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Page 1: Conservative The American MAY 23, 2005 TORTURE … · Mercy. And though my tome never quite hit the bestseller lists, there ought to be some special literary prize for a work

What Education Crisis?Social Security Shell GameMaking Families Public Property

I n s i d e

Why Conservatives Why Conservatives Should Care About Should Care About Animal CrueltyAnimal Cruelty

TORTURE ON THE FARM

The AmericanConservative

MAY 23, 2005

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M a y 2 3 , 2 0 0 5 T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t i v e 7

A FEW YEARS AGO I began a bookabout cruelty to animals and about fac-tory farming in particular, problems thathad been in the back of my mind for along while. At the time I viewed factoryfarming as one of the lesser problemsfacing humanity—a small wrong on thegrand scale of good and evil but toocasually overlooked and too gliblyexcused.

This view changed as I acquaintedmyself with the details and saw a fewtypical farms up close. By the time I fin-ished the book, I had come to view theabuses of industrial farming as a seriousmoral problem, a truly rotten businessfor good reason passed over in politeconversation. Little wrongs, when leftunattended, can grow and spread tobecome grave wrongs, and preciselythis had happened on our factory farms.

The result of these ruminations wasDominion: The Power of Man, the Suf-

fering of Animals, and the Call to

Mercy. And though my tome never quitehit the bestseller lists, there ought to besome special literary prize for a workhighly recommended in both the Wall

Street Journal and Vegetarian Teen.When you enjoy the accolades of PETAand Policy Review, Deepak Chopra andGordon Liddy, Peter Singer and CharlesColson, you can at least take comfort inthe diversity of your readership.

The book also provided an occasionfor fellow conservatives to get beyond

their dislike for particular animal-rightsgroups and to examine cruelty issues onthe merits. Conservatives have a way ofdismissing the subject, as if where ani-mals are concerned nothing very seriouscould ever be at stake. And though it isnot exactly true that liberals care moreabout these issues—you are no morelikely to find reflections or exposés con-cerning cruelty in The Nation or The

New Republic than in any journal of theRight—it is assumed that animal-protec-tion causes are a project of the Left, andthat the proper conservative position isto stand warily and firmly against them.

I had a hunch that the problem waslargely one of presentation and that byapplying their own principles to animal-welfare issues conservatives would findplenty of reasons to be appalled. More tothe point, having acknowledged theproblems of cruelty, we could then sup-port reasonable remedies. Conserva-tives, after all, aren’t shy about discours-ing on moral standards or reluctant totranslate the most basic of those stan-dards into law. Setting aside the dis-tracting rhetoric of animal rights, that’susually what these questions comedown to: what moral standards shouldguide us in our treatment of animals,and when must those standards beapplied in law?

Industrial livestock farming is amonga whole range of animal-welfare con-cerns that extends from canned trophy-

hunting to whaling to product testing onanimals to all sorts of more obscureenterprises like the exotic-animal tradeand the factory farming of bears in Chinafor bile believed to hold medicinal andaphrodisiac powers. Surveying the vari-ous uses to which animals are put, somemight be defensible, others abusive andunwarranted, and it’s the job of any con-servative who attends to the subject tofigure out which are which. We don’tneed novel theories of rights to do this.The usual distinctions that conservativesdraw between moderation and excess,freedom and license, moral goods andmaterial goods, rightful power and theabuse of power, will all do just fine.

As it is, the subject hardly comes up atall among conservatives, and what com-mentary we do hear usually takes theform of ridicule directed at animal-rightsgroups. Often conservatives side instinc-tively with any animal-related industryand those involved, as if a thing is rightjust because someone can make moneyoff it or as if our sympathies belongalways with the men just because theyare men.

I had an exchange once with an emi-nent conservative columnist on this sub-ject. Conversation turned to my bookand to factory farming. Holding hishands out in the “stop” gesture, he said,“I don’t want to know.” Granted, life onthe factory farm is no one’s favorite sub-ject, but conservative writers often have

Cover Story

[ c r u e l & u n u s u a l ]

Fear FactoriesThe case for compassionate conservatism—for animals

By Matthew Scully

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8 T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t i v e M a y 2 3 , 2 0 0 5

to think about things that are disturbingor sad. In this case, we have an intellec-tually formidable fellow known to mil-lions for his stern judgments on everymatter of private morality and publicpolicy. Yet nowhere in all his writings doI find any treatment of any cruelty issue,never mind that if you asked him hewould surely agree that cruelty to ani-mals is a cowardly and disgraceful sin.

