Meat - Facing the Dilemmas

Animals versusthe environmentIs animal welfare a luxury in the fight againstclimate change?Kate Rawlesfinds you can’tsolve a problemwith the samethinking thatcaused it…Dr Kate Rawles is anenvironmental philosopher.Having lectured for nineyears in philosophy at theUniversity of Lancaster shenow runs courses in OutdoorPhilosophy. She is a memberof the Food Ethics Council.kate@outdoorphilosophy.co.ukThere is no such thing as ethics-free farming.Farming by its very nature affects animals andother living things, ecosystems, and people’shealth and livelihoods. Explicitly or not, itcannot help but take a position on what theseeffects and relationships should be – on howthese various ‘others’ should be treated. Andwe are all party to this in-built ethics, becausewe all eat the products of farming.This is not a comfortable place to be. Thedevelopment of husbandry systems thatkeep large numbers of animals in confinedconditions has led inexorably to animal welfareproblems that are systematic rather thanthe result of occasional bad management.The recent UN Global Environment Outlookreport confirms – again! – that the waymodern societies meet their needs is damagingthe world’s ecological systems to such adegree that our own future is in jeopardy; andthat the way these societies supply themselveswith food is amongst the most significantcauses of this ecological mayhem. What’smore, despite our immense impact on animalsand the environment, the human species hasnot even succeeded in meeting its own basicneeds, with one in five people across the worldsuffering malnutrition and about the samenumber – in excess of a billion people – lackingclean drinking water.My focus here is on the environment andanimal welfare. In particular, I’m concerned byrecent suggestions that animal welfare mayhave to be compromised to help tackle climatechange. Unpacking the ethics behind industrialfarming reveals that this is as misplaced astrying to promote traffic calming throughmotorway expansion.Earth auditThe recent United Nations ‘Earth Audit’ oughtto be shocking. It isn’t, but only in the sensethat we’ve heard it all before. Like the earlierMillennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)report, it tells us that the speed at whichhumans have used the earth’s resources overthe last two decades has put “humanity’s verysurvival” at risk.1 Key factors in the degradationof natural systems that support life on earthinclude habitat change, climate change, invasivespecies, over-exploitation of resources, andpollution such as nitrogen and phosphorus.In all of this, agriculture plays a critical role.More land has been claimed for agriculturein the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19thcenturies combined. An estimated 24 percent ofthe earth’s land surface is now cultivated. Waterwithdrawals from lakes and rivers have doubledin the last 40 years, so humans now use between40 percent and 50 percent of all availablefreshwater running off the land. And, of course,there’s climate change. The United NationsFood and Agriculture Organisation argues thatlivestock, primarily cattle, are responsible fornearly one fifth of the world’s entire humancaused climate change emissions2 – that’s morethan every plane, train, car, motorbike andskidoo on earth.3In sum, industrialised societies, of which farmingsystems are a key part, are unsustainable. Thisway of living is promoted across the worldas what it means to be developed, successful,progressed. Yet this way of living, and the values,ethics and worldview that go with it, simplycannot be sustained into the future withoutecological collapse. It cannot be shared by 6billion people, let alone the projected 9 billion.As the WWF Living Planet Report puts it sopowerfully, if everyone enjoyed the lifestyle ofthe average Western European, we would needthree planet earths.4So where do we go from here? Steven Hawkinghas seriously suggested searching for otherplanets. Remaining earthbound, one approach isto try to technofix the problem – to increaseefficiency and reduce waste to such an extentthat we can retain industrialised lifestyles,and share them, without causing ecologicalmeltdown. Huge efficiency gains can certainlywww.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 13