Still Against Veganism
A reply to Petrică Nițoaia
This is a reply to the article Nițoaia, P. (2024, July 12). Embracing Kindness. The Moral Argument for Veganism, which appeared here on Daily Philosophy. We recommend looking at the original article for context first:
Ethical arguments against veganism are examined and refuted.
Which animals, or group of animals, have the best lives? Certainly not those victims of factory style meat production. This whole business should be ended.
But think of the animals in the relative freedom of a humane farm, and then think of wild animals, and then companion animals or, as we used to say, pets. Best lives? I say it’s those in the first group. There are farms, and farmers – there are many where I live – geared to taking animal welfare seriously; these animals live in ample space, with other animals of their kind, they’re given appropriate food, shelter, health care. Their quality of life is generally high. The quantity of life is much less than it might be, of course, but they typically live longer, and much easier than wild animals. Watch almost any nature programme and you’ll be glad you’re not a wild animal. Companion animals live the longest lives, but they’re often too long, as their owners, for selfish reasons, strive to keep them alive even when their best days are gone. Their food is often inappropriate, and they’re too often left alone. Maybe it can be ok to be a pet, but you’d want to choose your owner.
What should we think about pain? I think it’s always bad, bad in itself, or intrinsically, even if it’s sometimes useful, or good instrumentally. And so of course, I think it’s always bad for animals, and that we should want animals – all animals – to have less pain, and a high quality of life. But I think also, and controversially – and I argued this in ‘Against Veganism’– that a sudden and painless death isn’t bad for animals. So I don’t think it’s bad for farm animals that they have relatively short lives, and are killed, painlessly, before their time. Petrică Nițoaia, in discussing my paper, unsurprisingly takes issue with this, claiming that even if I’m right to say that animals don’t have an express desire to live, still it can be, and very often is, in their interests to live, and so against their interests, and so bad for them, to die. Even if most animals, unlike us, lack self-consciousness they all, like us, have a strong survival instinct.
This doesn’t do it for me. Trees have a strong survival instinct, searching out water with their roots, fighting disease, growing protective tissue over wounds. We might say that death is bad for living things – premature death anyway – without thinking it’s bad, or a bad thing, that they die. We might think, then, that something bad happens to the tree, when it gets sick and dies, without thinking we have any reason to prevent this from happening. Or put it differently, its death is bad, but not in a way that matters. And similarly, provided there’s no pain, for animals.
Suppose, though, that I’m just wrong about this, and even if it’s pain free it’s still bad that animals die prematurely, such that we have reasons to regret this, as indeed with premature human death, and reasons where it’s possible to prevent their dying, again as with humans. So I have reasons to swerve and avoid the rabbit in the middle of the road. But can I reasonably act on these reasons? The risk of an accident gives me a reason not to swerve. So then I need to weigh and balance these reasons. Assuming for now that it’s bad that a happy animal dies then I have reasons to break into a farm, free a lamb, and give it a long and lush life in my garden. But obviously I have powerful reasons not to do any such thing, and even more powerful reasons not to free the whole flock and leave them to wander on to the roads. Nițoaia, much more sensibly, suggests a gradual phasing out of the desire and demand for meat. That will in turn lead, in time, to a closure of even the best run farms and an end to all these early deaths.
Why, though, should we do this? My question was – and still is – a short good life with a pain free death, or no life at all, which would you prefer?
Yet maybe, and on two counts, that was – and still is – an unfair question. Maybe a pain free death is exceedingly rare. So rephrase it, a short good life with a bit of pain at the end, or no life at all, which would you prefer? And maybe the difference regarding consciousness is important here. Unlike people, no animal will prefer, want, choose to live. No animal can think it’s worth putting up with pain, as a price for these pleasures. But I’m not arguing that it’s good – good for the animals – that we have farm animals, even though I do think they have good lives – but only that it’s not bad for them. And so even if there are no reasons, for their sakes, to bring them into existence, there are also no reasons, again for their sakes, to be rid of them.
Now, though, my opponent can dig in hard. If, as I’ve argued, there’s really no reason, for their sakes, to bring into being happy animals, but there is even a minuscule reason not to – their lives, and deaths won’t be entirely pain free – then it seems that we should, insofar as we are concerned exclusively with animal welfare, phase out all the farms, both the worse and the best of them.
The problem now for the vegan is to explain where they stand on wild animals. If we should be rid of farm animals with happy lives, surely we should – and more urgently – be rid of wild animals, most of which have short and unhappy lives. Suppose vegans don’t want this result. How do they block it?
Someone might suggest – and Nițoaia’s piece gives various hints towards this – that there are important differences between farm and wild animals. The latter are free agents, acting autonomously, and don’t exist merely as a means to our ends. They are not systematically, continuously, subject to human exploitation. We are not responsible for present lives, and it’s not our job to look after their futures. Hands off nature.
Nothing here, I think, adequately addresses the issue. We should, it’s said, put an end to the suffering on the factory farm by stopping the breeding of these animals. We could, similarly, put an end to greater suffering in the wild. Why don’t we? Hedgehogs, blackbirds, lizards haven’t chosen their way of life, with the calamities it brings, and nature hasn’t put a fence round them, telling us not to interfere. And nor is the difference, as Nițoaia suggests, that we exploit animals and are violent towards them. First, these are dodgy terms whose meaning is unclear; and second, this shifts the focus to the moral character of humans, and away from the welfare or wellbeing of animals. It makes no difference to the dying pig whether the farmer enjoys or hates what he is doing.
What I want, then, is for vegans to think long and hard about our relation to animals, all animals, and work out, if possible, a consistent position on this. I don’t want them, I don’t think it’s good enough, to think about farm animals in isolation from others, and to overlook the broader implications of their proposals just in this area. And as the issues here are complex so it’s unlikely we’ll find any simple solution.
But what happens if I do my best to think long and hard? I confess, not as much as I might like. I think there are reasons to continue with humane farming. That people like to eat meat is a reason. So too is the fact that people like to see farmland, and animals living on this land. Of course, the animals are killed. But it’s good that we recognise there is no cost-free procedure for feeding the human population, and that industrial scale production of plant food itself impacts adversely on animal life.
Still, the question remains, is it good for the animals that there is animal life? I’m undecided, but tempted to say no. So the upshot is this: if there’s some reason to bring animals with overall good lives into existence, then there’s some reason to bring humanely reared farm animals into existence. But if there’s reason to be rid of these farm animals, then there’s reason to be rid also of most other animals, including most wild animals.
References
- Christopher Belshaw, ‘Against Veganism’, Philosophy Now 146 (November 2021).
- Christopher Belshaw, ‘What’s the Point of Wild Animals?’, The Philosopher 110 no.2 (Spring 2022).
- Petrică Nițoaia ‘Embracing Kindness – The Moral Argument for Veganism’ Daily Philosophy 326 (2024).
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Christopher Belshaw studied philosophy a long time ago at the University of York and then at UC Santa Barbara. He’s taught at both institutions, at the Open University, at St Martin’s College, and at Lancaster University.
Chris has written and published a number of books, including Environmental Philosophy (Acumen 2001) and 10 Good Questions about Life and Death (Blackwell 2005). Recent articles include pieces on punishment and anti-natalism (both in The Journal of Controversial Ideas) and on the right to suicide (forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook series). Beyond academia, he’s given various talks to general audiences, including at the Wellcome Institute, at the London Week of the Dead, and at the How the Light Gets In Festival.
https://fass.open.ac.uk/people/cdb4
https://www.york.ac.uk/philosophy/people/emeritus-honorary-visiting-staff/chris-belshaw/
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