A blog reader and e-mail correspondent e-mailed yesterday in response to my post on the ethics of chronic pain and referenced David Foster Wallace’s 2004 Gourmet magazine article “Consider the Lobster” in which his assignment to report on the Maine Lobster Fest turned into a discursus on the ethics of eating lobster. I actually did read it when it came out, but I had long since forgotten it. I just reread it this morning and enjoyed it very much, especially how one could, as my correspondent stated “almost feel Wallace’s own anxiety about the issue, and about ‘the age we live in’ coming through in almost every paragraph.” I identify with that anxiety very much. I have often felt that much of the writing on this blog is more or less a chronicle of my anxiety over raising animals to be killed and butchered for their meat.

One of the interesting things about Wallace’s article is that it ends with the issue unresolved. Most of us that admit the ethical quandry into our lives end up living with it perpetually; very very few of us become vegetarians and/or vegans. Instead we become like funeral attendees who periodically have our laughs and giggles and general good time interrupted by the force of the lack in our social body effected by the loss of the loved one we are mourning. Every now and then in the midst of mastication, as teeth meet teeth through soft cooked flesh we are jarred by the realization that the taste and texture, the sensuous pleasure being ground between our teeth was very much a sentient critter with distinct identifiable interests, a personality, a face, and the capacity for a great deal of suffering. As at the funeral, however, the moment passes and the joviality continues.

A little more than five years ago, I encountered for the first time Peter Singer’s concept of speciesism, which I have discussed on the blog before. Basically the speciesism argument goes that we think it is okay to eat the meat of various animals because we believe they have lower moral standing because they are fundamentally, permanently, and definitely different than we are. Cows, while indeed sentient beings capable of suffering that have some moral standing (we shouldn’t abuse them, they should be well cared for, etc.), do not have a high enough moral standing to outweigh even our interest (it is not a need) in cooking (most often) and eating their flesh. The danger of speciesism, Singer argues, is that speciesism is no different than racism or sexism, which were based on the same belief in the lower moral standing of the subject based on what were believed to be at the time identifiable differences. It is speciesism above all else that interrupts me because it is so clearly the true ground for my meat eating justification. A pig is not a person. In fundamental and permissive ways, a pig is less than a person. In light of speciesism, with it, in fact, constantly tapping on my shoulder in an effort to get my attention, I make a reverse Pascalian wager and act as if the threat of speciesism will never come to pass. That threat being, recall, that we will discover one day, just as we did with racism and sexism, that there is no difference there and that animals of different species have equal moral standing.

Continually spinning the wheel round and round this inescapable (because I am unwilling to give up eating meat) ethical quandry, I make regular trips to the slaughterhouse. To continue eating meat, to continue raising animals for the express puropose of having them killed so people, myself included, can eat their meat, I must consider the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse is, so to speak, the meat eater’s ethical moment.

There is a lamb, I mentioned her in post not too long ago, that I call “My Pretty Girl.” She is the cutest, most adorable thing I have ever seen. First, she is tiny. At five months old, she still probably only weighs forty pounds. (She isn’t unhealthy, just small in the same way that some people are big and some are small). Second, she has the whitest, cleanest, most delicately featured face you can imagine. She has great big doe eyes. Third, while skittish, she is bold and curious. She approaches me cautiously with her little nose stretched out crinkling as she sniffs the air between us. Of the 100 lambs in her group, she will be, because of her size, in the last group to go to the slaughterhouse, and as “My Pretty Girl,” she is the perfect lamb with whom (not, note, with which) to consider the slaughterhouse.

Ninety-nine point what, nine probably, percent of us never see the inside of a slaughterhouse, and this fact, incidentally is exactly how the jungle is able to thrive inside those windowless buildings. Not all slaughterhouses are jungles however. The one I use is not. To consider the slaugtherhouse, I would like to take us through My Pretty Girl’s journey through the slaughterhouse.

The morning that I take My Pretty Girl to the slaughterhouse will be stressful for her. For the past three months she will have been comfortably living in a familiar location following a comfortably familiar routine. When I come to load her group on the trailer, that routine will be shockingly interrupted. Because she will be in the last group to go, she will not need to go through the additional stress of being sorted out of a larger group. I will just open the pen and herd My Pretty Girl and her pen mates first into the holding area, then up an aisle, and finally onto the trailer. The group of lambs will be extremely anxious and will travel in a tightly wound blob, sort of like a school of fish. As they go up the aisle toward the trailer it will narrow and they will get more nervous. They will feel me walking behind them, urging them on. They might balk and try to turn around, only to find me standing behind them. My Pretty Girl and the rest of them will be wide eyed and nervous, no matter how calmly I work them. Livestock are critters of routine, which is one of the reasons working with them is possible. When we break that routine, no matter how calmly, it makes them anxious. At the trailer door, they will definitely balk. Because of the time of year, I need to load the lambs in the dark, and critters do not like moving from a lighted area (the aisle) to a darker area (the trailer with a nonfunctioning interior light). As I put pressure on them to urge just one of them to hop on the trailer their level of anxiety will rise because they feel trapped, penned in, not realizing that they can relieve the physical discomfort of the close space by hopping up onto the trailer. Within a minute or two one of them will hop on. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t tell you that I occassionally need to pick one up and toss it on to the trailer. As soon as the first one goes, they flow on like water.

