James McWilliams has written another anti-meat column for The Atlantic. That’s his beat after all. Let’s see if it contains any fallacies.
Here’s McWilliams:
I’ve repeatedly argued that supporting alternatives to the industrial production of animal products serves the ultimate interest of industrial producers. The decision to eat animal products sourced from small, local, and sustainable farms might seem like a fundamental rejection of big business as usual. It is, however, an implicit but powerful confirmation of the single most critical behavior necessary to the perpetuation of factory farming: eating animals. So long as consumers continue to eat meat, eggs, and dairy — even if they are sourced from small farms practicing the highest welfare and safety standards — they’re providing, however implicitly, an endorsement of the products that big agriculture will always be able to produce more efficiently and cheaply. And thus dominate.
The logic of this argument — that you shouldn’t buy more ethically acceptable versions of items that are usually produced unethically because this could be seen as endorsing the unethical version — could be used against purchasing everything from shirts to soy beans. Should we not buy clothing from manufacturers paying their employees a living wage because wearing ethical clothing could be seen as an endorsement of clothing on the whole, which is more often than not made by underpaid workers? Should we not buy tomatoes from the farmers market because that would endorse tomatoes, which are most efficiently produced by slave migrant labor?
Just because McWilliams has “repeatedly argued” this point doesn’t mean it makes sense.
He continues:
Until the act of eating animals itself is made problematic, “voting with our forks” will be little more than a vacuous slogan. Critics claim that it’s unrealistic to expect a substantial transition to veganism, and advocate the support of small-scale animal farms as a more achievable alternative. What’s truly unrealistic, however, is the expectation that small, more eco-friendly and “humane” farms will permanently defy economic logic and convince a meaningful percentage of meat and dairy eaters to spend substantially more money to buy a nobler egg or pork chop. I’d bet on a massive transition to veganism before a massive transition to economic irrationality.
How is it irrational to spend more money on animal products from farms you approve of because you don’t like animal torture, but rational to never eat animal products again for similar reasons? Becoming an “ethical omnivore” does have its costs. You usually have to pay more for animal products, though if you’re not afraid of offal or less popular animals, you can often get meat on the cheap. At a farmers market near me, you can get a whole wild rabbit for £4, and half a pig’s head for a little more than that: about a week’s ration of meat for two people for around £10. True, so-called “ethical omnivores” often can’t eat meat when they’re at restaurants or in other situations where they don’t have control over the ingredients, and thus they have to eat like vegans sometimes (or take the bivalve option if there is one). But unless vegans practice freeganism or are cool with eating bivalves, insects and other animal products that fit vegan ethics, they always have to eat like vegans, making “convenience, habit and taste” even harder to satisfy for them than for ethics-minded omnivores. After all, ethical omnivores can eat the vegan option but vegans can’t eat the humane meat option. So how is veganism less of a sacrifice and thus less irrational than eating only humane meat?
It’s irrational to knowingly pay more for something that doesn’t contain any additional value. It’s not irrational to pay more for humane meat because if you care about animal treatment, it’s a much better product than factory farmed meat. As long as there are people who care about animal suffering but don’t see anything wrong with intentionally killing animals for food, there will be a market for humane meat.
And really, McWilliams doesn’t think people behave in economically irrational ways? How would he explain the existence of name brand cereals when the generic store versions are so much cheaper (just to give one of endless possible examples)? And unlike humane meat vs. factory farmed meat, there’s not even a discernible difference between Rice Krispies and Crisp Ricies.
McWilliams again:
A point that’s germane to this issue, but frequently muted, is how the preexisting power and amorality of industrial animal agriculture enables it to manipulate the rhetoric of alternative animal-based systems to its profitable advantage. Agribusiness has been conspicuously nonplussed by the rise of the food movement, shrugging its shoulders as it markets itself as “sustainable,” “supporting family farms,” and steadfastly oriented toward the “welfare” of animals. Industry grasps, then thrills in manipulating, the axiom that language is both cheap and powerful. Industrial machinations are helped along by the fact that the food movement’s buzzwords are slackened catchphrases that allow the largest pig farm on the planet to advertise itself as “humane” and “sustainable.” This fungible verbal lexicon, with every well-meaning new term appropriated by the marketers at Big Ag, is the food movement’s Achilles’ heel.
