Some virtues are by accidents of history associated with utopianism, hostility to private property, anti-clericalism, and other core beliefs of the Left. I can scandalize a yoga instructor anywhere in the world by declaring myself an avid admirer of Margaret Thatcher, though I challenge you to read the yoga sutras and conclude from them that devotees must favor an overregulated financial sector.
Concern for the welfare and dignity of animals is such an issue, associated with nihilist leftists such as Peter Singer and local totalitarians who seek to regulate pets out of existence. But one need not believe that animals have been endowed with all the rights of humans to insist that they are more than a commodity that tastes good.
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The conservative case against routine indifference to animal suffering has best been made by Matthew Scully in his 2002 book, Dominion. As I read it, the cat in my lap stretched out her paw and tenderly patted my cheek. “She would taste good,” I thought, was not a morally serious answer to the question, “Should I eat her?” And if it was not, how could it be a serious answer to this question: Should I eat an animal that has been separated from its mother at birth; confined its whole life to a pen in which it could not lie down to sleep or even turn around; castrated without anesthetic; force-fed; maddened by pain, fear, and sensory deprivation; and often inadequately stunned before slaughter, and therefore boiled and dismembered while still conscious?
Wayne Pacelle, the president and CEO of the Humane Society, is not notably a philosophical conservative. Nor has his record at the Humane Society been unimpeachable; Michael Vick remains — despite his apologies and Pacelle’s — as plausible a campaigner for his organization as O. J. Simpson would be for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Pacelle has been too quick to praise animal shelters that are no more than killing machines. (There are better solutions: trapping, neutering, vaccinating, and releasing, for example.) He is not Scully’s equal as a prose stylist; his writing is a bit schmaltzy. But many of the arguments in his new book, The Bond, are compelling; some are new, and those that are not are cogently restated and worth restating.
Our instinct, he proposes, to care for animals is as much a part of our nature as our instinct to exploit them, and a better part of it. If Scully locates his argument, ultimately, in natural law and Christian theology, Pacelle appeals to the bond we instinctively feel with animals, one so ancient that to dismiss it as effete sentimentalism is surely to take the easy way out. This bond may be viewed through many modern prisms — genetic, evolutionary — but it has been observed from Aesop to Kipling. Children are born with a keen curiosity about animals; their horror at the thought that the animals are to be slaughtered must be trained out of them. It is well known that children who torture animals have something very wrong with them: They often grow up to practice this enthusiasm on humans.
I am happy to accept that animals are not humans and that the life of a human is more sacred than a cow’s. But it requires tergiversations of the mind and soul to accept that animals are thus like plants and their lives no more sacred than a carrot’s. We need not value animals more than children to ask, as Bentham did, whether they suffer, conclude that they do, and demand of ourselves that we limit the amount of suffering we impose upon them.
Ok… so we are now going to fill libraries with tomes railing against our insatiable and incessant animal cruelty, not so kind to the trees don’t you think.
And while I await next year’s Time Magazine Person of the Yea…ah I mean Liberal Cause Célèbre of the…oops sorry again …Organic Entity of the Year issue ….let me offer a few morsels of thought on this beastly topic.
Those good old gun and bible clinging racial hatred mongering American people donate more to animal causes, have more pets and do more good for the animal cause then any nation on the Earth. While admittedly we probably eat more beef too (the Chinese have us beat on poultry, horse and dog) , the average bovine standard of living is better here than anywhere else (darn capitalism, not only improving life for all citizens and illegals, its improving the lot of the 4 pawers as well). What’s an anemic gauntly cheeked upper lip peach fuzzed Das Capital thumping activist wraith to do…?
Protest, that’s it. They won’t stop until l every scrap of meat is outlawed and every goldfish is free.
Good for them but truth is our Judeo-Christian heritage puts us in good stead with our strict Buddhist vegetarian and beef boycotting Hindu compatriots.
The Kosher laws of the Jews were the first written instruction in self control. Our ancient Hebrew friends knew humans were capable of environmental mastery. But mastery unchecked leads to arrogance, hubris, recklessness and self destruction. Kosher rules, while arcane, teach self control both inwards and to the externally world. Do Not Kill, Steal, Covet and so on are just words unless they are wedded (not civil unioned) to the basic moral principal of self control. If people consume everything desired simply because they can, well the 10 Commandments won’t have too much meaning will it?
