Animals as Food (factory farming)

Animals as food module

1. Factual background (today)
2. A simple argument for vegetarianism (Friday)
3. 3 defenses of meat eating
• inefficacy
• humane farming + existence
• freegan
4. State fair and rodeo

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Statistics

• About 10 billion land animals die annually in food production in the US (2021 USDA figures)
• 218 million are killed in the US by hunters, in animal shelters, research, product testing, dissection, and fur farms -- 2% of total killed (2001 source)
• About 80 billion land animals die annually in food production worldwide
• More numbers

Types of farming

1. Factory farming/CAFO -- confined animal feeding operation--this post
• animals grown in factory-like conditions
• indoors, very little space
• highly automated
• most animal products in the US, spreading to other countries
2. Factory farming + reforms (here)
3. Humane farming (here)

Animal welfare issues (below) vs. environmental issues

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Content alert -- a few brief videos with disturbing images -- close eyes if necessary!

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Animals as food (reforms & humane farming)

REFORMS 

California regulations

Proposition 2 (California, 2008) each animal must have enough room to turn around 

Proposition 12 (California) - stipulates square feet, prohibits sale of products that don't comply, even if animals raised in other states, all laying hens cage-free, no gestation crates

Trump administration sues to overturn Prop 12 but judge rejects suit

Save our Bacon provision of farm bill would overturn Prop 12 

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Hog gestational stalls/crates 

Gestational stalls banned in some states (but not farrowing stalls)

• States that now prohibit: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Rhode Island (wikipedia) 

• But what are the big pork-producing states? 
• Smithfield farms (huge pork producers) reducing use of gestational stalls -- see video below

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HUMANE FARMING 

Doubts

• Reece, "There's no such thing as human meat, stop kidding yourself"

Whole Foods Humane Standards

• Levels

Turkeys

Laying hens

• Vital Farms Eggs  (Lo ranch) -- pastured raised

Pigs

• Niman ranch

 

Multiple species

• Polyface Farm (Follow link, scroll down, watch video)
• Shorter video (best one to watch)

Slaughter

• USDA rules: pigs and cows must be sent to regulated slaughter houses
• Chickens can be killed locally
• Killing chickens at Polyface

Higher and lower animals

Preview

1. Using animals as food -- RR18 food experiments
2. Finish Kagan
3. Animal ethics bracket

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Kagan recap

Unitarianism -- there's just one moral status, humans and animals both have it (Regan, Singer)

Hierarchy view -- there are many moral status, higher and lower

• common sense

Worrisome apparent implications that might make you doubt the hierarchy view

1. Superior beings (eg. wizards, Greek gods, superheroes, amazing aliens) have higher moral status than normal humans
2. Marginal cases have lower moral status than normal humans
3. Due to normal variation, different humans have many different moral statuses

Two ways Kagan can deal with these worrisome implications

1. AVOID.  Argue that the alleged implication isn't really an implication of the hierarchy view
2. LIVE WITH IT.  Argue that the implication is something you can live with; it's not actually worrisome.

We'll see what he says about the three worrisome implications.

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Practical realism -- correct principles and categories are understandable and motivating

Animal categories

• Not a continuum
• Not a hundred categories
• He says 5-6

Animal categories

1. Humans -- full persons (defined as conscious, intelligent, self-aware, moral, etc.)
2. Most intelligent, closest to personhood -- dolphins, whales, squid, great apes)
3. Highly intelligent -- like dogs, pigs, parrots
4. Midlevel -- rabbits, cows, squirrels
5. Lower -- birds, fish, reptiles
6. Lowest -- insects, spiders

Moral status depends on species, but also on whether the individual is a normal member of the species

1. Golden retriever who has taken a supervitamin and has the intelligence of a human--he's wroting poetry etc.
2. Snake that acts like a cat

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Implication 2: marginal cases have low moral status

Strategy:  avoid, live with it, or mixed?

1. They are "modal persons" -- non-persons who could have been persons
2. Practical realism -- correct principles and categories are motivating -- very low moral status for marginal cases wouldn't be motivating

   

   Kagan p. 14

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Implication 3: due to normal variation, humans will have lots of different moral statuses

Strategy: avoid, live with it, or mixed?

Kagan p. 15 

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Implication 1: superior beings would have higher moral status

Strategy: avoid, live with it, or mixed?

Kagan p. 7

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Why not ONE category for all humans and ONE for all animals?

