Animal Welfare
15 July 2005

I just got done reading George Will’s weekly column in Newsweek about Matthew Scully’s work (the author of Dominion and of an article in a conservative magazine about how we need to be less cruel to animals). The first thing I have to say is kudos to George for even writing about it – most people just ignore these arguments and avoid thinking about these issues.

And I’m not going to critique or analyze his essay (that’s Bob's department, since he does it so well), but reading it did make me think more about my own thoughts on animal welfare, which I’d like to talk about.

I’m all for more humanely treating animals – let’s start there. I think factory farming is abysmal and needs to be improved.

But, I have a real problem with those who advocate for animal welfare over the abolition of animal agriculture altogether, for several reasons.

If someone asked me “if we got rid of all factory farming practices and the animals lived a wonderful life and were killed completely painlessly and humanely, would you then eat meat?” – my answer would be NO. I do not believe that animals should be killed for my use at all. Killing them is making their normal lifespan shorter than it would be. Do I want healthy, young humans euthanized so they can be used for some purpose? No, so I don’t want animals to be either. (I can get all Star Trek or Twilight Zone on you here. Say an alien race came to earth and wanted to use humans for food. We are allowed to live in our houses and go about our normal daily business, but occasionally the aliens would come harvest a family and you’d be euthanized and eaten. Not fun. Who says the animals still don’t feel fear upon watching others of their kind being put to death?)

My other argument against the animal welfare position is that it just makes people feel better about eating meat, and MORE people would be willing to do it. We may be treating them better, but then we’d be killing even more of them. Peta’s new campaign is to get chickens killed by gassing them rather than cutting their throats. Yes, it’s a more humane way of killing them, but they still live miserable lives confined in their crates and you’re still killing them. All of that kind of reminds me of Auschwitz.

This is a tough issue for me, since I absolutely hate thinking about the animals being tortured in today’s factory farming practices. But, I think the way to deal with is for more people to become vegans, not to have them feel better about eating their chicken. Will says in his article not to worry, since Scully’s not trying to take away your BLT. Well, in my opinion, he should be.

Humane slavery is still slavery.

  Posted by Jenna Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Stupid Welfarists
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