animal cruelty Archives - Prindle Institute

March 21, 2023

Nueva Pescanova and the Ethics of Octopus Farming

The more intelligent an organism is, the more issues come with its captivity and, specifically, with its farming. Few lament carrot cultivation because vegetables are unintelligent and cannot suffer. Insects are more challenging as they respond to stimuli. Still, there is doubt whether they possess the required biological mechanisms to feel pain meaningfully. Domestic mammals are an even more significant challenge as their biology resembles ours enough to cast doubt on whether breeding and slaughtering them for food is permissible. Even more problematic are great apes, which, while not commonly bred for consumption, present severe challenges regarding humane treatment and enrichment in captivity. Finally (and hopefully theoretically), farming humans is strictly morally and legally prohibited because it would be principally and practically impossible to do so (putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t harm one another ipso facto). As Jeremy Bentham put more succinctly in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, when considering how to treat others, be they human or otherwise, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

This link between intelligence and farming underpins the outrage by animal rights groups at Nueva Pescanova’s plans for the world’s first octopus farm in Spain’s Canary Islands. Demand for such a facility certainly exists; many around the globe consider octopus a delicacy. But, until recently, successful octopus breeding had proven impossible to achieve commercially. Wild-caught octopuses were the only source. However, the company announced in 2019 that it managed to overcome the traditional hurdles that had prevented octopus breeding and was ready to proceed. As animal breeding is generally more straightforward and profitable than hunting and fishing, the venture stands to make Nueva Pescanova a lot of money.

But, unlike carrots, octopuses are not passive organisms unable to suffer. In fact, scientists typically consider octopuses highly intelligent, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for problem-solving and deep curiosity. For example, in 2009, workers at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived to find that one of their octopuses had redirected 200 gallons of seawater from its tank to the floor outside. They’re even capable of unscrewing jars to gain access to food within, which they complete faster each time scientists present them with the challenge. Indeed, as the 2020 hit film My Octopus Teacher revealed to many, octopuses are vastly complex organisms that play, mimic, and learn.

It is this capacity for intelligence and curiosity – one so remarkable that octopuses are the only invertebrate protected by the U.K.’s Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986 – that has led to the outrage about the planned octopus farm. According to a report by Eurogroup For Animals and Compassion in World Farming, the proposed facility will house and kill over a million octopuses yearly. This is a pretty horrifying statistic (although it pales compared to the roughly 890,000 cattle slaughtered daily in 2019). But, the conditions in which the octopuses will live and die give that number an even grimmer context.

First, according to the report, workers will kill the octopuses by submerging them into an ice slurry of around -3°C. Unfortunately, when used to kill fish, this method results in a slow and painful death (for more on the ethics of fish consumption, see The Prindle Post article on The Feelings of Fish). There is little reason to think this would be any different for octopuses. Indeed, given the octopuses’ remarkable cognitive capabilities, which exceed that of most fish, there’s reason to believe such a death would be even more agonizing.

Second, octopuses are, for the most part, solitary creatures. They prefer to live alone and only interact with others of their species at specific moments (like when mating). However, housing each octopus separately would be logistically and financially impossible at a commercial farm. So, Nueva Pescanova plans to keep its stock grouped in multiple tanks, with roughly ten to fifteen octopuses per cubic meter. For a solitary species, this is a recipe for a poor quality of life, and it runs the risk of leading to cannibalism. So, not only will they be housed amongst others of their species, for which they aren’t evolved, but they’ll also have to contend with the risk of predation.

Third, Nueva Pescanovaplan will keep the octopuses under 24-hour light to enhance captive females’ breeding capacity. Of course, this would be uncomfortable and likely traumatic for any number of creatures. Still, the prospect is practically hellish for octopuses that spend much of their time in the dark and can feel light via sensors in their many arms.

These are just a snippet of the concerns the farms raise. But, it paints a pretty unpleasant picture of a solitary, intelligent species forced into intimate proximity with others of its kind, for its entire life, under the gaze of 24-hour lights, until they reach a harvestable size when they’re dunked into sub-zero water to die. The company has acknowledged these worries and claims it will work to mitigate them. However, it is hard to see how Nueva Pescanova can accomplish this when the welfare concerns are in such stark contrast with the company’s proposed operating practices. And, if traditional agriculture and farming practices are any example, we can expect animal welfare to take a backseat to monetary interests.

In determining our obligations and responsibilities to others, Bentham asks us to consider whether an organism can suffer. If so, then we owe that creature the rights traditionally reserved for humans. So, would we feel comfortable treating humans in this way? The answer (hopefully) is no. If octopuses can suffer in a way that, while not identical to us, is at least comparable, then we have to ask whether such farming should be allowed.

While overwhelmingly dark, this story has a thin sliver of light. There are already bills progressing through Washington state’s House to prevent similar farms from being established there. While House Bill 1153 focuses on the environmental impacts (which is a good thing to focus on), it does make some allusion to the horrors that await farmed octopuses. Sadly, however, while this does offer some hope, it will come as cold comfort to those octopuses that could eventually be farmed in inhumane conditions around the rest of the world.

Ultimately, in the face of today’s all-consuming capitalistic practices, the question isn’t whether animals can suffer but whether their suffering can be made profitable.

March 14, 2023

The Hunting with Dogs Bill: Dominance Hierarchies and Animal Rights

photograph of rider on horseback with hunting hounds

The practice of hunting with dogs traces back to ancient Egypt. It became particularly popular in Britain in the 16th century when social clubs began using dogs with highly developed senses of scent to track woodland animals, dominantly foxes. Participants engaged in the activity primarily for sport. For the most part, the practice in this region of the world has now come to an end. On January 23, 2023, the Hunting with Dogs Bill was passed in Scotland. The ban does not outlaw hunting outright, nor does it even ban the practice of hunting with dogs. What the bill does do is make it illegal to chase and hunt animals with a pack of more than two dogs for sport. But farmers and ranchers can apply for exemptions for the purposes of “wildlife management.”

The bill has received mixed responses from communities of animal advocates and serves to highlight key differences between approaches to thinking about our obligations to non-human animals.

One dominant line of reasoning in animal ethics is that we ought to focus on animal welfare. Animal welfare approaches frequently direct their attention not toward banning human use of animals outright, but toward making such practices less cruel or harmful. So, for example, the advocate of an animal welfare approach might focus not on eliminating factory farming, but on making the practices used as part of factory farming more humane. This is the kind of strategy that has been successful when it comes to legislation mandating that egg-laying hens be raised cage-free.

The argument against hunting with dogs takes a similar approach. The argument is that being chased by a large pack of dogs causes animals such as deer, hares, and foxes extreme distress. The animals who end up dying directly in the hunt do not die quickly and painlessly; they are ripped to death by a large pack of dogs against whom they never stood much of a chance. The animals who aren’t ultimately caught by the dogs and don’t die directly as a result of the hunt nevertheless experience severe psychological and physiological problems as a result of the trauma. Some of them suffer injuries that they must deal with for the rest of their lives. Some animal welfare theorists argue that it may not be possible to end hunting entirely, but we ought to ban this form of hunting because it is cruel and unusual.

Other animal advocates do not support the Hunting with Dogs Bill in its current form. Those who adopt this philosophy take on the perspective articulated by philosopher Tom Regan that “the truth of animal ethics requires empty cages, not larger cages.” Thinkers like Regan who believe that we should be focusing on rights rather than simply on welfare are likely to think of the Hunting with Dogs Bill as incoherent. After all, if we acknowledge that for sentient beings who can experience pain, being ripped apart while still alive is a bad thing, preventing these animals from being ripped alive by large packs of dogs doesn’t go far enough. We should outlaw dog hunting in any form by any number of dogs.

If what bothers society is the purpose for which animals are being hunted, then we should go beyond banning hunting for sport using dogs. We should ban hunting for sport altogether. Anything less is not just inconsistent, but inconsistent in ways that have life-or-death implications for countless animals.

Once one acknowledges that we have moral obligations to non-human animals in light of the kinds of beings that they are and the relationship in which we stand to them, it becomes difficult (or perhaps impossible) to effectively defend the position that it is acceptable to torture and kill them, for sport or otherwise.

