Thanks Connor. One way of reducing the risk that "welfarism" just leads us into a dead end where even more sentient beings are being brutally exploited and killed... is to defend the usage and meaning of phrases and words like "high welfare" and "humane" even as we work for incremental improvements. If we allow these words to be applied to any farming and exploitation practices that does risk licensing farming and exploitation more generally as acceptable or moral - removing the motivation for further change. This is the explicit narrative plan of the animal industries. Whereas if we insist that, while there are better and worse forms of animal farming, none are "high welfare" and no slaughterhouse is "humane" - we can leave space open for incremental improvements without losing sight of the end goal. To put this another way, if someone claims to have even a minimal concern for my welfare, for my humane treatment, for my moral consideration, for kindness or compassion towards me - that's simply not consistent with paying someone else to kill me to make products - or with killing me to make products you can sell to others. These moral terms have to retain their meaning if we want to hold on to morality itself.
Do you have a link to where Francione says we shouldn’t use slaughterhouse footage? I knew he was doctrinaire but if his position is really “anything besides asking people to go vegan and expecting them to respond to sophisticated philosophical arguments is speciesist” that just seems silly.
Even if in principle humane farming might be permissable, when animals are seen as commodities the market is unlikely to actually treat them humanely. Farms that are labelled humane and certified, are often exposed as being cruel. So, it seems prudent to not exploit at all.
Much like how I think it might be permissable to farm humans if they are given great lives, but I oppose doing it in the real world because it would be fraught with awful risks.
Also, while I think animals probably don't have rights, I'm not THAT confident. Seems like a big risk for a small gain
However that's not really a worry, because that won't happen. In reality, the demand will slowly drop, and the supply will follow. They'll just stop being bred into existence in the first place
The word humane means treating someone with kindness and compassion. It isn't compatible with farming someone or what happens to all farmed sentient beings in slaughterhouses.
I'm interested in which forms of farming and which farming practices are consistent with being treated with "kindness and compassion". A good test is "would I be happy with this being done to a companion dog or even to a specifically bred human infant?" More importantly - how would they experience this treatment?
Even if we can dream something up that fits I suspect that will have no bearing to the reality of animal agriculture / fishing / exploitation today.
You're illustrating an important point, Simon. You're using the animal agriculture industry's definition of the word "humane" instead of the actual one. Killing someone as a child or adolescent so you can sell parts of their body is not an act of kindness or compassion - however efficient the slaughterhouse or fishery they're forced into may be. Let alone the other standard "non-factory farm" processes that include sexual abuses (semen extraction and AI), mutilations (beaks, tails, teeth, testicles...), harsh constraints on natural behaviours and forcible family separations (calves being the classic dairy example). None are kind or compassionate. So none are humane.
The reason these industries use this definition is because it gives them moral licence to continue doing what they want to keep doing.
The reason consumers love to accept this definition is because it gives them moral licence to continue buying bits of who they want to keep buying.
I see this warping of definitions ("humane", "high welfare", "care") to include acts that, from the perspectives of the victims, are horrific - as the most insidious way of defending animal exploitation. If we're to accept it we must also accept that doing these things to specially bred human infants or dogs would also be "humane". Of course - decent humans are horrified at such a suggestion.
Regardless - this warping of moral language to allow moral horrors is a tempting approach for the industry and its consumers - as the other ways of defending non-human animal exploitation and agriculture (e.g. denying animal sentience, denying the moral salience of sentience, it's awful but we just can't live without it, god told us to do it...) are intellectually and ethically embarrassing positions to hold. So they and their customers turn in desperation to language.
