The Insect Challenge
Loyal readers of Eating Plants: we face a challenge. It’s one that, I think, ethical vegans dismiss at our ultimate peril. Here’s what the last two blog posts—in addition to the essential/incredible commentary—have demanded that we do: we must explain why it’s morally unacceptable to exploit a farm animal but morally excusable to exploit insects.
We eat. We eat plants (or at least most of us here do). As a result, we kill insects. Anyone who thinks that organic agriculture spares insects needs to accept the fact that organic growers spray with an arsenal of insecticides. They just happen to be “natural” insecticides, a designation that makes consumers feel “safer.” Likewise, anyone who thinks we can consume food by foraging needs to choose about 5 billion humans who get to die first.
We eat plants. Therefore we support agriculture. Therefore we support the wholesale and unfathomable destruction of insects (among other “lesser” animals). Significantly (and obviously), we do not accept this destruction for cows, pigs, chickens, or other farm animals. But we do for insects.
Why? It’s not enough to say “we’re doing the best we can to reduce animal exploitation.” Even if it’s true—which it is for so many of us—the relativity inherent in such a claim requires grounding in order to make our case convincing. “The best we can do” tacitly consents to insect devastation but in no way tolerates the exploitation of farm and fur animals. As a said, we face a challenge: why?
Let me get to what I think does NOT need to happen: we do not need to draw a precise species line between morally unacceptable and excusable. That’s not possible to do with any degree of accuracy. We do, however, have to explain the question I opened with: why is it worse to kill a cow than an ant? I don’t like this question one bit, but I’m also tired of hiding from it.
Ultimately, this is going to require that take the concept of “sentience”—a word thrown around a lot on this blog (mostly by me)—and give it more nuance, greater gradation. The first thing I’m going to do when I get back from my Spring Break (and closer to my library) is go back to Gary Francione and Tom Regan (and others), re-examine what they have to say about sentience, and then start facing up to this challenge.
There’s no denying that this project will be a human-centered project. And there is no denying that the gradation of sentience that we devise to answer our cow/ant dilemma will ipso facto be a human designation. But until you can get an ant or a goat undertake the task for us, I see no other option. Onwards.
Is it really exploitation when growing food (meaning plant-based food) for humans is necessary? By definition I don’t think so.
Harm, yes. Exploitation, no.
Of course, we can attempt to minimize harm to insects and other animals, as veganic standards do (and as every committed vegan would prefer), but even if insects are inevitably harmed in the best of situations it would not be “exploitation” of insects.
The exploitation distinction puts the burden on vegans to show why exploitation is a special kind of harm to animals who may not grasp such harm nuances themselves. For instance, when almond farmers rent bees from beekeepers to pollinate their almond groves, vegans could call this exploitation. But do the bees themselves see this as a special form of harm that is worse than poisoning? If not, the exploitation distinction is self-serving for vegans since it doesn’t have to do with animals’ actual interests. But if animals do see exploitation as a particularly bad harm, in regards to insects, this means that vegans could eat foods with pesticides, but could not eat foods that farmed bees pollinate.
However, this doesn’t escape the need to distinguish between insects and other animals. Because if you leave it at “harm is okay as long as it isn’t exploitation,” this would also allow hunting, since the hunted animals aren’t exploited until after they are dead — when the exploitation is no longer a harm to them. If you still want to call that exploitation (hunters kill the animal for the purpose of later exploitation), then you would have to explain why it’s not okay to shoot a wild animal for no reason and leave it to rot, since that is not exploitation in any way.
Exactly, which is why, as a vegan, I rarely use the term or notion of exploitation. To me, it is the harm that is to be avoided whenever possible. That is also why I do not like terms such as “equal.” When I was a teacher, I never applied the equal rule to students, but the fair rule. If one student had a learning disability, it was fair to give that student extra help and/or accommodations. As one who seeks to do the least harm and the most good in this world, fair seems more important.
When a vegan anywhere in cyberspace explores the boundaries and limitations of veganism, we can always count on one ex/anti-vegan to come out of the shadows to call veganism, itself, bullshit. Talk about “self serving”…
Why ask questions that no one can answer and present them as arguments against vegans who take animal exploitation seriously? What do the animals, including insects, think about our intentions to exploit them? You don’t know anymore than anyone else, so what’s the point? Intentions don’t matter? Veganism is pointless? What is it? Clearly you care about this, Rhys. Other than being the prominent go-to “gotcha” ex vegan, what are you doing to navigate this imperfect world and live consistenly with your values (whatever they may be)? Are you proposing a better way to relate to animals other than taking a principled stand against unnecessarily exploiting them? Please share.