1. Humans: high status, so deontological rules apply, like "killing is always wrong"
2. Animals: low status, so utilitarian/consquentialist rules apply, like "kill only when necessary to maximize happiness"

Kagan p. 16

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Hierarchy and advocating for animals

Kagan p. 6

Kagan p. 18

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Animal ethics bracket

https://PollEv.com/jeankazez843

Food choices

Diet terminology

1. Omnivore -- literally means "eat everything"
2. Budding conscientious omnivore--switch to a few more-humane products (what should your priorities be?)
3. Reducetarian--Meatless Mondays, "vegan before 6" 
4. Conscientious omnivore--no factory farmed animal products 
5. Pescatarian -- vegetarian with an exception for fish
6. Vegetarian--mostly plant based, diet includes dairy and eggs, no meat
7. Vegan/Vegetarian--plant based diet, no animal products

Health

Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets  
Marion Nestle, "Are vegetarian diets ok?"

Higher and lower animals

 Shelly Kagan, How to Count Animals: More or Less

Some terminology

1. Unitarian view: every being with moral status has the same moral status
2. Hierarchy view: beings with moral status can have many different moral statuses (2, 3, 10, 20, innumerable)
3. Utilitarian ethics; the right action maximizes total good
• how to add hierarchy to Utilitarianism
  
  
  
4. Deontological ethics: ethics consist of a set of duties (e.g. duty to keep promises, duty to not harm for fun)
• how to add hierarchy to deontological ethics

  

  Sea lion shot 12 times (NYT Sept 25)

  
  
5. Practical realism: ethical principles and categories must be simple enough to be comprehensible and motivating
• will come into play in second half of article

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Kagan's hierarchy view: based on capacities of different species

• More capacities ---> higher moral status
• Fewer capacities ---> lower moral status

Which capacities count? He doesn't say. Which are plausibly relevant?

1. capacity to fly
2. capacity to run fast
3. capacity to survive under water
4. sentience
5. capacity to cooperate
6. capacity to be self-aware
7. sense of fairness
8. capacity to empathize
9. sheer intelligence
10. capacity to make art
11. capacity to appreciate beauty
12. capacity to migrate great distances

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Troubling implications of this capacity-based hierarchy view

1. Hierarchy leads to implication X
2. X is really bizarre and unacceptable
3. So hierarchy must be rejected

Three implications Kagan discusses:

1. Superior beings might have higher moral status than us
2. Marginal cases might have lower moral status than us
3. Given normal variation, different normal people might have different moral statuses

What is Kagan's response to each implications? He has two options:

1. Hierarchy doesn't really lead to that
2. That's not really so bizarre and unacceptable

We'll see what he says in part 2 of the article

Workbook--let's discuss superior beings 

Wild sovereigns and animal denizens

 

Donaldson & Kymlicka Basics

• equal basic rights (right to life and liberty)
• different political categories
• human categories --> animal categories

Last time: citizens

1. domesticated animals: cats, dogs, goats, donkeys, horses, cows, pigs, chickens
2. see last time

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Liminal denizens 

1. Humans: tourists, foreign students, temporary workers, illegal immigrants, opt-out citizens,  like Amish
2. Animals: ducks, geese, rats, mice, squirrels, swallows, chimney swifts, feral cats, etc.
3. Animal denizens seek human settlements, depend on us, but don't share a community with us
4. Two principles that apply to human denizens (p. 14)
• KEEP OUT: legit to have borders and laws about who enters; also legit to discourage entry
• ACCOMMODATE: "sooner or later they acquire the right to stay" (p. 14)
5. Application to liminal animal denizens
• KEEP OUT: we can try to keep them out
• ACCOMMODATE: "we need to regularize their status, and to accept and accommodate to their presence" (p. 14) 

Animal liminal denizen examples

MICE 

• keep out: plug holes in walls to keep mice out, avoid open food, use humane traps and remove
  
• accommodate: "why should we begrudge them some space in the cellar, or the garage or the garden shed? " (p. 15)

 

CANADA GEESE

"we can actively discourage geese from colonizing our parks and fields, although of
course we can’t kill them or otherwise harm them" (p. 15)
• video about methods
• Migratory Bird Treaty Act
• accept that they live in some areas

 

FERAL CATS

• analogy with opt-out communities (the Amish)
• feral cat colony at SMU

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Foreigners in other countries ... wild animal sovereigns 

1. Foreigners in other countries  
• respect for sovereignty (e.g. the UK gentry)
• we don't "manage" people in other countries
• occasional assistance ok
2. Wild animal sovereigns 
• respect for sovereignty
• we shouldn't "manage" wildlife
• occasional assistance ok

 

Wild animal sovereign examples

STOPPING RUTTING ELK - NO!

