It's good that you were emotionally moved by BB's description of animal exploitation. What would be even better is if you decided to go vegan. I did it 20 years ago, and I count it among the best things I've ever done in my life.
I have many tattoos that have taken a few hours. It would be an awful trade to put someone through that much pain for a sandwich - so factory farming is DEFINITELY not worth it. Multiple times worse
No doubt that factory farms are hell-holes, but I don't think we'd be justified in eating animal products, even if the animals were treated humanely. Animals have an inherent worth and autonomy. They are sentient beings, with their own interests. They don't exist simply as a resource for humans to use.
My second point is that discussions about animal exploitation should ideally include information about practical solutions, particularly the adoption of a vegan lifestyle. Going vegan is much easier than most people would expect (I've been vegan for about 20 years).
The only problem with this argument is this: Imagine a flock of chickens living in their natural environment, totally free of humans. They may not be resources for humans to consume, but they will be resources for other animals to consume. Other predators don't care about their inherent worth or autonomy. They just need to eat or they die. I'll grant that humans living now, in the modern world don't necessarily need to eat meat anymore, but strictly speaking, if they are treated humanely, for those reasons, I don't think it's a moral wrong to eat some meat, sometimes provided it does come from a small and decent farm.
> Imagine a flock of chickens living in their natural environment, totally free of humans.
The chickens we have today are far removed from their wild ancestors. There's no reason for chickens to exist either on farms or in the wild. I'd be fine with it if they went extinct.
1. Other life uses other life all the time, every minute on earth for its own ends. Even now, humans are "used" as a resources for million or billions of living things.
2. And that I agree with BB that factory farming is a horrendous practice, but given argument 1, I don't find it morally wrong to eat other animals provided they are not treated cruelly.
I don't dispute your first point, but I don't see how your second point follows logically. It seems like a confusion between "is" and "ought". Animals are also known to commit rape and infanticide, but that doesn't mean it's morally acceptable for humans to do so.
Your original point was that animals have their own interests and are not simply there for human use. My point was that this isn't a reality: no living thing is free of being used by something else. I agree that we don't need to eat meat, and we don't need to enslave animals in little cages for food, BUT we can give them space outdoors and as good a life as they could have and every now and then people can eat them. Now you don't have to, that's fine. Personally I have given up meat myself (in no small part to the arguments made right here on this substack) with some exceptions for eggs from my own chickens that are not in little cages and have ample space to do things chickens do.
We've gotta put this issue of pain and suffering into perspective. At the bottom of it, it's simply resistance against accomplishing a goal. Think about what happens if, eg, a shark eats our leg off. Sure, it's a "horrific" experience. But why, exactly? The sensation of having our leg eaten off, in and of itself, is nothing more than data. But we need our legs to accomplish many of our goals, and the shark is oppressing us. It's this interpretation of the data that causes the pain and suffering.
Also, while it truly breaks my heart to think of hens suffering--and truly, truly it does--let's consider an even worse form of suffering, and wider in scale, that you might be contributing to:
While having our legs eaten by a shark may well be pretty rare, being eaten alive is not. Cancer. Happens all the time. C'est la vie. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if we could stay lit up on opiates and happy drugs until they stopped working, at which point we could take a "final dose". Turns out, though, that ultra-liberal drug dispensation and euthanasia are not always permitted, not even in the case of terminal cancer. But what madness is forcing us to endure this fate essentially "raw", when there's such an easy solution?
Christianity!
You may think yourself free of guilt in the matter: "Hey man, I'm only arguing for the unfalsifiable/unverifiable 'God of the Philosophers' that can never be experienced and has no relevance to life, whatsoever...what these savage lunatic Christians do is on them!" Problem is, the Church uses philosophical arguments for this inert God as a Trojan Horse to smuggle in Yahweh. Aristotle probably never intended his Unmoved Prime Mover to turn into a cracker in ceremonies by domineering and murdering religious institutions, but, tough shit, that's just what happens when you construct God arguments
I find the examples of pain here underwhelming, especially in the context of agony we cannot fathom.