True only 2% of America is Jewish and only a minority of them keeps kosher but the underlying philosophy holds. Proof is in the popularity of Organic Foods. Expensive, yet still popular and with more popularity economy of scale is actually lowering the price of these goods (darn capitalism again). The good life of American animals is getting better daily, look at the proliferation of free range chickens, pigs and kosher hot dogs. True at the end of the day the chicken dies but what a run it had.
Thanks all for listening, I’ll let others self flagellate (with a patent leather whips) over animal destiny. I’m content praying to the reincarnation gods to make me, with the possible exception of being a Kobe Cow, an American animal.
Yes, we are more decent to animals than the Chinese, Indians, etc. etc. But still, have you ever actually seen a "factory" for "production" of veal or pigs or chickens or eggs? Animals are, after all, living things and the point is that we demean ourselves by abusing them, especially because G-d or nature (pick your preference) has given us absolute dominion and control over them.
Your citation of Jewish laws of kashrut as a paradigm of self-control is particularly apt. Interestingly, Jewish tradition holds that eating meat was prohibited until after the Flood. The rabbis write that hamburger was then allowed because the hope was that humans' innate brutality (which led to the Flood in the first place) would be channeled and ultimately diminished through the act of slaughter and meat-eating.
One of my son's friends attended a Jewish Orthodox rabbinical seminary. The laws of kashrut and slaughter are a basic part of the whole rabbinic thing, so at the end of the term the teacher arranged a field trip to a slaughter house in order for the students to fully appreciate the gravity of the subject. The students found the experience horrific and to this day my son's friend can't bear to see people waste meat.
One the one hand, the Talmud says that meat, chicken, fish should be eaten to celebrate Sabbath, weddings and the like. On the other hand, it says that any person who eats these things more than twice a week is a coarse and cruel person.
The Bible mandates decent treatment for animals as a critical core principle of a civil society. Our obligation to do so is absolute, not relative.
No one has ever seen a "factory" for the production of veal because they don't exist. Veal is not a production goal in and of itself but, rather, it is a by-product of dairy farming.
You see, in order to produce milk a cow must bear a calf. 50% of calves will be male. Dairy-breed cattle are bred to produce milk, not to put on muscle and flesh so there is no point to raising these male calves as beef steers -- their feed would cost more than their meat would be worth as adults of the customary slaughter age for steers.
So the male dairy calves are raised only long enough for their carcass weight to be profitable in the premium-priced veal market.
They are separated from their mothers because dairy cows produce vastly more milk than a calf could drink -- to the point that the fate of a dairy calf left to suckle at will is death from indigestion due to over-feeding. They are kept in small enclosures because they are small, young animals who require a snug, warm, draft-free, safe living area.
Again, smart farmers do not mistreat their animals because mistreated animals are not profitable. Individual cases of mistreatment can be dealt with on an individual level without condemning farming on the wholesale level.
Oh, I see. It's all a misunderstanding. Veal stalls are just little cow baby beds, and cows have evolved so as to destroy themselves were it not for the kind intervention of smart farmers.
Dairy cows are specifically bred to produce vastly more milk than their wild ancestors. Beef cows nurse their own offspring because they still produce only the normal amount of milk which is healthy for their calves.
If you don't know even this much about the farming you condemn then we can safely assume that your other points are equally ill-informed and poorly anchored to reality.
My dear friend drives past veal crates to and from work each day. (He GREW UP ON A FARM where they raised and slaughtered their own chickens and rabbits, so he is no 'raised pinky' liberal by any means.
He reluctantly mentioned the veal crates to me and said how sad they are--the animals have absolutely no room to move.
People who eat such animals are eating the life experience of those animals. Millions of Americans gorging themselves on suffering. And we wonder why we are a depressed, unhealthy, obese nation.
I associate kindness to animals with St. Francis of Assisi, not with man-chicken-bedroom-antics cheerleader Peter Singer or with the a Dog is a Rat is a Boy is Pig movement.
Scully's book made some powerful points, as do you. Especially in regard to factory farming. Conservatives do well to remember that a proper respect for other creatures, just like a proper respect for the environment at large, is a conservative virtue. Yes, the cultural left has co-opted and distorted too much of the movement, and blown a lot of things out of proportion.
