The Ethics of Eating

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Animal welfare and food consumption

Here at Glencadia we recently began making a line of food for dogs called Farm-to-Bowl. This project got me thinking about the ethics of eating.

Vegan, Vegetarian, Carnivore

There is plenty of evidence that eating plant-based food is better for the environment. However, many people are vegetarian or vegan for a less abstract reason, an ethical matter that is simpler to understand: killing animals. While the first point, about the environment, is more important, in this essay I will focus on the second issue, killing and harming animals, which will be the subject of this section of this essay because I have a thought I want to present on the second question, killing.

The following, my take on this question, could be rephrased as a question. The issue I am going to raise is one that seems obvious to me but no one I have ever raised it with has ever thought about it. This either could be that my point is original, or somewhat original, or maybe just wrong… In other words, I am presenting an argument here without being 100% sure that I am writing.

Here is the thesis statement:

How many and how much animals suffer or die to provide humans with food is not related to whether the food consumed is meat, a byproduct of animal husbandry such as dairy, or plant-based food but the amount of death and suffering for animals per pound of human food is related to the way that the food is processed.

In other words, there can be more suffering and death to make a loaf of bread or put watermelon on your table than to butcher and prepare steak.

The Smart Coyote

When I first moved upstate, my neighbor came lumbering down the road with his tractor and equipment to make hay. Right behind him, in the middle of a summer day, was a coyote.

The coyote knew that there would be a trail of mice, rabbits and maybe a few birds behind this small hay tractor. She had learned that making hay also means making meat.

My other neighbor — now long gone — warned me that I should keep my dogs inside for a while. He had a small field of cucumbers ripening and had set spring traps for the groundhogs and wanted to be sure my dogs didn’t accidentally get caught. I heard the snapping of the traps every morning.

Another time I walked down the line of crops inspecting a crop of watermelon. From the tracks and teeth marks, there was no doubt that the deer had wandered down the line, nipping several watermelons, not breaking the rind, then settling on the one they wanted, opened it, and ate every bit of melon, scooped it right out like they had a spoon.

The problem was not that they ate a melon or two. The problem was that every melon with a nick or blemish could not be sold. There was nothing wrong with the marked melons — I ate several. But if you were in the market and had to choose between a melon with no bite mark and one with a mark, you know you would pick the perfect rind. Washing, storage, and transportation issues mean that “seconds” cannot be brought to market.

“These deer are costing me $300 a night,” my neighbor said.

He passed the out-of-season hunting rights (agriculture) to a guy he knew, who camped out many evenings in a chair with a shotgun, mowing down deer. Often, he didn’t bother to get the carcass, as he had enough venison in his freezer and he was tired.

My grandfather in the 1950s with his Alice Chalmers killed a doe and adopted the fawn, who grew up with the cows, charming my mother as a child, until she was old enough to jump the fence and disappear into the woods. She was reminiscing about the fawn when I was a child, Daisy I think her name was.

“Oh I hit a lot of deer,” he said, “That was the only time I found an uninjured fawn.”

The Victims of the Harvest

I remember learning in an anthropology class more than 30 years ago that somewhere in Japan there was, or is, a festival commemorating the animals that were inadvertently killed during the harvest.

I pictured a pre-modern harvest with hand tools, maybe a horse drawn wagon of some kind… how many animals could they have accidentally killed, not counting insects?

My search results were mixed as to which this festival might be, if it really exists. Regardless, the idea of such a festival stayed with me for a reason. It seemed like a good idea.

If that little upstate New York hay tractor runs over enough ground-nesting birds, rabbits, and mice to fill the belly of a coyote, how many moles, groundhogs, and rats and mauled by a giant, fast-moving combine in the Midwest?

Pests

Some people might say, “Rabbits? Mice? Deer? Moles? Birds? I am a vegan because I don’t believe in intentionally killing a pig, an intelligent, sentient animal.”

So the suffering of rabbits and ground-nesting birds doesn’t count? Groundhogs in a trap? A cow or a sheep can be slaughtered quickly, with little suffering. Some of the scenarios I consider in this post seem to be crueler.

Now, the issue of factory farming is important, but separate. If you eat beef from Walmart, not only did the cow who is now meat eat grain, also involving the accidental death of animals, but certainly had a short, constricted and unpleasant life.

If a hunter shoots a deer, gets a good shot that leads to quick death, there is almost certainly only one animal killed in this transaction. If no hunters killed any deer, not only would the population explode, causing problems for us like collisions on the road, the loss of crops, and the spread of disease, but at some point a harsh winter will come along and the deer population will collapse — which means a lot of deer suffering and dying.

It would seem that hunting would involve less animal suffering and death than eating grain harvested by large, fast-moving tractors and fruits and vegetables that are popular with certain species of local fauna.

Ratios

How many groundhogs died per bushel of cucumbers? How many deer die per box of watermelons that make it to market? How many rabbits die per bushel of wheat? How many total animals died for a pasture-raised lamb who never ate hay? One? And how many pounds of food ended up on a human’s plate? Maybe I am missing something, but it seems that the tangential death of wild animals exceeds all other animal deaths in the agricultural process by an order of a magnitude at least.

Conclusion

There are many good reasons to be vegan: health, carbon footprint, etc. There are many reasons to avoid factory-farmed meat: torture, health, carbon, etc. But between these two poles, some people might eat some meat in a way that is in fact more ethical in all these ways, with hunting abundant wild animals being among the most environmentally conscious and animal welfare-related practices. Of course, everyone I know who hunts also buys factory-farmed meat at the supermarket, but that’s another story.

Shooting wild animals and growing food in a backyard garden are ethical in many ways, but these practices are also not going to feed eight billion people. So, where does that leave us? I don’t know.

Food for Dogs

Most obviously, this food for dogs can be eaten by people. It seems wrong for animals to eat better than some people do. I have thought about this issue and I have a very coherent and well-reasoned answer… for the next essay.

This post was originally published on this site