Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
killing is a benefit to the animal, whereas animals that are routinely slaughtered for
food today are killed for the pleasure of those who eat them.
A vegetarian ideal can, then, be envisaged: one in which animals are used but are
not exploited, and such coexistence is an overall good for those animals. They get to
exist, lead a qualitatively reasonable existence, and do not embody a morally distorted
life. Pigs or turkeys will have to be artificially preserved in small numbers, as there
will remain no financial incentive to breed them. But the rest can coexist with hu-
mans in morally acceptable ways.
TENTATIVE VEGANISM
Veganism is a position according to which people ought to be vegans both now
and in an ideal state. “Tentative veganism,” on the other hand, holds that
given
present exploitation, one ought to be a vegan until animal lives begin to radically im-
prove. Veganism, I claimed, is flawed, since it is predicated on an ideal that is bad
both for animals and for humans, because it requires the latter to give up milk and
eggs. How about tentative veganism? From a perspective that attributes a significant
moral status to animals, consuming eggs and milk is to participate and financially
support a currently exploitative practice, much like purchasing products that rely on
slave labor. Tentative vegans will accuse moral vegetarians of acting in bad faith,
analogous to someone who objects to slavery yet continues to benefit from cheap
products that depend on slave farms. That these products can, in principle, be pro-
duced in nonexploitative ways in some conceptual utopia does not modify present
facts. Cooperating with present exploitative practice is still wrong.
One reply on behalf of vegetarians here can be found in Hare, and I heard it from
Eddy Zemach: selective consumption rather than a total ban enables financially sup-
porting institutions that undertake steps in the right direction. Banning dairy and eggs
means that one perceives no difference between breeders that try to create better con-
ditions and those that merely exploit the animals. Since present pro-animal actions are
to be partly evaluated in relation to the degree to which they promote the desirable
end state, tentative veganism is counterproductive in comparison to selective vegetari-
an consumption (which basically means supporting products that come from free-
roaming animals).
The plausibility of this antivegan argument depends on how substantial the “step”
in the right direction really is: if a slave farm allows its slaves to have longer breaks
and to walk around freely for some hours, such concessions would obviously not
constitute a credible justification for purchasing products from it rather than from
slave farms that do not maintain such progressive conditions. The very fact of slavery
is too heinous to be excused by such meager improvements, and so consumer cooper-
