Human beings should treat animals as living things with their goals and interest. While consciousness between species is ever equal between two different species, human beings should recognize the animals have dignity, and our value system should take that into consideration for pets and livestock. Outside of an ethical question, meat diets are more taxing on the environment those vegetarian diets. Another question in human treatment of animals is how animals should be treated in experimental situations and what species of animals should be used.
For much of human consideration, ethics was not a discipline that extended human compassion to animals. It was not till the late 1800s that a concern for human and animals test subjects began to emerge. This was the result of some severe over--stepping of ethical boundaries in some of these experiments (Beck and Ferdowsian, 2011).
In 2010 Georgetown’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the John Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animals Testing met with other organizations to have a two-day discussion about the political and cultural, and scientific, challenges related to finding alternatives to animals testing.
This is not to say that throughout history that there has not been challenges to eating animals, but that for much of human history it was not a topic widely discussed. In their article “Save The Planet: Stop Eating Meat” Nicholas Hohler and Katie Engelhard write, “For centuries, people have debated the ethics of killing for food (one clearly carnivorous Stoic philosopher, Chrysippus, wrote in the third century BCE that the purpose of an animal’s soul was simply to keep the meat fresh)” (Kohler and Engelhard, 2010).
Much newer than the ethical debate surrounding eating meat is the environmental debate. Producing a pound of meat is far more taxing on the environment than growing and a pound of bread? Even vegetarians who decide not to eat meat for health reasons are inadvertently helping the environment from their abstaining from meat.
While it is impossible to every fully understand what it is like to be an animal, humans, farmers, ethicists and scientists should all try to understand how an animal feels in order to subject them to conditions in which potential suffering is reduced. Kohler and Englehardt write, “The concept of costs to individual animals can be further examined through a growing body of research on animal emotion and cognition” (Beck and Ferdowsian, 2011). Over the last twenty years, there have been illuminating the human understanding of animal behavior and thought. Some animals are social animals and in the laboratory find themselves deprived of the company of other animals. This research suggests that a bird in a cage is a bird who is being prevent from doing a basic behavior that the bird needs to feel fulfilled—flying.
Pain and suffering are difficult to quantify as they are considered to be “subjective experiences.” But animals studies in conducted from different disciplines for multiple intents have succeeded in vastly expanded the knowledge that we have about what animals need to feel fulfilled and how and why some animals suffer.
Humans would not consider keeping their pets, in the same way that pigs used for their bacon are kept. Pigs have been shown to in many ways be more intelligent than dogs. Pigs are intelligent and are capable of feeling deep, complex emotions. That we keep dogs as pets and pigs for food is a function of habit, culture and tradition rather than it is because of any difference in intelligent between the species.
People should treat animals in ways that they can live fulfilling lives and not be subjected to pain and suffering. If the farming and agricultural producer who bring us meat are unable to meet those standards, then people should refuse to purchase the meat produced by them. This satisfies a person’s ethical considerations for an animal, but it does not address the environmental ethics considerations a person should bring to the table when determining if it is ethically responsible for eating meat products.
Because of the carbon footprint meat eaters leave, meat eaters should strive to keep their meat consumption in a healthy balance. Studies have shown that excessive meat eating is not necessarily healthy for a person. Research has shown that the widespread production of meat has let to environmental damages. Engelhart and Kohler show that anyone can make changes in their life that contributes to a communal difference. The Medieval town of Ghent was able to reduce meat production by making one day of the week a vegetarian day. This is something that anyone can implement in their life.
Research has shown that animals can experience pain and suffering. Animals reared for food should be kept in a way in which they are free from unnecessary and excessive suffering. Also, research has shown that meat is worse for the environment that a vegetarian diets. People should balance the frequency in when they eat meat in order to have a smaller impact on the environment.
References:
Engelhart, K., & Köhler, N. (2010, June). Save the planet: Stop Eating Meat. ., ., ..
Ferdowsian, H. R., Beck, N., & Maccallum, C. J. (2011). Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing and Research. PLoS ONE, 6(9), e24059.
