How large/furry/"human" does an animal have to be for you to consider its value?

Great question. I was a vegetarian for 9 years, but still struggle with my choices. I’m actually going to post a question about the ethics of fishing soon.

If we are not specifically discussing food, I think many people are ok with smashing a fly or mosquito because we don’t believe it is conscious. While we may eat a pig, you’d be challenged to find someone here who could justify killing a pig with the same carelessness as we would a mosquito. It is confusing.

It appears that if our intention is to minimize our suffering and act morally, we would be concerned with conscious creatures. Many of us eat meat, however. But even eating meat has different levels of concerns. For example, is there something significantly different between hunting and killing a deer for food vs. paying people to raise cattle and chickens in factory farms, exposing them to lives of pure misery that only end when they are finally slaughtered for our consumption?

I have yet to meet someone who has this completely figured out. I see people make attempts by trying to live with extreme care to minimize death and suffering, and then there are those who seem to resent such efforts and have little concern for non-human suffering. I’m not sure it’s just a “find a place in the middle” situation. It might be that some level of arbitrary preference is necessary, while making intentional compassion and care for conscious creatures a active concern.

I place value on them all.
Ground beef – $3.79 lb
Whole fryers – $2.33 lb
Catfish fillets, $4.17 lb
Pork roast – $2.99 lb

I believe everything has a right to it’s life, and a good quality of life as well, even insects. The fly may get swatted but it just had a great horse shit feast over here. lol
We have 21 animals on this ranch property, 2 show horses, 2 pet mini-donkeys, 2 cats, 2 ducks, 3 geese 8 chickens ( was 9 last week ) and a dog.
The hen we lost last week had fallen ill, and we took her to the vet and after she died that night her remains to UC Davis Veterinary diagnostic lab here and are now medicating the rest of the flock for a parasite.

EVERYTHING on this little ranch gets the best of care. We give pain medication daily to our crippled duck and goose, the donkeys have custom made fly masks, the horses get the best hay and supplemental feed, bathing after riding, legs wrapped, fly spray, live in a gorgeous barn that is cleaned daily and caring for everyone is damn near a full time job.
I just rescued a preying mantis and a mole the other day and relocated them to a safer area. I do not wantonly kill anything, however, as much as I love the little vipers as a species we did just do in a baby rattlesnake that was on the back patio a few weeks ago. Oct. is birthing season for the Pacific Diamondback rattlesnakes here and having my cat and the ranch dog both get bitten in the last couple years, ( they both survived with expensive treatment ) well…so long little viper. haha

Quality of life is what is important, nothing wrong with killing a pasture raised calf for beef, it has had a happy free life, scampering around in a big field with it’s friends, eating well, napping in the grass, doing it’s bovine thing until the mobile butcher shows up.
I, personally, do not eat much meat but I also do not condemn ethical ranching practices.
Factory farming is ugly, wholesome homegrown farming is not.

For those of you that do not of my famous goose ” marwyn”..well….he decided to dress up as a chicken this year for Halloween. In my avatar haha He is 16 this year and I am a huge advocate of banning the Fois Gras industry. Illegal in CA. now Some of the worst cruelty perpetrated on intelligent and loving creatures. Marwyn got lucky when he found me 16 years ago. :-)

I don’t believe in placing more value on charismatic megafauna than we do on animals that are less cute or very small (animals that are generally less like humans). To do so is hypocritical.

This is one of the reasons I don’t have a problem with eating meat. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t think we should discount the notion of fear, pain or suffering in, say, fish or insects.

Mammalian attributes aren’t a factor for me in considering the value of an animal.

E.g., according to this, because bees are so important to the production of food, humans wouldn’t last 4 years if bees became extinct.

I love cats and they can be beneficial predators, but IMO, humans and their pets are almost worthless compared to bees, trees, etc.

All animals, humans included, have the right to life, but we all live the law of the jungle.

The only things I will kill intentionally are dangerous spiders that enter my home or are in the vicinity of my garden area. Fuck. I feel bad when I disturb the ants.

Luckily I live in a place where there are few dangerous animals; most of those are human.

