Radio piece on veganism

In a few weeks I'll be recording a script explaining the rationale for going vegan for the "Speak Your Mind" segment on the local public radio station, WFIU. (The delay is because they have a backlog and only broadcast these once a week.) May as well post it here so people who don't listen to WFIU can see it! Here it is:

"This is Jeff Melton. Nothing shapes our beliefs, values and actions more profoundly than our culture, yet we often don't notice its effects. Stealthily, it leads us to believe things without necessarily pondering their implications or why we believe them.

Consider our attitudes toward animals. Many of us call ourselves animal lovers. Many of us consider our pets to be family members, and grow very attached to them. If you took a poll of your friends and relatives, most would say that it is wrong to unnecessarily harm animals.

Yet, we unnecessarily harm animals every day when we eat them or their products, wear their fur or skin, or use them in other ways. In the US, 10 billion animals are killed for food or other uses every year, generally far short of their natural lifespan, and they suffer greatly during their lives. Whether raised for their flesh or because they produce milk or eggs, animals in the livestock industry are essentially treated as our slaves. Animal agriculture also causes many environmental problems; for example, it is one of the leading causes of global warming.

We don't need to consume animal products for our health; in fact, the evidence is overwhelming that a plant-based diet is very healthy and that, conversely, heavy consumption of animal products is very bad for our health. Nor do we need to eat them to enjoy delicious meals, as anyone who has eaten a well-prepared vegan meal can attest.

In short, we don't need to consume meat, dairy or other animal products at all. There is no logical justification for treating some species of animals as loved family members, while treating others as commodities that we use to satisfy our taste for animal flesh or other desires, and both we and our fellow animals would be better off if we didn't. Just as every human, regardless of their intelligence or any other characteristic, has the right not to be treated as others’ property, other animals should be accorded that right as well. So please consider going vegan. It’s not difficult, it’s healthy, and it’s the right thing to do. For Speak Your Mind, this is Jeff Melton."

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!

Thoughts On The Michael Vick Case

Recently, much attention has been focused on the case of Michael Vick, a professional football player who spearheaded a dogfighting ring. His cruel treatment of dogs outraged not only animal rights advocates, but the general public, the majority of whom consider dogfighting to be morally abhorrent. (A recent poll found that 81% of Americans considered dogfighting to be “America’s most hated sport.”) Although he has served a two-year prison sentence, many have called for him to be banned from professional football and perhaps receive other punishments such as a more extensive jail sentence, and have vowed to protest the Philadelphia Eagles and the NFL over his recent reinstatement in the NFL and hiring by the Philadelphia Eagles. It has been argued that his cruelty to animals was so far beyond the pale of civilized behavior that he is almost certainly a sociopath of some sort, and incapable of expressing genuine remorse or changing his ways. Since Vick was part of a dogfighting subculture in which such treatment of dogs is routine, the implication is that participation in dogfighting generally is a sign of serious mental disturbance.

In this blog entry, I will not attempt to diagnose Michael Vick’s condition, nor will I speculate on the likelihood that he can genuinely mend his ways. Even with far more detailed knowledge of someone’s life than I have of Michael Vick’s, diagnosing personality disorders is an undertaking fraught with difficulties even for trained mental health professionals (which, as a social rather than clinical psychologist, I cannot claim to be). And even if it can be conclusively established that Vick has exhibited “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others” since the age of 15, as called for by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria for antisocial personality disorder, the issue of whether such a condition can be successfully treated remains controversial among professional psychologists. Instead, my focus will be on the issue of how dogfighting fits into the general picture of humans’ treatment of nonhuman animals and of each other.

Although there is universal agreement among animal rights advocates that Michael Vick’s treatment of his dogs was horribly cruel and inhumane, there is considerable disagreement among them about the extent to which involvement in dogfighting should be regarded as an aberration in a society where cruelty to animals is so widespread that it is the norm rather than the exception. In an article provocatively titled: We Are All Michael Vick, Rutgers law professor and veteran animal rights activist Gary Francione points out that in the United States alone, more than 10 billion animals are killed for food annually, and that the typical treatment of these animals is every bit as cruel in terms of the amount of suffering inflicted upon them as the treatment endured by Michael Vick’s dogs. The vast majority of Americans eat animal products, and thereby support with their food purchases the very same sort of cruelty that the vast majority of them condemn in Michael Vick, despite the fact that it is not only unnecessary for humans to eat animal products, but actually healthier for them if they don’t. The inconsistency in attitudes toward different animal species is quite striking. Many Americans regard their dogs, cats, or other pets as family members, and an even larger number find practices such as dogfighting to be morally abhorrent, yet the vast majority feel little compunction about sticking a fork into the flesh of a pig, cow, chicken, or fish that they know perfectly well has been killed for the benefit of their taste buds. And, whereas dogfighting is not only widely condemned, but illegal in all 50 states, the abusive treatment of farm animals that is standard practice in animal agriculture is not similarly condemned, and is legal throughout the United States. Francione concludes: “Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former. How removed from the screaming crowd around the dog pit is the laughing group around the summer steak barbecue?...We are all Michael Vick.”

