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Kill-Switch Tractors and Techno-Pessimism

photograph of combine harvester in field

On May 1st, CNN reported that Russian troops had stolen around $5 million worth of John Deere tractors and combines from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol. At nearly $300,000 each, these pieces of farm equipment are extremely expensive, massive, and unbelievably high-tech. This last feature is particularly important for this story, which ended on a seemingly-patriotic note:

John Deere had remotely kill-switched the tractors once they became aware of the theft, rendering them useless to the Russians.

A remote kill-switch that thwarts invading Russian troops from using stolen Ukrainian goods is easy to read as a feel-good story about the power of creative thinking, and the promising future of new technological inventions. But some are concerned that the background details give us more reason to be fearful than excited. Notably, activist and author Cory Doctorow, whose writing focuses primarily on issues in new and emerging technologies, wants to redirect the attention of the reader to a different aspect of the Russian-tractors story. When John Deere manufactured these particular tractors, they had no idea that they would be sold to Ukraine, and eventually stolen by Russian troops. Why, then, had the company installed a remote kill-switch in the first place?

What follows in the rest of Doctorow’s blog post is an eerie picture. John Deere’s high-tech farm equipment is capable of much more than being shut down from thousands of miles away. Sensors built into the combines and tractors pull scores of data about machine use, soil conditions, weather, and crop growth, among other things, and send this data back to John Deere. Deere then sells this data for a wild profit. Who does Deere sell the data to? According to Doctorow, it was indirectly sold back to the farmer (who could not, until very recently, access it for free) by coming bundled with a seed package the farmers have to purchase from Monsanto. Doctorow goes on:

But selling farmers their own soil telemetry is only the beginning. Deere aggregates all the soil data from all the farms, all around the world, and sells it to private equity firms making bets in the futures market. That’s far more lucrative than the returns from selling farmers to Monsanto. The real money is using farmers’ aggregated data to inform the bets that financiers make against the farmers.

So, while the farmers do benefit from the collection of their data — in the form of improved seed and farm equipment based on this data — they are also exploited, and rendered vulnerable, in the data collection process.

Recent exposés on the (mis)uses of big data paint a picture of this emerging technology as world-changing; and not, necessarily, in a good way. Doctorow’s work on this case, as well as the plethora of other stories on big data manipulation and privacy invasion, can easily lead one to a position sometimes referred to as “techno-pessimism.” Techno-pessimism is a general bleak disposition toward technological advancement that assumes such advancements will be for the general worsening of society/culture/human life. The techno-pessimist is exactly what the name implies: pessimistic about the changes that technological “advancements” will bring.

Opposite the techno-pessimist is the techno-optimist. Nailing down a definition for this seems to be a bit trickier. Doctorow, who (at least once) identified as a techno-optimist himself, defines the term as follows: “Techno-optimism is an ideology that embodies the pessimism and the optimism above: the concern that technology could be used to make the world worse, the hope that it can be steered to make the world better.” Put in these terms, techno-pessimism seems akin to a kind of stodgy traditionalism that valorizes the past for its own sake; the proverbial old man telling the new generation to get off his law. Techno-optimism, on the other hand, seems common-sensical: for every bleak Black Mirror-esque story we hear about technology abuse, we know that there are thousands more instances of new technology saving and improving the lives of the global population. Yet, tallying up technology uses vs abuses is not sufficient to vindicate the optimist.

What can we say about our overall condition given the trajectory of new and emerging technology? Are we better-off, on the whole? Or worse?

What is undeniable is that we are physically healthier, better-fed, and better protected from disease and viruses. Despite all the unsettling details of the John Deere kill-switch tractors, such machines have grown to enormous sizes because of the unimaginable amount of food that individual farms are able to produce. Because of advances in the technology of farming equipment and plant breeding, farmers are able to produce exponentially more product, and do so quicker and with greater efficiency. Food can also now be bio-fortified, to help get needed nutrients to populations that otherwise would lack them. These benefits are clearly not evenly distributed — many people-groups remain indefensibly underserved. Still, living standards as averages have increased quite radically.

