Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
AT: “Reduced Suffering Would Require Everyone to Become Vegetarian”
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- AT: “Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Approaches Trade-Off”
AT: “Reduced Suffering Would Require Everyone to Become Vegetarian”SHIFT FROM CAFOs TO GRASS-BASED ANIMAL PRODUCTION REDUCES ANIMAL SUFFERING – MORE HUMANE John E. Ikerd, Professor Emeritus Agricultural Economics University of Missouri, 2008, Crisis and Opportunity: sustainability in American agriculture, p. 168 All grass-based and free range animal products have the built-in advantage of being highly marketable to customers who are concerned about the social and ethical consequences of industrial food and farming systems. Grass-based systems are uniquely adapted to family farming operations because they rely on intensive management, meaning more management per acre and dollar invested, and thus smaller farms. Grass-based systems also offer a variety of opportunities for people with different skills and management abilities, and thus are well suited to family farms. Grass-based, free-range production systems are naturally humane environments in which to raise animals, since pastures are similar to the natural habitats of most farm animals. Certainly, animals can be made to suffer in such systems, but suffering is virtually unavoidable with factory systems of production. So, most well-managed grass-based and free-range systems result in products that can be marketed and raised under humane conditions on family farms. BEEF INDUSTRY SEPARATED INTO TWO COMPONENTS – RANCHING AND CAFOs Bernard E. Rollin, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University, 1995, Farm Animal Welfare: social, bioethical, and research issues, p. 55 The beef industry has two distinct components, cattle ranching and cattle feeding, though it is often the case that the same individuals are involved in both sectors. Of all production systems, beef production most closely approximates the social ethic of husbandry. The ranching aspect of the industry, wherein animals live their lives under the conditions for which they were evolved, is virtually the same extensive system it was one hundred years ago, and feedlots are the least problematic of all intensive production units. RANCHERS DISTINCT FROM CAFO OPERATORS – COMMITMENT TO STEWARDSHIP AND WELFARE Bernard E. Rollin, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University, 1995, Farm Animal Welfare: social, bioethical, and research issues, p. 55 I have long argued the falsity of this stereotype. Many ranchers are small family farmers who must often work multiple jobs to hold on to their ranches. Furthermore, they are the standard bearers of the old husbandry ethic that society is trying to preserve – their animals are more than mere economic commodities to them. Few ranchers have ever seen their animals slaughtered; even fewer wish to. The vast majority see themselves as stewards of land and animals, as living a way of life as well as making a living. Many express significant distaste for industrialized agriculture.
Mary Midgley, Philosopher, 2008, The Future of Animal Farming: renewing the ancient contract, eds. M. Dawkins & R. Bonney, p. 31 Remedying these anomalies may, however, be easier now than similar reforms have been in the past. It is clear today that we do not face a single drastic choice between “eating animals” and “not eating them.” There is a huge range of choice available to us about how to treat them first, even if we do still eat them. The situation is like that over animal experimentation, where a similar realization is dawning that we do not have to choose between forbidding all experiments and accepting every method that is used at present. Today –even though, unluckily, a tiny minority of extremists continues to darken counsel on this subject – effective discussion about it now goes on between humane scientists and scientifically literate humanitarians who share the aim of ending bad practice, whether that practice is bad from the ethical or the scientific angle or indeed, as often happens—from both. Similarly, over farm animals, it is now clear that farm-literate humanitarians can work together with humane farmers to get a much more tolerable quality of life for creatures who have long been most bizarrely neglected. We should all wish more power to their elbows!
Gaverick Matheny & Cheryl Leahy, Professor Agricultural Economics U. Maryland & General Counsel, Compassion over Killing, 2007, Law and Contemporary Problems, Winter, 70 Law & Contemp. Prob. 325, p. 325 It is worth noting that welfarist campaigns can be compatible with abolitionist objectives, such as those Francione discusses in this volume. n217 Welfarist campaigns not only educate consumers, some of whom may choose to become vegetarian, but also drive up production costs, driving down consumption. In the case of eggs, per capita consumption has steadily decreased in Switzerland and Sweden, following the bans on battery cages in those countries. n218 Campaigns directed toward pigs and cattle, however, could have a negative welfare effect by shifting consumption to poultry and fish products, which provide significantly less food per animal life-year. In fact, removing only poultry, eggs, and farmed fish from the diets of one hundred people would affect more animals than turning ninety-nine people vegan. If it is easier for consumers to shift consumption among animal products than to eschew all animal products, then this arithmetic has implications for both welfarist and abolitionist strategies. EUROPEAN ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS HAVE FOCUSED ON FARM ANIMALS – HAD SOME SUCCESSES Joyce D’Silva, Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming, 2008, The Future of Animal Farming: renewing the ancient contract, eds. M. Dawkins & R. Bonney, p. 42 The European Commission itself has changed, allotting far more resources to farm animal welfare and taking the initiative in promoting action like the EU Community Action Plan on the Protection and Welfare of Animals. Meanwhile groups in the US were, on the whole, slow to take up the cause for farm animals, preferring to campaign on “safer” issues such as companion animals and wild animals. Around the late 1990s CIWF started engaging with leaders of the US groups and speaking at their conferences, urging them to campaign on farm animal welfare. ABOLITIONISTS MOVEMENT DEMONSTRATES THAT SUCCESS DEPENDS ON LIMITED OBJECTIVES – FOCUS ON WHAT MOST PEOPLE CAN AGREE WITH Erik Marcus, Editor-Vegan.com, 2005, Meat Market: animals, ethics and money, p. 82 The limitations of abolition’s agenda were not rooted in laziness or complacency. These limitations were in fact the cornerstone of a brilliant strategy. At the time, slavery constituted the single greatest abuse of blacks at the hands of whites. This abuse was rooted in the fact that many Americans viewed blacks as an inferior race, and would never accept the notion that blacks deserved social equality. Abolition’s great achievement was to recognize that, no matter what your opinions about race, you didn’t have to be terribly progressive in your thinking to view slavery as an abomination.
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