Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part II

This post is continued from "Stephen Law v. Peter Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part I" (2008, December 10), below.

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In her reply to her father's idea that there are relevant differences between human and non-human animals that justify humans killing and eating other animals, Gemma suggests, but then fails to follow up, the argument that Peter Singer makes. Certainly, Gemma, and Law with his long quote from Peter Singer (2003, p. 130), do make us think about what the implications of her father's suggestion must be, but they do not in fact show that eating meat is immoral. Law skips over this as though he had fully addressed this opposing argument and shown that it was weak, but he has not. Singer, who is more honest, and courageous, follows where reason leads. In Animal Liberation and his other writings, Singer presents powerful arguments that what an animal, such as a human being, a monkey or a chicken is capable of doing, thinking and feeling are the factors that must be considered to decide what are right and wrong ways of treating that animal; to do otherwise is to be guilty of speciesism, which I think Law presents fairly clearly and shows to be morally wrong.

For living things without any nervous system, such as all plants and some very simple animals, there is no reason to think that they can think or have any feeling, so there can be no moral problem in using them for our purposes. They cannot have any purposes, desires, intentions or any other preferences of their own, so we can not do them any moral wrong by chopping them up for dinner. However, as we come across increasingly more complex animals, that changes. The principle that Singer suggests we use is that we may not cause pain to an animal except for a compelling reason, a reason so strong that not causing the pain would be more immoral than causing it, just as a doctor who refused to give an injection because he didn't want to hurt the patient would be acting wrongly if his refusal put the patient in danger. Singer also points out that pain can be of various kinds: physical, mental and psychological. In the case of less complex animals, the only pain is likely to be physical, although this is a matter for zoologists to tell us by doing the necessary research. Prawns and fish, for example, probably do not have very strong emotions and are therefore unlikely to feel emotional pain, although they probably feel some physical pain: fish certainly react to being caught on hooks as though they are in pain. Chickens have more sophisticated nervous systems, and not only feel physical pain, but also seem to suffer depression, anxiety and other emotional pains when put under stress. More complex still are the nervous systems of the mammals we like to eat: cows, pigs, dogs and other mammals all suffer physical pain as much as we do and for the same reasons; they also clearly display emotions, and can suffer the pain of loss, separation, stress and other psychological pains. I assume that no one is so barbaric as to eat apes these days, but they are so very similar to humans that abusing them for no very good reason would be almost as bad, as morally wrong, as abusing humans. For SInger, it is causing needless pain or suffering that makes eating meat wrong, and the more complex an animal's nervous system, the greater the possibility of such pain and suffering being caused in turning it into our lunches and dinners.

If we take a closer look at chickens, or turkeys, we can see the serious mistake that Law makes even before he introduces the concept of speciesism. Immediately after his introduction, where Law clearly states the very strong thesis he is going to support, Gemma complains about the "miserable life that poor [turkey] led" (Law, 2003, p. 125), to which her mother replies that in fact "it never suffered at all, in life or in death" (p. 125). Law then ends this discussion, and moves on to start supporting his much stronger thesis that eating meat is morally wrong even if no pain is involved, but he has not actually answered Gemma's mother's opposing argument, and the same ideas about quality of life and capacity for enjoying life come up again in the discussion of Peter Singer's ideas and in the section "The Mentally Impaired" (p. 129 - 130). In his work, Singer makes what I think is a strong case for his idea that what matters in determining how we are morally obliged to treat non-human animals is their capacity to feel, think, wish, suffer and have goals. I think that's a reasonable enough proposition that I'm not going to present Singer's arguments any more than I explained them in the previous paragraph. But if you think Singer is wrong about this, please feel welcome to argue - you might think it sounds OK now, but then change your mind when you get to the end of this explanation of why I think Law is wrong. Oddly, Law also says something like this on page 125: "The issue is that it was a living thing capable of enjoying life." And as Gemma's father then tells her, a turkey isn't really capable of very much enjoyment, so if we apply Law's own criteria here, which is consistent with Singer's more explicitly developed ideas, it does appear that it was morally acceptable to kill the turkey that had led a life free of suffering before being painlessly killed, and if the killing was morally right, then it is also morally right for Gemma to eat its dead body.

What has been shown so far? All that I've supported is that it can be morally acceptable to eat meat under certain conditions: that the animal not be caused needless pain in its life or in turning it into dinner. This general principle then needs to be applied to particular cases. Gemma's mother sounds right in saying that a turkey that was raised comfortably on a farm and killed painlessly may be morally eaten. However, most chickens that are eaten are not raised in that way: they are raised in cramped, dark sheds, with little or no fresh air, no exercise and no treatment of any medical problems. That is, they life miserable lives so that they can be killed to needlessly satisfy human tastes for chicken. This would seem to be morally wrong, so we should not eat chicken from mass producers such as the CP Group as doing so causes animals to suffer needlessly. KFC is probably also morally wrong. It is, however, perfectly moral to eat chickens that have been raised under decent conditions and killed painlessly. For people in some European countries, strict laws now make it possible to be assured that the chicken they eat was not produced by causing pain or suffering. Similar analyses can be made for other animals that we like to eat, but as the animal's nervous system and emotional life and goals more nearly approach the human, it becomes more difficult to justify eating them. For an animal as intelligent and emotionally aware as a dog, it could only be acceptable to kill and eat it to actually avoid starving to death, so people who eat dogs today are almost always acting immorally.

to be continued ...

Still to come in part III: the consequences that I think those who have agreed with me so far might not like. Can you guess what they are yet?

I didn't realise this would be quite so long when I started. I'm trying to keep it as short as possible, but there also needs to be enough support for my ideas.

Continued at "Law v. Singer: The Morality of Meat, Part III" (2008, December 22), above.

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References

Law, S. (2003). Carving the roast beast. In The Xmas Files (pp.124 - 140). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. New York: ECCO.