It is also clear that some of the most horrifying misuses of technology are not unprecedented. While many gasp at the atrocity of videos of violent acts going viral on message boards, human lust for blood sport is an ancient phenomenon. So, does techno-pessimism have a leg to stand on? Should the drive toward further technological advancement be headed despite the worrying uses, because the good outweighs the bad?

In his work Human, All Too Human, the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche penned a scathing review of what he took to be the self-defeating methods by which Enlightenment humanity strove toward “progress”:

Mankind mercilessly employs every individual as material for heating its great machines: but what then is the purpose of the machines if all individuals (that is to say mankind) are of no other use than as material for maintaining them? Machines that are an end in themselves—is that the umana commedia?

While there is no reason to read him here as talking about literal human-devouring machines, one can imagine Nietzsche applying this very critique to the state of 21st century technological advancement. We gather data crucial for the benefit of humanity by first exploiting individuals out of their personal data, leaving them vulnerable in the hands of those who may (or may not) choose to use this information against them. The mass of data itself overwhelms the human mind — normal rational capacities are often rendered inert trying to think clearly in the midst of the flood. Algorithms pick through the nearly infinite heap at rates that far exceed the human ability to analyze, but much machine learning is still a black box of unknown mechanisms and outcomes. We are, it seems, hurtling toward a future where certain human capacities are unhelpful, able to either be used fruitlessly, inefficiently, or else abandoned in favor of the higher machine minds. At the very least, one can imagine the techno-pessimist’s position as something nearly Nietzschean: can we build these machines without ourselves becoming their fuel?

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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?

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Under Discussion: Can In Vitro Meat Help Fix What Cattle Ranching Has Broken?

photograph of cows in empty arid desert

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.

It is now clear that growing edible and delicious meat outside of an animal is not merely the stuff of science fiction. In vitro meat, aka cell-cultured meat, aka green meat, aka clean meat, has arrived. Regardless of how we want to brand it, our meat future could be slaughter-free if consumers express their support for it with their pocketbooks. There are many arguments that support this shift. Concerns about animal welfare are right out in front — our current system of industrial animal agriculture is terribly cruel and inhumane. There are also very compelling arguments related to environmental degradation and sustainability. The ways in which industrial animal agriculture harms the environment are too numerous to name and explain in this space. It will be useful to narrow the scope, so here we’ll emphasize environmental problems caused by cattle ranching.

People that live in rural areas are quite accustomed to seeing cattle grazing in vast pastures. In this setting, cattle seem wild and undomesticated. Their living arrangements appear to be peaceful — they have lots of room to move around, abundant fresh water to drink, and all the grass they can eat. They have the autonomy to socialize with peers or to venture out on their own. They also seem insignificant in the scheme of things. No one would think that the lifespan of a cow, or even a collection of cows could change the course of history. Because we have so much experience observing cows in these serene pastoral settings, many people do not know the life trajectory of most cows, whether they are destined to produce dairy, or their flesh will end up on a plate as someone’s dinner.

Though we may regularly see cows out on the pasture on our evening walks, we may not notice that they are not the same cows from year to year. Many cows do spend some portion of their lives grazing freely, but when they are roughly one year old, they are sold and shipped to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations — CAFOs. Even before they get to this point, cows make quite the impact. When land is set aside for grazing, it often becomes significantly degraded. Overgrazing diminishes the nutrients in soil. Cow manure is also high in salt and causes high salinity levels in soil. Grazing cattle cause soil compaction, which makes it more difficult for water to penetrate. Ultimately, cattle grazing leads to desertification — the soil becomes dry and infertile. Desertification leads to significant loss in biodiversity. The problem intensifies when tropical rainforests are chopped down to make room for grazing. It becomes difficult if not impossible to recapture what was lost. Preserving the quality of our soil is itself a compelling reason to switch to in vitro meat.

The environmental impact of cattle ranching increases when they are moved to CAFOs. Modern cattle traverse many more miles than their ancestors did prior to the introduction of industrial animal agriculture, but they do so in trucks. When data is reported on the topic of contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, transportation emissions are frequently reported as entirely distinct from the emissions caused by animal agriculture. This fails to take into account the fact that many greenhouse gas emissions caused by transportation are attributable to transporting billions of animals from local farms to CAFOs and then from CAFOs to slaughterhouses.

