Writing Shrink posted: " To live will be an awfully big adventure. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie I usually try my best to avoid reading billboards. When I'm crawling through traffic with little to keep my interest, I can find myself slipping from my lofty anti-advertisi" Self-Indulgent Twaddle
I usually try my best to avoid reading billboards. When I'm crawling through traffic with little to keep my interest, I can find myself slipping from my lofty anti-advertising perch. Today was one such day.
The billboard which caught my eye came from Go Vegan World. On it, a cow and a calf touch snouts, with the tagline dairy takes babies from their mothers. If we take the premise of the post as a given (and I see no reason why we should not. I do not know much about farming but I imagine separating calf and cow is common practice), the implication is that without the dairy industry the calf would be living happily with mamma cow. We are presented with a dichotomy, either continue enjoying dairy products from traumatised cows, or let cow and calf roam free through verdant pastures in vast herds.
Except, as I was sat in the car looking at the billboard I got to thinking, that's not the two options available to us. In reality, I think the options are;
Continue consuming dairy with the associated suffering for the cows
The cows do not exist at all
Yes, there may well be the odd farmer who would raise dairy cows for the love of it, but most dairy farmers are keeping and breeding cows to make money to live. If they are not making money selling milk, they not going to keep the cows. Separating cow and calf from each other to sell milk may come with suffering for the cows. Stop keeping cattle for diary and the cows do not get to exist at all.
The question for me then, is it better to exist with the possibility (likelihood?) of suffering, or never to have existed at all?
Antinatalists ask similar questions about people as the one above for cows. Given the very nature of human existence includes suffering (sometimes minor, some much worse), can it ever be ethical to bring a child into the world? By having children, they will at some point suffer, no matter what we do to minimise that. Inflicting suffering on someone is unethical, so having a child is unethical (and I know, that is an oversimplification of the antinatalist position but it will do here).
As I have said above the alternative to existing with suffering is not existing at all (I'm assuming here suffering cannot be entirely eradicated. For the foreseeable future this feels a reasonable assumption). Not existing certainly comes without suffering, but it also lacks all the, you know, existing.
When it comes to humans, I am very much not an antinatalist. As with many ethical questions, I generally take a pragmatic position. Yes to having children at the right time and in the right numbers, and then doing all we can to alleviate suffering for them (and the rest of us to boot) along the way. For me, the benefits of existence outweigh the potential for suffering, and our capacity to try and do something to deal with the suffering only further tips the balance.
But what about the dairy cow? Is the cow a human? Does the same pragmatic view apply?
On the face of it, I think the answer to this question should be yes. All too often, we humans place ourselves on a pedestal separate from the rest of the animal kingdom, considering the abilities we possess (such as the ability to pontificate on such ideas as I am doing here), distances us to such an extent that different rules and ethical codes should apply. I'm not sure this is the case, at least not always the case. Sometimes the ethical standards we apply to ourselves should also apply to other animals.
The issue with our dairy cow scenario, and where it differs from the decision about whether to have a human child or not, is the source of the suffering. For a human, some of the suffering will come intentionally or not from other people, but some of the suffering will be outside of human control (for example disease).
For the dairy cows, the suffering (at least the suffering people at Go Vegan World are concerned about) is entirely a product of human action. By breeding cows for their milk, we are inflicting suffering upon them by the very nature of the dairy farming process. Calves need separating from cows, and in that and more we introduce suffering.
If I am honest, I still do not think this outweighs the benefits which come with existence, most obviously existing at all. While I continue to consume dairy myself, I do think you can make arguments for cutting down on or cutting out dairy. The problem with the argument used by Go Vegan World, if you overthink it just a little like I have, it quickly falls apart…!
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