Is it possible to eat meat in good conscience?
Good stuff from the Analphilosopher on meat-eating today. While I do not hold animals to have rights directly analogous to human rights, I believe that the suffering experienced by animals in factory farm conditions is abominable. Even if most people are not amenable to rational persuasion, the average American would be horrified if confronted by a typical day in the life of a factory pig. It seems that consumers willingly turn a blind eye towards how their meat is produced.
I‚ÄövÑv¥ll give you one example.
As many readers of this blog know, I am a small-scale farmer. I have an orchard and a vineyard, both of which are very attractive to deer. After spending over a thousand dollars in passive exclusion methods (Ask the Maximum Leader and his long-suffering wife how much fun it was to construct a slant fence), I had to be more pro-active in my defense of my family‚ÄövÑv¥s livelihood. When a deer figures out how to get into the orchard through the truck gate, I have no real option but to shoot the darn thing. I don‚ÄövÑv¥t enjoy it, but it needs to be done.
Having sacrificed the deer, I don‚ÄövÑv¥t want the meat to go to waste. I have filled the freezers of family members, friends, and a local food bank. However, the guy who cleans the deer for the local food bank is tired of dealing with the animals. If there is a deer in the garden prior to school, I don‚ÄövÑv¥t have time to deal with processing the carcass. So I sent an e-mail to my colleagues at work:
I have a kill permit to protect my vineyard and orchard from deer damage. I have been donating the deer to the local food bank, but the guy who cleans them is feeling a bit overworked, so I switched to another hunters for the hungry drop off, but they don’t open until 7, so it makes it very tight for me to get to work.
If anyone here knows how to butcher a deer and wants free venison, I can bring you a cleaned and gutted carcass. I’ll call you in the evening when I get one so you can prepare and bring it up in the early A.M.
If interested, drop me an e-mail with your phone number.
Mark
One of the women I worked with became very angry at me. She thought the e-mail posted above was really disgusting and berated me, out in the halls in front of passing students, for ‚ÄövÑv grossing her out.‚ÄövÑvp She was genuinely, shakingly, angry.
Now, I tend to react to this sort of thing by becoming calm and trying to ascertain what the real issue. So I quietly apologized, explaining that I had not meant to insult her dietary beliefs, but that I was just trying to avoid having the meat go to waste. Her response? ‚ÄövÑv I‚ÄövÑv¥m not a vegetarian. I love meat. I just like to pretend that it comes from the store in little plastic packages.‚ÄövÑvp
She was so appalled at the humane killing of an animal that has lived its life in nature that she was willing to make an ass of herself in front of God and all his disciples, but she was cheerfully willing to consume feedlot beef? Her real issue is that I had pulled aside the curtain on her carefully constructed Oz of self-delusion.
Read the Analphilosopher‚ÄövÑv¥s post. My critique of his position is that the suffering issue isn‚ÄövÑv¥t either-or. Meat can be raised humanely ‚ÄövÑv¨ I do it. But most Americans don‚ÄövÑv¥t even think about that. I would guess almost 100% of meat in grocery stores is of factory farm origin.
UPDATE: After typing this, I saw that one of KBJ‚ÄövÑv¥s readers had sent in an asinine comment:
Why cant i deny that pain and suffering is bad for animals? For me its as simple as the food chain and im at the top of it. I love meat and have no quibbles about doing whatever is required to put it on my families dinner table. The super market just makes it easy. Got to love the division of labor!
Sorry i just dont put animals on the same playing field as humans.
Donovan
Here is the reply I sent to KBJ:
Dear Donovan,
As a fellow omnivore, I also believe in eating meat. However, I am dismayed that you so blithely dismiss animal suffering. While the position that animals are not morally equivalent to humans is defendable, we still ought not to cause unnecessary pain and suffering when it is avoidable. If you are unwilling to minimize suffering for the sake of animals, do so for your own sake. The way we treat ‚ÄövÑv lessors‚ÄövÑvp ‚ÄövÑv¨ however one might define that term, reflects on us and changes us.
The best parallel that I can think of is the historical opposition that many virulent racists offered to the institution of slavery. They opposed chattel bondage not because they felt any sympathy for Africans but because the racists were alarmed in the way that the institution coarsened slaveholders.
I believe (The good professor will have to confirm this for me; it has been awhile since freshman philosophy) that Aquinas extended this rationale to animals. If I may paraphrase badly: even though they do not have moral weight (souls) we ought to treat them well so as not to develop the habit of cruelty that might then be extended to out fellow man.
You don‚ÄövÑv¥t have to become a vegetarian to eschew being a cog in the horror machine. Buy humanely raised meat and enjoy it with a clean conscience.
Smallholder