Thanks Connor. One way of reducing the risk that "welfarism" just leads us into a dead end where even more sentient beings are being brutally exploited and killed... is to defend the usage and meaning of phrases and words like "high welfare" and "humane" even as we work for incremental improvements. If we allow these words to be applied to any farming and exploitation practices that does risk licensing farming and exploitation more generally as acceptable or moral - removing the motivation for further change. This is the explicit narrative plan of the animal industries. Whereas if we insist that, while there are better and worse forms of animal farming, none are "high welfare" and no slaughterhouse is "humane" - we can leave space open for incremental improvements without losing sight of the end goal. To put this another way, if someone claims to have even a minimal concern for my welfare, for my humane treatment, for my moral consideration, for kindness or compassion towards me - that's simply not consistent with paying someone else to kill me to make products - or with killing me to make products you can sell to others. These moral terms have to retain their meaning if we want to hold on to morality itself.
Do you have a link to where Francione says we shouldn’t use slaughterhouse footage? I knew he was doctrinaire but if his position is really “anything besides asking people to go vegan and expecting them to respond to sophisticated philosophical arguments is speciesist” that just seems silly.
Correction. Someone once told me he opposed it outright, but it looks like he has merely expressed this as a concern https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/violent-imagery-in-animal-advocacy/
I will edit that part now
I agree that factory farming should be abolished. What's wrong with humane farming?
Even if in principle humane farming might be permissable, when animals are seen as commodities the market is unlikely to actually treat them humanely. Farms that are labelled humane and certified, are often exposed as being cruel. So, it seems prudent to not exploit at all.
Much like how I think it might be permissable to farm humans if they are given great lives, but I oppose doing it in the real world because it would be fraught with awful risks.
Also, while I think animals probably don't have rights, I'm not THAT confident. Seems like a big risk for a small gain
I don't think it would be permissible to farm mentally competent humans.
On your view, what would be done with all the animals?
If we stopped all at once? Not sure.
However that's not really a worry, because that won't happen. In reality, the demand will slowly drop, and the supply will follow. They'll just stop being bred into existence in the first place
The word humane means treating someone with kindness and compassion. It isn't compatible with farming someone or what happens to all farmed sentient beings in slaughterhouses.
It is compatible with other forms of farming.
I'm interested in which forms of farming and which farming practices are consistent with being treated with "kindness and compassion". A good test is "would I be happy with this being done to a companion dog or even to a specifically bred human infant?" More importantly - how would they experience this treatment?
Even if we can dream something up that fits I suspect that will have no bearing to the reality of animal agriculture / fishing / exploitation today.
Any farming practice that gives animals a life worth living and a quick death is humane. That's a lower standard than the treatment of companion dogs.
The argument against factory farming is that it is wrong to torture animals. The life of a sheep that lives in an open field is not torture.
You're illustrating an important point, Simon. You're using the animal agriculture industry's definition of the word "humane" instead of the actual one. Killing someone as a child or adolescent so you can sell parts of their body is not an act of kindness or compassion - however efficient the slaughterhouse or fishery they're forced into may be. Let alone the other standard "non-factory farm" processes that include sexual abuses (semen extraction and AI), mutilations (beaks, tails, teeth, testicles...), harsh constraints on natural behaviours and forcible family separations (calves being the classic dairy example). None are kind or compassionate. So none are humane.
The reason these industries use this definition is because it gives them moral licence to continue doing what they want to keep doing.
The reason consumers love to accept this definition is because it gives them moral licence to continue buying bits of who they want to keep buying.
I see this warping of definitions ("humane", "high welfare", "care") to include acts that, from the perspectives of the victims, are horrific - as the most insidious way of defending animal exploitation. If we're to accept it we must also accept that doing these things to specially bred human infants or dogs would also be "humane". Of course - decent humans are horrified at such a suggestion.
Regardless - this warping of moral language to allow moral horrors is a tempting approach for the industry and its consumers - as the other ways of defending non-human animal exploitation and agriculture (e.g. denying animal sentience, denying the moral salience of sentience, it's awful but we just can't live without it, god told us to do it...) are intellectually and ethically embarrassing positions to hold. So they and their customers turn in desperation to language.