Fundamentally... is it compassionate to exploit and slaughter an animal when we don’t have to?.... If slaughterhouses were truly humane, wouldn’t we also take our pets to them when they needed to be euthanised?.... In truth, the reason we view someone kicking a dog to be immoral is because we have come to see dogs as the sentient individuals that they are, yet we fall into the trap of viewing the animals we farm as abstractions.
[Article first published on Irish Times, January 20, 2022]
About the book:
This is Vegan Propagand (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You)
If you were walking down the road and you came across someone
attempting to kill a dog, what would you do? Perhaps you would try
to save the dog, either by intervening yourself or calling the
gardaí. Now let’s say that instead of a dog, someone is attempting
to kill a pig. Do you also try and save the pig?
Now let’s say that the pig is still being killed but instead of it
happening in front of us, it is happening behind a wall in a
slaughterhouse. Has the morality of that action now changed? Is
unnecessarily killing a pig always wrong or only wrong when it is
happening in front of us?
To most of us, the act of harming an animal is morally reprehensible
and we think that those who cause undue suffering to animals must be
terrible people. Yet we have a huge blindspot. Meat, dairy and eggs.
However, as I discuss in my book This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other
Lies the Meat Industry Tells You), this blindspot is not necessarily
through any fault of our own. Time and time again we are told that
we needn’t worry about what happens to animals, that they are raised
with care and compassion and then when they are slaughtered it’s
done humanely. But what does this actually mean?
The concept of humane slaughter is used to make us believe that we
needn’t be concerned about the slaughtering of the animals we
consume. After all, it is because we care about animals that we have
to be convinced that what happens to them is humane. However,
synonyms for the word humane include compassionate, benevolent and
kind. In other words, by referring to slaughter as being humane, we
are also saying that it is compassionate.
If slaughterhouses were truly humane, wouldn’t we also take our pets
to them when they needed to be euthanised?
But is it benevolent to force pigs into gas chambers and suffocate
them with a highly aversive mixture of carbon dioxide that causes
them to enter a state of panic as they hyperventilate? Is it kind to
force baby lambs on to the kill floor of the slaughterhouse with the
intention of cutting their throat?
Fundamentally, is it compassionate to exploit and slaughter an
animal when we don’t have to?
If slaughterhouses were truly humane, wouldn’t we also take our pets
to them when they needed to be euthanised? After all, we’ve been
told that animals don’t suffer or feel pain in slaughterhouses and
that the process doesn’t cause them stress, anxiety or discomfort.
So surely slaughterhouses are the ideal places for our non-human
family members to be euthanised.
Yet imagine the horror we would feel if we were told that our
beloved companion animal was going to be put into gas chamber or
hung up by their back leg and bled out.
We all claim that we are against animal cruelty but in practice do
we actually live in a way that is aligned with this claim? To be
cruel to someone means to cause them either physical or mental harm,
meaning that animal farming couldn’t be a more a concrete example of
animal cruelty.
Animals in farms suffer physical harm from practices such as being
mutilated and being selectively bred to grow so fast their organs
fail. They also endure emotional harm as well. Their babies are
taken from them, they are locked in farrowing crates, they are
denied the ability to express their natural behaviours, they have
their autonomy denied to them and are dominated by industries that
force them to comply with their profiteering desires.
So why are we only against some forms of animal cruelty and not
others? Why is kicking a dog animal cruelty but cutting a cow’s
throat not? Why is punching a horse at the Olympics an example of
animal cruelty that deserves global condemnation but what takes
place in a slaughterhouse isn’t?
It’s not because slaughtering animals is good for the environment.
In fact animal agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of the
climate crisis
It’s not because we have to slaughter animals to survive. Far from
it. While the animal farming industries are keen to make the claim
that meat, dairy and eggs contain essential nutrients, those
nutrients can also be found elsewhere and we also know that the
consumption of animal products causes many of our most prevalent
chronic diseases. So instead of slaughtering animals being a
prerequisite for our survival, the opposite is true.
It’s not because slaughtering animals is good for the environment.
In fact animal agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of the
climate crisis with the UN calling it one of the “most significant
contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every
scale from local to global.”
Even looking specifically at Ireland, over 37 per cent of greenhouse
gas emissions in Ireland come from the agriculture sector, with
around 60 per cent of those coming from the methane produced by the
digestive process of ruminant animals alone. These figures don’t
event take into account the emissions produced abroad for animal
feed, with Ireland importing about two-thirds of the animal feed it
uses, which includes soya from South America.
A recent report from researchers at Trinity College Dublin and the
University of Limerick even found that replacing meatballs produced
from Irish beef with a plant-based alternative reduces the emissions
produced by as much as 90 per cent. Of the 16 criteria analysed,
Irish meatballs were even found to perform worse than meatballs made
by beef produced in Brazil in 14 of the criteria.
So how do we reconcile our paradoxical attitude towards animals?
Undeniably we have done it for a long time, but does the longevity
of an action make it moral? Undeniably we enjoy how animal products
taste, but is sensory pleasure a moral justifier for causing harm to
others, especially considering we can cook delicious plant-based
foods instead?
In truth, the reason we view someone kicking a dog to be immoral is
because we have come to see dogs as the sentient individuals that
they are, yet we fall into the trap of viewing the animals we farm
as abstractions. Whilst it’s easy to empathise with the plight of a
singular horse who we see being punched on TV, it’s harder to
empathise with the mass numbers of animals who are being exploited
out of sight and out of mind.
But cruelty is still cruelty, harm is still harm and an injustice is
still injustice irrespective of whether it is happening in front of
us or not, and that fact isn’t changed by us disingenuously using
words like humane to describe it.