Of course, animal advocates are not the only parties in Scotland or in Britain who disagree over laws of this type. There is strong pressure from some groups to overturn the legislation. Many of the arguments rest on familiar attitudes about the nature of non-human animals and their relationship to humans. This may have something to do with the fact that attitudes about species hierarchy have been dominant in the Western thought tradition since Aristotle, who famously argued in Politics that,

after the birth of animals, plants exist for their sake, and that the other animals exist for the sake of man, the tame for use and food, the wild, if not all at least the greater part of them, for food, and for the provision of clothing and various instruments. Now if nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man.

Following Aristotle, those who argue that humans have a right to hunt with animals, using dogs or otherwise, claim that the universe is purposeful and that humans, the only rational animals, were placed by nature at the top of a dominance hierarchy. The Bible seemingly lends the authority of God to this position in Genesis,

And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

In addition to arguments in support of dominance and hierarchy, advocates of dog hunting argue that they have a right to their cultural traditions. For instance, this month, Scotland’s Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Hunt, which met for the first time in the 1700s, announced that, as a result of the new bill, they could no longer conduct their hunt and that their 300-hundred-year tradition was now coming to an end.

Friends of the hunt might point to the social importance of pluralism about values and attitudes about the nature of the good.

Liberal societies can only function well if we both recognize and accept that people do not share the same ethical convictions. People will simply have to agree to disagree about whether animals have rights, and animal advocates shouldn’t force their attitudes on others.

In response, defenders of animals argue that pluralism is laudable as it relates to liberties such as free exercise of religion, freedom of thought and expression, and freedom of association, but there are limits. We shouldn’t be value pluralists when it comes to the exploitation, oppression, and death of sentient creatures with lives and relationships of their own.

They might argue further that Darwin effectively demonstrated that the universe is not teleological — it had no particular hierarchy in mind and did not have the intention (nor could it) to enthrone human reason. We should be willing to critically analyze the ways in which appeal to reasoning capacities has been weaponized through the years to justify the oppression of women, children, and racial and ethnic minorities. Western thought has denigrated the body while glorifying the mind, while at the same time associating targets of oppression more closely with the body. As Cathryn Bailey powerfully articulates in her contribution to The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics,

Against this socially constructed background of clumsy brutes, sometimes childlike, sometimes dangerous, animals, women, and people of color have been made to serve as a kind of foil to the purity and controlled exercise of rationality.

In light of these observations, we ought to proceed with caution when we feel inclined to make dominance claims or to force sentient beings into value hierarchies. Humans have done this poorly for all of recorded history with disastrous consequences. We may one day come to see our treatment of non-human animals in the same way.

December 19, 2022

Fireworks and Harm to Animals

photograph of alert cat in front of Christmas tree

As the end of 2022 approaches, so too does a staple of the holiday season: fireworks. In other parts of the world, this comes just a few weeks after another gunpowder-laden celebration – Guy Fawke’s Day. But while fireworks might be fun for some, there are many who find them less than enjoyable. Chief among these are our furry companions – the cats and dogs and other pets for whom fireworks don’t bring joy, but abject terror.

Many of us might already be familiar with common animal responses to fireworks: Dogs barking, cats cowering, birds becoming restless in their cages. But this impact is often understated.

Fireworks don’t just instill fear in animals, but can also cause irreparable physical and psychological harm.

There are, of course, the deaths and mutilations that occur as a result of the misuse of fireworks. But there are many less obvious physical harms as well. For one, the hearing of animals is much more sensitive than that of humans. Some fireworks can emit sounds of up to 190 decibels – louder than a jet plane (at 100 decibels) or even a gunshot (at 140 decibels). This can lead to conditions like tinnitus or the complete loss of hearing for some animals. Dogs are particularly susceptible, with a hearing range that is three times that of humans. Common reactions by dogs to loud fireworks may include freezing or paralysis, tremors, tachycardia, urination or defecation, increased activity, gastrointestinal disorders, and – in certain cases – irreversible hearing loss.

Further physical harms are created by the aftermath of fireworks too. Their detonation releases harmful particles that are toxic to inhale – posing a risk to the sensitive respiratory systems of smaller animals. There’s also the potential for the ingestion of the residue and detritus left by exploded fireworks. This affects cats in particular, who have a greater tendency to investigate (and devour) curious objects.

Birds are also affected, with some suffering tachycardia and death by fright. Loud noises like fireworks also cause birds to abandon their homes – sometimes permanently – leaving their young unable to fend for themselves.

The psychological effects are similarly concerning.

Loud, unpredictable noises can cause phobias in many animals. The reaction of dogs to the sound of fireworks is similar to post-traumatic stress in human animals, and it is estimated that around one-fifth of pet disappearances occur as a response to very loud sounds such as those created by fireworks.

All of these factors make the holiday season a stressful time for pet owners. It’s recommended that pets are microchipped before the holidays as insurance against possible firework-related disappearances. In addition, an entire industry has developed around products aimed at reducing the stress and anxiety of pets during the season, with catchy jingles reminding us to get our pets a “thundershirt” for Christmas. Earlier this month, the city of North Bend, Washington went one step further by banning the personal use of aerial fireworks.

But what are the ethics of this situation? Do the harms described above create a moral prohibition against enjoying a traditional fireworks display? Many of those who discuss the ethical treatment of animals would say “Yes.”

Consider a utilitarian approach – like that taken by Peter Singer. Stated simply, Singer argues that if it is wrong to inflict a certain amount of suffering on a human, then it is wrong to inflict that same amount of pain on an animal. We most likely could not bring ourselves to inflict the kind of distress described above on a human. Putting someone through an experience that creates such a risk of physical and psychological damage would clearly be wrong. And if this is the case, argues Singer, then it must be just as wrong to do the same to animals.

To be fair, Singer’s utilitarian approach does permit the infliction of such pain where there is a greater amount of pleasure to be gained – but it’s not clear that this justification can be used here. While the spectacle of fireworks creates joy and wonder for many – especially children – it’s unclear that these positive gains are of sufficient gravity to outweigh the negatives for animals. What’s more, it seems entirely possible for us to gain something approaching this same amount of joy through other – less harmful – celebratory activities.

Of course, Singer’s utilitarian approach isn’t the only analysis we might take. We could instead consider a rights-based approach, whereby the ethical treatment of animals is determined by whether or not we are respecting their rights. This rights-based approach is importantly different from utilitarianism in that it will still deem a rights-violating action as morally wrong even if outweighed by some greater good.

But do fireworks violate the rights of animals? It certainly seems so. In extreme cases, it’s an animals’ right to life and good health that is violated. More generally, however, the fear and stress resulting from the detonation of fireworks clearly violate an animal’s right to happiness. These violations should be of great moral concern regardless of how much good we humans might stand to gain from fireworks displays.

On the two most common approaches to the ethical treatment of animals, then, our indulgence in celebratory firework displays seems hard to justify. So do the right thing this New Year’s Eve – don’t let 2022 go out with a bang, but with a quiet, more animal-friendly celebration instead.

December 16, 2022

Neuralink, Meaningful Futures, and Animal Welfare Abuses

photograph of statue of gorilla contemplating a human skull

In December 2022, news outlets reported that Elon Musk’s medical device company, Neuralink, is under federal investigation for animal welfare violations. Neuralink is, in theory, a medical device that is robotically stitched into a person’s brain with the hope that it will help paralyzed individuals regain control over parts of their bodies to which they have lost access. If successful, the device may increase human ability to control things with their thoughts using a technological interface. The ability to regain control over one’s limbs and sense organs may just be the beginning of uses for this kind of device.

Musk has attracted some criticism for inaccurately reporting the speed at which we can expect this technology to develop. In December of this year, he claimed that implantation of the device in a human skull could happen as early as six months from the time that he made the announcement. Success in this endeavor has the potential to at least partially rehabilitate Musk’s tarnished reputation resulting from his handling of the Twitter takeover. He has powerful reasons to hope that his promises from Neuralink will be honored quickly. In keeping with these motivations, he has reportedly demanded that his employees conduct research more quickly. Employees are reporting that this increased speed has resulted in significant violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

This development is of particular concern because satisfying the demands of the Animal Welfare Act is not particularly difficult to do. The Act does not provide a tremendous number of restrictions when it comes to how animals can be treated when used in research. Many animals are not protected at all, such as birds, rats, and mice.

This means that whatever animal welfare regulations were being violated, it wasn’t a matter of treating animals of this type inhumanely (though, of course, such animals have moral status as well). To qualify for protections, the animals involved would have to be mammals — animals who we know to be intelligent, social, and capable of experiencing pleasure and pain.