I try not to kill anything (unless I plan on eating it or if it’s eating me, actually especially if it’s eating me….fuckin mosquitoes)

I don’t kill anything, maybe a spider. I do condone humane hunting since it’s necessary.

‘Flies’ of every sort, fleas, mosquitoes, house centipedes,silverfish, crickets regardless.
Hairless spiders, moths, bees and a few others of they get inside.
I do not and would not kill a water living creature, but I’m willing to eat them as long as someone else does the nasty part.

I no longer feel guilty about running over a squirrel. It’s not like I waited stealthily for it. It ran in front of red screaming locomotive. Just as well be me, because I’m not going to morn the loss of a little ignorance in this world.

I don’t kill anything, including spiders. They’re all as alive as I am.

Most things encountered outside the house get a pass including the bugs. Anything threatening the fruit or vegetables is marked for death. The freeloading doves ravaging my apples were spared through picking the tree clean of yet unmolested fruit. Mosquitoes are destroyed on sight. No quarter! Within the house, the spiders wander about at will til the wife shrieks. Then my job is to retrieve them through the use of a wide mouthed jar and a piece of stiff cardboard. They are then swiftly deported to the nether regions of the back yard. There was an ongoing argument as to whether one spider in particular was repeatedly jumping the border. I declared the likelihood to be non existent, but the wife swore to an ability to recognize the particular bug on sight (can you believe it?) The issue was settled by marking an accused spider (nail polish forced through a screen down onto the suspect at the bottom of the jar). His identical twin (according to the wife) was caught in the kitchen within a week. There are mouse traps baited with peanut butter in the garage. We catch 1 or 2 every winter.

If their value outweighs their nuisance, they get a pass. Usually the catch and release method as described by @stanleybmanly—except I’m usually swooping in for a rescue as the husband winds up with his shoe.

As for eating animals, I’m just going to quote my five-year-old.

Mom, pigs are really cute.
But they’re so yummy!

I kill pests and fish. (yummy yummy fish)

I will kill mice, flies, mosquitoes, roaches, ticks and fleas.

Fear of spiders is as irrational as fear of catching ebola in the United States. In the United States, an average of 6.6 people die from venomous spider bites each year. Eight times as many dies from bee and wasp stings.

Mosquitoes cause more human suffering than any other organism—over one million people worldwide die from mosquito-borne diseases every year. Not only can mosquitoes carry diseases that afflict humans, they also transmit several diseases and parasites that dogs and horses are very susceptible to.

I leave small spiders alone if I find them in the house. I catch large spiders and put them outside. I’ll set them near the garden during growing season. Spiders are beneficial. They eat insects that cause problems for plants and humans.

http://www.venomousspiders.net/

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
—Jeremy Bentham

One thing we need to clarify when asking when we ought to consider an animal’s value is whether we are considering its intrinsic value or its extrinsic value. A rainforest, for example, has great extrinsic value due to its role in oxygen turnover and its contributions to medical science. But we do not usually think of a rainforest as a being that deserves moral consideration for its own sake. It’s valuable, but not a member of the moral community.

Some animals, however, might be considered deserving of moral consideration for their own sake. That is, they may be considered to have intrinsic value. I agree that size, furriness, and similarity to homo sapiens are all irrelevant considerations here. None of these confer intrinsic value. My view, however, is that “being alive” does not confer intrinsic value either. Apples are alive—or at least were—but that is no reason to think of them as members of the moral community.

What does matter, then? I am with those who count sentience as a necessary condition for intrinsic value. If something lacks all capacity to sense or feel (in the sense of being a bearer of first-personal experiences), then I don’t think it can count as a being that deserves moral consideration for its own sake. We don’t care about the fate of rocks—outside of how they may be of use to us—because they cannot suffer. Nor do we have any trouble extending this to living things such as bacteria and plants. As such, I see no reason to resist extending it to members of the animal kingdom. If they fail to meet the criterion, then they cannot be the bearers of intrinsic value. Cladistic taxonomy is about biology, not morality.

