Torture is not the purpose of farming animals. Meat is the purpose, suffering a side-effect. No farmer is going to out of their way to torture their livestock if they think it isn’t suffering enough.
This is true.
While it’s true that torture isn’t the purpose, many workers in animal agriculture/farmers do go out of their way to torture animals, beyond what is entailed in profit seeking. Whether as a form of sadism, taking out their anger, a twisted and ineffective attempt at discipline, it certainly happens.
This may be somewhat tangential, but I think it’s worth noting.
Personally I’ve listened to a farmer I know gleefully recounting stories of repeatedly hitting his cows with baseball bats, in the face and body. It’s anecdotal, but growing up in rural environments I’ve heard a lot of things like that. He also talked/joked about performing DIY surgery on their genitals without anesthesia, which technically has a profit motive, but I think it’s indicative of an attitude of indifference to causing them extreme suffering.
There’s also all sorts of reports and undercover footage of workers beating and mutilating animals, often without any purpose behind it.
It’s a bit difficult to disentangle torture for the sake of torture, from torture which is vaguely aimed at profit seeking (though torture for the sake of harming the animal does happen).
If someone wants an animal to move somewhere, or if they want to perform an excruciating procedure on the animal without it struggling too much, they may beat the animal until it does what they want it to. They may be using this as an opportunity to vent their aggression. You could say profit seeking/meat is the ultimate purpose of that. However I think there’s a lot of context in between the dichotomy of ‘torture for profit’ vs ‘torture for torture’.
These things often happen in a context where the industries have final say over whether a particular practice constitutes unlawful treatment. Where it’s illegal to record and release video footage of what goes on there. Where local law enforcement has no interest in enforcing laws when there are laws.
I think abuse for the sake of abuse is common in any environment with power imbalances, lack of oversight, and resource constraints. Nursing homes, schools, prisons, policing, hospitals, etc. All entail countless examples of people with power over others abusing others, with the main purpose being some sort of emotional catharsis.
Those are industries where humans are the victims, members of the ingroup, who have laws and norms meant to protect their interests. I think beyond all of the available evidence of ‘torture for the sake of torture’ on farms, it also makes sense to assume it does/will happen.
I guess there’s a tricky thing here because one needs to distinguish:
Indifference about their suffering
Excitement about effective means of manipulating them
from
Sadistically enjoying their suffering
Like indifference about the animal’s suffering is a core part of modern carnism, right? And insofar as you see animals as morally irrelevant agents for human manipulation, it’s logical to be excited about certain things that otherwise seem grotesque.
As an analogy: I don’t see random farmed trees as morally significant. So if there is some powerful manipulation one can do with a tree, e.g. sawing in it using a chainsaw or running into it with some big machine, I wouldn’t feel outraged about it, even if it doesn’t serve a business need. Instead I might even get excited about it, if it looks awesome enough.
So in the case of animals, if one doesn’t care for them, one might enjoy showing off one’s new and powerful techniques. This makes some of the more absolutist vegan policies make more sense to me. Like it seems like to avoid this, you’d need to forbid carnists from farming animals.
While it’s true that torture isn’t the purpose, many workers in animal agriculture/farmers do go out of their way to torture animals, beyond what is entailed in profit seeking. Whether as a form of sadism, taking out their anger, a twisted and ineffective attempt at discipline, it certainly happens.
This may be somewhat tangential, but I think it’s worth noting.
Can you expand on what you are referring to?
Personally I’ve listened to a farmer I know gleefully recounting stories of repeatedly hitting his cows with baseball bats, in the face and body. It’s anecdotal, but growing up in rural environments I’ve heard a lot of things like that. He also talked/joked about performing DIY surgery on their genitals without anesthesia, which technically has a profit motive, but I think it’s indicative of an attitude of indifference to causing them extreme suffering.
There’s also all sorts of reports and undercover footage of workers beating and mutilating animals, often without any purpose behind it.
It’s a bit difficult to disentangle torture for the sake of torture, from torture which is vaguely aimed at profit seeking (though torture for the sake of harming the animal does happen).
If someone wants an animal to move somewhere, or if they want to perform an excruciating procedure on the animal without it struggling too much, they may beat the animal until it does what they want it to. They may be using this as an opportunity to vent their aggression. You could say profit seeking/meat is the ultimate purpose of that. However I think there’s a lot of context in between the dichotomy of ‘torture for profit’ vs ‘torture for torture’.
These things often happen in a context where the industries have final say over whether a particular practice constitutes unlawful treatment. Where it’s illegal to record and release video footage of what goes on there. Where local law enforcement has no interest in enforcing laws when there are laws.
I think abuse for the sake of abuse is common in any environment with power imbalances, lack of oversight, and resource constraints. Nursing homes, schools, prisons, policing, hospitals, etc. All entail countless examples of people with power over others abusing others, with the main purpose being some sort of emotional catharsis.
Those are industries where humans are the victims, members of the ingroup, who have laws and norms meant to protect their interests. I think beyond all of the available evidence of ‘torture for the sake of torture’ on farms, it also makes sense to assume it does/will happen.
Hmm… 🤔
I guess there’s a tricky thing here because one needs to distinguish:
Indifference about their suffering
Excitement about effective means of manipulating them
from
Sadistically enjoying their suffering
Like indifference about the animal’s suffering is a core part of modern carnism, right? And insofar as you see animals as morally irrelevant agents for human manipulation, it’s logical to be excited about certain things that otherwise seem grotesque.
As an analogy: I don’t see random farmed trees as morally significant. So if there is some powerful manipulation one can do with a tree, e.g. sawing in it using a chainsaw or running into it with some big machine, I wouldn’t feel outraged about it, even if it doesn’t serve a business need. Instead I might even get excited about it, if it looks awesome enough.
So in the case of animals, if one doesn’t care for them, one might enjoy showing off one’s new and powerful techniques. This makes some of the more absolutist vegan policies make more sense to me. Like it seems like to avoid this, you’d need to forbid carnists from farming animals.