The unjustified-suffering argument for vegetarianism Simon Clarke

Abstract: A major argument for vegetarianism is that eating animals causes unjustified suffering. While this argument has been articulated by several people, it has received surprisingly little attention. Here I restate it in a way that I believe is most convincing, considering and rejecting the two main justifications for causing suffering in order to eat animals. I compare it to some other prominent arguments for vegetarianism, and discuss a major objection to the argument which focuses on whether the animals would not exist if not bred to be eaten.

The main argument for vegetarianism is a simple and powerful one. Imagine someone who tortures cats for fun. Or consider a person beating a horse mercilessly. These acts of cruelty are clear cases of wrongful treatment of animals. Why are they wrong? What general principle do these acts violate? The following seems a likely answer: The Principle of Unjustified Suffering: it is wrong to cause suffering to an animal without sufficient reason. When we apply this principle to the practice of using animals for food, most such use causes suffering to the animals. So the question is whether the reasons for eating animals are sufficiently strong to justify the suffering inflicted. Vegetarians hold that they are not and hence killing animals for food is wrong.1 This argument–which I will call the argument from unjustified suffering–will be the topic of my discussion. I shall address the question of whether there are reasons sufficiently strong to justify killing animals for food and examine whether the argument avoids a major objection against vegetarianism. But first, two assumptions of the argument should be made clear:

1

This argument has received surprisingly little attention in the philosophical literature. It is briefly mentioned by Stephen Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 44-45 and by Gary L. Francione, “Animals – Property or Persons?” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, ed. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum, 112-116, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). The only extensive discussion of it is Mylan Engel, Jr, “The Immorality of Eating Meat” in The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, ed. Louis P. Pojman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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1. The argument presupposes that it is wrong to treat animals in certain ways. Hence it will do nothing to convince those who believe animals are outside the scope of moral concern, are equivalent to inanimate objects, and can be treated in any way we wish. But this is a small concession. Most people accept that we cannot treat animals the way we treat, say, rocks, even if they disagree about just how we ought to treat them. 2. I have suggested that the Principle of Unjustified Suffering explains why acts of cruelty to animals are wrong, but there may be other explanations for the wrongness. Perhaps, for example, those acts display a lack of virtue by their perpetrators. But the argument from unjustified suffering need not assume that its explanation is the only or even the best explanation for the wrongness of cruelty to animals. So long as it is one good explanation, and I think most people would say it is, then the principle provides a possible argument for vegetarianism.

Suffering Killing animals for food causes them suffering in two respects: the animals suffer in the ways they are farmed and they suffer in the ways they are killed.2 Farming practices involve various cruelties: •

Chickens are crowded into sheds in large numbers, with overcrowding leading to pecking and even cannibalism. They are sometimes de-beaked, de-toed, and removed of their combs. They suffer leg weaknesses, fragile bones, body sores, trampling, and suffocation.

•

Pork available in most supermarkets comes from pigs separated from their mothers at an unnaturally early age, that have their teeth removed, tails cut off,

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The information in this section is taken from Caroline Clough and Barry Kew, The Animal Welfare Handbook (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), chapter 3.

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and are (in the case of males) castrated. The sows used to breed these pigs are kept in small crates that prevent movement and grooming. •

Beef cattle in some places are kept in housing with slatted floors that cause lameness. When kept outdoors, cattle are sometimes not permitted to graze, are crowded into small areas, and suffer exposure.

•

While lambs are treated relatively better than other animals, they are often raised in harsh climates and suffer from having their tails docked and the skin underneath their tails cut off.

•

Fish that are farmed (rather than caught from the sea) are kept in overcrowded cages, which wears down their fins as they try to escape and frustrates their migratory instincts.

These practices are more or less prevalent in different places in the world. Some farms treat their animals in ways that minimise suffering. But factory farming–which involves the worst abuses to animals–accounts for much of the meat available in developed countries and is increasing in developing countries. It was recently estimated that 73% of poultry meat, 43% of beef, and 50% of pork consumed worldwide is factory farmed.3 Animals used for food also suffer in the manner in which they are slaughtered. Transportation to the slaughterhouse causes injuries, bruising, stress, and fighting. Once there, cattle, pork and sheep are stunned either using the captive-bolt method or electrocution, and then have their throats cut. Chickens are killed using either an electrified water bath, metal grid, or hand-held stunner. Fish caught from the sea die of asphyxiation or shock, while farmed fish are also killed by asphyxiation or electric shock. These slaughtering practices differ from place to place. Laws in some 3

Worldwatch Institute figures quoted in Jim Mason and Mary Finelli, “Brave New Farm?” in In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave, ed. Peter Singer, 120 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). 3

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countries attempt to make the method of slaughter as painless to the animal as possible, but it is likely that the final moments of the animal’s life are filled with terror.

Causing If animals killed for food do suffer, are the people who buy meat responsible for the suffering? Do people who eat meat cause animal suffering? A possible objection is that while farmers and slaughterers cause animals to suffer, those who buy and consume meat do not do so. In light of this, some arguments for vegetarianism avoid the claim that eating meat causes suffering and instead maintain that the wrongness lies in symbolically expressing support for an industry that causes suffering4 or benefiting from and participating in (but without causing) a morally wrong practice.5 However the causal connection can be maintained. Eating meat can be said to cause suffering to animals in two ways. First, it does so by way of backwards-causation, where an action is performed in the expectation that something will happen in the future, such as that someone will pay money later for the action. Consider someone who buys stolen goods. Since the goods were stolen in the expectation that they would then be sold on, the buyers of the goods can be said to cause the stealing of the goods, even though the acts of the buyer occur after those of the thief (and even though the thief can also be said to be a cause of the theft). Just because the purchasing comes after the stealing does not mean that it isn’t a cause of it. More generally, if I do X in the expectation that you will do Y in return for me doing X and

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Michael Allen Fox, Deep Vegetarianism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), chapter 2. Jordan Curnutt, “A New Argument for Vegetarianism” Journal of Social Philosophy 28, no. 3 (1997): 166. 5

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I would not do X if not for that expectation, then if you do Y, you cause X by doing Y, whether or not Y comes before or after X. Backwards causation is a controversial notion6, but fortunately the argument from unjustified suffering does not depend on it since the second way that eating meat causes suffering is more straightforward. Eating meat creates demand for more animal meat and hence for more suffering. Whenever anyone buys meat from a shop or at a restaurant, a small incentive is payed for the provider to supply further meat which requires rearing and slaughtering animals in ways that involve suffering. This is different to the first type of causation, according to which, buying meat causes suffering to the animal that the meat came from, whereas according to the second type, buying meat causes suffering to other animals. In both of these causal claims, I have focused on examples where people pay money for animal meat, because that is the most common way that eating meat causes suffering. But the same arguments can be made in cases where no money changes hands. Even when one accepts a meal of animal meat from a friend, or whenever eating meat fulfils the expectations of those who raised and killed the animal and provides incentives for further killing, one is responsible for causing animal suffering. Some interesting questions arise concerning where the causal lines are to be drawn. Causal connections become progressively weaker. Buying a new leather jacket causes suffering. Does buying a second-hand one also cause suffering? Probably. But eventually, the buying of a used leather jacket that has changed hands many times is so far removed from the suffering that it ceases to be a cause. Similarly with buying stolen goods; someone who buys them first-hand is part of the causal process, but someone who buys them after they have changed hands many times is no longer 6

Hanoch Ben-Yami, “The Impossibility of Backwards Causation” The Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 228 (2007). 5

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causing theft. Consider present-day dealings in artefacts which were known to have been stolen in the middle-ages. Buyers cannot be said to cause the stealing (but they may still be doing something wrong such as failing to respect the property rights of the descendants of the rightful owners). But while there is a grey area where it is unclear when someone might be said to be indirectly causing some wrong, it is unnecessary to clarify this area in the case of eating animals. Except for preserved meat that changes hands many times, animal meat is eaten by someone who pays for it, or is closely connected to someone who pays for it, or is in some other way closely connected to the rearing and slaughtering of animals.

Sufficient Reasons? According to the Principle of Unjustified Suffering, it is wrong to cause suffering to an animal without sufficient reason. So far, I have argued that eating meat causes suffering. Hence it is covered by the principle. The next question is whether there are sufficient reasons to eat meat that justify the suffering that it causes. Note that it is not enough that there simply be a reason. The examples we started with–torturing cats and beating horses–were all acts done for a reason such as for fun or perhaps getting the animal to do something. These reasons are often good enough to justify some actions. For example, having fun is a sufficient reason to play with a cat, and getting a horse to do something is sufficient reason to coax it. But these reasons are not sufficient to justify cruelty to the animals. Doing that involves a presumptive wrong of such magnitude that stronger reasons are needed to justify it. There are two main reasons offered to justify eating meat: nutrition and enjoyment. It is often argued that animal meat provides humans with essential dietary nutrition. However, there is strong evidence that a vegetarian diet can provide fully

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adequate nutrition. All the needed vitamins and minerals can be found by consuming the right kinds of vegetarian foods. While there is still some debate over whether vitamins such as B12 can be obtained from vegetables or other foods, these can be obtained through (non-animal derived) supplement pills. So the need for nutrition does not justify the suffering inflicted on animals raised for food. However, these statements are too general. Given people’s differing biological capacities, it is likely that they differ in their abilities to live on a vegetarian diet. Some people seem to flourish on such a diet, while others struggle and even get ill. Some of these latter may not be making reasonable efforts to eat the right variety of foods, but others may still struggle even when making reasonable efforts. Hence, nutrition may for some people justify eating meat, but only when it is necessary for their nutritional needs and these needs could not be met on a reasonable vegetarian diet. However for the majority of people in most countries at least, nutritional needs do not require animal meat, and so the first candidate reason for justifying eating meat fails. The second justification for eating meat is simply the enjoyment people get out of it. Many people claim that even though vegetarian diets are nutritionally adequate, they do not taste as good. It is questionable whether people could not get just as must enjoyment from a vegetarian diet since it can taste much better than people who have not tried it may think. But perhaps there is no arguing with taste. Some meat-eaters would maintain that a non-meat diet would never taste as good. However, even if true, this is not a sufficiently strong reason. Consider other cases of causing suffering for enjoyment. Acts of torturing cats for fun or beating a horse to relieve boredom are not justified simply because the person enjoys doing so. Enjoyment is simply not the right kind of reason to justify causing suffering in such cases, so it cannot be sufficient reason in meat-eating cases. Someone might reply that

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the enjoyment in eating meat is more subtle and refined than torturing cats for fun. But it is doubtful that someone who tortures cats out of a subtle and refined sense of enjoyment, say because he is aware of the history of cat-torturing and appreciates his role in the long tradition, is for that reason justified in doing so. So neither nutrition nor enjoyment are sufficient reasons for the suffering that eating animals causes. But so far, I have considered the two reasons separately and independently. Perhaps together they could constitute sufficient reason. Causing suffering to animals could be justified, so it could be argued, if it is for both nutrition and enjoyment. Showing that this line of argument is mistaken requires distinguishing two different ways in which a reason could be insufficient to justify a presumptive wrong. First, it may simply not count at all as a good reason for the action. Second, it may count as a good reason but not weighty enough to meet the level of sufficiency. Here I am claiming there is a scale of the weightiness of reasons, with a threshold of sufficiency at some point on this scale. The first sort of insufficient reason scores a zero on the scale, while the second sort scores above zero but less than the level of sufficiency. Consider as an illustration the act of breaking a promise. Doing so is justified only with sufficient reason. Some reasons–such as just because one felt like it–do not count at all towards sufficiency, while others–such as causing or failing to prevent harm to others–are the right sort of reasons but do not, if the harms are not significant enough, reach the level of sufficiency. The insufficiency of the nutrition justification is of the first sort. Insofar as adequate nutrition is available elsewhere, that reason does not even count at all as a justification for causing suffering. The status of enjoyment is less clear. One view is that no amount of enjoyment could justify inflicting suffering. Even if someone who tortures cats can truthfully say that he gets a huge amount of enjoyment from doing

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so, it does not seem like the right kind of reason. Another view, however, would hold that if the enjoyment really was substantial enough then it could justify suffering, but it simply never is the case in the real world that people enjoy causing suffering that much. It does not matter for the present argument which view is correct, for on either view, enjoyment and nutrition together would still not meet the level of sufficient reason. The first view that holds that enjoyment is not at all relevant scores zero on the sufficiency scale and hence when combined with nutrition’s score of zero gives an overall result of zero. The second view that holds that enjoyment counts for something scores some value on the scale that is non-zero but below sufficiency and hence when combined with nutrition’s score of zero would still give an overall result of non-zero below sufficiency. So for example, if 10 is the level of sufficiency on the scale of reasons needed before causing suffering is justified, since nutrition scores zero then even if enjoyment scores X where X is something from 1 to 9, nutrition and enjoyment together would still score X, which is below sufficiency. Hence nutrition and enjoyment, even when taken together, do not justify the suffering that eating meat causes. This completes the unjustified suffering argument for vegetarianism. Causing suffering to animals without sufficient reason is wrong, eating meat causes suffering to animals, and there are not sufficient reasons for doing so. What are the implications of the argument? They are both wider and narrower than vegetarianism. Wider, because the argument condemns practices other than eating meat as wrong, such as buying leather goods or factory-farmed eggs of dairy products. Narrower, because the argument would not condemn some meat-eating, such as eating animals that are reared and slaughtered without suffering, and eating animals that die of natural causes.

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Other Arguments To further clarify the argument from suffering, it can be compared to two other influential arguments for vegetarianism. The first, which I shall call the equality view, holds that the interests of all sentient beings ought to be treated equally and that killing animals for food is incompatible with equal treatment. On this view, there is no morally significant characteristic that distinguishes humans from animals that justifies giving a higher status to the former. So causing suffering to an animal is justified only if it would also be justified to cause equivalent suffering to a (severely mentally retarded) human.7 The equality view is compatible with the suffering argument in the sense that there is no contradiction in accepting both as true. But the suffering argument does not presuppose equality and could be accepted while rejecting the equality argument. Even if it turns out that humans have some status that raises all and only them above the level of animals, this does not mean that animals do not count at all. The Principle of Unjustified Suffering is compatible with a view that values humans more than animals. One could think that cruelty to animals is wrong without thereby being committed to thinking that is because animals are equal to humans.8 Another influential argument for vegetarianism attempts to establish that animals have rights and that using them for food violates those rights. This need not be the same as the equality argument, since an animal rights view might still accept a fundamental inequality between humans and animals. But a rights view has to hold that there is some characteristic of animals that is important enough to establish that

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Peter Singer, Animal Liberation Second edition (London: Thorsons, 1991). Contrary to this, Francione argues that the principle of unjustified suffering incorporates the principle of equal consideration. See Francione, 121. 8

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they are the kinds of beings that can have rights.9 The suffering argument is again compatible with the rights view, but does not presuppose it. It is possible to accept the wrongness of causing animals suffering without sufficient reason, without thereby being committed to the view that animals have rights.

The Problem of Non-Existence A common objection made against any argument for vegetarianism is that the animals would not exist but for the practice of eating them so at least they have had some life, which is better than none at all. Applied to the suffering argument, the objection says that even though animals suffer when they are reared and slaughtered for food, making animals suffer is usually wrong because suffering is bad for them in that they would be better off if they did not suffer. Consider the examples I began with, such as torturing cats or beating a horse. Such acts of cruelty make the animals worse off than they would otherwise be. But while this means that there are ethical standards for the way we treat most animals, animals for food are a special case. If we did not eat them, they would not be better off since they would not exist in the first place. However it is not clear that the animals would not exist anyway. If people could not eat meat at all, then that would probably be true. But on the argument from unjustified suffering, people are permitted to eat meat insofar as that does not cause suffering. So, assuming people would eat meat from humanely-treated animals, the animals currently made to suffer would exist anyway if not made to suffer. As long as the animals would be bred anyway, causing them suffering does harm them. The animals could have an even better life if they were brought into existence and then not

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Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 11

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caused suffering.10 So the conclusion would remain that anyone who buys meat of those animals is causing suffering to animals. But what if the animals would not be brought into existence? There might be cases in which this is true, such as when animal meat will be purchased only at a price so low that it requires unethical treatment. Ethical treatment of the animals may require practices that add to the price of the meat to such an extent that there would not be sufficient demand to make it worthwhile. So if causing suffering is not permitted, the animals would not be brought into existence. In such cases, would the suffering be justified since the alternative is non-existence? It would not if the suffering to the animals is so severe that their lives are worse than non-existence, for then the animals are worse off overall. But what if the animals have lives worth living even though made to suffer in the rearing and slaughtering process? Then it would seem that eating them does not cause them suffering. One way of trying to address this question is to revise the imaginary cases I used to motivate the principle of unjustified suffering. Consider someone who breeds cats for the purpose of torturing them or someone who breeds horses just to have something to beat when he feels the urge. Many people would judge such practices wrong, even if it is true that the animals would not exist if the practices are prohibited and even if the torture and beatings are not so severe that they make the animals’ lives so miserable that it would have been better if they had never been born. This might be because suffering has a special moral significance that makes these actions nevertheless wrong. If so, then the principle of unjustified suffering still condemns those practices as wrong, and would also do so with animals bred for food. However, while this is a plausible possible 10

However, would they be the same animals? Probably not because if humane farming were practiced, different animals would likely exist than under factory farming. So refraining from eating meat so as not to cause Daisy the cow to suffer would not make sense – Daisy would not exist, even though some other cow just like Daisy would be raised instead on a humane farm. There is not space here to examine this difficulty.

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argument, it takes us significantly beyond the argument from unjustified suffering. That argument is best understood as appealing to our common everyday moral belief that it is wrong to cause animals suffering because it harms the animals’ welfare in the sense that they would be better off without being subjected to cruelty. But these intuitions would not apply in the present cases, namely those where the animals would not otherwise exist. So the argument from unjustified suffering does not condemn those cases as wrong. In some cases, then, eating animals does not cause them suffering. These cases are when the animals would not exist otherwise and their lives are worth living. A person could eat those animals and not be causing them suffering since the alternative would be non-existence. But eating animals does cause them suffering in other cases, when either the animals would exist otherwise, or when they would not exist but the suffering is so severe that the animals’ lives are not worth living. (This latter is arguably the case with many factory-farming practices.)

Summary Since it is wrong to cause suffering to animals without sufficient reason, and since eating animals causes them suffering in various ways, and since there are no sufficiently strong reasons for causing this suffering, we ought not to eat animals. This argument for vegetarianism is a strong one since the wrongness of causing suffering is strong. But it does allow some exceptions. It leaves open the possibility that eating meat could be justified if the animals do not suffer or if they would not exist otherwise (so long as the suffering does not make their existence not worth living). Such a conclusion will seem too qualified for some. For a less qualified argument, vegetarians will have to look elsewhere, such as to equality or rights or

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simply the wrongness of killing.11 But for those who think these more ambitious arguments fail, then this qualified conclusion might be the truth about the ethics of eating animals. Pragmatic considerations may take us a bit further. For example, cases where the principle of suffering allows using animals for food may be rare and knowing when they occur difficult to judge. So refraining from eating all meat (except when one knows for certain that the animals have been humanely treated) might well be the most reasonable decision someone can make.

Acknowledgements I thank the audience at the “On the Ethical Life” conference in Sydney, April 2007 for their comments, especially Peter Singer. I also thank Peter Wenz and a philosophy seminar audience at University of Canterbury for further comments.

Bibliography: Ben-Yami, Hanoch. “The Impossibility of Backwards Causation” The Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 228 (2007): 439-445. Clark, Stephen. The Moral Status of Animals. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Clough, Caroline and Barry Kew. The Animal Welfare Handbook. London: Fourth Estate, 1993. Curnutt, Jordan. “A New Argument for Vegetarianism” Journal of Social Philosophy 28, no. 3 (1997): 153-172. Engel, Jr, Mylan. “The Immorality of Eating Meat” In The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature. edited by Louis P. Pojman, 856-889. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Fox, Michael Allen. Deep Vegetarianism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

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For this latter, see Andrew Tardiff, “Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism” Social Theory and Practice 22, no. 3 (1996) and Curnutt.

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Francione, Gary L. “Animals – Property or Persons?” In Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, edited by Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum, 108-142. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Mason, Jim and Mary Finelli. “Brave New Farm?” In In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave, edited by Peter Singer, 104-122. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. Second edition, London: Thorsons, 1991. Tardiff, Andrew. “Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism” Social Theory and Practice 22, no. 3, (1996): 299-314.

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