Pain-Free Instead Of Cage-Free?
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Some scientists may try to create farm animals who can’t feel physical pain. From New Scientist:
“If we can’t do away with factory farming, we should at least take steps to minimise the amount of suffering that is caused,” says Adam Shriver, a philosopher at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. In a provocative paper published this month, Shriver contends that genetically engineered pain-free animals are the most acceptable alternative (Neuroethics, DOI: 10.1007/s12152-009-9048-6). “I’m offering a solution where you could still eat meat but avoid animal suffering.”
There are lots of obvious problems with this “solution” to the problem of animal suffering on factory farms, but let’s start with the positives:
- Years ago the factory farming videos that came out were just as horrifying and just as shocking as today’s, but the animal exploiters just denied, denied, denied. They said it didn’t happen, the videos were staged ,or that the images on the videos were a rare circumstance. Today, they know that’s a losing battle. There are too many videos, too much evidence. At least people are acknowledging the problem of factory farming.
- Even though animal suffering may have increased in the last twenty years or so (because the meat-eating population reproduces faster than the vegetarian population and the meat-eating population eats more meat per person today than they did twenty years ago) at least they’re no longer denying that animals suffer. They’re no longer claiming that animals don’t sense pain and that it’s just “overly sensitive animal rights activists who anthropomorphize them.” Nope, there is no doubt that animals suffer when humans torture them.
- And finally, even though this proposed “science” is fueled by a stubborn refusal to go vegan or reduce meat-consumption, at least Adam Shriver isn’t simply apathetic. Shriver is, in fact, trying to do something to help prevent animal suffering. Sadly, that’s light years ahead of the general population.
However, there are some MAJOR problems with animals who are genetically incapable of feeling pain. Here is a short, incomplete list:
- Pain-free factory farming will still damage the environment. Animals who don’t feel pain still defecate.
- Pain-free factory farming will still pose a significant risk to human health. It spreads disease (think: swine flu, e coli, salmonella) and it causes disease (think: cancer, heart disease, diabetes).
- Pain-free animal agriculture is still inherently inefficient food production. Feeding grain to animals and then animals to people is wasteful.
- Animals who can’t feel physical pain will probably still suffer emotionally, socially, and intellectually. A sow who can’t feel the physical pain of being confined in a tiny gestation crate will still suffer when her babies are taken away from her. She’ll still suffer when she hasn’t got anything interesting to do (mud to root around in, other pigs to play with). She’ll still suffer loss even if she doesn’t feel physical pain.
- Pain protects. Animals need the sense of pain in order to survive. Humans who are born with congenital insensitivity to pain (CIPA) do things like accidentally chew off their own tongues. A life without the sensation of physical pain is inherently dangerous.
- The experiments to create animals with insensitivity to pain are immoral. All animal testing is wrong, but the kind where so-called scientists create new or altered mutants (and then patent these animals) is particularly problematic.
- The laws that allow this are immoral. The property status of animals is immoral; they are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, etc. The laws that allow patents on life are, in my opinion, one of the most gruesome and dangerous codifications of speciesism. Furthermore, these life patent law problems seep over into oppression of humans. (Think: seeds).
Bea has an alternate solution: “But wait… why don’t we genetically modify humans so we don’t feel empathy? Sounds reasonable enough. This way we can continue to abuse any and all who are weaker than us without a single bit of remorse.” Haha!
What do you think?
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UPDATE - Shriver has written more. Here are the links and my responses:
You make great points against this “solution;” the strongest of which, in my opinion, is the property status of animals. An abolitionist approach is the only worthwhile approach. And the only way to abolish the property status of animals is to shift the paradigm. Would we support using the people who suffer from CIPA as food? After all, they can’t feel pain. So, what’s the problem?
The change will happen, it’s only a matter of when.
Hi, I very much appreciate your thoughtful response. You raise some very good points and I agree with much of what you are saying. My argument, as can be seen in the quote you cite as well as this quote later in the article: “Certainly, eliminating factory farms would be the best option, he says, adding: if someone can prove that we really are on the verge of moving to that kind of society, “then I would be happy to jettison my idea”,” is based on a conditional. I agree that eliminating factory farming would be the best option, but am arguing that *if* we aren’t going to eliminate factory farming in the near future, *then* we should switch to animals who have a reduced capacity to suffer. If, as you seem to suggest, we actually are close to eliminating factory farming, then the second part of the conditional (that we should use G.E. animals) does not follow.
Also, I do acknowledge at least a couple of the points you raise (the environmental damage of factory farms, and the fact that pain protects from bodily damage) in the full article in Neuroethics. Again, I think these are both good reasons for thinking that the elimination of factory farming is a better option than using G.E. animals. However, I should point out that I don’t necessarily agree that we should put off making improvement for the sake of a “perfect solution,” if there is not good reason to think that that the perfect solution is possible. To put it in a somewhat awkward thought-experiment: imagine we have a choice between two scenarios, A and B. If we choose A, we know that all animals will be pain-free but factory farming will continue to exist. If we choose B, we will have a one in a hundred chance of getting rid of *all* factory farming, and all of the problems that come with it. I personally think it would be irresponsible to choose B in that situation, and I feel that doing so would amount to sacrificing the animals’ well-being for the sake of a very small chance at a perfect solution. Of course, in the real world there’s no reason to think that there’s only a 1 in 100 chance for eliminating factory farming, and we can be sure that there’s not any certainty that people would accept the idea of genetically engineering animals, but I’m saying that there is some point where if the likelihood of eliminating pain through engineering was greater than the likelihood of eliminating all factory farming by a large enough margin, it would then be irresponsible to hold off on eliminating the suffering. Ultimately, it is an empirical question what the likelihood of either of those scenarios actually is.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that there is at least some evidence that the area of the brain that’s responsible for the affective dimension of pain (ie the “suffering) is also involved in other kinds of suffering. In particular, I mention evidence in the full article that the suffering caused from taking babies away from their mothers is highly dependent on the same brain region involved in pain (the anterior cingulate cortex). Thus, just how much suffering could be eliminated through genetic modifications is a scientific question.