I’ve had far more than 3 fractures in my life, and while they definitely hurt for a time, they really aren’t that bad.
A quick lookup of images factory farms, even those published by EA activists showing how crowded they are, shows no signs of the intense pecking that a few close up examples of chickens seriously pecked show, so I’m honestly unconvinced as to the prevalence of this.
The third is somewhat more convincing, mostly because I don’t really understand the psychological stress those chickens are under.
If pain is the barometer of acceptability, then I see no reason why a chicken with a life worth living that was unexpectedly and painlessly killed would be a problem.
Now I’m not saying that factory farming is morally acceptable, or even that eating meat is or can be morally acceptable, it just seems the bar for unfathomable pain is unfathomably low.
I’ve reread the article twice and I can’t find what the unfathomable agony you’re referencing is then.
You reference unfathomable agony more than once, seem to use excruciating interchangeably with unfathomable, then describe the 3 worst instances of pain these animals experience. Maybe the unfathomable agony isn’t specified in this article, which makes no sense as it’s referenced in the subtitle of the whole article.
Okay there are two classes of agony. One class is very great but not unfathomable--e.g. the amount of perhaps a tattoo or pregnancy. The other class is the kind so great that many will attempt suicide during it--e.g. being burned alive. On average animals have hundreds of hours of the first kind of agony and a few minutes of the second kind.
I think your benchmark examples of excruciating vs debilitating pain are unjustifiable. When giving a benchmark for what makes excruciating pain, you reference some of the worst human deaths ever imaginable, while the excruciating pain that these chickens undergo seems about par for the course for death as it’s been for all time. Death by infection or physical injury is bad, but it’s not 400 hours of literal intentional torture.
Either way it wasn’t clear originally which is why I made my comment, as there were multiple references in the merely disabling pain category that called that disabling pain the worst kind of pain those chickens experience.
It seems like all these issues can be 99.9% solved by just buying pasture raised eggs. Which are like $1 more than normal and they sell them at every Whole Foods.
How about putting various measures to make farming more humane to a vote? And even to abolish factory farming altogether? I'd certainly vote for all of these things!
Thank you for this post - this is why I donate everything that is beyond the minimal wage in my country. Beyond a certain threshold, I know that money won't make me more happy. So might as well use it to help those that need it the most ! I also feel more satisfied doing that.
For instance, The Humane League managed to get hundred of millions of hens out of cages. So we have a lot of power here !
givingwhatwecan.org really is a very good resource if you want to make a difference in the world.
You are not inflicting any pain on these animals. The farmer is. If I buy potatoes from a farmer who beats his children when they get bad grades, I am clearly not in any way complicit in their pain. I just want the potatoes. If I buy potatoes from a farmer who beats his children when they wash potatoes too slowly, it feels more complicit, but it really isn’t- I am willing to pay a certain price for potatoes and the farmer compromises himself morally as a result of the process that delivers them at that price. The same goes for animals. With the exception of things like veal and foie gras, the pain of animals is no part of what most purchasers of animal products are purchasing; it is thrown in by producers, usually as a way of increasing their profits. In the modern supply chain, we don’t even buy meat from farmers. We get it from stores which get it from distributors who get it from farm pools which get it from farmers, so our moral distance from animal suffering is increased, and we are even less complicit. The pain is entirely the responsibility of farmers. They could take lower profits, lower sales (from increased prices) or find other jobs, but they choose the pain.
Ideally there would be no incentive to morally compromise oneself, but since such incentives are ubiquitous in the modern economy, getting especially worked up about farms is sentimentality, not philosophy.
Thanks for writing this. It has moved me to donate $100 to Giving What We Can's Animal Welfare Fund.
That's amazing!!!
Congratulations ! That's very good
It's good that you were emotionally moved by BB's description of animal exploitation. What would be even better is if you decided to go vegan. I did it 20 years ago, and I count it among the best things I've ever done in my life.
