Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
by substantially reforming quality of life for farm animals, and you inevitably dimin-
ish the number of existing animals, probably by millions.
Factory-farming prescribes harsh lives for animals, though—defenders of factory-
farming will point out—it is better than, say, a life of nonstop torture and arguably
better than not existing at all. An obtuse owner of a factory-farm would deploy
EABT not merely to vindicate eating meat, but also to prevent qualitative reform in-
volving reduction of animal suffering. She would claim that any such reduction in
suffering would inevitably reduce many lives of potential animals (consider, for ex-
ample, the financial implications of requiring that laying hens have more room to
move around in large-scale poultry farming). If eating animals benefits them, then
raising them in the most financially efficient way is in their favor too. It is even pos-
sible that the quality of living in such factories should be reduced further, thus en-
abling even more animals to exist (preventing any movement at all for chickens
rather then just limiting their movement severely may enable such factories to double
or triple the amount of living chickens). No philosopher who has taken the trouble to
examine the particularities of factory-farming accepts this conclusion.
21
Aside from this, EABT also has an interesting flip side: if killing animals for food and
eating them is truly held to be a benefit to these animals (because such practice brings
them into existence), the inverse holds too: animals that can thrive without humans
breeding them—say, fish—should not be eaten since, obviously, such killing has noth-
ing to do with their benefit. The same holds for cows and hens, which would still exist
in large numbers even if they were not killed for food, as the incentive to raise them for
eggs and milk would preserve them in large numbers. And so this objection to veget-
arianism actually goes some way in furthering the aims of moral vegetarians.
IS COLLECTIVE VEGETARIANISM DESIRABLE FOR ANIMALS?
EABT aside, we are still obliged to face the question of the desirability of a veget-
arian utopia from the standpoint of animals. Suppose that farm-animal husbandry is
reformed, that factory-farming is abolished, and that animals are only killed for their
own benefit or when they endanger people. Suppose that laying hens are still raised
for eggs, cows for milk, and all such animals live in uncrowded farms that are en-
couraged to invest in raising these animals for these products. Such animals are killed
only when they are old, wounded, or ill. In some cases they are then eaten or sold
as food; their bodies are used for the production of numerous products like leather or
pet food. There is nothing so far immoral in such a world. But what prospects does
such a world hold for bulls, male chicks, or hogs in general, which have no such
“goods” to deliver and are today not raised at all (in the case of virtually all male
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search