And when the subject is cruelty tofarmed animals—the moral standardsbeing applied in a fundamental humanenterprise—suddenly we’re in forbid-den territory and “I don’t want to know”is the best he can do. But don’t we havea responsibility to know? Maybe thewhole subject could use his fine mindand his good heart.

As for the rights of animals, rights ingeneral are best viewed in tangibleterms, with a view to actual events andconsequences. Take the case of a hunterin Texas named John Lockwood, whohas just pioneered the online safari. Athis canned-hunting ranch outside SanAntonio, he’s got a rifle attached to acamera and the camera wired up to theInternet, so that sportsmen going toLive-shot.com will actually be able tofire at baited animals by remote controlfrom their computers. “If the customerwere to wound the animal,” explains theSan Antonio Express-News, “a staffperson on site could finish it off.” The“trophy mounts” taken in these heroicswill then be prepared and shipped to theclient’s door, and if it catches on Lock-wood will be a rich man.

Very much like animal farmingtoday, the hunting “industry” has seen

a collapse in ethical standards, andonly in such an atmosphere couldLockwood have found inspiration forthis latest innovation—denying wildanimals the last shred of respect.Under the laws of Texas and otherstates, Lockwood and others in hisbusiness use all sorts of methods onceviewed as shameful: baits, blinds,fences to trap hunted animals in

ranches that advertise a “100-percent-guaranteed kill.” Affluent hunters like tounwind by shooting cage-reared pheas-ants, ducks, and other birds, firing awayas the fowl of the air are released beforethem like skeet, with no limit on theday’s kill. Hunting supply stores arefilled with lures, infrared lights, high-tech scopes, and other gadgetry tomake every man a marksman.

Lockwood doesn’t hear anyoneprotesting those methods, except for afew of those nutty activist types. Whyshouldn’t he be able to offer paying cus-tomers this new hunting experience aswell? It is like asking a smut-peddler toplease have the decency to keep chil-dren out of it. Lockwood is just one stepahead of the rest, and there is no stan-dard of honor left to stop him.

First impressions are usually correctin questions of cruelty to animals, andhere most of us would agree that Live-shot.com does not show our fellow manat his best. We would say that the wholething is a little tawdry and evendepraved, that the creatures Lockwoodhas “in stock” are not just commodities.We would say that these animalsdeserve better than the fate he has instore for them.

As is invariably the case in animal-rights issues, what we’re really lookingfor are safeguards against cruel and pre-sumptuous people. We are trying to holdpeople to their obligations, people whocould spare us the trouble if only theywould recognize a few limits on theirown conduct.

Conservatives like the sound of “obli-gation” here, and those who reviewedDominion were relieved to find me argu-ing more from this angle than from anynotion of rights. “What the PETA crowddoesn’t understand,” Jonah Goldbergwrote, “or what it deliberately confuses, isthat human compassion toward animalsis an obligation of humans, not an entitle-ment for animals.” Another commentatorput the point in religious terms: “[W]ehave a moral duty to respect the animalworld as God’s handiwork, treating ani-mals with ‘the mercy of our Maker’ … Butmercy and respect for animals are com-pletely different from rights for animals—and we should never confuse the two.”Both writers confessed they were trou-bled by factory farming and concludedwith the uplifting thought that we couldall profit from further reflection on ourobligation of kindness to farm animals.

The only problem with this insistenceon obligation is that after a while itbegins to sounds like a hedge againstactually being held to that obligation. Itleaves us with a high-minded attitudebut no accountability, free to act on ourobligations or to ignore them withoutconsequences, personally opposed tocruelty but unwilling to impose thatview on others.

Treating animals decently is like mostobligations we face, somewhere betweenthe most and the least important, amodest but essential requirement toliving with integrity. And it’s not a goodsign when arguments are constantlyturned to precisely how much is manda-tory and how much, therefore, we canmanage to avoid.

Cover Story

AFFLUENT HUNTERS UNWIND BY SHOOTING CAGE-REARED PHEASANTS ANDOTHER BIRDS, FIRING AWAY AS THE FOWL OF THE AIR ARE RELEASED BEFORETHEM LIKE SKEET, WITH NO LIMIT ON THE DAY’S KILL.

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If one is using the word “obligation”seriously, moreover, then there is nopractical difference between an obliga-tion on our end not to mistreat animalsand an entitlement on their end not to bemistreated by us. Either way, we arerequired to do and not do the samethings. And either way, somewheredown the logical line, the entitlementwould have to arise from a recognitionof the inherent dignity of a living crea-ture. The moral standing of our fellowcreatures may be humble, but it isabsolute and not something within ourpower to confer or withhold. All crea-tures sing their Creator’s praises, as thistruth is variously expressed in the Bible,and are dear to Him for their own sakes.

