The promotion of transparency is a rather general issue, not one that is relegated to the animal farming industry alone. Policing and the justice system writ large are areas where there have been significant reforms in the direction of transparency in recent years. Something on the order of half of the law enforcement agencies in the US, it seems, have adopted police body camera requirements, and such cameras typically are supported by the police and by the public. (Where cameras are not required, it often is the cost -- much of which derives from the need for data storage -- that presents the major barrier.) Police interrogations now are filmed in 26 states. So in the last decade, we have witnessed a major increase in transparency in the justice system, and one that seems poised to continue. Federal and state grants, for instance, are available for easing the adoption of police body cameras, and similar types of subsidies are available for recording interrogations. It is nice to see the government promoting transparency instead of impeding it.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Animal Rights and Animal Welfare
Sometimes the issue is framed as Animal Rights versus Animal Welfare. Reality is better approximated by a continuum connecting Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, but when juxtaposed, the two "extremes" are that Animal Welfare concerns protecting the well-being of animals as they are bred and confined and worked and slaughtered to satisfy human consumption preferences, while Animal Rights concerns granting non-human animals legal protections that are comparable to those that humans enjoy, and thus much or all of animal farming (and other animal uses) would not be permitted, irrespective of the well-being of the animals involved. (The internet is full of rather tendentious descriptions of the differences between animal welfare and animal rights.) The work of Professor Temple Grandin, mentioned in the immediately prior post, is in the Animal Welfare tradition, while the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project, unsurprisingly, is exemplary of the Animal Rights approach.
The tension between animal rights and animal welfare orientations is felt in many other areas of public policy. Often the conflicting approaches can be characterized as "harm reduction" versus "zero tolerance." Should prostitution or cocaine use be made more safe, or should the focus be on eliminating these behaviors entirely? Matters aren't always so stark. Many people who see abolition as an ultimate goal might support ameliorative measures in the meantime -- and perhaps even if those ameliorative measures, in the short-term, increase the frequency of the targeted behavior.
For people who object to the notion of animal agriculture, more humane slaughterhouses incorporating non-slip floors in livestock unloading areas, for instance, can be rather repugnant. Nonetheless, efforts to improve "welfare" in this sense need not surely come at the expense of promoting abolition -- though I hope I am not being too optimistic on this score. Broader discussion of animal welfare improvements and animal agricultural practices might assuage enough consciences that the industry is prolonged and strengthened -- but these discussions might also open doors to deeper reforms and more extensive mental conversions, while actually improving the welfare of farmed animals in the here and now. On a personal level, "reductarianism" or vegetarianism might be helpful way stations -- even if a vegan lifestyle is the more appropriate long-term goal.
The other potential trade-off that sometimes is invoked in non-human animal policy discussions is that devotion of effort to animal welfare detracts from attention to or concern with human welfare. But again, this trade-off is not a logical necessity -- and in practice, rather the opposite seems to be the case.
The tension between animal rights and animal welfare orientations is felt in many other areas of public policy. Often the conflicting approaches can be characterized as "harm reduction" versus "zero tolerance." Should prostitution or cocaine use be made more safe, or should the focus be on eliminating these behaviors entirely? Matters aren't always so stark. Many people who see abolition as an ultimate goal might support ameliorative measures in the meantime -- and perhaps even if those ameliorative measures, in the short-term, increase the frequency of the targeted behavior.
For people who object to the notion of animal agriculture, more humane slaughterhouses incorporating non-slip floors in livestock unloading areas, for instance, can be rather repugnant. Nonetheless, efforts to improve "welfare" in this sense need not surely come at the expense of promoting abolition -- though I hope I am not being too optimistic on this score. Broader discussion of animal welfare improvements and animal agricultural practices might assuage enough consciences that the industry is prolonged and strengthened -- but these discussions might also open doors to deeper reforms and more extensive mental conversions, while actually improving the welfare of farmed animals in the here and now. On a personal level, "reductarianism" or vegetarianism might be helpful way stations -- even if a vegan lifestyle is the more appropriate long-term goal.
The other potential trade-off that sometimes is invoked in non-human animal policy discussions is that devotion of effort to animal welfare detracts from attention to or concern with human welfare. But again, this trade-off is not a logical necessity -- and in practice, rather the opposite seems to be the case.
More on Farm Transparency: The Glass Walls Videos
The North American Meat Institute has sponsored a series of videos featuring Professor Temple Grandin that aim to show how animal slaughtering works in practice. The videos are intended to offer transparency: they are entitled Glass Walls videos. They show (to at least some extent) all the stages of operations in slaughterhouses -- slaughterhouses that are working properly, that is, as legal and industry standards require. These videos are hard to watch, but the fact that they exist indicates that the meat industry itself wants transparency, or at least wants to be seen as wanting transparency. So why not make the cameras permanent and the video public, a' la what Fair Oaks Farms has committed to?
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