Animals and the Harm of Death - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 40

all desire-satisfaction that is lost due to death, rather than counting only
the lost satisfaction of desires that existed prior to death.
On other accounts of welfare, it matters that the student has already
invested more effort in his future. Furthermore, the student's life has
already begun to take a shape or narrative, and death makes this a very
bad narrative, while in the baby's life the narrative has not really begun.
The foreclosure view can incorporate these concerns, 'as long as it is
intrinsically bad to have one's investments rendered futile or to have a
life with a bad narrative structure. And if those things are not intrinsi-
cally bad, why think they are relevant to the evil of death?' 9 If those
things were so bad that the student's life would have been worse than
the baby's life, then, assuming that their total welfare when they had
not died would be the same, the student loses more by dying than the
baby. Hence, even if one accepts those views, this provides no reason to
dismiss the foreclosure view.
In animal husbandry, animals are usually killed early in their lives.
For instance, cows that are used for dairy production are usually killed
after about four years, while a cow could otherwise live for about twenty
years. In egg production, male chickens are killed when they are a day
old because they cannot become laying hens and they are not selected
for growing meat. Animals that are raised for meat are also killed in
their early lives for reasons of meat quality and efficiency. These animals
would otherwise have been able to continue the pleasant lives that they
assumingly have in animal-friendly animal husbandry. Killing these
animals would be a significant welfare loss. It significantly harms these
animals, according to the foreclosure view, because it precludes all future
welfare they would otherwise have had.
According to the foreclosure view, the harm of death is not deter-
mined by how much somebody wants the future he would have had,
but by the loss of the value that the future would have provided for
the being. Hence, according to this view, animals can be significantly
harmed by death even if they do not desire to go on living, and even if
they have no or little future-oriented desires. In the following section,
I will discuss a proposed modification of the foreclosure view that is
relevant for the harm of death for animals.
4 Does psychological connectedness matter?
Although according to the foreclosure view the possession of future-
oriented desires does not determine the harm of death, it has been
suggested that death is a lesser harm for beings that have less psychological