Deontology, Rights, and Meat Consumption

In his article, "Vegetarianism, Causation and Ethical Theory", Russ Shafer-Landau argues that consequentialism and deontological ethics both fail to explain why one should not consume meat. He notes the shift from arguments against factory farming practices to ones that argue against meat consumption, but in his opinion, these issues are "separable", and so the latter deserves its own set of arguments (Shafer-Landau, 85). After arguing against the consequentialist view, Shafer-Landau asks: "if we do not tie moral imperatives to benefits or harms, what are they tied to?" (92). For a deontologist, the answer to this may be that moral imperatives are tied to rights. The author states that there are two views as to why this is so. The first view, which Shafer-Landau calls the "interest view" states that our rights exist as protection of our interests, and that rights violations translate to a "setback" of our interests (92). The second view, called the "autonomy view", states that rights allow us to do as we choose, and that violations of our rights is an infringement of our autonomy (92). The author states that if we believe that permanently comatose individuals have rights, then one may have valid doubts about the autonomy view (93). Obviously, this is because these individuals have lost the ability to do as they choose which goes against the definition of the autonomy view.


Based on the rights view, a person is violating the rights of an animal if he or she is limiting the animal's ability to do as it pleases (93). However, Shafer-Landau argues that, since we are simply consuming the carcasses of these animals, we are removed from the process that is the actual violator of these rights (93). Even, he argues that there is not enough adequate causal connection to the idea that a person's purchase of meat today will cause the death of another animal on a factory farm tomorrow (93). In total, Shafer-Landau believes that, by granting animals these rights, philosophers may have established why one should not kill animals, but they have not yet proven why it would be wrong to consume meat.

Looking at this narrow scope in which I have written, I must say that I agree with Shafer-Landau here. I had always believed that the killing of animals and their consumption were two separate issues, and so I have always been dissatisfied by the arguments condemning the latter. The author makes a strong argument as to why the interest view does not hold up as a strong argument. It is true that a dead animal no longer has interests, and so eating its carcass no longer violates its rights. This handles the interest view. However, I found that Shafer-Landau all too easily glossed over the autonomy view of the overall rights argument. One could argue that these individuals no longer or not do not yet possess these rights (parents make pre-toddlers do what the parents want all the time), so where would Shafer-Landau's argument go then? Perhaps I am simply misunderstanding his argument here, but I wonder why he so easily dismissed the idea that someone would not readily agree that the pre-toddler and comatose person do not have rights as described in the autonomy view.