Monarchs in Decline

Monarch butterfly habitats are diminished, and as a result their populations are rapidly declining. As stated in Forest Sovereignty: Wildlife Sustainability and Ethics (Oxford: Peter Lang 2025), evolved feeding behaviors or what humans call antagonistic predation are part of multiple functioning systems of Gaia. Human developments reduce animal ranges and movement, affect feeding behaviors, and upset population scales. Plants evolved systems to reward pollinators and seed dispersers. Organisms do not evolve in isolation since flora and fauna occupy a collective habitat. Organisms interacting with each other constitute ecology and evolution, a synergy that once disrupted can devolve into little succession and decline, evidenced in calamitous human deforestation and pollutions.

Copyright©2025 by Gregory F. Tague. Photo ©by Jerilyn Waterman Maclean. All Rights Reserved.

In any language, it’s still human-induced climate change

“Nunca sabremos el valor del agua hasta que el pozo esté seco.” -Spanish proverb

Conversazione vera . . . 

Vous avez dit avoir voté parce que vous vouliez du changement. Que voulez-vous dire?

Es simple. Hay muchos asuntos que deben abordarse con el objetivo de la humanidad.

Les attitudes centrées sur l’humain ont causé beaucoup de dommages à la Terre et à la faune.

La productividad y el bienestar general deben ser el foco, no los animales o el medio ambiente.

Nous sommes aujourd’hui confrontés à une crise climatique, conséquence des entreprises.

Los retrocesos son parte de ese proceso. La crisis climática es un engaño.

Qu’est-il arrivé à la promesse d’un air et d'une eau propres? L’exploitation minière et le forage détruiront les faibles vestiges de biodiversité et porteront préjudice à l'humanité.

Todo esto forma parte del diseño y plan de Dios para nosotros. La felicidad es un planeta cálido.

Il n’y aura pas d’oiseaux au printemps, comme l’a prévenu Rachel Carson. Toutes les espèces sont liées. N'avons-nous rien appris de la nature?

“La plupart des arts que nous possédons nous ont été enseignés par d'autres animaux…” -Montaigne

Brazil burning. Image by Alzenir Ferreira de Souza from Pixabay.

Is the land hostile to us, or are we hostile to nature?

Tierra hostil. Piedra seca. La naturaleza desafía a la humanidad. En Ecuador, probably in the early 1960s, two children in a harsh climate they did not choose. We are a wandering species since we left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Où allons-nous et que voulons-nous? Originally, we were part of the land and worked with nature, as evident among many Indigenous people still living in many places across the planet. Mais pourquoi sommes-nous allés dans des endroits comme l’Arctique ou dans les déserts? Because we are a migratory, settler species with no specially carved ecological niche like a toad, goldfish, or moose. So, it seems odd to say that natura est hostilis provocatio. No. Nature has evolved and adapted – from microbes and mammals to plants and insects – over many millennia, in fact longer than we’ve been around. What’s cruel is how the modern human mind seeks ways to conquer nature; this began in earnest over the past few hundred years with machinery and is still evident today in many countries. Instead of trabajando con the natural world, we deforest, deflate, drain, and destroy. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset says: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.” We created the climate crisis of global warming, mudslides, desertification, and intense storms.  Why is global warming not the number one story, the main concern, of the powerful and rich who can effectuate the sustainable change we need? Why are politicians, especially in the U.S., ignoring and even encouraging the devastation occurring under their watch?

Trading Trees for Beef

La exportación des carnes es una de las industrias más importantes de la Argentina. We have similar situations in many countries where ecosystems in biodiverse regions are ravaged because people in other places want a hamburger ainsi que beaucoup d'autres chairs et organes animaux. Try a bean burger: healthier for you, for the land/climate, and certainly cruelty free.

Plutarch on Eating Meat

“Plutarch’s (Animal) Lives and the Matter of Eating”

Plutarch (ca. 45–120 CE) wrote about the virtues of historical people. In a similar vein, consider the merits of wild and domestic animals who are essentially without vice and do not seek to control the bodies or minds of others. Truth is in small lives, not necessarily in the history of mighty men. Therefore, we can see among our nonhuman relatives the virtues of generosity, patience, and forgiveness. Can we say the same of many people who abuse animals and only perceive them as food? In the words of renowned classicist Edith Hamilton, “Plutarch was the first man to write about treating animals kindly” (Plutarch vol. 1, xvi). A key to Plutarch is that he focuses on greatness of character or doing good in spite of circumstances; the emphasis is not on power. In contrast, place that idea next to big game trophy hunters or circus/entertainment animal producers, as only a few instances.

What is the necessity of life? After reflection, one comes to realize it’s the same for plants, animals, insects, and humans (even microbes) – to survive and pass along genes. What then is the ethical business of life? That is, contemplate who among all living species evinces truth, goodness, and tolerance over militaristic or corporate control of others. Plutarch questions why one would put to her lips dead flesh she’s implicit in killing. Corpses have become food in the human ethos. He asks how one could eat that being who only just before slaughter was communicating, walking, and living in animated consciousness. Given that picture, imagine how horrified he’d be with concentrated animal feeding operations. Nonetheless, about two thousand years ago Plutarch says that for humans, animals as food contradicts nature and is unnecessary, compared with obligate carnivores. For example, humans do not eat lions or wolves, he says. Instead, we kill animals who are, in his words, harmless and gentle.

Nature gives life to animals, and we rob them of that vitality for our pleasure, not for our sustenance. Moreover, how much food is wasted uselessly, notes Plutarch, in the feeding of animals whose bodies are later often discarded partly uneaten. We are not built as carnivores, Plutarch avers. How could a human, he asks, entirely eat with little bites a cow or pig while it’s still alive. Rather than possessing beaks, claws, talons, or large teeth to gnaw raw flesh, we violently employ mallets, machines, knives, and guns. Furthermore, the dead animal must be butchered, cooked, and seasoned so meticulously for consumption that it’s not as it was when alive; it has been deceptively transformed. We see this dark shadow in how parents misinform their children about the origins of hamburgers, chicken nuggets, or hot dogs.

If, as Plutarch asks, meat is delectable, why then must we treat it with vinegar, honey, salt, pepper, olive oil, wine, herbs, spices, cheese, etc.? He intimates how such cooking and piquant preparations actually embalm the animal for human ingestion. Plutarch sees the problem not in the stomach (or physiology) but in the temperament of greed (or mind) that is willing to torture animals and fatten them as human food. Where he sees and queries, most of us simply veil our eyes and follow a custom. Yet, habits can be modified and improved.

Preceding much contemporary animal studies (to say nothing of Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, etc.), Plutarch postulates that animals have “souls” in their intelligence, feelings, and imaginations building from the ideas of Pythagoras and Empedocles who say justice is fair treatment of other living beings. As with tyrants, many people wield force over animals. Anticipating Immanuel Kant, Plutarch perspicaciously asserts that cruelty to animals corrodes one’s moral character; he goes further by suggesting that harming animals is a form of celebratory lawlessness against nature. Whose disposition and hands, we ask, will continue to be stained by disregard for all life forms? Who among us is willing to change ways?

References

Hamilton, Edith. Introduction. Plutarch: Selected Lives and Essays. Louise Ropes Loomis, trans. Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1951. vii-xxiv.

Plutarch. “The Eating of Meat.” Plutarch: Selected Lives and Essays. Louise Ropes Loomis, trans. Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1951. Vol. 2, 333-339.

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Copyright©2025 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. This post was generated by human brains and not by machine AI algorithms. Pixabay image by Pezibear.

Without compassion for the sentient... ?

 

El hombre triunfar sobre el animal. ¿Por qué?