CAFOs are unpleasant places for many reasons, not the least of which are the horrific acts of animal cruelty performed at these locations. They are also the source of a great deal of pollution. The government has zoning regulations for them because of the harms that they cause. According to the United States Department of Agriculture,

“A CAFO is an AFO with more than 1000 animal units (an animal unit is defined as an animal equivalent of 1000 pounds live weight and equates to 1000 head of beef cattle, 700 dairy cows, 2500 swine weighing more than 55 lbs, 125 thousand broiler chickens, or 82 thousand laying hens or pullets) confined on site for more than 45 days during the year. Any size AFO that discharges manure or wastewater into a natural or man-made ditch, stream or other waterway is defined as a CAFO, regardless of size.”

CAFOs came into existence to commodify animal bodies in order to maximize profits. Tremendous numbers of animals are kept in these spaces and they produce a lot of waste. Members of human communities understand that human waste can potentially make us sick, so over the years we have created and continue to improve upon sewage systems and waste treatment facilities. Animal waste created by CAFOs is not treated as the same health threat. Animal manure from CAFOS frequently ends up in both surface and groundwater and makes other living beings in the area, including humans, quite sick. These facilities are often located near poor communities and communities of color, raising concerns about environmental racism.

The system of industrial animal agriculture also contributes to climate change in two significant ways. The first is that it produces lots of greenhouse gases. The Humane Society, drawing on work from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, reports that industrial animal agriculture is responsible for

“9% of human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), 37% of emissions of methane (CH4), which has more than 20 times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2, and 65% of emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), which has nearly 300 times the GWP of CO2.”

CAFOs burn lots of fossil fuels for the purposes of heating, cooling, and ventilating facilities as well as to run farming equipment used in the production of feed for the animals. As manure decomposes, it releases methane, and it stands to reason that facilities that house lots of animals are going to produce a lot of methane. Methane is also produced during the digestion processes of ruminant animals such as cows and goats. Ruminants have multiple stomach chambers that allow them to digest in such a way that they can consume tough grains and plants. Fermentation processes occur in the stomach chambers which produce methane that these animals release into the air.

The second way that our system of animal agriculture contributes to climate change is the role that it plays in deforestation; it contributes to the cause of global warming while also demolishing our planet’s natural defenses. Healthy forests are critical for clean air — during photosynthesis trees and other plants take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Human beings are eliminating forests at an alarming and expanding rate and animal agriculture is the primary cause. Trees are chopped down to allow room for cattle to graze and to grow soy to feed to cattle and other farm animals. The World Resources Institute predicts that only 15% of the Earth’s forest cover remains intact. As a result of deforestation, ecosystems are destroyed, species are pushed into extinction, and greenhouse gasses warm the planet and acidify our oceans. Each of these considerations on its own is enough to justify producing meat in vitro instead.

Industrial animal agriculture also uses alarming amounts of water. The production of beef, in particular, is very water intensive. It takes nearly 1,800 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef. Many countries suffer from water scarcity. This can happen because of drought, poor water infrastructure, or pollution in water supply. The result of this is that many people and other animals do not have enough clean water to drink and to use in other ways that sustain life and health. When we consider the impact of the water consumed by raising cattle for food, taken together with how much water raising cattle pollutes, it is clear that, if human beings won’t give up eating red meat, producing meat via an in vitro process is much more compassionate and environmentally sustainable.

This argument has focused on beef but raising other animals for food presents related environmental challenges. In an ideal world, recognition of these problems would motivate everyone to become vegetarian or vegan. We do not live in such a world. Due to the efforts of dedicated animal rights and welfare advocates, vegetarianism and veganism are on the rise. Unfortunately, commitment to this lifestyle has not grown as sharply as has the worldwide demand for meat. If we are going to stop these environmental problems before they get even worse, we’ll need another strategy. In vitro meat may be an important part of that strategy.

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What’s In a Name? The Morality in “Meat”

close-up photograph of a raw cut of meat

In 2018, Missouri banned the use of the word “meat” to describe products that are “not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” As punishment, “Violators are subject to up to one year in prison and a fine of as much as $1,000.”  The law was written in response to the rise in popularity of realistic meat substitutes such as Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat and to the emerging technology of cell cultured meats. Similar laws followed in states such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The concerns don’t stop with use of the term “meat.” Last summer, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb expressed concerns about the use of “milk” to describe products like soymilk, almond milk, and oat milk. Such terms are misleading, he claims, because “An almond doesn’t lactate.” 