As a vegan and someone who has been a vegetarian since I was five years old, I have found that many people are resistant to acknowledging the suffering that is caused by factory farming. I think this probably has something to do with the fact that food and eating makes up a very central part of our lives, and in particular a part of our lives that gives us a lot of pleasure. I’ve felt that this attachment to meat in many people blocks them from even thinking about the idea of giving meat up, which in turn blocks them from thinking about the suffering that takes place in factory farms. However, I hope what I have proposed has changed the dynamics of this discussion. It no longer makes sense to ignore the suffering that takes place simply because one does not want to give up meat, since we could be working toward a world where people both eat meat and don’t cause suffering. My hope is that once people are able to truly look at the suffering being caused, they will take action to stop it.
It seems that your argument is that since humans already treat animals as machines and thereby cause tremendous suffering to animals, humans who are unwilling to stop treating animals like machines should go ahead and essentially turn animals into machines by eliminating or diminishing their capacity for sentience. Am I understanding correctly?
I felt exactly that way about humans after reading the article. Pain-free does not mean cruelty free.
I also like the line: “It’s impossible to know how animals such as cows, pigs and rodents feel about pain,…” so, currently, they’re not even sure that this can happen, or happen 100% effectively.
People are realising the suffering, but instead of looking at the cruelty which humans propagate, the solution is now being pushed closer towards removing the sensation in the animal rather than changing our attitudes to the cruelty and suffering already prevalent in the system. This continues to promote the idea that it’s okay for us to eat animals, as long as they don’t scream.
I think a change of attitude in humans towards the status of animals is called for, regardless of how much they ‘suffer’ or not.
My solution is not intended to be competition to the idea that we should get rid of factory farming. I agree we should get rid of factory farming. However, the question then becomes, “should we allow millions of animals to suffer every year while we are waiting for everyone to become an ethical vegetarian?” I think it would be immoral to do so because I think that suffering is *the* most important reason factory farming is bad. To me the arguments about “treating animals like machines,” “treating animals like property,” or even “cruelty” are all based on worrying about human psychology, since animals clearly don’t have the concepts of “property” or “machines”. If we really care about the animals, then we should take *their* interests into consideration, and they clearly have an interest in avoiding suffering.
Adam, I agree that we should consider the effects of factory farming on individual animals (I am always saying “It matters to this one”). Where I part company is in the idea of engineering animals to reduce their suffering. Instead, I favor incremental improvements in the way they are treated. Reducing their suffering by changing the conditions, in other words.
There is more than one reason I advocate this approach over the engineering one. But I will cite just one: engineering animals so that they don’t feel pain is even more likely to reduce the sense of obligation humans feel toward farm animals and even to reduce empathy. To my mind, that’s heading way in the wrong direction.
It’s intentionally absurd, right? It’s designed to force the happy meat people to reconsider their ethical stance.
Measures like this do nothing to change the property status of animals. I wonder would we genetically modify rodeo calves & horses to not feel pain? And eventually deer and wolves so we can continue to hunt them “guilt-free”? I don’t like the idea at all as it doesn’t eliminate the “use” of animals.
Adam said “if the likelihood of eliminating pain through engineering was greater than the likelihood of eliminating all factory farming by a large enough margin, it would then be irresponsible to hold off on eliminating the suffering.” And of course all this hinges on economics. BIG financing and incredible effort will go to test and develop these genetic “enhancements”. Money and science that could/should go into different research. Perhaps vat meat? Or ways to improve sustainable plant based foods?
Technology should not be anchored in animal agriculture – The more we invest in it the more likely we are to continue “getting our money’s worth”.
I would if I could, prohibit government from funding bio-technologies for animal agriculture and the “meat” sciences. Billions are funneled to them to create a better, “healthier” and safer product. It’s good money (and innocent lives) down the lab drain. Let’s focus on what we KNOW to be better, healthier, safer and ethical. A vegan diet.
But, we know where this science is going: Whatever is done to animals will eventually be done to, and for humans. This “painfree” farmed animal is the stepping stone for man… And this will result in an entirely different set of frightening issues, right along side Eccentric Vegan’s fears of “laws that allow patents on life”.
I have nothing against voluntary human testing – In fact the results would be much more accurate. But the idea of keeping nonhumans enslaved to us *forever*, as we pursue our god-like fetish for bliss and immortality, is just embarrassing and shameful!
And isn’t there anyone who wonders why is it that animals in agriculture have better healthcare than humans? “Science” gone mad: http://tinyurl.com/mbpwyw
and: http://tinyurl.com/nevaeb