So, you know vegans deeply care about not exploiting animals and minimizing harm to them, and you know that vegans know that we dont live in a world that allows vegans (or anyone concerned with oppression and injustice) to make perfect choices to live consistently with our values. Well, then I ask you, what’s the point in constantly and pointing this out to vegans?
To exploit, as defined by Merriam Webster, means to make use of meanly or cruelly for owns own advantage (the example given is to exploit migrant workers). Surely you can see that hunting, when it is uneccessary to do so, is exploitation. The same with shooting wild animals (for reasons you leave to the readers’ imaginations). Perhaps you use another definition of exploitation?
“To exploit, as defined by Merriam Webster, means to make use of meanly or cruelly for owns own advantage (the example given is to exploit migrant workers). Surely you can see that hunting, when it is uneccessary to do so, is exploitation. The same with shooting wild animals (for reasons you leave to the readers’ imaginations). Perhaps you use another definition of exploitation?”
Under your definition here, using pesticides *is* exploitation of insects, since this kills insects to our own advantage.
Well, I’m not an apologist for agricultural practices that unnecessarily kill insects or other animals (in many cases to simply maximize profits, and not necessarily to feed humans). Eating crops that others grow with whatever methods they employ is a choice vegans need to make in order to sustain themselves with food, which is a basic necessity. It’s as if you refuse to ackowledge that vegans already accept that every choice they make is imperfect, particularly within our current world.
Going back to Webster’s, migrant workers, including young children, are also exploited for their labor in agriculture. Many people who are not even vegan would object to this, yet people need to, and do, eat the crops. Would an individual’s commitment to human rights be any less consistent if this individual ate a vegetable grown within a system that is steeped in such exploitation, or is this a systemic problem beyond the immediate reach of an individual vegetable consumer? (I’m leaving aside that this also very much occurs in animal agriculture.)
You attempt to tear down vegans and veganism wit your “gotchas”, but you propose nothing. What’s the point? To put vegans and non-vegans on the same moral level? I’d love to read your response to these questions and to the ones I posed above in my previous comment.
My husband and I talk about this all the time. We never strive for perfection, just progress.
@JMC this is the post Humanist turn in insect incarnation: Haraway’s do you brush your teeth metaphor and Carey Wolfe’s: do we care more about a cow or a scallop? We are all killers on some level and therefore all speciesists. It is more a question of accepting responsibility for killing other species than where to draw a line.
Does “accepting responsibility” make an action acceptable? Always? Sometimes? These days everyone from sleazy politicians to nose-to-tails chefs seems to be pounding their chest and proudly taking responsibility. It’s often a way of saying, “What may look morally dubious is actually awesome!” I’m not suggesting that’s what you mean by accepting responsibility, John, but what are we to make of this notion? Are we to say, well, killing or whatever, it’s all part of the cycle of life and death, so just go for it?
Sentience, According to Gary Francione:
“A sentient being is a being who is subjectively aware; a being who has interests; that is, a being who prefers, desires, or wants. Those interests do not have to be anything like human interests. If a being has some kind of mind that can experience frustration or satisfaction of whatever interests that being has, then the being is sentient.”
http://freefromharm.org/animal-rights/sentience-according-to-gary-francione/
The problem with this definition is that if sentience can involve phenomenon that are not “anything like human interests,” then humans, in conceding that we may not be able to grasp another living being’s sentience, must by default grant sentience to every being. It’s thus a definition without distinction, which is not much of a definition.
James: Exactly. And to Markgil: Another reason I find Franicone’s writings and opinions wanting (aside from his arrogant narcissism.) A plant can easily have interests under his definition.
Francione seems to be fine with drawing quite distinct lines. I am not so comfortable doing that. I see life as having a lot more nuance than Francione allows for.
Every time I read Helen Atthowe’s website http://www.veganicpermaculture.com, I am impressed with how she has found — through humble, flexible, ever-evolving, compassionate thinking and actions — a way to not harm not only a single sentient being (from ants to elk) but also a single living thing (from mighty trees to minute microorganisms).
In theory and in practice, her veganic permaculture forest garden (I’m not sure I have the words in the right order) seems ecologically sensible, morally sane, and economically viable.
Moreover, this benign system appears to provide generous sustenance to any and all creatures who live in it, thereby enabling all to thrive together. Both individual and collective needs are taken into account — and beautifully met.
What I’m learning from Helen’s example is: Where there’s a right desire to treat all beings as intrinsically important to themselves and to the whole, there’s a good way to accomplish that desire. And not only one good way, but I’m sure a multitude of good ways, which we’ll discover as we continue to expand our hearts and our imaginations and our sights.
Nice.