Supporters of these laws offer a range of arguments, some of which appear to be in better faith than others. The first argument is that use of terms like “meat” and “milk” to describe products that are plant- rather than animal-based is misleading and perhaps even deceptive. Consumers have a right to know what they are putting in their bodies. They need to make nutritional decisions for the sake of their health, and the labeling of products like “meat” and “milk” may get in the way of their ability to make such choices effectively.

Opponents of the legislation are unconvinced by this argument for several reasons. First, this kind of figurative language has been used to describe replacement products for many years, and consumers are well aware of this. There is no reason to believe that they arrive at their grills angry and nutritionally deprived when they realize that their “veggie burger” isn’t made from a cow. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the new legislation came about because lawmakers were receiving letters or calls of complaint from confused consumers. Instead, they seem to be motivated by complaints that they are hearing from the animal agricultural industry—an institution that is understandably nervous about the rising success of meat replacement products. What’s more, these products are not packaged in such a way that would render consumers unable to tell that the “burger” they are consuming does not come from a slaughtered cow. They say “vegan” or “vegetarian” in no uncertain terms on the package. They also include a list of ingredients and nutritional information. Consumers know how to access nutritional information. There’s no plausible reason why confusion should exist. There is also no deception if there is no intent to deceive. These products do not claim, in any way, to be animal-based. What’s more, many opponents of this kind of legislation argue that it’s the industry of animal agriculture that is not transparent with consumers about the nature of the products that they sell. The conditions under which these products are produced—in factory farms—are neither appetizing nor ethical. 

One argument in favor of the legislation is more straightforward: these labels harm the agricultural industry, and that might be a very bad thing. Animal agriculture is important for the economy. It is also important on a more personal level. Farmers and ranchers have families to support. The labeling of these products hurts their bottom line and, as a result, has a real impact on the quality of their lives. There is nothing wrong with plant-based food, but such products should stand on their own merits, rather than riding the coattails of popular animal-based products by using the same language. 

In response, opponents argue that, though it is unfortunate that people might lose their livelihoods, society has no duty to protect this industry in particular. Some ways of earning a living are harmful, and moral progress requires that we get rid of them. For example, if we let concerns regarding the livelihood of slave traders and slave owners win the day, we’d still have slavery. What’s more, no one is trying to go this far. Animal agriculture isn’t being shut down, it’s simply competing against other products in the marketplace that use some of the same words as part of their marketing and advertising campaigns.

Legislation restricting the use of the “meat” label also faces constitutional challenges. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with The Good Food Institute, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed suit on behalf of Tofurky in response to the law passed in Arkansas. The lawsuit contends that the legislation was constructed to protect the business of animal agriculture in violation of the first and fourteenth amendment rights of the producers of other kinds of food. So long as they aren’t misleading consumers, they can exercise their rights to name their product whatever they want.

Complicating the issue is in vitro meat—a new product that has many meat producers very concerned. The current system of animal agriculture is cruel and inhumane to the animals involved, it contributes substantially to climate change, and it delivers a product that can be unhealthy for consumers. In vitro meat can potentially solve all of these problems. Instead of producing, raising, and slaughtering animals in order to consume their flesh, in vitro meat is produced by taking a biopsy from an animal and then culturing the cells. In this way, meat can be created without causing animals any significant harm.

Legislators are eager to ban the use of the word “meat” for this kind of product as well (though it is not yet on the market). But it’s harder to see the rationale here. After all, cell cultured meat is meat, if what it is to be meat is to be animal flesh. Despite this fact, the Missouri law, for example, bans the use of the word “meat” for in vitro meat as well as for vegetable-based meat products. The takeaway seems to be this—if the product isn’t part of the corpse of a slaughtered animal, it isn’t properly designated as “meat.” This is much harder to defend. Meat produced in a lab could be engineered to be much healthier, so concerns about consumer nutrition and health wouldn’t apply. Transparency concerns may make it important that the product is labeled as cultured, but perhaps, for similar reasons, the conditions under which factory farm meat is produced should also be listed on the package. 

