If you care about animals and you get to know a little bit about animal advocacy circles you would immediately realize that being vegan is considered as a moral threshold for the community. Not every animal advocate is vegan, in fact many of them are not, but it is viewed and to a significant extent accepted as a focal point. Any reasonable book or blog or article on animal rights at least mentions veganism at some point, most farmed animal advocacy organizations at least have some form of a vegan outreach program.
Thanks for the well informed article. One thing I find interesting here is the underlying and undiscussed belief that life has more value when the living thing is bigger or further up the food chain. Ie a hump back whale has more inherate value than a mouse. Or a vertebrate more than an invertebrate, and clearly an animal more than a plant. While at the same time there is another unspoken moral impression that human life shouldn't matter more than other life.
Without the above two assumptions or underlying beliefs veganism starts to fall apart pretty quickly and the discussion must become much more nuanced, as perhaps it should...
Perhaps more about quality of life, levels of chemical interference or how far from the natural biocycle that life is live. Or maybe more about levels of pain, suffering and death in differing farming systems. Or about energetics, bound energy, carbon footprints, and/or the efficiency of eating autotrophes not heterotrophs.
As it stands now a lack of willingness to openly explore and confront these (mostly) unspoken assumptions, leaves many non-vegans unconvinced of the true ethical credibility of veganism, unless your founding principle is that you only care about vertebrates, preferably fluffy and cute. Which may simply be the less rationalised truth for many in the animal advocacy movement.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you on the point that obsessing over individual consumption decisions is a distraction.
However, I have two comments on your article. I am posting them here if you don't mind:) These are different than the other comments which are posted under your article.
1- You are very optimistic about the growth of plant-based meats. Recent market signs show that alternative meats seem to be failing. Another bad sign is that Beyond Meat's market cap is constantly dropping. As for cultured meat, I think forecasts are wildly wrong. Even Open Philanthropy (which has a hits-based approach to charitable giving) decided not to provide grants to this field, since it is not tractable.
2- Astronomic suffering in factory farming will continue in the future as well if we do not act. Again, I agree that you or me eating a chicken sandwich is irrelevant. But “not achieving” a cage-free welfare reform ASAP alo constitutes a “long term” loss since incremental institutional reforms (or their lack of) ALSO compound in time.
Thanks for the comment! Agreed, small animals are generally perceived as less valuable, while they should be prioritized since there are so many of them.
As for the difference of value between human and animal life, I don’t think veganism or any other animal advocacy necessarily rests on the assumption that they both have equal value (although some people do that, as you point out). Singer, for example, based his theory on the equal consideration of interests, not persons. But even if we consider the interests of humans and animals somewhat differently, we should still view factory farming as extremely bad since the number of animals is astronomic (which is why I named this blog “a few billion”). The logical conclusion therefore is that "at the very least" modest reforms like cage-free are very reasonable.
This is a really great article! One other thing that is worth noting is that veganism sets a nice threshold that should be in accordance with the values of animal rights activists. If you set the threshold at 'donate some amount' you get weird problems of arbitrariness of animal products consumed. But veganism is a threshold that you can hold everyone to. Additionally, I think that animal rights people -- myself included -- would say that, if you're really on board with animal rights, that would entail you being vegan, just like if you appreciated the plights of black people in 1830 in the U.S. you would not own slaves. (I use animal rights advocacy as roughly identical to animal advocacy -- I'm a utilitarian, for the record).
Thanks for the comment! I agree that "some sort of threshold" is reasonable. My point was that the "vegan threshold" is also not entirely non-arbitrary, because of the points I made in the first and second part.
Additionally, one should also check whether our preference for “vegan threshold” is "working". If only a few people adopt that standard, then this is not good news for us: only a few people advocate for animals at the end of the day. And for most people being vegan does not work for them, whether we like it or not.
Everyone has a “ehh, this is too much for me” point. I assume you are not (as I am not) sweeping the floor while walking or wearing a mask in order to not to harm insects (examples from Tobias Leenaert). This is too much for us and we would refuse an invitation to join a community if their threshold required these actions. For many people, not being able to even occasionally eat ice cream or meat, even with friends and family, also reaches the “ehh, this is too much for me” point. So deciding the right height of the threshold is a matter of tradeoff: it may be useful to raise people’s moral standards (good) but it can also push people out (bad). So it is a matter of tradeoff, therefore it should require a utility calculus. If we are getting only a few more vegans (which has negligible direct impact for animals) while losing the majority of the population's support, that is not an optimal outcome. My view is that current preference in favor of veganism has more to do with emotional reactions and community dynamics rather than a calm utility calculus.
Finally, while anti-slavery advocates did not own slaves (as most advocates do not own farm animals), I think most of them consumed slave labour products such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. And I think it would not serve their cause if they had made “not consuming slave labour products” a focal point in their advocacy.
