Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
to say that nobody would experience a vegan diet as a loss of personal
pleasure. However, it is unlikely that those losses, if they persist, would
outweigh the overall benefits of abandoning animal husbandry. More
about this will be discussed in Chapter 9.
Another relevant issue here concerns the link between the cost-
benefit analysis of animal husbandry and its alternatives on the one
hand, and the moral agent's choice on the other. After all, the options
open for a single moral agent do usually fall short of deciding about
the continuation or eradication of animal husbandry. A single farmer,
consumer, or citizen can at most make a humble contribution to those
states of affairs, if any at all. Questions about individual responsibility
in the face of limited and unclear individual influence occur in many
domains. They are particularly pressing for utilitarians, who morally
evaluate individual actions in terms of the difference that they make.
Here, however, I will focus on the more principled issue of whether
there is any compensation for the welfare loss that is caused by killing
animals that could otherwise have continued to lead pleasant lives.
Let me now turn to justification (b), which states that the utility loss
can be compensated if the killing is the only or best way to prevent
greater or at least equally great negative effects on overall welfare. In
animal husbandry, animals are not killed in order to avoid any greater
harm for themselves or for others. Neither does killing the animals
prevent any unavoidable suffering. In intensive animal husbandry, the
animals might have miserable lives, but then this is due to how they are
treated and not unavoidable. In animal-friendly animal husbandry, it
is assumed that the animals have pleasant lives. So, killing the animal
would not prevent welfare loss but rather make impossible the further
experience of positive welfare.
So, let us assume that both justifications for killing animals do not
hold in the case of animal husbandry. I have explained that killing
animals is not categorically ruled out. Complex calculations are neces-
sary in order to determine whether killing animals is justified. I have
suggested that the welfare benefits that are caused by killing animals
in animal husbandry cannot outweigh the welfare loss that killing the
animals implies. Killing the animal makes impossible the experience of
welfare that the animal would otherwise have experienced. Therefore,
killing the animal causes a welfare loss, as compared to the alternative
option of letting the animal live. Furthermore, the animals are not killed
in order to prevent greater negative consequences on overall welfare. If
this is right, we need another utilitarian justification for killing animals
in animal husbandry if we want utilitarianism to support this practice.
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