• we would stop dogs from fighting at a dog park, because they're members of our community
• we should respect elk fighting because that's their way of life          

 

STOPPING PREDATION - NO!

• we stop our cats from killing birds, because the cats are members of our community
• shouldn't stop wild animal predation 

ONE-OFF ASSISTANCE

• Nick and Nora at White Rock Lake -- last summer one of their 3 eaglets fledged and couldn't get back to the nest...the police got involved with protecting them 

REGULAR ASSISTANCE 

• Saving the pufflings...solves a problem that humans create -- light pollution
• Habitat loss also human-caused ... solved with wildlife corridors

Helping the puffins in the Westman Islands, Iceland

EXCESSIVE ASSISTANCE 

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PREVIEW: Shelly Kagan, "For hierarchy in animal ethics"

• D&K: political categories
• Kagan: capacity categories

Animal citizens

Precis of Zoopolis (2011)

Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

Animal rights debate

• Do animals have basic rights like a right to life and liberty?
• Longstanding debate...they are not contributing to it...they assume YES
• Assuming ALL animals have basic rights, we need to understand the DIFFERENT rights and responsibilities of different animals

Human rights vary by "political category"

1. Citizens here (Canada, US, wherever) 
2. Liminal denizens: tourists, foreign students, temporary workers, refugee claimants (all drawn here for different reasons)
3. Foreigners in other countries

They claim: animals fall into parallel "political categories"

Note: they are NOT saying....

1. human and animal citizens should have the same rights
2. human liminal denizens and animal liminal denizens should have the same rights
3. human foreigners and wild sovereigns should have the same rights

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Animal citizens (next part of article is about the wild sovereigns and liminal denizens)

1. Why think of domesticated animals as citizens?
2. Are all the cows, pigs, and chickens going to be citizens too? 
3. What is involved in animal citizenship?

p. 5

Socialization

• Animals have to be trained to live with each other and humans in a mixed community

Public spaces -- outdoor

 Mixed communities that already exist

• cats of Istanbul -- KEDI trailer

Public spaces -- indoor

Cat cafe field trips

Animal cafes (South Korea)

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Animal citizens should work, but not be exploited

• contribute manure YES
• goats or sheep
  mowing lawn YES
  

Open Space

• sheep for wool if shorn humanely   YES
• keeping chickens for eggs MAYBE
• using animals as guide dogs (video clip) NO

Donkey farm field trip

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Exam 1

• Worth just 15% ... many great answers
• If you want to do better next time: 
• make better use of study guide and blog posts
• do the readings... don't just find the thing the RR calls for and skip the rest of the reading
• There's an exam key at the top of the Canvas home page

Do animals have moral standing?

1. 
   

Peter Carruthers, "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

1. Part 1 (sec 1-3):  contractualist argument ... animals have no moral standing
2. Part 2 (sec 4-5): why is animal cruelty still wrong?

Thought experiments

1. Kids set a cat on fire for fun in a public place (p. 11)
2. Astrid the Astronaut and her pet cat (p. 12)
3. Astrid the Astronaut and her dead servant (p. 13)
4. Lazy Jane the doctor 

Why is cruelty and indifference wrong?

1. Because of what is shows about you and your character (compare Indian animal ethics)
2. Your cruelty will lead you to harm humans (compare Kant)
3. Contractors would agree that cruelty is wrong

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Preview of Monday's reading -- to make more time for field trips 

Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights 

• they are Canadian
• they wrote this book in 2011
• we're reading their precis of the book -- a short summary
• "zoopolis" means (literally) animal city
• animalism, but a different kind of animalism than we've seen before

Individualistic animalism--our obligations to animals depend on each individual animal's "intrinsic moral standing" (D&K p. 1).

1. Peter Singer--sentience, interests
2. Tom Regan--being a subject of a life, rights

Political animalilsm

1. Intrinsic moral standing does matter
2. but so does "political status" 
3. both matter for both humans and animals

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What do they mean by political status?

