In the former part of this series of posts reviewing the book The End of Animal Farming we have addressed the factor of the inefficiency of animal farming. In the following we’ll address the factor of the expanding moral circle.

The Expanding Excuses

Some of Reese’s optimism is based on his agreement with the notion that the world is getting better and that humans are becoming less violent. He mentions Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, and agrees with him that “our increasing concern for animals is a particularly strong reason for optimism that the general trend in violence will continue downwards in the future.”
This is a very important issue, however, since we have thoroughly addressed Steven Pinker’s theory in our review of The Better Angels of Our Nature we will not repeat our arguments here but suggest you to read them all, especially the two about nonhuman animals.
Instead, we wish to focus on what seems to be the main source of Reese’s optimism regarding humans’ concern for animals. He often cites the following results of a US survey: “A 2014 US survey found that 93 percent of respondents felt it was “very important” to buy their food from humane sources. Eighty-seven percent believe “farmed animals have roughly the same ability to feel pain and discomfort as humans.” And an astounding 47 percent of US adults say in a survey that they support the seemingly radical policy change of “a ban on slaughterhouses.””

Reese is aware of the huge gap between supposedly half of US adults supporting a ban on slaughterhouses, and only about 5% of them being vegetarians (we’ll ignore for the sake of the argument that vegetarians actively support slaughterhouses given that chickens in the egg industry, and cows in the milk industry, let alone their claves, are murdered in slaughterhouses as well). His explanation for this gap is that humans want to be vegetarian but just don’t know how.
Apparently Reese is unaware of the huge gap between what humans are willing to state they support in a non-binding survey, and what they are willing to support practically in their everyday lives.
The reason many humans are making these statements is that humans like to feel good about themselves, especially when all they need to do to achieve that feeling is making empty statements. And making themselves feel good is also the reason why they are not practically stopping their active support in the very same slaughterhouses they state should be banned, as unfortunately consuming animal based food is making humans feel very good.

Reese sarcastically writes that: “Every grassroots farmed animal advocate I’ve asked about this topic has spoken with many people who insist that the meat they buy doesn’t come from factory farms. “I only eat humane meat,” they say, defending themselves from the activists’ critiques of factory farming. This is one of the most common justifications heard by grassroots advocates.” And points out how obviously very unlikely these common justifications are: “a survey my colleagues and I conducted in 2017 suggested that 75 percent of US adults say they usually consume humane animal products, which seems impossible given that the best estimates suggest less than 1 percent of US farmed animals live on nonfactory farms.” And these people, like the ones in the formerly mentioned survey, are simply interested in seeming good, they are not interested in bothering themselves with actually being good (or in this case avoid being bad). And the reason is very simple, merely sounding good doesn’t cost them a thing while actively supporting their statement comes with what they view as a price. They don’t mind making a statement as long as they don’t need to actually do something about it.

Reese argues that “When people call upon the idea of ethical animal farming—even if that constitutes little or none of their actual consumption—we can think of it as a “psychological refuge” they’re using to justify their consumption of factory farmed products. This refuge shelters them from the cognitive dissonance they would feel if they both fully considered their ethical views and the realities of their consumption choices. It’s one of the biggest roadblocks to fixing our food system, perhaps even more harmful than the four N’s.”
And we agree, only that the same goes for the other surveys he mentions. Humans’ completely empty statements regarding nonhumans’ ability to feel pain and discomfort as humans, and a ban on slaughterhouses, also function as a “psychological refuge”. Making these statements places them on the right side in their view, despite that they are actively enforcing the wrong one, several times a day, every day. All are “psychological refuge” and none truly represent their true position about nonhuman animals, which practically, is mostly cruel indifference.

Reese argues that a large part of the explanation for this gap, and for the problem in general, is that people are far more willing to support institutional change than they are to change their individual consumption. And again he tries to back this argument with surveys: “US adults consistently show over 70 percent poll support for various changes in farmed animal welfare, such as cage-free, slower-growth chicken genetics, higher-welfare slaughter methods, and an end to extreme crowding. There have also been consistent majority votes in favor of farmed animal welfare ballot initiatives. This widespread support contrasts with the tiny number of consumers who actually opt for these higher-welfare products in their individual consumption: organic meat made up just 1.5 percent of conventional fresh red meat sales in the US and grass-fed 0.9 percent in 2016.
Our 2017 poll also found that a whopping 97 percent of respondents agree with the statement “Whether to eat animals or be vegetarian is a personal choice, and nobody has the right to tell me which one they think I should do.” I cannot stress enough how resistant people are to individual consumer change, especially when it’s as closely tied to personal identity as vegetarianism and veganism are in the US public consciousness.”