Young Voice in Animal/Environmental Ethics: Adhyaan Balaji

“Meat is Murder”
             By Adhyaan Balaji

In the cut and thrust of talk about food, one principle of veganism stands supreme—meat is undoubtedly murder. However, veganism doesn’t stop there. Even products like cheese, which most people can’t live without, are made from milk, the nutritious sustenance meant for a mother to give her newborn calf. So many throughout the world claim to love animals truly, but if this is the deeper and darker truth behind the diets of 72% of the world’s population (the percentage of individuals who eat both meat and animal products), why don’t we stop the consumption of animal products for good? What if we all pulled our forks and knives out of our steaks and became vegan? What if we found our reason to say no to a juicy burger, a fluffy omelet, or a cheesy pizza?

Once considered to be a radical dietary choice, veganism has become increasingly mainstream throughout the world, providing benefits not only to our health but also to the planet. More than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to animal food. Cows bear the biggest responsibility, leaving an annual carbon footprint equivalent to CO₂ emissions from every train, ship, car, and aircraft. Now, of course, the large majority of us don’t immediately think of cows as a catalyst for global warming. Still, as it turns out, the one and a half billion cows in the world produce 150 kilograms of methane on average per year, a compound that, concerning the negative effects of CO₂ on climate change, proves to be 23 times worse. Additionally, about two-thirds of all the agricultural land on the planet is occupied by cattle alone. If everyone were to go vegan, we would use most of this pasture land to restore forests and grasslands to reduce the level of CO₂ in the air. We could start harvesting more crops to help fill the hotels in our food supply. Additionally, livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions would drop by nearly 70%. Veganism is often argued to be for the animals, but also ‘for the people’ but the outlook after a global conversion to veganism isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Veganism represents a sustainable option for feeding a family and slows down the global heating process of our planet. It’s often described as a way for the poorest people in our world, who often fall ill from the lack of quality in meats and animal products that they consume. However, it’s these more impoverished rural areas that would be hit the hardest. Your local butcher, as well as millions of farmers worldwide, would suddenly be jobless. They could try to grow and supply us with more crops, but on a larger scale, rural communities that were once able to provide people with milk, eggs, and meat would face severe amounts of unemployment. Jobs that were once the very core of our societies satience would vanish overnight.

This doesn’t just end on a local scale. What about society as a whole? Dozens of countries worldwide, dependent on agribusiness and animal-related commodities as exports, would face huge economic disruption as the demand for something as simple as a glass of milk would be next to zero. The dependence on a single animal-based commodity for these developing countries would completely halt the progress of their society. On the bright side, though, everybody would be a little bit healthier, but would we? Despite the ongoing slur of potential benefits that a vegan diet may offer, some of which include lowering the risk of certain cancers and heart diseases, and almost eliminating the probability of type 2 diabetes, vegans often miss out on several important nutrients. Calcium and especially vitamin B12, both present in milk, would be incredibly hard to come by. And while the Omega 3 fatty acids from salmon could be substituted with walnuts, shortcuts like this could actually lead to weight gain as walnuts, despite being a good source of Omega 3 for vegetarians, are also known to be incredibly calorie-dense. Due to various animal meats no longer being available as a source of complete protein, vegans would have to mix and match various foods such as soy, beans, and lentils in order to ensure they receive all the necessary amino acids for proper bodily function. However, with a proper diet, we as a population could celebrate lower levels of obesity and lower global mortality rates. This would contribute to nearly 1 trillion dollars saved on healthcare and more than 8 million saved lives.

A global shift from one diet to another wouldn’t just impact the health of billions of people around the world, it would cause global shifts in the economy, profound changes in the job market, fluctuations in national economies, and greatly impact the healthcare sector. While making the switch from our current eating habits to veganism, we would undoubtably benefit from the healthier living and surplus of energy, so long as we maintain a diet enriched with the proper nutrients. On top of our health, we would be creating a healthier planet for the future of humankind. We wouldn’t need animal products to satiate ourselves any longer, after all meat is murder. But the consequences would be catastrophic for the monumental developments that we as people have been able to bring the world thus far. Economies all across the globe would be in shambles and global trade would see drastic changes. Millions of people all over the world would become jobless overnight, and poverty-stricken communities would become increasingly poorer. The farm animals would be safe though. Except for the estimated 20 billion chickens who have, since their early days of living in the wild, evolved too far to ever be able to live outside of human care. Even animals such as horses and goats who seem to be much more capable of the rugged wilderness would be preyed on as most of these animals were bred in captivity making it difficult to transition back into the wild. Of course, there are good arguments for both sides, but it really begs the question—does meat truly mean murder? Or is meat what moves humankind?

- Adhyaan Balaji is a budding writer and rising high school junior with a profound passion for sports, medicine, and dietetics. As a semi-professional student athlete and a nationally ranked badminton player, he understands nutrition and health’s critical role in promoting efficiency and performance in all aspects of life. His interest in optimizing physical and mental potential stemming from his pursuits in junior professional sports has led him to explore plant-based nutrition and its role in fulfilling the nutritional standards of animal products and its implications on endurance, recovery, and long-term well-being. He considers sport, nutrition, and healthcare as disciplines with interconnected principles that work to shape the way the body can perform at its highest level.

Copyright©2025 by Adhyaan Balaji. All Rights Reserved. Image by Asompoch from Pixabay.

Smudge

A Remembrance

Man-handled as a newborn Mathilda’s leg was broken, lamed by human carelessness. A veterinarian could have healed her, but no. She’d be worth her weight in meat, thought the farmer. So, he listed her for sale with the bonus she could be butchered on-site, a convenience. Then, a vegan Samaritan saw the listing and offered to purchase the calf. I’ll get a sanctuary to take her, she thought. Sure, said the farmer. Money was raised quickly to purchase and transport Mathilda to another state. But there are no guarantees, thought the farmer; this is business. Meantime, a spiritual Samaritan asked her church to pray for Mathilda’s rescue and wrote out her appeal for the pastor. When the time came to offer “Lord, hear our prayers” to the congregation, there was no invocation. Later, the pastor said he couldn’t read the request; it was smudged. The vegan Samaritan kept calling the farmer, but he wouldn’t answer her calls, though she had a fistful of dollars and a bag of silver. Was there hope? Sold to a higher bidder, Mathilda succumbed to the farmer’s knife and became someone’s steak and barbeque. Her blood on the farmer’s hand smeared his money. Her existence was erased before she had time enough to enjoy her life outside of the barn. The calf was not a smudge – Mathilda was a breathing and feeling being who had a right to life because she was already alive among us mammal kin. Sentient life doesn’t have to become our food.

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Photo: Claire2003/Pixabay. This is not an image of Mathilda but of her likeness.

Copyright©2025 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. This post was generated by human brains and not by AI.

Humanity’s Language: A Meditation on Nature

In his book, Human Scale (1980), sociologist Kirkpatrick Sale talks about “manageable proportions,” not gross magnitude, in all aspects of human life. There are optimal limits of size as seen on biological and institutional levels. Sale says that progress is a modern, materialistic invention and not inevitable; industrialized humans are reproducing, manufacturing, and consuming beyond the human scale. On the other hand, there’s ecology, which is balanced without wholesale destruction. However, in the past few hundred years humans have dislocated from scale and have lost all sense of proportion. Let’s examine three related concepts in this light: humanity, animals, and nature. Mostly because of our language as actions, these notions are in a perpetual tug-of-war with little benefit to many forms of life.