Whistleblowers from the company report that rapid research into this technology has resulted in numerous botched animal surgeries, and Reuters reports that Neuralink has killed, “about 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys, following experiments since 2018.”

These allegations of animal cruelty reveal what perhaps should have been obvious but that probably flew beneath the radar for most people: Nueralink is engaging in animal testing, with Elon Musk at the helm. There are a cluster of objections against using non-human animals for testing Neuralink in the first place. Some scientists have expressed doubts that this kind of technology is viable at all. Neuralink claims to be, essentially, a mind-reading device. To effectively and responsibly read minds, we’d need to understand a lot more about how brains function. If Nueralink is really just a billionaire’s sci-fi fantasy with little chance of actually delivering on its promises, then the use of beings who are capable of suffering and of living lives of their own outside of the lab is particularly unjustified.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the technology has the potential to work in the way Musk claims, there are still significant problems with using non-human animals to test it.

The first concern is a special and acute form of The Dilemma Argument Against Experimenting on Non-Human Animals. Either the brains of non-human animals are sufficiently similar to human brains or they are not.

If they are sufficiently similar, then there are all sorts of problems with testing this technology on them. These animals would be capable of both joy and suffering — they experience joy when they are left alone to pursue flourishing lives for members of their species; they experience suffering when researchers treat them like objects to be cut up and discarded.

If, on the other hand, these brains are unlike those of humans, then we don’t know the full consequences of implanting such a device in an animal — we don’t know the range of things it will allow them to control. Fundamentally changing the capabilities of a member of a different species without full knowledge of the consequences is at best risky and at worst extremely morally negligent.

Compounding this problem is the question of the content of non-human animal thought. Either the Neuralink device responds to mental events like impulse and instinct, or it responds to mental states that have propositional content. If it responds to instinct and impulse, it’s worth noting that we don’t know what will happen when the instincts and impulses of members of other species are enhanced. If it responds to thoughts with propositional content, then we learn nothing about how the device will function in the minds of humans, since non-human animals presumably don’t have thoughts with propositional content. If this is the case, we are carving up the bodies of non-human animals and causing them to suffer for no good reason, since human and non-human animal higher order thought are not sufficiently similar.

A further argument has to do with virtue and vice and how we perceive our place on this planet. In A Sand County Almanac conservationist Aldo Leopold emphasizes the importance of reconceiving our relation to the natural world.

Instead of thinking of ourselves as conquerors of the land, he argues that we should think of ourselves as members of a biotic community. Instead of thinking of science as “the sharpener of our sword,” it would be more environmentally virtuous to think of science as a “searchlight on the universe” helping us to better satisfy the important role that humans play in ecosystems.

Neuralink encourages us, not to reflect on our role in the natural world, but to transcend it; to become something more than human. What’s more, it encourages us to use the lives and bodies of non-human animals to get there with no regard for the consequences for them.

These problems posed by Nueralink are made worse by a more general concern about the way that some of these potential innovations come about. Largely unfettered capitalism allows rich entrepreneurs to pursue projects that might change the nature of human experience forever, to do so on a pile of countless bodies representing the lost lives of previously sentient creatures, all to bring about ends that might diminish quality of human life and the features that make it subjectively meaningful and worth living, all without the consent of the rest of the human community. Billionaires are given carte blanche to decide what the future will be. If chips in our brains can interface with external technology, then our minds themselves seem likely to be directly invaded by capitalist forces and Big Tech — the very forces that often encourage us to exploit non-human animals, the natural world, and each other.

Neuralink has the potential to do real good in the world; it is likely that some paralyzed individuals would very much like to see this technology come to fruition. That said, we should reflect on the lessons offered by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein; we should guard against allowing a feverish thirst for progress blind us to the things that make human life good or to the need for compassion for our most vulnerable populations.

October 4, 2022December 14, 2022

Wanted Dead: Should We Place Bounties on Invasive Species?

Iguanas in South Florida have become a problem. Green iguanas, a species native to Central and South America have made their way to Miami Beach. They may have started as exotic pets that were released after growing too large (adult green iguanas may be as long as 5 feet), or perhaps arrived as stowaways on ships importing fruit. Regardless, their numbers have exploded in recent years.

Officials are trying to address the iguana population. Dan Gelber, the Mayor of Miami Beach, says the city is quadrupling its budget for iguana removal – up to $200,000 annually from $50,000. In addition, the city commissioner, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, has suggested implementing a “bounty” program. The plan would be to pay hunters to kill iguanas, with pay coming at a per iguana rate.

There are some concerns about implementing a bounty program. Some worry about potential cruelty towards the iguanas. In 2019, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission “encourage[d] homeowners to kill green iguanas on their own property whenever possible.” The commissioner at the time, Rodney Baretto, later noted that people should not shoot iguanas, but offered no description of what methods of extermination would be humane. Further, the policy could threaten human safety – a worker servicing a pool in Boca Raton was shot by an errant pellet from the gun of someone hunting iguanas.

Yet most troubling is that the bounty program could simply fail. It stands to create what economists call a perverse incentive structure.

Perverse incentives occur when a policy or intervention aimed to address a particular problem instead rewards acting in ways that do not contribute to solving, and may even worsen, the problem.

Bounties on pest animals are literal textbook examples of perverse incentive structures. In 1902, the French placed a bounty on rats in Hanoi. Anecdotes describe British governors in Delhi putting bounties on cobras. Both had similar results – after initial success in reducing populations, the policies eventually led to citizens breeding the bountied animals, to continually collect rewards. After the bounties were ended, breeders released their captive animals into the wild. Something similar could occur with iguanas.

The bounties, after all, do not incentivize reducing the wild population. They simply incentivize killing iguanas.

Suppose we could guarantee the bounty program would succeed. Would that make it desirable? First, we should consider why some call for the program. It’s because iguanas are a nuisance. The iguanas burrow underground, potentially causing damage to buildings and structures like sidewalks and seawalls. They destroy landscaping, eat plants on people’s property, and leave droppings wherever they walk. One woman found an iguana sitting in her toilet, it having apparently climbed through the pumping or other pipes connected to her home.

This way of justifying the policy does so by claiming it resolves a conflict of interest. The iguanas, by posing a destructive nuisance, threaten human interests in South Florida. However, it is not immediately obvious that the solution to this conflict is to declare open season on the iguanas. We are, if we endorse this reasoning, saying that the human interest in avoiding nuisance counts for more than the interests these iguanas have in their lives.

If we think the interests of the iguanas count for something – which is suggested by the fact that officials want to ensure iguanas are killed humanely – then it is not immediately obvious that our interests in avoiding a nuisance are sufficiently weighty to justify large scale elimination of the iguanas.

Perhaps an appeal to human interests would be more powerful if iguanas posed a risk to public health or safety. Though as of now they seem to merely be an annoyance.

A more compelling argument might come from the fact that these iguanas are an invasive species. Invasive species are both non-native to a region, and well-suited to live in that environment. As a result, their populations expand rapidly, and crowd out the native species in the area due to a lack of natural checks on their population like predators. The idea here is that the iguanas pose a risk to plant and animal life as well as the local ecosystem. Within any ecosystem, beings compete for finite resources like food, territory, and nests. Because invasive species have no predators, and their food sources lack defenses against them, they outcompete and overconsume local flora and fauna.

Notice that this rationale for the program shifts what’s doing the work in its justification. Instead of depending on human nuisance, viewing the program through this lens sees it pitting non-human interests against non-human interests. Since we may have good reason to reduce even wild animal suffering, this justification may go some ways.

The interests at stake are all vital interests, namely, the interests that both the iguanas and native species have in an environment capable of supporting them, ensuring their continued survival.

So, the idea may simply be that, on the balance of animal interests alone, it is better to remove the iguanas from the South Florida ecosystem. When invasive species experience population booms, it can cause native species to die through slower, more painful processes like starvation as they are outcompeted for resources. Indeed, continued explosive population growth may also result in harm for the iguanas themselves in the long run. For instance, deer populations in the U.S. are overabundant, leading to greater rates of disease and parasites among deer, in addition to poorer general health due to lesser access to food. So, it may be better for all animal parties involved to reduce the number of iguanas in South Florida through humane killing.

