On the Ethics of Livestock

I have been at once very excited about and dreading this post for a long time, but because of our last post on allyship with chickens, I think that it is necessary to do it now, before going deeper into the philosophies underlying our work here at Rancho de la Libertad.

As someone who currently keeps one species of livestock – chickens – and who hopes to keep more, varied species of livestock in the future, with very specific reasons for each kind of animal we'd like to keep, I ask myself this question almost every single day: is it ethical to keep livestock at all?

There are clearly very different answers to this question depending on who you ask. We have many friends and regional community members who are vegan, some very rigid in their beliefs, and they would say very clearly that the answer is no: there is no way to enter into a relationship with livestock that is mutual, it is always inherently exploitative, and besides, the consumption of animal products is unethical so there is no good reason to keep any animal in captivity whatsoever. Many of these same people have pets, so I would perhaps inquire into the depth of their willingness to interrogate their own relationship with animals, but that's besides the point. Or perhaps it isn't!

Our first major argument: on creating mutuality

Are our relationships with livestock inherently exploitative? Can we follow this same logic to discover that our relationships with pets are also inherently exploitative? Let's unpack this a bit.

If we are looking at the general state of the world that we live in, you and I, right now, and we say "most animals in captivity are being exploited, including pets", I think most people would nod emphatically, up until the clause "including pets" (and before you chastise me for getting off topic– just hang on, I promise this is relevant), at which point every single person who owns a dog, cat, bird, bearded dragon, fish tank, snake, etc. would stop and say: "No, wait. My pets love me! They aren't exploited!" Quite frankly, I held the same position up until about two years ago: that livestock in almost every situation on the planet today are exploited, but pets are willing participants in a mutual relationship. I began rethinking this position when I started going to the dog park with our first rescue, Diego. What I noticed as I took stock of the other dog/carer dynamics was that most of these dogs were living in strange conditions (by dog standards): small houses with small yards, minimal mental stimulation, and even those that had the company of one other dog seemed to have a kind of codependent relationship with their carer. As a result, it was clear which dogs were mirroring their carers' emotions to a maladaptive degree: dogs which were displaying aggression, extreme fear and guarding, constant licking and mouthing of their owner and everyone else. Most of the dogs with these behaviors had carers who were clearly tense, chronically stressed (noted based on conversing with them), and anxious or fearful. Training could help with the behaviors themselves, undoubtedly, but most of these problems are environmental: you can train the behaviors away, but in such situations other, sometimes invisible symptoms begin to show when we work to only suppress the visible signs of stress.

Diego exhibited some of the same behaviors when we first took him hone, but after about six months of feeding him real whole foods, walking him off leash (when in a reasonable environment to do so, after proper training), giving him jobs to do, and providing him with a stimulating environment (six acres of desert to protect, according to his instincts and some guiding, the ability to roam and sniff and hunt and mark, etc.) he changed. Yes he loves us, and gives us our daily doses of doggy waggles and asks for rubs in return, but he thinks before mirroring, appearing to be making his own decisions about his physio-emotional state, and he spends a lot more time outside or with our other dog than with us. In other words: he's now psychologically free to make choices, and he makes them. Now, we can achieve some mutuality in the relationship.

How does this relate back to livestock? Well, it isn't different. We can have mutual relationships with animals – and I'll get to the very real reasons we may want to do so later on – but it requires us being attentive to their body language and behavior and educated about their specific environmental needs so that that environment and nothing less may be offered. If we are to make the assertion that dogs can be happy in captivity but not chickens, and that the dogs are somehow engaged in a mutual, consensual relationship (at least, under the right conditions), but that this is impossible for chickens, we are making an assertion that is illogical at best. Why are dogs more uniquely suited to consent to a situation (nevermind that they didn't consent, generally, we brought them home in a moving vehicle with a leash on, in almost all cases) than a chicken? And if you make the argument that dogs are mammals and therefore more capable of bonding with humans, what is your stance on goats? Pigs? Cows? Bearded dragons or snakes as pets? Cats? Ultimately, mutuality relies on something different than in human relationships. It relies on creating an environment that is conducive to the animal being an animal, and being able to make some of the most important choices in their day to day life – even if they can't make all of their own choices (in the same way our children do not get to make all of their own choices).