Let’s consider some definitions as represented by the Oxford English Dictionary applicable here but excluding Indigenous people. Tautologically, humanism is that which is solely focused on the interests of humans; there is little concern for other life forms. With humanism, attention is given to human culture, not to the natural world. Abstractly, humanity has a nature, which includes certain feelings and characteristics; but this definition excludes our remaining, evolved animal instincts and traits. There are uses of the word humanity that point to how people can be disposed to treat others, including animals, with kindness. Historical and contemporary events demonstrate that humanity often acts maliciously to animals and other humans.

The word animal, deriving from forms like animus and anima, can refer to or mean life or spirit, for that which is an animal breathes and grows. That definition seems to exclude plants. The word animal can be used contemptuously when referring to a person who acts out of the bounds of humanity. With spite, we attach animal names to those we dislike (e.g., eats like a pig, fat as a cow, a horse’s ass, etc.), and such language ricochets degradingly back onto our fellow creatures. Animal connotes, but should not, physicality and sensations over intellect and thinking. Whatever the case, it’s clear that in modern usage, the word animal usually refers to an entity inferior to what’s human.

Now we come to the more controversial term of nature. The word could refer to one’s character, whether human or animal. In fact, it could refer to a human/animal quality. Nature could be unwittingly associated with, in the Anthropocene, physical force against humanity. However, while humans don’t control nature, they have influenced its synergies through global warming. There are also, as philosophers, biologists, and physicists say, laws of nature. Consider how the course of nature, whatever that might be, has been altered by humanity. Nature is not the world of mass manufactured consumer goods made for humans at its expense and to the detriment of much wildlife and forests. Thus, in anthropocentric thinking, nature is often believed to be subordinate to the high arts of creation by humanity.

Anthropology, as the Greek root suggests, is the study of “man.” Humans believe they are the only ones capable of introspection and self-reflection. Maybe that’s so because they can be deliberately vindictive, as philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer points out, in contrast to animals. Like the adaptable body, the mind reacts to its environment; consider how the wolf has become a dog. The only ones with sense, understanding, and reason are humans, we are repeatedly told. Again, Schopenhauer might disagree, as he notes that elephants won’t cross a rope bridge. In debating animal politics, primatologists like Frans de Waal might disagree that humans alone are capable of reason and free will. Eighteenth-century moralist and economist Adam Smith writes how only humans barter, but this conclusion comes before extensive field observations of animal negotiations that prove him wrong (e.g., from primates to vampire bats). Before Smith, political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, writing in the seventeenth century, finds in human language the power of reason, as if no wild animals effectively communicate. A prophet of liberation, philosopher John Stuart Mill, writing in the Victorian era, attributes to humans, not animals, superior intelligence. Where are passions in this picture? Common sense requires sensation, and the ability of judgment is not exclusively human to any animal observer. Current neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio say we are emotional creatures ruled very often not by reason but by feelings working on our intelligence. Human institutions (e.g., laws) don’t seem to control or check irrational actions.

From these brief notes, it seems that in our humanity we are not the absolute measure of nature.

Rather than household pets, wild animals are often characterized as brutes to justify killing them or taking away their habitats. Even domestic animals we’ve artificially selected from wild strains are deemed useful only as human food. Some humans, nonetheless, fight for their personhood status and the conservation of their natural domains. Everyday language indicates that animals are species unlike ours; but there are many species with common ancestors, like ours. Are humans in our pride the paragon of animals? Is there sympathy, as among Indigenous cultures, between humans and animals? French Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne ponders the nobility of animals. Indeed, outside of the human perspective of might-as-right in a jungle there are symbiotic balances across ecological niches inhabited by beings from microbes to large ungulates. Regarding living beings, Aristotle sees nutrition, growth, and reproduction. There are also sensations (plants and animals), locomotion (plants and animals). Sentience is more controversial. Are we the only feeling animals if we evolved from and share similarities to other vertebrate mammals? In The Edge of Sentience (2024), Jonathan Birch argues for caution since evidence suggests degrees of sentience in creatures from insects to lobsters. The natural world is not divided among groups like plants, animals, microbes, etc. – there’s unity with no easy classification.

In the seventeenth century Francis Bacon, an early proponent of the scientific method, talks of “bordering instances” where species seem to overlap in rudiments. Bacon’s observation foreshadows Charles Darwin’s and A.R. Wallace’s revelation of species loose continuity, separations arising from modified descent. Medieval religious scholar Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, talks about perfect and imperfect animals where humanity has reached perfection via reason and intellect. The word perfect derives from Latin per-factus, thoroughly done. Is there perfection in nature, of which we are a part? That query rubs abrasively against biological and cultural evolution. Relatedly, with developments in machine AI, have we returned to the seventeenth-century methodological skeptic René Descartes and his idea of a soulless machine? He said that about animals, calling them automatons. If intellect, reason, and feeling are the functions of plastic, neural, genetic matter, what then for computers or animals? If sensation and thought can be reduced to particles in the human brain, so too in machines and animals. Yet what of sentience and instinct in a machine or an animal? Does the machine, unlike an animal, know to avoid dripping water or fire? In terms of feeding and reproduction, could a machine adapt to sub-freezing cold or extraordinary humidity? How free is a machine compared with an animal or even a plant? Darwin studied plants and was well aware of their sensitivity and mobility; in fact, over time tree lines can move forward if not abated.

We again consider the most slippery of concepts, nature. The word is so slack it probably means nothing specific to biologists; on the other hand, we romanticize nature in art and literature. Indigenous people like the Yanomami of South America don’t really have a word for nature but rather see spiritual images among the trees of the forest. Nature helps us, and we emerged from nature. Do our material and manufacturing “arts” help nature? One could say nature is… minerals and chemicals. We use those resources to make products and then create polluting byproducts. It’s fair to say there’s no pollution in nature since everything is recycled and reused in mutualistic, evolved processes. The question is, what have we rendered in the state of nature? In contrast to Hobbes, political philosopher John Locke does not see war in nature; but what he deems civil society is not ours alone. In the early twentieth century Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin observed mutualistic behaviors among species. Human laws change over regions and time and can be quite cruel. In a broad sense, laws of nature offer stability, even accommodating metamorphoses over great time. Nature is that which has not been reduced or modified by humans. Nature need not be artificially nurtured under normal circumstances; but now, because of human-engineered climate catastrophes, we might have to intervene and apply salve to some of nature’s wounds we’ve inflicted. Has human culture and civilization improved nature? For Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we’ve diminished ourselves by tampering with our nature. Is the existence of plants and animals in the wild determined, or are they free; and why do humans believe they are free to determine the fate of wildlife, oceans, and old growth forests? Uniformity is in nature, or as Aristotle says, fire burns similarly in different places though state laws and customs vary. Clearly, this line of thinking doesn’t privilege human cities as superior to a bee hive, ant mound, spider web, or beaver dam. Is human moral order superior to the rhythms of an ocean or forest? Whereas nature is an end unto itself, humans use nature as a means to their ends.

We see plainly now the consequences of our modern, industrial actions.

In the end, our questions center around what Kirkpatrick Sale reminds us is the human scale. Is there an answer? We’ve gone out of bounds in so many ways that we now jeopardize all life on earth. Our virus is randomly discharged. In some respects, industrialized language promoting progress and materialism is responsible. Where there was order among plants, microbes, and animals in nature we’ve created disorder. Where vast expanses of oceans and forests were teeming with abundant, continuous life, we’ve created discontinuity. Our linguistic methods of differentiation impose death and destruction on the living whole of nature’s ecology. We say mine for resources or drill for oil when we should speak about helping complex ecosystems thrive as carbon sinks, freshwater reservoirs, and lungs of the world. Our languages, not counting those of Indigenous people who cooperate with nature in cycles of renewal, have worked mostly for humanity but not for nature.

