“It is almost impossible to observe the social feelings of animals without feeling a deep sense of kinship,” writes Roger Scruton in Animal Rights and Wrongs:
I don't believe there is a right side of history in any serious sense, but I'm convinced future generations will view industrial meat farming as barbaric and evil. Or at least they will do once lab meat has become widely available.
Having done an undergraduate and master's degree in synthetic organic chemistry (before foolishly getting too involved with computers resulting in a PhD in physical/organic chem) I'd strongly bet that that "lab meat" has a lot to do with petroleum as a source of hydrocarbons and solvents - it's yet another way of turning oil into food. Oil, believe it or not, is a finite and depleting resource, and when it is gone, there's no replacing it, and that will be the end of mechanized industrial scale agriculture - http://theoildrum.com/node/5120 - and a return to animal-based agriculture. Horses and cows eat grasses, you don't need to grow grain crops to feed them - although the taste of grass-fed beef is different from that of grain-fed beef. Chickens eat bugs and worms and whatever else they can find - in fact, no domesticated farm animal in existence today will go out of existence. Only in the 1920s did oil start to have a big influence in agriculture, so post oil, we should expect to go back to pre-1920s ag - and that's animal-based.
I can't pretend to be an expert in farming, but if we run out of fossil fuels it's still going to be easier to farm plants than rear animals. And as far as I'm aware, mass meat consumption is s recent trend. Our ancestors ate far less meat.
Your crop yields are going to be way down, because you won't have petrochemical-based fertilizers - all that ammonia you see at co-ops comes from natural gas - you'll essentially have manure and that's it. The Amish wil have a head start, those with horse-drawn implements will be the only game in town. And then there's drying and storage, and transportation... Domesticated cattle reproduce and eat grass, and you don't have to have a lot of tools to deal with them.
It's not just the killing which is painful - there's a reason cattle are put in a chute to castrate them. Same case for gelding horses so they don't become stallions... I've never seen this done with anaesthetics, just a sharp and quick squeeze on a tool which does the work. And, back in the olden days, before ear-tagging (and now probably chipping), there was branding with a red-hot branding iron on bare skin.
Great piece with some interesting reflections on a book I’ve never felt motivated enough to read.
I wonder why you are so circumspect with the case against eating animal, though? Surely you have outlined it quite well: animals are sentient, can and do suffer greatly when used in agriculture, and causing unnecessary suffering is wrong. Doesn’t a stronger conclusion flow from your premises?
I will put my cards on the table as a vegan always slightly perplexed by the lack of sincere concern for animal issues from the right—unlike, say, environmentalism!
Thanks. Great question. So, here's where I think my premises (which you have stated well) could be attacked:
(1) I think someone could argue that an animal which has lived a truly free range life and then been swiftly killed has been fortunate to have lived, and that such animals would not live if people didn't want to eat them. Obviously, no one would apply that to people, and almost no one would apply them to cats and dogs. Personally, I think if we have established that a happy animal life is good, that means it must be immoral to unnecessarily end it. But I'm not entirely confident in my reasoning there.
(2) I think someone could argue that the line between necessary and unnecessary suffering is so blurry that some kind of meat-eating could be ethical. I'm not a vegan because having had an eating disorder, I don't want to have such a restrictive diet. I'm not sure *that's* ethical, but it certainly makes me more cautious about telling other people what it and isn't essential.
Obviously, neither (1) nor (2) apply to factory farming.
I think (1) does raise an interesting philosophical point about animal ‘rights’, which I agree is on philosophically shakier ground than suffering-based arguments. I would agree with your last point re factory farming and add that I think it’s empirically impossible to universalise any kind of humane rearing and eating of animals on the scale modern society requires. Cruelty and suffering will always get through, on a huge scale; in the same way, I think, starting a war will invariably lead to atrocities off the battlefield. If animals matter, I don’t think it’s a morally safe position when there’s an alternative. (I do believe that animals have an interest in continuing to live that should be respected, but that’s a harder sell.)
(2) I think that’s a fair point and ties into questions about alternatives and living a well-rounded moral life, doing the good we can do pragmatically.
Thanks again for engaging. I enjoy your pieces on animals, which always seem a bit lonely in the media landscape. It feels like a cause without much of a constituency—or any reflective writers! BW, Jordan.
For (1) the animals life is contingent on the farmer being monetarily rewarded for raising it. Your claim it must be immoral to end a happy animal life seems to ignore that the happy life only exists because the farmer can afford to provide it. I dont see how your reasoning could possibly be applied in the real world. The animals should not be killed but the farmer should continue to provide for them until bankruptcy or natural animal death?
No, my suggestion is that if it's immoral to kill the animal, and no one wants to raise it without killing it, it shouldn't exist. I admit that this might be hard to justify under a utilitarian framework but it's my moral instinct. Granted, it is hard to argue from moral instincts.
