Animal welfare equally important as clean air – why even liberals should embrace welfare standards

On 30 June 2018 the NZZ am Sonntag published my article explaining why individual consumer decisions and meat labels are not enough to protect animals; why even a liberal view warrants standards for animal welfare just as much as for e.g. air quality, and why we thus should prohibit today’s welfare disregarding animal factories, just as the new Swiss popular initiative Massentierhaltungsinitiative requests it.

Due to a number of requests I got, here a first English translation.

Sorry, only raw Google Translate – by now surprisingly good AI work though, and I will correct it as soon as possible.

Those who eat only meat from exemplary animals, hardly changes the general animal welfare. There is no way around a prohibition of mass animal husbandry.
The Swiss Animal Protection Associations have launched a new popular initiative against mass animal husbandry. A ban on animal factories, they say, is intended to improve the quality of life for food animals. That’s the right approach. Animal welfare is a public good – as is clean air or an intact landscape. And they are also politically protected.

Until now, the responsible consumer has always been the focus of attention in the debate about factory farming. If he has only the necessary knowledge, so they say, then he is capable of making an informed choice. However, in the Internet age, anyone can easily see for themselves what the animal welfare is all about. Even labels help with the purchase decision.

If it were really just information, then declaration obligations would be more appropriate than new rules on animal husbandry. In extreme cases, one could – as in “Smoking kills” – write on the packaging of meat: “animal factory animals suffer”. Or: “My chicken beak was excruciatingly trimmed – we mass-kept chickens hack each other out of dense stress each other to death.”

The truth is: information is limited. Already today we are using animal welfare laws with good reason. Their necessity is not disputed. For the vast majority of us disapprove of animal suffering even when the tortured animal does not end up on its own plate.

So animal welfare is a public good and deserves political protection: just as society does not allow me to pollute its air arbitrarily, it does not allow me to arbitrarily treat the domestic cat or the pig before it’s on my plate.

Regulation is necessary because it is hardly worthwhile for individuals to shoulder the extra expense of protecting the public good, although it would be better for everyone if everyone took on this extra expense. In concrete terms, buying meat from animal-friendly sources is not worthwhile for many, because they bear the full additional costs, but only improve the lives of some of the 50 million Swiss livestock.

Here are laws to help: With stricter livestock policies, the individual has the same extra cost as if he was the only one to buy label meat, but sees instead of a handful of happier animals now their 50 million. It’s worth it.

That is why deliberate consumer choice is no substitute for legal regulation. Corresponding objections of the opponents of the initiative aim at nothing. The central question is rather: How much is a less traumatic attitude of animals to society worth to us?

That today’s livestock standards are far too lax, already suggests the comparison with pets. Fattening animals can live their lives close together in the dark, may be overbred until their legs can no longer support them.

On the other hand, for domestic cats “increased rest areas and retreats […], one toilet per cat” are required. The needs of pigs, for example, are hardly different from those of common pets.

The opponents of the initiative stamped out the provisions for meat imports provided for in the referendum as “Helvetic legal imperialism”. This is pure polemic: From the animal welfare point of view, nothing is gained if consumers simply evade the stricter domestic legislation by buying cheap imports. It makes sense to regulate imports as well.

Liberal opponents of the initiative like to point out that poorer could afford in the future no more meat. This argument implicitly demands a cheapening of meat at the animals’ expense. The true liberal would turn twice in the grave: If we want to help poorer households, this is more efficient through taxes and social services, and if you wanted to artificially reduce meat, you would have to subsidize it directly instead of animal welfare.

Since today according to the federal authorities from a health point of view three times too much meat is eaten, an artificial cheapening of meat seems questionable anyway.

How much animal welfare is socially desirable remains a subjective question. There is no conclusive answer as to what a chicken’s quality of life is worth. When asked “How many chicken lives per human life?”, Neither economics nor philosophy, nor brain and consciousness research have found an answer.

That animals have a feeling, but is hardly more controversial. And given the sheer scale of possible suffering in the animal factories, the caution demanded by the initiative does not seem exaggerated.