Language gives us the power of discrimination; unfortunately, we employ linguistic powers not just in song or the literary arts but also to harm the natural world (e.g., “drill, baby, drill!” or “wildlife management”); also, we are complicit in our silence. Use this meditation to interrogate how you think and speak about nature; turn your words to helping and not injuring wild plants and animals, and convince others to act likewise.

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Words and Image Copyright©2025 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. This post was generated by human brains with the help of the Great Books and not by machine AI algorithms.

A Heron's View

Imagine a built community (an expansive housing development in the U.S. with a homeowner association) that cares about indigenous plants and animals. The houses are all green certified and powered by solar panels. Water is conserved. Electric vehicles abound. Green spaces with native plants are aesthetically appealing and attract pollinators and wildlife. Deer roam. Rabbits run. Birds nest. Keep imagining, for there is no such place. However, some communities would have you think otherwise with labels like “sustainable.” Here’s what we found.

Native and wild plants are not the norm. In fact, residents are cited and fined for growing wildflowers; they are uprooted, so pollinators have nowhere to flourish. Uniformity is desired and achieved by planting rows of ornamental plants and bushes. Rather than wildflower plots or lawns that bio-ecologists like Michael Tessler, et al. (2023) recommend, we find acres of manicured, barren grass thirsty for water. Grass cutters descend in troops on a daily routine of noisy, gas-spewing machines blowing hapless insects to kingdom come. Residents then establish a small wildflower garden on community property, but the homeowner association tills the plants into the earth as if they never existed. For the most part, the utility of nature and its beauty do not belong here. Signs of wildlife are erased, buried under mounds of mulch or underground plastic sheaths to stifle growth. Even some residents seem surprised to see coyotes, as if this canine – opposed to their own – has no home here in a once-forested area. Nature cannot run its course; it’s “human v. nature” in this environment, and the ultimate look gives at best the appearance of a golf course, at worst, a cemetery.

A creek running through the terrain of this sprawling development was part of the original forest, a watering refuge for a variety of plants and animals. Houses were built on either side of the creek, but far enough away with some tree cover to offer the homeowners a picturesque view. Then, beavers returned to work as ecosystem engineers by creating a pool for an array of frogs, turtles, salamanders, fish, lizards, insects, birds, flora, etc. Maybe a coyote or bear would come in search of food, or deer would slake their thirst. Life teemed as part of the evolved, natural environment. The beavers helped rewild a portion of the community in view of backyard barbeques and garages. The beaver pond, alas, as reported (Breslin 2018) posed a threat to the humans who feared damage to their property from runoff or flooding. Kill the beavers! – some in the homeowner association cried, to the dismay of others who respected forest life that preceded them and was eradicated by their houses and roads. Ultimately, the beavers were spared because of public outcry (Martinez Beavers 2018), but threats remain.

For instance, rainwater catch ponds were built in this community to serve a practical purpose and also appeal to the human eye. Since the housing development was constructed in a forest, animals came to the catch ponds for refreshment. Fish were artificially placed in the pond to control algae. Heron frequented the ponds to feed, as they evolved to do, on the fish. The homeowner association didn’t like heron or other wildlife stealing their cleaner fish, so they placed a plastic fence around the perimeter of the pond and haphazardly strung up a grid of invisible wires across the pond. One heron, probably not the first or last, simply looking for a meal, became entangled in the wires. He languished for days, eventually dying from exhaustion, thirst, and starvation. Not a pretty sight for the homeowners whose houses face the pond. The state wildlife commissioner was informed, but nothing could be done. There are lots of herons, he said; though the network of deadly wire was legal but not necessary, he admitted that bright ribbons could have been attached to mitigate bird death. From the homeowner association perspective, pink or orange plastic ribbons would not have provided an appealing sight to those living near or passing the pond.

What would our planet be without wildflowers, pollinating insects, reptiles, amphibians, beavers, coyotes, deer, herons, etc. and their natural habitats? As philosopher Jonathan Birch (2024) intimates, many species live in or on the edge of a sentient life and experience pleasure and pain. They are evolved “animals” like us; we are not the only inhabitants of earth. Are we now only equipped to live in built and not natural environments? There’s a shifting baseline syndrome where our children see less wildlife, fields, and forests and believe that’s normal. We can do better for plants and animals that have evolved the forest systems we rely on for fresh air and clean water. Compared to other species, we’ve not been around very long; yet we often impose avoidable suffering on living nature for our benefit. We might want to find agreement on how to treat flora and fauna in a homeowner association. We might want to take the heron’s view of life and not just focus on our own wants and perceived needs.

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Copyright©2024 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. Photo: Anonymous posting on social media.

References

Birch, Jonathan. 2024. The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. Oxford: OUP. www.edgeofsentience.com

Breslin, Ryan. 2018. “Community Association Faces Backlash After Beavers Killed.” Spectrum News. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2018/04/19/community-association-faces-backlash-after-beavers-killed

Martinez Beavers. 2018. “Beaver Repriever in Briar Chapel.” https://martinezbeavers.org/beaver-repriever-in-briar-chapel/

Tessler, Michael, et al. 2023. “Rewilding in Miniature: Suburban Meadows Can Improve Soil Microbial Biodiversity and Soil Health.” Microbial Ecology 85: 1077-1086. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-023-02171-4

Philosophizing a Pig's Snout

In 2018 Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard published Fellow Creatures, a Kantian argument favoring our moral obligations toward animals. A few years later, her book became the subject of an essay by Peter Godfrey-Smith in Aeon. As a philosopher of science, Godfrey-Smith is known for books on animal minds and consciousness. He’s an accomplished writer, but one struggles to understand what exactly he says and criticisms he makes regarding Korsgaard’s challenging book. While Kant might not be the best philosopher one can muster to advocate for animals, Korsgaard makes strides in the field of animal rights by including him in the discussion, evident by Godfrey-Smith’s reaction. Our purpose here is neither a response to Korsgaard nor a reply to Godfrey-Smith but an opportunity to use these authors to talk about how humans harm animals as objects of means to an end.

Godfrey-Smith starts with a focus on corporate animal agriculture and the question about “what kind of wrongness” might entail in farming animals as human food. Unfortunately, he never seems to answer this implied query as he skirts around utilitarianism to reduce suffering and Kantian ethics regarding respect for others. He admits, as is well known, that Kant was not overtly concerned about animals and focused rather on human moral relationships. Nevertheless, Korsgaard attempts to apply Kantian ethics (moral duty under rational principles) to animals. Korsgaard is well-versed not only in Kant but also in Aristotle, so there could be a virtue component to her ethics. For instance, Kant argues how a bad action, such as harming another, will diminish one’s good character. Moreover, Kant’s categorical imperative calls for unconditional moral obligations, and perhaps that dictum could apply to how we treat animals. The categorical imperative says act as if you will it to be a universal law; and/or, act as if using yourself and others as an end and not as a means.

Yet, whatever the philosophical basis of morality (Schopenhauer found it in compassion), Godfrey-Smith does not buy Korsgaard’s Kantian argument. If not by employing socially moral imperatives, then what are we to do about nonhuman animals? We are surrounded by a diversity of life forms. Initially focused on factory farming, Godfrey-Smith seems more inclined to welfare but not rights. He’d look for ways to reduce suffering although slaughterhouse-doomed animals sit in pens as they are fed antibiotic and hormone laced feed to be fattened as human food. With a bolt to the head or a slice to the jugular vein they are sawed into chunks, cut into pieces, and then packaged for wholesale. Farmed animals are useful, then, since they supply humans with meat, protein. Beans, leafy greens, nuts, and seeds also supply protein, and without harmful fats or additives and with much less environmental degradation. If one can achieve nutritional health without animal slaughter, then why not; but Godfrey-Smith does not exactly make any such statement. Korsgaard admits that it’s difficult to draw human/animal comparisons since both have values of importance for themselves. Animals know what is good for them, and as Korsgaard says, they know/experience good because they know/respond to good/bad. Nonetheless, we have created false values regarding animals as sources of food, entertainment, companions, and subjects for experiments.

