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Science, values, and common ground¹

Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, OH 45221

	Abstract

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
In this paper, I argue that there may be common ground shared by animal science and its critics insofar as animal scientists seek improvement in their field in four areas: the quality of their products, the quality of life for those who make their livelihood in food production, the fair treatment of human workers, and the humane treatment of animals. I also propose that there are fundamental differences between improvement motivated by profit and improvement motivated by ethical values. Positive moral change is sometimes revolutionary, although it is often a matter of promoting positive incremental changes and keeping one’s attention on the effects of actions and attitudes. In conclusion, I suggest that in animal agriculture, positive change can be brought about by "getting closer" to the objects of scientific research, including nonhuman animals, by paying more attention to their welfare.

Key Words: Contemporary Issues • Ethics • Values

	Introduction

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
What sort of questions does an ethicist bring to the field of animal science? In addition to exploring the moral consequences of particular agricultural practices, an ethicist ought to ask questions about the values—the moral motivations, inclinations, and principles—at the heart of the agricultural sciences. Because animal science is built on the instrumental use of sentient beings, there is much that an ethicist might criticize, and animal scientists may themselves be critical of some of the moral dimensions of animal research and agriculture. Attention to the range of values motivating animal science may help to formulate strategies for practical ethical improvement, and to locate the common ground shared by animal science and its critics. This essay addresses some foundational questions about that common ground and about the potential for positive change.

	Ethics and Animal Agriculture

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
In the field of environmental ethics, especially in the academic discipline of philosophy, animals get a good deal of attention. Some of the most influential philosophers in history, including Descartes, Kant, and Bentham, have raised questions about human–animal relationships (Descartes, 1954; Kant, 1997; Bentham, 1998), and inquiries about the ethical and epistemic significance of animals are well represented in contemporary philosophy. For example, in the field of environmental ethics, the aim is to understand the details of our moral relationships with the nonhuman world and to identify the values and practices that best serve planetary flourishing.

Animal science is ethically interesting because it influences some of our most basic relations with nature. Consider how fundamental human–bovine relations are: we eat cow, and lots of it (even many vegetarians eat a lot of cow), so the particulars of cow production and consumption are relevant to fundamental questions about ethical practices and moral issues related to diet, human health, and food economies. In addition, the processes of raising cows and distributing cow-based foods are deeply intertwined in practices and institutions that have significant effects on ecological balance. Because human interests are so deeply interwoven with the well-being of cows and other animals and because animals are so morally compelling in their own ways, philosophy must investigate the ethics of our relationships with them. Human–animal relationships beg for philosophical investigation.

Whereas the very project of animal science is to obtain knowledge about agricultural animals, the knowledge it seeks is very different from the knowledge sought by philosophers. Accordingly, philosophers and animal scientists ask very different questions about animals. In the 1970s, when academic philosophers, such as Mary Midgley (1979) and Peter Singer (1976), began raising questions about the ethics of animal use, their work was controversial because it questioned the assumption that only humans have moral worth. Extending philosophical consideration to nonhuman animals was controversial in philosophy in the same way, I imagine, that it is currently controversial to ask questions about animal well-being and the ethics of human–animal relations in animal science.

If agriculture is the use of nonhuman nature (including animals) to serve human needs and desires, then, of course, the most basic questions in the agricultural sciences are about how to best put "x" to use. But what does best use mean? What is it generally taken to mean in animal science, and what does it mean in systems of agriculture that begin with ethical and humane values? When agriculture is primarily a system of profit, then best use is reduced to "most profitable use." If the institutions of animal science assume profit and efficiency to be foundational goals, they cannot encourage critical questioning about the ethics of our interactions with cows because they take for granted that it is okay to reduce animals (and much of nature, perhaps) to their use value.

Still, there is nothing absolutely preventing individual animal scientists and groups of scientists from asking new questions about animals—questions that critically engage assumptions about the nature of agriculture and agribusiness and about the ultimate goal of profit. In these remarks, I want to consider how to encourage those questions and how to construct scientific inquiries that could emerge from more ethically sensitive approaches to agriculture.

Animal science has unique potential as a complex, multispecies laboratory of environmental ethics. Because it is such a practical discipline (that is, success in the field is measured in impacts on real practices and outcomes), the critical engagement emerging from the animal science field must be presented in ways that are realistic and directly applicable. In this sense, one hopeful message of environmental ethics—that it is possible to have better relationships with the nonhuman world (better in an ethical, not economic sense, although those two are not mutually exclusive)—can uniquely be made real in the work of animal scientists.

