What the Zouma brothers did was clearly and unequivocally morally and legally wrong. But their prosecution raises a simple and direct question: how are they any different from the rest of us? Why aren’t we all being sentenced to community service along with the Zoumas? Every year, we kill about 80 billion land animals for food.
And meanwhile, Benedict Cumberbatch will probably get an Oscar
for his role in The Power of the Dog. In that film, he
repeatedly hits a horse in the face. What’s the difference between
hitting a horse and hitting a cat? There is none.
West Ham footballer Kurt Zouma pled guilty to violating the Animal
Welfare Act by kicking and slapping his cat and causing the cat
“unnecessary suffering.” His brother, Yoan Zouma, who plays for
Dagenham and Redbridge, filmed the incident and was accused of
abetting, counselling or procuring Kurt to violate the law. Kurt was
sentenced to do 180 hours of community service and prohibited from
keeping any cats for five years. Yoan was sentenced to 140 hours of
community service and also prohibited from keeping cats for five
years. Court costs of £9,000 were also assessed. This is all in
addition to the £250,000 fine imposed on Kurt by West Ham.
The Animal Welfare Act prohibits the infliction of “unnecessary
suffering.” This clearly includes at least suffering imposed for
reasons of pleasure, amusement, or convenience. The Zoumas violated
the law because there was no justification for kicking and slapping
the cat. They imposed gratuitous harm on the cat.
What the Zouma brothers did was clearly and unequivocally morally
and legally wrong. But their prosecution raises a simple and direct
question: how are they any different from the rest of us? Why aren’t
we all being sentenced to community service along with the Zoumas?
Every year, we kill about 80 billion land animals for food. About
one billion animals are killed in the United Kingdom. The number of
fish slaughtered annually is estimated to be between one and almost
three trillion. That is a great deal of suffering and death.
What is our justification for this?
There certainly may be times when there is no choice and we must
kill animals in order to survive. But that circumstance accounts for
a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the staggering number of
animals we slaughter every year. For the most part, we eat animals
because we think they taste good and animal foods are conveniently
available. We derive pleasure from consuming animals; there is no
necessity. The NHS — and just about every other governmental or
professional body in other countries, such as the American Dietetic
Association in the U.S. — maintains that we can live a healthy life
without consuming animal products. Indeed, an increasing number of
mainstream health care professionals are telling us that eating
animal products is detrimental to human health. In any event, eating
animal products is certainly not necessary for human health.
Moreover, animal agriculture is a leading cause of global warming.
Researchers at Oxford have argued that avoiding meat and dairy is
the single most effective step we can take to reduce our impact on
the earth.
In short, we impose suffering and death on animals because we find
it pleasurable to consume the products that we get from them. Animal
foods are convenient. The suffering and death we impose on animals
we use for food is all gratuitous — just as was the suffering that
the Zoumas imposed on the cat. I submit that there is no morally
relevant difference between the Zoumas, who have been adjudicated as
criminals for engaging in an act that we all regard as morally
odious, and the rest of us. Indeed, those of us who consume animals
may be worse in that we are responsible for their deaths as well as
for their suffering. The Zoumas did not kill the cat.
We are all Kurt Zouma and Yoan Zouma.
The response that our use of animals for food is different from
kicking the cat because there are animal welfare laws that regulate
the former and prohibit “unnecessary” suffering fails for several
reasons. First, animals are chattel property. It costs money to
protect their interests and, for the most part, we spend that money
only when we get an economic benefit from doing so. The result is
that animal welfare standards have historically been and continue to
be very low. The concepts of “humane” treatment and slaughter are
fantasies. The most “humanely” treated animals suffer a great deal.
But there is another sense in which this response misses the point.
No one is arguing that the problem with what the Zoumas did was that
they failed to take care to act in a more “humane” fashion. Because
what they did involved no necessity or compulsion, all of the
suffering they imposed on the cat was morally and legally wrong.
Sure, it would have been “better” if Kurt Zouma had more gently
kicked and slapped the cat. But his acts, even if more “humane,”
still would have been wrong.
Similarly, it is “better” that we impose less suffering on animals
used for food than more suffering. But if there is no necessity to
eat animals, then all of that suffering is unnecessary — and wrong.
Another response is that Kurt Zouma performed the cruel acts
himself. Most of us just buy “food” at the store. I would submit
that there is no morally relevant distinction between buying an
animal corpse at the store and killing the animal yourself, just as
there is no difference between unjustifiably killing someone
yourself and paying someone to kill the victim. The law treats both
situations as involving murder. And, at the very least, we are
analogous to Yoan Zouma in that we have abetted, counselled, or
procured the killing.
In 2007, an American football player named Michael Vick was
prosecuted for offences in connection with operating a dog fighting
ring in Virginia. The outcry against what he did was deep and long
lasting. He continues to be excoriated. In 2010, a bank worker from
Coventry, Mary Bale, was prosecuted for tossing a cat into a wheelie
bin where the cat remained for several hours. She, too, was vilified
and accused of being “worse than Hitler” and deserving of the death
penalty (which does not exist in the U.K. as a penalty for the
murder of humans). There have been many other similar cases as well.
These cases illustrate that, at least where dogs and cats are
concerned, we understand — and feel strongly — that the prohibition
against imposing unnecessary suffering means what is says. But there
is no morally or legally coherent distinction between the animals we
love and those into whom we stick a fork.
Ironically, the RSPCA prosecuted Bale and the Zoumas. The RSPCA
promotes the consumption of animal foods through its RSPCA Assured.
So the RSPCA promotes the imposition of animal suffering for no good
reason but prosecutes people who impose suffering for no good
reason.
I have been asking for some years now why those of us who continue
to consume animals for the transparently frivolous reason of palate
pleasure are any different from those who exploit animals for other
reasons of pleasure.
I have never gotten a coherent response.
If Kurt and Yoan Zouma are guilty, so are those of us who continue
to use and kill animals for transparently frivolous purposes. And
that’s almost all of us. Maybe we need to take a step back and ask
ourselves whether we are all obligated at the very least not to
inflict any unnecessary suffering on animals — even when we like the
taste. Maybe we need to acknowledge a very inconvenient truth; if
animals matter morally, veganism is a moral imperative.
And meanwhile, Benedict Cumberbatch will probably get an Oscar for
his role in The Power of the Dog. In that film, he repeatedly hits a
horse in the face. What’s the difference between hitting a horse and
hitting a cat? There is none.
I repeat: what Zouma did was wrong but he is no different from any
nonvegan, or from Benedict Cumberbatch.