It is certainly true that the livestock industry treats animals every bit as cruelly as those involved in dogfighting treat dogs. And since at the very least, those who eat animals are generally well aware that the “meat” on their plate got there because an animal was slaughtered, they bear responsibility for those animals’ deaths.

Some animal advocates agree that just as much harm is inflicted on livestock as on fighting dogs, but nonetheless see involvement in dogfighting as distinct in many respects from the consumption of animal products. For one thing, it is argued, eating animal flesh and other animal products is almost universally accepted in our culture, whereas dogfighting is widely disdained, and therefore it should be universally understood that dogfighting is immoral. Secondly, it is argued that although they are undoubtedly aware that animals are slaughtered for food, few people who consume beef, dairy, fish, eggs, etc. understand the magnitude of suffering that animals raised for food undergo. Obviously, it is much harder to remain ignorant of animals' suffering when one is inflicting it face-to-face, as Michael Vick and other dog fighters do, and many would argue that being in a position to experience animals' suffering firsthand and choosing to do it anyway is a more reprehensible act than inflicting suffering at a distance. In fact, many would go further and say that Michael Vick or anyone else who engages in that level of cruelty to dogs face-to-face is a profoundly disturbed, amoral human being, a sociopath.

One objection that can be made to the first point is that it presumes that the cultural experience of everyone residing within a given country is the same. That presumption can reasonably be questioned. The Wikipedia entry on dogfighting notes: "Dog fighting has been popular in many countries throughout history and continues to be practiced both legally and illegally around the world. Dog fighting is widely practiced in much of Latin America, especially in Argentina, Peru and many parts of Brazil." It goes on to note that dogfighting was legal in the United States as recently as 100 years ago, and was even sanctioned by the American Kennel Club! Thus, not surprisingly, a dogfighting subculture persists in the United States. According to sociologist Rhonda Evans, who has studied this dogfighting subculture extensively, it is most prevalent among working-class Southern males. In her interviews with participants in dogfighting, Evans notes a common thread that is also present in other dogfighting cultures around the world: "A machismo mentality." In the American South, and many other cultures around the world, there is nothing more important to a man than protecting his honor. Unfortunately for animals, owning an animal that is good at fighting has become an important symbol of masculinity and means of protecting honor in many such cultures. "Tough dogs are a symbol of manhood," Evans argues, "and by winning, the dogs build up their owners' ego." Given dogfighting's important social function, Evans says, participants do not regard it as cruel, but rather as a "valid, legitimate sport that is no worse than boxing or football." In short, it is likely that participants in dogfighting, like those who hunt, fish, raise livestock, or eat animal products, do not generally believe they are doing anything wrong.

Certainly, it is true that aside from knowing that (since humans are not scavengers) their eating meat entails animals being slaughtered, many people remain largely or completely unaware of the suffering endured by animals raised for food. That was true in my case. I became a vegetarian (that is, I stopped eating animal flesh but continued to eat other animal products such as dairy) in the mid-’80s, primarily because I had read that it was better for health and the environment to eat lower on the “food chain,” and secondarily because I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with eating slaughtered animals. However, I remained largely in the dark about the way the livestock industry treated animals until several years later, when I read John Robbins’ book Diet for a New America. Upon learning of the horrors of livestock farming--branding, castration, and other painful procedures administered without anesthesia, the crowded and unsanitary conditions in which the animals typically lived, the separation of mothers and their offspring often within days of the latter’s birth, feeding of an unnatural diet to fatten animals up for slaughter (which generally takes place at a small fraction of an animal’s natural lifespan), the treatment of dairy cows as essentially milk machines for their entire lives, and on and on--I became vegan almost immediately.