Translation: never trust labels. If you care about the conditions of the farm you’re buying from, research it. Just because corporations co-opt buzzwords doesn’t mean that the original idea behind “humane” no longer exists.
McWilliams writes:
A recent confirmation of this point is the emergence of an organization called humanewatch.org. Contrary to how it sounds, HumaneWatch is the self-appointed watchdog — think Cujo — of a group that actually does watch out for dogs, and many other animals, with admirable dedication: the Humane Society of the United States. Calling HSUS a “stealth animal rights organization” that’s stealing money from the public to promote secret agendas, humanewatch.com is a propaganda tool of the Center for Consumer Freedom. According to Source Watch, CCF is “a front group for the restaurant, alcohol, tobacco, and other industries” that “run media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, health advocates, doctors, animal advocates, [and] environmentalists.” Its website offers a sordid example of how the pursuit of sustainable animal agriculture, so long as the consumption of animal products is encouraged, easily plays into the hands of influential industrial interests.
If we are to take any tangible point from McWilliams’ paragraph before this one, it would have to be that we shouldn’t support small-scale animal farms because corporations that don’t care about animal welfare can easily steal and distort the language of humane meat suppliers. Yet to illustrate this point, McWilliams says that the Humane Society of the United States (a pro-animal organization that McWilliams seems to support) has had its name co-opted and distorted by the odious pro-meat group the Center for Consumer Freedom. So if we can’t trust humane meat suppliers because cruel corporations have taken their language, shouldn’t we not support the Humane Society of the United States now that their language has been co-opted too?
Right now industry is merely stealing words, concepts, and websites. In the unlikely event that mass economic irrationality prevails, and there is in fact a statistically meaningful transition to supporting the non-industrial production of animal products, what’s to stop industrial agriculture from building a few token sustainable farms where the animals are pastured, pampered, and publicized? Most of the small-scale animal farmers I know are literally living hand to mouth. Tyson’s or Smithfield wouldn’t suffer such hardships.
So if there is a massive change toward supporting non-industrial animal farming, this will actually be worse for non-industrial farmers because large agriculture corporations will act like the best non-industrial farmers and raise some of their animals humanely, thus competing with them more directly? Interesting.
If it were the case that Smithfield and Tyson decided to get in on some of the humane animal action, ethical omnivores would then face the dilemma that vegans face now: should they buy food that fits their ethics from a company that otherwise doesn’t? If the answer is yes, then - like vegans who buy vegan food produced by non-vegan companies - they will consider buying humane meat from Smithfield or Tyson. If not, they’ll continue to buy from the small-scale farmer. And they might still choose the small farmer for other reasons anyway, perhaps because they’d rather support them than a corporation, even though both produce meat from non-tortured animals.
If there were more ethical omnivores and this prompted big companies to try to satisfy that demand by meeting ethical omnivore standards, they could siphon off some of the dollars that would have gone to small-scale farmers. But with more ethical omnivores on the whole, there would still be plenty left to support small farmers. Either way, there would be more humane farming, so I’m not sure I see the problem.
We’ll never beat Big Ag at its own game. Those of us concerned with the myriad problems of industrial agriculture will make genuine progress toward creating agricultural systems that are ethical, ecologically sound, and supportive of human health only when we pursue alternatives that are truly alternative. The most immediate and direct way to take a step in this direction is to stop eating animals.
“Big Ag” makes vegetables, fruits and grains as well as animal products. If buying meat directly from farmers or raising animals for food in your backyard doesn’t accomplish anything because big corporations also raise animals for food, then growing your own vegetables or buying vegan food also will fail because it too is trying to beat Big Ag at its own game. Why is McWilliams selectively lashing out at meat when all his arguments apply equally to vegan food?
Oh right. Because he’s vegan.
