My argument for limited animal rights

Quillette asked me to write a piece on animal rights, and here is my middle ground argument

I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to republish my argument from Quillette.com, but if not I’ll take this down and just leave up the following link:

Quillette - A Roundtable on the Question of Animal Rights

Here’s my middle ground argument, edited by Bo Winegard (and possibly others at Quillette). He and Jake Scott took opposing positions in the article.

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II. Animals have some rights

Nathanial Bork is a political scientist and philosopher. You can follow him on Twitter @BorkNathanial on Twitter and read his essays at NathanialBork2.substack.com.

Animals deserve some rights, but not the same rights as humans, and it is ethical to use animals for food and experimentation, so long as certain criteria are met.

Prior to the modern period, concern for animal welfare largely revolved around issues of human character and the promotion of virtue. Because European Christians at that time believed that animals did not have souls, or at least the same type of souls as humans, the concern for their wellbeing came from the duty of biblical stewardship. Prominent philosophers such as Immanuel Kant argued that the cruel treatment of animals was not bad because it violated the rights of animals, but rather because it degraded the self.

The first animal welfare campaign in America can be traced all the way back to the 1600s, but the contemporary movement of animal rights really began in the 1960s and ’70s. Inspired by the successes of earlier movements, and by the civil rights campaigns of that time, the modern animal rights movement has been successful, but it is still wrestling with massive technological changes that have made the exploitation of animals easier and more profitable.

Two major technological advances led to mass animal exploitation—the development of antibiotics and the rapid growth of molecular and cell biology as academic fields after World War II. Antibiotics made it possible for farm animals to survive in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), and molecular and cell biology made it possible for animal experimentation to yield medical and veterinary breakthroughs through extensive animal testing.

Of course, farmers of the last 70 years were not less (or more) moral than their ancestors, but prior to the development of these technologies, animals kept in such conditions would have died, bankrupting the farmer. Animal death is a huge cost to farmers, and prior to the modern medical era, there existed traditions in animal husbandry that kept the animals in good health, because that was in the farmer’s best interests.

The early days of animal experimentation were unsavory and replete with experiments that induced incredible amounts of needless suffering, often for little or no benefit. Some of those experiments did lead to tremendous gains in human welfare (for example, advances in skin grafts and space travel), but many merely led to discoveries that catered to more trivial human needs (such as cosmetics).

During this period, people began to develop formal theories of animal rights. The first two major philosophers in this area were Peter Singer, who wrote Animal Liberation in 1975, and Tom Regan, who wrote The Case for Animal Rights in 1986. Singer defended the notion of animal rights on utilitarian grounds, arguing that the capacity for suffering made them worthy of moral consideration. Regan, on the other hand, argued that animals have inherent moral rights because they are the “subjects of lives” who have conscious experiences (awareness of surroundings, relationships, preferences, etc.). In this respect, Regan argued, animals are like humans, especially young and developmentally disabled humans, and thus deserving of moral recognition. Both Singer and Regan advocated for vegetarianism on account of the harm suffered by animals in industrial farming.

Bernard Rollin, the father of veterinary medical ethics, took a different approach to animal rights to that of Singer or Regan. He argued that because humans and animals had been in a symbiotic relationship prior to World War II, we could develop a system of rights aimed at taking good care of the animals we use. According to Rollin, the problem isn’t that we eat meat or use animals in experiments, it’s that industry abandoned the concept of animal husbandry, which farmers had employed for thousands of years. From this position he developed the first ethics protocols that animal researchers must follow to conduct animal experimentation, and helped to develop technologies that reduced animal suffering. He believed that we could use animals, but not abuse them, and I agree with this position.  

On utilitarian grounds, a cow raised from birth to slaughter in factory-farm conditions has suffered much more pain than the pleasure that consuming meat gives humans. However, a cow living in a field with acres in which to roam, free to eat grass and protected from predators and diseases, is able to enjoy a pretty good cow life. And if that cow is ethically slaughtered with the infliction of minimal suffering and distress, the pleasure produced for humans by the consumption of its meat outweighs the pain of the cow’s premature death. Cows have consciousness and instinctually avoid pain and death, but they’re also getting a good deal from the non-industrial farmer who practices good animal husbandry and keeps them safe from the harms they would face in the wild. So long as animals are treated ethically, a utilitarian calculation does not morally prohibit the raising and slaughtering of livestock.

John Rawls offers a similar logic and conception of justice in his “Veil of Ignorance” argument. The veil of ignorance asks us what types of lives we’d be willing to live if we jumped into the world without knowing which individual we’d get to be. This thought experiment was formulated to encourage support of welfare capitalism, but it is useful here as well. If you were going to have to live as a cow, what kind of cow life would you opt for? No one would pick the life of a factory-farm cow, or the life of a lab animal prior to the introduction of ethics board oversight. But if people had to choose between life as a well-cared-for cow on a ranch and life as a wild cow, it’s not immediately obvious which is preferable.

Many farmers have been amendable to animal husbandry practices that benefit the animals, even if it costs them a little extra or gives them less space because each animal gets more room. Industrial factory farming of course resists this logic, but they tacitly acknowledge it by the amount of effort they expend concealing their operations from the public. I used to show my students the 2008 documentary Food, Inc., and it would make them feel guilty for supporting the production of meat from factory farms. People want to be happy, but not at the expense of someone or something else suffering like that.

Ethics guidelines for lab researchers have come a long way since they were first introduced. Originally, animal experimentation that leads to suffering and death was considered ethical so long as the experiment could not be simulated (for example, on a computer), or conducted on cell cultures and biopsies or in some other way that avoided those outcomes. Anesthesia could be employed unless it damaged the experiment. Further, the research had to be original, such that the information could not be gained from other sources, and it had to be likely to bring about a pharmaceutical good which would aid more beings than were sacrificed.

The decision to allow for animal experimentation is now made by Internal Review Boards, which are made up of scientists and lay people—scientists because they understand the experiment at issue, and lay participants to keep the scientists in check. The current version of this procedure in Europe is enshrined in Council Directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament and the Council. In addition to the above, it stipulates that animals must always be treated as sentient, death should be avoided wherever possible and a particular threshold of pain must not be crossed, the number of animals used must be minimal, and the type of animal is determined by its capacity to experience pain, suffering, distress, or lasting harm.

Thus, animals have the right to not suffer needlessly and to have their interests taken into consideration by the humans who use them. It is possible to both respect these rights and to gain the benefits of using animals in agriculture and medical science, and we have a corresponding obligation to pay the extra associated costs of maintaining a morally satisfactory standard of animal welfare.

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As always, thanks for reading!

-Nate