Meat is Murder (literally)

 It would be easy to make this point with a simple linguistic discussion about the definition of the word murder and showing how it applies to the animal agriculture industry, specifically in terms of meat. However, that wouldn't be particularly convincing in most cases as what a dictionary says isn't always the way we use words. For most people, and I imagine most carnists, the process of turning non-human animals into our meat products is not murderous and certainly isn't immoral. One may even go as far as to acknowledge that it does indeed fit the definition of murder, while saying that it isn't necessarily immoral. However, I think we rightly associate murder with immoral behavior and I'll attempt to make that case as well.

Let me start by saying that many people view moral questions as being subjective. This is especially common among people who are not used to contemplating morality. However, even still, there is at least one standard by which we can judge morality, consistency. There is little to no satisfaction in holding any set of inconsistent beliefs and this includes moral ones. More importantly, it is futile to attempt to persuade someone to your moral system if it is inconsistent as anyone interested in defending their current position will always find fault in inconsistency. It is also worth pointing out that for all people who accept the law of noncontradiction (the vast majority of people who have considered it, though I recognize that there are some logicians who reject it) any inconsistent belief system is unreasonable to hold.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of an inconsistent position, one must analyze each of their beliefs against their first principles and other beliefs. In this case we are dealing with beliefs around murder, and the first thing to address is what murder is. Typically I define murder as any intentional killing that lacks sufficient justification. This means that anytime a moral agent intentionally ends a life, that action must have valid justification. I recognize that not everyone will agree with this definition, but it seems to cover all instances we would call murder, and excludes obvious cases of death that we wouldn't consider murder (ie self defense). For this reason, this is the definition I'll be using going forward.

In an attempt to dissuade comments about legal definitions of murder, I want to point out that different cultures, countries and even states have different legal definitions of what murder is. Considering laws are downstream from culture, and culture is typically a bit downstream from moral philosophy, it is not useful to use some culture, country or state definition of murder for the purposes of this argument. Ideally, with the definition given, we can apply the following points to a broad swath of cultures and communities.

I think it goes without saying that the killing of an animal is the ending of a life. This seems to be a truism, but I also recognize that there is some groups of people in the world who would tell you that plants are no different from animals in terms of the value of their "life". Perhaps going as far as to say that they don't have value because "life" isn't the value giving property but rather there is some other value giving property associated specifically with humans, typically given by a deity. I will be wholly ignoring this argument as I believe this will be too cumbersome to include in this blog and wish to dedicate an entirely different blog to this topic. For the purposes of this blog, I will be operating under the assumption that the reader agrees that animals are alive, experiencing feelings of pleasure and pain with the ability to desire one over the other. This is the current scientific consensus on the matter of animal consciousness as far as I'm aware and don't think I need to bolster this claim with any evidence at the moment. 

The most important question here is the following; how is it that we justify the slaughter of animals for our consumption and commodification in a way that is consistent with our other beliefs. For the purposes of this blog, I'll be ignoring the other potential reasons for choosing a plant-based diet such as environmental and health reasons. Instead I'll focus on how we view the deaths of these animals and why we should rightly classify it as murder.

In my previous blog, I point out why I think it's unreasonable to assume that humans are endowed with a right to life if you simultaneously believe that animals are not, so I'll skip that here. I'll operate under the assumption that we can't unjustifiably kill an animal without considering it murder. This of course presents us with a question, what is the justification for killing animals? In the next several paragraphs I will attempt to point to many of the common justifications and show why I find them inadequate.

Circle of life though-

The most popular justification I hear when discussing animal death in animal agriculture is some version of "it's the circle of life" or "lions kill for food, so we should too". This kind of appeal to nature seems to be well engrained in society (anyone remember the Lion King?) This is an interesting argument, not because of how persuasive it is but because of how easily it is thwarted and yet still deployed by so many people. The easy response is to point out the many immoral practices of animals in the wild and apply them to human culture or point out the obvious differences between natural predator biology and our biology. More importantly though is the point that the existence of some natural phenomena is not ethical justification for the continued participation in these phenomena by a civilized society. Civilization demands that we justify our natural tendencies instead of perpetuate them without question.