Next, I am one of the lucky ones with a slaughterhouse nearby, so the trip only takes twenty minutes. I have always wanted to put a camera inside the trailer to see what the ride is like, but I have yet to do that. I drive as carefully as I can, but still, I imagine being jostled around by turns and bumps is unsettling. Maybe My Pretty Girl will lie down, which would make the trip much more comfortable for her.

Once at the slaughterhouse I will back the trailer up to the unloading chute and then walk around to the front of the building to let them know I have arrived. During that time the lambs will be standing in an anxious huddle in the trailer, completely adrift, cut off from the familiar routine. They will be anxious, not terrified, not frightened, just anxious. My Pretty Girl, though small, will likely be on the outer edge of the group because she is bold. She will face the slaughterhouse worker when he opens the door of the trailer ready to run for her life. But, instead, when the slaughterhouse worker steps onto the trailer (I will be outside the trailer on the other side of the chute) My Pretty Girl will get scared and turn with the rest of her group and scurry up to the far end of the trailer away from the slaughter man, who will walk slowly, calmly, and thoughtfully (he is good at his job) up the length of the trailer so that he can get behind the lambs. As soon as he passes halfway past her body, My Pretty Girl will rush to the other end of the trailer, but she and the rest of the group will balk at the edge of the trailer. They won’t simply hop down. In just that short twenty minute drive, the trailer will have become the familiar place compared to the concrete floored chute outside of it. The slaughterman will slowly walk up behind them, saying “Come on sheep. Come on sheep.” and making “woosshh, wissshhhh, wissssh” sounds. When he gets to the group, My Pretty Girl will dig in her heels and lean back so that she doesn’t get pushed out of the trailer, but as the slaughter man gently puts pressure on the lambs by pressing against them with his knees, eventually the pressure will be enough that one lamb, maybe My Pretty Girl, decides to step off the trailer, and once one goes, they all go. After that, they will walk about ten feet to the door leading into the holding pens where, once again, they will balk and the process will be repeated. Once one goes, they all will go and once they have all gone inside, the slaughter worker will slide the door closed, and then we’ll button up my trailer, and unless I have some business to do inside, I will be on my way.

Inside the holding pen, My Pretty Girl and her pen mates will continue to be nervous, a bit agitated, unsettled, but they will soon calm down a bit. In an hour or two depending on how busy the slaughterhouse is, the slaughter man will reappear, increasing once again the anxiety level of My Pretty Girl and her pen mates. He will herd them out of the holding pen into the kill chute. Just as before, he will do this calmly, thoughtfully, and deliberately.

Within a few minutes of being herded into the kill chute, My Pretty Girl will be led forward onto the kill floor. The slaughter worker will deftly and quickly place a captive bolt gun against her forehead and pull the trigger. My Pretty Girl, the cutest, sweetest, most adorable little lamb you can imagine will drop like a stone. It will have been a stressful morning, anyone who denies that is a liar or a fool, but, at the end, she will drop like a stone. In the time it takes her to flutter those pretty long lashes, she will go from conscious to unconscious.

Within five seconds of being rendered unconscious by the blow to the brain of the captive bolt, a shackle will be placed around one of My Pretty Girl’s hind feet, and using a motorized pully, the slaughterman will raise her up off the ground with her unconscious head hanging down. He will then deftly insert an very sharp knife into My Pretty Girl’s throat and sever the major veins and arteries. With the force of her still beating heart, My Pretty Girl’s blood will gush out of her neck onto the kill room floor. Within seconds My Pretty Girl will pass from unconscious to dead.

My Pretty Girl’s body will dangle for a while to ensure that all of the blood has drained out. Then she will be moved over to a sort of metal cradle and lowered onto it. The slaughter worker will skin her and cut off her feet. Then her head will be cut off. From the cradle she will be moved about ten feet away and then raised up into the air again with her belly facing the slaughter worker. He will the disembowl her, being careful not to spill any of the contents of her guts inside of her, which would foul the meat.

About fifteen minutes after being walked forward onto the kill floor, My Pretty Girl will be a familiar looking whole lamb carcass ready to be rolled along the rails and placed into the cooler where she will hang for a week before being cut up to my specifications by the butchers in the cutting room, while other lambs or cows or pigs, though almost certainly none as cute, are being killed on the kill floor.

I am a speciesist. I believe because only I and none of her sheep family will miss her and because only I and not she can imagine the future and because only I and not she can wish for something different and because I have considered the slaughterhouse it is okay to kill My Pretty Girl and eat her.

For the second time this season, I have a pig with chronic pain. They aren’t sick and they grow fine, they are just clearly in constant pain in their back ends. There are no obvious injuries. They just mince around when they walk, sit on their butts while they eat, and spend most of their time lying around. The simplest description would be “growing pains,” although they aren’t around long enough for me to find out if they would ever grow out of it.