A certain moral relativism runsthrough the arguments of those hostileor indifferent to animal welfare—as ifanimals can be of value only for oursake, as utility or preference decrees. Inpractice, this outlook leaves eachperson to decide for himself when ani-mals rate moral concern. It even allowsus to accept or reject such knowablefacts about animals as their cognitiveand emotional capacities, their con-scious experience of pain and happi-ness.

Elsewhere in contemporary debates,conservatives meet the foe of moral rel-ativism by pointing out that, like it ornot, we are all dealing with the same setof physiological realities and moraltruths. We don’t each get to decide thefacts of science on a situational basis.We do not each go about bestowingmoral value upon things as it pleases usat the moment. Of course, we do notdecide moral truth at all: we discern it.Human beings in their moral progresslearn to appraise things correctly, usingreasoned moral judgment to perceive aprior order not of our devising.

C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

calls this “the doctrine of objectivevalue, the belief that certain attitudes

are really true, and others really false, tothe kind of thing the universe is and thekind of things we are.” Such words ashonor, piety, esteem, and empathy donot merely describe subjective states ofmind, Lewis reminds us, but speak toobjective qualities in the world beyondthat merit those attitudes in us. “[T]o callchildren delightful or old men venera-ble,” he writes, “is not simply to record apsychological fact about our ownparental or filial emotions at themoment, but to recognize a qualitywhich demands a certain response fromus whether we make it or not.”

This applies to questions of cruelty aswell. A kindly attitude toward animals isnot a subjective sentiment; it is the cor-rect moral response to the objectivevalue of a fellow creature. Here, too,rational and virtuous conduct consistsin giving things their due and in doing soconsistently. If one animal’s pain—say,that of one’s pet—is real and deservingof sympathy, then the pain of essentiallyidentical animals is also meaningful, no

matter what conventional distinctionswe have made to narrow the scope ofour sympathy. If it is wrong to whip adog or starve a horse or bait bears forsport or grossly abuse farm animals, it iswrong for all people in every place.

The problem with moral relativism isthat it leads to capriciousness and thedespotic use of power. And the criticaldistinction here is not between humanobligations and animal rights, but ratherbetween obligations of charity and obli-gations of justice.

Active kindness to animals falls intothe former category. If you take in strays

or help injured wildlife or donate toanimal charities, those are fine things todo, but no one says you should be com-pelled to do them. Refraining from cru-elty to animals is a different matter, anobligation of justice not for us each toweigh for ourselves. It is not simplyunkind behavior, it is unjust behavior,and the prohibition against it is non-negotiable. Proverbs reminds us ofthis—“a righteous man regardeth thelife of his beast, but the tender merciesof the wicked are cruel”—and the lawsof America and of every other advancednation now recognize the wrongfulnessof such conduct with our crueltystatutes. Often applying felony-levelpenalties to protect certain domesticanimals, these state and federal statutesdeclare that even though your animalmay elsewhere in the law be defined asyour property, there are certain thingsyou may not do to that creature, and ifyou are found harming or neglecting theanimal, you will answer for your con-duct in a court of justice.

There are various reasons the statehas an interest in forbidding cruelty, oneof which is that cruelty is degrading tohuman beings. The problem is that manythinkers on this subject have strained tofind indirect reasons to explain why cru-elty is wrong and thereby to forceanimal cruelty into the category of thevictimless crime. The most common ofthese explanations asks us to believethat acts of cruelty matter only becausethe cruel person does moral injury tohimself or sullies his character—as ifthe man is our sole concern and the cru-elly treated animal is entirely incidental.

A CERTAIN MORAL RELATIVISM RUNS THROUGH THE ARGUMENTS OF THOSEHOSTILE OR INDIFFERENT TO ANIMAL WELFARE—AS IF ANIMALS CAN BE OF VALUE ONLY FOR OUR SAKE, AS UTILITY OR PREFERENCE DECREES.

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Cover Story

Only in abstract debates of moral orlegal theory would anyone quarrel withJudge Glenn’s description of the animalsas “victims” or deny that they were enti-tled to be treated better. Whether we callthis a “right” matters little, least of all tothe dogs, since the only right that anyanimal could possibly exercise is theright to be free from human abuse, neg-lect, or, in a fine old term of law, other“malicious mischief.” What mattersmost is that prohibitions against humancruelty be hard and binding. The sulliedsouls of the Johnsons are for the John-sons to worry about. The business ofjustice is to punish their offense and toprotect the creatures from humanwrongdoing. And in the end, just as inother matters of morality and justice,the interests of man are served by doingthe right thing for its own sake.

There is only one reason for con-demning cruelty that doesn’t beg thequestion of exactly why cruelty is awrong, a vice, or bad for our character:that the act of cruelty is an intrinsic evil.Animals cruelly dealt with are not justthings, not just an irrelevant detail insome self-centered moral drama of ourown. They matter in their own right, asthey matter to their Creator, and thewrongs of cruelty are wrongs done tothem. As The Catholic Encyclopedia

puts this point, there is a “direct andessential sinfulness of cruelty to theanimal world, irrespective of the resultsof such conduct on the character ofthose who practice it.”

Our cruelty statutes are a good andnatural development in Western law,codifying the claims of animals againsthuman wrongdoing, and, with thewisdom of men like Judge Glenn, assert-ing those claims on their behalf. Suchstatutes, however, address mostlyrandom or wanton acts of cruelty. Andthe persistent animal-welfare questionsof our day center on institutional cruel-ties—on the vast and systematic mis-

treatment of animals that most of usnever see.

Having conceded the crucial pointthat some animals rate our moral con-cern and legal protection, informed con-science turns naturally to other ani-mals—creatures entirely comparable intheir awareness, feeling, and capacityfor suffering. A dog is not the moralequal of a human being, but a dog is def-initely the moral equal of a pig, and it’sonly human caprice and economic con-venience that say otherwise. We havethe problem that these essentially simi-lar creatures are treated in dramaticallydifferent ways, unjustified even by thevery different purposes we haveassigned to them. Our pets are accordedcertain protections from cruelty, whilethe nameless creatures in our factoryfarms are hardly treated like animals atall. The challenge is one of consistency,of treating moral equals equally, andliving according to fair and rational stan-dards of conduct.

Whatever terminology we settle on,after all the finer philosophical pointshave been hashed over, the aim of theexercise is to prohibit wrongdoing. Allrights, in practice, are protectionsagainst human wrongdoing, and heretoo the point is to arrive at clear andconsistent legal boundaries on thethings that one may or may not do to ani-mals, so that every man is not left to bethe judge in his own case.

More than obligation, moderation,ordered liberty, or any of the other loftyideals we hold, what should attune con-servatives to all the problems of animalcruelty—and especially to the modernfactory farm—is our worldly side. Thegreat virtue of conservatism is that itbegins with a realistic assessment ofhuman motivations. We know man as heis, not only the rational creature butalso, as Socrates told us, the rationaliz-ing creature, with a knack for finding anangle, an excuse, and a euphemism.

Once again, the best test of theory is areal-life example. In 2002, Judge AlanGlenn of Tennessee’s Court of CriminalAppeals heard the case of a marriedcouple named Johnson, who had beenfound guilty of cruelty to 350 dogs lyingsick, starving, or dead in their puppy-mill kennel—a scene videotaped bypolice. Here is Judge Glenn’s responseto their supplications for mercy:

The victims of this crime were ani-mals that could not speak up to theunbelievable conduct of Judy FayJohnson and Stanley Paul Johnsonthat they suffered. Several of thedogs have died and most had phys-ical problems such as intestinalworms, mange, eye problems,dental problems and emotionalproblems and socialization prob-lems … . Watching this video of theconditions that these dogs weresubjected to was one of the mostdeplorable things this Court hasobserved. …

[T]his Court finds that probationwould not serve the ends of justice,nor be in the best interest of thepublic, nor would this have a deter-rent effect for such gross behav-ior. … The victims were particu-larly vulnerable. You treated thevictims with exceptional cruelty. …

There are those who would arguethat you should be confined in ahouse trailer with no ventilation orin a cell three-by-seven with eightor ten other inmates with noplumbing, no exercise and noopportunity to feel the sun or smellfresh air. However, the courts ofthis land have held that such treat-ment is cruel and inhuman, and itis. You will not be treated in thesame way that you treated thesehelpless animals that you abused tomake a dollar.

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Whether it’s the pornographer whothinks himself a free-speech championor the abortionist who looks in themirror and sees a reproductive health-care services provider, conservativesare familiar with the type.

So we should not be all that surprisedwhen told that these very same capaci-ties are often at work in the things thatpeople do to animals—and all the moreso in our $125 billion a year livestockindustry. The human mind, especiallywhen there is money to be had, can man-ufacture grand excuses for the exploita-tion of other human beings. How mucheasier it is for people to excuse thewrongs done to lowly animals.

