[In April the NYT ran an essay contest on this subject. I didn’t expect to win as all the judges had been writing against the eating of meat for years. But at the publishing of the top six entries whose name should be among them but that of Ingrid Newkirk the founder of PETA. The fix went deeper than I had thought.
JimG33]
Since the rules of the contest prevent arguments on hedonistic or epicurean grounds, and by statement Dr. Singer has taken the high ground of utilitarianism, I feel I, must of necessity, find some useful definition of ethics. When I fire up my Kindle and go to The Oxford Dictionary of English and look up ethics the definition given is: [usually treated as] moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. There is also a side bar: Schools of ethics in Western thought can be divided, very roughly, into three sorts. The first drawing on the works of Aristotle holds that the virtues (such as justice, charity, and generosity) are dispositions to act in ways that benefit both the person and the person’s society. The second, defended particularly by Kant makes the concept of duty central to morality; humans are bound, from a knowledge of their duty as rational beings. Thirdly, utilitarianism asserts that the guiding principle of conduct should be the greatest happiness or benefit of the greatest number.
Unless we can find some way to give animals the same rights as humans then they don’t come under any of these three schools, if only because they do not have the capacity of reason. As an example; if my pet chimpanzee destroys my neighbor’s face he is not arrested, assigned a lawyer, asked to plead, and tried before a jury of his peers on a charge of assault and battery. Instead he is immediately put down and the owner, who will not be brought up on a charge of slavery, charged with criminal negligence. Animals do not know right from wrong, and they never will. Therefore we should treat them with as much kindness and generosity as is necessary to our purposes and one of those chief purposes is the harvesting of meat.
In the silhouettes that illustrate the story both domesticated and wild food animals are shown. For the wild we are just one predator among many. I’m sure we have all seen what happens to the slowest wildebeest in the herd as it moves to new pastures. But for the domesticated animals an implied contract exists. Over the past few thousand years these animals the cow, duck, goose, pig, lamb, and chicken have given up their wild state so we can husband them; in doing so we have become their designated predator, killing the wolves and lions that they would have to sacrifice their slowest member to. The least obvious side of the contract is that if the Human race were to go vegan a mass killing of many millions of these food animals, leading to extinction, would have to take place as no one is going to take a feed lot cow as a house pet.
Finally I think the question is not one of ethics but of aesthetics. In a culture where most people get their meat on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic the slaughter house is so off putting that one must turn away in disgust. Therefore arguments will be made to end the meat trade, no matter how much of the economy is destroyed in the changeover.
I thank you for this contest as these are questions that have been stewing in my mind for years. And watching my niece agonize over whether to eat a spoon full of trout mousse this past Christmas seemed to bring it all to a head for me.
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