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Essay by Gordon M. Brown
© 2006-ff. Gordon M. Brown • All rights reserved
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“A human body no ways resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. . . . But if you will contend that yourself was born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe—as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou hadst rather stay until what thou eatest is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against Nature eat an animate thing? Nay, there is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing as it is; but they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.”
~ Plutarch of Chaeronea, ca. 100 CE1
Of all the excuses and rationalizations cleverly and not-so-cleverly devised by humans to defend their habit of eating meat, eggs, dairy products and honey (it would not be difficult to conjure a compendium of 20 or 30 such excuses), two of these arguments stand out especially for being so widely proffered, and so particularly sophomoric, pathetic, and lame. According to the first of them, whether one eats vegetables only, or occasionally indulges in meat, some life form or other had to suffer and be killed for it. Why, then, do high-minded vegetarians scruple against the suffering and killing of animal species when their very existence depends upon the suffering and killing of plants? According to the second, meat-eating is a natural occurrence, inasmuch as instances of nonhuman animals killing and eating the flesh of other animals can be observed everywhere in nature; therefore, it is just as natural (and, by implication, acceptable) for humans to follow suit, and kill other animals for food. Gary Yourofsky has already eviscerated the first argument in his essay titled The Insipid “Killing Plants” Argument; it will be my purpose in this essay to eviscerate the second.
As the above paragraph already suggests, the so-called “meat-eating is natural” argument can be formulated in two ways. One of them is clearly anthropological, and biological: this formulation concludes that human meat-eating is just as natural as nonhuman meat-eating. On any reasonable account of evolutionary biology, this argument simply does not hold water. With the exception of the breast milk provided by mothers for their infants, humans are not equipped physiologically to digest animal-based foods (see the essay in this section titled Humans Are Herbivores). Yet humans continue to eat such foods, and often to their own peril. This makes necessary the second formulation of the argument, which is clearly a moral one: Since nonhuman animals kill and eat other animals, it is morally acceptable for humans to do likewise, and kill and eat nonhumans. One of Gary's recent correspondents tried to lend a false aura of erudition to this god-awful argument by exhorting Gary as follows: “Other animals have accepted the circle of life. Can you?”
The Irrefutable Datum
Many people hold the argument from meat-eating in nature to be so invincible that just the mere utterance of the argument would suffice to end the debate for all time. Perhaps their gullibility arises from the fact that the argument's premise is impossible to dispute: there are some animals (the carnivores and omnivores, at least) who kill other animals and eat their flesh. That part of the argument is an irrefutable datum of the world as it really is. Yet the meat-eaters2 make the logical mistake of thinking that just because their premise is irrefutable, their conclusion that humans should be permitted to kill and eat nonhuman animals is just as irrefutable!
To see what I mean by this, suppose that I floated by you the following argument: “Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Therefore, everyone has a moral obligation to refuse to exploit other animals.” Had I served this up as a defense of ethical veganism, you'd be well within your rights to think that I had lost my mind, utterly. You might retort with something like this: “Your conclusion doesn't follow at all from your premise, because your conclusion has nothing to do with your premise.” To put the point more technically, my argument would be invalid, because even though the statement that Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system is undoubtedly true, and for most intents and purposes irrefutable as well,3 the truth of the matter regarding Jupiter is completely irrelevant to any matter concerning what one ought (or ought not) to do.
Yet the argument that meat-eating is a natural occurrence really doesn't fare much better than this. The fact that genuinely carnivorous nonhumans kill and eat other nonhumans does not in any wise speak to the issue of whether human killing and eating of nonhumans is just as natural, nor does it even address whether humans ought to mimic the eating habits of nonhuman carnivores.
The Argument That “The Strong Shall Prey on the Weak”
The ethical argument from the naturalness of meat-eating is thought by many to stem from the more general ethical position that “might makes right,” and unfolds somewhat as follows: “Throughout the natural world we see evidence everywhere of the stronger animals capturing, killing, and preying upon weaker animals. And since humans have come to dominate other animal species, we are morally entitled to prey upon the weaker animal species as well. All of this follows from the general principle of nature according to which the strong shall prey upon the weak.” Clearly, this argument is a reductio ad absurdum if ever there was one! It would be easy for a 200-pound man to subdue, and forcibly rape, a 13-year-old girl weighing 95 pounds; does it follow that he's morally entitled to do it? If sheer physical strength were the only thing necessary to grant moral permission to have our way with the weakest members of society, then that attitude would morally license all manner of hideously cruel behavior toward others, from rape and murder, to child molestation, to child slavery and sex slavery, to abuse of the elderly, and finally, cannibalizing of our babies and children!
