Farming, Science, and Animal Rights

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Jane Sorensen Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Word count: 4497 of 13

Farming, Science, and the Animal Rights Debate

Farming is a major target of animal welfare campaigns and of the organic food

revolution, based on concern for environmental justice and the health of the food we

consume. It also has been a major recipient of financial support as it is, more than other

industries, buffeted by adverse conditions in the weather and the market for its products.

Farming gets governmental support for many reasons: farmers are a politically active

group, with an historic link to our national heritage, providing a culture of its own that is

distinct from urban culture, and a once-present lifestyle of husbandry (Rollin 523). It

does not hurt that agribusiness is, as a whole, quite profitable, with the national appeal of

feeding the world. Farmers are contributors to everyone’s well-being, the three days

without bread being the buttress of civil society. We can tolerate the occasional farm

failing just as any businesses can fail, but any trend of failure recalls the verse:

A dog starved at his master’s gate

Predicts the ruin of the state. - William Blake

This may also silently speak to the great dismay and rage that we feel whenever a

farmer starves his flocks and herds. My father (a retired farmer) says that this does not

happen intentionally and without outside cause, but even so, it is the farmer’s

responsibility to take every humane recourse. When I was a child, one of our neighbors,

Cecil Romanelli, had a herd of Charolais that were starving when the bank foreclosed on

his loan. Early one morning he loaded up his pick-up truck with some of his dead cattle

and dumped it on the sidewalk in front of the Royal Bank head office in Toronto – a bank

that has gold as part of its windows’ mirroring compound.

While farming may merit some of the criticisms directed against it since farmers have

changed their methods with the advent of agribusiness, Fraser notes the assumption we

have that animal producers have shifted away from traditional animal care values. He

asks if we actually have data on the shifting mores of farmers. If we don’t, it would be

helpful to find out in order to have a dialogue. (552) Farmers may care as much as they

ever did, and some are not immune to care more (vis a vis organic farming), as society’s





general shift in perception of and compassion towards animals is due to the ability to

know more about them - through documentaries of wild animals, responsible

relationships with pets, and research on animal behaviour (ethology), psychology,

neurology. (550) But, under the economic and social constraints farmers have, permissionto care may be limited, and it does not easily translate to the increasing scale of their

practices. (553)

There is a film in Canada’s Top Ten (2008) called Farmer's Requiem by director

Ramses Madina1 about the disappearance of farming culture. There has been a

concomitant relegation of pastoral structures in the adjustment to new practices, but

another source of anxiety exists: It is rare to pass a farm on to your children. Most

farmers live poor and die rich, because the most lucrative crop you can plant is concrete,

so they sell their land to those who develop it for commercial and residential purposes,

without respect for the land itself. (Witness another Canadian film, Radiant City, in

which the city of Calgary – small enough to still see fields of wheat between the airport

and city limits – has experienced such a boom that outlying suburbia is the coveted, yet

dysfunctional, place to live.)

Agriculture is such important work that to be done right, it needs diversity at the cost

of efficiency (see Rollin, 524); competent, knowledgeable, and caring owners and

workers; adequate compensation to retain the best workers, and social value to enable

dialogue. Because it is not well-compensated and is seasonal, labour pool shortages and

transient work are endemic problems, (Fraser 549) working against knowledge-building

and caring. Small farms fall victim first. This is the beginning of where economics put

the family farm at a disadvantage.

Fraser identified government support of mass industrial production as the intent to

improve the lot of farmers (549) in the face of competition pressures from expanding

1 http://topten.ca/films/farmersrequiem/default.aspx accessed latest on Tuesday, 08 April 2008





global markets. (550) The government has found cause to invest in intensive farms, and it

has also benefited from corporate taxes and the jobs derived from the agribusiness

supplier side – which the government helps fuel through scientific research in its labs and

at the universities. The most direct tools to protect farmer’s livelihoods are the productionquota, the marketing boards, and compensation when the market plummets. Shrinking

operating or profit margins have oblige even unwilling farmers to switch to confinement

systems. Nevertheless, for farming communities, the environmental degradation and the

loss of pastoral (pasture) scenes due to intensive farming is a serious issue. Both make the

countryside less hospitable.

In addition, the critique that has not been taken seriously enough is that these systems

treat living beings in an industrialized manner. Although the organic revolution is

portrayed with the self-interested reason of healthy choices, it is also in part a critique of

the exploitation of the natural world. The perception is that money from this exploitation

is being made across the board, even during compensation periods.2 Some pig farmers

have been made rich since the advent of intensive confinement. This fuels the

righteousness of animal welfare advocates that intensive farming is a game played on the

literal backs of animals made miserable as reducible pawns.

