Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
pose projected onto the future life is morally objectionable as such even if it involves
qualitatively satisfying existence). The three dimensions help us determine when the
argument regarding benefiting animals by bringing them into existence is acceptable,
and when it is a self-serving rationalization.
Vegans and vegetarians tell meat-eaters that eating flesh as means of helping anim-
als to exist is a self-serving rationalization. Vegans level the same charge against
ovolacto vegetarians who claim that their choice promotes a better world for animals.
The tripartite division of life's value enables seeing why meat-eaters are indeed ra-
tionalizing, and why vegetarians are right. Any animal-related practice should be eval-
uated in terms of whether the lives it brings to the world should be lived. Having
pets is continuous with quantitative and qualitative dimensions and does not constitute
a morally objectionable life. It is accordingly an overall good practice for pets. Stuff-
ing geese cannot be excused through saying that they get to live, since such lives are
qualitatively horrifying. Breeding cows in order to kill them when they are a year or
two old is a morally objectionable plan even when they do get to live pleasant lives
(some calves do). On the other hand, sheering and milking sheep does not prevent
them from leading a qualitatively good life, and so here the quantitative dimension
does have weight: bringing such animals into the world can be an overall good for
them. The same applies to harvesting eggs from hens and milk from cows, if these
are kept in good conditions.
Reforming current exploitative farm-animal husbandry by turning such lives into
qualitatively desirable lives is not limited to providing reasonable space for the anim-
als. Avoiding killing animals when they are over their productive period probably im-
plies that eggs and milk will be more expensive than they are today. (On the other
hand, a pro-animal ideal state will also be one in which many more of these sources
of protein will be consumed. Greater demand may compensate farmers for endorsing
less economical breeding practices.) As for regulating the birth of “unproductive”
male offspring in poultry and cows, here differential artificial insemination (which
already exists technically) can create both an economical and a moral predifferenti-
ation of livestock without killing. I see nothing against the practice of enhancing the
animal's diet to make it more profitable for the farmer, as this need not occasion suf-
fering. As for artificially induced consecutive pregnancies in cows, there is no reason
to think that this practice harms the cow (women who have many children do not
such animals can be euthanized when they are old or sick, and then (here I deviate
from some moral vegetarians) no moral objection stands in the way of eating them or
using their hides, or processing their carcasses into pet food. The difference between
eating the flesh of such animals and objectionable eating of animals is that here the