One of the essential vitamins - B12 - is present in significant quantities only in meat - and B12 deficiency can severely impact the health of vegetarians. For example, see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38962588/ - "We report a case of a 25-year-old female college student presenting with symptoms indicative of megaloblastic anemia, attributed to her recent adoption of a strict vegetarian and vegan diet. Clinical manifestations included dizziness, palpitations, blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, burning sensations, excessive sweating, mouth ulcers, and unintentional weight loss. Physical examination revealed pale palpebral conjunctiva and sweating on the palms and soles. Laboratory findings confirmed megaloblastic anemia secondary to vitamin B12 deficiency, with elevated mean corpuscular volume (MCV), reticulocyte count, serum methylmalonic acid (MMA), and homocysteine levels." ...
Not my problem, I'm an avid consumer of meat products. it's the strict vegans and vegetarians who have the problem - because most if not all B12 supplements come from animals...
Vegan supplements obviously exist, have done for a long time, and typically come from spirulina or algae. You might find it interesting to note that 10-15 years ago vegans regularly got, ‘where do you get your protein/B12?’ but I’ve not heard this one in the wild for some time now!
Unsurprisingly I agree with this line of argument entirely. And as I've argued elsewhere, the issue extends far beyond meat to the animal products sneaking into so much of what we buy, edible and inedible. And it's the hidden animal products that tend to come from the worst livestock systems.
Great post. Scruton is so frustrating on these issues in part because he's such a good writer. When he puts his mind to it, he so eloquently gets to the heart of the problem. I mean, look at this beautiful quote!
"Someone who was indifferent to the sight of pigs confined in batteries, who did not feel some instinctive need to pull down these walls and barriers and let in light and air, would have lost sight of what it is to be a living animal. His sense of the value of his own life would be to that extent impoverished by his indifference to the sight of life reduced to a stream of sensations. It seems to me, therefore, that a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong, even if legally permissible."
Then a page later he'll be talking about how fox hunting is critical to the good life because it connects man with his primeval spirit. Sigh.
Ranching is the activity most defensible on a large swath of land in the US. Not that it is always done according to best practices. But the land could theoretically be restored entirely to prairie while still supporting cows (and the many grassland species that have lost their habitat).
I don’t have a solution for the hard parts of the business, that trouble you - but I think the range absent cows, if bison don’t come back, is a strange idea.
And I have often looked at cows and thought they really do seem among the most contented animals in Creation, which is hard to square with the thought of their non-existence.
I don't believe there is a right side of history in any serious sense, but I'm convinced future generations will view industrial meat farming as barbaric and evil. Or at least they will do once lab meat has become widely available.
Having done an undergraduate and master's degree in synthetic organic chemistry (before foolishly getting too involved with computers resulting in a PhD in physical/organic chem) I'd strongly bet that that "lab meat" has a lot to do with petroleum as a source of hydrocarbons and solvents - it's yet another way of turning oil into food. Oil, believe it or not, is a finite and depleting resource, and when it is gone, there's no replacing it, and that will be the end of mechanized industrial scale agriculture - http://theoildrum.com/node/5120 - and a return to animal-based agriculture. Horses and cows eat grasses, you don't need to grow grain crops to feed them - although the taste of grass-fed beef is different from that of grain-fed beef. Chickens eat bugs and worms and whatever else they can find - in fact, no domesticated farm animal in existence today will go out of existence. Only in the 1920s did oil start to have a big influence in agriculture, so post oil, we should expect to go back to pre-1920s ag - and that's animal-based.
I can't pretend to be an expert in farming, but if we run out of fossil fuels it's still going to be easier to farm plants than rear animals. And as far as I'm aware, mass meat consumption is s recent trend. Our ancestors ate far less meat.
Your crop yields are going to be way down, because you won't have petrochemical-based fertilizers - all that ammonia you see at co-ops comes from natural gas - you'll essentially have manure and that's it. The Amish wil have a head start, those with horse-drawn implements will be the only game in town. And then there's drying and storage, and transportation... Domesticated cattle reproduce and eat grass, and you don't have to have a lot of tools to deal with them.
It's not just the killing which is painful - there's a reason cattle are put in a chute to castrate them. Same case for gelding horses so they don't become stallions... I've never seen this done with anaesthetics, just a sharp and quick squeeze on a tool which does the work. And, back in the olden days, before ear-tagging (and now probably chipping), there was branding with a red-hot branding iron on bare skin.
Great piece with some interesting reflections on a book I’ve never felt motivated enough to read.
I wonder why you are so circumspect with the case against eating animal, though? Surely you have outlined it quite well: animals are sentient, can and do suffer greatly when used in agriculture, and causing unnecessary suffering is wrong. Doesn’t a stronger conclusion flow from your premises?
I will put my cards on the table as a vegan always slightly perplexed by the lack of sincere concern for animal issues from the right—unlike, say, environmentalism!