In case my statement of this isn't enough to convince you, there are some species of ants that are referred to as "slave making ants" that enslave other ants. However, this doesn't justify our enslavement of other people, right? Of course not, every modern culture recognizes slavery as an immoral behavior. Further, nearly everyone sees rape as immoral and yet some social species, such as mallard ducks, don't seek consent before having sex with the females. This is contrary to other birds who attempt to woo their prospective mates before copulating. Point being, some breeds of ducks, such as mallards don't seek any consent and simply engage in sexual intercourse with others while other bird species (even other duck species) attempt to gain approval before engaging. This doesn't mean, because the mallard doesn't require consent, that we also don't require consent.

As for the point of the lion and other natural predators, instead of getting into why our biology (and the study of evolutionary biology) points to us being mostly if not exclusively herbivories, I'd like to discuss why I think their behavior is actually morally acceptable. In terms of a lion, for instance, it cannot live on plant food alone. It is what we refer to as an obligate carnivore, an animal that requires animal proteins and other nutrition only available through the consumption of animal foods to survive. These animals are required to eat animals for survival and are therefore justified in doing so. Further, these animals don't kill animals for sport or fun. They only kill when necessary. Humans, as I will point out in the next section are not obligate carnivores and do not require any nutrition from animal products for survival or even for healthy living.

We need to eat though-

The next justification I see commonly is that we require food for survival, animals are food, therefore we can justify the killing of the animals. Here is where I remind the reader that the category "animals" includes "humans" (homo sapiens). What is really being said here is that non human animals are food, but human animals are not food. However this falls apart in many ways. Let's start by pointing out that there is no relevant characteristic existent in non human animals that would justify this categorical separation. For every characteristic or trait you name (say intelligence) there is some relevant characteristic of some humans that would allow you to treat them as we do animals. For instance, in terms of intelligence, if you say it's okay to kill pigs for food because they are less intelligent than people, one could point out that pigs are shown to have the intelligence of a 3 year old human, and yet we don't kill 3 year old humans. Honestly to come up with an exhaustive list of examples and counter examples would be far too time consuming and take away from the purpose of this blog so I'll leave that for now.

Additionally, in terms of the food justification, we should consider that we not only don't need animal agriculture to be healthy but that avoiding animal products can also reduce our risk of heart disease and some cancers. A plant-based diet has also been shown to help in terms of prevention and treatment of type-2 diabetes. Though I'm not a nutritionist or dietician, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ("the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals" according to their webpage) came out with a statement claiming that there is adequate evidence to support the conclusion that a vegan diet is healthy for all stages of life, including infants, pregnant mothers and breast feeding mothers. This, I believe, adequately debunks the claim that animal food is required for our survival.

Lastly I just want to point out that we don't see all animals as food. We, in the United States think it's weird for people to eat dogs or cats for instance. Regardless of whether some cultures do or don't do it- this shows a lack of consistency in our ethic. We think it would be wrong for someone to keep a large population of dogs in cages in their back yard to be slaughtered for food, and yet we find it completely fine to do the same with cows, chickens, and pigs. This is simply an inconsistency that can be reconciled by either accepting that doing the same to dogs and cats is as acceptable as the other animals we eat, or it is as wrong to do this to other animals as it is with the dogs and cats.

The last point to make here is one regarding the trophic pyramid. Not only do we not need to eat animals to survive, but it is incredibly inefficient to do so. The trophic pyramid is a simplification of the energy lost in consuming different levels of the pyramid. For instance, something that eats plants receives a 1:1 calorie benefit from those plants. When someone eats a cow that eats a plant, the caloric ratio is between 6:1 and 25:1 depending on how long the cow lives before being slaughtered. This makes eating animals incredibly inefficient in terms of caloric intake. Again pointing to the lack of necessity for this kind of agriculture.

