a look at the 'anti-vegan zinger': animal rights, autonomy and self-ownership

“A common response to vegan philosophy – seemingly considered as something of a zinger – is that to go vegan would mean extinction of the vast majority of farm animals alive today. The only response to this is that it is far better to never exist than to live a life of abject horror and pain of the sort that factory-farmed animals endure. Would you like to live in constant darkness, growing up in a cage in which you cannot move, be mutilated, branded, and brutalised, no parents to guide you, no space to socialise, all to the constant screaming and braying of your kinsmen, whose bloodcurdling cries instinctively warn you of your inevitable slaughter? I would rather be dead.“

–Matthew Chalmers, Expanding the Original Position to Animals, 2021

In his article on the veil of ignorance and animal rights – a discussion I’d like to revisit and challenge extensively to better understand my own intuitions regarding animal rights, if nothing else – Matthew Chalmers makes the above claim. He’s right to say this response is considered “a zinger”. I think it’s mainly because, prima facie, it makes the vegan movement look incredibly hypocritical. Let’s break this objection down into premises to understand what’s going on here.  

The anti-vegan says:

P1: Farm animals should be of concern to vegans, as they seek to protect animal rights 
P2: If everyone went vegan, farmers would go out of business
C1: Without farms to hold farm animals, there would be nowhere to keep said farm animals
P3: We would have to euthanize the vast majority of farm animals
P4: Death is inherently bad 
C2: Veganism inherently leads to worse outcomes for farm animals 

This is usually how I hear the objection phrased in discourses I have had with meat eaters. This appears to be a very powerful argument, I think mostly because P1, P2 and C1 are basically unchallengeable and draw great attention to the alleged hypocrisy of vegans (especially P1). Perhaps C1 is not a certain conclusion, but it is undoubtedly the natural conclusion, given the huge shift in infrastructure which would be required to house said animals. For the purposes of my planned discussion, I will not challenge any of this here. 

I would like to challenge P3, but perhaps at a later date. If we hold C1 true, then P3 follows for the sake of protecting the human population (animals running around on the streets and in the roads is indeed possible if we simply free them all and then do nothing else). But this comes with another implicit premise, that the human race is deserving of such protection. Perhaps it can be argued that just because humans would suffer in this circumstance, P3 does not naturally follow – i.e. we should instead take a less anthropocentric view on this topic. For now though, I will leave it alone.

P4 is the main point of challenge from Chalmers – that death is inherently worse than a life of suffering. Here’s a problem with his counter-argument, though – it makes a sweeping generalisation with regards to the treatment of animals. It pits the default state as one with obscene levels of suffering – which, for a great deal of farm animals, is not necessarily the default state. Indeed, for a great number of calves and caged hens, what Chalmers says is hardly an exaggeration (and may even be an understatement). 

But what of the Highland cow who lives a good life on a farm, is not torn away from its family but instead lives life alongside its offspring, and has decent space to roam? Surely, a seemingly arbitrary and early death would be worse in this instance, as the amount of pleasure which they may enjoy in life is unduly limited. While the number of animals which do live in good conditions is not (close to) as many as we might like, that does not mean it literally never happens. In these cases, death is certainly worse. 

pictured: john rawls and some highland cows. rawls himself claimed that animals are not entitled to justice since they are not “moral persons”, lacking certain capacities which would otherwise create said entitlements.

I raise the following objection to Chalmers. Assume I live a good life as a human being. I achieve all of my goals, I live a long and fulfilling life – one I can say I am happy with. But let’s say I die suddenly (and painlessly) due to some natural force. Suspending the psychological harms of consuming human flesh, is it morally okay for you to feast on my corpse?

If we assume also that I have no right to bodily autonomy in death (quite the leap, I admit – I will come back to this) then there is no reasonable objection to such an action. To not feast on my corpse is to use it non-optimally, it might be argued – in much the same way that objecting to the consumption of the Highland cow after it has died is also a non-optimal use of resources. 

For Chalmers, what this means is his counter-argument is contingent upon these animals being in a state of suffering to begin with. If we could eliminate animal cruelty rather than eliminate the meat industry altogether, surely this would be the most moral and optimal choice, not just for the animals but for the humans that consume them. 

Ergo, the case for veganism is best phrased as an instrumental one, in the hopes that going plant-based will encourage a change in market practices (painless deaths, more space to roam, etc.) After this point, it is difficult to object to the eating of meat in circumstances where the animal in question has lived a long, rich and fulfilling life, at least relative to what its life would have been like without human intervention.  

The argument that meat eating is inherently wrong in all cases is difficult to support. Of course, there are environmental concerns which I am neglecting in this rough-and-ready essay. To keep a keen focus on animal rights (and simply for the sake of brevity) I will ignore these issues for now, and perhaps re-introduce this concern at a later date. 

on the importance of autonomy

So far I have assumed that animals (and humans, I suppose!) do not have a right to bodily autonomy in death. This is a huge leap, although in some ways feels intuitive: when someone dies, their soul leaves their body. Or, if we are to use mere scientific observation, the unique qualities that made them who they are (i.e. which constituted the self) essentially cease to exist entirely since their brain no longer functions. Because they can no longer express preferences as themselves, and we believe ‘them’ to be gone; this person no longer owns their body anymore. 

This is often contested by religious arguments (e.g. the need to make preparations to help one pass onto the afterlife), and can be backed up by a more libertarian principle of ownership: just because you no longer possess your body, that does not give others the right to it. You are the only person who ever occupied that body before, so you get to decide what happens to it in life – why not in death? 

I ignored this concern earlier but let us assume the libertarian argument as given – that we, as humans, should get to decide what happens to our bodies in death. Do animals deserve this same right? Before we even get onto the moral differences between humans and animals, I’ll discuss another important point first – expression of preferences. 

If a person died and (again suspending psychological concerns) they had not expressed any preferences in their life with regards to how they want their corpse to be treated, we do not suddenly assume it is okay to eat them. If they had expressed this preference, however (or, as is more likely, the weaker preference that they don’t mind if somebody eats them when they die), then this would give us the right to do so. 

Animals can’t do this, obviously. They can’t explicitly express these preferences. Sheep cannot tell us, “when I die, it’s okay to use my wool for a coat”, or something along those lines. If this libertarian principle is to be applied to them, they ought to have full rights to their bodily autonomy throughout their whole life – so no milk, or wool, or any such good, even if you procure it in a manner which does not harm the animal in any way.

pictured: matthew chalmers and some free range chickens. suffice to say, most chicken farms do not look anything remotely like this…but if they all did, would we even be having this discussion in the first place?

The problem so far is that we are taking this libertarian principle for granted. It has been expressed in a strong form here: that we have no right to take anything from the animal because they are not us, they are separate from us. But the same principle, in the real world today, does not actually apply to humans in this strong form – at least, in the vast majority of developed Western nations. 

While no body parts are taken from people themselves by force, they are taxed by the societies in which they live by an institution that has a monopoly on violence. The results of one’s labour time – and ergo the labour time itself, if we are to paraphrase Robert Nozick in “taking n hours from the person” – is taken forcibly in much the same way the sheep’s wool is taken forcibly. To clarify: in modern societies, time is taken from humans by the government, and wool is taken from animals by farmers.  

But rather than turn this into an anti-taxation, pro-vegan stance, the point can quickly be spun on its head. Taking n hours from that person pays for public services which that same person benefits from greatly; taking wool from the sheep ensures that their coats are not overgrown, and also guarantees access to high quality veterinary care to ensure the sheep stays alive and still produces said product. Again, this paints contemporary farmers in a much more charitable light than is perhaps deserved. Although in the case of sheep especially, I struggle to see how their lives would be better without farmers shearing them and looking after them. 

There is nuance to this claim – the production of milk, for instance, requires a kind of force that clearly harms both the cow and its offspring, with the latter taken to slaughter and the former suffering from maternal deprivation. For certain animal products, the cruelty built into their production makes such processes inherently objectionable. But wool, our current focus, can be ethically sourced on this view.

pictured: robert nozick and a lot of eggs. nozick himself advocated a vegetarian diet in his first work, anarchy, state, and utopia: “the extra benefits americans today can gain from eating animals do not justify doing it. so we shouldn’t.”

Let us return to the libertarian principle of ownership with regards to bodily autonomy. Imagine instead if our taxes were paid for not by our wages, but by the sale of our hair. I think more people would object to this, since it constitutes a part of their appearance, and constitutes a stronger example of the right to bodily autonomy – an essential liberty which, in this case, upholds freedom of expression. But if animals don’t care about their appearance (but probably do care a lot about being far too warm in the summer months), is their autonomy really of much relevance? What right are we defending for the animals here?

As the previous example demonstrates, an animal’s right to bodily autonomy is inherently weaker since their preferences are – to our knowledge – markedly different. This is to say, when faced with the prospect of death, a human would care about how their corpse is used after it dies. While of course animals still – as we can infer from their emotional states – do not want to die, and would obviously prefer a rich fulfilling life when given the opportunity, animals do not care for such questions of bodily autonomy after death. 

On top of that, the emotional distress caused by the prospective threat of death can be avoided by euthanizing animals, meaning in their actual lives the animal may suffer no material harm at all so long as they are allowed to lead a rich and fulfilling life beforehand. This, in my view, makes it very difficult to come up with any intrinsic objection to the procurement of animal goods that has been procured in a genuinely ethical manner. 

an intuition pump

I will leave this discussion (for the time being) with a thought-experiment, since I have so far assumed implicitly that it is morally permissible to eat animals if they die from natural causes, or are nearing the end of their life, etc.. This is not the status quo – animals are usually killed earlier in their lives, not later, to gain higher quality meat. I ask then this question; would you rather:

a) Live a fulfilling and rich life, but you are guaranteed to die at the age of 40, with your corpse being feasted on afterwards.

or

b) Live a life of unknown quality without any external protections for disease, malnutrition, etc., that would otherwise be provided by others.

Which life would we choose for ourselves? What kind of life should we choose for animals? 

It is important for the vegan movement to clarify their aims and end goals. If it is to end animal suffering by improving the conditions of farm animals by boycotting animal products until these conditions improve, then we essentially choose option a). If it is to simply end the consumption of meat altogether, then we essentially choose option b). Right now it is not clear. The movement ought to have a clearer exit strategy in mind.