The Enormity

In the previous post, I asserted that "if animals possess even a small (but positive) independent standing in the social calculus, then their current treatment at our hands constitutes an ongoing, massive crime." What is the evidence for that assertion?

It's the scale of the suffering and death that is all but unfathomable: “Over 150 million animals are killed for food around the world every day—just on land. That comes out to 56 billion land animals killed per year. Including wild caught and farmed fishes, we get a daily total closer to 3 billion animals killed.” – from the “How Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Day?” webpage at Sentient Media.

Any tiny intrinsic valuation of farm animal welfare, then, would be of utmost importance in judging socially “optimal” policies. If land animals have 1/100 the "standing" of human beings, then 560 million "human equivalents" are impacted (in life and premature death) annually by farm and slaughter conditions. And that is just the land animals used for food. In the US alone, more than 10 million animals are used in research annually, with the vast majority being birds, rats, and mice -- species that are explicitly excluded from the protections of the Animal Welfare Act.

Beyond the sheer scope of animal lives and deaths, the other type of evidence requisite to establish the ongoing enormity concerns the welfare shortfalls typically visited upon these animals. More on that evidence in the days ahead.