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“Reducing suffering is the project of modernity,” he says. “Thatis a good thing in itself, though there are certain intellectuallimitations and problems with a pure suffering approach…somehow, then it would seem to be OK to do whatever you wantto do with animals as long as you kind of keep them in a halfdruggedstate where they’re not experiencing any suffering.”if one accepts that there are ethical and spiritual concernssurrounding the treatment of animals on factory farms, whatthen, is the answer? Is it a radical overhaul of the system?Not eating animals? Changing a few regulations?Bisgould is not convinced there are any laws that canreally improve things for animals used in industrial agriculture(although she would like to see a change in privacy laws,which would allow people to see where their food comesfrom). One can ask for bigger cages or make anaesthesiamandatory before castration, but these improvements areminimal in the grand scheme of the suffering the animalsendure, she says. The demand to produce vast amounts ofmeat for human consumption means there’s no room foranimals to live well, she adds.“When there’s no market, we’ll stop producing them,” saysBisgould, pointing to the cosmetic industry, which began tomake massive changes after people found out their productswere being tested on animals. “In that sense, all of us have alot of power, but we have to be willing to re-examine our ownbehaviours because a lot of us love to eat animal products –and I totally get that, but we have to be open to a little bit ofchange if we want these harms to go away.”Wayne Sumner, a professor emeritus of philosophy atU of T, points to vegetarianism as the moral ideal. (A vegetarianhimself for several decades, he says, “I’ve backslid a bit sincethen. I don’t live up to my own ideals.”) “For most of us livingin big cities in Canada, we can get by perfectly well withouteating animals or eating animal products. I think that’s ethicallyadmirable, but I would take a harder line as far as animalsuffering is concerned,” says Sumner. “It’s not just admirablenot to cause animals to suffer, it’s an obligation not to causethem to suffer.”Scharper favours a “context of consumption” approach,which takes into account quality-of-life issues for animals andhumans, and environmental concerns, when choosing whatmeat to eat. Of factory farming in particular, he adds, “This isa crisis of imagination and of the way we think. And becausewe’ve allowed ourselves to be colonized by a pragmatic, endsdrivenmodel, rather than to other ways of looking at theworld – of integration, of deep empathy, of deep participatorysolidarity – we can’t think of other ways to be human. That’swhat we are challenged to do now.”Berkman, a vegetarian himself, references a modern Mennoniteposter that reads: A Modest Proposal for Peace: Let theChristians of the World Agree That They Will Not Kill EachOther. “People asked, ‘Why just Christians? Why shouldn’teverybody not kill each other?’ Well, this is a modest proposalfor peace. At least people who are supposed to agree, fundamentally,about what life is about, should be able to not kill eachother,” he says. He relates this back to animal suffering, arguingfor at least eating free-range meat: “Ultimately, I would like tosee a much broader vision where we come to an agreementabout respecting the goodness and the inherent dignity of animals,and that unless we absolutely need to we should let themlive according to their natures and peaceably. The modestproposal for change is let’s not be engaged in institutionalizedcruelty, which almost everybody knows is wrong.”Before ending the conversation, Bisgould makes one importantdistinction between humans and other animals. “We’vetried for a long time to distinguish ourselves from otheranimals to justify hurting them. And all of the distinctionsthat we’ve drawn over time have been disproven by our ownscience. They don’t think, they don’t reason, they don’t feel,they don’t form social bonds. So we don’t have the factualpremise for this entitlement that we continue to claim,” shesays. “If there is perhaps one difference, it might be thissecond-order thinking that we do, this thought aboutthought. And since we have that capacity, aren’t we obligedto use it? Instead of saying, we’re better than you, thereforewe get to hurt you, let’s use our morality and say, I have achoice between sustaining myself in a way that causes profoundpain and suffering, or a way that doesn’t. How do Ijustify choosing pain and suffering? How do I justify it?”Stacey Gibson is managing editor of U of T Magazine.For more information about factory farming, visit www.magazine.utoronto.ca.Autumn 2010 43