False Hope: Vegetarianism and Animal Cruelty
Animal rights is a very controversial topic especially pertaining to factory farms. Animals at such facilities are often subjected to harsh treatment during their lives so that they can be slaughtered and sold for human consumption. In effect, someone must be held responsible for how these animals are treated. Russ Shafer-Landau explores the various arguments pertaining to animal cruelty in his article "Vegetarianism, Causation, and Ethical Theory". He critiques two versions of the consequentialists' arguments towards meat eating which he dubbed the "...Inefficacy Argument..." (Shafer-Landau, 1994).
The inefficacy argument contributes some of the responsibility to each consumer that has purchased meat. Proponents argue that each individual's meat purchase contributes harm, no matter how small, towards these animals. They assume that if "...consumer demand [were] to vanish, so too would most animal cruelty on farms" (Shafer-Landau, 1994). This is a very strong assumption that does not seem to hold much support. I don't believe that refraining from meat eating would significantly reduce animal cruelty. Even if I stopped eating meat, that would not even be noticed by the meat production industry. Even if a million people stopped eating meat, the amount of animal cruelty would not cease in the long-run. It could be reduced significantly in the short-term, but meat producers could make other products with these same factory farmed animals.
What many proponents of this argument miss is what meat producers use animals for. There is a significant amount of animals being bred and slaughtered for people to eat, but that's not the only way these producers make a profit. There is a substantial amount of products that are formulated from animal parts that people use everyday. Even if we all stopped eating meat, these producers could use more animals to make products such as rubber, bio-fuels, plastics, shampoos, body wash, and toothpaste just to name a few. Regardless if I decide to eat only vegetables for the rest of my life, I use so many other products that these factory farm animals have been slaughtered to help produce for my enjoyment. In the end adopting a vegetarian lifestyle would not resolve the mistreatment of factory farmed animals.
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ReplyDeleteMy view actually differs from Leslie's in this case. Suppose million people stop eating meat, it would result in a drastic reduction in the meat production, thus farmed animals raised. Despite the fact that animals will still be used for other purposes, the reduction in farm animals used for food alone would still be very significant. Moreover, it's not that if animals are not slaughtered for their meat, they will instead be killed to produce other products. This is due to the supply and demand theory, which suggests that if there's no increase in the demand for rubbers, shampoos and so on, the supply of these products will remain the same. Overall, a significant amount of animals suffering would be reduced from millions people saying no to meat.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I agree with Leslie on the point that giving up on meat alone would not eradicate completely farmed animals' sufferings. It would be morally inconsistent for one to only refrain from eating meat, but insist on the consumption of other farmed animals products.