I have many tattoos that have taken a few hours. It would be an awful trade to put someone through that much pain for a sandwich - so factory farming is DEFINITELY not worth it. Multiple times worse
I have two points to make.
No doubt that factory farms are hell-holes, but I don't think we'd be justified in eating animal products, even if the animals were treated humanely. Animals have an inherent worth and autonomy. They are sentient beings, with their own interests. They don't exist simply as a resource for humans to use.
My second point is that discussions about animal exploitation should ideally include information about practical solutions, particularly the adoption of a vegan lifestyle. Going vegan is much easier than most people would expect (I've been vegan for about 20 years).
The only problem with this argument is this: Imagine a flock of chickens living in their natural environment, totally free of humans. They may not be resources for humans to consume, but they will be resources for other animals to consume. Other predators don't care about their inherent worth or autonomy. They just need to eat or they die. I'll grant that humans living now, in the modern world don't necessarily need to eat meat anymore, but strictly speaking, if they are treated humanely, for those reasons, I don't think it's a moral wrong to eat some meat, sometimes provided it does come from a small and decent farm.
> Imagine a flock of chickens living in their natural environment, totally free of humans.
The chickens we have today are far removed from their wild ancestors. There's no reason for chickens to exist either on farms or in the wild. I'd be fine with it if they went extinct.
You didn't address my main points which were:
1. Other life uses other life all the time, every minute on earth for its own ends. Even now, humans are "used" as a resources for million or billions of living things.
2. And that I agree with BB that factory farming is a horrendous practice, but given argument 1, I don't find it morally wrong to eat other animals provided they are not treated cruelly.
I don't dispute your first point, but I don't see how your second point follows logically. It seems like a confusion between "is" and "ought". Animals are also known to commit rape and infanticide, but that doesn't mean it's morally acceptable for humans to do so.
Your original point was that animals have their own interests and are not simply there for human use. My point was that this isn't a reality: no living thing is free of being used by something else. I agree that we don't need to eat meat, and we don't need to enslave animals in little cages for food, BUT we can give them space outdoors and as good a life as they could have and every now and then people can eat them. Now you don't have to, that's fine. Personally I have given up meat myself (in no small part to the arguments made right here on this substack) with some exceptions for eggs from my own chickens that are not in little cages and have ample space to do things chickens do.
We've gotta put this issue of pain and suffering into perspective. At the bottom of it, it's simply resistance against accomplishing a goal. Think about what happens if, eg, a shark eats our leg off. Sure, it's a "horrific" experience. But why, exactly? The sensation of having our leg eaten off, in and of itself, is nothing more than data. But we need our legs to accomplish many of our goals, and the shark is oppressing us. It's this interpretation of the data that causes the pain and suffering.
Also, while it truly breaks my heart to think of hens suffering--and truly, truly it does--let's consider an even worse form of suffering, and wider in scale, that you might be contributing to:
While having our legs eaten by a shark may well be pretty rare, being eaten alive is not. Cancer. Happens all the time. C'est la vie. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if we could stay lit up on opiates and happy drugs until they stopped working, at which point we could take a "final dose". Turns out, though, that ultra-liberal drug dispensation and euthanasia are not always permitted, not even in the case of terminal cancer. But what madness is forcing us to endure this fate essentially "raw", when there's such an easy solution?
Christianity!
You may think yourself free of guilt in the matter: "Hey man, I'm only arguing for the unfalsifiable/unverifiable 'God of the Philosophers' that can never be experienced and has no relevance to life, whatsoever...what these savage lunatic Christians do is on them!" Problem is, the Church uses philosophical arguments for this inert God as a Trojan Horse to smuggle in Yahweh. Aristotle probably never intended his Unmoved Prime Mover to turn into a cracker in ceremonies by domineering and murdering religious institutions, but, tough shit, that's just what happens when you construct God arguments
If your story were true, then I would expect non-Christian countries to allow euthanasia. Do they?
