Issues about animal rights We don't eat children. So why should we eat other animals?

Background

Animal farming causes a lot of pain and suffering

• videos from PETA (See esp. "KFC Supplier" & "Horror at AgriProcessors")
• Some further information
• Peter Singer Do animals feel pain?

Suffering requires justification

• Generally we think it is wrong to cause pain and suffering for no reason, unless some good justification can ben given (e.g. self-defense, rational agreement, etc.)

Typical justifications (that don't work)

1. Many people do it.
2. We need meat to survive.
3. It is part of our culture.
4. Animals are stupid.
5. Animals owe their lives to us.
6. They kill each other anyway.
7. They don't care about us, so we don't need to care about them.
8. Survival of the fittest.

Against eating meat

An argument based on fairness and equality

1. Unequal treatment is wrong without good justification. (=discrimination)
2. To treat X differently from Y, we appeal to some significant differences between X and Y.
3. No such significant differences betweeb human beings and animals, as far as using them for food is concerned.

Possible differences

Differences can be mental or physical

• Physical appearance - not relevant
• Genetic - not relevant
• Intelligence - what about babies
• Potential - what about the mentally handicapped
• Morality - ditto

Defending animal farming

Intrinsic and relational differences

1. Against premise #3 above.
2. No relevant intrinsic differences between babies and animals.
3. But there are relevant relational differences.

Intrinsic differences are due to internal differences. Relational differences are due to how the two things are related to things external to them. If there are two identical paintings with different prices, then there is no intrinsic difference, and their difference in price is a relational difference.

A relational argument - rights by extension

Focusing on the right not to be farmed as food.

1. (Value assumption) Only creatures with sophisticated mental abilities (self-awareness, emotions, high-order reasoning) have rights.
2. (Consequence of #1) Animals, babies and some severely mentally handicapped people do not have rights.
3. (Value assumption) We ought to respect rights and encourage people to respect rights.
4. (Empirical claim) Normal human beings cannot develop respect for rights if they treat babies and the mentally handicapped as lacking rights. But they can still respect rights if they do not treat animals as having rights.
5. (Empirical claim) There would also be lots of disputes about the level of intelligence required for having rights.
6. It is better to pretend that all human beings have rights regardless of their mental condition.

Comments

1. In other words, we give rights to babies and the mentally handicapped for instrumental reasons. Many people will be uncomfortable with the view that it is not wrong to kill a handicapped baby in itself.
2. Even if animals do not have rights, perhaps their lives still have some value, and there are limits as to what we can do to them.
3. Are we not going to respect rights more if we do not eat animals?

A Utilitarian argument

1. Utilitarianism - the right thing to do is to maximize utility (the balance of happiness over suffering).
2. Tradeoff - exchange a shorter life for more happiness (for animals and human beings).
3. Current methods of animal farming are problematic.
4. See "Why I Am Only a Demi-Vegetarian" by R. M. Hare, Chapter 11 of Jamieson, Dale (1999) Singer and His Critics Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass. Blackwell Publishers. [available from Netlibrary on the HKU intranet]

Articles

• Peter Singer "All animals are equal"
• "The moral status of animals"
• Joe Lau "Animal rights" (chinese)

Further considerations

• Even if it is wrong to use animals for food, what impact does an individual consumer has?
• Small effect does not mean no effect.

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