Disclaimer: I’m politically moderate — this will be my best attempt to make a case that appeals to conservative values; I do not necessarily endorse the various conservative values and views that I defend in this article.
We live in a society of debauchery and erosion of values. A society that treats that which is weird and unnatural as good, and that which is good, pure, and just as something that real high-minded intellectual elites understand we no longer need. Modernity opened up a pandora’s box of horrors — from the undermining of traditional family values to the expansion of corrosive secularism, to the radical increase in single motherhood.
And yet, there is one particular disease of modernity that is ignored uncritically by many conservatives. There’s an understandable reason for this — many of the others who criticize this scourge are impish, secular “soyboy” libtards, with no appreciation of God, justice, or virtue — often also with crazed environmentalist fears.
Based on the title, one might have been able to ascertain which feature of modernity I’m discussing. This cancer is factory farming — the way that nearly all meat is gained in the United States.
Note, I am not claiming that eating meat is necessarily immoral. I am merely claiming that as people of decency and virtue we have an obligation to stop indulging in the horrors of the modern factory farming industry.
Man is the rational animal. As the rational animal, we have both a higher and a lower appetite. Our lower appetite represents cheap pleasures, the things not truly worth pursuing. Our higher appetite represents the higher goods we can experience — virtue, friendships, deep wisdom, marriage, a relationship with God.
As an opponent of this frivolous band of secularism which says that whatever makes you happy you should do, even if it’s deeply wrong — a moral abomination even, the fact that meat tastes nice is not of consequence in evaluating whether our current practices are permissible. Our lower appetites’ inclination for meat isn’t actually significant — as rational creatures we have the duty to pursue the greater things, to subordinate our cheap, frivolous appetites in the name of higher virtue. Much like you can’t chop up little babies in the womb just because it would be convenient or make you happy, if the process of getting meat is deeply wrong, it shouldn’t be done, regardless of how good it tastes.
Remember, 99% of meat in the US comes from factory farms. Thus, the question of whether we should eat meat is almost entirely the same as the question of whether it’s wrong to eat meat from factory farms.
In a previous article, I’ve documented some of the horrors of factory farms.
The question we face is whether we should torture billions of sentient beings before killing them because we like the taste of their flesh.
Whether pigs should be roasted to death, hot steam choking and burning them to death. Whether pigs who are smarter than dogs should be forced to give birth in tiny crates where they can’t move around. Whether they should be castrated with no anesthetic, have their tails and teeth cut off with a sharp object and no anesthetic, whether parts of their ears should be cut off for identification purposes, cruelly cramped together during transport1 unable to stand or move around, and whether they should have a knife dragged across their throat. All of these are the price we pay for cheap pig flesh.
Whether chickens should be hung upside down by one leg before being brought on a conveyor to a knife being dragged across their throat—the only saving grace being an error prone electric bath that knocks them unconscious; sometimes. Of course, the combination of blade and electric bath is sufficiently error-prone to boil to death half a million or so sentient beings every year. It becomes abundantly clear that we’re acting horrendously when animal advocates are hoping that we’ll gas animals to death—kill them the way the Nazi’s did, for the ways we do it now are far crueler. Whether chickens should be crammed in a space far smaller than a sheet of paper, living their whole lives without seeing the sun, except in the moments before they’re transferred to their grisly slaughter. We do this to about 80 billion land animals and trillions of sea creatures.
Are cheap eggs worth forcing sentient beings to live in shit, with the smell of feces being the only thing detectable from inside the barn? Forcing sentient beings to get osteoporosis and heart disease, all in an attempt to reduce the cost of eggs. This barrage of shit is not limited to egg-laying hens—it’s why a full 80% of pigs have pneumonia upon slaughter. A life lived in so much shit that it causes pneumonia the vast majority of the time is not how we ought to treat sentient beings. Veterinary care is rarely given to animals who suffer in agony and terror. Mothers are separated from their children at birth, both of whom cry out for days or weeks. 90% of the chickens for meat that you eat can’t walk properly because of genetic manipulation. Chickens were placed into darkness, killing 5-10% of them, all in an attempt to increase their egg laying. Broiler chickens develop horrific diseases and experience unimaginable pain.
Because a large amount of calcium goes into egg production, almost all battery hens suffer from osteoporosis, which is exacerbated by lack of exercise in cages
It’s standard practice in the pork industry to “thump piglets. Thumping is when farmers slam the pigs headfirst into the ground because they won’t meet a size requirement or are sick and deemed a waste.