It tastes good though-

The next justification that I see commonly is one of taste. The taste pleasure of the flesh of animals is satisfactory justification for the death and harvest of animal body parts for human consumption. This is probably the most common issue I've tackled with people. It was the last thing I had to overcome before becoming vegan. I realized that all my other justifications were inadequate and that I was out of options other than an appeal to my own sensual pleasure gained from consuming these products.

The first objection I'll levy against this justification is that sensory pleasure is inadequate to justify actions with a victim. It seems to me that if any desires are to be thought of as least important, sensory desires should be at the bottom of that list. When it comes to other, more obvious instances where sensory desires acquired lead to the harm of another being, we see obvious fault with them. For example, if a person were to say that they desire the taste of blood, we would rightly condemn them for cutting people and drinking their blood. Even if this person claimed to like the taste of animal blood, if they kept dogs just to harvest blood to drink, we would consider that animal abuse. This is not an uncommon sensory pleasure though- many people find the taste of blood, specifically their own, to be pleasant.

This may be a bit of a strange example, but the taste of animal flesh is the exact same. Yet, when someone wants to enslave a group of animals to kill (or otherwise exploit) and eat, we deem it fine. Simply because they aren't drinking the blood, but rather eating the muscle. We could take this a step further to really drive the point home- if a person though it pleasurable to hear the squeal of a dog who had just been kicked, is he justified in kicking the dog? I think not, and I think you'd agree that just because you think the yelp or squeal is a pleasurable sound to hear doesn't justify your kicking of any animal. We would rightly classify this as animal abuse. However in terms of animal agriculture this is exactly the type of victimizing we are doing in terms of cows, pigs and chickens.

We raise these animals to die prematurely. To die against their will and without consent. This is a major issue for us because killing an animal who isn't in insufferable pain or discomfort seems less moral than inflicting a moment of pain on an animal. Yet, we are in a place where if we think taste justifies our consumption of animal products, then we have to allow the man who gets pleasure from the sound of dogs squealing to go around kicking dogs. If you can't accept that, as I couldn't, then you are forced, for consistency to come up with another justification for the consumption of animal flesh.

Speciesism though-

Earlier I claimed that murder is immoral and that we should continue to view it as such, even when referring to the murder of non-human animals. If you hold the belief that murder of human animals is wrong/immoral and we have adequately shown the justification for the deaths of animals to be lacking, then the only way out here is speciesism.

Speciesism is, like racism, the belief that one species is sufficiently inferior to another that this inferiority is justification for excluding them from moral considerations. This is a particularly bad idea for anyone who accepts evolution, in that evolution doesn't distinguish between superior and inferior. Further, superior and inferior require a goal. I may be superior intellectually to a cheetah, for instance, but I certainly am inferior in terms of my ability to run a mile. Inferior and superior are relations to things in terms of goals, not things that can be objectively applied to a whole species without a goal in mind.

Speciesism is an issue for a number of reasons, namely that any justification that can be made for speciesism can be made for other morally wrong ideas like racism. Racism is a bit of a hot topic, but the point is that any (false) justification that can be applied to racist ideas is just as false in the case of animals. For instance, in the early 19th century some tried to claim that based on skull shape that African Americans were less intelligent than Caucasians. This turned out to be patently false as well as the attempt to correlate difference in brain size and intelligence. The difference in the anatomy or biology of a cow or pig from humans is often pointed to as a reason to subjugate them as well. The available evidence shows that anatomy/biology isn't enough to point to a lower level of intelligence, consciousness or other factors so often associated with the subjugation of a species or race.

The point being, the faults that exist with the ideology of racists is the same that exist in the speciesist. The speciesist makes an arbitrary distinction based on which species one belongs instead of recognizing the value of the different species. This is typically shown to be wrong with a thought experiment about a potentially more powerful alien race that enslaves our own. Would there be any reason to object to this kind of subjugation? I certainly think there would be.