Where animals are concerned, there isno practice or industry so low that some-one, somewhere, cannot produce a high-sounding reason for it. The sorriest littlemiscreant who shoots an elephant, lyingin wait by the water hole in some canned-hunting operation, is just “harvestingresources,” doing his bit for “conserva-tion.” The swarms of government-subsi-dized Canadian seal hunters slaughteringtens of thousands of newborn pups—hacking to death these unoffending crea-tures, even in sight of their mothers—offer themselves as the brave andindependent bearers of tradition. With thesame sanctimony and deep dishonesty,factory-farm corporations like SmithfieldFoods, ConAgra, and Tyson Foods stillcling to countrified brand names for theirlabels—Clear Run Farms, Murphy FamilyFarms, Happy Valley—to convince us andno doubt themselves, too, that they areengaged in something essential, whole-some, and honorable.

Yet when corporate farmers needbarbed wire around their Family Farmsand Happy Valleys and laws to prohibitoutsiders from taking photographs (as isthe case in two states) and still otherlaws to exempt farm animals from thedefinition of “animals” as covered in fed-eral and state cruelty statues, somethingis amiss. And if conservatives do noth-ing else about any other animal issue,we should attend at least to the factoryfarms, where the suffering is immenseand we are all asked to be complicit.

If we are going to have our meats andother animal products, there are naturalcosts to obtaining them, defined by theduties of animal husbandry and of vet-

erinary ethics. Factory farming cameabout when resourceful men figured outways of getting around those naturalcosts, applying new technologies toraise animals in conditions that wouldotherwise kill them by deprivation anddisease. With no laws to stop it, moralconcern surrendered entirely to eco-nomic calculation, leaving no limit to thepunishments that factory farmers couldinflict to keep costs down and profits up.Corporate farmers hardly speak any-more of “raising” animals, with the mod-icum of personal care that word implies.Animals are “grown” now, like so manycrops. Barns somewhere along the waybecame “intensive confinement facili-ties” and the inhabitants mere “produc-tion units.”

The result is a world in which billionsof birds, cows, pigs, and other creaturesare locked away, enduring miseries theydo not deserve, for our convenience andpleasure. We belittle the activists with

their radical agenda, scarcely noticingthe radical cruelty they seek to redress.

At the Smithfield mass-confinementhog farms I toured in North Carolina, thevisitor is greeted by a bedlam of squeal-ing, chain rattling, and horrible roaring.To maximize the use of space and mini-mize the need for care, the creatures areencased row after row, 400 to 500 poundmammals trapped without relief insideiron crates seven feet long and 22 incheswide. They chew maniacally on bars andchains, as foraging animals will do whendenied straw, or engage in stereotypicalnest-building with the straw that isn’tthere, or else just lie there like brokenbeings. The spirit of the place would befamiliar to police who raided that Ten-nessee puppy-mill run by Stanley andJudy Johnson, only instead of 350 tor-tured animals, millions—and the lawprohibits none of it.

Efforts to outlaw the gestation cratehave been dismissed by various conser-vative critics as “silly,” “comical,” “ridicu-lous.” It doesn’t seem that way up close.The smallest scraps of human charity—a bit of maternal care, room to roam out-doors, straw to lie on—have long sincebeen taken away as costly luxuries, andso the pigs know the feel only of con-crete and metal. They lie covered intheir own urine and excrement, withbroken legs from trying to escape or justto turn, covered with festering sores,tumors, ulcers, lesions, or what myguide shrugged off as the routine “puspockets.”

C.S. Lewis’s description of animalpain—“begun by Satan’s malice and per-petrated by man’s desertion of hispost”—has literal truth in our factoryfarms because they basically run them-selves through the wonders of automa-tion, and the owners are off in spaciouscorporate offices reviewing their spread-sheets. Rarely are the creatures’ afflic-tions examined by a vet or even noticedby the migrant laborers charged with

TO MAXIMIZE THE USE OF SPACE AND MINIMIZE THE NEED FOR CARE, THECREATURES ARE ENCASED ROW AFTER ROW, FOUR- TO FIVE-HUNDRED POUNDMAMMALS TRAPPED WITHOUT RELIEF INSIDE IRON CRATES 22 INCHES WIDE.

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their care, unless of course some ailmentthreatens production—meaning whocares about a lousy ulcer or broken leg,as long as we’re still getting the piglets?