There are two places to go from here. The first is the argument that, sure, we can say that livestock and pets are no different. But maybe I believe that no animal should be kept in captivity, period. The second is the argument that redefines exploitation: you want something from livestock (meat, milk, eggs, etc.) that you aren't demanding of your pets. That's where the exploitation lies, not in the fact that the animal is being mistreated necessarily.

Let's consider both in turn. First, let's start with what I will call the freedom argument.

Our second major argument: the freedom argument

Let's assume for a moment that where we have landed in our thinking on this matter is that okay, let's set aside the potential for mutual relationships for a moment. Keeping pets or livestock inherently requires some kind of restriction of the animal's freedom. For instance, my dogs live within a fence (well, they're both adept escape artists, and can leave whenever they want, but let's pretend my fence was impenetrable or my dogs were less clever). My chickens, though free-ranged much of the time, sometimes are confined to their coop and run (or for the mobile flock, the chicken tractor). Doesn't that inherently violate consent, and therefore make the relationship unethical or at the very least non-mutual?

The answer I've come to is: maybe not. If I'm being completely honest with all of you, I believe that in most cases, keeping animals in captivity is unethical. This goes for pets and livestock, above and beyond and including mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, protozoa, all of it. But this isn't because I think freedom is necessarily what animals privilege above all else, but that the relationship we have with the animals we keep in captivity colors the way that we engage with and relate to those animals, and therefore the shape of their lives.

When our relationship with animals is that of owning property, having an accessory, displaying status, meeting our own emotional needs, or viewing our chickens as meat and egg factories, and we are containing those animals in spaces which are unfit for their psychosomatic needs, this is unethical. Quite honestly, I think that the ways that some of my dearest friends and family members keep animals are unethical, though I would most definitely say that all of them are wonderful animal keepers and none are abusive or neglectful. When I say unethical, I mean that I cannot come up with an appropriate philosophical argument for why it is okay to, say, have a cat that cannot go outdoors when that so clearly violates its psychological and physical needs, not necessarily that the animal is being abused in the way that we typically define that: they all keep animals very much according to the best norms and values of pet keeping in our time, and despite this I have some qualms.

I think the biggest failure of the argument that the only ethical way to engage with animals is to ensure they have total freedom is that it chooses to predicate itself on a specific definition of freedom, and that it projects a kind of human desire for independence on animals with very different physiological and psychological needs. Most of the species we keep as livestock have co-evolved with humans: being selectively bred and raised for a purpose, and with that there is an intrinsic internal need within this animal for, first of all, interdependence, and second of all, fulfillment of that purpose.

Now, let me be clear that I am not making the claim that animals raised for meat intrinsically want to die. That would be ridiculous. What I mean is that specific behavioral traits have been selected for, and the animal, whether its life is destined to be 12 weeks or 42 years, wishes to engage those behaviors. Chickens need to scratch, peck, and flap their wings. Hens need to be allowed to go broody sometimes. Goats like to rub things, play, climb, browse, have lots of sex, and hang out with other goats. Pigs like to root and wallow, eat just about everything they can and gain weight, and be with other pigs. You get the idea. But what I am saying is that the keeping of animals with whom we have co-evolved is different than the claiming of a different kind of animal and containing it: most species of livestock (note: most) are not chronically stressed by confinement so long as all of their physical and psychological needs are met. This is not the same with all species: deer, for instance, frequently die from complications of acute or chronic stress when placed into a farming situation.

There is an enormous projection that occurs when we have this conversation about livestock, typically, that makes it a very difficult conversation to have. If we assume that from the very beginning, humans have domesticated animals for purely selfish reasons and have as a result exploited them, then we might follow that to the assumption that these species inherently are going to be unhappy living with humans. But.. why do we make this assumption at all? Why do we say that dogs co-evolved with us, enjoying mutually stimulating and beneficial relationships with humans, and then turn around and say that domesticated cows are inherently miserable in captivity?