The existence of this legislation, and of other proposed legislation like it, speaks to the power that animal agriculture wields in state legislatures. The fear that motivates these legislative changes may also clue us into something about the future of food.

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Farmworker Abuse and Agricultural Exceptionalism

photograph of migrant workers harvesting sweet potatoes

In mid-June, New York passed the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, a measure aimed to improve working conditions for agricultural employees that has circulated the hallways of the state legislature for roughly twenty years. By allowing farm workers collective bargaining rights, eligibility for workers’ compensation, and unemployment benefits (among other provisions), the FLFLPA targets a series of long-standing exemptions in the legal code that have allowed farm owners to disadvantage their employees for decades. 

Although the 1930s brought a series of federal labor regulations to the books, including familiar arrangements like minimum wage requirements, overtime pay standards, and laws restricting child labor, agricultural workers were explicitly excluded from each of those statutes. Dubbed ‘agricultural exceptionalism,’ the federal government has largely left the task of protecting the interests of farmworkers to particular states which house various industries. While this practice of special treatment may have made sense in the early 20th century, one might expect policy arrangements to change as the landscape of contemporary agriculture has changed and farmwork has grown ever-more industrialized (and ever-more similar to the dismal factory conditions which, in part, prompted FDR’s labor reforms in the ‘30s). With a few notable exceptions, this simply has not happened.

Take, for example, minimum wage requirements and compensation protections for injured workers. Although the federal Fair Labor Standards Act was amended in 1966 to include some farmworkers under its wage mandate (a provision originally left out of the FLSA when FDR signed it in 1938), those requirements allow for plenty of loopholes that corporations can exploit to lower expenses by lowering employee compensation, such as the implementation of a piece rate system that pays farmhands based on their productivity (as measured in buckets or bags of produce picked). Even when piece rate systems are supplemented to equitable hourly rates, their very nature incentivizes farmworkers to engage in unsafe practices (such as working through rest periods or minor injuries) – a particularly problematic result when laws often do not require employers to provide workers’ compensation benefits for injured employees (in a field routinely ranked at “very high risk” for occupational hazards) or when a variety of additional pressures make such benefits risky or inaccessible to farmhands.

Of course, comparing data across industries is particularly difficult for agricultural economists, given that many agricultural jobs are filled by seasonal, migrant, and/or undocumented workers. This means that even if workers are paid above a state’s minimum hourly wage rate, their actual take-home earnings can leave them significantly impoverished. Consider how quirks in reporting requirements allow Californian employers to grossly overstate the actual amount of money paid to each employee: because the majority of workers do not work full-time for one employer, “in 2015, workers who received their primary earnings from agricultural employers earned an average of $17,500—less than 60 percent of the average annual wage of a full-time equivalent (FTE) worker in California.” Nevertheless, industry representatives can routinely make claims about higher compensation rates that, though technically true, are thoroughly misleading.

Consequently, the passage of the long-debated FLFLPA sets a standard against agricultural exceptionalism in one of the largest agricultural states in the country; requiring, among other things, that farmhands receive overtime pay (after working sixty hours a week, not forty, as a concession to industry lobbyists), be eligible for unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation coverage, and be given one uninterrupted 24-hour rest period each week. Critics of the legislation suggest that increasing industry costs may lead to the bankruptcy of small farms and the out-of-state relocation of others, but human rights advocates and labor defenders have heralded the FLFLPA as a landmark step in the right direction. As Beth Lyon, a law professor at Cornell who founded the school’s Farmworker Legal Assistance Clinic points out, “If you have an industry where the jobs are so unattractive that you have to fill them with undocumented 15-year-olds, then maybe you need to make the jobs more attractive.” It remains to be seen whether NY’s legislative victory for farmworkers will prove to effect change more broadly throughout the country or not.

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The UK Novocaine Shortage and Animal Welfare

close-up photograph of two chickens poking their heads out of cages.

Currently, the United Kingdom is facing a rather unique problem. Due to a plant failure and seasonal high demand, they are experiencing a shortage of the anesthetic Novocaine. Novocaine is widely known as the main pain management drug for dental practices however, the real effects of the shortage are seen in the veterinary and farming practices. Humans won’t be affected because there are many approved alternative anesthetics as options. Unfortunately for animals, there are fewer approved options for pain relief medication. In fact, The British Veterinary Association (BVA) president, Simon Doherty, says that vets have been able to only purchase a fraction of the required anesthesia needed for their practices.

