Jeff McMahan on Benign Carnivorism

Benign carnivorism is the view that it is morally permissible to consume animals as long as they have had good lives and are killed painlessly. Proponents of benign carnivorism believe that animal suffering matters considerably more than animal lives. They would argue that, if the avoidance of suffering was significantly more important for animals than living to enjoy the goods of the future, it would be in their best interest to be painlessly killed before they can experience any suffering whatsoever. However, McMahan argues that it is better for animals to experience a minor degree of suffering so that they can enjoy the goods of the future. This is not the strongest argument in my opinion. Although human beings are generally willing to experience a small degree of suffering to enjoy the goods of the future, the same cannot be confidently asserted about animals. Due to the fact that animals are only self-conscious to a rudimentary degree and can therefore not contemplate anything beyond the immediate future, it does not make a difference from their point of view whether their suffering is in vain or not: all they are aware of is their present condition. Therefore, for us to assume they would prefer to experience a certain degree of suffering in the present for the sake of enjoying future goods is neither fair nor rational. Although it would be a worthwhile sacrifice in our eyes, animals live in the moment – they do not have desires, ambitions, or intentions for the future. Thus, the assumption that our interests overlap in this way is logically unfounded.

According to McMahan, to suggest that it is ‘better’ for an animal to exist implies that it would have been worse for that animal never to have existed, and that comparatives like ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are therefore a bad way of rationalizing the quality of an animal’s existence. He suggests that it can be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for an animal to exist and that the debate about benign carnivorism depends on whether the good aspects of an animal’s life outweigh the bad aspects. He argues that the pleasure humans derive from eating meat is generally greater that the pleasure they derive from eating plant foods, but we must compare the interest of an animal to continue living with the humans’ interest to satiate their tastebuds and stomach by consuming the animal’s flesh. I agree with this because the difference in pleasure humans get from eating meat versus eating plant foods is far smaller than the difference in pleasure animals get from being alive versus being killed against their will, no matter how painlessly it is done. McMahan concludes that the interests of twenty people to enjoy the taste of meat for a matter of minutes does not outweigh the animal’s interest to live out the rest of its life happily (and enjoy its own food for years!).

However, McMahan concedes that benign carnivorism may be good for animals overall. While killing animals is bad for them, the good lives they have lived provide enough good to outweigh the bad aspects of their lives such being killed. The proponent of benign carnivorism would argue that allowing one component of a practice to discredit the morality of the practice as a whole is a mistake. This counterargument is sound in my opinion, for the fact that a human is killed painlessly at the end of a long and fulfilling life does not overwhelm all the other positive aspects of the human’s life. McMahan also argues that there are no animal interests that favor implementing benign carnivorism since the animals at stake are not alive or conscious yet and therefore do not have interests. However, he fails to acknowledge the other side of his own argument, namely that there are also no interests that reject implementing benign carnivorism, so to assume that animals would dislike benign carnivorism would be deciding their interests for them.

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral" - Leo Tolstoy