Rationally Speaking: Some animals are more equal than others - 0 views
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society's answer to the question “Is it acceptable to hurt animals for our pleasure?” isn't always “No.” Odds are that most of the people who objected to the dog fighting and crush videos are frequent consumers of meat, milk, and eggs from industrialized farms. And the life of an animal in a typical industrialized farm is notoriously punishing. Many spend their lives in cages so confining they can barely move; ammonia fumes burn their eyes; their beaks or tails are chopped off to prevent them from biting each other out of stress; and the farm's conditions make many of them so sick or weak that they die in their cages or on the way to slaughter. As a society, however, we apparently believe that the pleasure we get from eating those animals makes their suffering worth it.
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many people will object that eating animals isn’t a matter of pleasure at all, but of the need for sustenance. While that may have been true for our ancestors who survived by hunting wild animals, I don’t think it has much relevance to our current situation. First, it's questionable whether we actually do need to eat animal products in order to be healthy; the American Dietetic Association has given the thumbs up to vegetarian and even vegan diets. But even if you believe that some amount of animal product consumption is medically necessary, we could still buy from farms that raise their livestock much more humanely. It would cost more, but we could always compensate by cutting back on other luxuries, or simply by eating less meat. By any reasonable estimate, Americans could cut their meat consumption drastically with no ill effects on their health (and likely with many positive effects). Buying the sheer amount of meat that Americans do, at the low prices made possible by industrialized farms, is a luxury that can’t be defended with a “need for sustenance” argument. It’s about pleasure — the pleasure of eating more meat than strictly necessary for health, and the pleasure of saving money that can then be spent on other things we enjoy.
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there are several reasons why people regard consumers of industrial farming differently than consumers of crush videos and dogfighting. The first has to do with the types of animals involved: pigs, cows, and chickens simply aren't as cute as dogs, bunnies, and kittens. I don't know how many people would explicitly cite that as the reason they're willing to inflict suffering on the former and not the latter, but it seems to play a role, even if people won't admit as much. People who have no qualms about a pig spending its life in a small, dark crate would nevertheless be outraged if a dog were treated in the same way.
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