Passport control at DFW international terminal

Picture people who get off a plane

They all have  the same basic rights based on "intrinsic moral standing" (p. 1) – enshrined in Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

1. right to life
2. right to liberty
3. we can't torture or enslave any of them

But they have different rights based on "relationship to a particular political community" (p. 2)

1. Citizens of the US
• right to enter the US
• right to work here
• right to have their interests represented by government
• right to vote
• right to have access to public spaces (can go there, signs are in your language)
• right to emergency health care
• 
  
2. In-betweens/Denizens: "tourists, foreign students, refugee claimants, business visitors or temporary workers" (p. 2). 
• have all the basic rights based on "intrinsic moral standing" 
• don't have all of the rights of citizens, but do have some
• 
  
3. Foreign Nationals--citizens of other countries, back in home country
• have set of rights established in other nation

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D&K say animals are in parallel political categories 

1. Animal Citizens -- domesticated animals living with us-- for example pets
2. Animal Denizens  -- animals drawn to us but not living with us--squirrels, rats, mice, raccoons, ducks, geese, chimney swifts, swallows
3. Animal wild sovereigns --  live independently in wilderness (inside our borders or outside)

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Next time: arguments, details, what it means to be an animal citizen

Do animals have moral standing?

Look ahead

1. There have been no quizzes for a while...they are randomly scheduled!
2. Next time: more Carruthers, but I will also give you a preview of the next reading
3. Monday: 3 field trips

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Module 3 -- Animals and humans: the contemporary debate

What is the moral status/moral standing of animals?

•  the extent to which moral agents (like us) have obligations to Xs

Views on animal moral standing

1. NO MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS
2. EQUAL MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS
3. SOME MORAL STANDING FOR ANIMALS

Today: Peter Carruthers, "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

Next: type 3 views

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Recap

Singer and Regan: argument from marginal cases

Marginal cases: humans at the low end of the ability spectrum.  

Babies, cognitively impaired people, adults with advanced dementia, etc.

1. Some animals and some marginal cases have roughly the same abilities
2. So what you say about the moral standing of one you must say about the moral standing of the other. 
3. Since marginal cases have equal moral standing, so do animals.

One goal of Carruthers' article is to counter this argument

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Peter Carruthers,  "Against the Moral Standing of Animals" (2011)

SECTION 1, Assumptions

About animal minds

1. Animals are sentient
2. They aren't rational, don't weigh costs and benefits, can't abide by rules, etc.

_________________________

Why are there any moral truths? Why does anyone have moral standing? 

Ideas we have already encountered:

Religious answers: God gave humans special standing, prohibited murder, permitted eating animals
Aristotle: ruler-ruled is built into the constitution of the universe 
Regan: being a subject-of-life has inherent value
Singer: sentience is sentience 

Carruthers proposes a different answer: contractualism 

"All contractualists agree that moral truths are, in a certain sense, human constructions, emerging out of some or other variety of hypothetical rational agreement concerning the basic rules to govern our behavior." (Carruthers, pg. 2)

 

A few clarifications

1. The social contract is hypothetical, not real
2. The contractors are rational people, because only rational people can agree to a contract 
3. The contract situation is idealized -- people don't know what would be in their personal best interests -- they decide behind a "veil of ignorance" (Rawls)
4. The contractors have no moral beliefs ... for example, they don't go into it already believing "murder is wrong" ... morality is the "output" of their agreement (pg. 3 & 8) 
5. Contractualists think people everywhere would agree to the same things  

 _________________________

Carruthers, SECTION 2-- what would rational human contractors decide about humans?

All rational agents have equal moral standing

• they wouldn't agree to the contract otherwise         

Non-rational human agents (marginal cases) have equal standing

• The social stability argument -- pg. 5
  
• Regan's objection to contractualism: this is second class standing because they are not contractors; Carruthers says: no, its first class moral standing

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Carruthers, SECTION 3 -- animals

          Animals have no moral standing 

1. there's no social stability argument for giving them moral standing -- pg. 8
2. so they don't have it 
3. the fact that some animals have the same abilities as some marginal cases is irrelevant

_________________________

Rest of the article: can we really torture animals for fun?

 

Animal morality

Let's do some reviewing first...use the Exam 1 tab above

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Do animals have anything like morality?

        Does it matter, as far as their fundamental moral status is concerned?