Korsgaard tries to focus on the interests of others and how we act with reason on their needs and desires, how we can share some basic, common values. Animals in the wild are capable of making choices about what’s good for them: with whom to mate, what to eat, how to raise young, when to travel, where to nest, how to avoid conflict, etc. Not all of that is instinctual per se; some of these types of choices could be part of their individual brain functions or distinct group mentality. After all, individuals who made successful choices survived to spread their genes in a population; those who made bad choices died off. Taking animals out of the wild, artificially breeding them, and confining them to enclosures, as we’ve done for at least eight thousand years, to become human food renders them literally and figuratively as objects barely capable of choice.

Korsgaard, not so much Godfrey-Smith in his essay, tries to help people understand that our fellow creatures we call “animals” deserve respect for their decision making, including types of reflection (like strategizing by apes or wolves and matriarchal decisions by elephants, our examples). With forced confinement in factory farms, zoos, laboratories, etc., humans have erased an individual animal’s ability to choose. Fortunately, this is not entirely the case with animals rescued from slaughter or retied from laboratories who reside in bona fide sanctuaries. In sum, without any categorical imperative, we have chosen our perceived needs over their lives. Korsgaard sees this fault, but Godfrey-Smith apparently does not – at least in this essay, distracted as he seems by his need to neuter Kantian ethics aligned toward animals.

Granted, for Kant, there is no direct duty to animals, but Korsgaard, like Tom Regan, argues that animals have intrinsic value; there could be, then, an indirect duty. We have a duty toward animals since they are part of society, whether as our food, in zoos and laboratories, as companions, or in the wild (though Godfrey-Smith does not really clarify these distinctions). More specifically, as Korsgaard might say, it’s not that animals are without value and don’t sway us to exert moral obligations for them. Kant would say we have no duty to irrational (i.e., nonhuman) beings. W.D. Ross might jump in and say there’s a difference between duty as something we are to be and something we tend toward. Do we act on the face of duty, or do we try to predict consequences advantageous to ourselves? Kant says we should be motivated by duty and not feelings or consequences. However, good acts motivated by feelings have value; feelings need not be eliminated but should not be the reason to act. For Ross, there’s a difference between actual and ideal duty; one can have bad motives and seem to act rightfully, like a foreign agent infiltrating a democratic government. The conundrum seems to hover around how humans have falsely created a world separate from the flora, fauna, and fungi of nature from which we have evolved. We are the foreign agents.

Kant, too, would argue that actions are more important than theological theories or consequences disregarding a rationally-based moral imperative. Religious or cultural traditions are not a sufficient excuse to harm/eat animals given the many healthy plant options now available to most people worldwide. Given that a society can choose to live in cities, why destroy forests for suburban sprawl? Other examples include choices societies make about travel, consumption of goods, etc. Does one really need a sofa or car with leather seats? Godfrey-Smith himself might ask of such scenarios if any of these actions make sense. Perhaps it does if one advocates extreme capitalism at all costs. Consumerist choices that harm animals and the environment are hardly defensible. At any rate, Godfrey-Smith flatly says he prefers “a society where interference is discouraged.” That libertarian attitude ignoring principles of duty can lead to many harms to many people and to animals; it could also write into stone antiquated ideas, like patriarchy, and olden cultural practices, like butchering lambs on Easter or decapitating chickens during the Yom Kippur Kaporos.

Vague, hypothetical wordplay by Godfrey-Smith trivializes the importance of Korsgaard’s argument. We should be concerned about what others think if it could hurt them and other forms of life: deregulating laws protecting clean water; deregulating laws regarding air pollution; deregulating laws ensuring food safety, etc. That’s not interference but rationally-induced moral norms for the common good. What’s “good” for all is not always relative, as Godfrey-Smith suggests. Death and economic destruction from pollution or a pandemic via zoonotic disease are not relative. Cattle ranchers in the western parts of the U.S. are granted cheap grazing rights on federal land to raise livestock for slaughter when those animals trample and ruin native vegetation. The ranchers are encouraged to kill wildlife that’s in a balanced ecosystem. Who is interfering against whom here? Government funding, grants, subsidies, etc. for corporate polluters – many concentrated feeding operations produce massive water waste and pools of offal – are not interference but the taxpayers’ gift to unwittingly engender ecological harms.

Considering acts and choices as values, any nation has, or could have, a character: will that character be soiled by disrespecting and harming others, the environment, or animals whether wild or domestic? Kant believes that moral character is developed through rational reflection about one’s past mistakes. As Korsgaard might put it, for Kant, autonomy is characterized by one who regulates behavior with moral principles she deems law as part of constructing a normative public self. Some social animals, like primates, wolves, and elephants for example, are capable of self-evaluation in a social context: what to do when with whom understanding different outcomes. Considering the emphasis some philosophers place on the rational mind, not discounting a moral sense, we’d have to ask what type of country do citizens envision for themselves in a global environment. Harms against nature, upon reflection and given the climate crisis, are not rational and do not seem to fit Kant’s categorical imperative that asks reasonable people to be like legislators in a world of ends.

Only in rare instances – unprovoked warlike violence – is killing viewed by many as valuable moral aggression. In his criticism of Korsgaard, Godfrey-Smith does not use concrete examples but speaks in vagaries about “ordinary decisions” and veers far away from the core of Korsgaard’s argument: respect for animals, which implies the greater sphere of the natural environment. For instance, he asks, without stating who or what, why we should have “respect for the goals of others”? For the animals? For those advocating for animals? Even those questions can be more specific. For example, should one who protests the transportation to slaughter of pigs hungry and crying in a hot truck be arrested? Would no one respect how that individual person values life? What about the mountain vacation lake used by privileged people over the spring and summer for boating and swimming. The water has become filmy with algae. Factory manufactured chemicals can eliminate the natural growth. Regardless, these chemicals will likely kill the geese, ducks, herons and other species who rely on the lake for sustenance – an ecosystem will perish.

To use Godfrey-Smith’s words, what in this morally-tinged situation is “factual, emotive, structural”? In answer, people might contemplate not using alternative facts or selfish desires in satisfying their recreational needs over wildlife. Godfrey-Smith brushes against an anthropocentric attitude: he does not see how the systems of Gaia that regulate atmospheric and planetary health are on par with human decisions about environmental regulation, which he fears can become “subversive.” We are animals; that’s a biological fact, evident in harvesting pig organs for human transplant, so there’s genetic parity with us. There’s little moral value in that equation, though, for the pig. Every inch of the pig is harvested, and if not eaten by humans, the snouts become dog chews. A healthy pig would not choose to relinquish her organs and die as a dog’s play chew. What’s subversive is the turning upside down of moral judgment to satisfy human needs and desires over an animal’s ability to live freely. Extending Godfrey-Smith’s thinking to wildlife, humans can then drill, mine, and develop oceans and lands since it’s their prerogative. While Godfrey-Smith uses terms like moral and ethical, he’s unknowingly talking about cultural evolution. We are not really evolving biologically, but we are evolving culturally. Cultural change can be rapid, viz political revolutions in some countries over the past few hundred years. Cultural transformation is also subject to gradual Darwinian selection. One prediction is that given time, the libertarian attitudes espoused by Godfrey-Smith, unless one misreads him – leave me alone to do what I want – are slated to be replaced by more liberal, tolerant, and fair values discussed by John Rawls. The question is whether or not liberal toleration and fair treatment will include animal lives.

