I’ve been watching a current affairs program about mistreatment of animals during live animal exports and in slaughterhouses, and something occurred to me - I feel nothing about this either way. Since I haven’t really formed an opinion of this yet, I’m interested in starting a discussion about it.
Why is animal cruelty an issue in regards to animals we kill for food? How are they different from the plants we eat? Animals are not people. Animals are just food. The whole purpose these animals are bred, raised and grown is for our dinner plates. So why do we care how they are treated? If it’s barbaric then why isn’t the mass-production and farming of these animals barbaric as well? We restrict their freedom by locking them into pens or paddocks and they’re doomed to a bloody and gruesome death from the day they are born. So why should we care if they live an uncomfortable life?
Like I said, I don’t care either way at this stage. I feel nothing. Considering the point of view of the interviewer in the TV program, it was pretty much moral indignation but without verbalising any justification behind the position, just a matter of “This is outrageous” and I don’t know why. So I figured I’d play the devil’s advocate so I put forth some ideas as to why it might be ok to treat them poorly to see what people would say.
For practical purposes, if you treat them really bad, you can affect their carcass quality (unhappy animals do not give the best meat).
Also, at least in the US, by law the animals have to be stunned prior to slaughter. This not only decreases their pain, but allows for easier bleeding (since meat products in the US must not have blood in them).
Okay, you see no reason that we should treat animals humanely, because, as you so incisively observed, "Animals are not people. Animals are just food."
Do you not feel that given an animal’s capacity to feel distress and pain we should, as moral beings, minimize the stress and pain that we inflict upon it? And do this just for its own sake?
Or is it that our humanhood places us above all such considerations, only other humans deserve such ethical treatment? But why extend such consideration to other humans – they are not you; their pain is not your pain, why should it matter?
Maybe it’s a contractual thing? You don’t inflict pain upon your fellow human beings and in return they agree to inflict none on you? But animals have no capacity to enter into such a “contract”, so fuck 'em, where’s the benefit to you?
My experience is most definitely that those people will cavalier attitudes towards inflicting pain or harsh treatment upon animals have a corresponding low threshhold for their behaviour towards the people around them. I think this is no coincidence, its hard to be selective with your empathy, you either have it, or you don’t.
mecaenas, your OP seems to presume that the “people” you refer to do have inherent rights - as The Great Unwashed says you really need to start from a position of the basis for those rights before you can explore whether those rights extend to animals and why.
I have a small flock of sheep that I keep to train my dogs (sheep/cow dogs) on. Occasionally, one ends up in my freezer by my own hand so I feel that I may be able to shed some light on the philosophy of raising livestock and what the animal “gets” out of decent treatment. These are domesticated animal, specifically modified by us to use. They would not exist in their current form otherwise. They do deserve humane treatment. Absolutely. What they do not want or understand is “freedom”. Freedom is a human concept- for a herd animal, their ultimate priority is safety and reproduction. They want meals on time and a lack of predators. We are the predator but because we are outside the natural order of things- our livestock can expect that they won’t suffer at death, be intentionally scared or panicked, etc. Instead, we do try to make the death as fast, painless and something the animal never knows what has happened to it. A friend of mine has just lost (this morning) 3 of her sheep to dog attacks. Those dogs were only acting out a normal predator role- the sheep suffered horribly, two weren’t even dead yet and had to be shot. We have a moral obligation to do better than the average predator- because animals do feel pain and fear and because we are capable of doing the morally right thing.
I think the agricultural industry- at least the sheep and bovine parts- are often making advances in the handling of animals during transport and slaughter. There are still some mentality out there , but I don’t feel its the main mentality, that these are just animals and they don’t feel anything. A good example of an advance is the work by Dr. Temple Grandin, who has developed a system of pens for slaughter houses that cut down on bovine stress and make the animals relaxed and calm. It may seem ironic that they are making it easier to kill animals, but all that counts in my book is that fewer animals are afraid and/or injured than in the outdated systems.
I don’t feel animals have rights- rights are something that a species can understand (generally- notwithstanding children and the mentally challenged) and assist in supporting its own system of rights. What I do feel is that we have an obligation to be good stewards of our animals, to allow them a comfortable and safe life and a humane death. They should be content- I do not feel that factory farming accomplishes this in most instances. I do eat more beef and lamb than any other meat- because I feel those two industries are the best at providing quality lives for those meat animals (I don’t eat veal). I try to get free range chicken when I can- I don’t like how chickens are raised but I’m not sure what can be done about it since we are such huge consumers of it. I don’t know if there is enough space out there to raise the amount of chickens we consume humanely but I think we need to try alot harder on that than we are doing now.
Lamb is the ultimate free range meat- its not so much a feedlot finisher like cattle (although feedlots in general are not that bad)- sheep do not do well in crowded or inside quarters, so most are raised in big pastures with lots of attention (sheep like to die if you don’t pay attention to them LOL). Its unfortunate that industry is the one struggling the most- lamb is very tasty and have usually led pretty happy lives up till their death. BTW, its not really “lamb” usually like you’d picture it- most lamb is young adults- over a year old- not the cute fuzzy things most people envision. The last wether I killed was about 18 months old and had good life and a quick death.
As I see it, at a very basic level, we choose to give fellow humans rights as a safety net because someday it might be us or someone about whom we care. Animals do not fall into this category for the majority of people. However, treating animals well up to the point of slaughter gives better meat (e.g. chickens don’t attack each other, beef tastes better). I enjoy a steak, so I will choose a steak from a source where the cattle have been well-treated in preference to one where they haven’t, because I will get a better steak.