Kept alive in these conditions only byantibiotics, hormones, laxatives, andother additives mixed into theirmachine-fed swill, the sows leave theircrates only to be driven or dragged intoother crates, just as small, to bring forththeir piglets. Then it’s back to the gesta-tion crate for another four months, andso on back and forth until after seven oreight pregnancies they finally expirefrom the punishment of it or else areculled with a club or bolt-gun.

As you can see at www.factoryfarming.com/gallery.htm, industrial livestockfarming operates on an economy ofscale, presupposing a steady attritionrate. The usual comforting rejoinder wehear—that it’s in the interest of farm-ers to take good care of their animals—is false. Each day, in every confinementfarm in America, you will find cull penslittered with dead or dying creaturesdiscarded like trash.

For the piglets, it’s a regimen of teethcutting, tail docking (performed withpliers, to heighten the pain of tail chew-ing and so deter this natural response tomass confinement), and other mutila-tions. After five or six months trapped inone of the grim warehouses that nowpass for barns, they’re trucked off,355,000 pigs every day in the life ofAmerica, for processing at a furiouspace of thousands per hour by migrantswho use earplugs to muffle the screams.All of these creatures, and billions moreacross the earth, go to their deathsknowing nothing of life, and nothing ofman, except the foul, tortured existenceof the factory farm, having never evenbeen outdoors.

But not to worry, as a SmithfieldFoods executive assured me, “They loveit.” It’s all “for their own good.” It is avoice conservatives should instantly

recognize, as we do when it tells us thatthe fetus feels nothing. Everything aboutthe picture shows bad faith, moral sloth,and endless excuse-making, all readilyanswered by conservative arguments.

We are told “they’re just pigs” or cowsor chickens or whatever and that onlyurbanites worry about such things,estranged as they are from the realities ofrural life. Actually, all of factory farmingproceeds by a massive denial of reality—the reality that pigs and other animals arenot just production units to be endlesslyexploited but living creatures withnatures and needs. The very modesty ofthose needs—their humble desires forstraw, soil, sunshine—is the gravestindictment of the men who deny them.

Conservatives are supposed to reveretradition. Factory farming has no tradi-tions, no rules, no codes of honor, nolittle decencies to spare for a fellowcreature. The whole thing is an aban-donment of rural values and a betrayalof honorable animal husbandry—to saynothing of veterinary medicine, with itssworn oath to “protect animal health”and to “relieve animal suffering.”

Likewise, we are told to look awayand think about more serious things.Human beings simply have far biggerproblems to worry about than the wellbeing of farm animals, and surely all ofthis zeal would be better directed atcauses of human welfare.

You wouldn’t think that men who areunwilling to grant even a few extrainches in cage space, so that a pig canturn around, would be in any position tofault others for pettiness. Why are smallacts of kindness beneath us, but notsmall acts of cruelty? The larger prob-lem with this appeal to moral priority,

however, is that we are dealing with suf-fering that occurs through humanagency. Whether it’s miserliness here,carelessness there, or greed throughout,the result is rank cruelty for which par-ticular people must answer.

Since refraining from cruelty is anobligation of justice, moreover, there isno avoiding the implications. All thegoods invoked in defense of factoryfarming, from the efficiency and higherprofits of the system to the lower costsof the products, are false goods unjustlyderived. No matter what right andpraiseworthy things we are doing else-where in life, when we live off a crueland disgraceful thing like factory farm-ing, we are to that extent living unjustly,and that is hardly a trivial problem.

For the religious-minded, and Cath-olics in particular, no less an authoritythan Pope Benedict XVI has explainedthe spiritual stakes. Asked recently toweigh in on these very questions, Cardi-nal Ratzinger told German journalistPeter Seewald that animals must berespected as our “companions in cre-ation.” While it is licit to use them for

food, “we cannot just do whatever wewant with them. ... Certainly, a sort ofindustrial use of creatures, so that geeseare fed in such a way as to produce aslarge a liver as possible, or hens live sopacked together that they become justcaricatures of birds, this degrading ofliving creatures to a commodity seems tome in fact to contradict the relationship ofmutuality that comes across in the Bible.”

Factory farmers also assure us that allof this is an inevitable stage of industrialefficiency. Leave aside the obvious replythat we could all do a lot of things in lifemore efficiently if we didn’t have to trou-

Cover Story

FACTORY FARMING HAS NO TRADITIONS, NO RULES, NO CODES OF HONOR. THEWHOLE THING IS A BETRAYAL OF HONORABLE ANIMAL HUSBANDRY.

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departments) have been tampering withthe genes of pigs and other animals tolocate and expunge that part of theirgenetic makeup that makes themstressed in factory farm conditions—taking away the desire to protect them-selves and to live. Instead of redesigningthe factory farm to suit the animals, theyare redesigning the animals to suit thefactory farm.