I have been wondering what, if anything, my ethical obligation is. Generally speaking, I think I have an obligation to keep the animals under my care from suffering. But, what to do with a pig that has chronic pain? Certainly, I am not going to put the pig on a pain medication regimen. Am I then obligated to have the pig slaughtered to (ironically) relieve it of its pain and sell it (at a substantial loss) as a roaster? Or, is it ethical for me to do nothing about it? Can I just let the pig live in pain and have it slaughtered on schedule when it reaches slaughter weight?

I took the last option with the first pig. I just kept an eye on him. I decided that if it became clear that his pain was getting substantially worse, or if the pain became so great that he was no longer well enough to get around, that I would have to do something about it. With that pig, that never happened, so I kept him around and made no interventions. He grew fine and went to slaughter on schedule with the rest of his paddock mates.

So far, I have been taking the last option with the current pig as well, but taking the last option has me ill at ease. I don’t like knowing that the pig is in pain and doing nothing about it. Yet, I also don’t like the option of selling the pig at a loss as a roaster. And, I really don’t like making a decision about whether to relieve an animal of pain based solely on how that will impact me financially. And, yet, that is exactly what I am doing.

It is pretty clear to me that while I am having trouble admitting how I should act, ethically speaking, it is not actually an ethical dilemma. A dilemma, by definition, has more than one outcome and all of the outcomes are “bad” in some way, which is what gives force to the dilemma. In this case, ethically-speaking there are two outcomes: 1) relieve the pig’s pain (by whatever means) or 2) don’t relieve the pig’s pain. Option two is unethical, so it is therefore not a dilemma, and the ethical imperative is clear.

I have to admit, therefore, that I am acting unethically, in spite of the fact that in an effort to retain the illusion of ethical behavior, I have lowered the bar all the way to the ground by stating that I will act to relieve the pig of its pain only when that pain becomes unbearable, evidenced by an inability or unwillingness to rise. While the pig spends more time than the others lying around, I do see her up and grazing, so by my definition the pain is not unbearable.

There is more to say (there is always more to say), but I have to go out and do chores.

I am not a peak oiler, except in so far as my own rampant oil consumption contributes to leading us ever rapidly towards peak oil. Nevertheless, it does not take a genious to realize that our level of oil (fossil fuels, generally speaking) consumption is unsustainable. What is unclear to me is what energy future we face. Are the gloomers right? Will things come to a screeching halt? Will we see starvation, riots, and the like? Will we be faced with a situation in which we come face to face with the reality that we need to produce our own food and have no resources, cultural and/or physical with which to do so? Are the peak oil and climate change deniers right? Is there plenty of oil out there, enough to keep on keepin’ on without worrying too much about it? Is climate change not happening? Or, are the middlers right? We are faced with peak oil and climate change, but when push comes to shove altenative energy technologies will rapidly come on-line and be made widely available and technology and cultural changes will enable us to deal effectively with the worst consequences of climate change.

I am a cautious middler. I am not fool enough to ignore the cycle of the rise and fall of “great” civilizations throughout history. I just don’t see the challenges that we currently face as the catalyst for such a cataclysm. Regardless of how much I hate it, the remarkable thing about capitalism (and this is a thing for which Marx also regarded it with a degree of awe) is its ability to revolutionize itself. Barring literal impossibility, capitalism will come to our fossil fuel crisis rescue, as long as it responds to market signals in time. It is not widely known, for example, that there are currently fuel-cell powered vehicles on the road. The only thing keeping fuel cell technology from replacing the internal combustion engine is human will and the need to come up with a viable and efficient way to capture and distribute hydrogen. So too alternative energy production technologies. Once oil (and other fossil fuels) becomes unprofitable, or substantially less profitable, alternative technologies that prove to be profitable will quickly become available. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, etc. Companies will dive into them with reckless abandon. Some will thrive. Some will fail. In the end, a combination of alternative technologies, or even a single alternative technology, will be arrived at that keeps the infernal machine happily chugging along. Capitalism will not be toppled by a simple technological challenge. Only a concerted effort by people can bring capitalism to its knees.

Whether these changes will come about in time to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, or whether they will help us weather them, will of course remain to be seen. I do not think that can be predicted well enough to think too much about it.

What is “certain” (truthfully, I am about as certain about this as I am about tomorrow’s lottery numbers) to me is that our energy future is bright (sorry, couldn’t resist). Twenty-five years from now the only thing remarkable about my tractor will be the quiet of the electric motor and the fact that using it produces some of the water with which I water my livestock and gardens.

Oil will be seen for what it was, a dirty, slimy thing over which countless millions died brutal deaths, and by which hundreds of millions of acres and whole oceans of water were ruined, nearly beyond recovery. Oh, the brutality of capitalism will continue. Fuel cells need platinum, another mined, finite resource, after all. I said our energy future was bright, not just.

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