I respect, but do not agree with, religions which believe in reincarnation in animal form. I note that, within such religions, animals appear to have scant involvement with or impact upon politics
Humanity appears to be the only sapient and sentient species upon this planet so it is up to us to manage the other species to humanity’s best benefit.
Smokinjbc I generally agree. Although I would disagree that what you are defining does not constitute a right - defining “rights” the way you have runs up against problems, the main ones of which you have already identitified.
qts, your arguments are logically coherent (although I disagree with them!). I’m not sure how it works in practice. Who defines “humanity’s best benefit”? And do we look at the long term or the short term? Cheap meat today or sustainable agriculture in the future, etc? The main problem with this approach (from my point of view, you may not see it as a problem) is that living beings that feel pain can still be made to suffer unduly if it is deemed in out interests for them to do so.
I think everyone is missing the point. You don’t need to extend any rights to the animal (actually The Great Unwashed was on to this).
As a human why would you want to cause unnecessary suffering if it can be avoided? What possible purpose can that serve except to label the people who di it as sadists?
I visited a slaughterhouse in Iowa in the late 80s and saw the whole process from beginning to end. As it turns out killing the cattle ‘humanely’ was efficient and simple. If there were economic benefit to killing them in a slower, more painful fashion you might have a discussion but that isn’t the case. The cattle were funneled into a chute where one would be held still and a guy with a pneumatic hammer would pop the animal in the head. My guide told me the hammer part (about the size of a half dollar) had an air nozzle in the center that would jet a blast of air into the animals head thus scrambling the brain. You need a brain to feel pain. No brain…no pain. The animal was dead in a fraction of a second and if it felt anything it was at most an instant and doubtful enough to really register as pain to the animal. After that the animal was hauled-up by the back legs and sent into the factory. Very fast and efficient.
What would be your alternatives? Slice the throat and bleed them to death? Slower, messier and painful to the animal. Unless you have some religious shtick about this being the only proper way to dispatch an animal I don’t see why you would want to do that.
Plants have never been shown to be able to feel pain or distress.
No, they’re not people. Yes, we raise them for food. So? How does this affect their “rights” in any way? Why do people have rights?
Because they can feel pain and distress.
It is.
You’re saying the equivalent of “We kill people, so why should we care if they die?”. We shouldn’t do the things you speak of.
If there is an absolute evil, it is physical and emotional pain. We have the ability to cause and prevent physical and emotional pain in animals. I think it follows that we should prevent pain. While I do not think it’s wrong to eat meat, it is wrong to torture living things.
I don’t really see the point in defending myself against the personal attacks from those who’ve already chosen to be offended by my post and pass judgement on me as a human being all in the space of a few lines - so I’ll stick to the basics of the discussion.
It didn’t take long for you to be proven right London_Calling, just look at all those emotionally-charged posts. However I do see the practical side in terms of the points raised by KarlGrenze, Smokinjbc and qts.
In terms of human rights versus animal rights, I suppose the purpose for these concepts mean different things to different people so it’s nearly impossible to define in a meaningful way that will make sense to everyone.
This is not an empirical argument by any definition.
However, I raise chickens and beef for food.
Let’s put aside the fact that animals raised humanely on pasture in good condition are much more nutritious for you, the human.
There’s something very real and very immediate when you kill another living creature and it’s not something that I can take at all lightly.
I helped slaughter and process 15 chickens yesterday.
While I didn’t hold a funeral service for the birds, I did bow my head and acknowledge that living creatures were dying to provide me with protein.
I think that we’ve become far too divorced from the realities of what it takes to raise and process our meat and that’s one of the major reasons why we even raise the question of why our farm animals should be raised and killed humanely.
Perhaps you missed my earlier post. You do not need to bring animal rights into to this to come to an answer. I personally believe animals do possess certain rights but humans can have cause to treat them humanely without resorting to that.
I detailed above how cattle are slaughtered (or at least were slaughtered in one slaughterhouse 15 years ago…I suppose it could be different elsewhere or changed in the intervening time but I have no reason to suspect it would be different). In this case the slaughterhouse was operating very efficiently. Perhaps you could make a case for killing animals in a more painful fashion if that somehow increased the efficiency of the slaughterhouse. Presumably that would lower the costs of the food and more people could afford to buy it. I’m not saying that would necessarily make it ok but you’d have a position to start a debate.
However, the slaughterhouse killed the cattle in a humane fashion. It is hard to conceive of ways in which the steer could be killed more quickly and less painfully. It is doubtful the steer felt anything at all and if it did it was for a fraction of a second…literally. This method of dispacthing the cattle is also extremely efficient for the slaughterhouse thus keeping the end cost of the meat to a minimum. A method of killing the animal that caused it pain would perforce increase the time it takes the animal to die and lower the efficiency of the plant thus raising the cost of the meat. So, you have higher food prices thus impacting the poor? Exactly where is the benefit of any of this to anyone? Even if you don’t give a crap about the animal you are still negatively impacting humans.
Also, without reverting to animal rights, I think it says something about humanity in how they treat any living creature. To cause pain to something for no other reason than to cause the pain is sadism. If you are a hunter hunting for your food and wound an animal you have caused it pain. This is for the goal of feeding yourself and your family. Lions and tigers cause pain to the animals they hunt for food. However, the hunter and the lion both don’t set out to cause pain. Both the hunter and the lion hope for the quickest kill possible. If the hunter gets a head shot then so much the better. Now compare the hunter hunting for food and a person who just shoots an animal to wound it for fun with no intention of killing it. I don’t know about you but I know which person I would NOT want around me or my family.