I’ve used this space for a number of different topics in the past from general philosophy, to cappuccino reviews, and even a covid diary. Over the next year I’d like to spend time exploring a topic that has come to interest me over the past few years.
To what extent is the raising, use, and killing of animals in agricultural settings unethical?
In order to address this I’ll also explore what we might owe wild animals that we encounter in our daily lives, and how this question relates to our treatment of animals in agriculture.
Most vegans, and to a lesser extent vegetarians and pescatarians, see the typical treatment of animals in agricultural settings to be an atrocious moral wrong that most of us ignore. In fact our society spends a great deal of energy keeping the treatment of animals in agriculture out of sight from the consumers of animal products. If we had to live next to a slaughterhouse or a high-intensity animal feed lot we would likely eat much less meat. Hunting itself is considered uncouth by urbanites even as they enjoy meat on a daily basis. There certainly is a misalignment between the emotions many of us experience when encountered with the harm and killing of animals and our attitudes towards the abstract idea of animal agriculture.
I’m going to start by exploring a possible middle way, but one that many animal rights advocates will think a delusion. I’ll call this the “Whole Foods Omnivore.” This is a person who recognizes the moral wrong in widespread mistreatment of animals in much of animal agriculture, but believes that animal product consumption can be made ethical through the improved treatment of those animals. I think this view is important both because it seems particularly common among a set of individuals who are otherwise quite concerned with animal welfare (at least among pet species) and because it touches on a number of different aspects of animal ethics. For instance, it isn’t obvious whether pasture-raised animals who are treated relatively well have worse lives than similar (non-domesticated) animals in the wild. Is that relevant? Does the condition of wild animals set a baseline above which any domestication project is ethical, even if those animals are systematically slaughtered?
The ethical evaluation of the so called “Whole Foods Omnivore” will touch on a number of important topics in animal ethics. Next I will motivate why this position is appealing and why it seems to overcome some initial objections. Contrary to what an ethical vegan or vegetarian might claim there may be limits on the sorts of lives we owe animals. Or at least that is where I will start. It turns out, I think, that the Whole Foods Omnivore is ultimately benefiting from uses of animals that they would never permit for other domesticated species like dogs and cats, and threatens their own ethical consistency.