Fraser points out that the extension of the above critique, that either we return to the

type of agriculture that preceded the agribusiness revolution, or become vegan, (551) is a

“two solitudes” debate that has sidelined the resolution of practical conflicts (554) and is

counterproductive when “the people who most closely influence farm-animal welfare –

the producers themselves – often feel alienated and vilified by the debate rather than

being engaged in it.” (554)

To give a personal insight into a farmer’s frame of mind before this critique, farmers

and farm workers feel they have, and may have always had, a pejorative stereotype.

2http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080414.wpigs0414/BNStory/robNews/home?cid=al_gam_mostemailaccessed April 15, 2008





“Don’t condemn farming when your mouth is full” is a bumper sticker many farmers

have. It is not directed specifically against animal rights activists. It tells people not to

interfere in any negative way, that they ought to protect and support farmers. The trouble

is, one cannot have it both ways. If you want more protection and support, you have toaccept more demands and involvement.

When it comes to confinement systems, there are legitimate reasons to avoid them that

have to do with what we know animals experience of the world. There are also arguments

about what level of violence and domination could be greatly mitigated or even rendered

unnecessary if we allowed it to be. These concern the permission farmers give themselves

to look at some of their practices through this filter, and some of the assumptions that we

as a society ground our practices in regarding animals, which farmers are opposed to

addressing for commercial or fear-of-change reasons. We will get into these shortly, but

first, even that premise has hope. Gary Valen’s article Agribusiness: Farming without

culture (a better title is Farming: Putting Culture back in Agribusiness) documented the

resolution of practical conflicts in a document negotiated amongst key stakeholders

entitled Creating a New Vision of Farming. Valen notes that “there was almost

unanimous consent that “ethics matter” when it comes to growing and raising food in

contemporary agricultural production systems.” (573). He also noted that production

ethics are a moving target, as everything changes from year to year. To me, this gives

indication that, provided that “moving target” is not a euphemism for a loophole,

agribusiness will support the structures that give ethics expression and farmers will

participate in forming and acting along ethical guidelines.

Fraser’s article on Caring for Farm Animals identified the fallacy in the criticism that

Judeo-Christian principles are the root of today’s environmental crisis, but it also

identified the failing of our Judeo-Christian society in living up to the pastoral ethic of empathetic responsibility (548). He returns in his arguments on behalf of farmers to the

pastoralist ethic, advocating that just as this ethic did in biblical times, it might be the

basis to form a consensus again. The reasons for confinement that work in favour of

animals – warmth, less food required, protection from predation and disease (551-52),





have meaning, but nonetheless, many demand granting the behavioural needs of freedom

for grazing, scratching, and wallowing in the fresh air. But he asks if our market can

handle that producers allow animal-care standards to trump its demands. (554) In the

meantime, the most exemplary case can (and should) be made for the moral farmer, whodoes what he or she can to alleviate suffering in the privacy of the barn, even if

pretending (like researchers working with the SEMA chimps, on whose behalf Jane

Goodall constructively advocated new standards [653]) that what the animal may be

deprived of from birth may not be perceived as a lack.

In turn, there are criticisms that need to be addressed at the level of cause. Valens

noted that the USDA, followed by Canada, and the WTO value only scientific data

(research that often opens up other ethical dilemmas) for food safety standards; the legal

market supports amoral demands only, not cultural values (the WTO, as mentioned in

Valen’s article, has ruled against the EU in their ban on hormone-treated beef, calling it a

non-tariff trade barrier). This science-only-admitted criteria rejects the social level of

precaution Steven Rockefeller, a religious scholar, discusses in his article on Earth

Charter Ethics and Animals, which he helped negotiate. The point of his article was to

demonstrate how working principles are negotiated, the concerns of various parties, and

how issues get resolved. He is also writing from an actionable point of view, which,

along with Valen’s article are working perspectives that are constructive to the debate

and instrumental in making positive changes and alleviating negative conditions. A

government that deals in positivist data only may be forever biased against goods of other

value.

So we come to the consumers. Food is a necessity, but people are capable of paying

more than they do. We leave much of price to choice, constraining production costs

beyond ethical values, if legal. Many choose to continue paying the same 10-15 ¢ per eggthey have paid for the past 20 years, which means, at least, that chickens are cycled





through and killed faster than they were before.3). When we rely on the market to set the

prices of products which are necessary, and yet should meet an absent ethical standard

(that we should not treat living beings like unconscious objects), it seems to me like

asking fraudsters in white-collar jail to rewrite the laws that put them there. It is also amoral hazard: keep food prices low so that people can afford healthy choices, but no

obligation to make those choices, because we bail them out of their health crises anyway.

