Worried About Crop Deaths? Eat Plants
Meat doesn't kill fewer animals
Spend any amount of time speaking about animal rights on the internet and you’ll probably run into the crop death argument at some point (you’ll also run into a lot of bacon jokes that are about as funny as stepping into a bear trap on Remembrance day). The idea is, because combine harvesters inevitably kill small animals while farming plants, more animals are killed while making corn and wheat than they are while making cows or chickens. So, checkmate, vegans. While you’re chomping down on your lettuce sandwiches and spinach soup, you’re the ones that are really at fault!
“Now excuse me while I never scrutinize this belief or think about it again, bye!”
Now, it might surprise you, but there are some reasons to be doubtful that this argument succeeds against ethical veganism.
What’s the right Ethical Theory?
I’ll start this by just pointing out that the argument does assume that Consequentialism is true. That is, it assumes the best action to take is always the one which brings about the best consequences (in this case, the fewest deaths). I am quite sympathetic to Consequentalism, but it’s not like it’s without it’s detractors or counter examples.
Take this scenario: 5 people are rushed into hospital, all in dire need of an organ transplant. As it happens, we only need one person’s organs to save all five patients. There’s someone nearby who you know won’t be missed by anyone, that you can murder without being caught. You also know for a fact that the transplants will be a success because you work in some perfect futuristic super hospital. Is the right thing to do murder this person? Some people bite the bullet and say yes, but most people would say no - even though abstaining from murder results in worse consequences. 5 people would die instead of 1.
There’s obviously pages and pages on competing ethical theories, and I’m not going to resolve that dispute here. I only aim to illustrate that assuming Consequentalism is a fairly big assumption. It might be the case that animals have something like rights, in which case there would be a serious difference between incidentally killing them while plant farming, and purposefully cutting their heads off. Most people draw a distinction between accidental killing and premeditated killing.
Does being Vegan result in more dead animals?
Still, let’s just assume that Consequentalism is true. Is it even the case that more animals are killed as a result of being vegan than non vegan? Well, unsurprisngly, no.
The first thing to mention is that a huge amount of crops are grown to feed animals - and no, not just the scraps that humans can’t eat, like you might have heard. If the world transitioned to a plant based food system, we would still use less cropland than we are now.
We’d regain a North America sized chunk of land back. That’s 6100987 football pitches, or twice as big as Elon Musk’s forehead.
So, in ordinary circumstances, being a meat eater means you’re responsible for more crop deaths than vegans and you also kill animals directly. Not a great scenario.
You might say “Ahah! Under ordinary circumstances, sure - but I don’t eat meat from ordinary circumstances. I only eat meat from the very best five star farms, where animals only eat grass”.
I don’t think that’s an out, and will elaborate, but to be clear even if we were to accept that, that would still mean it’s unjustified to buy animal products from restaurants and supermarkets. You’d basically be vegan all the time, and I have a sneaking feeling that the people that make this claim don’t actually make the effort to buy vegan every time they’re in a Tesco. They probably buy meat that has “RSPCA” written on it every now and then and call it a day.
Still, let’s say they really do buy vegan whenever they’re in restaurants, and only buy animal products directly from a farm that only feeds animals grass, what then? I think there’s still a series of good reasons not to buy from them on Consequentialist grounds.
The legal definitions for “grassfed” in the UK or US are either ambiguous or non existent. Even if they weren’t, farms have a financial incentive to lie to you, as we’ve seen time and time again. It’s common practice to supplement the animal’s diets with alfalfa and hay, which reintroduces the crop deaths.
We have some evidence to show that “conscientious omnivores” are more likely to have cheat days (page 7), and are less likely to feel guilty about doing so. Again, this would reintroduce crop deaths, and factory farming.
People notice if you’re vegan! Merely being vegan makes people ask questions, and now people around me have thought more about animal rights than they did in their entire lives before I switched. 3 people have gone vegan from my doing so, and one person was vegetarian for a while. Many friends have also eaten meals at vegan restaurants with me. I imagine none of this would’ve happened if I became a conscientious omnivore.
Even the “nice” farms still engage in cruel practices such as disbudding, branding, the separation of families, and of course - decapitation.
Reducing animals to property status is unlikely to yield the best consequences in the long run. Say what you want about rights, but they are great tools for utility gain. We have some evidence to show that merely eating animals reduces our moral concern for them (although, to be clear, I’ve been told these sorts of studies are hard to replicate, so while it’s very plausible I wouldn’t say it’s conclusive).
The environmental impact of animal farming kills an enormous amount of wild animals. (Water pollution, temperature increase, habitat destruction, ocean dead zones, drought, etc.).
I feel like the rejection of happy farms takes the same form of other utilitarian objections to weird scenarios. A Utilitarian might say that human farms are permissible in principle, but are unlikely to endorse them in the real world because they would likely be a disaster. Which is exactly what has happened in animal farming.
Given uncertainties around the rights of animals, and the practices actually being done while farming them, it seems to me we should play it safe. Maybe, in principle, there’s a world where eating purely grass fed animals is morally preferable - but I don’t think this world is one of them.
“I’ll start this by just pointing out that the argument does assume that Consequentialism is true.”
Not it doesn’t! It’s compatible with Nozick’s “Utilitarian for animals; Kantianism for people” view—or even just “Utilitarianism for bugs; Kantianism for people”
Regarding point #6, I think the impact on wild animals is actually a consideration in favor of high-welfare farms, not against them.
Animal farms take up a lot of land (especially high-welfare farms that give animals a decent amount of space instead of cramming them into battery cages and gestation crates). Presumably this land would have been wild land otherwise.
By preventing them from being born into existence, high-welfare farms spare tons of wild animals from a torturous existence of misery and agony.
This is also why I don’t think pointing out that animal agriculture results in crop deaths than plant agriculture, while true, really shows that animal agriculture is worse than plant agriculture on consequentialist grounds.
It’s not clear that crop deaths result in an overall decrease in utility (maybe the animals killed by combine harvesters would’ve suffered worse deaths in the wild?) and it seems extremely likely to me that replacing wild land with crop land increases overall utility.
To be clear, I am vegan and I think the amount of suffering generated by factory farming outscales the wild animal suffering it prevents (especially when it comes to chickens, who make up 74% of all farmed land animals). I think purchasing factory farmed animal products is egregiously immoral.
I just don’t really think the crops deaths point is as clear-cut as some vegans seem to think it is. I also am unconvinced that the consequentialist case against high-welfare farms succeeds - I think it probably fails.