Should We Eat Meat?

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Are you really going to argue that planet-wide veganism is inevitable? That's a dietary model that less than one percent of Americans choose to embrace, and the only reason that number isn't lower is because we have the luxury of choosing. The rest of the world is scrambling to add more animal protein to their diets. But in Gary Francione's view, perhaps the Third World isn't as "enlightened" as the morally superior PETA-types that walk among us.

Let's get serious. In my (admittedly anectodal) experience, people who embrace the theoretical view that humans aren't all that special change their minds the moment they have children. There's something instinctive about the experience of parenting that brings into focus the plain differences between people and animals. Holding your child for the first time, if you can't tell that there's something in your arms that immediately outpaces the highest potential of a dog, a cat, or even a gorilla, then we'll simply have to agree to disagree.

And that's fine. It take all kinds. But let's stop pretending that there's something morally blessed about drawing lines of equivalence between your daughter and your Shi Tzu (or your chicken, for that matter). Peter Singer has taken that line of argument as far as it can go, and look where it got him: He argues that the life of a "smart" dog should be saved before that of a retarded child. And he reasons (somehow) that parents should be able to kill their fully born children without legal consequences, if said babies have mental disabilities. That's a brand of moral superiority few people see as anything but offensive and crazy.

Bottom line: There are many, many instances in life where the interests of people and those of animals can't be reconciled. In those instances, people should come first. We will always eat animals. The rise of "flexitarians" in conventional wisdom should be enough to persuade anyone that strict meatless eating isn't palatable to any but the most philosophically extreme practitioners of dietary self-policing. If you're among them, good for you. But your right to an all-tofu smorgasbord ends where my pork BBQ begins. Welcome to America.

We should strive to treat animals according to the highest standards of welfare possible, but that's it. "Rights" belong to humans alone. Why? Because we're the only species capable of even approaching the argument rationally. Show me another species that can understand the basic framework of rights, and we'll talk about it.

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CCF has posted a response to my initial reply; however, CCF does not substantively address any of the points that I made.

First, CCF reacts to my statement that veganism is inevitable if only for reasons of environment and health by saying that developing nations seek more animal protein and not less. That is not responsive.

I do not doubt that because meat has become a symbol of status, developing nations demand more meat as social wealth increases. But so what? The facts--and they are facts--remain that animal protein involves a terribly inefficient use of resources both in terms of causing diseases that entail social costs, and in terms of the amounts of grain and water that are used to produce animal protein and the pollution of air and water that results from animal agriculture. These facts will eventually and inevitably force a massive shift in consumption away from animal protein irrespective of whether the moral paradigm also shifts. That countries like India and China are consuming more animal protein is not a reply to my argument.

Second, CCF claims that humans accept the "humans are special" argument once they have children. The fact that many ethical vegans have children indicates that this claim is without foundation.

Third, neither CCF nor the Reason Foundation has provided any substantive analysis in reply to my argument that there is nothing--except power--that supports our continuing to consume nonhuman animals. The positions taken by CCF and the Reason Foundation are no different from the arguments used to support human slavery, the oppression of women, discrimination against gays and lesbians, etc. Their position takes the following general form: It is acceptable to consume animals because humans are "special," which is proven by the fact that (most) humans have certain cognitive characteristics that are declared to be morally "special." That is not an argument. It is no different from saying, for instance, that it is acceptable for men to oppress women because men have  physical characteristics that men arbitrarily designate as morally "special." The argument that it is "natural" for humans to eat nonhumans is no different from the argument that heterosexism is justified because it is not "natural" to be gay/lesbian. For a species that proclaims itself as the pinnacle of rational thought, we surely engage in a great deal of irrational and confused thinking. 

It is remarkable that CCF would raise Peter Singer's views about infanticide or the view that a normal dog has greater moral value than a severely disabled human. I have explicitly rejected such views just as I have explicitly rejected the use of violence or anything other than reasoned, non-violent discourse to persuade others on this issue.

Fourth, CCF says that in situations of conflict humans must come first. Even if that statement is true where there are genuine conflicts, there is no conflict here and that is precisely the point that both CCF and the Reason Foundation miss. We do not need to eat meat or animal products. There is no necessity. We just like the taste and the sense of power that it gives us. The point is that we all--CCF and the Reason Foundation included--explicitly agree that we have moral obligation to animals not to inflict 'unnecessary' suffering on them. Neither proponent of animal exploitation, however, has sought to explain how their explicit acknowledgment that nonhuman animals are part of the moral community can be reconciled with the creation of a completely false conflict between humans and animals that arises only because we reject the "necessity" notion that we claim to embrace.

Of course, they cannot address that argument, which is precisely why they talk about stone soup or attempt to characterize this debate as being about "forcing" people to be vegan or raise Singer's admittedly problematic views about infanticide. But at least CCF seems to have agreed that it was not wise to defend the "OSU study" that laughably suggested that a plant-based agriculture would result in more animal deaths than a mixed animal-plant agriculture. We're making progress here.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University