Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
its principle ideologue is the Oxford transhumanist, David Pearce, who promotes his vis-
ion of a totally veganized nature under a variety of headings such as 'paradise engineering'
and 'abolitionism'. Like most transhumanists, Pearce predicts that within the foreseeable
future, the human race can be redesigned to eliminate both ageing and suffering:
If you take suffering seriously, the only way to eradicate it is by biological re-
programming. In the short run this may involve superior drugs. In the long run the
only realistic way to abolish suffering is through genetic engineering … With the
right prosthesis one could have an enhanced body image, a greater responsiveness to
a wider range of physical stimuli.
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But he doesn't stop at humans, for paradise engineering must spread throughout the
whole of animal creation, and the first step in that project is to stop eating meat:
Biotechnology will enable the human species cost-effectively to mass-produce ed-
ible cellular protein, and indeed all forms of food, of a flavour and texture indistin-
guishable from, or tastier than, the sanitized animal products we now eat. As our pal-
ates become satisfied by other means, the moral arguments for animal rights will start
to seem overwhelmingly compelling. The Western(ized) planetary élite will finally
start to award the sentient fellow creatures we torture and kill a moral status akin to
human infants and toddlers. Veganism, though not in quite the contemporary sense,
will become the global norm.
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This global vegan norm will encompass animals as well as humans. Some predators, par-
ticularly 'feline psychopaths', will have to be either reformed or eliminated:
Just as there is no need to recreate the natural habitat of smart, blond, handsome
Nazi storm-troopers who can then prey on their natural victims … likewise the prac-
tice of continuing to breed pre-programmed feline killing machines in homage to
Nature is ethically untenable too.
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But other carnivores can be fed on cultured meat, while herbivore populations can be
kept to a manageable size through drugs or bioengineering:
Essentially, in 50 years or so all that's left of 'Nature' is going to be our wildlife
parks. What we will actually allow in our wildlife parks is debatable. Already in zoos
we don't feed live animals to snakes or crocodiles, even though it would fulfil their
'natural' instincts … Already the elephant population in a few parts of Africa has re-
covered sufficiently such that techniques such as depot-contraception have been intro-