	Moral Improvement and Common Ground

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
My intention here is not to provide convincing arguments that humane treatment of animals, fair treatment of human workers, and ethical scientific and technological practices ought to be at the heart of animal science. My guess is that most people who are interested in critical perspectives in animal science believe that livestock agriculture has need for improvement along at least one of the following lines: 1) quality of product, 2) quality of life for those who make their livelihood in food production, 3) fair treatment of human workers, and 4) humane treatment of animals. We should also be attentive to the ways in which those four areas of potential ethical improvement are deeply intertwined. In fact, given the nature of animal agriculture, it is difficult or impossible to improve in one without also improving in other areas. For many reasons, the fourth potential sphere of improvement, humane treatment of animals, may be particularly controversial among animal scientists. But, ironically, the fact is that animal scientists have a great deal of intimacy with animals: they think about and spend time with animals and are familiar with the details of what it is like to be a cow, pig, or chicken. Knowledge and proximity can be a starting point for exploitative use, but it is also a starting point for empathy and affection. I would venture that many animal scientists were initially attracted to the field because they were interested in animals or enjoyed being around them. Could that sort of caring for animals be channeled toward positive practical change in agricultural practices?

Quite a few animal scientists, philosophers, and regular folks already agree that animal agriculture ought to be improved, for ethical reasons as well as practical reasons. If there is significant opportunity for ethical improvement in much that comes within the purview of animal science, and significant scientific and philosophical agreement that there are good reasons to pursue such improvement, perhaps the most pressing questions are not about why, but how positive changes can be made. What strategies can be used to actually improve things (for all sorts of sentient beings) in animal science?

	Beyond Profit

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
In a scientific system in which the primary goal of research is taken to be increased productivity, one way to argue for a more humane treatment of cows is to show that to do so increases productivity. In an article in a recent issue of the Journal of Animal Science, Australian researchers Hemsworth et al. (2002) show that positive interventions on the attitude and behavior of stockpersons toward livestock have positive effects on the behavior and productivity of commercial dairy cows.

But such approaches do not question the utter reduction of cows to their use value or the assumption that increased productivity is the purpose justifying innovation in animal science. Increased productivity is a primary goal not for ethical reasons, but because of its relationship to profit, and profit is not itself a moral goal. Making money is a practical goal, although money or profit can be gotten ethically or unethically and can be used to serve either ethical or unethical goals.

Interestingly, when profit motives create questionable practices and products, but consumers are educated, demanding, or motivated by compassion, the linear relationship between increased productivity and profit may be disrupted. In the fast-food industry’s recent moves to promote humane farming, we see that profit in the form of "public relations" can sometimes motivate ethical improvement (see www.americanradioworks.org/features/mcdonalds). A key insight that has enabled changes in labor and agriculture is the fact that not all ethical improvements are contrary to profit and productivity.

Although it can be strategically useful to motivate ethical change through profit, the view that the fundamental goal of animal science is to maximize profit, without regard to the experiences of animals, ultimately cannot be reconciled with the view that nonhumans have some value or significance beyond their use value.

	Toward Positive Change

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
Sometimes we think about ethics as a social phenomenon—what "society" values. However, in the end, ethics is also a personal matter. What are your moral goals? What values motivate your work? How can your moral goals be brought into your work, and the institutions that define it?

All scholars and scientists are producers of knowledge. As an ethicist, I want to encourage knowledge-producing labor that is in the service of a better world, the good life for all, a healthier planet, life-loving cultures, a more peaceful world, and less violence. You may say that I am idealistic, but the work of a philosopher is to investigate ideas and to see how they relate to the real world. Although "the good life for all" is an ideal goal that cannot be achieved in the real world, an image of what that phrase means can help inform ethical actions and interactions. For example, in the real world, we cannot be perfect parents or perfect teachers, but most of us aim toward incremental improvement, try to learn from our mistakes, and strive to be good. Similarly, positive moral change on a broader scale is often a matter of promoting positive incremental changes and keeping attention on the effects of actions and attitudes.

