Size doesn’t matter when it comes to animal suffering 
Posted By Mirko Bagaric on May 31st, 2007
Animal Cruelty: The Japanese alone are not ashamed
If it is OK for Australians to butcher pigs and cows for barbeques, then Japan should be permitted to harpoon whales for sushi. That’s the line that the Japanese are running this week to try to encourage other nations to overturn a 21 year ban on commercial whaling. They Japanese have got a point – other than their harpoons. Whales are bigger than the farm animals we eat, but when it comes to moral standing, size doesn’t matter.
Whales scream in terror as they are being massacred. Unlike humans, they are not blessed with a consciousness shut off valve that kicks in when they are subjected to extreme levels of pain. Their suffering continues as their flesh is harpooned and ripped apart. Hence, killing whales is a particularly distressing instance of cruelty.
Regrettably, the Japanese alone are not shamed in their treatment of animals. All countries engage in the practice to obscenely high levels. The gross amount of suffering we inflict on animals signifies a major black spot in our moral psyche.
Looking back on history many of us are bewildered at the barbarity displayed by previous generations towards the interests of certain agents. More enlightened future generations will regard the callous disregard with which we treat animals as on a par with the repugnant ways that our forefathers treated groups such as women and people with dark skin.
We eat millions of animals annually, despite the fact that animal products are not essential (and in some cases are detrimental) to our dietary needs. In the process we often farm and kill animals in cruel ways.
And don’t think that there is even the slightest wriggle room here in terms of justifying such barbarity: pain is pain. The physiological process that causes pain in people is identical to that in animals. Animals feel pain just as intensely as humans and have just as strong desire to avoid suffering.
Despite significant advances that Australians have enjoyed in individual prosperity over the past fifty years, remarkably we have become more inhumane in the way that we treat many animals.
For most of their lives factory farmed pigs are confined in concrete pens that are so small that they can’t turn around; they are denied contact with other pigs and suffer a myriad of painful ailments including lameness and sores through standing on hard floors. That’s only the start of their pitiable plight.
Pigs are social animals and quite smart too – their cognitive skills are about equivalent to three year old children. Their confinement results in them experiencing depression and a range of other dysfunctional behavioural traits. Their lot is downright wretched. It’s so bad that the way we treat them is outlawed in many parts of the world, including the UK and Sweden.
The pain doesn’t end with pigs. Animal welfare laws in Australia don’t extend to most of the 500 million production animals in this country. As a result, the level of pain experienced by these animals daily would land people in jail if it was inflicted on pet dogs or cats. Thus, in the wool industry we see that lambs have their tails cut off and males are castrated – anaesthetic is not even an optional extra.
The cages in which battery hens are housed are so small that the hens never get the chance to spread their wings. The hens are painfully debeaked, causing such intense shock that it sometimes results in death.
The paradox relating to the increase in animal suffering is that most of us abhor animal cruelty. So much so, that many people pay as much attention to the needs and wants of their pets as to family members.
The enormous goodwill in the community towards animals has not however translated to less malice towards the animal species in Australia. This, I suspect, is largely because most of us don’t know the intolerable conditions in which farm animals are kept. To some extent the ignorance might be blissful, but whatever the reason we are better off knowing the facts. It is only then that we will be empowered to make decisions for the beings that have no voices of their own.
Now, no one reading this piece will find it comforting. Thankfully, we all have a low tolerance to pain, in any form and all recoil at the prospect of witnessing animal suffering. But we’re all pretty good at finding ways to ignore the desperate shrieks from behind the farm fence. We need to get less adept at doing so.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take much. Unless animal products have been labelled free range or organic it is time to start ignoring them. In the end, civilising people means that we have to humanise animals – if only slightly.
I’m not suggesting that we should accord animals the full catalogue of rights and interests that we are now starting to attribute to all humans. Animals wouldn’t know what it means to vote or own property, but they sure would revel in a less painful existence – so would our conscience. We owe this to animals because in the end the only criterion for a being to have moral standing is the capacity to feel pain. By failing to accord them this standing we are diminished.
A version of this was in Daily Telegraph (Sydney) on 31 May 2007.