Philosophy Now Forum

If you eat meat, are you personally to blame for the evils of factory farming? Richard Corry considers the consequences.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/102/A_D ... onsibility

I'd like to focus on just two problems. One, there's an obvious difference between eating meat and watching child pornography. Meat, like lots of food, has objectively measurable nutritional value. By eating meat, I'm doing something to sustain myself. Many dieticians would say that meat provides important nutrients. No such claims can be made about watching child pornography. Two, this article proves too much. It posits that people, qua consumers, should consider that their actions are having adverse effects down the line. The author says, no need to limit that issue to vegetarianism. Better (at least more consistent) point would be: why limit the discussion to people qua consumers - don't we need to apply it to people qua people? Consider this: Many people, including many vegetarians, I suspect, would accept the view that overpopulation generally has terrible long-term consequences for the earth, including everything on it (which includes animals). In other words, many people would agree that adding to the human population has ecologically devastating consequences. Well, does it follow that it's immoral for humans to procreate? Take it one step further: Perhaps the human race is morally obligated to eradicate itself, for the benefit of animals and the survival of the earth? Any consequentialist analysis that does not tackle these issues is just lost in the weeds.

Another problem. The argument as framed actually stacks the deck, in contrasting watching "child" pornography versus eating any and all meat. The better analogy is all pornography versus all meat-eating. That's at least a more helpful analogy because it only because it serves to isolate one of the crucial issues relating to "child" pornography - an issue that makes it an inapt analogy to meat eating. The point is this: obviously, not all pornography is illegal. In fact, virtually all pornography is perfectly legal. That's significant, because it tells us that society's view about child pornography has more to do with the "child" piece of the equation than the "pornography" piece. In other words, the child pornography issue has to do with society's views of children as contrasted with adults - in particular, the special status accorded children as opposed to any other people. Which tells us a few things. First, if we abhor child pornography, it's because child are considered essentially a special class of persons who raise special moral issues not otherwise implicated with pornography. Because of that, child pornography may tell us absolutely nothing at all about meat-eating and vegetarianism, because our view of child pornography (that it's extremely immoral) is merely an EXCEPTION to our general view on all pornography (which is that it's generally okay). Stated differently, unless one thinks it makes sense to equate the rights and concerns raised by the specially-protected class of children to the rights of ALL animals, the article's analysis is skewed. Even many vegetarians don't necessarily go so far as to equate animals and people. No vegetarian I knows says that animals are deserving of MORE protection that adults, and AS MUCH protection as children.
Last but not least, there's a glaring additional problem with the article - the article plainly equates meat-eating with animal suffering. There are PLENTY of ways to raise and kill animals humanely. There's an enormous amount of literature on that. So, at most, the article shows that we ought to find ways of raising and killing animals that minimizes or eliminates animal suffering - the article's binary approach (all meat-eating versus an all vegetarian diet) and its progression from the POTENTIAL implications of meat-eating for animal suffering to vegetarianism is a leap that finds no support whatsoever in the article, if anywhere.