Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
it is not difficult to see deer, feral goats, rats and rabbits expanding their field of operation,
possibly followed by wolves, bears or large cats, not to mention hyenas, badgers and other
scavengers and opportunists who would avail themselves of whatever else they could find
in people's dustbins and gardens. The bears and large cats would occasionally take out a
human for good measure.
Of course, this would never happen on any scale, because the farmers wouldn't allow
it, any more than the 18th century Berkshire farmer, quoted, tolerated the presence of his
Lordship's deer. If the park managers failed to control pests, then the farmers would turn
to poaching, not only to save the crops upon which their livelihoods depended, but also be-
cause they would reason that if wolves, bears, lynxes and foxes are allowed to predate, why
aren't humans? Enforcement would be near impossible, no matter how many vegan police-
men were deployed, while reinvoking the Black Act and making hunting a capital offence
would presumably confiict with vegan ethics. In such a situation it is likely that poaching
(and probably poisoning as well) would be quietly tolerated, in much the same way that the
eating of sacred cows is tacitly accepted in India.
It is for this reason that the Vegetarian Society's 'Green Plan' drawn up by vegan Alan
Long sensibly allows a measured amount of meat-eating:
Domestic species of farm animals, at present travesties produced by domestic
breeding, would be allowed to assume the feral state in these reserves … In such feral
conditions, animals may have to be culled … Casualties could be used for meat for
those who want it.
9
One wonders, in passing, whether Long refers to cultivated cabbages and beans as 'trav-
esties'. But for Peter Singer and more purist vegans the idea of 'harvesting' excessive pop-
ulations of feral or wild animals is another form of 'speciesism'. His solution to the poach-
ing problem, and to the problem of inedible pests, is to control their population through the
use of drugs or the release of infertile males to reduce female fertility. I will come to that
shortly. But what is most revealing about Singer's coverage of pests is the tiny proportion
of his book which he devotes to them - just one page, compared with an entire chapter on
factory farming and another chapter on vivisection. Pests, in Singer's view are a side issue:
this is how he introduces the subject:
It is possible to think of more unusual cases in which there is a genuine clash of in-
terests. For instance, we need to grow a crop of vegetables and grain to feed ourselves;
but these crops may be threatened by rabbits, mice, or other 'pests'.
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Unusual? Rabbits, mice and other pests? Far more rodents have died as a result of traps,
poisons or targeted anthropogenic disease, than have ever been killed in the laboratories he