There's a second formulation of this despicable argument that exploits another dimension of humans' alleged superiority: that of intelligence. According to this formulation, since humans are more intelligent than the other animals, we have moral license to eat them. (This formulation is often invoked as a way of circumventing the idea that humans are natural herbivores; to wit, by using our superior intelligence to craft tools, weapons, cooking instruments and culinary embellishments, we humans can overcome our obvious physical shortcomings in relation to certain other animals such as cows, birds, deer, and antelope.) But this formulation is also of no avail to the bloodthirsty meat-eater. Consider that in some countries, children are often notoriously, heinously, exploited as human vehicles for deadly explosives to be discharged in suicide bombings. That the limited (but rapidly developing) intelligence of children can be so easily manipulated in this fashion provides no assurance whatsoever that turning them into ticking time-bombs is morally acceptable.
Truly, those who purvey the attitude that “might makes right” are confused, utterly, as regards a supposed connection between “being capable of doing X,” and “having the moral permission to do X.” In truth, there is no logical connection in either direction. For example, I'm not capable of running a mile in four minutes, but that doesn't entail that it would be immoral for me to run a mile so quickly, provided I had the ability. Conversely, and more importantly, just because I have the ability to bilk my elderly relatives, and steal their money, it does not follow that it would be ethical for me to do it.
By this point you may be thinking, “But all of your counterexamples are fallacious, because they involve weaker humans, not weaker animals! There are significant differences between human and nonhuman animals that allow us to prey on the latter, but not the former.” Yes indeed, human and nonhuman animals are different. And because they are, and because you seem to believe that you and your fellow humans are perched securely atop the food chain, I invite you to try this experiment. Drive out into a mountainous area sometime, and make sure it is a place inhabited by mountain lions. Strip yourself naked, and lie down in the dirt. Or enjoy a nice ocean swim in a region known to be infested with sharks. Afterward, when you contemplate that hungry pack of mountain lions licking their chops at the sight of your naked body, or that swarm of sharks eager to taste and smell your blood, tell me whether you've had some time to reconsider your puerile—nay, infantile—notion that the strong should be allowed to prey upon the weak.
The Matter of Scale
Whether or not one espouses the claim that might makes right, there remain two other crucially important differences between human and nonhuman eating of animals. The first concerns matters of scale; the second concerns the ways in which humans and nonhumans are disposed to treat their captives prior to eating them.
All over the world, more than 150 billion animals, including some 90 billion marine animals, are slaughtered each year for food alone. In the United States, the numbers are roughly 10 billion land animals, and another 18 billion animals, large and small, that are fished out of America's waterways each year. (These numbers also bespeak an important point about the distinctly American ethos of food: Americans comprise about 4.3 percent of the world’s population, yet of the world's animals raised, hunted, or fished for food they consume 20 percent.) Every man, woman and child in America alone consumes, on average, about 35 mammals and birds annually, and another 65 marine animals. In order to sustain American appetites, approximately 900 animals are killed every second. It is now too-well-known that in the hour that it took for the World Trade Center towers to implode and collapse, about 3,000 persons from all over the world perished in the incident. No one should refuse to acknowledge, or otherwise discount, this despicable tragedy. Yet during that same hour approximately 3.2 million mammals, birds, and marine creatures lost their lives in America's slaughterhouses and waterways, predominantly in the hands of the same Americans affronted by the assault on the World Trade Center.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern the epidemic of obesity that is gripping not only those in America, but in other Western nations as well, and even in countries like Japan, where fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, and Jack in the Box have been allowed to proliferate. In stunning contrast to humans, who eat so many of their nonhuman brothers and sisters that they become fat, disease-ridden, walking corpses, there is not even a trace of natural obesity to be found among animals who live in the wild. For many humans, the sight of a wild turkey is truly a revelation: these birds are tall, and slender, not the living spheroids created by turkey farmers when they force-feed these birds until they reach up to ten times their natural weight. A pig, when left to his own devices, is another revelation; humans are wont to refer to a gluttonous person as a “pig,” when in fact there is nothing of this sort of gluttony to be found among wild pigs. A wild pig has a long, lean, and muscular torso, much like that of a healthy dog of normal weight. The only obese animals to be found anywhere in the world are strictly those held captive by humans, whether those animals are dogs and cats abused by their guardians when they grossly overfeed their pets—or pigs, turkeys, and chickens abused by factory farmers when they fatten these animals for human consumption and maximum return-on-investment.
The Argument Eviscerated
Despite these figures, it is not so much the killing of these animals that marks the distinction between human and nonhuman eating of animals. Rather, the distinction lies primarily in the fact that nonhumans do not make a living from the eating of animals, nor do they profit from it in any way, nor do they eat animals for their own good pleasure, nor do they kill and eat more than is necessary in order to survive and flourish, nor do they pay others to do their killing for them. Nonhumans do not treat selectively the tissues of the animals they eat, nor do they wash, trim, wrap and package these tissues so as to conceal as much as possible the killing at their source, nor do they cook the tissues that they eat, nor do they cut, slice, grind, tenderize, pulverize or purée these tissues with any implements save their own teeth and claws, nor do they flavor these tissues with sauces, pickles, seasonings and marinades that mask the odor of death and corruption.