1. Kant -- in some places, says YES
2. Singer, Regan -- NO

Two theories

1. Morality is something entirely new in humans, there's nothing like it in animals
2. There are rudiments/precursors of morality in animals; human morality evolved from these precursors (this is Frans DeWaal's view)

Who is Frans DeWaal?

• was a primatologist at Emory University

What are thes rudiments/precursors of morality in animals?

1. Perspective taking 
2. Targeted helping
• chimps will try to get humans to give them a banana outside their enclosure--will point if humans can see them--will make noise if humans can't see them
3. Cooperation 
•  the cooperative pulling paradigm
• teamwork in other animals--whales, orcas, lions, wolves, wild dogs, Harris's hawks, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees
4. Empathy
5. Reciprocity & Fairness

Self-awareness

Today we're discussing...

• self-awareness
• awareness of oneself in past and future

Human self-awareness

• awareness of one's body
• introspection

Human awareness of self in past and future

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Does self-awareness (or self-consciousness) matter for moral status? 

YES (Kant)

"But so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man." (Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics AWT p. 6)

"The fact that man can have the idea 'I' raises him infinitely above all the other beings living on earth. By this he is a person; and by virtue of the unity of his consciousness, through all the changes he may undergo, he is one and the same person--that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals, which we can dispose of as we please." (Kant, quoted in Fellow Creatures, by Christine Korsgaard, pg. 30) 

NO (Singer) 

 "If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration.No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering-insofar as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing pleasure or happiness, there is nothing to be counted." Peter Singer, Animal Liberation Now, pg. 8 of our pdf

A non-self-aware sentient being still has interests and is entitled to equal consideration.  Then again, the non-self-aware may have somewhat difference interests. 

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Do any animals have self-awareness?

1. NO animals have any self-awareness (Kant's view)
2. SOME have it, some lack it (Gordon Gallup's view -- inventor of the mirror test)
3. ALL sentient animals have self-awareness to some degree

• feeling pain and pleasure creates awareness of ME
• bat is aware of certain echoes as MINE
• lion locates zebra relative to ME

_________________________

Some have, some lack....using the mirror recognition test to decide

• what is the "visual mark test"?

Frans DeWaal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)

• The mirror test can be passed to different degrees
• complete pass
• elephants
• What would Kant say?  Are elephants persons? Do they have full moral status?
• Also: Inside the animal mind episode 3, 32:44-36:40)

• intermediate--
• some animals fail the mark test but can use mirrors as a tool 

Using mirror as a tool

• intermediate--dogs and cats who don't react much to image instead of fighting with it

• complete fail--small songbirds and fighting fish--treat the image like it's someone else

_________________________

Mirror test videos

Problems with the mirror test

• too visual
• dogs are smell oriented -- recognize own urine
  

• bats and dolphins are sound oriented -- recognize own echoes

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Awareness of past self and future self

1. Recalling your past activities (episodic memory, autobiographical memory)
2. anticipating your future activities

Another term for both

• time travel

Animals: are they "stuck in the present" and therefore less self-aware?

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Episodic memory

1. recalling yourself at your high school graduation
2. using episodic memory strategically
• looking for my car in Airline garage -- visualize when I drove into it
• answering an exam question -- visualize when we were discussing it
• deciding whether to eat leftovers in your fridge--when did you put them there?

Contrast with other kinds of memory (that animals obviously have)

1. Knowing where your car is ....you just know
• Clark's nutcracker knows where the seeds are--Inside the Animal Mind I, 15:11-17:48- 
2. I can ride a bike ... dog heels

Is there evidence of episodic memory in animals?

• Chimps

DeWaal 

• when chimps are going to a fig tree they've visited before they get up early, walk in the dark(which they avoid), 

• Most plausible explanation: they recall past visits to the fig tree.

• Western scrub jays

Nicky Clayton's research
they dig up cached food

1. which food they dig up depends partly on "freshness"
2. so apparently they remember the act of caching
3. recently cached perishable foods are preferred

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Anticipating the future

Examples

• grabbing an umbrella because you think it will rain
• includes forethought, planning, anticipation

        Contrast with other types of future orientation

• Squirrels hoarding nuts for the winter
• They're doing it "for the winter" (future) but are they thinking about the future?
• Behavior could be just triggered by nuts + shortening of the day

        How to prove that animal is thinking about future?

• Chimps: Storing a tool today for use tomorrow 
• Crows

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Does it matter?

1. Why does self-awareness seem SO important to Kant?
2. is it really a determiner of fundamental moral status?