Simon the Sadist
14 June 2005

In his book Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog, Gary Francione proposes a stunning hypothetical that illustrates the problems with the way that we view animals in our culture. To take Francione’s hypothetical, imagine that there’s a nasty bastard named Simon the Sadist who gets off on torturing a dog by burning the dog with a blowtorch. Now, as a non-facetious question, ask yourself: is there anything wrong with this? If you’re like us, you can’t say “hell yeah!” quickly enough. Anyone with any moral conscience whatsoever can see that there’s plenty wrong with this scenario. As far as we can tell, Simon is subjecting a dog to horrible torture, and it is clear that the dog suffers for this torture. It squeals in pain, it recoils, and it pulls away. Were we to ask Simon why he was torturing the dog, his only response would be that he enjoys doing it, that it gives him great pleasure.

This seems objectionable to most reasonable people. Here’s a whack-job who’s torturing dogs because he feels like it and enjoys it. Beyond that, he can’t really give us any other reason. We’re going to venture a guess and say that you don’t have to be a vegan to find this deeply problematic. But why do we find it so very problematic? If asked, most reasonable people would say the dog feels pain, and would agree that dogs should not be subjected to undue pain. The dog knows that he’s being tortured and has every interest in not being tortured further. Seems pretty clear, right? In the end, most of us would simply say that there’s no need for it.

In addition, most people would likely extend this kind of thinking outward to other animals as well. Most folks would say that we shouldn’t blowtorch cows or pigs or chickens or anything else either. And when we see these kinds of animal abuse cases, we’re usually completely shocked by them. This kind of blatant torture and death feels unnecessary to us, because we understand that at some level animals suffer. Most people—whether vegan or not—would understand these kinds of problems and object to them.

If most people can agree that these things hold, then how can most people eat meat, dairy, and eggs? If we can agree that animals should not face undue suffering for our pleasure, how can we justify killing animals for meat? As many vegans show, it is completely feasible to live a healthy and vital life without animal products of any kind. Considering that we can live quite well without animal products, our consumption of animal products cannot be chalked up to anything but preference and tradition. And if we truly have an interest in keeping animals free from suffering, our preference for meat is no more valid than Simon’s preference for blow torching animals. Period.

Despite this, somehow we’re in a place where we see killing, dismembering, and consuming animals as ok, and blowtorching as “bad.” Where we see blowtorching as capricious, we see our desire for the byproducts of animal exploitation as “tradition” and “the natural way.” Yes, it may be “tradition” to eat meat, but it is also “tradition” in some parts of the country to exclude women from certain jobs, to deny same-sex people the same rights as straights, and to discriminate against people of color. As for the “natural way” argument, how come we never hear anyone talking of “the natural way” when bears eat infants (as recently happened in New York State), or when crocodiles bite people? Also, what is so “natural” about going to a grocery store and buying a bloody hunk of flesh wrapped in styrofoam and plastic?

At this point, some of you out there may object to this whole hypothetical by arguing that Simon is in fact torturing animals while the animals that are used for our food are not explicitly tortured. True enough, animals are not routinely blow torched on their way to the average meat eater’s plate. Nevertheless, they are (variously) de-beaked, castrated, and de-horned without the aid of anesthetics as routine parts of meat, dairy, and egg production. This says nothing of the completely deplorable conditions that farm animals live in, often with limited space, light, and fresh air. To take just the example of egg-laying hens, chickens are often packed 7 to a tiny cage, and not allowed to move outside of that cage until they go to slaughter. In addition, male chicks are routinely discarded in dumpsters—alive. Aside from this, animals are frequently slaughtered by having their throats slit. Though part of modern slaughter methods includes incapacitating the animals, this incapacitation is not always effective.

In short, contemporary agricultural production practices subject animals to conditions that essentially enslave the animals to our whims. We may not explicitly blow torch animals in food production, but the other methods used aren’t much better. And why? Because people like the taste of eggs, dairy, and meat. There’s simply no other reason.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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