As mentioned earlier, there are more ways to explain these surveys results, but even if we’ll ignore them for the sake of the argument, the claims in the first paragraph don’t exactly settle with the claim in the second, because if humans unequivocal statement is that eating animals or being a vegetarian is a personal choice, and “nobody has the right to tell me which one they think I should do”, then how can it be that the best way to change their habits is not that activists – people like them and who have no air of authority – would convince them, but rather that authoritative institutions, would change their habits for them?

In fact he himself gives an example that contradicts this assertion: “Chinese consumers eat around 173 grams of meat per day, but the government recommends only 40 to 75 grams—less than an average American hamburger patty. China has a highly centralized governance system, which makes policy change more difficult, but also makes changes easier to promulgate across the country. Meat has been regarded as a luxury, but it also hasn’t been as associated with Chinese cultural identity the same way bacon, cheese, and bratwurst have in many American and European cultures.”
If even one of the most centralized governance system in the world fails to change people’s consumption habits, let alone in a nation that meat is not associated with its cultural identity, how would that work in other nations? Why would other nations succeed where an incidentally and indirectly test case such as China is failing?

Finally for that matter, let’s get back to Reese’s explanation that the gap between the number of humans making these statements and the number of vegetarians is due to that humans want to be vegetarian but just don’t know how.
He writes that: “When advocates hand someone a leaflet on the street, show their friend a video of undercover investigations, or speak with a journalist about animal-free eating, the hesitation and counterarguments we hear are mostly about how they can change their behavior, not why they should. Common concerns include:

■ “I’m an athlete. Where would I get my protein?”

■ “It’s just so hard to find vegetarian options when eating out.”

■ “I would love to be vegan, but I could never give up cheese.”

It’s become increasingly less common over the past few years to hear arguments against changing to a non-meat diet such as:

■ “They’re just animals. They don’t matter.”

■ “Most farms aren’t like the ones in that investigation.”

■ “I only buy meat from humane farms.””

But these are not genuine concerns, they are poor excuses. There are many plant based options for any food imaginable nowadays, and the excusers know that. No one really believes in these “concerns”. It’s just that people need to say something when confronted with a moral truth, and they feel uncomfortable admitting their immoral truth, which is that they care more about their own marginal interests than they do about others’ most major interests.
Humans spit out such excuses since they find it easier to tackle the How than the Why.

And in any case, what is really behind all these excuses and many others of this kind, is anyway, eventually, practically, arguing that “They’re just animals. They don’t matter.” As who better than us, veteran vegans, knows that these are all nonsense. We have become vegans long before the current abundance and diversity of plant based food, before the abundance of information about what happens to animals in the food industry, before the abundance of information about human health, before the relative social acceptance and normality of veganism and etc., and still, we didn’t have a doubt for a single moment regarding the Why. So we figured out the How by ourselves. And that’s because for us nonhuman animals were never “just” animals, and they always mattered. If we easily figured out the How decades ago, surly humans can easily do so nowadays.
Obviously everybody knows how to stop their support in the cruelest system ever. And everybody knows why they should do so. The problem is not that people don’t know what’s going on. And it’s also not that they don’t know how to stop supporting it. Everybody knows how animal based products are made, or at least that they were made of animals, and that those animals didn’t volunteer to become their bacon and eggs. And everybody knows how to get plant based food nowadays. Neither is the main problem. The main problem is that humans don’t care enough to simply stop supporting animal abuse.

For the World Farm Animals Day held today, a critical review of the book The End of Animal Farming by Jacy Reese.
Reese’s argument, basically, is that considering the incredible inefficiency of animal farming, along with what he views as an expansion of humans’ moral circle, and the technological developments in the animal-free food systems, animal farming will end.
In the following three posts we’ll address each of these three main factors correspondingly.

