Animal Liberation Later: Most consumers of meat know that animals matter, but they choose to act as if this isn’t the case
We look back on our predecessors treatment of animals with a mix of shame and anger. We can often forgive them with a few words that will inevitably be used to describe us someday: They didn’t know any better. But that isn’t always true. When future generations look back on our era, they will see how much we knew about the nightmare of factory farming. We don’t deserve leniency for the way we’re treating the other creatures with whom we share the planet, because we do know better. We just refuse to do better.
MATT JOHNSON: One of the strange pathologies of our time is our eagerness to condemn previous generations for failing to observe contemporary ethical norms… Beyond the fact that our predecessors didn’t know what we know, human beings are social animals who tend to adopt many of the dominant attitudes and behaviors of their time…
It’s useful to imagine what future generations might think about ideas and practices that are commonplace today. Perhaps they will be outraged that we aren’t more proactive about addressing climate change or the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Maybe they will be shocked by the extent of global income inequality. While we certainly won’t receive top marks on either of these issues—or countless others—our treatment of nonhuman animals will likely rank at the top of our successors’ list of past horrors.
Billions of factory-farmed animals are slaughtered every year, and they spend most of their lives in filthy confined spaces that severely inhibit (or entirely prevent) the satisfaction of their basic instincts and needs. Egg-producing chickens are kept in battery cages that don’t allow them to spread their wings. Female pigs are crammed into gestation crates that are approximately the same size as their bodies, which prevents them from being able to turn around. Dairy cows are held in tie stalls which tether them at the neck to restrict movement. Practices such as debeaking and tail-docking without anesthetic are common. Calves of dairy cows are taken from their mothers, which causes great emotional distress. Billions of male chicks are “culled” (killed with industrial-scale efficiency) because they aren’t economically viable…
In the preface to Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed (2023), Peter Singer reviews the progress that has been made since the first edition of Animal Liberation was published in 1975… While anti-cruelty organizations used to limit their focus to companion animals such as dogs and cats, there are now many nonprofits dedicated to improving the lives of farm animals—such as the Humane League and Mercy for Animals… Public outreach, grassroots organizing, research and advocacy training, and corporate pressure campaigns are often effective at changing laws and company policies to take animal welfare into account.
Despite all these positive changes, there’s clearly more human-caused animal suffering in the world today than there was 50 years ago. When Animal Liberation was published in 1975, around 15 billion animals were slaughtered for meat annually—a figure that’s closer to 77 billion today. Beyond population growth and the fact that meat consumption tends to rise as societies get richer (an example of one form of progress canceling out another), the rapidly rising demand for poultry has driven an explosion in the absolute number of factory-farmed animals…
The animal-rights movement has secured major victories since 1975, and there are many encouraging trends, from the increasing availability of meatless products to the growing political influence of animal activists. But the shift in attitudes and laws hasn’t kept pace with greater demand for animal products and the increased productive capacity of factory farms…
In his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker observes that previous generations thought it was fun to torture animals. “In 16th-century Paris,” he writes, “a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire.” Barbaric as this practice was, it doesn’t even come close to the cruelty we inflict on animals today—both in scale and degree, as farm animals with entire lives of relentless suffering are even worse off than cats who suffered for a minute or two before death. While there’s a stark psychological difference between buying some pork at the supermarket and shrieking with laughter as a cat is burned to death in front of you, the fact of animal suffering is the same in both cases. And no matter how many cats were burned in Paris, their numbers were a tiny fraction of the 1.4 billion pigs slaughtered for meat each year…
There are two major psychological distinctions between cat-burning and the consumption of factory-farmed products. First, at least there’s an ostensible point to the latter (while the former was an indulgence of cruelty for its own sake). Second, there’s a difference in proximity,… the idea that we are less morally responsible for reducing suffering if it isn’t happening in front of us…
This logic also applies to the other forms of suffering we ignore at a distance, especially if we actively contribute to that suffering. The average American consumes roughly 280 pounds of meat, almost 500 pounds of dairy products (excluding butter), and 35 pounds of eggs each year. The vast majority of the animal products we consume are produced on factory farms, which means we’re willing to countenance a staggering amount of suffering to get the products we want. This arguably makes our complicity in animal suffering even worse than our indifference about global poverty—we’re reaffirming that complicity every time we walk through a supermarket and vote with our dollars…
In March, an ASPCA/Ipsos survey found that 79 percent of American adults are “somewhat or very concerned about the negative impacts of industrial animal agriculture on animal welfare.” Eighty-nine percent are in favor of factory farms transitioning to “humane systems of agriculture,” while 82 percent would support government funding for these transitions. Eighty-six percent endorsed the addition of chickens and turkeys to the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Perhaps most remarkably, almost three-quarters said they would support a “ban on new industrial animal agriculture facilities”—a 20 percent increase since 2020. It’s difficult to reconcile these figures with the demand for factory-farmed animal products in the United States, as they reveal a general awareness that there are urgent problems with current methods of industrial food production. There’s a wide gulf between what Americans will say in a survey and what they’ll put on the dinner table… Even when consumers recognize that human-caused animal suffering is a grave ethical failure, they continue contributing to it…
In a recent article on his Substack, Richard Hanania captures the contradictory attitudes many Americans appear to have toward factory farming and its alternatives… He cites an essay by Matthew Adelstein which argues that factory farming is the “worst crime in history,” adding that he “can’t find much to argue against in his essay.” “Our species,” Hanania concludes, “has an ethical obligation to move beyond factory farming.”
Then Hanania explains why he continues to eat meat: “I’m not a vegan. Why? Well, I like the way animals taste, and I want to be in good physical condition.” He says “I want to be thin and have broad shoulders.” He explains that “Eating meat doesn’t feel as bad because most other people in the world also do it.”
Throughout his article, Hanania demonstrates that he’s well-acquainted with the evidence and arguments against factory farming. He acknowledges that vegans have “won the argument,” and that they’re “morally superior from a utilitarian perspective.” But his central claim is that his clear-eyed acceptance of this moral failure is preferable to rationalization…
Hanania thinks it’s “reasonable” to continue eating factory-farmed meat until the arrival of a cheap and tasty lab-grown alternative. He demands that readers “honestly confront what we do to animals,” but doesn’t allow his own confrontation of these “crimes” to affect his consumer habits. Like so many people around the world, Hanania is willing to put his concerns about animal welfare aside because he enjoys the taste of meat and believes it helps him stay fit. Meanwhile, the global production and consumption of animal products is accelerating, and the demand for ever-greater efficiency seems to be outstripping concerns about animal welfare…
In one sense, a recognition of the moral impermissibility of factory farming is a step toward a more humane world—if people don’t regard animal suffering as an issue in the first place, they won’t even begin to think about alleviating it. However, there’s another sense in which informed consumers are more culpable than those who are ignorant about what they eat, or who hold the antiquated view that animals don’t suffer in any meaningful way. Consumers like Hanania know that animals matter, but choose to act as if this isn’t the case. They have access to ample data about the cruelty and extent of factory farming, the ethical arguments in favor of animal welfare, scientific facts about animals’ subjective experiences, and all the other information they need to make responsible decisions about what they eat. Yet they continue to purchase factory-farmed products, which sends a message to the companies that run these operations: keep doing what you’re doing…
When future generations look back on our era, they will see how much we knew about the nightmare of factory farming… When we look back on our predecessors with a mix of shame and anger, we can often forgive them with a few words that will inevitably be used to describe us someday: They didn’t know any better. But that isn’t always true. We don’t deserve leniency for the way we’re treating the other creatures with whom we share the planet, because we do know better. We just refuse to do better. SOURCE…
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