More horrors of this nightmarish industry
Farmers use pliers to pull the skin off of live fish. Dozens are crammed into buckets and baskets, gasping for oxygen. They’re often flailing and struggling, trying to escape the workers’ knives.
Ibid
When they have young, sows are jammed between two rails, so that they cannot turn around and take care of the piglets, only feed them. This is done to prevent the sow from crushing a piglet to death, because of the lack of space. The piglets are brought to the weaning section after the nursing period of only 3 to 4 weeks (instead of the natural 14 weeks). At the age of about 72 days they go to the fattening farm, where 14 of them are put in a sty of 10 m², usually on a grid floor without straw.
Now, perhaps if you’re a godless, secular liberal with no basis for objective morality, where you think that everything is gray, that we can’t call some things evil — maybe then your values (or lack thereof) allow you to tolerate these horrors. Yet as people and decency, we cannot look the other way as beings that cry out in pain are beaten to death against concrete.
Veganism is seen as the extreme position here. But the status quo is really the extreme position. What kind of monster thinks that it’s permissible to grind up little babies in blenders. Thinking that we shouldn’t grind up little babies — even when they’re a different species — isn’t an extreme position; it’s common sense. Thinking that we shouldn’t take off animals’ skin with pliers isn’t an extreme position.
I’m not some hippy who thinks that animals are the same as humans. But the animals we eat are pretty similar to dogs. And we wouldn’t tolerate any of this being done to dogs. Let’s just treat other animals like we treat dogs — prohibit outright egregious cruelty to them.
There’s a very solid biblical case for caring about animals. While we do have dominion over the animals, this doesn’t give us free reign to mistreat them. To see just a few of the numerous biblical passages that provide the case for avoiding cruelty to animals, here I’ll provide some.
Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
Proverbs 12:10
For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 3:19
Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds,
Proverbs 27:23
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
Psalm 145:9
And the angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me.
Numbers 22:32
He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man;
he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck;
he who presents a grain offering, like one who offers pig's blood;
he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like one who blesses an idol.
These have chosen their own ways,
and their soul delights in their abominations;
I also will choose harsh treatment for them
and bring their fears upon them,
because when I called, no one answered,
when I spoke, they did not listen;
but they did what was evil in my eyes
and chose that in which I did not delight.”Isaiah 66:3-4
Isaiah 11:6 ESV
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
Thus it’s very clear from the bible that — while eating meat isn’t always wrong — causing deliberate cruelty to animals is wrong. And what are factory farms if not deliberately cruel? If it would be wrong to drop a baby chicken into a blender — as it obviously would be — so too is it wrong to pay for others to drop little babies into blenders.
Additionally, as moral agents, we have the ability to intuit right and wrong. The moral law written on our hearts allows us to figure out that many things — deliberate animal cruelty, for example — are wrong, and that others are right. When we reflect, when we apply compassion and empathy, it’s obvious that animal cruelty is deeply wrong. And yet we cause animal cruelty on a vast scale. Most people will cause hundreds of extra animals to be bred into cruel confinement and then sent to brutal slaughter. If it’s wrong to be cruel to animals, so too is it wrong to pay for someone else to be cruel to animals.
It would be wrong to kick or beat a dog. It would be wrong to kick or beat a pig. And yet far away, in factory farms, under the cover of dark concrete, far worse horrors are inflicted upon pigs, chickens, and cows. When the animals cry out in agony and terror, can we really claim to be good, godly people if their cries fall on deaf ears?
We have dominion over the animals, just as parents have dominion over their children. Yet parents wouldn’t be morally permitted to beat their children. Dominion does not sanction treating animals however we want. As Pollan describes
Scully, a Christian conservative, has no patience for lefty rights talk, arguing instead that while God did give man “dominion” over animals (“Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you”), he also admonished us to show them mercy. “We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality but . . . because they stand unequal and powerless before us.”
So let’s dispense with this absurd notion that caring about animals is a lefty notion. Are we really going to be outdone on the moral issue of how we should treat animals — the most vulnerable among us — by those who chop up babies in the womb, disbelieve in God, and force perverse gender ideology upon children in schools? Are we really going to lose the battle of who is more compassionate to leftists? Let the culture war not blind us to a moral horror — one so obviously wrong that it takes a twisted, warped moral system not to see it as wrong.