Are there no boundaries of nature andelementary ethics that the conservativeshould be the first to see? The hubris of

such projects is beyond belief, onlymore because of the foolish and frivo-lous goods to be gained—blood-freemeats and the perfect pork chop.

No one who does not profit fromthem can look at our modern factoryfarms or frenzied slaughter plants oragricultural laboratories with theirfeatherless chickens and fear-free pigsand think, “Yes, this is humanity at ourfinest—exactly as things should be.”Devils charged with designing a farmcould hardly have made it more severe.Least of all should we look for sanctionin Judeo-Christian morality, whosewhole logic is one of gracious conde-scension, of the proud learning to behumble, the higher serving the lower,and the strong protecting the weak.

Those religious conservatives who, inevery debate over animal welfare, rushto remind us that the animals them-selves are secondary and man mustcome first are exactly right—only theydon’t follow their own thought to itsmoral conclusion. Somehow, in theirpious notions of stewardship anddominion, we always seem to end up

with singular moral dignity but no singu-lar moral accountability to go with it.

Lofty talk about humanity’s specialstatus among creatures only invites suchquestions as: what would the Good Shep-herd make of our factory farms? Wheredoes the creature of conscience get offlording it over these poor creatures somercilessly? “How is it possible,” as Mal-colm Muggeridge asked in the years whenfactory farming began to spread, “to lookfor God and sing his praises while insult-ing and degrading his creatures? If, as I

had thought, all lambs are the Agnus Dei,then to deprive them of light and the fieldand their joyous frisking and the sky is theworst kind of blasphemy.”

The writer B.R. Meyers remarked inThe Atlantic, “research could prove thatcows love Jesus, and the line at theMcDonald’s drive-through wouldn’t beone sagging carload shorter the next day…. Has any generation in history everbeen so ready to cause so much sufferingfor such a trivial advantage? We deadenour consciences to enjoy—for a few min-utes a day—the taste of blood, the feel ofour teeth meeting through muscle.”

That is a cynical but serious indict-ment, and we must never let it be true ofus in the choices we each make or urgeupon others. If reason and morality arewhat set human beings apart from ani-mals, then reason and morality mustalways guide us in how we treat them, orelse it’s all just caprice, unbridledappetite with the pretense of piety.When people say that they like theirpork chops, veal, or foie gras just toomuch ever to give them up, reason hearsin that the voice of gluttony, willfulness,

ble ourselves with ethical restraints.Leave aside, too, the tens of billions ofdollars in annual federal subsidies thathave helped megafarms underminesmall family farms and the decent com-munities that once surrounded themand to give us the illusion of cheap prod-ucts. And never mind the collateraldamage to land, water, and air that fac-tory farms cause and the more billionsof dollars it costs taxpayers to clean upafter them. Factory farming is a preda-tory enterprise, absorbing profit andexternalizing costs, unnaturally proppedup by political influence and govern-ment subsidies much as factory-farmedanimals are unnaturally sustained byhormones and antibiotics.

Even if all the economic argumentswere correct, conservatives usuallyaren’t impressed by breathless talk ofinevitable progress. I am asked some-times how a conservative could possiblycare about animal suffering in factoryfarms, but the question is premised on aliberal caricature of conservatism—theassumption that, for all of our fine talkabout moral values, “compassionateconservatism” and the like, everythingwe really care about can be counted indollars. In the case of factory farming,and the conservative’s blithe tolerance ofit, the caricature is too close to the truth.

Exactly how far are we all preparedto follow these industrial and technolog-ical advances before pausing to takestock of where things stand and where itis all tending? Very soon companies likeSmithfield plan to have tens of millionsof cloned animals in their factory farms.Other companies are at work geneticallyengineering chickens without feathersso that one day all poultry farmers mightbe spared the toil and cost of de-feather-ing their birds. For years, the many shillsfor our livestock industry employed inthe “Animal Science” and “Meat Sci-ence” departments of rural universities(we used to call them Animal Husbandry

FACTORY FARMING IS A PREDATORY ENTERPRISE, UNNATURALLY PROPPED UP BYPOLITICAL INFLUENCE AND GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES MUCH AS FACTORY-FARMEDANIMALS ARE UNNATURALLY SUSTAINED BY HORMONES AND ANTIBIOTICS.