To effect positive change, I propose a model of knowledge production that involves getting closer to the objects of our knowledge and also to the truth about the significance of our own work. By "getting closer," I have in mind methodologies that are not romantic, but scientific. We can use science, and knowledge, to get closer to the following:

• Our own values
  
• The effects of our work
  
• The objects of our study (including nonhuman animals)
  

What science emerges when we pay close attention to our own deepest personal and social goals? What science emerges when we pay attention to our own affection for, and dependence on, animals and to the needs of animals themselves? Projects that bring us closer to the objects of knowledge help us know more about our interdependencies and to care for what we care about. Such knowledge is clearly emotional and embodied as well as intellectual. The project of getting closer therefore bridges knowledge and action by bringing knowers closer to the worlds affected by our actions and inactions.

Do animal scientists care about animals? What are the relationships between animal scientists and other animals? If there remains any sense in which animal scientists care about other animals, how can that caring be brought to mind in the laboratory and the classroom, and into practice in livestock agriculture and curriculum development?

Instead of taking considerations about the welfare of animals to be hopelessly naïve, or contrary to the interests of animal science and its institutions, or assuming that the only hope for ethical improvement lies in its connections to profit, we might take a different approach. That is, we might ask about the common ground shared by a variety of players in this scene: animal scientists, consumers, advocates for animals, and workers in agricultural industries. Likely sites of common ground include needs and desires for good food; sustainable practices and industries; socially useful, safe, and fulfilling work; and the health and well-being of nonhuman animals.

Among the main obstacles to knowledge projects that aim to "get closer" are academic and economic stances that begin with arrogance or that assume that the status quo can never change. Getting closer requires curiosity and caring across chasms of species and cultural differences. In animal science, it requires openness to truths that are found by taking into account the perspectives of animals and thus requires some humility, and attention to our similarities with nonhuman animals. In science and technology, getting closer can help us formulate alternatives to present habits, practices, and institutions. Although I am admittedly an outsider to the institutional worlds of animal science (although as a consumer of the food it produces, I am not outside the moral universe of animal science), it seems to me that "animal welfare science" is an excellent example of a field of inquiry that aims to get closer to its objects of study and that faces uncomfortable truths about the realities in which it participates. The very concept of animal welfare can be a tool for promoting positive change on a number of fronts.

Arrogant inquiries accept a comfortable distance between knowledge and life and hide their own limits and inadequacies. If we want to get closer, it is easy to know that academic arrogance comes not simply from a lack of humility, but from a mistaken picture of our place in the world. We are connected, not separate.

	Implications

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 
The primary implication of the perspective presented here is that taking ethical values seriously is a good starting place for making positive changes in animal science and industry. This is important because economic and decision-making privilege is a form of power that can be used for positive change. If "use" is not reducible to "abuse," then animal scientists have an important role to play in determining the particulars of appropriate and respectful use of agricultural animals. When motivated by positive values, rather than profit, the work of animal scientists can help us improve the relationships between humans and other animals and between consumers, producers, and workers in the meat industries.

	Footnotes

 
¹ This symposium paper was developed by WCC 204 Regional Committee on Animal Bioethics and was sponsored by Elanco Animal Health, ASAS Foundation, and the European Association for Animal Production.

² Correspondence: Mail Location 374 (E-mail: cuomocj{at}email.uc.edu).

Received for publication October 16, 2002. Accepted for publication August 28, 2003.

	Literature Cited

Top Abstract Introduction Ethics and Animal Agriculture Moral Improvement and Common... Beyond Profit Toward Positive Change Implications Literature Cited

 


Bentham, J. 1998. Benthamania: or, Select Extracts from the Works of Jeremy Bentham. J. H. Burton, ed. Gaunt Publications, Holmes Beach, FL.

Descartes, R. 1954. Philosophical Writings. E. Anscombe and P. Thomas Geach, ed. Nelson Press, Edinburgh, U.K.

P. H. Hemsworth, G. J. Coleman, J. L. Barnett, S. Borg, and S. Dowling. 2002. The effects of cognitive behavioral intervention on the attitude and behavior of stockpersons and the behavior and productivity of commercial dairy cows. J. Anim. Sci. 80:68–78.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Kant, I. 1997. Lectures on Ethics. P. Heath and J. B. Schneewind, ed. P. Heath, trans. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Midgley, M. 1979. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. The Harvester Press, London.

Singer, P. 1976. Animal Liberation. New York Review Books, New York.

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