Most persuasive yet
I find the examples of pain here underwhelming, especially in the context of agony we cannot fathom.
I’ve had far more than 3 fractures in my life, and while they definitely hurt for a time, they really aren’t that bad.
A quick lookup of images factory farms, even those published by EA activists showing how crowded they are, shows no signs of the intense pecking that a few close up examples of chickens seriously pecked show, so I’m honestly unconvinced as to the prevalence of this.
The third is somewhat more convincing, mostly because I don’t really understand the psychological stress those chickens are under.
If pain is the barometer of acceptability, then I see no reason why a chicken with a life worth living that was unexpectedly and painlessly killed would be a problem.
Now I’m not saying that factory farming is morally acceptable, or even that eating meat is or can be morally acceptable, it just seems the bar for unfathomable pain is unfathomably low.
But those weren’t the examples of unfathomable agony.
I’ve reread the article twice and I can’t find what the unfathomable agony you’re referencing is then.
You reference unfathomable agony more than once, seem to use excruciating interchangeably with unfathomable, then describe the 3 worst instances of pain these animals experience. Maybe the unfathomable agony isn’t specified in this article, which makes no sense as it’s referenced in the subtitle of the whole article.
Okay there are two classes of agony. One class is very great but not unfathomable--e.g. the amount of perhaps a tattoo or pregnancy. The other class is the kind so great that many will attempt suicide during it--e.g. being burned alive. On average animals have hundreds of hours of the first kind of agony and a few minutes of the second kind.
I think your benchmark examples of excruciating vs debilitating pain are unjustifiable. When giving a benchmark for what makes excruciating pain, you reference some of the worst human deaths ever imaginable, while the excruciating pain that these chickens undergo seems about par for the course for death as it’s been for all time. Death by infection or physical injury is bad, but it’s not 400 hours of literal intentional torture.
Either way it wasn’t clear originally which is why I made my comment, as there were multiple references in the merely disabling pain category that called that disabling pain the worst kind of pain those chickens experience.
It seems like all these issues can be 99.9% solved by just buying pasture raised eggs. Which are like $1 more than normal and they sell them at every Whole Foods.
Yeah pasture raised is much better.
How about putting various measures to make farming more humane to a vote? And even to abolish factory farming altogether? I'd certainly vote for all of these things!
This has already begun, for instance, Proposition 12 in California.
Yes, and this is great news!
Okay, I didn't have time to respond because of the holidays, but seriously? You are using data from extremely biased sources.
Thank you for this post - this is why I donate everything that is beyond the minimal wage in my country. Beyond a certain threshold, I know that money won't make me more happy. So might as well use it to help those that need it the most ! I also feel more satisfied doing that.
For instance, The Humane League managed to get hundred of millions of hens out of cages. So we have a lot of power here !
givingwhatwecan.org really is a very good resource if you want to make a difference in the world.
You are not inflicting any pain on these animals. The farmer is. If I buy potatoes from a farmer who beats his children when they get bad grades, I am clearly not in any way complicit in their pain. I just want the potatoes. If I buy potatoes from a farmer who beats his children when they wash potatoes too slowly, it feels more complicit, but it really isn’t- I am willing to pay a certain price for potatoes and the farmer compromises himself morally as a result of the process that delivers them at that price. The same goes for animals. With the exception of things like veal and foie gras, the pain of animals is no part of what most purchasers of animal products are purchasing; it is thrown in by producers, usually as a way of increasing their profits. In the modern supply chain, we don’t even buy meat from farmers. We get it from stores which get it from distributors who get it from farm pools which get it from farmers, so our moral distance from animal suffering is increased, and we are even less complicit. The pain is entirely the responsibility of farmers. They could take lower profits, lower sales (from increased prices) or find other jobs, but they choose the pain.
Ideally there would be no incentive to morally compromise oneself, but since such incentives are ubiquitous in the modern economy, getting especially worked up about farms is sentimentality, not philosophy.