As for those whose preferences seem arbitrary, there might be more charitable ways of interpreting their behavior. Just because something doesn’t have intrinsic value doesn’t mean we cannot care about it, and caring about something could give it a sort of extrinsic value. So maybe those who draw the line at fuzzy aren’t saying that fuzzy things have intrinsic value, but merely that fuzzy things have enough extrinsic value to them that they are willing to overlook the lack of intrinsic value. If I like looking at butterflies, I might refrain from swatting them—even if I think it is permissible to do so—because that is the best way to ensure that I have plenty of butterflies around to look at. Is this actually how most people reason? I doubt it. Consistency is a harsh mistress, and it’s hard to achieve without working at it. But it does not follow from this that their behavior must be inconsistent.

A brief note to follow up on something I left out. Being morally considerable is not the same thing as being morally inviolable. So even if we make the shift from sentience (as defined above) being a necessary condition for being a member of the moral community (that is, anything that lacks sentience is not a member) to sentience being a sufficient condition for being a member of the moral community (that is, anything that has it is a member), it does not follow that it is never appropriate to, say, kill and eat an animal.

There might be inappropriate ways of doing so (unnecessarily painful ways of killing something, for instance, or killing more than it would be wise to eat), and we might decide that animals deserve to live certain types of lives before they are slaughtered to become food (thus we might reject the practices of factory chicken farms or the chaining up of baby cows to produce veal). But that there are inappropriate ways of killing an animal or raising it for slaughter does not mean that it is always inappropriate to kill an animal or to raise it for slaughter.

@SavoirFaire “But that there are inappropriate ways of killing an animal or raising it for slaughter does not mean that it is always inappropriate to kill an animal or to raise it for slaughter.”

Yes, this is how I think of it as well.

I would add to what you wrote that it is insufficient for one to say “I don’t eat veal because baby cows should not be chained up in boxes” – if one drinks milk, one supports the veal industry, period. The production of milk and veal go hand in hand. There are some people who argue that veal should be produced as an ethical alternative to uselessly killing the males at birth.

@dappled_leaves My grandfather was a dairy farmer. He neither produced veal nor killed males at birth. I get my milk from a local farm that employs the same practices. As such, it is possible to avoid both horns of this dilemma. I also think there’s a lot to be said in favor of being killed at birth rather than being forced to live in misery. Since the argument of the article you linked is primarily about the putative “waste of life,” then, I’m not yet convinced that the alternative on offer is more humane. It said precious little about the conditions in which the “young beef” is being raised. Interesting article, though. Food for thought (if you’ll pardon the expression).

@SavoirFaire Your argument is a bit of a contradiction. If the males are not killed at birth, then unless your dairy farm sells them as pets, they are presumably being sold for eventual consumption as beef. This might work on a very small scale, but not at the scale that provides enough milk to match American consumption.

So, is it better to raise the males to adulthood than to raise them for veal production? I’m not sure there’s a good argument for that beyond the cruel conditions generally associated with veal production. But I also don’t see why we can’t change those conditions in order to make veal less ethically troubling.

Veal cutlets – $18.00 lb

Veal production was a factor in my becoming a vegetarian. I hope it’s become more ethical in the past 20–30 years.

I have never touched Veal in my life, even the name sounds ugly.

@dappled_leaves The farm uses them for beef. And yes, the objection is just the cruel conditions generally associated with veal production. Maybe those can be changed, but my point was only about the current procedures (and that the article you linked gave no indication that they had changed). A long, enjoyable life ending in slaughter does seem better to me than a short, miserable life ending in slaughter, just as being killed at birth seems better to me than a short, miserable life ending in slaughter (again, I take quality of life to be more important than length of life). As such, I fail to see any contradiction.

Just a point of clarification, the horns of the putative dilemma were “produce milk and veal” or “produce neither.” It is clearly possible to avoid both. If there is also an option for “produce milk and cruelty-free veal,” that’s great. But no evidence has yet been offered that this is a genuine option, particularly while also maintaining the standards of texture that make something veal rather than just young beef. That said, I have no theoretical objection to cruelty-free veal. My apologies if that has not been made clear.

@SavoirFaire Agree 100% QUALITY over quantity always, goes for humans too. I would rather die at 60 having led a full life than linger til 97 in a state of misery.

