Letter to the Editor: Vegetarians, etc. have no exit strategy.
In the Wednesday, 7Dec05 edition of the Statesman, Moss-Holmes presented a well defended argument in favor of veganism and animal rights. However, I would like to ask the animal rights community some questions.
I will start with the assumptions presented by Moss-Holmes: we should be concerned with animal welfare and rights, that animals feel pain and should not experience it, and they deserve comfort. Another statement I will consider is the amount of land used/damaged for raising meat animals.
Let’s say tomorrow everyone agrees to stop meat consumption. What do we do with the animals? Since they are no longer economic commodities, someone
will have to pay for their comfortable and pain free existence. Who would pay? Maintaining these animals would be economically infeasible, so we would have to let the animals go free. If animals have rights, we shouldn’t interfere with their right to reproduce.
These newly freed animals would quickly over-populate, which would do more to consume land resources, not free them up and feed the world as Moss-Holmes suggests. Then they would die by starvation, disease, and killing sprees of wild carnivores and domestic dogs that would likely get in on the scene (by the way, how does the animal rights community feel about carnivores? Do they need to change their diet?).
What about the pain animals would feel without human intervention? For example, modern dairy animals produce much more milk than their offspring can consume. They would experience painful engorgement. Many domestic animals are ill equipped to fend for themselves, and many would die without help.
I have yet to come across an animal rights activist that has a well thought out “exit strategy.” I have tried to paint the most likely scenario according to my knowledge of the assumptions presented by Moss-Holmes and my knowledge of domestic and wild animal behavior (I would appreciate corrections).
In conclusion, which is worse for the animals? Allowing them to die by the most humane ways a slaughter house can use, or to die by starvation, disease, killings by nonhuman carnivores and as road kill?
Stephen Tueller