"In any event, I’ve not yet noticed that anyone who cares for animals is diminished in his capacity to care for humans. To the contrary, in fact."
There I have to demur. Too many - by no means all or most, but too many - who identify who animals more than they do with their fellow human beings display some frightening, almost sociopathic tendencies. Think of the typical savage rottweiler or pit bull attack on a toddler. How many donations pour in the "save" the poor misguided canine, as opposed to helping the human victim?
And I think it's a bit of a strawman argument to argue against testing primates by torturing them, merely to see if they still dislike torture. Is there now or has there even been such an actual experimental program at any mainstream university or research center? I think this is a ditarction from your excellent points about factory farming and the need for the human custodians of animals to make sure that their charges have the happiest existences possible until whatever final disposition of their lives occurs.
And I think it's a bit of a strawman argument for *you* to argue, "Think of the typical savage rottweiler or pit bull attack on a toddler. How many donations pour in the 'save' the poor misguided canine, as opposed to helping the human victim?"
Sounds like you pulled that one out of someplace dark.
Ah, "natural" treatment of animals. I suppose it's far more humane for ungulates, weakened by winter and starvation, to have their throats ripped by a pack of wolves. That's the "natural" end of life for most mammals. They die while being eaten alive. Likely quite painful. Or perhaps it's humane to live like those wolves, driven by that same starvation and cold, to kill to survive. I think a single high-speed .30-30 round is far more humane.
Methinks there is evil in anthropomorphizing our furry friends. Obviously, some people have never worked a farm. Those nasty "industrial farms" create animals which would not have been otherwise born. It's a great leap in logic to gloss over that fact. Further, mistakes during slaughter do happen, but they are not the norm. An animal thrashing in its death throes is simply bad business - the lactic acid build-up doesn't taste very good.
The great evil is in books that convince people to pass "animal ethics" laws to force their morality on others. The marketplace has plenty of opportunities for pricey open-range livestock. However, the rest of us may not have that much money.
Full disclosure: I occasionally eat range-fed animals. I am a member of PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.
Oh, I like your logic, I'm going to dive right on into it and let the not-so-convincing-and-full-of-holes flow all over me. So . . . according to you, that animals created in factory farms would not have lived otherwise is some sort of major, salient fact. It is so important a consideration, in fact, that it automatically renders animals objects, in no way subjects, and the farms can have at them as they will. We cannot complain about the treatment of animals in such environments, because they are artificial lives, made possible only by the capital and labor of the industrial complex in question, and therefore beyond moral consideration. Fair enough.
Then I propose, following your oh-so-rigorous logic, that any human embryo created in a lab is an object, not a subject - since those lives would not have existed otherwise - and the scientists involved are welcome to use them as they will. The embryos are, after all, the products of the lab's capital and labor, and the system's so well regulated that we needn't worry about any abuses! Who's up for some organ harvesting?
"Those nasty "industrial farms" create animals which would not have been otherwise born."
But who, nonetheless have an awareness and an intelligence that, apparently, you have sadly never experienced.
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"Methinks there is evil in anthropomorphizing our furry friends."
If so, C.S.Lewis was an especially evil man.
Rather, I would say that there is evil in willfully ignoring another's sentience.
I have found that ONLY when animals truly feel safe and respected do they open up, like flowers. The feeling of befriending another species is one of God's gifts to mankind. Conversely, an abused animal will hide its consciousness away as though it were just a lump.
One's experience of animals directly reflects the quality of one's treatment of them.
Yes, we should treat animals with due respect in our role as good stewards of the earth and we should never be cruel to them simply because intentionally inflicting suffering is a wrong in and of itself.
However, the natural relationship of man to animal is the relationship of predator to prey. What an animal represents to a human in the state of nature is a high-quality source of proteins, fats, and vitamins that are difficult or impossible to obtain from plant sources alone. (A vegan cannot maintain health without indulging in the unnatural act of taking nutritional supplements and it is particularly difficult for a vegan woman to maintain a healthy pregnancy and give birth to a healthy child even with said supplements).
I wonder if the author has ever actually lived in a farming area? Smart farmers do not mistreat their animals because mistreated animals do not thrive and animals that do not thrive are not profitable. Even a person who is not naturally kind can understand that simple concept.
