Does "Meatout Day" Help Animals?

For the last several years, an organization called the Farm Animal Rights Movement has organized an annual event called "Meatout" that calls for people to give up meat for one day, the first day of spring, and also organizes "Meatless Mondays." Other self-proclaimed animal rights organizations, including PETA, Vegan Outreach, Mercy For Animals, and several others also promote the event and are listed as supporters on the Meatout (www.meatout.org) home page, as are numerous celebrity promoters such as Alicia Silverstone and Ed Asner.

Undoubtedly the organizations and individuals involved in promoting Meatout believe that they are serving the cause of animal rights by doing so. But are they? What if anti-slavery activists had supported a promotional campaign in favor of slaveowners giving their slaves Sunday off? Or what if activists in the Civil Rights movement had promoted "Lynching-Free Wednesdays"?

Of course, neither of these movements did these things, and there's a good reason why: Nothing says "I don't take my ethical principles seriously" like advocating that others give up actions contrary to one's ethics one day a week--or, in the present case, give up ONE unethical behavior (eating meat) for one day per year. Animals are sentient beings who can experience pain and suffering just as humans can. Treating them as mere "things," as nothing more than property to be used for humans' pleasure and convenience, is not any more ethically justifiable on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday than it is on Monday. Using them as milk slaves, having them fight with each other, kidnapping them from the wild and putting them on exhibit to a curious public in cages, or other uses that revolve around our needs and desires and ignore theirs are no more ethically justifiable than killing them for their flesh. Anyone who is serious about the notion that nonhuman animals have the right to not be treated as "things" should not be promoting "Meatout" or "Meatless Mondays."

Do Vegans Think Vegetarians Are “Bad People”?

Frequently, I’ve had occasion to observe or participate in conversations with (lacto-ovo) vegetarians along the following lines: “Why are vegans so critical of vegetarians? We’re on the same side as you; we all love animals and would like to reduce their suffering. Shouldn’t we unite around our common concern for animals rather than being divided?” Some vegetarians have even asked me if I thought vegetarians were "bad people" because they weren't vegan.

Well, no, I don’t think that being vegetarian rather than vegan makes someone a bad person. For that matter, I don’t think meat eaters are bad people, either. I don’t even think that hunters, fishermen/women, or participants in bullfighting or dogfighting--or even participants in genocide--are necessarily any more “evil” than most people, though some of them may be. An abundance of social psychological research has shown that in some situations, ordinary people without any known psychopathology are capable of treating other sentient beings, human and nonhuman alike, in ways that almost anyone would agree are cruel. And well over 99% of people in our society, including the vast majority of people who are now vegan--me included--have consumed animal products for a considerable portion of their lives. Consuming animal products is a “normal” activity in our society, engaged in by people who by and large are not “evil,” “bad,” or “crazy.” Even participation in an activity such as dogfighting that is widely condemned in our society is not in itself indicative of a person’s character, because there are subcultures in which dogfighting is condoned, a point that I explored in my last blog entry.

Moreover, if my experience with vegetarians (and my own experience when I was vegetarian) is any indication, insofar as they are aware of animal suffering, many vegetarians do genuinely care about animals. In addition to not eating animal flesh, vegetarians often avoid buying leather or fur and products that have been tested on animals, and many avoid buying other products, such as cheese made with animal rennet, that use animal parts.

So, my raising the issue of veganism with vegetarians isn’t based on a belief that I or other vegans are “better” people than vegetarians, or that vegans alone care about animals. Rather, my view is that both being vegan myself and encouraging other people (whatever their current lifestyle) to become vegan are logical consequences of my assessment of humans’ ethical obligations to animals. Animals are not “things,” but sentient beings. Most animal species are, like humans, able to experience pain and fear; they are capable of suffering. Since we humans do not need to eat animals or animal products to be healthy, and in fact are typically healthier if we do not eat animal products, we have no more right to cause an animal to suffer than we do to cause another human to suffer. In essence, both human and nonhuman animals have the right not to be treated as “things,” as property exploitable for the sake of human pleasure or convenience. Being vegan is the only way to be fully consistent with this view.

But why isn’t being vegetarian enough? Consuming dairy products and eggs doesn’t kill the hen or dairy cow, does it? And vegetarians typically consume a smaller amount of animal products than omnivores. Wouldn’t it be better in terms of reducing animal suffering if, say, ten people became vegetarians than if one person became vegan?