However, this view of the situation may suffer from a lack of imagination. In some cases, population booms of invasive species have led to the rebounding of predator species – saltwater crocodiles in Australia, and Florida panthers have experienced population resurgences, as a result of feeding on invasive feral pigs. Given the ecological role of predators, there is at least some potential that, on a long enough time horizon, the presence of green iguanas could ultimately help rebalance the local ecosystem. There may also be other methods of reducing iguana populations that do not require killing. For instance, despite the ecological damage they cause, feral cats are often trapped, neutered, and returned to the wild in order to reduce their numbers. Showing that we ought to reduce the iguana population does not demonstrate that we should kill them.

Overall, there are several questions we must answer before endorsing a policy like the bounty program. First, we should ask whether it would be effective, or if it may lead to unintentional consequences. Second, even with a well-designed policy, we must determine why we believe the policy is necessary. But before committing to a single course of action, we should carefully consider the options available to us rather than settling on what seems to be the simplest or easiest idea.

June 28, 2022December 14, 2022

Is “Personhood” a Normative or Descriptive Concept?

photograph of young child watching elephant at zoo

Many ethical debates are about “getting the facts right” or “trusting the science,” and this sentiment is driven by a presumed difference between political and ethical values and facts. This can be problematic because it naively assumes that facts are never a product of values or that values can’t be a product of fact. This can lead to mistakes like thinking that evidence alone can be sufficient to change our thinking or that the way we value things shouldn’t be affected by the way the world is. Ethical inquiry requires us to consider many questions of both fact and worth to draw conclusions. To demonstrate, we will consider the recent case of Happy the elephant and whether it makes sense to call her a person.

While it is tempting to think of values as being something entirely personal or subjective, in reality most discussion and debate about values is far more nuanced and complex than that. Determining the value of something, whether it’s going for a walk or eating a candy bar, involves considerations of function, worth, and means.

Eating a candy bar has the function of providing sustenance and a pleasant taste. The worth of the bar will be determined by considering the means required to attain it compared to the worth of other things I could eat. If the cost of the candy bar goes up, the means required to attain it becomes dearer. While the candy bar provides necessary energy, it is also harmful to my health, and so I re-evaluate the worth of the bar.

People may differ over the value of the candy bar, but the disagreement will likely hinge on the different functions the candy bar has in life. But notice that function and means – two essential considerations for valuation – are factual in nature. To ask what the candy bar will do is to ask what it is good for. In other words, any thought about worth inevitably involves factual considerations. Often, the reason we want people to avoid misinformation or to trust expertise has to do with the ethical concerns rather than the factual concerns; we expect facts to moderate the way things are valued and thus the way we act.

But what about facts? Aren’t the facts just the facts? Well, no. There is no such thing in science as the “view from nowhere.”

We don’t study every part of the natural world; we study things we are interested in. Our investigations are always partial, infused with what we want to know, why we want to know it, and what means we have available to try to find an acceptable answer.

The risk that we over-generalize our findings – start making pronouncements about the world and forget about our practical aims in research – suggests that facts alone cannot settle ethical debates. Just like values, a fact is defined by function, worth, and means. Indeed, many concepts are “thick” in that they perform a dual function of both describing something while also offering normative content. “Cruel,” for example, is often used both normatively and descriptively. But what about “person?”

Recently a New York court ruled that an Asian elephant named Happy is not a person. The case began after the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a petition against the zoo holding Happy, arguing that Happy’s confinement was a violation of habeas corpus because Happy resides in a solitary enclosure. They demanded recognition of Happy’s legal personhood and her release from the zoo.

Habeas corpus – a person’s legal protection from unlawful detention – has historically been used to push legal boundaries. One of the most famous cases is Somerset v. Stewart, which found that a slave could not be forcibly removed from England and so was ordered to be freed. This suggests that “person” is often a “thick” concept that not only describes something, but also inherently (especially legally) contains normative elements as well. In the end, the court, found that Happy was not a person in the legal sense and was thus not entitled to invoke those rights.

Those who supported Happy’s case emphasized that elephants are intelligent, cognitively complex animals. The Nonhuman Rights Project argued that elephants share numerous cognitive abilities with humans such as self-awareness, empathy, awareness of death, and learning. Happy was the first elephant to pass a self-awareness indicator test. In addition, several nations such as Hungary, Costa Rica, Argentina, Pakistan have taken steps to recognize the legal rights of “non-human persons.” The argument is that because these animals are intelligent enough to have a sense of their own selves, they are entitled to the robust liberties and protections afforded by the law.

But the question is not whether Happy meets some cosmic notion of personhood, but an instrumental question of what function we want the concept of “person” to perform.

The question for the court was to determine the worth of competing conceptions of “personhood” which would perform different social functions (one which extends to animals and one which doesn’t), and which involve very different means in operation. For example, a legal person is usually someone who can be held legally accountable. A previous ruling in a similar case held that “the asserted cognitive linguistic capabilities of a chimpanzee do not translate to a chimpanzee’s capacity or ability, like humans, to bear legal duties, or to be held legally accountable for their actions.”

The issue of cognitive complexity in relationship to personhood is not static – simply meeting a given threshold of intelligence is not enough to warrant designation as a “person.” There are practical considerations that bear on the matter. Changing our conception of personhood would, as one justice noted, “have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society.” It’s difficult to know what legal obligations this might create or how far they could extend. What would happen, for example, if there was a conflict of legal rights between a human and non-human person? The issue is thus not whether Happy should be treated well, but whether the concept of personhood is the right tool for sorting out these difficult ethical problems. Similar controversies crop up in the debate about extending rights to nature.

In other words, when we consider cases like this it will never simply be as simple as saying a fact that “elephants are cognitively intelligent” or proclaiming that “elephants should be protected.” As a “thick” concept, the definition of “personhood” is always going to depend on the practicality of the concept’s use in our particular social world. But if the problem with extending certain rights to elephants is problematic because of the stress it places on the function of the concept, then perhaps seeking to label elephants as “persons” is unhelpful. It simply isn’t going to be enough to point to evidence of cognitive awareness alone. When we consider what we want the concept “person” to do for us, we may find that by paying attention to the intended function we can achieve it more effectively with another ethical notion, such as the UK potentially granting rights to animals on the basis of “sentience.”

October 7, 2021December 14, 2022

In Defense of Eating Dogs

In Western societies, dogs are regarded as our companions. As such, the idea that one might ever eat a dog would strike us as abhorrent. This view stands in stark contrast to that of many Asian countries, in which the consumption of dog meat is a regular part of their culture. However, attitudes appear to be shifting. As younger generations increasingly regard the practice as taboo, the president of South Korea has recently suggested that the time has come for the practice to be prohibited.

But should it be? I suspect that many people would regard the consumption of dogs as not only taboo, but morally wrong. However, this attitude seems to be inconsistent with our attitudes towards other animals.

I want to suggest that if there is nothing wrong with eating cows, chickens, and pigs, then there is nothing wrong with eating dogs. Conversely, if it is wrong to eat dogs, then it is also wrong to eat cows, chickens, and pigs. Regardless of what direction one goes with the reasoning, my point is that there is an inconsistency in how most people view dogs, cows, chickens, and pigs.

Can We Draw a Line?

Why might it be wrong to eat a dog? One answer is that dogs are companion animals. They are honorary members of our family, so to speak. Indeed, some dog owners refer to themselves as “dog moms” or “dog dads.” As such, it would be wrong to eat a dog because of the special status that we have given them.

The problem is that this association is contingent. Perhaps you might view your dog as part of your family, but that doesn’t mean everyone else views dogs in that way. Indeed, that is not how they are viewed by people who consume them as food and in societies where this practice is prevalent. If dogs only have significant value because we give it to them, then they don’t have it inherently. If that’s the case, then while eating dogs might be revolting or disgusting, it isn’t wrong. And just because something is offensive to one’s own tastes doesn’t mean it should be legally banned for everyone.

Another answer might be that dogs are what animal rights philosopher Tom Regan called “subjects of a life.” Dogs are conscious: they can experience pain, pleasure, and other aspects of consciousness. These qualities generate moral value which makes it wrong to kill them purely for the sake of consumption. While this argument shows that dogs have inherent value, it also applies equally to cows, chickens, and pigs — animals that we commonly consume. After all, all of these animals can feel pain and other aspects of consciousness. So why wouldn’t it be wrong to eat them? It seems that any property we think of is going to be a property that these other animals have.