Finally, at the end of long digressions, Godfrey-Smith comes back to the animals but succumbs to welfare over rights. Shockingly, he says we have “unique human powers” over our animal kin. We cannot fly, live unaided under water, scale buildings, or burrow and live underground, etc. Of course, we have power in machines, but look how they’ve treated ecological systems. With great limitations, he gets to what he calls cases of “special status,” but then mentions none other than using the phraseology “some kinds of mistreatment.” Factory farming? He seems to suggest smaller, what some might erroneously label “humane” farms, though he’s not explicit. He wavers, too, on the question of sentience positing it as “borderline forms and by degree.” That’s obvious given species evolution, so too with sapience, but it exists in many forms no matter how much (or how little he’d argue). Animals know how to survive in a forest; most “civilized” humans do not. Humans do not have more value if they destroy the environment that wildlife, flora, and fungi have created and conserve. Godfrey-Smith does not address that issue, or others outlined here, though he begs the questions. Instead, he ends with the ambiguous and not novel idea that we need to “rethink our relationships” with the nonhuman world. That’s not a very proactive stance and flies against what Korsgaard, to her credit, tries to establish while Godfrey-Smith attempts to dismantle her efforts.

Being human is not, as Godfrey-Smith suggests, a badge of honor. In her book, Korsgaard has an entire chapter called “The Case Against Human Superiority,” mostly because she sees how animals are important not in the grand evolutionary scheme but to their kin, other species, and even humans. That’s a good start, as Korsgaard ultimately disagrees with Kant’s belief that only humans have moral standing. She goes on to say how some humans argue there’s no duty to animals without any reciprocal relationship; but we live in a world filled with the beauty, sounds, and antics of animals to whom we are indubitably connected via biophilia, evolutionary kinship, and their ecosystem engineering. With compassion we are able to value an animal’s life, but not all people are equally compassionate.  Even so, Schopenhauer might say, if we have obligations and duties as rational, moral and somewhat egoistic beings, we should be concerned about the differing conditions of various life forms without only heeding an a priori hypothetical imperative.

Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Bibliography of Works Consulted

Alvaro, Carlo. 2019. Ethical Veganism, Virtue Ethics, and the Great Soul. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2021. “Philosophers and Other Animals.” Aeon, 25 February. 

Kant, Immanuel. 1797. The Metaphysics of Morals. Mary Gregor, trans. Cambridge: CUP, 1996.

Korsgaard, Christine. 2018. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford U.P.

Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.

Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P. of Harvard U.P.

Regan, Tom. 2004. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: U. of California P.

Ross, W.D. 1930. “The Right and the Good” chapter 2. Ethics: The Classic Readings. David E. Cooper, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 246-261.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1840. On the Basis of Morality. E.F.J. Payne, trans. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995.

 

Copyright©2024 by Gregory F. Tague. All Rights Reserved. Image by Pexels from Pixabay. 

The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness

The NY Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced on 19 April 2024 at New York University. Although the Declaration does not assert certainty in consciousness across all species there is strong support for the claim and therefore a call to consider consciousness when making policy decisions regarding animals. While some might say that any announcement about animal consciousness is not news or might shrug off the “realistic possibility” of consciousness in, for example, fish, the Declaration has wide-ranging implications in areas of teaching, medical research, suburban and rural development, wildlife conservation, etc.

For instance, while many of the signatories are research scientists, what care is henceforth required for “animals” used in experiments? Should animals be excluded from lab experiments, given computer generated imaging and other forms of visual effects and artificial intelligence? Should animal experiments that simply replicate known results cease? Beyond the university lab, what about animals, from mice to monkeys, used in experiments for the corporate beauty, pharmaceutical, or medical industries? What happens to businesses that breed animals simply for the purpose of sale as human food or research bodies in labs? At the conference, one audience member inquired about the fate of animals at the close of an experiment. The person who answered the question, and a primary signatory to the Declaration, said she does not dispose of animals when an experiment is done; but that begs the question about practices of “euthanasia” among other scientists. If you stop and look around, you will realize how animals are ingrained into our lives as pets, companions, workers, food, or objects of entertainment. So, the crystallization of meaning in the Declaration boils down to how we treat the lives of others.

The original 40 signatories don’t call for animal rights but “welfare,” which implies that animals can be used “humanely” for our use. Should animals be objects of experimentation in the first place? Activists would object to the welfare reference and insist on animal rights. The presentation at the start of the conference made clear that among the 40 primary signatories there was discussion and disagreement, so it’s likely that some lean more to rights while others rest on welfare. That’s not a criticism but a reflection of the reality about how animals are currently viewed. Though a declaration, much of the language admits “uncertainty” (as of now) and opens with a question about which animals have a “capacity” for consciousness. To their credit, the signatories imply that many organisms including fish have such a capacity in various degrees based on their evolutionary adaptations. Clearly then, the Declaration is an important development and tool for researchers and animal activists alike. For example, in advancing concerns about welfare or rights, many people can raise legitimate claims about how animals are treated with reference to this document.

The statement of animal consciousness is brief but includes background material, which highlights (in simplified form here) how crows can learn, octopuses evade pain, cuttlefish have memories, cleaner wrasse fish can identify themselves, bees engage in free play, etc. The point is that a consensus of leaders in this arena of inquiry, from scientists to philosophers, confirm that more species have subjective awareness than has been recognized heretofore. Ongoing evidence firmly suggests that more animals have phenomenal consciousness or sentience exhibited in a range of behaviors, from self-consciousness, problem solving, planning, etc. This evidence, so far based on different species, posits a range of “more likely” to the “realistic possibility” and “strong scientific support” of consciousness across a broad range of species.

However one thinks, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness is yet another important step forward regarding how humans interact with the living world. Assuming our human ethics of caring, animal rights are linked with human rights, so this pronouncement is a crucial development in establishing rights for all living organisms. To bolster the authority and credibility of the Declaration, the announcement has been covered by many outlets large and small, from Nature News to The Hill. 

For academic references used by the writers of the New York Declaration, go HERE. 

The New York Declaration comes almost twelve years after the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, HERE. 

Readers might also be interested in the PETA argument for animal sentience and emotions, HERE. 

There’s also a declaration of animal personhood by the University of Toulon, France, HERE. 

Additional resources for the curious can be found on the Literary Veganism site, HERE. 

-Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka A. Jacks

Animals as Medical Experiments

 
What are the ethics of using animals as a means for human ends? While we deplore the word “animal” since it reduces other living organisms to objects, we’ll use it for shorthand. As for medical experiments, in this context we mean advancing “humanity” at the expense of animals. In the never-ending periods of political turmoil, civil unrest, and war, it’s easy to ignore the inherent rights of animals. Nevertheless, we cannot luxuriate in humanity while the rest of the world – wildlife and animals raised as food or for human experimentation – suffer and die for our pleasure or gain. Recently, we noticed an article in Wired¹ entitled “A Monkey Got a New Kidney from a Pig – and lived for 2 Years.” The article prompts us to question our moral duty toward animals.

Let’s take a closer look at the article under consideration. For instance, the word “got” appears in the title. That word makes it sound as if the monkey just reached into the pig’s body to procure an organ willingly relinquished. Or, “got” as in gotcha! Or, as in “got” what was deserved. Language about animals shapes our perceptions of them. Additionally, what’s meant by “a monkey” – just any monkey? Did he or she not have a name or personality like your dog or cat? The monkey surely had an identity – they, like pigs, are genetically close to humans. The expression “new kidney” is equally puzzling. That kidney was not new – it belonged to the pig. What makes the kidney “new” in the eyes of the reporter and scientists is that it was artificially engineered to function in a monkey; this is not natural selection. Finally, we are supposed to revel in how the monkey recipient lived for two years after the jerry-rigged transplant. The primate in question was a cynomolgus monkey with an average lifespan of twenty-five years. Considering that the transplant was not made on an aged monkey, years were erased from his or her life. This species of monkey’s small size and compliance render them desirable for lab experimentation. Of course, as our readers might know, monkeys used for lab tests are produced like cabbages and shipped globally, as if disposable and replaceable commodities. Worth noting, these primates often live confined and barren lives in university and medical laboratory cages. 

The pig in question was a Yucatan miniature pig, with an average lifespan of about thirteen years. They are popular laboratory animals since they are docile and become tolerant of human handling. There’s one line in the Wired article that resonates disturbingly: “… pigs are already raised for agriculture.” In other words, since some animals have already been designated as objects of commercial use by humans, why not also expose them to medical experiments. We already raise animals as our food – fatten them with hormones and fill them with antibiotics before slaughter and packaging. So, it seems, as the logic of the Wired writer suggests, if we can eat them, why not employ them for invasive trials benefiting emerging medical technologies. The fact that animals suffer in the human obsession for advancement is just collateral damage, it seems. Bear in mind that as usual this experiment was not a transaction between one pig and one monkey; dozens are used, and then magnify that number by how many other researchers race to achieve similar results elsewhere and then how many more animals perish when the tests are replicated over and again.

Certainly, humans benefit financially and socially from animals in a multitude of ways. Consider our long history of using horses, whether in work or war. There are dogs who guide the blind and enhance law enforcement. Rabbits and a host of rodents used in the cosmetic or pharmaceutical industries help us smell sweet or live comfortably. Since we’ve been using animals as objects, and not recognizing them as subjects of their own lives, it only seems reasonable, so the logic goes, to harvest their organs for human transplant. The argument is that we can artificially engineer pig organs and experiment on primates because they are “like us”; but that likeness claim should be a reason for us to treat them humanely. Have we learned nothing since the dark days of Old Testament animal sacrifices or Descartes’ vivisections? The pig kidney in question, otherwise fully functional for its owner, was genetically re-engineered using Crispr² to make the organ compatible for xenotransplantation. The kidney of the Yucatan miniature pig is similar in size to a human’s organ, and the genomic edits promoted graft endurance and minimized rejection in a primate body like ours.

The scientists who managed this complex process provide some interesting language in the title of their paper. They state to have “designed” a “humanized” pig donor. Humanized design seems rather strange phraseology but suggests that the gene-editing protocol on animals is only for human advantage; or, it’s as if other species that evolved adaptations over eons to survive and reproduce in their own ecological niches don’t even really exist for themselves. We doubt medical ethicists would condone performing these procedures on herds of humans confined to a research facility. More to the point, one sees the word “plantation” in the language of this animal medical research, conjuring expansive farms of donor pigs bred to lose their internal organs.

Without having to cite sources, it’s well known that like many animals, monkeys and pigs are extremely sapient and sentient, so it seems unethical and cruel to conduct Frankenstein experiments on them solely for the benefit of “humanity,” especially in this highly technical era assisted by artificial intelligence and computer-generated imaging. We realize that medical research is dependent to some extent on animal experimentation, but where are the lines to be drawn and at what cost to nonhuman life? The Hippocratic Oath³ reads, in part, as follows: “I will soothe the pain of anyone…. Never will I betray them…. Under no circumstances I will use his body to advance my knowledge or fame…” Not surprisingly, the oath and much medical research is anthropocentric: there are few limits to the breeding of and experimentation on multitudes of test animals if the results benefit humans.

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka Jacks, Editors, ASEBL (animal studies ethical behavior literacy)

References and Notes

1. Mullen, Emily. 2023. “A Monkey Got a New Kidney from a Pig – and Lived for 2 Years.” 11 October, Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/a-monkey-got-a-new-kidney-from-a-pig-and-lived-for-2-years/

2. Anand, Ranjith, et al. 2023. “Design and Testing of a Humanized Porcine Donor for Xenotransplantation.” Nature 622: 393-401. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06594-4

3. Arenas, Amelia, trans. 2010. “Hippocrates’ Oath.” Arion 17.3. https://www.bu.edu/arion/files/2010/03/Arenas_05Feb2010_Layout-3.pdf

Biospecimen monkey image from IQ Biosciences https://iqbiosciences.com/blog/serious-monkey-business-short-take-cynomolgus-monkeys-research/  

Biospecimen pig image from Sinclair Bio Resources  https://sinclairbioresources.com/miniature-swine-production/micro-yucatan-miniature-swine/

Copyright©2023 by Gregory F. Tague and ASEBL. All Rights Reserved.

An Open Letter to Peter Godfrey-Smith

An Open Letter to Peter Godfrey-Smith in response to his essay, “If Not Vegan, Then What?” (Aeon 10 February 2023) 

Dear Dr. Godfrey-Smith:

 

As an “experiment” you tried a “near-vegan” diet for one month and then stopped. Most vegans would probably say their transition was gradual and over a longer period of time. They’d also likely indicate how careful choices with some guidance were made about which foods to eat. You imagine an ethical person but one for whom a plant-based diet “does not work.” This conclusion fails to see the many vegan options for most people in developed and even in some developing countries. You look for a “defensible” compromise to veganism when we don’t see any. Ethical vegans make a willful choice and don’t experiment; if it’s a trial, one is bordering on a popular trend that is doomed to fail.

 

Near-vegan for you included eggs, butter, and fish oil – that prescription is not even close to a vegan diet. However, with willpower and changes to routines, you could have weaned yourself away from animal products gradually. Instantaneously proclaiming “near-vegan” promotes a misconception about ethical vegans who make a concerted effort to avoid whenever possible harming or eating animals or purchasing products tested on or containing animal ingredients. You say you wanted the eggs for protein without having considered other choices. Many beans and leafy plants are protein rich. Besides, most modern humans take in too much animal protein, which can be harmful. You say you opted for eggs from “free range” chickens, but as Alice Crary and Lori Gruen¹ have noted, terms like free range, grass fed, cage free, etc. are more about marketing gimmicks and less about animal welfare. Eating “free range” or “cage free” products is an excuse conjured by corporate agriculture to make carnivores feel better; or, as you literally suggest, to justify killing and eating animals. While you mention ethics a few paragraphs into your essay, you indicate a move toward veganism because of motives regarding “animal welfare.” As you know, welfare issues for farmed animals are far different than advocating for their rights or liberation. At the same time, you claim that animal suffering is a primary concern, as if any farm-raised animal does not experience psychological or physical pain at the point of death and perhaps before then.

 

You go on to note how your experiment turned out to be an “illuminating failure.” How much light has been shed on which issues, even from reader comments on the Aeon site? You say the “regime” was too difficult, that you felt cold and “unsettled.” These were likely psychosomatic responses that even farm animals feel. You say that by the tenth day you added dairy into your diet and felt well. We consider that a dodge. Ten days? It seems that you tried to go vegan for mistaken reasons if you now justify eating animal flesh. While you do question your lack of perseverance, you nevertheless defend how you felt “unsettled.” In fairness, we’ve all been brainwashed from an early age to love our pets but to eat cows, pigs, sheep, fish, chickens, etc., so you were no doubt reckoning with an uncompromising and steely mindset. You obliquely admit that there might have been some psychological resistance on your part as you feared vulnerability to pathogens during Covid. Consider how Covid, and other such global pandemics, began in wet markets where live animals are slaughtered on demand, to say nothing of potential bacteria like salmonella, e-coli, and yersinia in meats.

