Date: Saturday, September 11, 2010, 1:13 PM
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/gary-francione-responds-to-uk-s-george-monbiot
Gary Francione Responds to UK's George Monbiot
Opinion by Gary L
Francione
(22 Hours Ago) in Society / Animal Rights
Dear
Colleagues:
Guardian UK columnist George Monbiot, who expressed
support for veganism, has recanted his support and, in an editorial
entitled, I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat -- but farm it
properly, Monbiot jumps on the 'happy' meat bandwagon.
I wrote a
brief comment that was posted on the Guardian website:
Dear Mr.
Monbiot:
I have three comments:
First, putting aside whether
Fairlie is right about the environmental issues, you are missing a
fundamental point: the consumption of animal flesh and products cannot be
justified as a moral matter apart from environmental considerations. Think
about it. We all agree that inflicting unnecessary suffering and death on
sentient beings is morally wrong. We can argue about what 'necessity' means,
but if it means anything at all, it must mean that we cannot inflict
suffering and death for reasons of pleasure, amusement, or convenience. But
those are the only arguments that exist in favor of consuming animal
products. No one maintains that eating animal products is necessary for
human health (quite the contrary) and animal agriculture is still a
significant ecological problem even if Fairlie is right. The only
justification that we have for inflicting pain, suffering, and death on 56
billion animals (not counting fish) is that they taste good and we enjoy
eating them.
If that constitutes a moral justification, then animals
have no moral value and we should just acknowledge that they are outside the
moral community altogether rather than hypocritically maintaining a moral
principle about unnecessary suffering and death that is wholly without
meaning.
Second, I have yet to read Fairlie's book but your
description of his environmental arguments makes it appear that his analysis
of the issues is questionable at best.
Third, your position that we
ought to make animal production more 'humane' is unbelievably naive. Animals
are property; they are economic commodities. They have no inherent value.
Animal welfare reforms provide very little protection to animal interests
and If you looked at the history of animal welfare reforms, you would see
that, for the most part, they do little beyond making animal production more
economically efficient. These are reforms that industry would have
implemented anyway. Consider the move away from veal crates. Veal crates
increase animal stress and result in higher veterinary costs; small group
units decrease costs and do not lower meat quality. The same analysis
supports moving away from gestation crates for pigs, adopting
controlled-atmosphere killing of poultry, etc.
The economic
inefficiencies of intensive agriculture, which developed in the 1950s, are
becoming increasingly clear. There will be changes in factory farming and
some of these changes may arguably provide a marginal welfare benefit to
animals. But that is all that will happen. Large animal groups in the US and
UK, which make millions off promoting these inevitable reforms, turn these
small changes into big campaigns for 'humane' treatment and that makes
people think that progress is being made.
Could animal welfare
standards be much better? Sure-in theory. Any significant departure from
intensive agriculture would mean much higher costs and given the reality of
global markets and the inability to stop import of lower welfare products,
it's simply not realistic. Moreover, if consumers (or rather, those affluent
consumers who could afford it) cared enough to pay the much higher costs
that would be involved, they would probably care enough about animals as a
moral matter not to eat them at all.
In any event, even if animal
welfare standards increased dramatically, our treatment of animals would
still represent torture if humans were involved. Water boarding someone on a
padded board is marginally better than using an unpadded board but it is
still torture.
There is no way to do animal agriculture in a way
required to feed billions (even if they consumed fewer animal products)
without inflicting torture on animals. I am astounded that you apparently
think to the contrary and have jumped on the 'happy meat/animal products'
bandwagon.
Thank you for your consideration of my comments.
Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University
Newark, New Jersey
www.abolitionistapproach.com
*****
It is sad to see a progressive person like George Monbiot
buy into this welfarist, reactionary nonsense.
Gary L. Francione
--
2010 Gary L. Francione