The Dangers of the Inefficiency Argument

Reese repeatedly argues that one of the main reasons, if not the main one, that animal farming will end is that it doesn’t make rational sense:
“The ace in the hole for the inevitability of the end of animal farming is the incredible inefficiency of making meat, dairy, and eggs from animals. Farmed animals consume calories and nutrients from plants, and they use that energy to do a lot more than produce meat, dairy, and eggs. They have all the normal bodily functions like breathing, movement, and growing by-products like hoofs, organs, and hair. These processes mean farmed animals have a caloric conversion ratio of 10:1 or more. For every ten calories of food we feed them, we get only about one calorie of meat in return. And for every ten grams of plant-based protein, we get at most two grams of animal-based protein.”

However, in order for the claim that animal farming will end because in efficiency terms it is unreasonable, to be reasonable, humans need to consume food on reasonable basis, only that they don’t. Humans don’t choose their food on the basis of energy-efficiency, but according to many other factors. Humans eat for great many reasons, for reasons of community, rituals, family, expressing their identity by eating this and not that, and of course for pleasure. For billions of humans food is comfort, a gesture, entertainment, an enemy, a profession, a hobby, a weapon, it can break barriers, it defines cultures, and connects families. It involves so many taboos and determinations of who belongs to the group and who does not, it unifies and distinguishes between ethnic groups and cultures. Unfortunately food is much more than taste and nutrition. Looking for reason based on efficiency in humans’ eating habits is unreasonable.

For someone who is very familiar with humans’ various psychological biases, it is a bit strange that he ignores it in relation to food consumption. Humans don’t consume food on the basis of a rational caloric conversion ratio, or on a rational basis whatsoever, so this rational reason is far from being sufficient. Humans are not even consuming food on the basis of its nutritional value, health benefits, or environmental considerations, not to mention moral ones. They have a rather different list of priorities. They rather eat what they like, what they are used to, what is traditional, common, cheap, normal, what they have always eaten, what others around them are eating, food that defines them the way they wish to be defined, food that doesn’t distinguish them from the group they want to be part of, and etc. That’s why they are willing to invest what seems, on the face of it, as irrational efforts in the food they are eating.

Animal farming is still highly romanticized all around the world. Obviously for no good reason, yet that myth must be destroyed. Animal farming is not going to end merely because rationally speaking it is inefficient. For many humans around the world, following tradition is more rational than energy-efficiency. Food is not fuel for the body.

Exactly because food is not fuel but among many other things, a cultural and social indicator, there is a growing concern, that in many societies, and definitely in the US, animal based food would be associated with class and political stands. Meaning, that sadly, there is a high probability that many humans would choose whether or not to eat animal based products merely according to their political agenda. In other words, it is probable that consuming animals would be partisan based. It already is in many senses, but it might get worse. Veganism is already highly associated with the leftwing, this may happen to cultured meat as well. This is not a prediction but more of apprehension. And in any case not the point here. The point here is that food is far from being merely the way people energize themselves. Insisting that it is, in such an irrational world, makes his rational claim totally irrational.

Beyond the fact that humans’ preferred foods don’t reflect the energy-efficiency of their food system and so it is not very likely that the inefficiency claim would radically change the food system, there is a great danger in making the inefficiency claim.
That is since the arguer may raise a factual claim and control the practical conclusions s/he is extracting from it, however s/he has no control over the operative conclusions that others would make. In the energy-efficiency sense, since humans excel at resisting any substantial changes in their beloved habits, and tend to choose the least demanding option, the one that requires them to change their habits the least, it is more probable that if anything, they would choose the more “efficient” animal based options than the plant based one. In other words, and practically speaking, this means that some people would consider instead of devouring the corpses of cows and sheeps, to devour the ones of animals who are considered as more “efficient” such as chickens and fishes. Considering that fishes and chickens are much smaller than sheeps and cows, that means that more individual animals would be exploited and tortured by humans. So opposite to the original intention of this claim, it may be the case that it would bring about an unfortunate increase in the number of tortured animals in the food industry.