 

Then, you seem to get to the heart of your essay and propose what you believe are three justifiable options for those concerned about animal welfare. 1. Eating “humanely farmed” meats, including beef. 2. Eating fish caught in the wild. 3. Eating conventionally-farmed dairy products.

 

You proceed to go into some detail about these three options, as if they are the only ones. For example, regarding number 1, you seem inclined to consume cows who live a “good life” and are killed by “specialist butchers” because the killing is “inevitable.” This pronouncement neglects how cows are forcibly impregnated to produce milk for humans, not for their babies sold as meat. Their lives are short and their demise is engineered by humans, not nature. Biology, not the human marketplace, makes cows lactate and hens lay eggs. Synthetic hormones are used to force cows to produce large quantities of milk for human use. Forced production results in infected udders that yield pus mixing into milk drunk by humans. Growth hormones are used to fatten cows and steer and thus ultimately ingested by humans. This artificial feeding chain is amplified by the use of antibiotics in the farming industry, which might account for increased resistance in humans. The calves are taken away almost immediately, to the distress of the cow. Male calves are literally starved so that they have tender, white flesh sold as veal. These are just a few examples of the paucity of “animal welfare” in the beef industry.

 

For number 2, you justify killing wild fish because, in your calculus, they’d die anyway. Would that justify killing and eating one’s pets? You claim that victims of commercial fishing don’t experience an “especially awful” death. Fish can suffer², and kill methods include ice chilling, bleeding out, suffocation, CO2 stunning, etc. Worse, the vast number of what is called bykill trapped in commercial fishing nets is staggering and ranges from dolphins to turtles and even birds. Endangered species are also killed in these fishing nets. How, then, is this serving animal welfare? As for wild fishing, you say it’s part of human history in a “natural food web.” This is oversimplistic and ignores a few key points. First, going back in history to human settlements around the Mediterranean Sea, fishing would not have depleted resources, as is now the case. Second, deeper in history our hominin ancestors were likely geared to a plant-based diet⁴. Third, nowhere in your essay do you indicate that humans are omnivores. As one of our friends is fond of saying, “I’ll eat anything.” That means one can survive well from a diet rich in vegetables (root and green), legumes and beans, fruits, grains, seeds, nuts, tofu, tempeh, etc. You use the term “food web” to suggest that we must eat meat and dairy. That is untrue. Some animals (large cats, for instance) evolved as obligate carnivores. Humans, like our great ape cousins and even baboons, did not.

 

In terms of number 3, you admit serious welfare anxiety for cows on dairy farms, unless the farm is “humane.” Humanity is an outdated and anthropocentric notion. When you say “humane” you imply animals are used as a means for human ends (e.g., humanely killed). In the course of history up to the present, humans have not treated each other humanely, and they certainly do not routinely treat work or farm animals with the care and concern given to their children or pets. In a twist of logic, you suggest that the farmed cow should exist since it produces food we eat. Animal milk is produced for their offspring, not humans. This fact is evident by our lactose intolerance to cow’s milk.

 

You wonder, next, which of the three options is the most justifiable. In our opinion, none, and the only option is to choose ethical veganism. Worth noting is how most modern humans eat far more than needed and more often than necessary. You say about dairy offspring that their “bodies will be put to some use.” Male chicks are ground in wood chippers to become fertilizer. You find “humane” beef as more defensible and even as a “positive good.” Surely this is not good for the cow, and without citing the scientific literature readily available beef is the most deleterious to human health and the environment. A look at Our World in Data³ indicates how there is growing demand for meat worldwide, especially beef. Grains are produced in trillions of pounds and fed to farm animals when that food could be used for humans, to say nothing of the water waste and fossil fuel emissions from slaughterhouses, meatpacking facilities, and transport vehicles. Worse, those grains fed to farmed animals are wasted twofold since the animal uses the nutrients to grow body parts (e.g., beaks or horns) not farmed as human food. It’s not in the service of anyone’s welfare to feed and fatten animals who cycle calories that could feed those humans already malnourished. Which choice is more humane? Massive amounts of cattle cannot be “humanely” raised since forests are cleared to produce food for them. That’s poor land use for all forms of life and reduces rainforest biodiversity that cleanses and hydrates the air we breathe. The devastation to the climate is pervasive in the cattle feeding/ranching scenario, and one only needs to look at satellite images of the Amazon to see what we mean.

 

You justify eating cows by saying that because they exist, we can eat them. Farm animals, as any reader of Darwin⁵ knows, have been artificially bred and selected for certain traits. Many farm animals are, historically and evolutionarily speaking, recent developments. Sheep, for instance, must be sheared since we have bred them to have wooly fleece. Your argument reminds us of one by Nick Zangwill⁶: raise farm animals, assume they are happy, and then it’s okay to kill, butcher, and eat them. The “logic” is that for there to be happy cows and other animals they must be farmed and “humanely” killed as human food. The conclusion is that you are a beef eater, but you say that numbers 2 (fish) and 3 (dairy) are also defensible. Whether on a small or factory farm, animal bodies and offspring, as well as food they naturally produce for young, are all packaged for human profit by the pound. Selling animal body parts does not seem to be about welfare. No farm animal, unless she has been rescued and placed in a sanctuary, is considered as an individual; regrettably, that anthropocentric attitude comes across in your essay very strongly.

 

You conclude by asking that one should “calculate” what’s best, balancing opposites like utilitarianism and rights theory. Noted earlier, you leave out of the equation virtue ethics. As a prominent professor who has written extensively on animal minds and consciousness, you exercise immense influence your peers and legions of students in your classroom. What’s the message you’d like to communicate? Is it the distorted view about “animal welfare” that justifies meat eating and dairy consumption? Why publicize your failed and short-lived dietary experiment, which ends on a note of moral relativism (utilitarianism v. Kantianism, yes/no/maybe, it depends), while ignoring how the majority of vegans make an ethical choice not to support businesses that harm animals and not partake in exploiting animals as human food. This is not to say vegans are perfect. For one, animal products appear everywhere and are hard to avoid. More importantly, being vegan is an act of faith that’s always tested and requires constant attention as one strives toward an ethical goal.

 

- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D. and Fredericka Jacks, Editors, Literary Veganism 

 

References/Notes

 

1. Crary, Alice and Lori Gruen. 2022. Animal Crisis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

2. Chandroo, K.P., I.J.H Duncan, R.D Moccia. 2004. “Can Fish Suffer?: Perspectives on Sentience, Pain, Fear and Stress.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 86 (3–4): 225-250. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159104000498

3. Our World in Data. 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person. Also, see, Ritchie, Hannah and Max Roser. 2019. “Meat and Dairy Production.” Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production.

4. Tague, Gregory F. 2022. The Vegan Evolution. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. https://sites.google.com/site/gftague/veganism-and-evolution

5. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species. Joseph Carroll, ed. Ontario, CN: Broadview P. 2003.

6. Zangwill, Nick (2021) “Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association.295-311. Doi: 10.1017/apa.2020.21. For a response to Zangwill, see: Tague, Gregory F. 2023. “Is There Moral Justification to Eat Meat?” The Ecological Citizen. 6 (1): epub-082. https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/article.php?t=is-there-moral-justification-to-eat-meat There’s a related video on this subject (15 minutes) here: https://youtu.be/uwFEqJmbk6E

Copyright©2023 by Gregory F. Tague and Fredericka Jacks. All Rights Reserved.