Yes, excellent site! And great point about the desire to respect the intrinsic value of all beings and ways of accomplishing that desire. Without the desire, or intention, Atthowe probably would not have discovered these better ways.
Thanks for sharing this!
Lori and Michael and all — you might like to hear a follow-up to my comment about Helen’s website.
After I emailed the comment to her, she wrote back to say that it had arrived at a perfect time. It seems that an unknown someone or someones had been eating too many of her pepper starts (I guess that means cuttings or seedlings). Not being able to find “the culprit(s),” she spent two days considering taking the organic poison route. But the desire to live only with loving intentions and actions prevented her from following through. Happily, Helen’s patience and compassion bore fruit: Monday morning, just hours before receiving my missive, she found the pepper-lovers and harmlessly moved them to a nearby oak forest.
We probably all know people who, like Helen, have proved that respect for all life harmonizes relations among different species.
One of my all-time favorites is J. Allen Boone, who wrote books about his canine pal, the famous silent-screen German Shepherd star Strongheart.
In “Kinship with All Life,” Boone tells of his interactions with members of the Formicordea family who, after he left his icebox door ajar one evening, were swarming all over the walls, floor, and ceiling of his kitchen and back porch — and all over his food. He writes:
“My dinner was ruined. So was my disposition. And so were my resolutions about treating all forms of life with respect, kindness and consideration. I resented these ants in a most primitive way. Hurrying over to my nearest neighbor I borrowed a can of ant poison. With this in one hand and a broom in the other, I was ready for massacre. I was going to show those little bandits that they could not get away with pillage in my house. I was just about to let them have it with both poison and broom, when my New England conscience began to hiss. It demanded to know why, with all that I had been privileged to experience in relationship balancing, I should want to kill these ants. I began to reason with myself, always an excellent thing to do when one is in a combustible mood. Finally I decided not to go through with the slaughter but to confer with my unwelcome guests as Strongheart and other animals had taught me. But how to confer in a practical way with such an army of ants?
“Sitting on the floor in order better to observe the situation, I tried to discover which was the head ant, or the committee of ants in charge of operations, so I could have a specific target at which to aim my remarks. But though I looked searchingly through a powerful magnifying glass, no one ant or group of them appeared to be any more important than the others. Each ant seemed to be doing its required part in the general effort without the need for direction or supervision.
“Setting up an invisible bridge for two-way thought traffic between oneself and a single animal is relatively easy when one is ready for such an experience and goes about it in the right way. But establishing such an intercommunicating system with hundreds of ants all over the house was something entirely different. I decided that the only way it could be done was to turn myself into a kind of broadcasting station and talk to all of the ants at the same time. This I proceeded to do.
“‘Listen, ants!’ I said. ‘We seem to be living in a topsy-turvy world. At the moment I am not entirely sure whether you or I really belong in this house. But on one point I am very clear: your wants have ruined a perfectly good dinner for me. I had to go to considerable effort and expense, and all alone, too, in order to get that food for my dinner tonight. I have to eat to live just as much as you fellows do. Then without any kind of a “May we?” you come sneaking in here and take my dinner away from me. That is neither right nor fair from any angle of approach, especially in these difficult days when we all ought to be trying to help one another.’
“I paused for observation purposes. The broadcast did not seem to be having the least effect on them. More ants were coming in under the back door; more were appearing on the walls and ceilings; and more appeared to be working on the food. It was discouraging; nevertheless I kept on.
“‘You ants may not be aware of it,’ I said, ‘but I am in a position to wipe most of you out of existence within the next few minutes with this poison and with this broom. But that doesn’t seem to be the right answer. We humans have been killing one another off in matters of this kind for centuries and we are worse off today than we were when it started.’
“Then remembering how every living thing likes to be appreciated, I began sending all the complimentary things I could think of in their direction. I told them how much I admired their keen intelligence … their zest for living … their complete dedication to whatever they happened to be doing at the moment … their harmonious action in a common purpose … their ability to work together without misunderstandings or the need to be constantly told what to do.
“I paused to take another look through the magnifying glass. The situation seemed to be worse than ever. I decided to bring the broadcast to a close. ‘That’s all I have to say to you ants,’ I said. ‘I have honestly done my best in this situation. The rest is up to you fellows. I am speaking to you as a gentleman to a gentleman.’
“I went into the living room and sat down in a chair. I felt dejected. Also I began to wonder if I were not mentally unhinged. Things did seem to be moving in that direction. . . .
“Returning home shortly after midnight, I went out on the back porch to see what was happening. There was not an ant in sight! Not one! The icebox door was still wide open with the inviting food inside, and there was some food on the near-by table, but not an ant in sight. I went over practically every inch of floor, wall and ceiling space in the house with a flashlight, but not one ant could I find. Those little fellows had actually kept their part in the gentleman’s agreement.
“This happened several years ago. Since then I have never been bothered by ants in any manner, at home or abroad. Occasionally a scout ant passes through one of the rooms on his way from outdoors to outdoors and pauses just long enough for us to exchange a friendly silent greeting with each other. There are countless hundreds of ants moving about the grounds where I live and plenty of easy entrances into the house. There is usually food that ants like in the kitchen and on the back porch. But while they invade the houses of all the neighbors and annoy them excessively, they never gang up on me any more. Our gentleman’s agreement still holds good, not only with the ants that invaded my house that day but with all other ants. It is like holding an invisible honorary membership card in the Ants’ Union.”
wonderful story, thanks for taking the time to share it. we also shared the kitchen of our living space with a swarm of ants last year for several months and tried very hard not to injure them. we were not upset at them living with us but the hardest part was keeping them out of the dishwasher and i can’t count the # of times i relocated ants before starting the wash cycle. i’m sure some of them which i could not find did not make it but i did the best i could.
Thanks so much. Lovely story. I enjoyed it.
A most beautiful story, thank you for sharing it. Two years ago I began to avoid harming carpenter ants who invaded our home in the spring and summer. Last year, hardly any ants visited us. I look forward to this year. Perhaps we have a gentle-womanly agreement as well?
That is indeed a challenge. It is a profoundly disturbing question (one that almost prevented me to go vegan). I never thought it was safe to assume insects, or arthropods more generally, are “animal machines”. Insects have sense organs, can move by themselves, learn, remember, some have moods as well as a highly social life, and so on. However, following the cumulative argument for animal consciousness, their different phylogenetic history and the body plan are sufficiently different from ours to make it *possible* that they could not be sentient. Invertebrates have no cortex, amygdala and many other brain structures usually implicated in human emotion.
However, the burden of proof is different in ethics and in sciences. Scientists cannot affirm animals are conscious (not even chimps and dogs) unless they have solid empirical proofs (and we actually do not know what counts as a proof of consciousness). Ethicists, on the other hand, must follow a principle of precaution : it is worst to harm a sentient animal than to have refrain from unnecessarily harming a creature which ends up not being sentient after all. Our ethical theories must make room for the possibility that arthropods have some form of sentience.
On the deontological side, some of my colleagues working in animal ethics explain it as a case of “collateral damage”. We are not intentionally farming insects, we do not prevent them to live their life as they wish and we do not select which one will die. The problem is similar with rodents and little mammals who get killed when we harvest, or people getting killed in car accidents. However, if we can improve our methods to reduce the harm, we must do it (ex: vegan permaculture).
The problem becomes harder for utilitarianism because more than 95 percent of all animal species are invertebrates. Given the principle of equal consideration of preferences, the calculus would never favor humans, mammals, birds nor reptiles.
Relational ethics (like feminist care ethics or some other kinds) may be more suitable in this case insofar as it allows for differenciated moral obligations on the basis of relationships. The traditional requisite of impartiality, of doing ethics from a point of view of nowhere, may be a regulative ideal, but it is delusional to think we achieved it. As many feminists thinkers have argued, the pursuit of this ideal also have several negative effects. Morality is grounded in our reality as human beings, so we must acknowledge that a form a (metaethical) anthropocentrism cannot be avoided altogether, even if we must try to get rid of ethical anthropocentrism.
We must not harm others, but who is recognized as other is another question. We “intuitively” know humans are others like we know many non-human animals are others, at least the familiar animals with which we live and the ones in which we spontaneously recognize expressions of lived experiences. On the basis of this personal knowledge, I may come to see very different animals as others, as I learn to see them as living in their own meaningful world and temporality. But we can only reconstruct their worlds on the basis of our own. Regan’s criteria for being subject-of-a-life requisite may be too demanding, but (even if we reject the similar mind theory), there is a sense in which a creature’s consciousness must be enough “like ours”.
It seems to me that much of this is a question of where the burden of proof lies. We can’t know absolutely that rocks don’t have some kind of sophisticated internal awareness that is beyond our ability to comprehend; but it would be quite unreasonable to require anyone to invoke the precautionary principle on behalf of rocks. Similarly, despite some claims about plant sentience, I don’t think that, at this stage of our knowledge, it is reasonable to invoke the principle of behalf of plants. Intuition plays into this too, as you note. Plants don’t have a “face” that appeals to our sense of who is a morally considerable “other”. Insects seem to have an intuitive appeal to some people, but not to others. (Sartre, who liked a nice tidy division between the pour-soi and the en-soi, said insects have a “degree of life and doubtful consciousness that I find so irksome, and above all, in our everyday existence, they have a look of being entirely absent — almost entirely absent — from our world, which sets them totally apart.”)
the difference between rocks and plants and insects is that insects have a central nervous system and can move in order to achieve their interests and flee from danger. although as you said there is no way to prove it, biologically speaking there is no reason for rocks or plants to be sentient or aware as they have no sensory anatomy and are incapable of doing anything about changing their situation.
Mark, I agree with you about rocks, but not about plants. They are not entirely “incapable of doing anything about changing their situation.”
The difference between rock and plants and insects, to my mind is that rocks are not living things. Not in the sense that we generally think of as living anyway.
What is the significance of (simply) being alive? Does being alive automatically entail having some sort of conscious awareness, and what is the evidence for that? If not, why should simply being alive matter morally? Could a sophisticated artificial cybernetic system be aware? If so, would that make it “alive”? Why should we rule out awareness in thermostats? Even rocks exhibit processes of change, such as radioactive decay, and so can be said to have intrinsic goals. Does having intrinsic goals entitle one to moral consideration? (I’m just raising these questions, not demanding definitive answers.)
As for plants, the following articles suggest we should be fairly sceptical about attributing consciousness to them:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/07/16/plants-cannot-think-and-remember-but-theres-nothing-stupid-about-them-theyre-shockingly-sophisticated/
http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2010/lt03/lt_2010_03_30_33.pdf
http://web1.sssup.it/pubblicazioni/ugov_files/302981_2007_2330.pdf
Lori,
other than shifting their leaves slightly to get more sunlight, i am unaware of any action a plant can take to change it’s situation for the better. some plants like fly traps have more motion leaf wise and some have poison or other toxins to protect against insects but these reactions far too limited to be considered as any form of awareness imo.
Taylor,
can you elaborate on why you consider radioactive decay as an intrinsic goal instead of just a natural process required by the laws of nature?
To Markgil and Taylor: We could play dueling studies here on plants. There is much evidence that suggests, at the very least, a sophistication of sorts. And they indeed do many things to enhance and further their lives. Are they sentient? I don’t know, especially since that word is bantered about with lots of meanings and lots of agendas. Same applies to insects and some sea creatures (i.e, whether or not they are sentient). I have no problem respecting rocks and not harming them when possible, but I’d say they are not living in the sense that we, animals, plants and even bacteria are. (That is not definitive, because I am not a geologist and haven’t read enough about rocks.)
As for the question “what is the significance of being alive?” Good question. I think anything that is alive has an interest in remaining alive. It’s certainly drawing a line, just like drawing a line at sentience is, and point well-taken about a cybernetic system. (Yes, I loved Data on Star Trek!) So perhaps coupling sentience with life might be more apt.
Oh perhaps, we could just respect and be mindful of all things, even the junk toys made in China. After all, someone’s life went into making that toy.
But, again, my larger point, respecting, have compassion, being mindful, trying not to cause harm, are not the same as drawing lines at sentience and giving those certain things that pass the (current) muster of sentience equal rights.
I’m going to defer to Robert Grillo’s statement on Ahimsa and say that I see that as the best path so far.
“The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are.”
– Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
markgil: I didn’t say “instead of just a natural process required by the laws of nature”. Aren’t the laws of nature specifications of goals?
Taylor, thanks for the reference on Sartre and insects, I did not know it. I think he could have said the same for all nonhuman animals, no?
At the very end of “L’existentialisme est un humanisme”, he claims that « there is only one universe, the universe of human subjectivity ». Hard to find a more anthropocentric perspective: for him, animals have no subjectivity because they have no self-consciousness. In his bipartite distinction, a nonhuman animal is not a being-for-itself, but is only a being-in-itself (like inanimate objects).
Gennaro argues that Sartre’s theory of consciousness as self-consciousness is insync with contemporary higher-order thought (HOT) theories of consciousness.
http://www.canadianjournalofphilosophy.com/PDFs/cjp32-3–293-330–Gennaro.pdf
Usually, such theories are connected to a denial of animal consciousness (eg. Carruthers). Gennaro, however, argues that it is possible to combine HOT theories and animal consciousness (in the light of recent ethological research on the capacity for having a sense of an “I”):
http://www.usi.edu/libarts/phil/gennaro/papers/AnimalsforLurzEd.pdf
This, however, seems to me to be an intellectualized standpoint on our own experience of ourselves, others and the word which confuse subjectivity with reflexive consciousness.
Here’s another thought: Ants, bees, and bacteria all display forms of collective intelligence, or what some researchers have called swarm intelligence. While humans and mammals also display elements of swarm intelligence, ant and bee manifestations seem categorically different, and ants and bees appear to lack certain vital forms of functional intelligence as individuals that they clearly demonstrate as collectives. Perhaps one could also consider that these species, if not some other insects, have collective sentience, more than individual sentience.
Here are some possible leads for why it feels worse to kill a farm animal than an insect. I’m not saying I agree with these (in fact, it’s possible to pick holes in all of them), but you might want to think about them and see what else you come up with:
* Insects aren’t conscious and more complex animal organisms are. Insects don’t know they’re alive and they aren’t consciously attached to life, so killing them is no different than hitting a light switch.
* Complex animals have lives worth living and insects don’t particularly, so it’s harmful to end a larger animal’s life, but not an insect’s life.
* Insects don’t feel pain.
* It’s “necessary” to kill insects, but not necessary to raise and kill farm animals for food.
* It seems like more of a betrayal to kill a farm animal who has been a friend of sorts — or at least a dependent — than to kill a trespassing alien bug. This is a feminist ethics of care, relational ethics sort of approach. (But it’s hard to see how this would rule out hunting unknown animals.)
It’s likely that more complicated organisms have a greater capacity for suffering, so that the killing process itself may be worse for animals such as cows, deers and pigs than for insects poisoned with pesticides. However, this depends on how the killing of the larger animals is handled. If the stunning process really knocks the animals unconscious so that they cannot suffer as their slaughter continues, it may actually be less painful to be an animal who dies in a slaughterhouse than an insect who dies more gradually from poison.
The farm animals would, however, experience more anticipatory suffering, like the uncomfortable ride to the slaughterhouse, and fear inside the slaughterhouse, if they were rushed to the knocker or if something went wrong and they saw other animals being killed. However, a smaller slaughterhouse could minimize the animals’ fear in the slaughterhouse itself, and vegans seem to be okay with transport-related suffering when they take their companion animals on trips or to the vet, so the transport to the slaughterhouse cannot in itself be an intolerable harm. Plus, most vegans aren’t okay with animal slaughter in principle even if it is hypothetically guaranteed to be completely free of suffering.
So it may not be the greater difficulty of killing farm animals that puts vegans off to farm animal killing while they accept insect killing. “Necessity” (a problematic word in this context since nothing — not even human existence — is independently “necessary”) or thinking that farm animals have a greater degree of awareness than insects is probably why vegans are typically more comfortable with killing insects than pigs.
The latter point raises a question, though: once the insect and the cow are both dead, what difference does their previous level of consciousness have if it’s now all gone and they are both equally aware of nothing whatsoever?
It also could be that the most significant difference between killing insects and killing farm animals is aesthetic. Even if slaughter of larger animals were relatively painless, and at least no more painful than being a bug who dies of poison, it’s still more disturbing and gory to see a farm animal die than to see an insect die. This could be because the farm animal deaths look more similar to our own than insect deaths do. It’s also just a longer and bloodier process.
None of your asterisked point are necessarily true.
As for: “The latter point raises a question, though: once the insect and the cow are both dead, what difference does their previous level of consciousness have if it’s now all gone and they are both equally aware of nothing whatsoever?”
The exact same thing could be applied to and said of humans.
“The exact same thing could be applied to and said of humans.”
No question. (Except for those who believe in souls.)
You mean those particular religions that believe in souls and that only humans can have them.
“vegans seem to be okay with transport-related suffering when they take their companion animals on trips or to the vet, so the transport to the slaughterhouse cannot in itself be an intolerable harm.”
to compare a trip to the vet by a companion animal to the transport of farmed animals to slaughter shows that either you know very little about this subject or are in tremendous denial about the reality of animal agriculture. farmed animals are dragged into and out of the trucks, directed with electric prods and squeezed in so tightly that they cannot move. the farmed animals are subjected to intense heat and horrible cold and wind for many hours with no food or water, standing or laying in their own excrement. many of them have horrible untreated ailments and infections and suffer such severe frostbite that they are often frozen to the metal sides.
But this doesn’t seem to be a make or break issue for vegans in regards to slaughter. Would you be okay with it if the trip to the slaughterhouse could be made about as comfortable as a cat’s caged trip to the vet? Or if the slaughter took place at the farms?
as far as it being an issue, it depends on the vegan-it certainly is an issue for the animals who are forced to endure it by the billions every year. the suffering during transport is only one aspect of the commodification, enslavement, exploitation and slaughter of other animals for our own personal gratification which is morally and ethically repulsive. would it be ok with you if a person took you out for a wonderful meal and then to sleep at a five star hotel only to cut your throat in the morning? just as there is no such thing as humane rape or humane murder when it comes to humans, there is no such thing when it comes to non-human animals who want nothing more than to live and be free.
Rhys, there’s no point to all this back and forth. Either you believe that you have a right to kill animals or you don’t. Your position is that you want to eat and you will try all kinds of gotcha scenarios to back up that want. But it isn’t backed by compassion or science (we know people live very healthy lives as vegans). And compassion dictates that we don’t purposefully kill others. Since compassion (and every moral code I can think of) does allow for self-defense, we have to eat plants, and we may have to kill insects, animals or even humans in self-defense during our lives.
I eat vegan, but vegan is not the end all be all in compassion. My position is to try not to harm any living being when possible, and know that life means I can’t be perfect, but that I will continue to try and be better. Can you refute that?
*typo- you want to eat “animals” I meant to write.
“I eat vegan, but vegan is not the end all be all in compassion. ”
very true Lori-it is only the first step in a lifelong process which is a journey and not a destination. as Gandhi said:
“A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard.”
I do think, on certain levels, it’s enough to say we are trying our best to minimize suffering. Especially when one considers the sheer number of insects, how small they are, where they live (in the soil, air, on every plant we eat… they literally live everywhere), and the fact that we hardly go a moment without encountering one, whether or not we know it. I mean this literally. It’s really an unprecedented situation that doesn’t draw a whole lot of practical comparisons to the hows and whys of exploiting mammals, birds, and fish. That’s not to say they aren’t sentient, or that we shouldn’t figure out the best ethics for minimizing insect suffering; I just don’t know that the ethical guidelines we usually use for larger, less numerous (even billions of cows is less numerous than the number of insects on this earth), much more easy to avoid animals. We don’t have to exploit and kill most of the non-insect animals we exploit and kill. But in many ways it is unavoidable to exploit and kill insects. I think we’ve got to simplify, or at least alter, the terms of this conversation a bit. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about how to minimize suffering and the ethics of it, so please, everyone, skip your potential finger wagging about that. I’m just saying: What do we do, when ultimately it is never going to be possible to stop killing insects just by virtue of our existence? By virtue of walking, eating plants, living, even breathing (I have inhaled insects before by accident)? This isn’t the same as a carnist saying that we can’t avoid eating animals for xyz reason. This is pretty basic stuff: it is impossible to avoid being alive and killing insects. Therefore the terms of the ethical debate cannot be the same as the ones we use when we talk about brash, totally avoidable killing.
Carolyn Z – It is so true that it is impossible to live on this earth, particularly some parts of it, without killing insects. For example, anyone been to Metairie, Louisiana in July? Your windshield is covered with dead bugs if you drive just one mile alongside the Mississippi.
And it still has not been addressed the necessity of killing parasitic insects such as mites, mosquitos, ticks and fleas.
I think by your last statement, you mean that you see the necessity and would like it to be address? I agree. I would like to know what we should do about, for instance, the fact that in many countries the number one cause of death is mosquitoes (via malaria etc.) I’d also like to add that this is a question that first world privileged vegans who will never be touched by this problem, need to tread really, really carefully with when trying to answer. I don’t myself have an answer but this is the kind of question that just can’t be addressed with a typical ethical vegan paradigm.
Minimizing harmful practices in agriculture, etc. seems pretty obvious to me, on the other hand. The real question I think is whether or not we are willing to complicate our vegan identities by looking at places where, actually, we can’t avoid killing.
Yes, that is what I was getting at. But, there are people who live here in the United States who do have to kill roaches en masse. The area that I was speaking of in Louisiana (near River Road) used to be the site of many deaths from Yellow fever. Concern for insect sentience is a first world vegan issue.*
There are so many areas (crowded) where if your neighbor kills a lot of insects it spares you the necessity of having to kill them yourself. So, if my hands are clean, what about my neighbor’s? If I live next to a hoarder, a dump, a swamp or a river where insects like to dwell, then the insects become a real problem and I can’t control their behavior or that environment but I can do something about my own space. And insects do not know what boundaries are. They are everywhere.
*I don’t go out of my way to kill insects and avoid doing so most of the time. Anyone who spends any time outside “in nature” knows what I mean.
Something I published recently with Francione’s input on more clearly defining sentience: http://freefromharm.org/animal-rights/sentience-according-to-gary-francione/. Should we be prepared for a time when it becomes widely accepted that insects have some level of sentience? Yes, maybe we should. But as others have pointed out here, necessity defines our moral obligation. In Francione’s view, if we were true carnivores, we would at least have a moral defense for eating animals.
It seems that the concept of Ahimsa — most good, least harm — would be the guiding moral principle in veganism that would address this challenge. Surely there is a huge difference between artificially breeding into existence and killing animals we do not need to eat from those that are unintentionally killed through a process of growing food crops that we need to survive.