Nonhumans do not inseminate species other than their own. Nonhumans do not milk the mammary glands of species other than their own. Nonhumans do not use machines to milk the mammary glands of other nonhumans. Nonhumans do not force cows to produce and retain up to 30 times the amount of milk that they would produce naturally. No nonhuman has ever caused a cow's udder to swell grotesquely, no nonhuman has ever infected a cow's udder with mastitis, and no nonhuman has ever caused a cow to discharge pus in her milk. Nonhumans do not inject antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids and drugs into the bodies of other nonhumans. Nonhumans do not snatch male calves from their mothers immediately after birth, condemn them to tiny wooden crates for the rest of their lives, feed them an iron-deficient diet, and convert them to veal. Nonhumans do not brand the skins of other animals using hot irons. Nonhumans do not castrate steers, with or without anesthesia.
Nonhumans do not sterilize male piglets by ripping their testicles right out of them. Nonhumans do not cut the tails and teeth of pigs, they do not cut off the beaks of baby chicks, and they do not cut off the horns of bulls. Nonhumans do not imprison female pigs in so-called “gestation crates” wherein they cannot move from the prone position in which they are forced to gestate and suckle their young. Nonhumans do not stack pigs vertically in crates, so that the feces and urine of the pigs above are allowed to spatter the pigs below. Nonhumans do not overfeed turkeys so that by the time they are mere adolescents these turkeys will have reached ten or more times their normal weight and can barely stand on their own legs. Nonhumans do not ram feeding tubes down the gullets of geese, then stuff them with nutrients, causing the livers of these geese to become distended. Nonhumans do not use these distended livers to produce pâté de foie gras (that's obscurantist language meaning “paste made from fattened liver”).
Nonhumans do not pack five, six, or seven chickens into a “battery cage” whose floor space comprises less area than two sheets of typing paper. Nonhumans do not force chickens to live in the toxic, ammonia-drenched squalor of their own, and others', feces and urine. Nonhumans do not force chickens to feed on their own fecal matter, and on their fellows. Nonhumans do not starve chickens for up to two weeks in order to manipulate egg production and market prices. Nonhumans do not manipulate the natural diurnal cycles of chickens by warehousing them, then flipping the lights on and off. Nonhumans do not throw “useless” male chicks into grinders while these chicks are still alive, nor do nonhumans stuff them into trash bags (again, while they are still alive) for hauling to the dumpster, nor do nonhumans plow them into the ground while they are still alive. Nonhumans do not kill other nonhumans by hoisting them by their hind legs, then slitting their throats with sharp knives; nonhumans do not stalk their prey using clubs, arrows, knives, rifles, traps, nets, fishing rods and harpoons; nonhumans do not pillage a parcel of rain forest the size of a small apartment—and thereby destroy or displace all of its attendant animal and plant species—for the “utility” of producing a two-pound chub of hamburger, and perhaps a few pennies' profit; nonhumans do not throw away 18 to 46 percent of the animals that they've killed for food, either because that food was left to waste on their plates, or on grocery-store shelves.
If any of these practices strikes you as being “natural,” or as “having unfolded in the course of nature,” then you haven't grasped either the strength or import of this counterargument. On the other hand, if you have, I shall waste no more time or breath attacking the notion that human meat-eating is “natural.”
The Argument That Never Dies
One would think that by this point there would be little more to say about the argument from meat-eating in nature. Except to note how it just boggles the mind that, despite its very lameness, despite that, for aught we can determine, it should have been slayed in the hands of reason several millennia ago, this argument somehow manages to resuscitate itself again and again, enticing new and unsuspecting generations of people who are either too juvenile, or too dense, or too headstrong to examine it, and trace out its implications.
The Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. 45-120 CE), who wrote the passage that precedes this essay, exposed this argument as a fraud nearly two thousand years ago. Nevertheless, as the British animal rights activist Henry Stephens Salt (1851-1939) wrote in a related context, “It is quite possible that fools may be repeating it two thousand years hence.” 4
Notes
1. Plutarch, “Of Eating of Flesh,” Moral Essays (1898 translation). Reprinted in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, ed. Tom Regan and Peter Singer (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), pp. 113-114.
2. For purposes of this essay I will use the abbreviation “meat-eater” to refer to any human who eats not only meat, but also dairy products, eggs, and honey.
3. For although there are bodies more massive than Jupiter beyond the trans-Neptunian bodies, at that distance the sun's gravitation would be too weak to hold such a massive body within an orbit about the sun.
4. Henry S. Salt, Logic of the Larder. Excerpted from The Humanities of Diet (Manchester: The Vegetarian Society, 1914). In this context Salt is actually referring to yet another pathetic defense of meat-eating, which argues that animals should be grateful to the persons who eat them, since without a demand for these animals, they would never have existed! To be honest, I was sorely tempted to write another essay in this series, and call it The Insipid “But the Animals Wouldn't Exist If We Didn't Eat Them” Argument. However, no one can improve on what Salt has already had to say about it, so I gladly refer readers to his essay instead.
Gordon Brown is a former Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges near San Diego, California, and an animal rights advocate. He is also ADAPTT's web developer.