For me, it follows along the lines of the Kantian idea of using something for "mere means". If you aren't a philosophy nerd, or are otherwise unfamiliar with this concept from Immanuel Kant, I'll outline it briefly here. When we need to achieve some "end" (think of it as a goal for now) then we employ a number of methods by which we try to achieve that goal. These methods are our "means" to our "end". For example, if my toilet is clogged, I may try to use a plunger to remove the clog. If I fail to eliminate the clog I may go retrieve an auger or snake to clear the clog. If I don't have one, or what I have is inadequate, I may call a plumber. The plumber will come, remove the clog, and I will pay him for his service and we will both go on with our lives. In this example we are using the plumber as a "means" to an "end"- he is the method (means) by which my toilet gets unclogged (the end). However, I am not using him as a "mere means" in that I compensate him for his time and do not inhibit his autonomy. However, if instead of a plumber, I used my plunger, then I would be using it as a "mere means" in that I would be treating it as an object that satisfies my end. Keeping it in my house for the sole purpose of plunging drains, not compensating it and inhibiting it's autonomy. This is entirely fine because it doesn't have any autonomy given that it is an inanimate object.

If I had treated my plumber the same way in which I treat my plunger, I would be doing something immoral, after all keeping a plumber as a slave, only to be used for removing clogs and eliminating his or her autonomy is what it means to use people as "mere means". To subjugate them to one purpose, and that purpose being a means to an end instead of treating them as an end in themselves.

An end in themselves is any being that can terminate an series of means/ends relationships. Continuing the analogy here, I want my toilet unclogged, that is one end. However unclogging that toilet serves as a means to another end, which would be my peace of mind, knowing that I can freely use my toilet when I need to next time. This peace of mind is a end that is terminated by me, the agent that wishes to obtain the peace of mind. In a way, it terminates the potentially infinite question "why" we could ask of any end. In the same way, the plumber is an end because he is also capable of terminating a series of means/ends relationships.

This is important to our animal example because they too can terminate this means/end relationship. As I mentioned earlier, it is the consensus of animal psychologists that animals have desires and an ability to pursue these desires. These desires are the ends that terminate the means/end train in the same way that my desire for peace of mind terminates the means/end train in the example. For instance, when a cow pines after their calf who is removed in order to avoid the consumption of milk (so we can harvest that milk) that cow is pursuing the end of being with their child. This end is a means to find satisfaction or gratification in bonding with their offspring. This example, from the dairy industry, is an example of using a cow as a mere means, in that we do not consider their autonomy but rather subjugate them to be a tool for collecting and distributing dairy products.

The meat industry that kills animals purely to provide a product is doing something evil by ending the life of the animal, again using the animal as a mere means to the end of creating animal products for human consumption. Since the animal is an end in themselves, it is immoral to treat them as a means to an end which we in fact are doing, and is a necessary part of animal agriculture. You can't farm a cow for the purpose of consuming their body without treating them as a mere means because no matter how pleasant their experience on your farm is, you are ending a life they wish to continue without regard to their autonomy.

In the same way that it would be wrong for a higher order species to subjugate us, it is morally wrong for us to subjugate lower order species (if we can even call them that). If a person believes it is not immoral to treat an "end in themselves" as a "mere means", then I would point out that this rejection would allow for the enslavement of human animals to be morally acceptable. If a person believes this is acceptable, I think we have much larger moral issues to handle before tackling issues with non human animal agriculture and I'll not derail my thoughts for that end today.

Conclusion:

If we go back and look at our definition of murder, "any intentional killing that lacks sufficient justification" then we can see that the "meat industry" meets every criteria. It is intentionally ending the life of another and doing so without an adequate justification. Whatever the perceived justification may be; nutrition, cessation of hunger, taste pleasure, etc. each shows themselves to be unnecessary and therefore invalid justification for taking a life. In my previous post on here, about the animal agricultural industry being "unjust" I tackled the topic of why taking the life of an animal unnecessarily is wrong. Here I've attempted to tackle why I think any justification for this necessity fails.

If you've found this to be compelling and are interested in "going vegan", I'd implore you to check this link out. The vegan society has a ton of information on their website about easy ways to start! https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan