Sustainable animal agriculture and ethical vegetarianism

The sustainable dairy, egg and meat trend presents an interesting moment for animal advocates, as it brings to the fore the limitations of the anti-suffering, anti-cruelty rhetoric of animal welfare organizations. Read any vegetarian starter kit or eat-less-meat booklet from one of these groups and you’ll find they are treatises against factory farming (animals suffer in factory farms; factory farms hurt the environment). Many take great pains to state clearly that they’re talking specifically about factory farms, and not about other farms that breed, raise and kill non-human animals.

Sustainable animal agriculture neatly sidesteps all animal welfare concerns. This is why, for the public, it offers an attractive alternative to factory farms. When I worked for an animal welfare corporation handing out their anti-factory farming literature, people all the time would say to me, “That’s why I don’t buy animal products from factory farms! I buy local, organic, free range!” The arguments against factory farming have no relevance to sustainable animal agriculture (if anything, they support it!).

Peter Singer, around whose philosophy all the modern animal welfare corporations are based, was clear from the start that his anti-suffering philosophy only prohibits eating products from animals in factory farms. In Animal “Liberation”, Singer writes “So we must ask ourselves, not: Is it ever right to eat meat? But: Is it right to eat this meat?” (Second Edition, p 160). In a recent book, The Way We Eat, he tells readers where to buy sustainably and humanely raised animal products. Two of many examples:

• “[A]void animal products that come from factory farms. … Information about farms that do not use factory methods is available … at www.eatwellguide. org [the web site’s tagline: local, sustainable, organic], and from … www.eatwild.com [tagline: the #1 site for grass-fed food and facts].” (p. 287)
• “If you eat marine animals, choose species that come from sustainable fisheries … www.thefishlist.org” (p. 288, in the ‘Sustainable Fish’ section)

It’s an odd quirk of history that Singer’s anti-suffering ideas, which explicitly endorse consuming animal products, have been used as the ethical argument for vegetarianism. It is this tension that is exposed by sustainable animal agriculture.

As vegetarian advocates, I think sustainable animal agriculture offers us a great opportunity to examine our message and our ideas. When speaking with the public about vegetarianism, do their questions reveal problems with the message we are presenting? If so, rather than ignoring those problems, I suggest reconsidering the ideas underlying our message. In my own case, it was speaking with a skeptical public that led me to realize that my own ethical vegetarianism was grounded in the vegan ideal of non-exploitation, and not in the anti-suffering arguments promoted by animal welfare corporations. Of course, your reasons for vegetarianism may be different from mine. Regardless of what those reason are, by continually and honestly examining our personal reasons for being vegetarianism, we strengthen our understanding of our beliefs and become more articulate, confident and effective advocates.