Animals

There are two main moral issues concerning our dealings with animals (here by "animals" I mean non-human animals):

1. Do animals belong in the moral sphere intrinsically or merely parasitically?
2. If they belong to the sphere of morality intrinsically, how should we deal with them?

A.    Do animals belong in the moral sphere intrinsically?

Of course (some) animals belong within the moral sphere parasitically: they are  someone's pets or property, and harming them is indirectly harming their owner.  However, here we are addressing a different issue: Do animals per se belong in the moral sphere?  Those who adopt a negative answer, e.g. Aquinas or Kant, embrace radical speciesism: Since animals don't fall within the purview of morality, we can do with them as we please; consequently, even trivial human interests take precedence over vital animal interests.
Arguments for Radical Speciesism:

Theological arguments:

• We are made in God's image; animals aren't

Problem: there's no plausible evidence of this. To the best of our knowledge, we are closely linked to those primates who share a relatively recent ancestor with us.

• We have immortal souls; animals don't.

Problem: it's hard to see the relevance of having or lacking an immortal soul to being a subject of morality or not.

• God has given us dominion over the animals; they exist for us to do what we want with them.

Problem: There's no plausible evidence of this.

Sentience arguments:

• Animals are mere machines, without any sensations or feeling.  Hence, picking an animal apart is like breaking a watch, which per se is certainly not morally wrong.  By contrast, humans are conscious.

Problem: I spite of Descartes' views, the idea that animals are mere machines seems false for two main reasons:

1. Animal behavior is exactly what we would expect if animals had sensations and emotions
2. The neural structures which are involved in sensation and emotion in us seem to have analogous counterparts in  some non-human animals (at least in mammals and birds).
• Animals are unable to feel significant pain because they have no conscious diachronic continuity; since they have no sense of self through time, they can at most experience disconnected fragments of pain.  But this fragments of pain don't amount to suffering, which involves the attribution of successive pains to a subject which has a diachronic sense of self, and suffering is the only morally relevant type of pain.

Problems:

1. There is some evidence that some animals have a diachronic sense of self.  For example, they seem to become stressed (e.g. Porcine Stress Syndrome) when in unpleasant situations
2. Why shouldn't pain fragments count?

Social Contract argument:

Morality is the result of agreement among self-interested agents.  But no such agreement is possible with animals.  Hence, animals are outside the sphere of morality.
Problems:

• Unclear whether contractarian ethics is satisfactory
• It's true that animals lack the characteristics necessary to enter an agreement; hence, they lack obligations.  However, they may possess the characteristics necessary to qualify as the beneficiaries of an obligation.

Personhood argument:

Humans are persons, animals aren't.  But only persons are within the sphere of morality.  Hence, animals are outside such sphere.
What the necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood are, is a matter of controversy.  There are two main views :

• Strong version: An individual is a person if and only if it is
1. self-conscious, i.e. able to think of itself as itself through time.
2. capable to act autonomously on the basis of a set of moral beliefs

NOTES:

• In short, a person is a center of autonomous choice and evaluation
• A rational being with no notion of morality (if there can be such a thing) would not be a person
• Presumably non-human animals would not qualify as persons.  However, this doesn't entail that no animal can manifest behavior which perhaps may be called "moral", as in cases of altruism among rhesus monkeys who go hungry rather than impart an electric shock to other rhesus monkeys.
• Young children or some mentally impaired humans, to the extent they have no moral capacity, are not persons

Objection:
Although young children and some mentally impaired humans lack (1) or (2), there are other reasons (egoistical or utilitarian) for considering them persons or at least to give them the same treatment due to persons.
Reply: It's hard to see why.  It's not clear, for example, that some degree of infanticide has bad utilitarian or egoistical consequences.

• Weak version: An individual is a person if and only if it is
1. conscious , e.g. aware of one's surroundings.
2. self- conscious, i.e. able to think of oneself as oneself through time.
3. able to reason and know, e.g. plan, understand.
4. a sentient being, e.g. feeling pain/pleasure.
5. able to have emotions.

NOTES:

• Most young children (but not infants or comatose humans) are persons
• Many, perhaps all, non-human mammals are persons.

