Duties to Non-Human Animals (Consumption)

Question 1

What does Gruen state about certain people following a vegetarian diet?

Answer 1

‘There are people living in some parts of the world [or in certain circumstances]… for whom a vegetarian diet does not make practical sense. It is not possible to cultivate plant food to sustain populations in the Arctic’

Question 2

How many animals were slaughtered in the UK in December 2020?

Answer 2

163,000 cows;
952,000 pigs;
1,208,000 sheep;
79,000,000 chickens and turkeys

Question 3

What are the three aspects of the harm-based arguments?

Answer 3

1. Harms to Animals;
2. Environmental harms;
3. Public health risks

Question 4

What are the 4 premises and two conclusions of the Harm-Based Argument?

Answer 4

P1: The meat industry causes significant harm;
P2: This harm is unnecessary;
C1: The meat industry causes significant, unnecessary harm.
P3: It is wrong to knowingly cause (or to support practices that cause) significant, unnecessary harm.
P4: Purchasing and consuming meat supports the meat industry.
C2: Purchasing and consuming meat is wrong.

Question 5

Concerning the first argument of the harm-based argument (harms to animals), what does Lori Gruen say?

Answer 5

That harms result from insufficient living conditions, frustration of typical behaviours and desires, and the methods of killing

Question 6

Concerning the second aspect of the harm-based argument, what does Gruen say are the environmental harms?

Answer 6

Factory farming causes local problems with water and air pollution at the sites of intensive factory farms.

Question 7

What is a quote from Gruen concerning environmental farms?

Answer 7

‘Between 14 per cent and 22 per cent of the 36 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases produced in the world every year is the result of animal production’

Question 8

What other harms can be caused by the environmental harms of animal farming?

Answer 8

Other beings can be harmed, such as humans and other non-humans, as well as eco-systems

Question 9

What does Gruen say about public health risks consequential of animal farming?

Answer 9

That between ‘60 per cent to 80 per cent of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals to promote growth’

Question 10

What is the first possible reply to harm based arguments?

Answer 10

That they only apply to factory farms

Question 11

What is a problem with saying that these arguments only apply to factory farms?

Answer 11

That the animals are still being killed prematurely, which is thus a harm to those animals, even if they have lived a decent life

Question 12

What is a response to the argument that the animals are still being killed prematurely, which is thus a harm to those animals, even if they have lived a decent life.

Answer 12

Something counts as a harm only if it either (i) causes unnecessary pain or (ii) thwarts an important desire.
Non-human animals can be killed painlessly, and they are not capable of complex desires about the future. So the killing itself shouldn’t be considered a harm.

Question 13

What is another worry, argued by Bruckner, concerning the view that most of the harms addressed by Gruen are associated with intensive factory farming?

Answer 13

‘Everyone seems to agree that extensive harm is done to animals in the production of vegetables. If only we could find a source of food that did not harm any animals at all’

Question 14

What is Bruckner’s food that does not harm any animals at all for the purposes of farming?

Answer 14

Road-kill

Question 15

What is a possible reply to Bruckner?

Answer 15

We may think that the implications are minimal. For we are not often presented with the option of collecting and consuming roadkill

Question 16

What is a response to the argument that the implications are minimal?

Answer 16

That Bruckner’s argument actually serves as a reductio of the harm-based argument

Question 17

Explain how Bruckner’s argument may be a reductio through causal impotence

Answer 17

We might still think that individual instances of eating meat are morally permissible.
If our individual choices have no impact in terms of increasing or decreasing the harms mentioned, then perhaps they are all morally permissible

Question 18

What is the central claim of causal impotence?

Answer 18

My abstaining from eating animals won’t have a significant impact, so it is morally permissible to continue

Question 19

What is a worry with causal impotence?

Answer 19

Does complicity matter? Benefiting from an unnecessarily harmful practice is (plausibly) morally wrong, even if you are not yourself contributing to the continued existence of that practice.

Question 20

What is another way of looking at the issues connected with the consumption of animals?

Answer 20

Through reflecting on our potential for ethical relationships and the respect for others that this requires

Question 21

What does Gruen say about the ethical relation?

Answer 21

‘When we allow certain things to be bought and sold on the market, we change the relationships we have and how we think of those relationships.’

Question 22

On the approach of even positing the question, or starting down the path of calculating the harms and benefits of eating animals, what is there?

Answer 22

A moral misstep