Food may also be too cheap because in 2007, for the first time ever, Canadians spent

more at restaurants than they do on their grocery bills. This means both groceries and

restaurants are affordable, and people are opting less to cook. If our farmers suffer under

these conditions, and foreign countries can produce food according to a pastoral ethic that

provides care as well as or better than we can apply, perhaps we should raise our

standards and prices and allow them to participate.

So why do we treat animals as objects in the market? Because there is pressure to do

so. As scientists are on the forefront of creative endeavours to improve our lives, they

have a responsibility to report on and incorporate new data into the paradigms and

practices that affect all of our human and animal subjects. One such example is the

Canadian Council of Animal Care, which established protocols of handling animals for

research, as one way to ensure the public’s (scientists and non-scientists alike) values

regarding animal needs and emotions have some sort of resonance in scientific protocols.

The average person knows that animals have emotional and physical feelings and

farmers know that they have personalities more than some scientists do. Science, built so

3 A hen will lay about 300 eggs (13- 14 days to make a dozen eggs) her first year, then the second

year that decreases to 200 eggs per year - which doesn’t pay for her food. At 12¢ per egg or $1.44

per dozen – and we know that’s being generous to the farmer – she must consume less than $36

per year in resources. If she were kept as a domestic animal, a family would find her upkeep a

pittance and she would, especially if paired with another of a different age, supply them with more

than enough eggs. But these things are frowned upon in an urban setting.





carefully on building blocks that need to be rigorously justified before allowing them to

stand, has some who still consider animal lives in our meaning of the word a non-fact,

and some others argue it has been kept from becoming one for as long as possible. Part of

this is a rationale that if a fact is scientifically denied, it is merely a belief, and beliefs canbe equated with religion and constrained from influencing secular interests. So, some

enforce this status quo by limiting scientific inquiry that benefits our knowledge of

animals via a “we cannot know” argument. Nevertheless, some scientists make

interesting observations in spite of this enforcement.

Wild Justice is an argument in favour of the factuality of animal emotions and

thoughts. Bekoff gave many examples of the demonstration of animal emotion,

contrasted to the scientific assumption that we can never know what animals think and

feel. “Behaviorism in psychology and reductionism in biology were so dominant from

roughly the 1920s to the 1960s that scientists were reluctant even to consider the

possibility that there was such a thing as animal cognition, let alone animal

consciousness.” (Griffin 481) It has taken another 40 years to change this.

This leap from cognitive to consciousness studies in animals also implies they have

private subjective states. The repeated evidence from “purposive behaviorism” for

“expectancies” of animals leads to the possibility of consciousness and choices, but

Griffin explained how most scientists preferred to create a framework based on

behaviorism that eschewed any attribute of a state of mind or a possibility of intention or

anticipation of a result. They justified avoiding the issue by emphasizing the

“impossibility” of learning about animals’ mental experiences. (Griffin 483) Some also

said that only reflective consciousness is real consciousness (484). Griffin gives examples

of cognitive behaviours that show behaviorism is insufficient to describe and research the

topic, and asserts that “subjective private experiences are certainly an important part of cognitive ethology. The attempt to limit cognitive ethology to information processing is

an obsolete relict of behaviorism.” (487)

It comes across, through Griffin’s article, that science appears to have a dogma (he

even refers to indoctrination on p. 493). The article was carefully written for a scientific





audience, and it appears that he has taken so much heat on this issue that he has every

reason to be frustrated at the resistance to open up this field in entertaining a

“consciousness” theory for animals, especially when 1) leaps in the scientific

advancement have not necessarily nullified pre-existing explanations (491), and 2) wealready are willing to apply less conservative conclusions to less-supported data in

humans (493, 494).

“It is a needless limitation of our imaginations to assume” that animals do not have

thoughts, feelings, and mental experiences of their own, says Griffin. (495) He offers

nine speculations in the hope that they will stimulate constructive research as an

alternative to the prevailing view that animal consciousness is not an appropriate subject

for scientific analysis. Considering that almost everything we learn about human

cognition and neurology and psychology is vetted and supported by research done on

animal subjects, the only thing that is surprising is the disconnect that we still have from

admitting this information, subjective of the research subjects and applicable to their

species in the natural world, into our “canon” of acceptable knowledge. Animals are

probably conscious in a different way than us, according to the needs of their lives – this

distinction, helpfully supported by the founder of process thought, A.N. Whitehead.

