Introduction
Those of us living in affluent consumer culture under late capitalism, where plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy are readily available, are morally obligated to adopt vegan practice. The source of this obligation is grounded in a widely held belief, namely, thatâall else being equalâunnecessary suffering and premature death are bad things and that acting with relatively minimal cost to oneself to contribute to a decrease in violence, objectification, domination, exploitation, and oppression is something we should all aspire to. 1 When I say that we 2 are obligated to adopt vegan practice, not just any type of âvegan practiceâ will do, so I want to argue for a specific type of veganism I call political veganism. I will do that toward the end of this chapter since I first want to establish that it is morally wrong for the vast majority of us living in high-income, highly industrialized, consumer culturesâsuch as the majority of us living in the Global Northâto consume animal 3 products.
To clarify, the argument is not an argument for some kind of universal veganism; that is, I will not argue that every human being on the planet is morally obligated to become vegan. Not because I donât believe itâI doâbut because (a) the question of whether an indigenous Inuit subsistence hunter must stop consuming all animal products is complicated and not my focus in this chapter, and (b) I prefer to focus my argument on those of us living in Western societies.
Instead, I offer what I call a âlocalized versionâ of the argument for veganism. That is, itâs an argument that applies only locally, not universally, the scope of which is directed, as I said, toward those of us living in consumer culture under late capitalism where plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy are readily available. Central to the argument is the claim that both factory farming and so-called âhumaneâ farming are morally problematic. However, describing the treatment of nonhuman animals used in food production and why these practices are unnecessary and immoral is not the focus of this chapter. Knockdown arguments for why both methods of animal farming are morally wrong are successfully made elsewhere. 4 Instead, I want to focus on a challenge generated by the central premise of the argument for veganism, a challenge that, prima facie, threatens to undermine the obligation to embrace veganism for those who believe that going vegan decreases the suffering and death of sentient beings (which, I imagine, is the reason why a majority of ethical vegans go vegan in the first place). In answering this objection, I discuss a number of solutions that I believe, jointly, meet the challenge. Finally, I explore various kinds of veganisms and advocate for political veganism. But for now, letâs first have a look at the localized argument for veganism.
An Argument for Ethical Veganism 5
- 1.It is wrong to cause suffering and/or premature death unless there is good enough reason. 6
- 2.The production of animal products causes animals suffering and/or premature death.
- 3.Consumption of animal products increases the production of animal products.
- 4.With minimal hardship (if any), a vast majority of those of us living in high-income, highly industrialized, consumer cultures (such as those of us living in the Global North) can flourish without consuming animal products.
- 5.A vast majority of those described in (4) consume animal products not because such products are physiologically or nutritionally necessary but for convenience or taste preference.
- 6.Convenience or the satisfaction of taste preference are not good enough reasons to justify the harm that the consumption of animal products causes to animals.
- 7.Therefore, it is morally wrong to consume animal products (1â6).
- 8.Therefore, a vast majority of those living in high-income, highly industrialized, consumer cultures ought to stop consuming animal products.
The argument is pretty straightforward and compelling (to me, at least), but the argument for veganism faces what some see as a serious factual and conceptual challenge to the central premise of the argument, namely (3), consumption of animal products increases the production of animal products. 7
A Puzzle About Ethical Veganism: The Causal Impotence Objection
To argue that the raising and commodification of other-than-human animals for consumption is morally bad is one thing; to argue that individual consumers ought not to purchase animal products is quite another. The reason being that thereâs a bit of a puzzleâlocated in (3) of the argumentâthat few vegans address.
Recall premise (3) of the argument: Consumption of animal products increases the production of animal products. The relation implicit in (3) is a causal relation. That is, the idea behind (3) is that my consuming (âconsumingâ in the sense of my acting as a market consumer) animal products creates demand for animal products, and thus, (indirectly) causes an increase in the production of animal products, and thus, an increase in animal suffering. The assumption behind ethical veganismâand most likely the central reason why a vast majority of vegans go vegan in the first placeâis that going vegan decreases animal suffering. By going vegan, according to the argument, you somehow contribute directly to decreasing suffering on both small ranches and factory farms.