Objection: animals cannot reason
Reply: since animals seem to have no language as sophisticated as ours, it's unlikely that they can carry out very complex thought because such thought needs symbols.  However, members of many species can perform creatively complex tasks which seem best described as involving thought.
Duplication: these complex tasks are cases of tropism (an automatic unthinking response to a stimulus), as one can see in the case of the sphex wasp, in which the cricket-at-a-distance stimulus triggers the drag-cricket-to-the threshold response (like a program routine).  Higher animals are, in this respect, no different.
Reply: Since the human brain is a finite system, human behavior is tropistic as well.  The issue here is one of complexity.  Since some animals can change their strategies to match changed circumstances, we may consider them endowed with some degree of rationality. For example, crows can not only make tools but also use tools to get tools, a trait traditionally reserved for humans.

Problem: Hence, it looks as if the strong version of personhood leaves out some (too many?) humans, and the weak version takes in some animals.  Then, if one accepts the weak condition for personhood, some animals do fall within the moral sphere.

Arguments against Radical Speciesism:

• Utilitarian argument: If animals are sentient, PU demands that their pains and pleasures be taken into account.

NOTE: the quantity/quality of pain and pleasure (not whether the subject is human or not), is what matters.  Hence, Utilitarianism goes well beyond common morality on this.

• Moral Individualism argument (James Rachels): Morality demands that individual beings be treated in the same way unless there is a relevant difference between them which justifies the difference in treatment.  Hence, if the treatment involves pain, the fact that human A, but not the animal B, is a person, is an irrelevant difference.  What matters is that both A and B can feel pain.

NOTE: this view is very controversial: being a possesssor of rights (e.g., being a person in the strong sense) does seem to be a morally relevant difference even with respect to inflicting mere pain

B.  If animals intrinsically belong in the moral sphere, how should we deal with them?
This question can be broken down into three others:

• is it prima facie wrong to kill animals, however painlessly (imagine zapping them out of existence, as it were)?
• is  animal farming , when it has little concern, if any, for the welfare of the animals involved in it, wrong?
• Is animal experimentation, when it has little or no concern for the welfare of the animals involved wrong?

NOTE: notice that a positive answer to the second or third question doesn't entail a positive answer to the first.

I.    Is it permissible to kill animals painlessly?

• Clearly, to the extent that an animal is a person, it has a very substantive claim (a right) to life, and consequently it's deeply wrong to kill it.  As we saw, depending on which criteria for personhood once accepts, there is a good ground for claiming that at least some animals are persons.
• One might think that
1. since many animals hurt/eat each other, we may do the same to them.  However, this is a bad argument since animals are amoral, and consequently their behavior cannot be a guide for what we do
2. since it's natural that the stronger preys on the weaker, we may prey on animals. However, this is a bad argument because even if it were "natural" for us to prey on animals, it wouldn't follow that we should.
• A more controversial issue is whether mere sentience is enough to give some claim (some right) to life

• Yes, because a conscious being can derive pleasure from satisfaction of desire, and eliminating pleasure is bad (Singer's view).

NOTE: Because of problems associated with the replaceability thesis, Utilitarians like Singer cannot successfully adopt this view.
Problem:  A merely conscious being, with no sense of self through time, can at best experience disconnected fragments of pleasure.  Hence, it's unclear how such a being could even experience satisfaction of desire because desire must occur before its satisfaction.

• No, because only persons have any claim (right) to life at all.

NOTE:  However, both for classical Utilitarianism and common morality, mere sentience is reason enough not to mistreat animals.

Before considering industrial animal farming and animal experimentation, it may be helpful to make a few points about the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law protecting animals.  The original AWA was enacted in 1966, and revised after that

• the law applies to animals; However, for the US, "animal" doesn't mean what it seems to mean to the average English speaker.  In its original form (1966) the animals covered were "live dogs, cats, monkeys (non-human primate animals), guinea pigs, hamsters and rabbits."  Later (1970)  the term was expanded to cover "any live or dead dog, cat, monkey (non human primate mammal), guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm-blooded animal, as the Secretary may determine is being used, or is intended for use, for research, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes or as a pet; but such term excludes horses not used for research purposes and other farm animals, such as, but not limited to livestock or poultry, used or intended for use as food or fiber, or livestock or poultry used or intended for improving animal nutrition, breeding, management or production efficiency, or for improving the quality of food or fiber. With respect to a dog the term means all dogs including those used for hunting, security, or breeding purposes."  The USDA, the agency charged with providing the regulations for the AWA, interprets the  term "animal" to exclude "birds, rats of the genus Rattus and mice of the genus Mus bred for use in research."