I cannot go back to the genesis of agriculture on this planet, and the best archaeologist could similarly only speculate about the intentions of humans from long ago when considering taming, captive breeding, and continuing to selectively breed the animals that eventually became livestock. However, based on many things I've read about the history of various cultures, it seems like most cultures that would have originally practiced animal stewardship would have been land-connected and considering things in a more holstic way than we are capable of doing. You have to remember that their worlds were smaller than ours: they knew their ranges and all of their plants and animals (I'm not just talking about one culture here: before the beginnings of large scale civilizations which were only made possible through one form or another of planned food cultivation, all cultures would have needed to have this knowledge to survive and thrive enough to be innovating) acutely. The kind of knowledge specialization and siloed awareness that is our default did not exist when these decisions were first being made, at least presumably.

With all of that being said, and having had observed various animals in various confinement situations (pets, livestock, animals in zoos, etc.) throughout my life, as I've pondered these questions, I've come to the conclusion that freedom or independence is not the primary drive for most animals, but that in most situations other, more important drives are denied by captivity.

After all, if we're being honest, as humans what we value most is not generally freedom or independence (rather, too much of either may make us very unhappy), but thoughtful interdependence. We sacrifice total freedom each and every day to be a part of a community, to have friendships, to raise children. But what we do need is the capability to make the most critical choices for ourselves, to feel secure in saying no when things are not conducive to our well being, and to do human things: have sex, eat, drink, stimulate ourselves intellectually and sensorily, create things, and so on.

So herein lies the problem with most captive situations. We castrate our male animals, spay our females, we clip ears, we tattoo numbers, we brand, we keep animals without an appropriate number of companions, we keep too many animals in too small a space, we don't allow them to keep their space clean, we burn off horns, we clip beaks and wings. Instead of appropriate environment and management, we alter the animal itself, fundamentally denying the physiological needs of the animal. Creating long term, constant psychological stressors that, yes, make keeping any animal in confinement unethical.

So.. is it ethical to keep animals in captivity? Usually no. But sometimes yes.

Our third major argument: exploitation

The second rebuttal to the first section of this text is that basically because we want something from livestock that we don't ask of our pets: their body after we cause their premature death, milk that they produce after having offspring, eggs that they produce periodically, etc. that the relationship is inherently not consensual or mutual and that we are exploiting these animals.

Honestly, this is the most difficult ethical quandry to me personally, and I will likewise leave you with an answer that will probably not satisfy your desire for a clean binary response.

I do not believe the biblical notion that we somehow "have dominion over" any other creature on earth. I try to avoid killing most insects who enter our home, because I see them as intelligent beings whose consciousness is equal, albeit different, than my own. I just modify the environment (i.e: keep things clean) to avoid them accumulating. I care very deeply for other living things, and do not believe in a hierarchy of importance or "levels" of consciousness among beings. Yet, I do still consume the bodies of other beings, and the other products of their lives (eggs, dairy, etc.). With that being said, this consumption is not without stringent standards and the utmost consideration. We were vegan for years (Star longer than I) and had to come back to an omnivorous diet. For nutritional reasons, but also because we recognized the structures necessary to ensure the kind of nutrient availability required to maintain a purely vegan diet.

With all of that, I still think that it is possible to orient ourselves to the raising of livestock for food in a way which is not inherently exploitative. We must, in some capacity, have relationships with animals, by virtue of being animals ourselves. We are a keystone species, our ability to utilize tools and shift evolution itself is an enormous responsibility, and we should not take that lightly. All of us are members of food chains and ecosystems, and our denial of this fact is irrelevant to the reality.

