The ethics of commercialising wild animals
by Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University
reprinted from
Animals Today
, Feb-April 1996
The western tradition
When Europeans first came to Australia, they saw our continent's wild animals much as we now see its coal and iron ore: as a resource for the taking. So they shot kangaroos and koalas for their skins, meat or for sport, slaughtered seals for their fur, harpooned whales for blubber and oil, and even boiled down the penguins of Macquarie Island so that their oil could be used in cosmetics.
The Australian animals that were not exploitable in this way were pests, and better eliminated. So there was a bounty on the head of Tasmania's marsupial "tiger", the thylacine, and grazing kangaroos and wallabies had to make way for the more useful animals imported from Europe, like sheep, cattle and even rabbits.
The Europeans who did this to Australia's animals brought with them attitudes to the natural environment that were a legacy of more than two thousand years of Western civilisation. These attitudes ruled with very little challenge until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1970s; and it could be argued that they are still the predominant force in decisions about the environment.
Western attitudes to nature grew out of a blend of those of the Hebrew people, as represented in the early books of the Bible, and the philosophy of ancient Greece, particularly that of Aristotle. In contrast to some other ancient traditions, for example, those of India, both the Hebrew and the Greek traditions made human beings the centre of the moral universe; indeed not merely the centre, but very often, the entirety of the morally significant features of this world.
The bible says ...
The biblical story of creation makes very clear the Hebrew view of
the special place of human beings in the divine plan:
"
And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them,
and God said upon them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and
over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon
the earth
."
Today Christians debate the meaning of this grant of "dominion";
and those concerned about the environment claim that it should be
regarded not as a licence to main to do as he wills with other living
things, but rather as a directive to look after them, on God's behalf,
and be answerable to God for the way in which they are treated. But
given the example God set when he drowned almost every animal on earth
in order to punish Noah for his wickedness, it is not wonder that
people should think of animals as things for us to use. After the flood
there is a repetition of the grant of dominion in more ominous
language:
"
And fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon
every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that
moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your
hands they are delivered
."
The implication is clear: to act in a way that causes fear and dread to everything that moves on the earth is not improper; it is, in fact, in accordance with a God-given decree.
This was the thinking of mainstream Christianity for at least its first eighteen centuries. There were gentler spirits, certainly, like Basil, John Chrysostom and Francis of Assisi, but for most of Christian history they have had no significant impact on the dominant tradition. It is therefore worth emphasising the major features of this dominant Western tradition, because these features can serve as a point of comparison when we discuss different views of the natural environment.
According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless by this destruction we harm human beings.
But some concerns survive
Harsh as this tradition is, it does not rule out concern for the preservation of nature, as long as that concern can be related to human well-being. Often, of course, it can be. One could, entirely within the limits of the dominant Western tradition, oppose the mining of uranium on the grounds that nuclear fuel, whether in bombs or power stations, is so hazardous to human life that the uranium is better left in the ground. Similarly, many arguments against pollution, the use of gases harmful to the zone layer, the burning of fossil fuels, and the destruction of forests, could be couched in terms of the harm to human health and welfare from the pollutants, or the changes to the climate that may occur as a result of the use of fossil fuels and the loss of forest. Since human beings need an environment in which they can thrive, the preservation of such an environment can be a value within a human -centred moral framework.
From the standpoint of a form of civilisation based on growing crops and grazing animals, wilderness may seem to be a wasteland, a useless area that needs clearing in order to render it productive and valuable. As for wild animals, they are either dangerous, like wolves in European folklore, or crocodiles and snakes in Australia, or they are pests because they eat the crops and grasses that we want for our own use. But once we drop the Judeo-Christian view of the world, can these assumptions be defended?
Is there value beyond the human species?
In any serious exploration of environmental values a central issue will be whether there is anything of intrinsic value beyond human beings. To explore this question we first need to understand the notion of "intrinsic value". Something is of intrinsic value if it is good or desirable in itself; the contrast is with "instrumental value", that is, value as a means to some other end or purpose. Our own happiness, for example, is of intrinsic value, at least to most of us, in that we desire it for its own sake. Money, on the other hand, is only of instrumental value to us. We want it because of the things we can buy with it, but if we were marooned on a desert island, we would not want it. (Whereas happiness would be just as important to us on a desert island as anywhere else.)
Now consider the issue of killing wild animals in order to profit from their meat, or skins. Should the decision be made on the basis of human interests alone? Here we find a fundamental moral disagreement: a disagreement about what kinds of beings ought to be considered in our moral deliberations. Many people think that once we reach a disagreement of this kind, argument must cease. As I have already briefly indicated, I am more optimistic about the scope of rational argument in ethics.
