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animals or for others. As has been elaborated in Chapter 4, it is doubtful
whether these conditions are fulfilled in many practices of what is
considered animal-friendly animal husbandry. Usually, the process of
the killing has a negative impact on the animal's welfare. Furthermore,
it is not clear that the overall welfare level of an animal that is kept for
human consumption is always positive. After all, even in more animal-
friendly practices of animal husbandry, animals might suffer from
boredom, stress, fear and/ or pain and might lack sufficient opportuni-
ties for having positive experiences. However, better animal husbandry
practices in terms of animal welfare - compared to current practices of
animal-friendly animal husbandry - are conceivable. Thus, for what
concerns the conditions of the Replaceability Argument, certain forms
of animal-friendly animal husbandry might in principle be justified.
Secondly, as we have seen in Chapter 4, even if the Replaceability
Argument is accepted and if the relevant conditions are fulfilled, it is
controversial which beings would be replaceable and which would
not. As elaborated in Chapter 4, Singer tries to restrict the scope of the
Replaceability Argument to the effect that persons are irreplaceable.
By 'persons' Singer indicates those beings that are self-aware and have
future-oriented desires and a conception of life and death. Only those
beings, according to Singer, have a preference for continued life. Only
persons are therefore significantly harmed by death. As we have seen in
Chapter 4, Singer appeals to the moral ledger model, which implies that
unfulfilled desires count negatively on the welfare scale and the fulfil-
ment of a desire can only restore the negative count to zero. Therefore,
killing a person would leave unsatisfied desires, such as the desire to
go on living, while any newly created being could never score better
than zero on the welfare scale. According to Singer, personhood comes
in degrees, as comes replaceability. I have discussed the implications of
Singer's arguments for limiting the scope of the Replaceability Argument.
I have argued that it is pessimistic, dependent on a particular account of
the harm of death, and ad-hoc in several respects. Furthermore, it fails to
restrict replaceability in the desired way. Those who, in spite of all this,
would like to accept Singer's account of the scope of the Replaceability
Argument should note that Singer is prepared to ascribe personhood to
the animals that are usually killed for consumption, or at least to give
them the benefit of the doubt.
For instance, Singer discusses evidence about the capacities of pigs
and other animals and ends up with the following remark:
We think of dogs as being more 'human' than pigs, but we have
already seen that pigs can plan ahead and grasp whether another pig
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