Thanks for the well informed article. One thing I find interesting here is the underlying and undiscussed belief that life has more value when the living thing is bigger or further up the food chain. Ie a hump back whale has more inherate value than a mouse. Or a vertebrate more than an invertebrate, and clearly an animal more than a plant. While at the same time there is another unspoken moral impression that human life shouldn't matter more than other life.
Without the above two assumptions or underlying beliefs veganism starts to fall apart pretty quickly and the discussion must become much more nuanced, as perhaps it should...
Perhaps more about quality of life, levels of chemical interference or how far from the natural biocycle that life is live. Or maybe more about levels of pain, suffering and death in differing farming systems. Or about energetics, bound energy, carbon footprints, and/or the efficiency of eating autotrophes not heterotrophs.
As it stands now a lack of willingness to openly explore and confront these (mostly) unspoken assumptions, leaves many non-vegans unconvinced of the true ethical credibility of veganism, unless your founding principle is that you only care about vertebrates, preferably fluffy and cute. Which may simply be the less rationalised truth for many in the animal advocacy movement.
Ah! And perhaps we should also wonder if the value of human happiness might compound over time, whereas animal happiness might not? https://alltrades.substack.com/p/a-longtermist-case-against-veganism?r=ce9uk
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you on the point that obsessing over individual consumption decisions is a distraction.
However, I have two comments on your article. I am posting them here if you don't mind:) These are different than the other comments which are posted under your article.
1- You are very optimistic about the growth of plant-based meats. Recent market signs show that alternative meats seem to be failing. Another bad sign is that Beyond Meat's market cap is constantly dropping. As for cultured meat, I think forecasts are wildly wrong. Even Open Philanthropy (which has a hits-based approach to charitable giving) decided not to provide grants to this field, since it is not tractable.
2- Astronomic suffering in factory farming will continue in the future as well if we do not act. Again, I agree that you or me eating a chicken sandwich is irrelevant. But “not achieving” a cage-free welfare reform ASAP alo constitutes a “long term” loss since incremental institutional reforms (or their lack of) ALSO compound in time.
Thanks for the comment! Agreed, small animals are generally perceived as less valuable, while they should be prioritized since there are so many of them.
As for the difference of value between human and animal life, I don’t think veganism or any other animal advocacy necessarily rests on the assumption that they both have equal value (although some people do that, as you point out). Singer, for example, based his theory on the equal consideration of interests, not persons. But even if we consider the interests of humans and animals somewhat differently, we should still view factory farming as extremely bad since the number of animals is astronomic (which is why I named this blog “a few billion”). The logical conclusion therefore is that "at the very least" modest reforms like cage-free are very reasonable.
This is a really great article! One other thing that is worth noting is that veganism sets a nice threshold that should be in accordance with the values of animal rights activists. If you set the threshold at 'donate some amount' you get weird problems of arbitrariness of animal products consumed. But veganism is a threshold that you can hold everyone to. Additionally, I think that animal rights people -- myself included -- would say that, if you're really on board with animal rights, that would entail you being vegan, just like if you appreciated the plights of black people in 1830 in the U.S. you would not own slaves. (I use animal rights advocacy as roughly identical to animal advocacy -- I'm a utilitarian, for the record).
Thanks for the comment! I agree that "some sort of threshold" is reasonable. My point was that the "vegan threshold" is also not entirely non-arbitrary, because of the points I made in the first and second part.
Additionally, one should also check whether our preference for “vegan threshold” is "working". If only a few people adopt that standard, then this is not good news for us: only a few people advocate for animals at the end of the day. And for most people being vegan does not work for them, whether we like it or not.
Everyone has a “ehh, this is too much for me” point. I assume you are not (as I am not) sweeping the floor while walking or wearing a mask in order to not to harm insects (examples from Tobias Leenaert). This is too much for us and we would refuse an invitation to join a community if their threshold required these actions. For many people, not being able to even occasionally eat ice cream or meat, even with friends and family, also reaches the “ehh, this is too much for me” point. So deciding the right height of the threshold is a matter of tradeoff: it may be useful to raise people’s moral standards (good) but it can also push people out (bad). So it is a matter of tradeoff, therefore it should require a utility calculus. If we are getting only a few more vegans (which has negligible direct impact for animals) while losing the majority of the population's support, that is not an optimal outcome. My view is that current preference in favor of veganism has more to do with emotional reactions and community dynamics rather than a calm utility calculus.
Finally, while anti-slavery advocates did not own slaves (as most advocates do not own farm animals), I think most of them consumed slave labour products such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. And I think it would not serve their cause if they had made “not consuming slave labour products” a focal point in their advocacy.
There was a big boycott campaign against sugar especially:
https://theconversation.com/how-18th-century-quakers-led-a-boycott-of-sugar-to-protest-against-slavery-174114
Good point. I concede that "not consuming" has a non-negligible symbolic impact.
I would highly recommend this article by the way, which also covers sugar boycott: https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/british-antislavery
Yeah I think as a symbol it's quite potent - a costly signal that you really believe in the cause.
And thanks, will check that article out!