Marco Kaisth asks, could radical genetic engineering create ethical factory farms?
Pigs are exceptionally intelligent animals. They’re able to solve odor quizzes, recognize themselves in mirrors, and even play rudimentary video games. One Cambridge University Professor, Dr Donald Bloom, has even claimed that pigs “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three year-olds” (‘New Slant on Chump Chops’, Cambridge Daily News, 29 March, 2002). Despite their intellectual powers, 110 million pigs are slaughtered for food every year in the US alone, the vast majority of them after short, miserable lives on factory farms.
The abuses on these farms are well documented, and the conditions in which such pigs are placed are widely acknowledged to be deplorable and unethical. Sows are forced into ‘gestation crates’ too small for them to even turn around, and male piglets are castrated, their tails cut off and their teeth broken at the ends with pliers, without painkillers.
One’s moral reaction to this mistreatment of pigs is only intensified by recognising the pigs’ intelligence and self-awareness. This intensification stems from the assumption that the capacity of a creature to suffer is proportional to its level of intelligence, to the depth of its feelings, and the complexity of awareness. Killing a dolphin is more immoral than squashing a spider, even disregarding the fact that both species are not equally endangered, simply because the dolphin is a more conscious creature. This is also why animal farmers have a greater ethical responsibility to their animals than crop farmers to their crops.
Denne historien er fra April/May 2017-utgaven av Philosophy Now.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra April/May 2017-utgaven av Philosophy Now.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.