I recently ate at the Southern California vegan fast-food chain Native Foods, where, after ordering at the counter, I was handed a placard with my order number on it. The placard read, âCrispy Battered Native Chicken Wings: One order saves three chickens!â What exactly does this mean? It canât mean that there are three chickens somewhere who are waiting to be slaughtered on a factory farm whose lives are spared when I order the Crispy Battered Native Chicken Wings.
Maybe what the placard means then is something like this: Three chickens wonât be born, wonât come into existence, and wonât suffer the horrible lives and deaths of factory-farmed chickens because I order the Crispy Battered Native Chicken Wings. But how exactly does that work? It canât mean that I thwart the plan of some egg producer, who is waiting for the thumbs-up to hatch another three chickens, by ordering this particular vegan dish. Besides, you cannot save a nonexistent being, so it canât mean that. I think the charitable read is something like this: When consumersâas a groupâorder Crispy Battered Native Chicken Wings instead of actual chicken wings, the demand for chicken decreases, causing the chicken market to produce fewer chickens. Translating this market decrease into number of chickens actually âsaved,â and dividing by the number of consumers who order the Crispy Battered Native Chicken Wings, you get the average number of chickens that each individual consumer saves when ordering the Crispy Battered Native Chicken Wings, which in this case is three. But is that really what is intended by the claim on the placard? And even if it is, is it all really that simple? The answer seems to be no.
Critics argue that this kind of linear causal story connecting individual consumer choice to changes in market supply gets the real-world facts all wrong. Markets like the chicken market are too massive to be sensitive to the purchasing behaviors of any single consumer. And since the overwhelming majority of individual consumers have nothing at all to do directly with agribusiness, or the raising or killing of âlivestock,â an individual consumerâs choice to refrain from the purchase or consumption of animal products makes no difference at all in decreasing the number of animals suffering and dying on factory farms. This is known as the causal impotence objection to ethical veganism.
One might object on the grounds that this kind of challenge is too abstract and that itâs obvious that purchasing meat causes animal suffering and death; hence, annoying âhypotheticalâ puzzles like this should be dismissed out of hand as so much philosophical sophistry. However, it would be too fast a dismissal.
First, itâs easy to imagine someone in the real world reasoning in the following way: Whether or not I order the chicken wonât change anything. Regardless of what I do, the ag industry will do what itâs going to do and the animal rights movement will do whatever itâs going to do, so what I do makes no difference. So I guess Iâll just order the chicken.
Second, itâs certainly true that, (a) collectively, consumers of animal products (e.g., meat eaters) cause harm to animals. 8 However, from the truth of (a), it does not follow that (b) a particular consumer of animal products causes harm to animals. An inference from (a) to (b) would be fallacious since itâs possible for (a) to be true while (b) is false. 9 But letâs look more closely at the claim made by the Native Foods placard. It would seem that such claims make a kind of simplistic assumption, namely, that supply is sensitive to demand. But imagine the following case. I decide to prepare chicken for dinner, so I head to my local supermarket and purchase a frozen chicken. As Robert Bass points out, this purchase has âno effect on the killing, packaging, freezing and shipping of that chicken a week or two earlierâŠthe decision weeks earlier to raise a certain number of broilers from eggs, or the decision months or years earlier to operate the chicken house where the chicken spent her life. Nothing I do brings it about that one chicken more or less is raised for food.â 10
At this point, you might think that my purchasing that one chicken reflects an increase in demand for chicken, and that an increase in demand will lead to a future increase in supply, and thus, one more chicken will be slaughtered as a result of my purchase. But you would be wrong for a few reasons. First, supermarkets order more chickens than they expect to sell since waste and spoilage are built into the ordering process. Second, supermarkets in particular, and agribusiness more generally, are so huge that the chicken market is insensitive to individual con...