As such, someone who accepts this line of reasoning must also be committed to stopping the consumption of these other animals. But that’s a tough bullet to bite, as many people who are opposed to dog consumption engage in other forms of meat consumption.

The point is that it’s arbitrary to draw a moral line at dogs but not for, say, cows. Consistency demands that we either embrace the permissibility of eating cows, chickens, and pigs — and therefore the permissibility of eating dogs, or we embrace the wrongness of eating dogs — and therefore the wrongness of eating other animals.

Which Direction Should Consistency Take Us?

There are arguments to be made for either. I have argued that since it is not wrong to eat cows, chickens, and the like, that it is not wrong to eat dogs. On the other side, Alastair Norcross has argued that since it’s wrong to eat dogs, most other kinds of meat consumption are therefore also wrong.

It’s worth taking a deep dive into the literature to build an informed view, but let’s table these arguments for a second. Most people lack the expertise, time, or willpower to confidently explore the academic literature. Indeed, unless you’re a professional philosopher you likely haven’t taken deep dives on many of the beliefs you have. In the absence of that, the next best thing is to work from our background knowledge and engage in critical and reflective deliberation on our beliefs. How might we do that in this case?

Suppose that you’re opposed to eating dogs. Ask yourself this: which is stronger – your intuition that it’s morally permissible to eat chicken, cows, and pigs, or your intuition that there is something wrong with eating dogs? I suspect that most people would answer the former — after all, even those who are opposed to eating dogs are generally OK with eating other kinds of meat. So if that intuition is stronger, perhaps consistency should weigh in favor of that intuition.

That is to say, if we are faced with a dilemma where both horns are counterintuitive (in this case, either we say that eating dogs is morally permissible, or we say that most meat consumption is morally impermissible), then we should go with the horn that preserves our strongest intuition. Our moral common sense is generally reliable, so if we are going to deviate from it, the smaller the deviation the better. In other words, if we are going to bite a bullet, we should bite the smaller bullet. Based on that rule of thumb, we should go with the view that it is morally permissible to eat dogs.

Of course, this isn’t the final say. We are just weighing intuitions, and intuitions and heuristics are defeasible. There are other factors we might need to consider. One might give an independent argument against meat consumption that is strong enough to override intuitions in favor of meat-eating that were not formed reflectively. On the other hand, one might enhance these intuitions by giving independent arguments to shore them up.

Note that I am not saying that someone who thinks it is OK to eat cows, chickens, and pigs must also be OK with personally eating a dog. There is no inconsistency in being willing to eat a cow but refusing to eat a dog, so long as the different attitude is not justified by an appeal to different moral status. The point is one about intellectual consistency.

July 12, 2021December 14, 2022

Is It Time to Show the Lobster a Bit of Respect?

photograph of lobsters in water tank at market

The United Kingdom is currently in the process of revising what the law says about sentience and the ethical treatment of animals. This week news broke that the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation has called for greater protections for non-vertebrates such as octopi and crustaceans. As a consequence, debate is emerging about whether practices such as boiling lobsters alive should be banned. Much of this debate seems to be centered on scientific facts regarding the nervous system of such animals and whether they are capable of feeling pain at all. But, perhaps this is the wrong mindset to have when considering this issue. Perhaps it is more important to consider our own feelings about how we treat lobsters rather than how the lobsters feel about it.

The ethical debate about the treatment of lobsters has mostly focused on the practice of boiling them alive when being prepared for eating. Lobsters are known to struggle for up to two minutes after being placed in boiling water and emit a noise caused by escaping air that many interpret as screaming. In response to such concerns, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, and New Zealand have all banned the practice of boiling lobsters alive and require that they be transported in saltwater rather than being kept in/on ice. But the debate always seems to hinge on the question of sentience. Can a lobster feel pain when being boiled alive? To answer that, questions of sentience become questions of science.

There is no clear consensus among scientists about whether the lobster nervous system permits it to feel pain. But how do you measure pain? To many the reaction to being in boiling water is taken as a sign that the lobster is in pain. Some studies have shown that lobsters will avoid shocks, a process called nociception where the nervous system responds to noxious stimuli by producing a reflex response. This explains why the lobster thrashes in the boiling water. However, other scientists have questioned whether the nervous system of the lobster is sophisticated enough to allow for any actual sense of suffering, arguing that a lobster’s brain is more similar to an insect. They suggest that the sensory response to stimuli is different than that to pain which involves an experience of discomfort, despair and other emotional states.

Indeed as invertebrates, lobsters do not have a central brain, but rather groups of chain ganglia connected by nerves. This can make killing them challenging as simply giving it a blow to the head will not do; a lobster must have its central nervous system destroyed with a complicated cut on the underside. It is recommended that they be stunned electronically. Because of this very different brain structure, it is suggested that lobsters lack the capacity to suffer. As Robert Bayer of the Lobster Institute describes the issue, “Cooking a lobster is like cooking a big bug…Do you have the same concern when you kill a fly or mosquito?”

Nevertheless, critics charge that this thinking is only a form of discrimination against animals with neurological architecture different from our own. Indeed, beyond nervous system reflex responses, because pain is difficult to directly measure, other markers of pain are often driven by using arguments by analogy comparing animals to humans. But creatures who are fundamentally different from humans may make such analogies suspect. In other words, because we don’t know what it is like to be a lobster, it is difficult to say if lobsters feel pain at all or if pain and suffering may fundamentally mean something different for lobsters than they do for humans and other vertebrates. This makes addressing the ethics of how we treat lobster by looking to the science of lobster anatomy difficult. But perhaps there is another way to consider this issue that doesn’t require answering such complex questions.

After all, if we return to Bayer’s remarks comparing lobsters to bugs, there are some important considerations: Is it wrong to roast ants with a magnifying glass? Is it wrong to pull the wings off flies? Typically, people take issue with such practices not merely because we worry about how the ant or the fly feels, but because it reveals something problematic about the person doing it. Even if the ant or the fly doesn’t feel pain (they might), it seems unnecessarily brutal to effectively torture such animals by interfering in their lives in such seemingly thoughtless ways, particularly if not for food. But would it all suddenly be okay if we decide to eat them afterwards? Perhaps such antics reveal an ethical character flaw on our part.

In his work on environmental ethics, Ronald L. Sandler leans on other environmental ethicists such as Paul Taylor to articulate an account of what kind of character we should have in our relationships with the environment. Taylor advocates that actions be understood as morally right or wrong in so far as they embody a respect for nature. Having such a respect for nature entails a “biocentric outlook” where we regard all living things on Earth as possessing inherent moral worth. This is because each living thing has “a good of its own.” That is, such an outlook involves recognizing that all living organisms are teleological centers of life in the same way as humans and that we have no non-question begging justification for maintaining the superiority of humans over other species. In other words, all living things are internally organized towards their own ends or goods which secure their biological functioning and form of life and respecting nature means respecting that biological functioning and the attainment of such ends.

Taylor’s outlook is problematic because it puts all life on the same ethical level. You are no more morally important than the potato you had for dinner (and how morally wrong it was for you to eat that poor potato!) However, Sandler believes that much of Taylor’s insights can be incorporated in a coherent account of multiple environmental virtues, with respect for nature being one of them. As he puts it, “The virtues of respect for nature are informed by their conduciveness to enabling other living things to flourish as well as their conduciveness to promoting the eudemonistic ends.” While multiple virtues may be relevant to how we should act — such that, for example, eating lobster may be ethical — how we treat those lobsters before that point may demonstrate a fundamental lack of respect for a living organism.

Consider the lobster tanks one finds at a local grocery store, where multiple lobsters may be stacked on top of each other in a barren tank with their claws stuck together. Many have complained about such tanks, and some stores have abandoned them as critics charge that they are stressful for the lobster. It is difficult to say that such “live” lobsters are really living any kind of life consistent with the kind of thing a lobster is. Does keeping lobsters in such conditions demonstrate a lack of respect for the lobster as a living organism with a good of its own? As one person who launched a petition over the matter puts it “I’m in no way looking to eliminate the industry, or challenge the industry, I’m just looking to have the entire process reviewed so that we can ensure that if we do choose to eat lobsters, that we’re doing it in a respectful manner.”

