Defense 2: Existence

Should you eat products produced in factory farms?

1. Rachels: no, your taste preferences are minor compared to the suffering of the animals
2. Budolfson: sometimes it's permissible, i.e. when (A) you can't prevent the suffering, AND (B)  the product is not essentially harmful

What about humane farms?

• traditional farms around the world -- sheep all over New Zealand, the UK, Iceland
• boutique farms in the US -- products sold at places like Whole Foods
• cattle ranches in Texas -- seemingly humane at least for the duration

• Our World in Data: amount of grazing land
• Our World in Data: animals killed per year for food

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Ranch field trip -- how humane is humane?

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Nick Zangwill, "Why You Should Eat Meat" -- the Existence Argument

• Henry Salt -- discusses and rejects
• Peter Singer -- discusses in many places including ALN
• a large literature about this argument
• Zangwill's version is particularly provocative

Zangwill's conclusion 

Not only is it permissible but we SHOULD eat animals

"If you care about animals, you should eat them. It is not just that you may do so, but you should do so. In fact, you owe it to animals to eat them. It is your duty. Why? Because eating animals benefits them and has benefitted them for a long time. Breeding and eating animals is a very long-standing cultural institution that is a mutually beneficial relationship between human beings and animals. We bring animals into existence, care for them, rear them, and then kill and eat them. From this, we get food and other animal products, and they get life. Both sides benefit. I should say that by ‘animals’ here, I mean nonhuman animals. It is true that we are also animals, but we are also more than that, in a way that makes a difference."

The whole existence argument in a nutshell

"Domesticated animals exist in the numbers they do only because there is a practice of eating them. For example, the many millions of sheep in New Zealand would not begin to survive in the wild. They exist only because human beings eat them. The meat-eating practice benefits them greatly and has benefitted them greatly. So, we should eat them. Not eating them is wrong, and it lets these animals down."

MAIN STEPS

1. Some farm animals have quite good lives

"Of course, the animals we eat should have good lives, and so the worst kind of factory farming is not justified by this argument, since these animals have no quality of life. Life is not enough; it must be life with a certain quality. But some farmed animals do have good lives overall, and sheep farming in New Zealand is an example."

"the pleasure and happiness of animals also matters, and it may outweigh pain and suffering – something usually overlooked by most of those who affect to care for animals. The emphasis among the defenders of so-called ‘animal rights’ on animal pain and suffering while ignoring animal pleasure and happiness is bizarre and disturbing"

"I suspect that the pleasure and happiness of animals is overlooked because they are not of our species. This is a kind of speciesism that particularly afflicts devotees of ‘animals rights’. All lives have their ups and downs; and this is true for animals as well as human beings. Both ups and downs are important."

2. Breeding animals for our food is mutually beneficial

"It is this ongoing history of mutual benefit that generates a moral duty of human beings to eat animals."

"Indeed, if many human beings became vegetarians or vegans, it would be the greatest disaster that there has ever been for animals since the time that an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species."

Assumes: for a sheep, the good of existing for six months outweighs the harm of being killed at 6 months.

3. The argument doesn't lead to support for breeding and killing dogs

"It is because history matters that we should not eat dogs that were originally bred to be pets or for work. The dog-human institution licenses only the behaviour that is in accordance with its historical function. Eating dogs would violate that tradition."

4. The argument doesn't lead to support for breeding and killing humans

"In 1780, Jeremy Bentham said of animals: ‘The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?’ I agree that the suffering of animals is important, but, as I have complained, so is their pleasure and happiness. And I would also like to complain that just because suffering is important does not make reasoning unimportant."

Our rationality gives us rights that animals don't possess -- though a few higher animals might be exceptions.

Also: we would exist even if we weren't bred for food, but sheep wouldn't.

5.  Climate change isn't a good reason to abstain from meat

"However, the big negative, for many people is climate, and the effects, mostly, of cattle burping and farting. Does not climate give us reason to be vegetarian or vegan? Well, since the problem mostly comes from cows, one option would be to move to eating other kinds of animals in greater numbers. Moreover, the climate damage is mostly due to very intensive factory farming, which I do not defend because the animals do not have good lives. Indeed, the evidence is that small-scale farming in which animals have good lives does not harm the environment much, and it may even benefit it."

Animal agriculture and climate change

WORKBOOK