@SavoirFaire I have never recommended that calves be raised inhumanely. My point was only that the argument was between killing the animal as a calf or killing the animal as an adult. But either way, the calves that are necessarily born as a by-product of the dairy industry are going to be eaten by someone.

I don’t see why those lives, long or short, have to be miserable either way, unless captivity and slaughter are inherently inhumane (which I don’t think they are). It’s not true that veal requires cruelty to be tender and delicious. In fact, cruelty-free veal seems to be preferred by those in the know.

How about we all drink nut milks? Guaranteed cruelty free.

I have coconut milk in my fridge. Mmmm good.

@tinyfaery Well, I’d be dead in minutes if I took that route sooooo…....

@Coloma While coconut “milk” is quite delicious, it’s really no substitute, especially when it comes to cooking.

@El_Cadejo I thought so too, but..I just made cornbread from scratch and used coconut milk and it turned out great.

@Coloma Yes, I completely agree about it going for humans, too. It’s sad how many people die miserably just because they (or their families) couldn’t let go sooner.

@dappled_leaves I wasn’t suggesting that you were recommending that calves be raised inhumanely. Not only does no one explicitly endorse such a thing, I am confident enough in your character to know you wouldn’t recommend it. My point was that the article you linked made no indication of how the cruelty factor was being addressed. I didn’t say that cruelty is a necessary aspect of veal. I was merely interested to know details about how the guy was raising his calves before signing off on his claim that his veal is ethically produced. That doesn’t seem like such an unreasonable demand.

If it is just a matter of killing the animal as a calf or an adult, then I agree there need not be any problem (and have already said as much). But it’s not always just a matter of those two options. Plenty of calves currently being raised for veal are treated cruelly. That’s the bit you seem to be misunderstanding. My objection is not to veal. It is to specific practices that are often—though not necessarily always—associated with it. Furthermore, I made the observation that Doherty (the person discussed in the first article you linked) did not address these concerns. He addressed the “useless waste of life” problem, but not the cruelty problem.

This is not to say that Doherty uses cruel methods. It is only to say that, for all he says in that article, he might or might not. And I’m not going to say “looks fine to me” until I know whether or not he does. Again, I do not see how it could be unreasonable to withhold my endorsement in the absence of adequate information.

@SavoirFaire “My point was that the article you linked made no indication of how the cruelty factor was being addressed.”

This is from that first article:

”“But it is much more humane these days in Britain where the veal calves are raised a lot better than many pigs, for example,” she said. “Our standards are so much better now than when we were fighting to first get the vile veal crates banned and then protesting at live exports.”

I have no reason to be particularly suspicious about Doherty, who is the farmer in the photo. I assume he quoted because he is on TV; this quote from D’Silva (^) seems to speak to the state of the trade in the UK in general, and as an animal rights activist, I guess she should know. But to be honest, I mainly opened my last post the way I did because of the interjections by others around our side conversation (who I think may have misunderstood what I was trying to say).

“Plenty of calves currently being raised for veal are treated cruelly. That’s the bit you seem to be misunderstanding.”

I do understand what you have been saying about this. What I am saying is that (1) it doesn’t sound like that’s true anymore, and (2) there’s no reason for calves to be treated more harshly than any other cattle raised for beef. Which is to say we should demand that they all be treated well.

Veal should be banned.

So should Fois Gras. :-(

I’ve been fluthering on my mobile these last weeks, and responding to all of you would have driven me insane without a proper keyboard. Here I am.

I don’t kill any animals. In theory, though, I don’t consider the act of killing wrong. What is horribly cruel, to me, is the suffering we allow for whilst raising to kill and then killing animals. Many of you agree. There also does not seem to be a clear answer, but I hadn’t been expecting one. Thanks for your input!

@SavoirFaire Thank you for teaching me about intrinsic versus extrinsic value.

“So maybe those who draw the line at fuzzy aren’t saying that fuzzy things have intrinsic value, but merely that fuzzy things have enough extrinsic value to them that they are willing to overlook the lack of intrinsic value.”

Like you, I doubt this is the motivation for most of these people. In my circle, the invisible and individually-determined line is usually stated as “common knowledge”, in a way.