NOTE: the following animals are excluded: birds, Rattus, Mus (i.e. mice and rats commonly used in labs), all cold-blooded animals; farm animals, unless they are used in experiments; equines used in entertainment events (e.g., rodeos, mule-diving, etc.).  However, birds suddenly become animals when animal-fighting ventures are concerned (if the relevant state law prohibits cock-fighting).

• The law doesn't apply to: retail pet stores, state and county fairs, livestock shows, rodeos, purebred dog and cat shows.
• There's no specific regulation of experiments; as long as experimenters think that a procedure is necessary, no matter how painful, they are allowed to perform it.
• In reality, AWA only regulates how animals are transported, housed, and treated before and after an experiment.
• The committee member representing "the general community interests in the proper care and treatment of animals" is picked by the "chief executive" of the research facility.
• The USDA has provided minimum standards for handling, care, housing, feeding, sanitation, ventilation, etc., of "animals."
• The enforcement of AWA is problematic because of the very large number of facilities to be inspected (about 8,000) and the small number of inspectors (about 90)  (1997).

II.    Industrial animal farming

A. Some facts about industrial animal farming:

• The numbers of animals involved just in the US is very large: over 5 billion chickens, 240 million turkeys, 80 million pigs, 1.2 million calves (veal), are slaughtered every year.  There are about 300 million egg producing hens; about 10 million milking cows.
• Most industrial animal farming in much of the world (with few exceptions, e.g. Sweden) involves treating animals as things.  In the US, common practices involve cramped housing (e.g. 5-6 egg laying chickens are put in a cage with a floor of 18X18 inches), separation of mother and young, breaking up of herds, branding, transporting, and slaughtering.  Aggression and cannibalism brought about by crowding and stress are curtailed by debeaking (poultry), tail docking (pigs), light manipulation and chemicals.  Calves for veal meat are fed an anemic diet and kept in small stalls unable to move about (about 22X54 inches).  Animals are treated with large amounts of antibiotics, without which animal factories would probably be impossible; as a result, some of the flesh Americans eat is contaminated with bacteria which are resistent to many antibiotics, including vancomycin.
• In 1988 the US fed 70% of their corn, 94% of their oats, 52% of their barley, 74% of their sorghum and 90% of their unexported soybeans to animals.  However, the conversion rates of feed protein to animal protein are low: 22% for cow milk, 23% for hen eggs, 17% for broilers, 12% for pigs, 4% for beef.  This inefficiency requires the cultivation of vast tracts of land.
• Industrial animal farming produces large amounts of waste. In addition to animal carcasses, an average 50,000 pig farm produces about 3,000 tons of manure and urine per week; a 60,000 laying egg chicken farms produces about 82 tons of manure per week.  Some of the waste is recycled as feed, some of it degraded in waste holding facilities.  Occasionally, spillage contaminates rivers, lakes, sea-coasts, and the water table.

B.  Arguments against industrial animal farming

• The amount of animal pain involved in treating sentient beings as things greatly outweighs the pleasures coming from the tickling of our palate.

Problem: one might argue that given the gulf between humans and animals, animal pain/pleasure is incomparable to human pain/pleasure.
Notice that one ought to specify 1) what the "gulf" consists in, and 2) why it is relevant to the evaluation of pain/pleaure.

• Industrial animal farming requires cultivating land which could be returned to a natural state, and often substantial pollution of land and water due to spillage.  However, industrial animals farming has kept the prices of eggs, broilers, and meat low.
• Overcrowding, ill treatment, and the excessive use of antibiotics they require, appear at least partially responsible for some bad consequences: a considerable portion of broilers (37% in 1987), eggs (1/2%), and beef (5% in 1987) are contaminated with Salmonella or Listeria according to USDA. More recently (1997) about 70% of broilers seems contaminated with Campylobacter.  Worse, some of the contaminating bacteria are now resistent to all known antibiotics, including vancomycin.  Hence, it may be reasonable to eliminate or drastically reform industrial animal farming.  However, irradiation some other technological solution may be found to elimate the problem.

III.    Animals in the laboratory

A. Some facts about the use of animals in US laboratories:
In the US, between 18 and 23 million animals are used in laboratory research every year.  Although some (how much is a matter of controversy) research is carried out in a humane fashion, some has not been and, according to animal rights organizations, e.g. PETA, still isn't.  Some examples may suffice.
NOTE: these experiments were carried out after the AWA was passed (1966), and  involved Rhesus monkeys, primates explicitly covered by the law.