Eventually humans would do what they find convenient and pleasing. If we’ll tell them that animal farming is incredibly inefficient, as soon as they discover that the various industries are not equally inefficient, they are more likely to choose the less inefficient ones, and unfortunately choosing these ones means consuming more individual animals. And that is among the humans who would even consider changing their habits, most humans are practically totally indifferent to any consideration which is not selfish.

And Reese is aware of this implication. He even writes that “consuming smaller animals leads to far more suffering per calorie because it takes far more animals.”  So the inefficiency argument is not only a speciesist argument in the sense of suggesting an opposition to an extremely cruel industry based on its inefficiency rather than its cruelty to other animals, it is also a cruel argument in the sense of the high probability of increasing the number of individual victims. Humans have been consuming more cows, sheeps and pigs in the past than they do nowadays (percentage wise), and nowadays they consume much more chickens and fishes. Along with human health motives, efficiency, also played a role in that awful course.
Reese is enough of an optimist to think that this argument is bound to bring about the end of animal farming, however, so far, along with other human oriented arguments, it has been increasing the number of exploited nonhuman animals.

The efficiency issue doesn’t only increase the number of victims but also each victim’s suffering.
Overall, the main mean in making animal farming more “efficient” is making the exploited animals more “efficient” at converting feed to flesh, and bodily secretion. More product for less investment. That practically means more control over the animals by manipulating them and their surroundings. These methods include increased lighting, unnatural calorie-dense feed, antibiotic use, growth hormones, and of course – a manipulation which invades deep into the animals’ body by changing their genetic characteristics. Craving efficiency led to engineering animals who are deformed and crippled, with some organs extremely enlarged and others shriveled.

Chickens are the most extreme representatives of the industry’s ability to manipulate animals’ bodies in a way which fits the exploiters needs – convert feed more “efficiently”, and grow larger.
Recent campaigns calling for exploitation of chickens from less deformed breeds, wishing to somewhat reverse this extremely violent trend, face the industry’s cynical green-washed excuses about the supposed unsustainability of this call. The National Chicken Council emphases that such a move would result in the use of more environmental resources due to the increase in feed and water (resources which would ‘grow unprofitable body parts’), and due to the overall number of days it would take to raise the birds.
Some animal exploitation experts also admit that less crippled chickens, who suffer less pain with each step, tend to move around more and therefore waste more energy, which is less “efficient”.

So chickens, who are already the most numerous land victims on earth, which are bound to the severest genetic manipulation and to the harshest living conditions, will be even worse off.

Much like chickens, fishes also suffer from their reputation for being more “efficient”.
Similarly to land animals, today, more and more fishes are bred in factory farms, euphemistically called aquaculture. Of course, the controlled environment of a farm means more control over the fishes – and much more manipulation to make them grow faster, thus also be more “efficient”. From the moment they hatch, farmed fishes endure a lighting regime that tricks them to eat more of a commercial diet designed for weight-gain. They live in crowded tanks or sea cages where they often face aggression from other fishes they cannot escape, and have to fight for food. The density leads to disease outbreaks and parasites which lead to immense suffering.

These intensive conditions which produce more flesh from each fish are known to cripple them. About 50-60% of farmed salmon and trout were found to have damaged ear bones, which leads to drastic hearing impairments. Studies have identified this deformity to be the result of accelerated growth rates that were traced to high-nutrient feed and exposure to longer light periods. This illness has also been found in other farmed fish species such as carp, eel and red drum.

The pressure for rapid weight gain doesn’t end with external environmental intervention. In another horrid resemblance to land animals, fishes too are the subject of genetic manipulation to increase “efficiency”.
In 2015 the level of invasion into the fishes’ bodies took another turn for the worse, as for the first time the FDA approved the marketing of GM animal – Atlantic salmon who has a gene from a Chinook salmon and a promoter sequence from an ocean pout.
This salmon can grow twice as fast as conventionally farmed Atlantic salmons, reaching adult size in some 18 months compared to 30 months, and requiring 25% less feed.

So far, animal farming’s inefficiency, didn’t cause the industry to reconsider its practices, but to constantly push further and further the biological limits of its poor victims. So talking about the industry’s inefficiency may increase the number of its victims as well as the suffering of each victim.