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In his recent newsletter [1], Lewis Bollard, farm animal welfare programme officer at Open Philanthropy, makes a very interesting point. Starting with the question of why humans love some animals while disregarding or mistreating others, Lewis cites several studies that show an astonishingly small difference in the importance people place on the welfare of farm or companion animals — in world regions as diverse as North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Europe. In countries such as Sudan or Bangladesh, people even place slightly more importance on the welfare of farm animals.

Animal welfare laws of most countries consider cruelty against animals a crime. And yet there are exceptions and loopholes for factory farming, where cruelty to so many animals is part of their everyday life, for more than a dozen animals per human being. Why? Lewis is not satisfied with popular theories about lacking knowledge on animals’ needs, the reduction of animal complexity to arbitrary tests, cultural habits, the anthropocentric preference of animals looking like human children, the limits of our moral circle, etc.

We mostly don’t want to know—yet there’s hope

Lewis argues that the abuse of animals happens when it is convenient, ’normally because there’s money to be made‘. But, he continues, ‚only a tiny fraction of people systematically abuse animals‘, because ‚factory farms and slaughterhouses employ far less than one percent of the world’s population‘. Thus, the question is: ‚Why do the rest of us allow, and pay them to abuse animals?‘ Because, Lewis argues, ‚most people have no idea how animals are treated‘, and consequently a ’survey finds that most (US-)Americans agree that the animal foods I purchase usually come from animals that are treated humanely‘. The main reason for it, Lewis says, is that ‚we mostly don’t want to know‘.

Amidst the contradiction between the love of pets and the disregard for the fate of farm animals, however, Lewis also sees hope. Because, in contrast to most social movements, the movement for animal welfare does not have to persuade people, as most people are already against the mistreatment of animals. ‚Our task is to mobilise that support into corporate and legislative change”‘ Lewis concludes.

Comment: What could be done

It is true, cruelty towards animals is a no-go for most people. Then, why is it still so hard to translate this passive attitude into a massive shift in food production so far based on factory farming? What is the sticking point we still oversee, after all these campaigns against the industrial use of animals, after all these campaigns advocating better animal welfare or reducing the consumption of animal products?

I think we can tell an overwhelming number of good and beautiful stories about the normal natural life of the animals we are used to using. Especially in the case of aquatic animals because still every second seafood plate comes from the wild and aquaculture history is still very young, so the way of how this animals live in nature is easy to tell, and thousands of unique stories can be told. Once we succeed in bringing natural life — including needs and behaviour — of food animals home to the eaters, they will more or less draw conclusions for their daily life by themselves.

This positive approach has its parallel in a paradigm shift in animal welfare science, which has long focused on reducing pain and suffering and only recently began to study positive emotions in animals as well.

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Title picture
Drawing by Kasia Jakowska

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Reference:
[1] https://farmanimalwelfare.substack.com/p/we-love-animals-why-do-we-torture?

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