Walking on Eggshells: Flimsy Defenses for Meat Eating

The human race raises  27 billion chickens, 1.5 billion cows, 1.2 billion sheep, and 784 million pigs for meat. 72,650 billion gallons of water are used to grow livestock feed. It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef.

In the United States, 99 percent of meat, dairy, and egg products come from factory farms. Few seriously question the morality of industrial agriculture, and fewer will change their ways because of ethical arguments. Vegan activists are often seen as fanatics pushing a radical agenda, as meat-eating is deeply ingrained in cultures around the world. This indignant reaction is absurd—all defenses of industrial agriculture, when rationally examined, amount to no defense at all.

In factory farms, pigs and chickens often have their tails, teeth, or beaks clipped off to prevent crazed cannibalism and are confined in tiny cages. To kill an animal, farmers usually slit its throat and throw its still-dying body into a boiling vat. Male chickens, useless to the egg industry, are thrown into a grinder to save money. These animals are stripped of essential psychological experiences—calves are separated from their parents at birth, farm animals live short, solitary lives, and the terrifying drive to the slaughterhouse is often their first outdoor exposure. All anesthetics are skipped to cut costs. Paradoxically, upon hearing about these realities, many may feel short-lived empathy but almost immediately return to blissful ignorance, consuming factory-farmed meat with no regard to the ethical implications.

Some will claim that certain traits set humans apart from other species: our intelligence, our ability to communicate, and our higher receptivity to pain justify exploiting “lower” animals. However, no scientific evidence suggests humans feel less pain than other animals: in fact, the National Research Council concluded that all vertebrates experience meaningful pain. Muteness and lower levels of intelligence surely do not permit our abhorrent treatment of livestock either—consider a completely mute human of especially low intelligence. Most would think it a moral abomination if this person, albeit of inferior intellect, was confined to a cell in which he could not turn, with his teeth clipped off, torn away from his parents at birth, gassed to death in a chamber of carbon dioxide, for his meat to form the patty of a juicy burger. If you argue that the lower intelligence of our farmed animals justifies their torture and slaughter, surely, for consistency, you would also have to comfortably condemn such a human being to the same conditions. If so, I would be incredibly scared of you, and if not, this argument is clearly flawed.

Here’s another inconsistency: The average person, seeing a dog being abused by its owner, rightfully reacts with outrage. Animal rights activists around the world fight against bullfighting and fund stray dog rescues. However, even many such activists fuel the meat industry by consuming it. The only relevant distinction between dogs and pigs is cuteness; we keep dogs as pets. The Animal Cognition Journal suggests pigs may even be smarter than dogs. Therefore, our outrage over hurt dogs paired with our relish of steak and bacon epitomizes cognitive dissonance. Any genuine moral defense of factory farming must maintain consistency in this situation as well, otherwise it is hypocritical and meaningless.

Another popular defense asserts that meat consumption is part of the natural order—wild animals continually kill each other for food, and humans have hunted for sustenance for millennia. However, appealing to the “natural order” implies all actions taken in the natural world are moral, defending many instincts our society considers wrong. Notably, actions resembling rape can be observed in populations of dolphins and chimpanzees; praying mantises and black widow spiders famously devour their mates. Conversely, conditions in factory farms are far from natural. Nowhere in the natural world are species of animals bred to have populations nearing 30 billion just to sustain a single species’ selfish desire for the taste of meat. Farm animals’ modern experiences are far worse and more grotesque than even the experiences of animals hunted and killed in the wild. Generally, the degree to which something is natural states nothing about its morality.

There are practical defenses: perhaps meat provides us with nutrients absent in ethically farmed foods. However, nutritionists repeatedly proved that healthy and cost-effective lifestyles are perfectly achievable with only plant-based products. Nuts, beans, seeds, and tofu are packed with protein. Although certain nutrients, such as vitamin B12, are mostly unique to animal products, soy milk and various cheaper supplements can easily fill this deficit. Nutritional arguments hardly outweigh the immense suffering factory-farmed animals endure, especially when it is so easy to find alternatives for every possible “animal-exclusive” nutrient.

 Finally, the single most efficient way for someone to fight against climate change is not to buy solar panels, shorten their showers, or reuse metal straws, but to eliminate factory-farmed meat from their diet. Raising livestock depletes crops at a rapid rate and leads to the release of an absurd amount of carbon dioxide. According to the Breakthrough Institute, animal farming accounts for 11-17 percent of yearly greenhouse gas emissions. The livestock feed America alone grows might feed 800 million people. Dismantling factory farming would positively impact the entire planet, feeding billions more people.

The only remaining defense argues that humans are unwilling to give up factory farming simply because it produces meat that tastes good. This hardly stands; the amount of suffering that factory farming causes by treating animals as if they were unfeeling objects is being weighed against the pleasurable sensation of taste. In light of these arguments, having such a diet is completely unethical and indefensible, yet I am almost certain that this article will fail to change anyone’s lifestyle, simply because it is “too much of a sacrifice.” As Peter Singer, the author of the famous book Animal Liberation asks, “When history looks back, do you want to be counted among the oppressors? Or among the liberators?” You can make that choice with the lifestyle you live.