The basis for Budolfson’s claim on the ineffectiveness of vegetarianism can also be challenged empirically. Current research suggests that individuals are more likely to consider and disseminate information that comes from those close to them. Through the natural flow of information, those one hundred newly converted vegetarians will present others with moral arguments for avoiding factory-farmed meat, who will then present others with those same arguments, and so on.
Even if this flow of information is unnatural and somewhat forced, Singer would argue that its dissemination is each vegetarian’s (and non-vegetarian’s!) moral imperative. In an anticipatory rebuttal, Budolfson asserts the unfounded claim that arguments for vegetarianism “might lead to a consensus […] that vegetarians are radical, self-righteous jerks,” and he shares anecdotal evidence that these arguments are often met with pledges “to eat more meat to ‘cancel out’ the effects of vegetarians.” Again, empirical evidence shows this to be false. Nearly 13 percent of Americans are vegetarians or vegans, and 49 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of vegetarians while only 22 percent view them negatively.
Despite these inconsistencies, Budolfson further develops his inefficacy objection and claims on vegetarianism by arguing that the decision to consume factory-farmed meat is sufficiently distinct from the decision to cast a vote so that arguments used to address the paradox of voting do not translate to an individual’s decision to consume factory-farmed meat. In regards to an individual’s reason to vote, Budolfson shares the broadly agreed upon relevant considerations: the probability that an individual’s vote will trigger a dramatic threshold effect, the fact that voters have a personal preference to vote, the fact that voters collectively cause the outcome of the election in an ethically important way, and the fact that voters have non-welfare-based reasons to vote.
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Budolfson quickly dismisses the first two claims as inapplicable to the discussion on consumption of factory-farmed meat. He argues that an appeal to threshold effects is unsuccessful due to inefficiency and slack in the supply chain. This is a very weak argument. Although potential threshold effects are more easily measured in a democratic election with discrete ballots cast, this does not deny the existence of similar threshold effects in the supply for factory-farmed meat. I concede that market decisions are fuzzier and less precise than those decisions arising from elections, but the anonymous nature of virtually all free and democratic elections means that the decisive voter is no more likely to know who she is than the decisive consumer is to know who he is.
Moreover, in both cases a threshold—which by definition must involve at least one individual—is crossed. The argument dismissing an individual’s personal preference in choosing to consume factory-farmed meat can just as easily be refuted. Nearly every purchase is the result of an individual’s preference-based decision. Vegetarians who refuse to eat meat due to moral concerns might be doing so from a personal preference to increase total welfare, while vegetarians who refuse to eat meat for health reasons might be doing so from a personal preference to maintain a healthier lifestyle. Waheed Hussain’s description of social change ethical consumerism is built from the idea that individuals consume based on personal preference, even if their personal preference is to indirectly increase welfare by rewarding or punishing certain producers. ,
My earlier argument resting on the supply and demand theory of economics serves to refute the reasoning behind his third consideration that voters cause the outcome of the election in an ethically important way and consumers of factory-farmed meat do not cause the inhumane outcomes present on these farms. Using his earlier premises of slack in the factory farm supply chain preventing individual consumers from affecting the amount of meat produced and inhumane treatment being derived from the ‘supply side’ of the meat industry, Budolfson argues that the inhumane treatment is not caused by consumers. He points to the more humane animal product industries in Australia and New Zealand to show that a supplier’s inhumane treatment of animals is not inherent to the production of meat. Again, this fails to consider the fact that the factory farming industry exists only because of the consumers who purchase its products. There would be no factory farming industry without consumers of factory-farmed meat, so consumers are, in some sense, responsible for the consequences of their consumption decisions.
This argument can be extended to show why Budolfson’s analogy relating the faulty implementation of a welfare policy to the ‘supply side’ workings of the factory farm industry is misguided. He has the reader consider a general social welfare policy enacted in the United States. He claims that if the welfare policy works in other countries, but when implemented results in bad consequences in the United States, then the law itself is not bad. One must conclude that the U.S. policy was implemented in a corrupt and incompetent way, whereas the policies in other countries were not. He argues that it would be a mistake to condemn the social welfare policy on the basis that it was the ethically relevant cause for these bad consequences, even if the policy was a necessary condition for the bad consequences and was a background causal factor.
This logic works with respect to the implementation of a particular policy, but Budolfson’s argument fails to apply to the consumption of factory-farmed meat. I have argued that individual consumption decisions are an ethically relevant cause for the ills of the meat industry, but, even if one disregards my claim, consumption of meat is a repeated activity, and, while an individual cannot be expected to be fully aware of adverse outcomes related to a policy prior to its implementation, once informed of the realities of the factory farm industry, she can no longer claim ignorance in her support of that industry.
3) Budolfson does address the fourth consideration (non-welfare-based reasons), perhaps providing his strongest argument for the moral permissibility of consuming factory-farmed meat. This argument is based on his discussion of the degree of essentiality of harm to an act where he claims that “consumption of a product is particularly objectionable the more essential it is to that product that harm or the violation of rights lies behind it.” Thus the difference between right and wrong consumption decisions depends on if it is theoretically possible, though not in fact the case, to produce a product without a high degree of harm.
Budolfson believes that this is what separates actions that are morally permissible for consumers (though not for suppliers) and actions that are impermissible. He illustrates this point using a few examples. The first example considers the purchase of a can of vegetables from a supermarket. He argues that the production of those vegetables depends on petroleum products and therefore involves an unexpectedly high harm footprint. But, Budolfson claims, this footprint of harm is highly inessential to the product because there is nothing in the nature, actual production, or actual consumption of that product that necessitates harm or the violation of rights. He makes a similar analysis of the decision by ovo-lacto vegetarians to consume factory-farmed dairy and egg products.
Even though the eggs and milk that most vegetarians consume is factory-farmed and has a very high footprint of harm, their consumption is permissible because even factory-farmed dairy and egg products “can be coaxed from animals without hurting or killing them.” His third example presents the case of a computer constructed from metals and other inputs that are themselves produced in an ethically objectionable way. Budolfson argues that, if the ethically objectionable parts are not central to the design of the computer and if the computer manufacturer cannot practically do anything about the parts, buying the computer is not in itself impermissible even if some action lying far behind it is impermissible.
Budolfson’s claim on the degree of essentiality of harm to an act arises from his objection to Tom Regan’s complicity in evil argument against eating meat. Budolfson believes that Tom Regan’s argument does not hold here because an individual’s consumption of animals does not appear to cause harm in the right way, nor does it make a difference to the harm that animals suffer, nor does it even benefit those who cause such harm. I have shown that aggregate consumption decisions, made up of several individual’s consumption decisions, do cause harm by directly benefitting links in the supply chain of an inhumane industry.
This line of reasoning can also be used to show that consumption decisions ultimately end up benefiting those who cause such harm (i.e. the farmers and ranchers) through the market’s transfer of resources. The claim that a lack of difference in the harm that animals suffer serves to nullify the complicity in evil argument is a bit harder to refute. We must look to Mathias Risse and his thoughts on fairness in trade to reconcile this purported inconsistency. Risse argues that, in the context of international trade, workers have legitimate fairness complaints if without trade they would not be worse off, for then they do not benefit adequately from their contributions. Using Singer’s earlier stated principle of doing everything within our power to prevent something bad from happening as a premise, this argument can be translated and applied to the situation of farm animals.
If an individual’s decision not to consume factory-farmed meat does not make the animals better off or worse off, the individual must do more to improve their situation (either through market pressure by purchasing humanely raised animal products, social pressure by advocating for vegetarianism and veganism, legal pressure through the introduction of regulative legislation, or performing some other action to reduce the animals’ suffering). With the other claims against the the complicity in evil argument refuted, it does not follow that one is morally permitted to consume factory-farmed meat products simply because a single individual’s decision to consume does not create a noticeable effect on the amount of harm that animals suffer.
Even if, as Budolfson contends, “almost every consumption activity is complicit in evil in the sense that it depends on and supports companies that violate important constraints to a similar extent that consuming factory-farmed meat does so,” consumers, being moral agents, have an obligation to minimize harm. Deciding not to eat factory-farmed meat is not a morally important sacrifice. Budolfson himself concedes that “a person’s gustatory pleasure is of little ethical significance compared to the suffering that animals must experience in the service of that pleasure.” Factory-farmed meat is easily replaced by humanely raised animal products, and, if one chooses to forego meat entirely, vegetable and vitamin supplements can substitute for those nutrients found in meat.
I have considered Budolfson’s claims and objections while putting forth my own arguments for the moral impermissibility of consuming factory-farmed meat. Singer’s notion that we should do everything in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, is relevant to discussions on the ethics of eating meat. This principle allows one to counter Budolfson’s assertion that consuming factory-farmed meat is not wrong because slack and waste in the factory farm supply chain prevent any one individual’s decision to not purchase meat from making a significant impact on the quantity produced.
One can use Singer’s principle in conjunction with empirical evidence to argue for the moral rightness of vegetarianism and an obligation to vigorously oppose factory-farmed meat consumption. The principle also helps us object to Budolfson’s discussion on the degree of essentiality of harm to an act, which is interesting but skips over important consequentialist ideas like minimizing harm wherever possible. If nonconsumption by itself is indeed ineffectual (a claim which I dispute), then individuals have an increased, not decreased, obligation to oppose harm. Moral agents are compelled to act in the face of great and obvious injustices like the inhumane treatment of animals on factory farms.
Budolfson raises novel points on the consumption of factory-farmed meat, and the discussion is subtler than it seems, but the consumption of factory-farmed meat is ultimately not permissible.