Additionally, smart slaughtering practices are designed to minimize stress and upset for the animals both because panicked animals are difficult to handle safely and because the biological effects of stress degrade, or even destroy the quality of the meat -- causing a loss of profit.
As for what she calls, "sport hunting", I have to admit that I have misgivings about trophy hunting, where the goal of the hunt is a set of impressive antlers on the wall and the meat is wasted. But to hunt for meat is entirely justifiable and should be especially praised by those who condemn "factory farming" because it is a principle for ethical hunters that when the practice of hunting is at its finest the prey should not know its in danger until its dead.
Is the system perfect? Of course not. Nothing on earth is either perfect or perfectible. And it goes without saying that acts of intentional abuse should be punished. But to object to it wholesale, embracing scarcity in the place of abundance for the sake of the same unreasoning sentiment that causes the author to rescue vermin from their natural predator is, simply, silly.
I had no problems with either of my two pregnancies, despite maintaining a vegan diet throughout. My girls were 10+ pounds and had apgar scores of 9. The only supplements I took were the prenatal vitamins routinely given to pregnant women.
Your "nothing is perfectible" argument is exactly the sort of shrugging excuse for doing nothing that she references in the article. Can nothing be improved? Where's the reasoning behind your belief that "embracing scarcity" is the only option to institutionalized cruelty?
Great post. Thank you for mentioning slaughterhouse improvements (Dr. Temple Grandin is an amazing woman) and hunting for meat. There is no comparison between the health and respect of the latter and factory farming. Hunting for meat also helps to regulate wild ungulate populations and the spread of disease.
However, your argument, "embracing scarcity in the place of abundance" doesn't necessarily follow from more humane farming practices. The argument reminds me of that used by state governments facing spending cuts, "crime will soar when we reduce the police force; there will be more fires with a reduced fire department", when what they secretly fear most is a reduction in their entitlements--their benefits and pensions.
Scarcity doesn't have to follow the adoption of humane animal husbandry, nor does "abundance" result from brutal factory farming (unless you especially crave hormone- and antibiotic-imbued meat and dairy products).
My comments come from having been on both sides of the strident carnivore/quasi-vegan argument.
I grew up *loving* crispy bacon and bloody-rare steaks, making fun of non-deodorant-wearing vegetarians, laughing supportively at "Save the Humans" bumper stickers, etc. I ate fast food regularly and, frankly, was overweight and in need of exercise.
Don't know when the change occurred but, 30 years later, I am 30 pounds lighter, toned (something I never thought possible), and weaned off of Zoloft (antidepressant). Our grocery bill is very manageable, and we buy organic whenever possible--always organic dairy products.
Our food is home-cooked from scratch or a healthy frozen brand like 'Amy's', and we have a garden. --> Eliminating meat and SUGAR from our diets has caused us to lose weight and to feel better. We appreciate our home-cooked meals much more than when we ate takeout.
Going back to the 'typical American' meat- and junk-food-'rich' diet would feel like eating plastic. I did it a couple of times a few years ago (used to enjoy Runza's fish sandwiches and fries), but stopped because I fancied I could FEEL THE GREASE oozing down my stomach walls--a heavy, dull feeling.
Your tastes change, your body improves, my oncologist (yes, I had cancer) told me I am "the poster child for cancer recovery...a good patient who actually listened to (her) recommendations". I am thankful for this abundance.
"We need not value animals more than children to ask, as Bentham did, whether they suffer, conclude that they do, and demand of ourselves that we limit the amount of suffering we impose upon them."
Thank you!
"In any event, I’ve not yet noticed that anyone who cares for animals is diminished in his capacity to care for humans. To the contrary, in fact."
Very true. Usually when people hurl this charge, it is simply their defense against not doing squat to help promote decent treatment of animals when confronted with someone who does. If you mentioned that you donated to Japanese tsunami relief, for example, they would lecture you about not helping Americans -- people who choose to do nothing need some excuse! Similarly, if you persist in believing that Michael Vick is a sadistic low-life who has half-heartedly gone through a pantomime of "rehabilitation," you care more about dogs than humans, and are probably racist as well. Recite the details of some of his executions of dogs, and they raise their voices to tell you that that doesn't matter -- Hey, it's the home team we're talking about! I suspect these people are the same ones who roared their disapproval when Joe Paterno was fired for failing to report his child-raping colleague to the police. But it's the animal-lovers who have distorted values??