So perhaps the ethical issue is not whether lobsters can feel pain as we understand it. Clearly lobsters have nervous systems that detect noxious stimuli, and perhaps that should be enough to not create such stimuli for their system if we don’t have to. We know it doesn’t contribute to the lobster’s own good. So perhaps the ethical treatment of lobsters should focus less on what suffering is created and focus more on our own respect for the food that we eat.

June 14, 2021January 23, 2024

The Ethics of Animal Dis-Enhancement

photograph of chickens packed into pens at poultry farm

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

Human beings have long treated animals not as sentient beings, but as objects or products to be used and consumed. We do this in spite of the fact that animals demonstrate every sign of having mental lives. We have the same reasons to believe that animals have mental lives that we do to believe that other human beings have mental lives; the best evidence we have is behavior. Humans report having affection for animals. Nevertheless, we intensively farm them for food and use them for medical experiments, activities which are quite painful and lead to suffering, permanent disability, and/or death. Engaging in these activities requires compartmentalization and moral disengagement.

The tension arises because humans want to use animals for all of the purposes that they typically use them for, but they also don’t want the animals to feel pain or to suffer if it can be prevented. Under ordinary conditions, when faced with this choice, humans use animals rather than exhibit care for their suffering. Recently, some scientists and philosophers have suggested an alternative solution: genetically engineering farm and research animals to experience little to no suffering. Recent research on pain suggests that it is registered in the brain in two places. The first is in the primary or somatosensory cortex, which establishes the nature of the pain (burning, throbbing, etc.). The second involves the affective dimension which happens in the anterior cingulate cortex. This area controls not the pain itself, but how much the sentient creature minds the pain. Either area could be genetically engineered to reduce the discomfort experienced by the animal.

Advocates of this approach care about animal pain and suffering; if they didn’t, they would remain satisfied with the status quo. They are advocating what philosophers frequently refer to as an approach in line with non-ideal theory. The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is a meta-ethical distinction, that is, it is a distinction between different theories of what ethics is and how we ought to approach it. Ideal theorists argue that ethics should be concerned with identifying the correct moral theory and then directing behavior so that it conforms to that standard. The non-ideal theorist, on the other hand, acknowledges that everyone would follow the ideal theory in a perfect world, but emphasizes that we don’t live in such a world. As such, our ethical theorizing should situate itself in the world that we actually inhabit, with all of its flaws and imperfections — a world where we perhaps can’t or shouldn’t expect everyone’s compliance or agreement on all things at all times.

When it comes to dis-enhancement, these non-ideal theorists often acknowledge that it would be best if we simply stopped exploiting animals and using them as objects for human purposes. They also recognize, however, that animal advocates have been shouting their messages from the rooftops for decades, even centuries in some parts of the world. To the extent that these messages are being heard, they are also largely being dismissed. If we are going to continue to use animals for food and research, at least we could do so in a way that minimizes pain. This may not realize what true justice demands, but it may represent incremental change toward that ideal state of affairs.

Opponents of dis-enhancement make several different kinds of arguments. First, they argue that dis-enhancement leaves animals vulnerable. The ability to experience and to care about pain is an evolutionary mechanism that helps creatures to avoid danger. If there is no longer any fear of pain because dis-enhanced animals do not feel it, then animals could die from otherwise avoidable risk. In response to these claims, the non-ideal theorist might argue that the unfortunate truth is that these animals aren’t going to be venturing out into the wide world in which they might make bad decisions. Their fate is certain — they are destined to live lives during which they are imprisoned and used and then discarded. If this is the case, why not do what we can to make their existences less unpleasant?

Opponents argue further that our willingness to do this to non-human animals highlights the extent of our speciesism — our tendency to direct our moral concern only to members of certain species on the basis of species membership alone. Imagine that a scientist wanted to create a group of people to enslave and abuse. The scientist doesn’t want to cause the resultant humans any pain, so he creates them without the ability to experience it. It is reasonable to suppose that many people would object to this experiment. Would their objections be justified? How is this different from creating a horde of robotic slaves? If we react negatively to this thought experiment, but not to dis-enhancing animals, what could explain our reaction other than speciesism?

Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake takes place in a futuristic universe that is increasingly bioengineered. At one point, Crake, who is working in the “Neo-agricultural Department” at a research university takes the main character, Jimmy, to observe a new method of food production. They are growing parts of chickens — only the breasts — for the purposes of food. Crake says,

“You get chicken breasts in two weeks – that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.”

Crake’s laboratory is experimenting with animal parts, but, at least at this point in the story, they are not creating sentient beings. They are just chicken breasts, they aren’t having lived experiences of the world, they don’t have preferences or a dignity to contend with. (Consider in vitro meat, which allows scientists to create meat and organs to eat or to test on without changing the genetic structure of future sentient animals.)

When it comes to farm and research animals who have been “dis-enhanced,” we are still dealing with sentient creatures that have experiences of their world. They may lack the ability to feel or to care about feeling their own pain, but they still have a set of dispositions to behave in certain ways and have the ability to develop preferences. This makes them different from robots or disembodied chicken breasts. They are aware of their own experiences. Some opponents argue that respect for the lived experiences of sentient creatures demands that researchers refrain from playing Frankenstein with their bodies in ways that have serious consequences.

In response, advocates of dis-enhancement might appeal again to the non-ideal nature of the theory under which they are operating. They might agree that it would be wonderful if everyone respected the dignity of sentient creatures. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. Given this, dis-enhancement might be our best chance at reducing or eliminating the massive amounts of suffering that these processes entail.

Another objection to dis-enhancement comes from the perspective of environmental virtue ethics. Are we oriented virtuously toward the natural world and the living creatures on it if we respond to the crises that we face with dis-enhancement? Consider the following parallel case. One way of responding to climate change is to engage in geoengineering. One form that this can take is changing the chemical constitution of our atmosphere in such a way as to roll back or lessen the effects of global warming. Opponents of geoengineering point out that when a child messes up their room, the right thing to do is get them to clean it and teach them how to keep it clean rather than searching for ways to mess it up ever further without consequences. By analogy, we should limit our greenhouse gas emissions and try to clean up the mess we’ve made rather than pursuing geoengineering strategies that threaten to produce ever more mess.

Critics of dis-enhancement argue that we should adopt the same standard of responsibility when it comes to cruelty to animals. Instead of finding ways to engage in cruel behavior without causing pain, we should simply stop engaging in cruel behavior. Treating animals in the way that we do is an exhibition of vicious character. Even if it has little effect on the animals because they have been dis-enhanced and don’t feel pain, the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s observations may be useful here. He says that we “must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” If we behave callously toward dis-enhanced sentient animals because they don’t experience pain, the consequence may be that we are increasingly callous and cruel toward the beings that do.

The question of dis-enhancement is ultimately a question of how we should view the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Should it be a conqueror’s relationship to the conquered? Are we so depraved as a species that it would be naïve for us ever to expect broad scale changes? Or is there hope that we can someday view ourselves as empathetic fellow participants in biotic communities?

December 22, 2020June 27, 2023

Under Discussion: Animal Dignity and Cultured Meat

photograph of raw lamb cutlet surrounded by vegetables

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: In Vitro Meat.

As cultured or lab-grown meat arrives for the first time on consumers’ plates, the ethical arguments surrounding this product will undoubtedly take on new urgency. Some of these arguments revolve around the supposed environmental benefits of cultured meat, or the fact that it is still produced using materials derived from dead animals. However, there is a more radical argument favored by some ethical vegans that I will assess in this column: namely, the claim that cultured meat harms animal dignity.

There is a live controversy in philosophical circles over whether animals can be said to have dignity, but for the sake of argument I will concede that they do. To say that animals have dignity is to say that in virtue of possessing some property — sentience perhaps, or the capacity for flourishing — animals have intrinsic moral worth and a kind of moral status that demands respect and care. Respect and care require taking animals’ interests into account when deliberating about what to do. Perhaps more controversially, taking their interests into account may require assigning weights to those interests equal to the same interests of human beings. For example, Peter Singer argues that to the extent that the pain of an animal and that of a human are of equal intensity and duration, there are reasons of equal weight to relieve the pain of the animal and the human for those who are able to do so.