However, by no means is ignorance of the treatment of animals the only reason why people continue to eat them. As with any culturally sanctioned practice, a variety of justifications for consumption of animal products have become part of the fabric of the culture, as has a tendency for people to avoid or distance themselves from the consequences for animals of consuming flesh or other animal products, and for society to make it easy for them to do so. Protection of the ego by any means necessary is a fundamental psychological process. We use euphemisms to refer to the dead animals on our plate: “Beef” instead of “cow meat”; “pork” instead of “pig meat,” etc. Slaughterhouses are generally situated in remote locations. Advertisements for animal products often display cartoonish, smiling animals, and imply that the animals raised for our consumption have happy lives. Some ads for animal products even depict animals as wanting to be killed and eaten! (The website www.suicidefood.com catalogs hundreds of ads of this nature.) Animals are continually portrayed as being inferior to humans in every imaginable way, and a favored way of describing people we don’t like is with animal names: “Rats,” “worms,” “beasts,” “pigs,” “vermin,” “insects,” etc. Obviously, regarding any being (whether human or not) as inferior to oneself makes it easier to inflict harm on it. I could go on, but you get the point: These sorts of ego defense tactics exist for a reason. We would not avail ourselves of them if there were not some pre-existing unease about the ways in which we use animals. As is often the case with other realms of life where defense mechanisms are used extensively, they serve the ego at a great price: Even when confronted with strong evidence that their continued consumption of animal products is harmful to themselves, the environment, and other animals, many people continue to be very reluctant to question or change what they are doing, because they manage to find ways to keep their unease at bay sufficiently to continue it.

However, one might object, eating animals involves cruelty at a distance -- in fact, many people are not aware of the treatment of farm animals in general, aside from knowing that they ultimately wind up in a slaughterhouse. Surely, someone who inflicts cruelty face-to-face as Michael Vick did must be a very sick person.

Psychological research, however, suggests that perfectly ordinary, average people are quite capable of inflicting cruelty face-to-face, given the right circumstances. In 1963, social psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to investigate the extent to which average, ordinary people were willing to inflict what they believed to be painful electric shocks on someone else purely because an experimenter ordered them to. What Milgram found was quite shocking: 28 of the 40 subjects in his initial study continued to follow the experimenter’s orders to supposedly inflict painful electric shocks all the way to the very end of the experiment, at which point the subjects had every reason to believe they were inflicting shocks that were not only painful, but quite possibly dangerous. Although subjects who were face-to-face with the person supposedly being shocked were less willing to obey the experimenter’s orders, nonetheless more than 20% of them obeyed the experimenter’s orders all the way to the most intense “shock.”

A similar study where the cover story, as in Milgram's experiments, was that the experiment was examining the effects of punishment on learning, investigated subjects' willingness to deliver electric shocks to a puppy. In this case, real shocks were delivered. Although not as intense as advertised, the shocks clearly caused the puppy pain. Yet, despite being able to see and hear the puppy suffer, 50% of the males and fully 100% of the females in this experiment administered shocks all the way to a supposed level of 450 volts. Although most were clearly upset by what they were ordered to do (as were Milgram's subjects), they did it anyway. In these and many other similar studies, a variety of situational factors contributed to the high level of obedience that was usually observed, most prominently the opportunity for subjects to use the excuse that the experimenter rather than themselves was responsible for the suffering that they themselves chose to inflict on the victim.

But one needn't delve into the experimental social psychology literature to find examples of perfectly ordinary, average people inflicting face-to-face cruelty on both human and nonhuman animals. Milgram's obedience research was inspired by his observation that millions of "good Germans," average, "normal" people, appeared to have participated in the Nazi Holocaust merely because they, like Hitler's right-hand man Adolph Eichmann, were "just following orders." Countless other tragic historical events can be described in a similar manner.

In the realm of more everyday events, millions of Americans hunt every year, and tens of millions go fishing. When I was a boy, I myself went fishing with my dad on a regular basis. Although I was a little uneasy as I watched fish struggle and suffocate, it never occurred to me just how terribly, terribly wrong what we were doing was. If my dad and millions of other people thought it was an okay thing to do, then as far as I was concerned it was an okay thing to do. What is or isn't socially normative, at least within one's own particular social circle, may be the ultimate situational factor. Indeed, in Milgram’s experiments, the presence of accomplices of the experimenter who displayed disobedience almost completely eliminated obedience, whereas the presence of accomplices who obeyed the experimenter without question increased an already high level of obedience by the real participants.

Whether one is involved in dogfighting, fishing, or eating animal products, the fact that one's friends, relatives, and neighbors engage in whatever the practice is without questioning it is the ultimate social force. What humans consider "normal" is largely defined by what people around them do. Thus, it doesn't make sense to judge another person's actions -- or their sanity -- in light of standards that may not be shared by that person's particular social milieu. Ultimately, the ethics of actions can only be judged by their intentionality, their motivations, and their consequences. By those standards, consumption of animal products fails the test of ethical acceptability just as miserably as dogfighting. Both are intentional, motivated purely by the pursuit of pleasure, and horribly cruel to the sentient beings on the receiving end.