1. The US armed Forces Radiobiology Institute trained rhesus monkeys to run inside a wheel by giving them an electric shock if they slowed down.  Then, they were given a lethal dose of radiation.  While sick, vomiting, and defecating (these are effects of radiation) they were compelled to run until they dropped.  The alleged reason for the experiment was to see for how long irradiated soldiers could keep on fighting (Carol Frantz, "Effects of Mixed Neutron-Gamma Total-body Irradiation on Physical Activity performance of Rhesus Monkeys", Radiation Research  vol. 10 (1985), pp. 434-41)

NOTE: because of military secrecy, it's almost impossible for the public to know what the US military does to "animals."

2. At the Primate Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, rhesus monkeys were raised under conditions of maternal deprivation, so that when placed among normal monkeys, they would sit in a corner in a state of depression and fear.  Harlow and Suomi put female rhesus in a small steel cages a few hours after their birth and left them there in total isolation for 18 months.  Then,  the monkeys  were impregnated with what they called a "rape rack," and after giving birth, let loose on their own offspring.  Some paid no attention to their offspring; others crushed their skulls or "smashed the infant's face on the floor, then rubb[ed] it back and forth."  The rationale for the experiment was to study the psychopathology of maternal rejection in humans.  Harlow and Suomi explained how baby rhesus are similar to, but smarter than, baby humans; how maternal love is equally important in both; how normal rhesus mothers show affection to their offspring, etc. (Harlow and Soumi, "Induced Psychopathology in Monkeys", Engineering and Science, vol. 33 (1970), pp. 9-14)

NOTE: the rationale behind such an experiment is that rhesus and humans are psychologically similar.

B. Analysis:
Here are some relevant considerations:

• Utilitarian argument: Animal experimentation is justified as long as the amount of pain (human or animal) generated is smaller than the pleasure (human or animal) produced.

For example, in order to test new food colorants or additives, animals are subjected to a procedure called "LD50", designed to find the dose at which 50% of the subjects dies.  In the process, nearly all the animals become very sick.  Another test, the Draize test, consists in dripping concentrated solutions of shampoos, or cosmetics in the eyes of rabbits, who have to be restrained and prevented from rubbing their eyes.  If the damage falls within certain limits, the product is approved for human use (These tests are being discontinued).  The good produced by LD50 or Draize is minimal: we don't really need new shampoos, cosmetics, or preservatives.
Medical experiment cases are more complex, depending on the view one takes of the end for which the experiments were performed and of the necessity of these experiments to achieve that end.  In general, Utilitarianism holds that if we are convinced that using Rhesus in labs is likely to be necessary to find a cure for some serious and widespread illness, then we should use them.

• Radical Speciesism: Given the immense moral gulf between humans (persons) and animals, even trivial human interests justify inflicting any amount of pain on animals.
• Mild Speciesism:  When trivial human interest and substantial animal interest are in conflict, we should choose the latter.  However, when they are comparable (e.g. equal or not largely different), we should give preference to human interests.

NOTE: Mild Speciesism might be defened by claiming that animals cannot be moral agents (they're unable to engage in moral reasoning), and consequently, although they belong in the moral sphere, the morally relevant differences between them and humans are wide enough to justify very unqual moral treatment.
Problem: the same criticisms which affect Radical Speciesism (e.g., comatose humans, infants) affect Mild Speciesism
NOTES:

• Mild speciesism is much less egalitarian then Utilitarianism: in cases of equal, or even comparable, amount of animal and human pain, we should choose the former
• LD50,  Draize, and similar tests ought to be eliminated.  Cases (1) and (2) are more complex, but more likely to be permissible than for Utilitarianism.
• Treatment of persons:  Persons should not be tortured either intentionally or as an unintended but foreseen consequence of one's activity.

NOTE: A good case can be made for the view that Rhesus monkeys are persons in the weak sense of the term (although presumably they don't qualify as persons in the strong sense because they are not moral agents). If weak personhood is qualification enough, cases (1) and (2) are wrong.  This is especially clear in example (2), in which rhesus were chosen exactly because their psychological makeup is sufficiently similar to ours to make them appropriate subject of psychological experiments designed to learn more about us.