Eating Animals: A Review

Eating Animals is an urgent appeal for humans to step away from factory farming, suggesting traditional farming is the only way forward. The documentary highlights the negative impact factory farming has on animal welfare, the environment, and human health. It emphasizes that factory farms have disconnected eating meat from killing animals to shield the conscience of consumers and that this psychological refuge is insidious because people become complicit in the inhumane treatment of animals. Over time, farmers have repeatedly pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable, thereby shifting the window of discourse and increasing the psychological distance between humans and our food sources. Several whistleblowers interviewed in the documentary allude to the fact that, should slaughterhouses have glass walls, people would find what goes on inside morally repulsive.

Using the narratives of several farmers as primary illustrations, Eating Animals suggests that factory farming has diminished the role played by traditional outdoor farms by creating a competitive market for farmers whereby cooperation is disincentivized under the tournament system. The farmers interviewed believe that this has ultimately led to less compassion for animals, less appreciation for the beauty of farming as a way of life, and disrespect for farmers, who are generally treated like servants. With every aspect of factory farming geared towards maximizing efficiency, there is no consideration for the moral status of non-human animals. The only concern is meeting the world’s rapidly growing demand. In fact, factory farming is so neglectful of its stakeholders that corporations such as the MARCN were reported to have carried out experiments to determine how close to death they could keep animals without actually killing them. Essentially, with all efforts going towards maximizing profits and efficiency, everything else is irrelevant to these companies.

A proponent of factory farming might argue that we have been using animals for their flesh, secretions, and labor for thousands of years and that it is therefore morally permissible to do so as efficiently as possible in the present. However, such a person would be falling victim to the fallacy that the longevity of an action makes it moral. After all, members of our society have been murdering and raping each other for thousands of years, but does that make it morally acceptable to murder and rape today?

An alternative argument states that slaughtering animals for human consumption is morally justified if the animals have lived happy lives. However, this argument is not morally sound in my opinion. I believe that slaughtering a happy animal is even more morally reprehensible than slaughtering a suffering animal due to the fact that the happy animal valued its existence as opposed to the suffering animal which did not. This is not to say we should let animals suffer so that killing them is less immoral.

Similarly, it is frequently argued that farm animals would not be here if we didn’t breed them into existence, so we should therefore have autocratic control over their lives which entails the authority to kill them. However, put into a different context, the logic is tarnished by what we consider acceptable in the western world. For example, is dogfighting morally permissible because the dogs used are bred into existence solely for that purpose?

The problem with the marketing ploy “humane slaughter” is that it is an oxymoron. Humane means showing benevolence and compassion, but there is no compassionate way to unnecessarily (given the ubiquity of plant-based alternatives such as Beyond Meat) take the life of a sentient being that does not want to die. No matter how you put it, slaughtering animals for the sake of sensory pleasure and with such drastic consequences environmentally and ethically cannot be morally justified.

"For me, eating is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do." - Natalie Portman

"It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal." - Joaquin Phoenix