BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited

Subject: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 03:12 PM

Today's Sunday New York Times has an interesting article by Michael Pollan on animal rights. I suspect that it has to do with the publicity around "Dominion", Matthew Scully's book on animals from a Christian conservative perspective. Pollan takes an "animal welfare" perspective -- that the current treatment of animals in the food production system is unconscionable; rather than a vegan or pure animal rights view. More interestingly, he believes that factory farming is an expression of capitalism at its unfettered worst, efficiency of production with no other moral boundaries. In this, he agrees with Scully -- one of the Achilles' heels of contemporary conservatism: can you support free market capitalism if it generates a completely amoral production system?


He supports "free farming" as an alternative. I can't say I agree with everything he says, but it is a decent article for a change. Maybe it will do some good.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: GUEST,paddymac
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 03:48 PM

This is topic of high emotional content, and I applaud what I perceive as your effort to promote rational discussion. The core question, or so it seems to me, is not "how" but "whether" animals ought to be raised for food. If the question of "whether" is answered in the affirmative, the question of "how" is essentially relegated to the area of effectiveness. Determination of animal density (biomass per unit area) in cultural systems is a process of optimization, which may or may not mean maximization, largely determined by the species being cultured. Increased densities have both problems and advantages, and resolution of the pertinent questions is often site or case specific.
And then there are the really murky questions, such as: how do we decide which species we wish to get excited about? Good luck.

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 05:01 PM

No, that cannot be all of it. If you decide whether or not to marry someone, the how is not simply relegated to the area of effectiveness. To say that since we have decided to kill animals, the only criterion is effectiveness (whatever effectiveness means), and so are engaged in moral evil and can therefore turn a blind eye to what that entails is what a lot of people do, but it is shaky. Whatever my views on capital punishment, drawing and quartering the victim is even more repugnant. (On the other hand, if you are against capital punishment you might argue that the more gruesome the better, as long as it is carried out in full public view). Pollan argues for transparent slaughter houses.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Big Tim
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 05:13 PM

Compassion in world farming?

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Mudlark
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 05:27 PM

Though I eat very little meat I accept the fact that I belong to a species considered to be omnivores, and now and then crave animal protein. I accept the fact that "raised" meat borders on a necessity. How such meat is raised, however, defines a culture, in my estimation. Feed lots, chicken factories, veal cages...these all have implications far beyond the obvious cruelty aspect, and I think society as a whole suffers from such abuse.

Meat raised in this way, in a totally artificial environment, with antibiotics, inappropriate food such as urea and animal byproducts being fed to herbavores at worst, and unnatural at best, is not healthy food. Slaughter houses are rife with trauma, both mental and physical, which changes hormonal balances in the animal, releasing adrenalin, stiffening muscles, further contaminating the meat. And the post slaughter handling, thru the long chain of processing and shipment is disastrous.

Commercially raised meat is a brutalizing business. It is not possible to work day in and day out around so much palpable suffering, the stench, the crowding, aberrant behavior caused by these conditions, without a frightening reduction of personal sensitivity. Studies have been done showing that pathological criminals often signal their behavior toward humans with brutal behavior to other animals.

I don't think one needs to be a calf hugger to see that capitolism has run amok here, any more than one needs to be a tree hugger to be appalled at the destruction of old growth forests when sustained forestry, at a slightly higher initial cost, is bypassed. It is the same with industrial waste, pollution...aghhh...the list is endless.
This is where capitolism fails big-time, in my estimation. Without rigorous and uncorruptible oversight, it is too short sighted, too driven by gain, to be a long-range workable economic system.

And one only has to read the papers to know that that kind of oversight is not happening. And in the meat business, this means not only are animals suffering, we are poisoning and brutalizing ourselves in the process.

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:07 AM

Oh darn! I thought this was a thread where the nefarious criminality of animals was finally going to be exposed. I was going to copy it and show it to some local squirrels that have consumed my pear tree's output for two years running. Hoping that a thread that condems such behavior would at least turn them from MY pear tree to that of my neighbor's.

Yes, yes, yes! High emotional content indeed. That's what happens when one anthropomorphizes. Animal rights. Vegetable rights. Mineral rights (no, wait a minute, doesn't that deal with real estate?). It makes a mockery of HUMAN rights. It is very silly as well!

CB

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: mg
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 01:35 AM

I think we need to pay more for food and insist on better conditions (and laws) for the animals and for the people who slaughter them which is a whole other sordid story. I am totally for range chickens and grass fed cows..read Dr. Mary Enig on health benefits of butter from grass fed cows, as well as the meat..we shouldn't be feeding cows that want to eat grass corn which is not their natural food (nor is it probably ours) and somehow that is a cause for more antibiotic use. Dr. Mercola writes about it. I live in a place of high poverty and unemployment that could support so many grass fed animals..cost would be higher but the animals would be healthy and we would be too. A lot of changes can be made by people supporting their local farmers and also by reading people like Dr. Enig who says a return to people eating dairy fats (if their metabolism thrives on it, as many of Northern European descent do) can save the family farm...We have broken the cycle in the US and some other places of rampant overpopulation, so the need for ever cheaper foods to feed families too large for the breadwinner to support is now reduced. Many, not all, Americans have discretionary income, going into overhousing in particular and a lot of this could be diverted into better food with more support for the farmer and better conditions for livestock.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Kim C
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 09:51 AM

I buy free-range whenever I can.

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: GUEST,paddymac
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 11:35 AM

"To say that since we have decided to kill animals, the only criterion is effectiveness (whatever effectiveness means), and so are engaged in moral evil and can therefore turn a blind eye to what that entails is what a lot of people do, but it is shaky."

Peter, I think you've imported some of that emotional content I noted into the meaning of my remarks. "Raising animals for food" includes breeding, birthing, feeding, and, in the end, killing. You are free to consider that process a 'moral evil' if you choose, as I am free to disagree.

Given the reluctance of the human species to regulate its own population growth rate, organized production of foods is a necessity.
"Hunting and gathering" has become mythologized in many respects, but is simply not a practical method to feed the world population. When the effect of modern techonolgies is plugged into the equation, hunting and gathering becomes environmental devastation. How do you propose the collective "we" feed ourselves?

Subject: RE: BS: Animal Rights and Wrongs Revisited
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 12:44 PM

I did indeed collapse several notions into one sentence, too quickly. I was trying to say that some people (not necessarily you) think that once we have decided to kill animals, then arguing about the details is absurd in the face of the larger evil.


Surely "organized production of foods" can include many things besides factory farming, and we are not necessarily reduced to "hunting and gathering". Should we not be using technology and other skills to reduce suffering? That is what modern medicine is about, after all. With a concerted effort, we could do the same with modern food production -- how to minimize animal suffering, and yet feed ourselves.

yours, Peter T.