Novocaine is used in many farming practices in the UK and across the world. There are many major causes of pain for farm animals including: disease, housing and handling, parturition, and routine practices like castration, tail docking, dehorning, ear-tagging, branding, teeth clipping, nose ringing, and beak trimming. According to a summary of pain research in 2018 by Agriculture, researchers looked to see if these procedures caused animals’ pain by looking at the long-term effects in their behaviors. Due to the nature of farming animals, who are prey animals, they have evolved to hide their pain in order to avoid opportunistic predators. The study was motivated by public concern for animal welfare and hope for finding ways to access animal’s pain levels since basic facial expressions are not enough.

The study found that pain has a significant negative effect on farming production and the animals’ quality of life. Lambs who had undergone castration and calves who had their horns cut off are less likely to engage in playful behavior. Animals with injury eat, move, and interact with children less, all indicating lingering pain. With the current shortage, the pain levels are increasing throughout the UK for animals that still have to undergo these painful procedures. The study supports the theory that it would be better in general to farm without inducing pain for the livestock.

The BVA has declared that the shortage will have “a very acute impact on animal welfare.” The term “acute” however could be misleading. Pain can be described in two ways, as acute or chronic. Acute pain is caused from injury, infection, or inflammation. It is short-lived and responds to effective pain relief. Chronic pain is long-lasting pain that continues after the healing process. With this shortage of pain relief medicine, the farm animals in the UK will be experiencing an increase of acute pain across the nation. This shortage has raised the question, should we give pain relief to farming animals?

Moral vegetarians would argue that causing animals pain while raising them for food, especially when there are other alternatives, is wrong. It is frequently seen that the conditions that the animals raised in are inhumane and animals suffer physically and psychologically.  For example, pigs distressed will bite their own tails, so farmers often cut them off. Chickens in tight spaces will peck at each other so farmers slice off the edge of the beak. While the European Union mandates that farmers first try to improve an animal’s conditions, this rule is frequently ignored. There may be a moral obligation to discontinue these practices given that farming creates unnecessary suffering. If one accepts this, then, some vegetarians argue, isn’t it an obligation to not consume the food that is unethically raised and produced?

The anesthesia option challenges this picture as Novocaine lessens the harm animals experience in the process. The goal of reducing animal harm is met with near universal acceptance. It applies to any kind of work that involves animals including veterinarians, medical research, zoos, farming, and more. The veterinary code of ethics states that, “A veterinarian shall provide competent veterinary medical clinical care under the terms of a veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR), with compassion and respect for animal welfare and human health.” Novocaine is a solution to pain management and can diminish the challenges that the profession of farming has for the animal’s well-being.

Another bonus from reducing harm for farm animals with anesthesia is that it can increase farming production and result in higher profits for farmers. Pain weakens the immune response, makes animals sicker, eat less and grow more slowly, and leads animals to reject their offspring. With less pain, the risk of these conflicts is dramatically lowered.

The main pushback towards using Novocaine for farming animals, even in countries where there is a wide range of pain relief options, is that it is expensive. There are more than 50 billion animals raised and slaughtered for agriculture annually. Paying for  all of those animals’ pain relief would be extremely costly and unrealistic. Ultimately these animals are going to be raised to be eventually killed for consumption. In fact, in the US, pain relief isn’t used. It wasn’t until 2017 that the FDA approved the drug banamine transderm to treat the painful disease foot rot and pyrexica (a fever) associated with bovine respiratory disease. One contributing factor to this policy is the limited number of approved anesthetics for animals given the challenging nature of the drug. Variety in animals’ anatomy, life style, and behavior create an extra challenge for scientists to find drugs that will be effective in reducing pain and last long enough to do so.

This is not to say that farmers who do not use anesthetics act unethically. As previously mentioned, it can be difficult to recognize pain in these prey animals. Further, assessments will differ on whether temporary pain has a justifiable benefit for the future well-being of an animal. US policy may be defensible, but it could be worth considering if anesthetics should be a more common practice for all farming practices worldwide.