(Griffin 498) The avoidance of admitting as much is an attitude he coined as

“mentophobia,” and attributed it as “so intense that it suggests a deeper, philosophical

aversion.” (496) As we will come to, Adams has identified a basis for this aversion.

Disregarding mentophobic baggage, Bekoff studies social fairness in animal behavior,

beginning with animal play. He finds that they have a morality which, when contrasted

with popular ideas about the innate selection success of selfishness, ought not to exist.

Good acts without reward are considered intrinsic to human morality, and yet are evident

in animals. Bekoff posits that “Charles Darwin’s (1859; [1872] 1998) ideas aboutevolutionary continuity, that behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and moral variations

among different species are differences in degree rather than in kind… not a void in the

evolution of moral capacity or agency.” (Bekoff 464)





My analogy is that if we pretended that oral societies, without reading and writing, did

not convey history but only instructions when they spoke, by just looking at their

behaviors, their “moral” actions too would look only “proximate and pragmatic.” (Bekoff

464) This is an apt analogy because a versatility of communicative behavior in someanimals provides fairly direct evidence about thoughts and feelings, which we would

readily admit of any strange human society. We would not have any visibly clear cue that

there is a progressive tradition in human conduct, as our notions of right and wrong are

not so apparent in wordless action. If humans were stripped of the politics preventing us

from knowing animals (the term “anthropomorphism” has become politically charged in

order to scientifically continue the religious tradition of severing our similarities with

animals4) – which is what Bekoff, Griffin, and Hauser all advocated for – would we have

things to learn from them? (Bekoff 471-73)

Are Animals Moral Agents? is where Marc Hauser explores inhibitory control in

rhesus and tamarind monkeys. He notes that “No one has yet developed an animal-

friendly battery of moral dilemmas that might reveal how animals make such choices,”

(507) so what is tested is their ability to make choices against temptation to determine the

context of the limitations that they have. They may be similar to us when desires

overwhelm their known problem-solving abilities, and their tenacity to certain cognitive

models (for example, the location of a fallen object in the face of contrary evidence) is

also “precisely what is expected if the animal has a theory.” (511)

Hauser also cited evidence gathered from old studies, now ethically questionable,

which tested temptation and control as a social challenge. These studies shed light on

“the capacity for empathy and attributing beliefs and desires to others.” (Hauser 511)

The studies that followed were almost astounding for the personal costs animals would

go to avoid hurting another animal, or to aid in their distress. This raised, according to

4 Consciousness is called (vilified) an anthropomorphism when applied to animals. (Griffin494)





Hauser, questions regarding evolutionary changes in the mind. Considering the age of

these studies and the behaviourist dominance of ethology at that time, altruism shown by

animals was not ready for admission. “Knowing what it is like to have someone else’s

emotions takes us from emotion to feeling and from a straight-forward triggering systemto having a theory of mind.” (513)

The basic conditions of life for both animals and people involve what it means to do

well , what are the needs and rights, and what kinds of frameworks do animals and

humans have to obtain them. Hauser argues that from needs comes the is. This is biology.

From rights comes the ought. This is morality. (Hauser 515) None of us, human or

animal, are immune from temptations and the punishments that can arrive from the

satisfaction of such temptations – and we don’t even need to be the author of our own

misfortune, the temptation of another can be our downfall. Hauser provides “an argument

concerning how humans evolved a unique trick, one that provided them with a degree of

control over their passions that no animal has or ever could exert. With this trick in hand,

humans must nonetheless remain vigilant of the is handed down from biology and use

this knowledge to guide the ought associated with an ethical life.” (505) The trick is

actually four-fold: “physical constraints, mental commitments, religious strictures, and

legal documents.” (515) In other words, a social contract that recognizes our limitations

and protects us and from which, according to the same framework argued for its creation,

it is unethical to exempt non-human animals.

Carol Adams’ “A Very Rare and Difficult Thing” was an exhaustive article about the

many constructs we use to avoid confronting the implications of the suffering we cause to

nonhuman animals, starting with the fact that we are different. (593) This is part and

parcel of the way our society looks at interests among people and non-human animals.

The mechanism of status, power, and fear makes potential losers adhere and defend theinterests of the powerful. It is, essentially, about scapegoating. She ascribes it to dualistic

thinking, value-hierarchical thinking, and an ill-defined logic of domination. (592)

Her model is biased – she tries to deconstruct well-supported tenets without

considering they can be extended positively. For example, “…the Western definition of





the man of reason was that he could overcome body, history, social situations, and

thereby gain knowledge of others he examined as objects.” (593) Everything is both a

subject and an object. It is possible to better handle a subject holistically by also

understanding its object properties – this is why, as Hauser advocated (and as Singer haselsewhere), we must understand what animals want.

