Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics

Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137286277
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Is it acceptable to kill an animal that has been granted a pleasant life? This book rigorously explores the moral basis of the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry and sheds new light on utilitarian moral theory by pointing out the assumptions and implications of two different versions of utilitarianism, with surprising conclusions.

1

Introduction

1 The aim of this book

It is broadly accepted that animal husbandry is morally sound, provided that the animals are treated well. But can this position be morally justified? A common justification for animal-friendly animal husbandry is that the animals are granted pleasant lives, usually in connection with the claim that they would not exist at all if it were not for the purpose of our consumption. By consuming and farming animals, we are actually enabling their existence and granting them a pleasant life, which seems better than not existing at all. The objective of this book is an examination of this and other arguments in favour of animal-friendly animal husbandry. I claim that one cannot coherently accept these arguments without committing to other positions, which most of us would not be willing to accept.

Animal-friendly animal husbandry is conceived as a moral goal.¹ I am writing this book in the Netherlands, which is one of the most densely populated countries with about 16 million human inhabitants. In this small country, 12 million pigs are kept in animal husbandry. Even though these animals are invisible to the general public, due to their number and the way they are treated, these pigs, and farmed animals in general, undergo a lot of suffering. It is broadly acknowledged in the Netherlands and in other Western countries that this suffering matters morally. Animals are considered due objects of our moral concern. Their welfare matters to them, and therefore it is broadly accepted that we may not neglect it. This acknowledgment has resulted in a political and societal striving for animal-friendly animal husbandry.

Animal-friendly animal husbandry is a moral goal that strikes me as inherently inconsistent. On one hand, it is assumed that animals deserve our moral consideration and that causing them suffering should be avoided. On the other hand, routinely killing animals is considered perfectly acceptable. At least in Western countries, the consumption of animal products is not necessary for human health.² How can it be justified, then, that killing animals for mere pleasure is considered acceptable, given our concern with their welfare and their assumed moral status? How can it be explained that we are not allowed to kick farmed animals, while we are allowed to kill them? In this book, I will explore a possible justification for the moral ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry. I will explore whether a major theoretical account of what we morally ought to do, namely utilitarianism, can justify animal-friendly animal husbandry.

My motivation is not to justify the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry. I think that treating animals well is incompatible with killing them for food, at least where equally nutritious alternatives are available. I think that we should refrain from killing animals and consuming their products. However, most people currently disagree with me. While most agree that we should not unnecessarily harm animals, they also hold that it is admissible to kill them in order to consume their products. My aim is to challenge that majority position. Those who wish to defend animal-friendly animal husbandry should provide a moral justification for it. In this book, I point out the implications of the most promising justification that is currently on offer. I leave the judgement about its attractiveness to the reader.

I focus on utilitarian moral theory because on the face of it, it is more likely to provide a justification for animal-friendly animal husbandry than rival moral theories. After all, the most common rival theories in their standard interpretations do not recognize any duties towards animals at all. These theories would not provide a justification for animal-friendly animal husbandry. Other rival theories acknowledge moral duties towards animals and acknowledge, among other things, that animals have a right to life. These rival theories would not justify any form of animal husbandry, as I understand it here. So, those who accept the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry need to justify both that we have moral duties towards animals and that these are compatible with unnecessary routine killing of animals. Since other moral theories are less likely to do this job, and since common arguments that defenders of animal-friendly animal husbandry usually bring forward are actually utilitarian arguments, I will focus on utilitarianism as a possible justification of this ideal.

Historically, utilitarianism is the moral theory that has contributed most to the recognition of animal suffering as an evil.³ Utilitarianism, in its simplest form, states that the morally right action is the one that results in the greatest net balance of enjoyment over suffering. Thus, outcomes of possible actions have to be compared in terms of their overall effects on welfare. The welfare consequences that an outcome contains have to be brought together (aggregated) in order to determine the overall value of the outcome. Utilitarianism thereby takes into consideration the welfare consequences for all sentient beings, equally. Thus, utilitarianism strives for the maximization of welfare for all sentient beings.