We, too, are food for other beings. No, it likely won't look the same as bringing chickens to slaughter. You can argue that an accidental death is somehow better than an intentional one, but why? Why are we so quick to make exceptions to this rule when we believe we are minimizing suffering (i.e: euthanasia)? If our goal is the minimizing of suffering, perhaps utilitarian metrics have no place: we all must eat, and we should do so in a way that honors our ecosystem. Some ecosystems can carry the diversity of plant foods necessary to sustain a vegan diet, some cannot, or can't yet.

I think raising livestock has enormous potential to be exploitative. I think generally it is. When we orient to the creatures around us as property (even the term "live stock" is terrible, I just lack a better word comprehensive of what I'm talking about), accessories, trends, emotional outlets, status symbols, just a meat market, and so on, we are inherently exploiting the animals' needs for our own benefit, and intrinsically denying their wholeness as a result. If we can mutually gain, while ensuring the dignity and needs of the animal, while recognizing them as beings as conscious as us, as members of our community and ecosystem, perhaps it is less exploitative, or not at all. We should strive for this, at least.

Considering the whole: livestock in context

But why? If raising livestock is generally exploitative, generally unethical, why do it in any circumstance? Why risk doing it wrong?

We have to consider the reality of the current world that we live in. We have stripped enormous regions of their animal residents. We have destroyed entire ecosystems. We have razed forests, graded unthinkable sections of land, ripped out biodiverse native grasses and destroyed the soil by leaving it fallow, collapsing food chains, and calling the result "natural desert". We have run from our responsibility in every way: blaming drought, people from other cultures, blaming animals we called "pests" or "monsters" or "vermin" and extinguishing almost all of them. Each and every species eliminated from an area once filled a vital ecological niche, now left unfilled, and the land suffers. And we suffer. And the survivors suffer.

Now consider another angle: each and every system responsible for your life consumes and destroys enormous tracts of lands, entire species, entire cultures. You likely have absolutely no idea what it takes to produce your food: those avocados, that yeast, that flour, the coconut or cashew milk you exalt as being the more ethical alternative. What does it take? Death, on a massive scale. Of human beings, of microbial life, of marine life, of mammals, birds, insects, fish, even if you are vegan your existence in this society (any society on earth right now with access to a computer to read these words) is a point of complicity within systems that continue to destroy the life around us.

So there are two dilemmas that can be solved with a single action, if done correctly, and alongside rigorous inner work to fundamentally re-orient ourselves to the world: the need to fill biological niches if we are to restore ecosystem, and the need to produce food in a way that is a radical refusal of the industrial systems that are killing us and everything around us. We can do both by raising and carefully managing livestock, engaging in thoughtful observation of their behavior, needs, what behaviors inherent to them fills what niche, finding ways to raise them without industrial inputs, creating cyclical food ways that can maybe, just maybe, help to begin pulling our communities out of an endless cycle of reliance on systems that lead to much more death and suffering than that what is caused to simply eat.

This happy ending assumes we foundationally change the way we live. It assumes we build community food ways that are outside of existing modes of commerce, that we learn to cohabitate and share land and work together, that we find alternative modes of land stewardship not predicated solely on property ownership. There are more things to do than simply start a small farm or boycott industrial ag – until we change the way we orient ourselves to the whole, we will see the unethical patterns of exploitation and ownership continuously repeat themselves.

A few final notes:

• Of course we must consume less animal products. This happens naturally when we discover what it takes for them to be produced. And if you live in an area where you can be vegan, and where all of your nutrients can be local, I'd say try it. Why not?

• Dairy is a difficult subject. Perhaps the ethics of dairy production warrants its own, separate post, because it is different than egg or meat production.

• You don't have to agree with me. I don't hope that this changes your mind – but maybe it will change your diet, or leave you thinking differently about the relationships we can have with other beings as opposed to the relationships we do have with other beings

Our next post for paid subscribers only will be released later this month, and will include crucial considerations and tips for gardening in hot climates – or climates which are just going to get hotter. Please consider subscribing to support our mission if you can, and share this with a friend if you think it's valuable.

Until next time ~