Animal Products Are Probably Evil, We Should Boycott Them Just In Case

Killing should require more moral certainty than we have

There are a few ethical debates that currently dominate our discourse. Are fetuses persons? Is AI art theft? How much of an obligation do the rich have to redistribute their wealth? The question with the highest stakes, however, is one that gets very little attention, and that’s whether or not animals deserve moral consideration.

Mentioning animal rights in the same breath as abortion might make some people flinch (of course we would flinch though, we’re a generation that disvalues animals, so we discount their interests out of hand), but the scale of animal exploitation is so vast, so titanic, that it being unjust would constitute one of the gravest crimes in history. In the UK, 200,000 abortions are performed each year. In contrast, 6.4 billion animals are slaughtered for food. If we’re wrong about that being justified, that would mean we’re guilty of 32,000x more unjust killings than if we were confused about fetuses not counting as persons.

The bandwidth of sentient life that is affected by how we think about this question is enormous. It’s estimated that about 100 billion humans have ever existed. We kill that many land animals every 2 years, almost all of them living lives of torture. Even the animals that are lucky enough not to be factory farmed still undergo cruel practices such as castration, disbudding, and of course, getting their heads cut off. So, every two years, we cause about as much suffering to other species as humanity has ever experienced - and yet this issue is treated as trivial.

It’s really a testament to the power of cultural conditioning that we’ve all been lulled not only into thinking that this harm is justified, but that the issue isn’t worth thinking about. Most of the time someone challenges our ideas about animals being commodities, they are shut down with some version of “don’t force your views”.

(Side note: it’s a real pet peeve of mine when someone says “you shouldn’t force your views”, because that is itself a view they’re forcing, so it’s self undermining. You can’t enforce that ethical norm without violating it. It’s also obviously false, there have been loads of occasions when it was appropriate for people to “force” their views. That’s what the criminal justice system is. That’s what everyone fighting for moral progress has ever done)

Given the number of sentient beings being affected though, I’d say it’s very much worth thinking about. In fact, it’s probably the most important ethical issue to think about. If we’re going to kill trillions of living things, we better be certain that we’re justified in doing so.

Comparisons

The arguments in favour of ethical veganism are pretty straight forward. Pain is bad. Suffering is bad. Killing is bad. Living things deserve autonomy over their own life. These are all statements that are totally uncontroversial to anyone with a functioning moral compass.

The arguments opposing ethical veganism, are less than stellar. I want to speak about one of the better arguments against it, but I’ll rattle through a couple of popular ones and explain why I think they don’t work. If you’re familiar with the responses to these, you can just skip to the next section.

1. “It’s natural to eat animals”

Not sure what the relevance is here. I assume the implication is that if something is natural it must then be permissible, but that has counter examples. Sexual violence is natural, human on human violence is natural. If we discovered stealing was natural, would that mean it’s not wrong? Seem like the answer is “no”.

2. “Animals are stupid”

They sure are, but what does someone being stupid have to do with our right to torture and kill them? It’s not as though Einstein was justified punching us normies in the street. Also notice that babies are stupider than animals, and presumably we still think they deserve respect (If your answer to that is that they will grow up to be smart, just imagine a perpetually young baby. Still seems like their pain is bad).

3. “Food chain!”

I’m not sure this one even counts as an argument. People just say the words “food chain” and hope something sticks. The food chain describes things as they are, but doesn’t say anything about how things ought to be. It’s devoid of normative content. If we think the food chain makes eating something moral, then eating literally anything would be moral, because the moment we eat something, that would describe a new chain. I assume though, that even if we normalized eating people, the fact that food chain diagrams would describe it wouldn’t mean we should then endorse cannibalism.

Rant over. I think a stronger argument opposing ethical veganism is consumer responsibility (or the lack thereof). I’m going to use it to illustrate a point, but if you have some other argument that you think is even stronger, you can just insert it below instead.

Consumer Responsibility

Something that gets said a lot, albeit not with a great deal of scrutiny, is that there’s “no ethical consumption under capitalism”. Sometimes this is framed as literally saying profit itself is exploitative, but a watered down version is that exploitation is so rife in the world, that it’s impossible to live without causing harm. Our phones are made by slaves, our clothes made in sweatshops, and all of it is shipped around on ships that pollute the ocean. If we applied the view that we ought not buy things that cause harm consistently, we’d be committed to a level of asceticism that’s unattainable. It’s not my fault everything I buy hurts someone else, but I do need to buy things to survive.

Strictly speaking, you can hold this view, and still think that animals matter. It’s just that we aren’t morally required to consider their interests when making purchases, because we aren’t morally required to consider anyone’s interests when making purchases. It’s not inaccurate to say that this argument, if successful, would refute what a lot of us think of when we hear “veganism" - that being the abstention of buying animal products.

Moral Probabilities

Now, I could argue against the Consumer Responsibility argument itself (and in real life, I do, and it’s taking every fibre of my being not to write at least a little paragraph on it- but’s let’s stay on point here, Connor), but I’d like to take a different approach. Let’s say that you find Consumer Responsibility arguments compelling. What I’d ask is, exactly how compelling do you find it? What’s your credence that it works? 50%? 70%? 90%? The concern is, the moral risk here is not trivial. If you decide to purchase animal products because you think something justifies it, and you’re wrong about that, the consequences are enormous. You’d be guilty of the very worst moral failure of your life (assuming you’ve not done anything else as bad as unjustly killing thousands of sentient beings). In contrast, if you abstain from animal products because you think buying them is wrong, and you’re wrong about that, the cost is relatively trivial. You’ve missed out on some food you like, and have to be subject to ridicule at the dinner table when you weren’t morally required to do so.

The top right square seems like the one we should avoid at all costs.

It strikes me as prudent in situations like this to play it safe. Even if we only think there’s a small chance that buying animal products is impermissible, unjustly torturing someone to death is so much worse than missing out on food we like, that we still shouldn’t buy them. Buying meat amounts to playing with moral fire, and all for the trivial gains of a meal that we won’t even remember.

The only way to think it’s worth the risk is if we have something close to certainty that it is in fact permissible to buy animal products - so the question is, do consumer responsibility arguments (or any other argument you prefer) get us there?

Probably not. Honestly, I’m not sure that the jump from “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” to “no purchase can be wrong” is justified (Okay, I lied, I’m going to write a few sentences on Consumer Responsibility). It definitely strikes me that at least some purchases are wrong. Human flesh, Revenge Porn, V-necks - even the most staunch communist probably draws the line somewhere. I’d wager that funding torture chambers for things we don’t need falls over that line.

If we’re going to pay someone to kill someone else for something as trivial as snacks, we better be at least 99% sure that we’re justified in doing so - but I don’t think any reasonable person can say we’re close to that credence with a straight face. Until Consumer Responsibility, or some other argument, gets us closer to certainty that killing animals is permissible, it’s probably best to be conservative and not buy their bodies - because it might just turn out it’s really evil.