Is “factory farming” the moral equivalent to Auschwitz?

1. Is “factory farming” the moral equivalent to Auschwitz? No. Humans have more ability to feel mental and physical pain than most animals. However, while they are not morally equivalent, they are both wrong. That's the important concept.

2. While the Nazi holocaust and today’s abuse of animals are not morally equivalent, there are useful analogies. In both cases the number of individuals tortured is enormous, the treatment of the oppressed is indescribable, and the possibility of freedom fully resides in the hands of some benefactors. In the United States, billions of animals die each year in structures like death camps that are hidden from public view. Like the manufacturers of the Holocaust, animal killers need a justification to abandon caring for animals, and they need an industry that efficiently kills and keeps the blood from seeping into public consciousness.

3. People who knew…. Isaac Bashevis Singer: "There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a la Hitler and concentration camps a la Stalin... There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is." Edgar Kupfer was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp in 1940. To read his opinion, click: http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/AbuseLinked/Dachau.htm

4. Nazi holocaust survivor Georges Metanomski, who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising:“When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz [the spot in the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps]. When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates.” 

5. Animals in factory farms • "Veal" calves spend their entire life individually confined to narrow stalls too narrow for them to turn around in. cartoon video: • http://www.noveal.org/forgetaboutit • Laying hens live a year or more in cages the size of a filing drawer, seven or more per cage, after which they routinely are starved for two weeks to encourage another laying cycle. • See http://www.MeatYourMeat.com, http://www.VeganOutreach.org, http://www.TryVeg.com

6. Hogs & Cows • Female hogs are housed for four or five years in individual barred enclosures ("gestation stalls") barely wider than their bodies, where they are forced to birth litter after litter. • Until the recent "Mad Cow" scare, beef and dairy cattle too weak to stand ("downers") were dragged or pushed to their slaughter. [industry is trying to block “no downer”legislation;http://www.FarmSanctuary.org]

7. Kosher Slaughter • Kosher slaughter is where an animal is hoisted and bled to death without prior stunning. Often joints are ruptured during the hoisting, and the death is a slow, conscious one.

8. What is wrong with leather if it’s just a by-product of slaughter? • Some cows are grown and slaughtered purely for their skins. • Regardless, buying leather products contributes to the profits of slaughtering cows, which makes cow products more economically competitive with vegan products. Which means that more cow products are sold. Creating more profit. Which lowers the price again. And on and on ad-nauseum.

9. Current reality of meat • Meat producers want the least costly means of producing meat for human consumption. If that means that animals are made to suffer by that process, then, because they are not deserving of moral respect, producers do not worry unduly about it. • It might be morally justified to eat meat if that is all we had to eat, or if meat were the only thing which would properly nourish us, but neither of these things is the case.

10. Don't crop harvest techniques lead to the death of animals? • Accidental deaths can’t be compared, morally, to intentional deaths. That’s like saying, “Since some people die in car accidents, it must be okay to run over people in my car.” • In neither case, that of animals on crop farms or that of people on the road, should we deliberately take lives. In both cases we should work to minimize the number of accidental deaths.

11. What if I made use of an animal that was already dead? While it is wrong to purchase animal-based products, it may be good for animals to use them if they are ‘already dead’. Obviously, this doesn’t justify buying a hamburger because it is ‘already dead’, since more meat will be murdered to replace it. More practically, this means that if you are given a leather wallet, you should use it before you go buy a vegan wallet, because the vegan wallet would cost money that could be sent to a no-kill shelter. Ramifications of actions are usually complex, and each specific situation requires analysis (please don't over-analyze if it takes time away from helping animals or earning money that could help animals).

12. Hypothetical: Is eating meat intrinsically wrong? • Saying that the mistreatment of animals in the meat production process is immoral is one thing, saying that eating meat itself is immoral is another. • If we can raise animals for slaughter that do not suffer, and which are quickly and painlessly killed, then would eating meat morally acceptable?

13. The morality of painless killing • If it is wrong to kill a person painlessly why it is not also wrong to kill an animal painlessly? • Animals are not as complex as human beings, but they “live in communities, communicate with one another, have ongoing social relationships, suffer, and are capable of happiness, as well as fear and distress, as we are.”

14. Why not?

15. The right to life and painless killing • If we assume that humans have a right to life - it would be wrong to murder a normal, healthy human even if it were done painlessly - and it is hard to think of any plausible rationale for granting this right to humans that does not also apply to other animals. • So what could be the rational basis for saying that we have a right to life, but that they don’t? What could be the rational basis for saying that a severely retarded person, who is inferior in every important respect to an intelligent animal, has a right to life but the animal doesn’t?

16. The amelioration argument • The hypothetical amelioration argument: If animals can be made not to suffer, then they can be killed (quickly and painlessly) and eaten. • “The more animals that can be brought to lead pleasant lives, the more animals that escape the argument from pain and suffering and so may be eaten.” • All a concerned individual need do then is to look for improvements in factory farming so that animals no longer suffer.