Page 9: Conservative The American MAY 23, 2005 TORTURE … · Mercy. And though my tome never quite hit the bestseller lists, there ought to be some special literary prize for a work

14 T h e A m e r i c a n C o n s e r v a t i v e M a y 2 3 , 2 0 0 5

Cover Story

or at best moral complaisance. Whatmakes a human being human is pre-cisely the ability to understand that thesuffering of an animal is more importantthan the taste of a treat.

Of the many conservatives whoreviewed Dominion, every last one con-ceded that factory farming is a wretchedbusiness and a betrayal of humanresponsibility. So it should be a shortstep to agreement that it also constitutesa serious issue of law and public policy.Having granted that certain practicesare abusive, cruel, and wrong, we mustbe prepared actually to do somethingabout them.

Among animal activists, of course,there are some who go too far—thereare in the best of causes. But fairnessrequires that we judge a cause by its bestadvocates instead of making straw men

of the worst. There isn’t much money inchampioning the cause of animals, sowe’re dealing with some pretty altruisticpeople who on that account alonedeserve the benefit of the doubt.

If we’re looking for fitting targets forinquiry and scorn, for people with anangle and a truly pernicious influence,better to start with groups like Smith-field Foods (my candidate for the worstcorporation in America in its ruthless-ness to people and animals alike), theNational Pork Producers Council (a reli-able Republican contributor), or the var-ious think tanks in Washington subsi-dized by animal-use industries forintellectual cover.

After the last election, the NationalPork Producers Council rejoiced, “Pres-ident Bush’s victory ensures that theU.S. pork industry will be very well posi-tioned for the next four years politically,

and pork producers will benefit from thelong-term results of a livestock agricul-ture-friendly agenda.” But this is no trib-ute. And millions of good people wholive in what’s left of America’s smallfamily-farm communities would them-selves rejoice if the president were toannounce that he is prepared to sign abipartisan bill making some basicreforms in livestock agriculture.

Bush’s new agriculture secretary,former Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns,has shown a sympathy for animal wel-fare. He and the president might both besurprised at the number and variety ofsupporters such reforms would find inthe Congress, from Republicans likeChris Smith and Elton Gallegly in theHouse to John Ensign and Rick Santo-rum in the Senate, along with Democ-rats such as Robert Byrd, Barbara

Boxer, or the North Carolina congress-man who called me in to say that he, too,was disgusted and saddened by hogfarming in his state.

If such matters were ever brought toPresident Bush’s attention in a seriousway, he would find in the details of fac-tory farming many things abhorrent tothe Christian heart and to his own kindlyinstincts. Even if he were to drop intorelevant speeches a few of the prohib-ited words in modern industrial agricul-ture (cruel, humane, compassionate),instead of endlessly flattering corporatefarmers for virtues they lack, that alonewould help to set reforms in motion.

We need our conservative valuesvoters to get behind a Humane FarmingAct so that we can all quit averting oureyes. This reform, a set of explicit fed-eral cruelty statutes with enforcementfunding to back it up, would leave us

with farms we could imagine withoutwincing, photograph without prosecu-tion, and explain without excuses.

The law would uphold not only the ele-mentary standards of animal husbandrybut also of veterinary ethics, following nomore complicated a principle than thatpigs and cows should be able to walk andturn around, fowl to move about andspread their wings, and all creatures toknow the feel of soil and grass and thewarmth of the sun. No need for labelssaying “free-range” or “humanely raised.”They will all be raised that way. They allget to be treated like animals and not asunfeeling machines.

On a date certain, mass confinement,sow gestation crates, veal crates, batterycages, and all such innovations wouldbe prohibited. This will end livestockagriculture’s moral race to the bottomand turn the ingenuity of its scientiststoward compassionate solutions. It willremove the federal support that unnatu-rally serves agribusiness at the expenseof small farms. And it will shifteconomies of scale, turning the balancein favor of humane farmers—as thosewho run companies like Wal-Mart coulddo right now by taking their businessaway from factory farms.

In all cases, the law would apply tocorporate farmers a few simple rulesthat better men would have beenobserving all along: we cannot just takefrom these creatures, we must give themsomething in return. We owe them amerciful death, and we owe them a mer-ciful life. And when human beingscannot do something humanely, withoutdegrading both the creatures and our-selves, then we should not do it at all.

Matthew Scully served until last fall as

special assistant and deputy director of

speechwriting to President George W.

Bush. He is the author of Dominion:The Power of Man, the Suffering of Ani-mals, and the Call to Mercy.

HAVING GRANTED THAT CERTAIN PRACTICES ARE ABUSIVE, CRUEL, AND WRONG,WE MUST BE PREPARED ACTUALLY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM.