Is it okay to eat meat? Peter Singer tackles the best objections against vegetarianism

[Applause] [Music] so some have argued that even if I'm a committed vegetarian my whole life it's not clear that this actually could save even one animal's life and it's because meat production is insensitive to demand in such a fine-grained way so the supply chain of meat is just too complex to respond to an individual's decision to buy or not to buy meat so does this make it futile to be a vegetarian I don't accept the arguments that you're putting forward there what we should act on is the expected value of our decisions obviously we can't know what results will come from our decisions but we have to go by probabilities that's the guide of life so even though it's true that the supply chain is not sensitive to the purchase of one chicken let's say if you're avoiding chicken your entire life then I think the expectation is that many of your days when you don't eat the chicken will have no effect but every now and again one day when you don't buy a chicken or have a very large effect because there must be a cutoff point somewhere in which the supermarket or wherever you'd be buying from will say oh we're not selling enough chickens let's order 200 fewer chickens tomorrow right so what if I eat a hamburger just once a year I think the expected value equation is the same I mean the benefit to you if there is any benefit I would argue this actually negative the benefit to you harm to you by eating is that but if there were a benefit then the benefit is smaller and the chances of it making a difference is smaller but I think it all averages out I mean I can't understand how otherwise you could have a supply and demand system if it doesn't if it doesn't average out over the long run and if each individual decision doesn't have a chance of affecting the supply so what is that hamburger is produced from a happy cow would that make it better so Karen had a good life with lots of space in a pleasant matter that was slaughtered painlessly would you have any objection against eating a happy cow a hamburger me I think the objection is a somewhat mitigated there I do think clearly it's better to eat the meat of animals who were happy lives and the meat of animals who suffered I think you still have to think about a number of different factors one is the impact that your example is having because is it going to be clear to people that you're conscientious in your choice of meats I mean if you make a big point about that and everybody who sees you eating the hamburger knows that you wouldn't have eaten it if it was not from a cow that had a happy life and that might meet that objection and then this questions about was the animal happy throughout its life was it for example perhaps happy for most of its life but then transported to a slaughterhouse in horrible conditions and killed in a brutal way so there's a lot to find out and finally and this applies particularly if you're talking about cows there is the impact on climate change that you're having and ruminant animals cattle and sheep are particularly large contributors to greenhouse gas emissions so that isn't helped by the fact that of happy cow in fact there's some evidence that cattle on grass produce more greenhouse gas emissions per kilo of meat produced than cattle her favored own economic arguments might suggest that if fewer people buy meat the price of meat will go down which will result in others buying more meat so could this make it futile to be a vegetarian I think that what we don't know a lot about consumer purchases and consumer to what extent it's well I think the what you need to hope is that if your people buy meat the price of me drops below the production costs so so what the producers are getting no longer covers their costs and if it no longer covers their costs then the fact that more people want to buy it isn't going to help and it's only if they come in and push the price up again so that the producers do cover their costs so so it depends on a number of questions that I don't think we really know the answer to the other factor that you have to take into account here is can you build up a critical mass of people who are avoiding me and thereby creating a market for plant-based alternatives to meat and I think that's in fact already starting to happen we're starting to see more and better plant-based alternatives to me on sale not just in specialist health food stores but in mainstream supermarkets and I think if we need to encourage that trend because if these products become economical more environmentally sustainable and meet obviously less cruel and meet and comparable in taste to meat then I think we have a real chance of essentially replacing the entire media production industry so here's another possible arguments against vegetarianism so in a recent article in the conversation Mike Archer refers to figures that suggest that in Australia 25 times more animals die in the production of plant protein than in the production of the same amount of protein from cross fed cattle and sheep and that's for example because many animals died when the fields are plowed or when their habitat is destroyed to make space for crops so does this make it unethical for Australians to be vegetarian well I think Michael Asia really gets this wrong because firstly this would only apply to completely grass-fed meat it wouldn't apply to animals that have been fed grain even for part of their lives and the vast majority of Australian beef comes from animals who are fed grain at least for the last three months of their lives and because it's so inefficient to feed grain to cattle you're actually having to produce more grain and therefore kill more of these small rodents and other animals in the wheat fields by feet growing grain feeding it to animals and then eating the meat so you're actually reducing the number of small animals if you eat the grain directly then if you eat the grain after it's been cycled through the animal now if you just to say well I'll only eat the grass-fed meat then there are still some things to be said about that one is as I've already mentioned you are making a major contribution to greenhouse gases and that's something that I think needs to be taken into account as well the other thing is that I just suggest that there's less suffering not just less killing but less suffering and I think he's wrong about that because he says the the cattle are killed humanely but even if the actual moment of death is humane if you look at cattle in Australia's rangelands which basically means places in the more remote regions of the north and northwest of Australia these cattle are rounded up in horrible conditions I've seen this happen because they're pretty much wild animals they haven't really had contact with humans very often then they're rounded up they're terrified they're herded onto trucks and then they're driven on these trucks maybe a thousand kilometres maybe 1,500 kilometres you know very long distances to two slaughterhouses and perhaps in great heat and without being without stopping to be fed and watered I think it's a quite horrible process and if you compare that with a mass let's say that is killed by the harvester and has a pretty quick death compared to the suffering of the catalyst country so billions of animals suffer tremendously in the livestock industry now if it became technically possible would it be okay to use gene-editing to produce livestock that can't feel pain I certainly think it would be better if livestock could not feel pain of course we're not just talking about physical pain we're also talking about mental suffering or boredom from confinement in cages or stress from those conditions so if you could actually get rid of that and then I think that would be a preferable situation to the present one again there would still be other reasons even if you completely eliminate the suffering there would still be environmental reasons I think for to eliminate particularly the ruminant animals but also from point of view of wasting grain you would still want to eliminate the rest of the media industry as well but but it would be a different kind of issue if there was no suffering then there would be more more relating to environmental questions rather clearly than then animal welfare questions because the animals wouldn't have a welfare but isn't there a risk that this will result in even more people consuming meat because they will think that it's less ethically problematic now this is the kind of thing that is also been said about other reforms that have already happened for example the idea that in the European Union that there are restrictions on how you can keep hens you can't keep them in the standard small wire cages that used to the same with pigs and video cards they have to be able to turn around and move a little bit which previously they didn't and some people worried that this would actually lead to an rate of acceptability of meat consumption but if you look at what's happened in the European Union since those reforms have been introduced which is now I think they started around 2010 if I remember rightly so we've now got sort of seven years and in fact it doesn't seem that there has been an increase in meat consumption rather it seems there's been an increase in acceptance of vegetarian and vegan foods so so I think that perhaps this effect would not take place I can't be sure of course but I think it's reasonable that it would be a sign of increased concern about animals that would make people think more about animals and maybe therefore they would still be reluctant to read them do you think schools should offer only vegetarian or vegan food and because perhaps this would be a good way to steer younger generations towards eating no or less meat I think that would be an excellent move yes if if schools were prepared to do that of course there's always a question about how much particularly for talking about government schools here private schools can do what they like I guess and but if you're talking about government schools there's always a question about how far a government can get ahead of where population is so I think that might work in some regions where there's very high acceptance of arguments against eating meat but probably in mainstream schools then they're not just rated just not ready for it yet do you think people are reluctant to do this because they're concerned about the health of the children I imagine that there would be some concerns about the health of the children and of course those who are trying to promote the production and sale of meat would stir up those fears as much as they could but I think this well certainly if you're just talking about a vegetarian diet I think there's no question that a vegetarian diet can be perfectly healthy way of nourishing children and probably healthier than a meat based one if you're talking about a vegan diet a little bit more care would be needed and you would need to make sure that children got enough b12 for example so there might be more concerns but I think we're understanding more about how to do that I think we can have fortified foods that contain the necessary ingredients so probably this is a little futuristic but if we're talking about over the next decade or so then I think it's possible that we could meet those concerns about the health of the children do you think that we should protect certain animals more than others if you're talking about the entire zoological kingdom of everything that cancers an animal then definitely we should protect those animals that are capable of suffering and we don't have to protect those that are not so I think an oyster Zoo logically is an animal but I think it's unlikely that bivalves like oysters and mussels and clams okay blood suffering so I don't think they need protection in themselves once you get beans you can suffer then the question is can you have gradations between some who can suffer more in different ways and that's possible but I think we don't quite know enough about that yet we assume that animals with higher cognitive capacities are capable of suffering more but it's not absolutely clear that that's right and I think there's still a lot of work to be done to try to establish how much different species are capable of suffering what cognitive capacities have to do with suffering should we grant legal rights to the most intelligent animals so legal rights along the lines of basic human rights so for example should chimpanzees have the right not to be killed or not to be tortured yes that's what I've argued together with Paula Cavallari and the Great Ape project that we should extend those rights to great apes in particular because they Center us the clearest cases of beings who are close to us in terms of their intelligence their self-awareness their deep social relationships and so on it's not that we want to draw a line sort of between great apes and lesser apes or other primates or anything like that rather we see this as a way of narrowing the gap between humans and nonhumans in general so at the moment we sort of think that there's humans here and then there's all animals over here and somehow all animals are pretty similar but humans are very different and obviously any zoologist and biologist will tell you that that's wrong in evolutionary terms it's clearly wrong the relationship between us and a chimpanzee is closer than the relationship even between a chimpanzee and an orangutan let alone between a chimpanzee and a dog or a cat the idea is to draw humans and non-human animals closer by extending legal rights at least initially to those nonhumans who are most like us in their abilities and social relations and emotional life and so on and then hopefully we will get extended further as well but you need to make a start somewhere in the future it may be possible to eat and featuring meat so real meat grown in the laboratory would it be okay to eat that yes I certainly think it would there would be no suffering involved it looks like one estimate I saw says it would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of meat production by 97 percent so this would be clean environment police safer and no suffering so yes I think that would be excellent if we can produce that economically is it okay to eat insects with insects I think we still don't really know enough about their possible consciousness you could argue that it's better to eat insects than to eat other animals vertebrates so particularly because with vertebrates we can be highly confident that they can suffer and with insects we don't really know they may suffer or they may not on the other hand people will say yes but to get a meal you're going to have to reach a large number of insects you know whereas you only need to read even just a small piece of a cowl it's okay to have a meal so maybe that balance is out in terms of the probabilities I'm not sure I would I would hope that we will learn more about the likelihood of different insects being conscience we shouldn't assume that you know either all infected conscious or none of them there's an enormous variety in insect I've seen arguments that suggest that perhaps bees are conscious because of the learning of things that they can do sophisticated communication and so on whereas perhaps mealworms are not conscious so in that case it would be around three mill worms but not bees and I'm not the most proposing eating bees but I guess there are though crickets for example it may be more complicated than mealworms again so I think it does depend a little bit on what insects we're talking about but also on how much we can learn about the possibility that they're conscious just man has argued that we should prevent the pain and suffering of wild animals and so for example presumably if we could stop a line from killing an antelope by giving him other food perhaps Road kills then we should and what do you think about that I agree in principle or we should try to reduce the suffering of wild animals as well as domestic animals exactly how we do that without having other bad consequences isn't easy to see but yes if if we could do it then I would even thing to do shelly kagan has argued that if we could make fish smarter for example through gene editing we should do you agree I haven't actually seen that out ago that I know that I don't know whether he a Russian article but he told me in an interview yeah maybe I mean but it's it's possible that it might seem sophomore more right it depends a bit I mean are we talking about if we're talking about gene editing fish are we talking about fish who will then be farmed as in aquaculture they might suffer more because they're still trapped in this tank and then smarter and they're now more aware they're being frustrated and bored and so on on the other end maybe we could make wild fish smarter they wouldn't swallow those hooks and or they'd stay out of those nets and maybe that would be a good thing to do you've often defended positions that rely on the importance of impartiality so roughly the idea that we should give equal way to all with equal interests however sometimes you've questions whether impartiality is always possible or desirable so to what extent or when is it permissible to be partial so for example suppose you have a thank you ler and can give it to your child to cure a headache or use it to prevent the same amount of pain in a chimpanzee would it be okay to give it to your child and if so is it because she's your child or because she's in the same species it's the same amount of pain yes it was the same amount of fun I think it's okay to give it to your child because there's no no you're not you're not you know you it's not really favoring I mean you could say well you oughta toss a coin but I don't really see the reason for that I think either choice is acceptable and if if if you argue well I will feel better if I give it to my child because I love my child then there's a little bit of extra happiness that comes from you giving it to your child so if it's the same amount I think yes it's permissible to give it to your child so and suppose the the chimpanzee had a much worse headache immature then it starts to become more dazzle and I would then say it's better to give it to the chimp and Z but on the other hand if someone did give it to their child this would be I think a case of what prophet called blameless wrongdoing so it's the wrong choice but we don't blame somebody for being a loving parent who cares about their child because in general we want to encourage people to be loving parents and to bring up children who will be happy and so on so I think that it's it's it would be the wrong choice but I would not blame the parent who did that so could you give people concerned about animal suffering some practical advice so I think what many find difficult is that it's all a bit overwhelming it seems that whatever we eat we may contribute to animal suffering so when we eat one hamburger a year when we eat vegetables when we saw when we products with palm oil and so on so if we want to be careful what should we do well I still think the the biggest single thing that you can do to reduce animal suffering from that perspective is to avoid factory farmed products so avoid the factory farmed chicken and pork and eggs those would be the the worst things from the climate point of view avoiding beef as well and of course a lot of beef is quite intensively produced so I think those those are more important I mean if you want to go into other questions like palm oil that's really a separate issue of course because there's you can keep time or whether you're a vegetarian or meat-eater so there are many questions about buying organic not buying organic and so on there are many separate questions that people ask but I think that the single biggest contribution you can make through your food choices to a more ethical world is to avoid factory farmed animal products [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Practical Ethics Channel

Views: 149,775

Keywords: Practical Ethics Channel, Katrien Devolder, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Philosophy, ethics, Peter Singer, vegetarianism, vegetarian, animal welfare, animal wellbeing, animal suffering, animal rights, animal liberation, meat, meat production, shelly kagan, jeff mcmahan, food ethics, no meat, vegan, eating insects, in vitro meat, in-vitro meat, artifical meat, school meals, ethical meat, factory farm, veganism, climate change, global warming, PETA, Animal cruelty

Id: PLl3vEGU49Q

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2017