But then what would be the argument against hunting animals who we did not breed into existence? If vegans have to consider the lives of insects as much as they consider the lives of mammals, why is it better to kill insects (and other small animals) to protect food we’ve grown than to kill wild animals to make them food? If insects and other animals need to be equally considered, this would be like saying it’s okay to kill rabbits to stop them from eating our cabbage (since we need to eat to survive, and cabbage provides nutrition), but not okay to kill rabbits in order to eat them (even though rabbits too provide nutrition). What’s the difference? Both killing animals to protect crops and killing animals to eat them are examples of killing in order to feed ourselves — which we need to do to survive.
Yea, because everyone hunting animals to eat them would be totally humane and sustainable, and would have no negative effect on other animals at all, right? And those animals’ bodies would provide us with all the nutrition we need without having consuming any plants, right?
And why in the hell would anyone need to kill rabbits to protect their cabbages?
Don’t pull a muscle reaching so hard, Rhys.
“If vegans have to consider the lives of insects as much as they consider the lives of mammals…” Do you not have to consider the lives of any other beings at all? Or is it just vegans that have to do so?
Rhys, Your questions suggest that vegans must be held to an impossible standard of doing no harm. This is a reductionist way of framing the issue that ignores the Ahimsa principle of “most good – least harm” that I mentioned earlier. It also ignores the importance of intention. If I could grow crops that I need to survive and use fencing to keep out rabbits rather than killing them, that would be a solution based on the principle of Ahimsa. If, on the other hand, I hunt and kill rabbits when I have other options for meeting my nutritional needs from plant foods, then I would not follow this principle. In the end, vegans require less acreage in cultivation for the food they eat which means less resources being used which in turn minimizes, not eliminates, the harm we do to wildlife.
Quite right and good points. And I like the Ahimsa principle far more than I like the sentience argument, btw.
Here is my problem (or I should say, one of my problems) with Francione: In his mission statement he rejects speciesism and yet, he himself becomes a speciesist when he draws the line at sentience. He also states that since we don’t know if insects are sentient, he dismisses their rights.
This is the problem when we start speaking of rights and equal consideration in absolutes.
I believe all life deserves compassion and consideration. Humans, animals, insects, plants…and to live free from harm when possible. That means obvious things like not harming life intentionally unless it’s in self-defense or needed for life. We need plants for life, but not animals. Insects fall in more of an intermediate state in the picture. They deserve compassion and consideration, but it’s not always possible in pursuing our life. Depending on our lifestyle, some will kill more insects, animals and plants (and even humans, those darned workers enter the picture too here) than others.
I believe we should all work to lower our harm footprint, not just our carbon footprint. If we teach people (and raise our children) with respect for life, we’ll probably save a lot more animals than if we lobby for their legal status. But I say to the Franciones…continue to go for it, just stop being so damn sure of yourselves.
Lori, I agree with your sentiment overall. I would just add that to be fair Francione does not dismiss insects as non sentient. He openly admits that we do not know and may never know about their level of sentience, if any. But he also believes in erring on the side of caution and acting as if they were sentient rather than assuming that they are not and therefore dismissing their interests all together. Here is a quote from Francione that confirms this: “People often say that I regard insects as not sentient. That is not accurate. I do not know whether insects are sentient. I err on the side of sentience and I do not intentionally kill them. Indeed, I exercise caution when I walk so as not to kill or injure them. I do not know whether clams or other mollusks are sentient although I err in favor of sentience and do not eat them or buy products made from them.” And yes, I realize that Francione’s communication style has alienated some people that might potentially find his arguments appealing. And that is unfortunate.
Agreed and thanks for the quotes.
[...] I read and commented on a post on James McWilliams’ blog about the issue of sentience in insects. James urges us to take the possibility of sentience in [...]
Regarding the “nuances of sentience”, you mention exploring the views of Regan, Francione, and others. If you haven’t already read Joan Dunayer’s book “Speciesism,” I suggest doing so. While Ms. Dunayer is perhaps not as well known, I have found “Speciesism” and her prior book “Animal Equality:Language and Liberation” invaluable in an exploration of the true meaning of animal rights/liberation and advocacy. The book has many references to sentience, but Joan’s essential definition is that if an individual has a nervous system, ergo allowing them to feel and experience life, they are sentient, and thus deserve equal respect, consideration, and rights. This includes all vertebrates and the vast majority of invertebrates (insects included). You certainly raise essential questions, and living on this Earth seems to entail causing some harm. I won’t address these questions now, but perhaps in a later posting.
In Love and Gratitude,
Mark Wiesenfeld