The argument against cultured meat from animal dignity begins with the empirical claim that the marketing and consumption of cultured meat will tend to promote, or at least preserve, the idea that animals are edible. But, it is claimed, this idea is inconsistent with the acknowledgement of animal dignity. To see this, consider the ethical implications of the widespread consumption of lab-grown human meat. Although kill-free, we might still object to this practice on the grounds that it would cause people to start viewing people as edible, which — much like viewing human beings as commodities — is contrary to their dignity. Similarly, if we grant that animals have dignity, and that their dignity entitles them to equal consideration, then it is contrary to their dignity to view them as edible. And although lab-grown meat does not require the slaughter of animals on a scale approaching traditionally harvested meat, it is still marketed and consumed as a simulacrum of flesh from slaughtered animals. Thus, it is alleged that the resemblance between cultured meat and flesh from slaughtered animals will help perpetuate the notion that animals are edible.

So, the argument against cultured meat from animal dignity looks like this:

1. The belief that animals are edible is incompatible with the acknowledgement of their dignity.
2. The marketing and consumption of cultured meat encourages people to view animals as edible.
3. Therefore, the marketing and consumption of cultured meat undermines or prevents the acknowledgement of animal dignity.

As David Chauvet points out, this argument seems to trade on an ambiguity in the meaning of “edibility.” The dictionary defines “edible” as “suitable or fit for consumption.” On the one hand, for something to be edible means that it can be eaten; inedible things on this definition include things like rocks, nails, and shards of glass. Call this sense of edibility “physical edibility.” But to say that something is edible can also mean that it is to be eaten, or that it ought or to be eaten. On this definition, inedible things might include certain animals or other human beings. Call this sense of edibility “ethical edibility.”

Now, it seems plausible that cultured meat will perpetuate the idea that animals are physically edible. Everyone will know that cultured meat ultimately comes from animals via their stem cells, and that cultured meat resembles and is a substitute for “real” meat. But if this is the sense of “edibility” at play in the second premise of the argument, then for the argument to be valid, it must be the operative sense of “edibility” in the first premise — that it is contrary to animal dignity to see them as edible. However, this claim just seems false. We know that animals are physically edible, so how could this truth possibly undermine our acknowledgement of their dignity? Again, compare this to the case of lab-grown human meat. If lab-grown human meat merely encouraged the belief that humans are physically edible, it is implausible that this belief — which most adult human beings already share, at least tacitly — would undermine our acknowledgement of human dignity.

So, if the sense of “edible” in the second premise of the argument is physical edibility, then that must be the sense of “edible” operative in its first premise, if the argument is valid. But with this sense, that premise is quite probably false, and the argument as a whole unsound.

On the other hand, if cultured meat encouraged the belief that animals are ethically edible, this would constitute grounds for concern for those who believe in animal dignity, since the belief that animals ought to be eaten or are permissibly eaten is arguably incompatible with equal respect for their interests. By the same token, if lab-grown human meat encouraged the belief that humans are ethically edible, this would arguably undermine human dignity. On this reading of “edible,” then, the first premise of the argument is likely true.

However, it is doubtful whether the consumption and marketing of cultured meat really encourages the belief that animals are ethically edible. Cultured meat is often touted by industry spokespeople and the press as the ethical alternative to traditionally harvested meat. This serves to underscore the ethical divide between cultured meat and the traditional variety. Moreover, this marketing strategy would only be compelling to those who are already disposed to believe that animals are not ethically edible, at least under contemporary factory farming conditions. Thus, the vast majority of cultured meat consumers, particularly in the early adopter phase, will be people who reject the ethical edibility of traditionally harvested meat.

So, if the sense of “edible” in the first premise of the argument is ethical edibility, then that must be the sense of “edible” operative in its second premise, if the argument is valid. But with this sense, that premise is quite probably false, and the argument as a whole unsound.

Finally, as Chauvet points out, even if the argument is sound and cultured meat does prevent the acknowledgement of animal dignity, it does not necessarily follow that we should reject cultured meat. The acknowledgement of animal dignity would require a radical transformation of most people’s attitudes towards animals. Very probably such a transformation can only take place in a series of gradual steps, rather than all at once. If cultured meat can make good on its promised benefits to animals and humans alike, it can still serve as a transitional step even if it does not take us very much closer to recognizing animal dignity.

December 21, 2020June 27, 2023

Under Discussion: Aristotelian Temperance and Cultured Meat

photograph of raw steak arranged on butcher block with cleaver and greenery

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: In Vitro Meat.

On the 19th of December, so-called “cultured meat” was listed for the first time on a restaurant menu when the Singaporean eatery 1880 began offering lab-grown chicken from the American company Eat Just. Unlike its standard counterpart, an ingredient like cultured meat (also sometimes called “in vitro” meat) is not harvested from the dead body of an animal raised for slaughter, but is literally grown in a cultured solution much like a petri dish (hence the name “cultured”). While meat-substitutes of various types have become increasingly popular in recent years, this newly-approved product goes one step further: rather than simply aiming to mimic the flavor and texture of meat with plant-based ingredients, cultured meat is biologically (and, by most reports, experientially) identical to “meat” as typically conceived — it is simply not meat grown in the normal way.

For many, cultured meat offers one of the most economical and practical methods for potentially dismantling the ethical scourge that is the industrial factory farming system (responsible as it is for the annual torture and death of billions of chickens, cows, pigs, and more). If cultured meat can be produced economically at a scale sufficient to satisfy popular demands for meat products, then consumers might well be able to stubbornly maintain their meat-eating habits without requiring the suffering and death of so many creatures each year. From a utilitarian perspective, the moral calculation is clear: to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, we seemingly must pull the switch and convert our societal habits from eating meat to eating cultured meat.

But, this leaves open alternative questions about the ethics of eating cultured meat. For example, even if it’s true that cultured meat could offer a viable method for satisfying culinary desires for meat in a way that requires comparably little animal death, that does little to address the problem of having those desires in the first place.

In a recent article, Raja Halwani argues that the Aristotelian virtue of temperance gives us two ways of thinking about how to consider our meat-eating desires: as a matter of desiring the wrong object or as a matter of desiring the right object in the wrong way. As Aristotle himself explains in the Nicomachean Ethics, the temperate person:

“neither enjoys the things that the self-indulgent man enjoys most—but rather dislikes them—nor in general the things that he should not, nor anything of this sort to excess, nor does he feel pain or craving when they are absent, or does so only to a moderate degree, and not more than he should, nor when he should not, and so on” (emphasis added).

While temperance is often considered primarily as a matter of the latter practice — that is, as a restraint on the uncontrolled pursuit of our desires of taste (as exemplified perhaps most infamously in the American Temperance movement) — Aristotle also points out that the temperate person will lack a taste for things that should not be desired.

That is to say, it is one thing to desire something inappropriate while consciously restraining yourself from acting on that desire, while it is quite another to simply not desire the inappropriate thing at all. Imagine, for example, that Moe is a person who (for some reason) desires to murder a series of innocent people in some horrifically gruesome manner. Although he imagines that he would feel great pleasure at committing murder (and, indeed, takes pleasure simply in his imagination of doing so), Moe knows that acting on those murderous desires would be wrong, so he works hard to suppress them and (thankfully) never actually kills anyone. Calvin, in contrast, lacks the desire to murder anyone and, therefore, never commits murder. While it is true that, on one level, Moe and Calvin are the same — neither of them is a murderer — it is also the case that we could say that Calvin is better than Moe in at least some way.

To Aristotle, Moe’s case evidences a kind of continence insofar as Moe has mastered control of his improper desires (because he desires the wrong thing — namely, murder); as Aristotle says, the continent person “knowing that his appetites are bad, refuses on account of his rational principle to follow them.” This means that Moe also demonstrates a lack of what Nicolas Bommarito has described as a kind of “inner virtue” insofar as Moe’s tendency to feel pleasure at even just imaginary murder manifests “morally important cares or concerns” — in this case, they are “morally important” precisely because they are unethical. So, while it is true that we should also recognize Moe’s conscious restraint as proof of separate moral virtues (assuming that his restraint is borne from more than simple self-preservation or a desire to avoid punishment), it is still the case that Moe’s murderous desires are vicious.

What, then, do we make of cultured meat?

Although Halwani does not specifically discuss in vitro meat, he mentions briefly that it “might even be that the temperate person would not desire fake meat processed to look and taste like common forms of meat, such as the Impossible Burger, given that they imitate the kind of meat produced through a cruel history of suffering and death.” Or, like Rossi argued here at the Prindle Post, if cultured meat continues to encourage popular attitudes or perspectives of animals as “edible,” then it might well be serving to perpetuate a less-than-ideal set of desires, even if there are few direct problems with a tasty meal of ethically-produced in vitro meat. Like Halwani points out, temperate individuals might well be morally required to forego various aesthetic pleasures “when they come at the expense of immoral actions,” but the point is that the truly temperate person would not suffer from desires for immoral objects in the first place.

In effect, cultured meat could be promoting a structural sort of continence for our diets that recognizes the moral harms of our current food production methods and so acts to restrain them without doing anything to dissipate the original problematic desires themselves.

Admittedly, I’m taking for granted here that the currently standard system of raising creatures in captivity and subjecting them to immense pain simply for the purpose of consuming their flesh is a moral abomination, regardless of how tasty that flesh might be. If cultured meat offers the most realistic opportunity to prevent widespread nonhuman animal suffering, then that alone is sufficient reason to explore its viability. But the implications of our diet for our character (and what we care about) is also important to consider, even once creaturely suffering is diminished.

In short: cultured meat might indeed do well to prevent future bloodshed, but it cannot, on its own, establish a robustly virtuous culture that lacks the desire for the products of bloodshed.

November 8, 2019December 14, 2022

Is the “Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act” a Step in the Right Direction?

photograph taken of turkeys overcrowded in pens

On October 22nd, Congress unanimously passed the “Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act.” The law makes certain acts of cruelty against animals federal crimes. Before the federal law was passed, legislation protecting animals was largely a matter reserved for state legislatures. The law was met with praise from both private citizens and animal welfare organizations like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

The scope of the law is one of its most noteworthy positive features. Many animal welfare laws arbitrarily restrict protections to only certain species of animals—often companion animals or animals that human beings tend to find cute or pleasant. Bucking that trend, this bill includes, “non-human mammals, birds, reptiles or amphibians.” Specifically, the law prohibits the “crushing” of animals, where “crushing” is defined as “conduct in which one or more living non-human mammal, bird, reptile, or amphibian is purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.”

While the law is laudable when it comes to the range of animals it protects, it is arbitrary in other ways. The protection the law provides is subject to noteworthy exemptions. The following conduct is exempt from protection: conduct that is, “a customary and normal veterinary, agricultural husbandry, or other animal management practice,” “the slaughter of animals for food,” “hunting, trapping, fishing, a sporting activity not otherwise prohibited by Federal law, predator control, or pest control,” action taken for the purpose of “medical or scientific research,” conduct that is “necessary to protect the life or property of a person,” and conduct “performed as part of euthanizing an animal.”

On its face, the law seems like a step in the right direction. The exemptions, however, should motivate reflection on the question of what a commitment to the prevention of animal cruelty actually looks like. Exemptions to a law can be useful when there are compelling moral reasons for them. In this case, however, the exemptions highlight the inconsistency in societal attitudes about just how wrong it is to be cruel to animals. It looks as if all the law really prevents is the callous, perhaps even psychopathic, infliction of pain on animals by private individuals. This isn’t where the majority of animal abuse and cruelty takes place.

Consider the first exemption, allowing for animal cruelty in the case of “a customary and normal veterinary, agricultural husbandry, or other animal management practice.” This exemption covers a tremendous number of interactions that occur between humans and animals. What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious moral justification for the exemption. If animal cruelty is bad, why would cruelty for the purposes of “animal management” be any less bad? This exemption also constitutes a fallacious appeal to common practice. The fact that a given practice is a “customary” part of animal management practices does not mean that the practice isn’t cruel.

The slaughter of animals for food is a particularly interesting case. One might think that this exemption is morally justified. After all, we must balance the interests of animals against the very real need that human beings have for sustenance. The legislators in this case felt that this balancing act ultimately favored the needs of human beings. There are a number of problems with this argument. First of all, it assumes that the harms we are justified in causing to other creatures can ultimately be justified by human need. That assumption may not be morally defensible. Second, human beings do not need to consume animal flesh in order to satisfy their nutritional needs. We continue to consume animals, in a way that is, ultimately, unsustainable, because human beings like the taste of animal flesh. Even if the question of how we ought to treat animals must be resolved using a balancing act, it doesn’t seem like a justification that is based purely on taste preferences could ever be sufficient to come out ahead in the balance. What’s more, even if such considerations could come out ahead, factory farms currently engage in cruel practices simply to maximize the volume of their “product,” and, as a result, the size of their profits. For example, chickens are kept under conditions in which they don’t have the space to fully spread their wings. To prevent them from cannibalizing one another under these stressful conditions, chickens are often “debeaked.” This cruelty could be avoided if these farms simply raised fewer chickens. The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act does nothing to address this cruelty—it actually provides exemptions for it.

Finally, the passage of this act may provide many people with the false impression that the government is protecting animals in a real, thoroughgoing way. Many people probably believe that cruelty to animals is strictly regulated and enforced by the government. After all, how could the vicious treatment of a living being not be against the law. Before this law passed, there were two pieces of federal legislation offering limited protections to animals. First is the Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1966. The Act nominally provides for the humane treatment of animals, and its mere existence may make citizens feel at ease with the protections afforded. The Act does ensure that animals in certain contexts, are provided with “adequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, water and veterinary care.” They must also be protected against extreme temperature. However, this law contains significant exemptions as well, of the same variety as those provided in the Act passed this year. The second bit of legislation is The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, passed in 1958 and revised in 1978. This Act only protects certain animals from being killed in particular kinds of inhumane ways. It does not prohibit cruelty full stop. The bottom line is that animals are not protected from cruelty by federal legislation. Despite the pleasant-sounding name of the “Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act,” the Act fails to provide protections where animals need them the most. It’s unfortunate that sometimes psychopaths and future serial killers kill animals for kicks, and that should certainly be against the law. At the end of the day, though, the real problems that we face have to do with our attitudes about animals and with the institutions that we’re willing to go to great lengths to protect.

March 20, 2018December 14, 2022

The Puppy and the Snapping Turtle

On March 8, 2018, an abandoned, terminally ill puppy was brought into the classroom of Idaho high school science teacher Robert Crosland. Crosland, known for taking in sick animals, could tell that the puppy was beyond saving. After school, in front of a handful of his students, Crosland placed the sick puppy inside the tank of his snapping turtle. It drowned and was then eaten by the turtle. Crosland was reported for animal cruelty. The snapping turtle, a member of an invasive species, was confiscated and euthanized by the Department of Agriculture.

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February 21, 2018November 29, 2023

Will Changes in Meat Consumption Redefine the U.S. Food System?

In 2017, a plant-based diet became tremendously popular. The growing demand for alternative proteins motivated grocery stores and food companies to offer more alternatives to meat proteins, which has been reflected in consumer behavior patterns. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, production in the U.S. beef, pork, and broiler industries is expected to increase in 2018. For the record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that 2018 will hold the highest per capita consumption of meat since the U.S. record set back in 2004. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the average consumer is projected to eat 222.8 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018.

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April 13, 2017December 14, 2022

Animal Abuse on Spring Break: The Case of Total Frat Move

Popular blog Total Frat Move has been in hot water recently in response to numerous animal abuses posted on their main Instagram account (@totalfratmove), along with an associated account dedicated to spring break (@tfmspringbreak). Both accounts follow drunken college antics, with @tfmspringbreak focusing especially on beer luging (pouring beer down a narrow channel, such as one made of ice) and shotgunning (puncturing a can and opening the top to consume liquid more quickly). Controversy comes into play as a significant portion of the photos and videos on this account feature animals contained within alcoholic drinks or being used as a drinking vessel.

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April 7, 2017December 14, 2022

Finding Consciousness in the Humble Honeybee

Though previously a point of contention with artificial intelligence and apes, consciousness and awareness are now possibly exhibited by insects — most specifically bumblebees and honeybees. In 2012 a group of scientists released the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. They had been reevaluating the “conscious experience,” and concluded that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.” This statement revolutionizes the idea that consciousness is reserved for higher mammals.
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November 2, 2016December 14, 2022

On the Ethics of Bullfighting

In 2011, Catalonia’s Parliament introduced a ban on bullfighting. Now, this has been overturned by Spain’s Constitutional Court. The rationale for the new ruling is that, in 2013, Spain declared bullfighting a national cultural heritage, and no local government has the power to ban festivities that are part of declared cultural heritage.

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