Yet, how does utilitarianism judge the killing of animals? In particular, could utilitarian moral theory justify the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry? The mainstream view is that utilitarianism supports the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry. For instance, Peter Singer, the most famous animal ethicist and utilitarian, and one of the most influential philosophers in the world, makes it very clear that the standard form of intensive animal husbandry that causes animals a lot of suffering is morally indefensible. In contrast, Singer suggests that there might be nothing wrong with granting animals pleasant lives and then painlessly killing them.⁴ Typically, the utilitarian position is presented as opposing unnecessary suffering, while allowing the painless killing of animals, or at least keeping this latter issue somewhat vague.⁵

This utilitarian ‘welfarist’ position is commonly contrasted with the ‘abolitionist’ position of animal rightists.⁶ Those who strive for ‘empty cages’ rather than ‘bigger cages’ have accused utilitarianism of not taking animals seriously enough. In this book, I will show that this is an incomplete and therefore wrong picture of utilitarianism. Whether or not utilitarianism is compatible with the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry depends on which version of utilitarianism one accepts or refers to. While one version, Total Utilitarianism, is compatible with the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry and could be used to justify it, another version, Prior Existence Utilitarianism, is not. The aim of this book is to explore the various implications and assumptions of both Total Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism.

Singer’s Replaceability Argument plays a central role in the utilitarian evaluation of animal-friendly animal husbandry and therefore also in this book. The claim is that the welfare loss caused by killing an animal that could otherwise have had a pleasant future can be compensated by bringing into existence another animal that would not otherwise have existed and whose life contains at least as much welfare as the future of the killed animal would have contained. In all likelihood that argument has been the most controversial part of Singer’s whole theory and has provoked criticisms about it being overly impersonal. As Singer points out:

The replaceability argument was probably the most controversial, and widely criticized, argument in PE [Practical Ethics]. Unfortunately none of the critics have offered satisfactory alternative solutions to the underlying problems to which replaceability offers one, if not very congenial, answer.⁷

One of the versions of utilitarianism that I present in this book avoids the Replaceability Argument.

The Total View and the Prior Existence View are two fundamentally different utilitarian views regarding the question: Across whom should welfare be aggregated? These different versions of utilitarianism have different implications as to how personal or impersonal utilitarian moral theory is. A major strand of criticism that has been brought forward against utilitarianism is that utilitarianism is not really interested in benefits and harms for individuals, but in welfare as an abstract quantity. What many people consider really wrong with utilitarianism is that instead of valuing happiness because of what it does for sentient beings, it values sentient beings for what they do for happiness.⁸ I will present a comprehensive version of utilitarianism that is concerned with harms and benefits for sentient beings, rather than with welfare as an abstract quantity. Thus, by exploring the utilitarian stance on animal husbandry, I will also address two related fundamental issues within the moral theory: the question of across whom to aggregate and the criticism of being impersonal.

Furthermore, my exploration of the utilitarian stance on animal husbandry will lead to fundamental philosophical discussions beyond animal husbandry and beyond utilitarianism. Topics to be discussed in this book are the moral status of possible beings and the question whether causing a being to exist can harm or benefit that being. A further topic is the question of what to do if our choices determine who will exist or how many will exist. It will be explored what the harm of death consists in for humans and animals. Furthermore, the relevance of some competing notions of betterness will be investigated. Thus, discussing the ethics of killing and creating animals will lead us to topics that might seem arcane and far removed from the practical questions we are setting out to answer. What Singer points out in his introduction to Practical Ethics is exemplified by this book as well: ‘our judgments of what is right and wrong need to be informed by investigations into deep and difficult philosophical issues’.⁹

This book, then, examines the Replaceability Argument. This argument has been used to justify killing of animals. The focus is on the relevance of this argument for the practice of animal husbandry. It should be noted, though, that the argument is also relevant for other practices in which animals are killed and replaced. Relevant practices include:

•Meat production (An animal is killed and a new animal takes its place: that is the core of the business.)

•Milk and dairy production (A dairy cow is killed and a new one takes her place. Here the new calf already exists, as the dairy cow has to give birth each year in order to give milk. This calf would be killed if it were not used as a replacement of a killed dairy cow. So, its existence does not directly depend on the killing of another cow, but its continued life does.)

