But for the Sake of Some Little Mouthful of Flesh
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A second response also relies on religious beliefs. “The Holy Bible reveals that God has given us dominion over animals,” it is said. “This means we are entitled to do to animals whatever is necessary to promote our interests or satisfy our needs, including slaughtering them for food.” As was true of the previous response, this one encounters dissenting voices — for example, the voices of atheists, who deny that there is a God to tell us anything, and the voices of followers of religions other than Judaism and Christianity, who do not accept the Holy Bible as God’s Word. But one can counter this response without abandoning the Judeo-Christian basis on which it stands. For “dominion” in the Biblical context clearly does not mean “tyranny”; it means “stewardship.” God enjoins us to be as caring and compassionate in our relationship with His creation as He is in His relationship with us. Like Him, we are to be “Good Shepherds.”

Are we? No one can attempt to answer this question and ignore what goes on in slaughterhouses. For it is there that we see most vividly what our God-like stewardship comes to in the end. It is scarcely believable that anyone could hope that God will someday treat us in the way “food animals” are treated by the slaughterer. Who could possibly look forward with joyful longing to the prospect of meeting this sort of deity “face to face”? The influential Anglican cleric William Ralph Inge (Dean Inge) writes insightfully when he observes that “we have enslaved the rest of the animal creation ... so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.” The massive scale of animal slaughter for food more than confirms our failure to live up to our role of “good shepherd.”

“Even so,” it may be said, “it is undeniably true that God did give us animals to eat. And since we can hardly eat them without slaughtering them, He cannot look with disfavor on our killing them, either — provided, of course, we do so humanely.” This response overlooks too much and accepts too little. It overlooks the fact that, judged in Biblical terms, the original diet given to human beings clearly was vegetarian. As Genesis 1:29 declares, “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat.” That was humankind’s diet “in the beginning.”

The current response also accepts too little because it is satisfied with the spiritual status quo. Genesis reveals how things once were and should have remained. In the Biblical account we find that it was only after humans disobeyed God and were expelled from Eden — indeed, only after the Flood — that God gave us the choice to eat animals. To act on that choice thus is a sign of our disappointment of God’s original hopes for us, “the first step” in our journey back to a proper, loving relationship with God and His creation. “The vegetarian movement,” Tolstoy writes, “ought to fill with gladness the souls of those who have at heart the realization of God’s kingdom upon earth ... because (the decision not to eat animals) serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.” People who defend eating meat and slaughtering animals “because of what the Bible says” thus are somewhat confused. It is a graceless religious faith, one grown fat and sloppy from lack of spiritual exercise, that happily accepts humanity’s permanent alienation from God. One would perhaps do better to have no religious faith at all.

Whatever one’s religious beliefs, each of us can agree on a number of plain facts. Humans belong to one biological species (Homo sapiens); all other animals belong to other biological species. Perhaps it will be suggested that this is why killing humans is, while killing “food animals” is not, wrong.

No thoughtful person will accept this response. As a piece of logic it is indistinguishable from defenses of the worst human prejudices. Consider the racist: “Only members of my race really count; people who belong to other races aren’t our equals.” And the sexist: “Only members of my sex really count; others really aren’t our equals.” Both prejudices rest on the same error. Both take some biological fact (one’s race or sex) and make that fact the basis of moral preeminence. but no members of a given race are better than another just because they belong to that race, and no members of a given sex are better just because of the sex they are. Biological facts (race and sex, for example) are not the foundation of morality.

This is no less true of species membership than of other kinds of biological classifications. We humans are not morally preeminent just because we belong to the species Homo sapiens. People who believe that we are preeminent for this reason are called “speciesists.” Speciesists purvey as much truth as racists and sexists. A speciesist can justify slaughtering animals at least as much as a white racist can justify lynching blacks.

Biological considerations about species membership are not the only allegedly “scientific fact” put forward to defend slaughtering animals for food. The French philosopher Rene Descartes teaches that nonhuman animals lack consciousness. Not a little but a lot. Hogs, chickens and cows, cats, dogs and dolphins — every nonhuman animal — are totally lacking in conscious awareness in his view. Some people who today profess to have a “scientific understanding of the world” continue to accept Descarte’s teachings. For these people a chicken and a hog are fundamentally like an ear of corn and an eggplant: Like vegetables, animals have no mind. Since neither is aware of anything, neither feels any pain. And since both lack consciousness completely, death does not cancel any of their future experiences. For these scientists it is no more wrong to slaughter an animal than it is to pick a radish or harvest a potato. In the case of human beings, however, Cartesian scientists, because they see the presence of mind, also see the evil of death. It IS wrong to kill humans for food; it is not wrong to kill nonhuman animals for this reason.

Cartesianism is so much at odds with common sense that most Cartesians are of the “closet” variety: They keep it to themselves. But there are Cartesians out there, and not a few can be found in commercial animal agriculture. They think people who care about animals are dumb and emotional, not like Cartesians, smart and scientific. In displaying these attitudes, present-day Cartesians continue to keep alive the attitudes of Descartes himself. “My opinion,” he writes, “is not so much cruel to animals as it is indulgent to men — at least those who are not given to the superstitions of Pythagoras — since it absolves them of the suspicion of crime when they kill or eat animals.” Pythagoras, it is perhaps unnecessary to note, was a vegetarian.

Descartes denies a mind (consciousness) to nonhuman animals because he thinks they are unable to use language. Critics have pointed out that the same is true of many human beings and that some animals, contrary to Descartes’ denial, can use a language (for example, some chimpanzees have been taught American Sign Language for the Deaf).

Both objections have a place. But neither gets to the crux of the matter. That concerns the Cartesian view that individuals lack consciousness if they lack the ability to use a language. These are overwhelmingly good reasons against this assumption. To see what they are, consider the following:

Human children don’t come into the world knowing how to talk; they have to be taught. Unless they contribute something to the learning process, however, they will never learn. If we say “ball” to a child and the child does not hear, or does not see, or does not understand what we are referring to, or does not remember what we said a moment ago — if the child is deficient in these ways, no instruction can take place. We can say “ball” until we exhaust ourselves and the child won’t learn a thing. Human children, in other words, must be conscious, must be aware of things, before they learn to use a language. If they were not, they could never learn to use one. And this means that children must have pre-verbal and, so non-linguistic awareness. In some way (which may remain forever mysterious to us) young children are able to represent the world to themselves without using words.

This finding destroys any plausible “scientific” basis for Cartesianism. It must be rank prejudice, not respect for science, that would attribute non-linguistic awareness to human children, on the one hand, and deny this in the case of nonhuman animals, on the other. If the former can be made aware of things without knowing how to use language, the same can be true of the latter. There is no good reason to deny a mind (consciousness) to hogs, cows, chickens, and other “food animals.”

In fact, of course, there are very good reasons to affirm the presence of mental awareness in their case. The central nervous system for these animals resembles that of human beings in fundamentally important ways. It is not as though we humans have brains, for example, while chickens and veal calves have empty heads. The behavior of these animals, moreover, resembles human behavior in many instances, including, for example, aversion to pain and the expression of preferences, and the display of feelings such as anger and boredom. By way of illustration: Piglets not only suckle at the teats of their mother; they enjoy doing so. And adult sows rather dislike being severely confined; they are frustrated when tethered, sometimes to the point of chronic depression. Will those who profess to respect “science” judge otherwise? Then they must swallow Voltaire’s barbed wit: “Has nature arranged all the means of feeling in this animals,” he said, “so that it may not feel?” Against those who profess to understand the world from a “scientific point of view” Voltaire has the last word: “Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature.”

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