Adams also posited: “The body, identified with animals, is what must be transcended.

A rational, objective knowing person is one who esteems autonomy over relationship,

hyperseparation over attention.…Modern epistemology and its suspicion of emotions, its

dualistic ontologies, its rationalist bias, its concern for achieving objectivity, and its

avoidance of sympathy as a basis for ethical treatment” is the point of view of an elite

human male. (594) Yet there is counter-evidence in our culture; I find men have always

celebrated the body, in classical times as now. Being emotionally functional has also long

been a factor in one’s success in life; the rational objective knowing person without

emotions is a failure of a different sort. Attention and relationship is the basis of most

ethical systems, at least as ethics is understood by most to be in practice.

Nevertheless, Adams gives us a compelling construct that helps explain the tricks we

play to allow ourselves to get away with subjecting someone or something to a fate we

would not wish upon any of our own, a cognitive dissonance that we consider ourselves

caring people, yet ignore the broad harm we cause in treating other beings in ways that

have no consequence. It is by creating an absent referent . (595)

“The most efficient way to ensure that humans are not reminded of animals’ suffering

and our role in it is to transform nonhuman subjects into nonhuman objects. Someone

becomes something , a who becomes a that , ultimately, the living are made (as) dead, and

the process of reification triumphs. Who is suffering? No one.” (594)

“The crucial point here is that humans make someone who is a unique being and

therefore not the appropriate referent of a mass term into something that is the

appropriate referent of a mass term. Humans make a subject into an object.” (595)

When we say we esteem animals and care for them, “fearing that we care too much,

we create structures that enable us to care too little.” (601) One of those structures we

have already seen in science, by refusing to admit consciousness so shortly on the heels

of cognition. This refusal is a power structure that Adams identifies as the god trick





(600), seen in pastoral Judaic sacrifice as imitation Dei, resonating with our subjugation

before a loving God, but inverted when God becomes distant and disinterested. The god

trick is powerful enough to be the seat of the philosophical aversion Griffin called

mentophobia. We are gods, but not God-like enough to need to love our subjects. Thepoint is, we are different .

She also notes the exception that proves the rule: that charismatic animals get the

benefit of our attitude of care (though the benefit is still paltry, as too many face

extinction). This is an appeal to the noble savage of the wild beast, bearing our positive

traits, while we despise those who are slavish to us. (596) It also contains an element of

the scapegoat, where ancient societies put their individual and collective sins onto an

animal and drive it out, relieving the group of their guilt. The degradation and

helplessness of the domestic animal allows it to be the scapegoat.

I must object to the author’s repeated argument of denigrating the female. Of

livestock, as in nature, females are worth more than the males. The extent of the dualism

she argues is not needed to defend the value-hierarchical and absent referent mechanisms

by which we promote hypocrisy in the face of suffering. The value-hierarchical model is

sufficient to explain the power structures that oppress, and our avoidance of paying

attention to the suffering that we inflict through that oppression. It is also the value-

hierarchical model that can flexibly change to allow the elevation she recommends of the

kind of subjectivity that sees others as subjects, too.

Peter Singer’s contribution to the book Animal Protection and the Problem of Religion

noted that "there is much positive work that could be done short of these religions ceasing

to be human-centered” but notes what an uphill task it is. He has a better opinion of

secular means to promote the compassionate treatment of animals, especially when facing

governmental and scientific obstacles. However, I think that religious discourse and

apologetics will be instrumental to changing hearts and minds even with secularists. His

mistake in the interview was “certainly the texts in Genesis were not very helpful. They

portray God as drowning virtually every living thing on earth, just because humans had

behaved badly. What kind of example does that set?” (618) The crucial point is he





neglected God’s instructions to Noah to save a pair of every animal on earth in order to

repopulate it when the waters subside. God holds the animals innocent.

The themes in the philosophical papers, as well as the scientific papers, all touched

upon the need to be less objectifying, fragmenting and destroying the other in animals.

The themes the papers on farming and agribusiness touch on the need to be less

polarizing and more constructive in addressing the prevention of objectification of

farmers and their livestock. It is clear that work needs to be done to force the sanction of

truths we already believe to be true and have been demonstrated cogent, and education of

ourselves and each other as stakeholders can only take place by addressing these issues

directly and acknowledging the games we play to avoid measuring their importance.

Bibliography

Waldau, P. and K. Patton, eds. 2006. A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion,

Science, and Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Farming, Science, and Animal Rights

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