•Egg production (A laying hen is killed and a new one takes her place.)

•Aquaculture (Animal husbandry with fish.)

•Animal experimentation, and in particular the breeding and selling of animals for that purpose (Animals with particular characteristics, so-called ‘animal lines’ are produced, and sold animals are replaced by new ones)

•Sport fishing, where bred fish is released in the waters where the fishing takes place in order to keep the fish population on a certain level

•Sport hunting of animals bred for this purpose (Animal populations are often maintained by providing them with food, and sometimes tame animals are released for the hunt.)

These are all practices in which non-human animals are killed and replaced. In these practices, the killed animals are not replaced for moral reasons. Rather, the animals are replaced for practical reasons: their replacement is necessary in order to carry on with the practice. According to the Replaceability Argument, the fact that killed animals are replaced (for whatever reason) is relevant for the moral evaluation of the killing. The Replaceability Argument has implications for human beings as well, which I will indicate in my exploration of the argument.

In order to introduce the question whether utilitarianism is compatible with the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry, let me first explain what I mean by the ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry and why my focus will be on utilitarianism. Furthermore, I will introduce the question whether we do have any moral obligations towards animals and relate it to utilitarianism and the justification of animal-friendly animal husbandry. This will be followed by the outline of this book.

2 The ideal of animal-friendly animal husbandry

In the last decades, there has been a growing public concern about the welfare of animals in animal husbandry. After World War II, agricultural policy in the Western World was directed towards safeguarding food supply. The focus on sufficient, safe food supply and economic efficiency resulted in an industrialisation of the production process, including animal production. Since then, the aim of safeguarding food supply in Western countries has been reached. In particular, since the late 1970s ethical concerns regarding our treatment of animals have been voiced. Those ethical concerns have influenced policy making about animal use in general, and animal production in particular. For instance, concerns about animal welfare have been translated into animal welfare laws and regulation.¹⁰

Many people, however, are still unsatisfied with the treatment of animals in common production systems. Recent food scares such as swine influenza, foot and mouth disease and avian flu – with the accompanying pictures in the media – have again contributed to ethical criticism of intensive animal farming. Moreover, intensive animal husbandry is broadly criticised because of its negative effects on animal welfare. For instance, in the Netherlands there has been a citizen’s initiative, titled ‘Stop wrong meat’, which asked for – and indeed resulted in – a parliamentary reconsideration of intensive animal husbandry.¹¹ The Party for the Animals, which has entered Dutch Parliament, speaks out against intensive animal husbandry. In radio spots, prominent party-members told the public something along the lines of: ‘It is up to you whether or not you eat meat, but please be aware of how it is produced and choose the animal-friendlier meat.’ Other organizations on behalf of animals air a similar message. For instance, the yearly flyer of Varkens in Nood (Pigs in Peril) starts with: ‘Don’t eat meat from factory farms at Christmas.’ Many people consider intensive animal husbandry morally unacceptable. The actual striving of politicians, societal organizations, citizens and consumers for a more animal-friendly agricultural sector must be understood in this context.

European governments promote ‘animal-friendly husbandry systems’ and citizens acknowledge the moral superiority of more animal-friendly products.¹² For instance, the Dutch government strived for 5 per cent of all animal sheds being ‘entirely sustainable and animal-friendly’ in 2011.¹³ A growing number of producers and consumers (though still less than 5%) choose organic animal products.¹⁴ More than 95 per cent of meat consumed in the Netherlands is from intensive production systems, but this fact does not represent a lack of support for animal-friendly animal husbandry. Rather...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Utilitarianism and Animal Husbandry
• 3 Animals and the Harm of Death
• 4 The Replaceability Argument
• 5 Total View versus Prior Existence View
• 6 Can Existence Be Better for a Being Than Non-Existence?
• 7 Person-Affecting Restriction and Non-Identity Problem
• 8 Repugnant Conclusion and Expected Misery Argument
• 9 Veganism versus Animal-Friendly Animal husbandry
• 10 Conclusions
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index