There are a number of problems with this view. For starters, the notion that being vegetarian doesn't result in animals' death is false. Furthermore, the distinction vegetarians make between flesh and and non-flesh animal products is arbitrary. The view that eating cheese, eggs, etc. but foregoing the consumption of animal flesh is somehow kinder and gentler to animals than consuming an equivalent amount of animal products that include flesh reflects a common misconception about how the dairy and egg industries operate. Like companies in the meat industry or any other industry, businesses that produce eggs or dairy products exist to make a profit. What has to happen for that to occur? Well, first of all, there’s the issue of what to do with the males. Male chickens do not produce eggs, and dairy bulls do not produce milk. It isn’t profitable to feed animals from whom no animal products can be obtained, so one of two things happens to male animals in these industries: either they are killed immediately after birth (the typical practice in the egg industry), or they are raised for their flesh (the typical practice in the dairy industry), most commonly for veal. In short, male animals in the dairy and egg industries suffer greatly and die young, just like their counterparts in the beef and chicken industries.

And what about the females? Let’s consider the example of dairy cows. Female cows’ destiny is to spend their lives as, essentially, milk slaves, producing milk for human consumption. And, since their milk is destined for human consumption, that means that their calves hardly get to drink it at all! Calves are taken from their mothers within days of birth, never to see them again. A few months later, when the lactating mother’s milk production begins to fall off, she is impregnated again (typically through artificial insemination), and the cycle begins anew. After four years or so, about 1/5 of a cow’s life expectancy, she joins her male counterparts at the slaughterhouse, because her milk production has declined to the point that it is no longer profitable to keep her around. (The fate of egg-laying hens is similar: When their egg production wanes, typically at about 18 months of age, they are sent off to slaughter.)

Even if there weren't death involved, and even if it didn't involve breaking up families, taking cows' milk from them involves treating them as if they were our property. To see this, consider the following hypothetical example involving humans. Let’s suppose there was a nursing human mother who was a very deep sleeper, and someone sneaked into her bedroom, hooked her up to a breast milk pump, and obtained some of her milk for his personal consumption. Even if the mother never woke up during the theft of her milk, would anyone consider this ethical? If the milk thief was later apprehended, would anyone buy an excuse such as “Well, she never would have known I took it, I didn’t hurt her and, besides, I really like cheese made from human milk”? Of course not, and the reason is obvious: The milk does not belong to him; it belongs to the mother and her baby. Even if the milk burglar didn’t significantly hurt the mother and baby and was never detected, he has exploited the mother for his own selfish ends by taking something that does not belong to him. And if it’s not okay to treat a human mother in this way, what makes us think it is okay to do that to a cow? If we think about the matter honestly, the reason why it’s thought to be acceptable becomes apparent: In our society, humans are regarded as having the right to not be exploited--to not be treated as property or a “thing” to be used as a means to our pleasurable or convenient ends--but we do not regard cows or other animals (except, for some of us, our pets) as having such a right. As a result, whether it be for their flesh, their fur or hides, their secretions, or whatever purpose, nonhuman animals are exploited by both the consumers and producers of animal “products.” As an ethical vegan, I don’t think consuming animal secretions such as cow’s milk is ethically acceptable, because it involves treating an animal as an object every bit as much as killing it for his or her “meat” does.

Even if there was an abundance of dairy farmers who weren’t interested in making a living at farming and didn’t kill males at a young age, separate mothers and calves so as to divert almost all of the milk for human consumption, deliberately keep cows pregnant or lactating continuously for all of their milk-producing years, etc., and there were consumers willing and able to pay astronomical prices for dairy products produced in this manner (which would be very costly to produce and could not be mass-produced), the question remains: Whose milk is it, anyway? (And whose eggs or honey, in the case of chickens and bees?) Even if it were the case that the dairy, egg, and honey industries never killed a single animal, even if animals in these industries were not routinely branded, debeaked, confined in close quarters, etc., it would remain the case that consumers of these products treat these animals as if they were mere property, to be exploited for the consumer’s pleasure and convenience. To an ethical vegan, this is simply not an acceptable way to treat animals.

Ultimately, although the fact that animals can suffer is what makes the way humans treat them important, strictly speaking, veganism is not about reducing suffering; it’s about upholding to the greatest extent possible in one’s everyday life the principle that animals have the right to not be exploited for human purposes. Being vegetarian no more upholds this principle than, say, shoplifting from Macy’s but not shoplifting from Barnes & Noble upholds the principle that people shouldn’t shoplift. If we take seriously the idea that animals are not mere “things,” but sentient beings whose autonomy we need to respect, then behaving in accordance with this idea some or even most of the time is not enough; we need to go vegan!