Thanks. Great question. So, here's where I think my premises (which you have stated well) could be attacked:
(1) I think someone could argue that an animal which has lived a truly free range life and then been swiftly killed has been fortunate to have lived, and that such animals would not live if people didn't want to eat them. Obviously, no one would apply that to people, and almost no one would apply them to cats and dogs. Personally, I think if we have established that a happy animal life is good, that means it must be immoral to unnecessarily end it. But I'm not entirely confident in my reasoning there.
(2) I think someone could argue that the line between necessary and unnecessary suffering is so blurry that some kind of meat-eating could be ethical. I'm not a vegan because having had an eating disorder, I don't want to have such a restrictive diet. I'm not sure *that's* ethical, but it certainly makes me more cautious about telling other people what it and isn't essential.
Obviously, neither (1) nor (2) apply to factory farming.
Thanks, Ben.
I think (1) does raise an interesting philosophical point about animal ‘rights’, which I agree is on philosophically shakier ground than suffering-based arguments. I would agree with your last point re factory farming and add that I think it’s empirically impossible to universalise any kind of humane rearing and eating of animals on the scale modern society requires. Cruelty and suffering will always get through, on a huge scale; in the same way, I think, starting a war will invariably lead to atrocities off the battlefield. If animals matter, I don’t think it’s a morally safe position when there’s an alternative. (I do believe that animals have an interest in continuing to live that should be respected, but that’s a harder sell.)
(2) I think that’s a fair point and ties into questions about alternatives and living a well-rounded moral life, doing the good we can do pragmatically.
Thanks again for engaging. I enjoy your pieces on animals, which always seem a bit lonely in the media landscape. It feels like a cause without much of a constituency—or any reflective writers! BW, Jordan.
Thanks Jordan! Glad you enjoy them
For (1) the animals life is contingent on the farmer being monetarily rewarded for raising it. Your claim it must be immoral to end a happy animal life seems to ignore that the happy life only exists because the farmer can afford to provide it. I dont see how your reasoning could possibly be applied in the real world. The animals should not be killed but the farmer should continue to provide for them until bankruptcy or natural animal death?
Hi Garreth,
No, my suggestion is that if it's immoral to kill the animal, and no one wants to raise it without killing it, it shouldn't exist. I admit that this might be hard to justify under a utilitarian framework but it's my moral instinct. Granted, it is hard to argue from moral instincts.
One of the essential vitamins - B12 - is present in significant quantities only in meat - and B12 deficiency can severely impact the health of vegetarians. For example, see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38962588/ - "We report a case of a 25-year-old female college student presenting with symptoms indicative of megaloblastic anemia, attributed to her recent adoption of a strict vegetarian and vegan diet. Clinical manifestations included dizziness, palpitations, blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, burning sensations, excessive sweating, mouth ulcers, and unintentional weight loss. Physical examination revealed pale palpebral conjunctiva and sweating on the palms and soles. Laboratory findings confirmed megaloblastic anemia secondary to vitamin B12 deficiency, with elevated mean corpuscular volume (MCV), reticulocyte count, serum methylmalonic acid (MMA), and homocysteine levels." ...
Take a supplement!
Not my problem, I'm an avid consumer of meat products. it's the strict vegans and vegetarians who have the problem - because most if not all B12 supplements come from animals...
Vegan supplements obviously exist, have done for a long time, and typically come from spirulina or algae. You might find it interesting to note that 10-15 years ago vegans regularly got, ‘where do you get your protein/B12?’ but I’ve not heard this one in the wild for some time now!
Unsurprisingly I agree with this line of argument entirely. And as I've argued elsewhere, the issue extends far beyond meat to the animal products sneaking into so much of what we buy, edible and inedible. And it's the hidden animal products that tend to come from the worst livestock systems.
When I knew him, Sir Roger was fond of flogging an otter. This was in his twilight years, mind.
"Flogging an otter" sounds like a wonderful euphemism. Alas, some take it too literally.
Great post. Scruton is so frustrating on these issues in part because he's such a good writer. When he puts his mind to it, he so eloquently gets to the heart of the problem. I mean, look at this beautiful quote!
"Someone who was indifferent to the sight of pigs confined in batteries, who did not feel some instinctive need to pull down these walls and barriers and let in light and air, would have lost sight of what it is to be a living animal. His sense of the value of his own life would be to that extent impoverished by his indifference to the sight of life reduced to a stream of sensations. It seems to me, therefore, that a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong, even if legally permissible."
Then a page later he'll be talking about how fox hunting is critical to the good life because it connects man with his primeval spirit. Sigh.
"excessively terse analysis"
great use of understatement
Ranching is the activity most defensible on a large swath of land in the US. Not that it is always done according to best practices. But the land could theoretically be restored entirely to prairie while still supporting cows (and the many grassland species that have lost their habitat).
I don’t have a solution for the hard parts of the business, that trouble you - but I think the range absent cows, if bison don’t come back, is a strange idea.
And I have often looked at cows and thought they really do seem among the most contented animals in Creation, which is hard to square with the thought of their non-existence.