Recap: Using animals as food
Types of farming
- factory farming
- factory farming + reforms
- humane farming
Other ways to harvest animals for food
- commercial fishing
- sport hunting and fishing (later)
Arguments for vegetarianism
- Rachels: Taste Argument (in a nutshell)
- We need to justify inflicting suffering on animals and our taste preferences are not an adequate justification
- Also, arguments in moral status authors: Singer, Regan, D&K, Kagan
Defenses of using animals as food
- 3 defenses: Budolfson, Zangwill, Bruckner
- Also, arguments in moral status authors: Bible, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Carruthers
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Mark Budolfson, “Is it wrong to eat meat from factory farms? If so, why?”
- focus: eating meat from factory farms
- Budolfson assumes: factory farming is really bad
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The issue of efficacy -- having an impact, making a difference
- can you actually prevent the suffering and death of food animals (in factory farms)?
- do you have "efficacy" when it comes to those animals?
Cases in which you DO have efficacy (p. 4)
- Jimmy’s You-Hack-It-Yourself
- Fishing, hunting
- Ordering a Thanksgiving turkey from small humane farm on January 1
Cases in which you DO NOT have efficacy
- Dumpster diving
- Eating meat that you didn't order at a restaurant
When it comes to the suffering and death of food animals in factory farms, do you have efficacy?
- Budolfson says no!
"it is virtually impossible for an individual’s consumption of animal products at supermarkets and restaurants to have any effect on the number of animals that suffer and the extent of that suffering, just as it is virtually impossible for an individual’s consumption of products acquired through dumpster diving to have any effect on animal welfare" (p. 4)
- Budolfson rejects Peter Singer's arguments about efficacy in Animal Liberation
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Peter Singer's account of how you CAN make a difference
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| Assuming the numbers above, if I abstain, I have a 1 in 10,000 chance of saving 250,000 chickens Singer: this is equivalent to a certainty of saving 25 chickens (ALN p. 6-7) |
Budolfson's response: there is no threshold effect like this
"many products we consume are delivered by a massive and
complex supply chain in which there is waste, inefficiency, and other
forms of slack at each link. Arguably, that slack serves as a buffer ... " (p. 5-6)
"Slack at each link" (p. 5-7)
- Ranchers are insensitive to demand
- Growers of animals insensitive to demand
- Livestock auctioneers insensitive to demand
- Supermarkets insensitive to demand, don’t care about waste
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| If you abstain from buying cheese at Central Market will that prevent any animal suffering at all? |
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Budolfson: Is the efficacy objection just a "paradox of eating" like the "paradox of voting"...so should be dismissed? NO
- voting behavior does control the outcome of an election
- people vote for many reasons, not just to affect the outcome
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Budolfson -- part 2 of his argument (not in reading assignment)
- "degree of essentiality of harm" (p. 12)
- suppose harm was in fact involved in the production of a product
- that harm can be essential, necessary, inevitable
- that harm can be contingent, accidental, potentially avoidable
- Harm in fact involved, but non-essential: factory farmed eggs
- Harm involved, and essential: foie gras -- produced by force-feeding geese to produce a fatty liver
Bottom line
- you have no duty to be a vegetarian to save animals from suffering and death, because through your food choices you can't save them
- nevertheless, you should avoid essentially harmful foods
Is meat essentially harmful?