In ethics, even at a fundamental level, there are arguments that should convince any rational person. Take, as an example, a view held by one of the founders of the Western ethical tradition: Aristotle's notorious justification of slavery. Aristotle thought that captured barbarians were "living instruments" - that is, human beings who were not of intrinsic value, but existed in order to serve some higher end. The end was the welfare of their Greek captors or owners. He justified this view by arguing that barbarians were less rational than Greeks, and in the hierarchy of nature, the purpose of the less rational is to serve the more rational.
No one now accepts Aristotle's defence of slavery. We reject it for a variety of reasons. We would reject his assumption that non-Greeks are less rational than Greeks, although given the cultural achievements of the different groups at the time, that was by no means an absurd assumption to make. But more importantly, from the moral point of view, we reject the idea that the less rational exist in order to serve the more rational. Instead we hold that all humans are equal. We regard racism and slavery based on racism as wrong because they fail to give equal consideration to the interests of all human beings. This would be true whatever the level of rationality or civilisation of the slave, and therefore Aristotle's appeal to the higher rationality of the Greeks would not have justified the enslavement of non-Greeks, even if it had been true.
Even barbarians feel pain
Members of the "barbarian" tribes can feel pain, as Greeks can; they can be joyful or miserable, as Greeks can; they can suffer from separation from their families and friends, as Greeks can. To brush aside these needs so that Greeks could satisfy much more minor needs of their own was a great wrong and a blot on Greek civilisation. This is something that we would expect all reasonable people to accept, as long as they can view the question from an impartial perspective, and are not improperly influenced by having a personal interest in the continued existence of slavery.
What about animals?
Now let us return to the question of the moral status of non-human animals. In keeping with the dominant Western tradition, many people still hold that all the non-human world has value only or predominantly in so far as it benefits human beings. A powerful objection to the dominant Western tradition turns against this tradition an extended version of the objection just made against Aristotle's justification of slavery. Non-human animals are also capable of feeling pain, as humans are; they can certainly be miserable, and perhaps in some cases their lives could also be described as joyful; and members of many mammalian species can suffer from separation from their family group. Is it not therefore a blot on human civilisation that we brush aside these needs of non-human animals so as to satisfy minor needs of our own?
Speciesism? What is it?
Pain is pain, and the extent to which it is intrinsically bad depends on factors like its duration and intensity, not on the species of the being who experiences it. Hence there is no justifiable basis for drawing the boundary of value around our own species. To do so is to give preference to the interests of members of one's own species, simply because they are members of one's own species - and this is speciesism, a moral failing that is parallel to racism, because it attempts to put a morally crucial divide in a place that is not justified on any basis other than a preference for "us" over "them". Or to put it another way, if we are prepared to defend practices based on disregarding the interests of members of other species because they are not members of our own group, how are we to object to those who wish to disregard the interests of members of other races because they are also not members of our own group? I shall not here go further into this argument, because I have developed it elsewhere at some l
How does this relate to our wildlife?
Rejecting the dominant Western tradition in this way makes a radical difference to the value basis on which we should consider the commercialisation of wild animals. The entire mind set that lies behind talk of "sustainable use" and "harvesting a resource" is derived from this Western tradition that makes animals merely of instrumental value. It is therefore fundamentally wrong.
Whales - "minds in the water"
I have been involved in the animal movement long enough to have participated in the debate about whether Australia should continue to allow whaling. We had, as recently as the 1970s, a shore-based whaling station at Cheynes Beach in Western Australia. I well remember the arguments that took place then, between those opponents of whaling who argued that present catches of whales were driving the southern right whale to extinction, and the defenders of whaling who claimed that the catch taken at Cheynes Beach was less than the "MSY" - "maximum sustainable yield" - and therefore no threat to the whale populations. The calculations as to what might be the maximum sustainable yield of the whale population were quite complex, and depended on such things as whether female whales would begin to breed at an earlier age if there were fewer whales, and hence more food to go around the whale population. For me, these arguments were always irrelevant: whales are conscious beings - "minds in the water" - and to treat them
But are we consistent?
Yet, as the Japanese are fond of pointing out, we are surely being a bit hypocritical if we, who do not like to eat whales, insist that whales must not be turned into small parcels of meat, while we continue to do just that to our own land-based wild animals. Is this not some kind of cultural imperialism?
The accusation of cultural imperialism is not entirely groundless. We can reject it with a clear conscience only if we insist that Australia's land-based wild animals are not, any more than our marine mammals, things for us to use, like lumps of coal we dig out of the ground, or nuts we gather from trees. To treat animals as resources, and argue about when use is sustainable, is a classic example of economic rationalism running heedlessly over non-economic values. We should no more hand our wild animals over to the tender mercies of the market than we should hand our children over to the same market forces. Neither children nor wild animals are a "product" or a "resource" at all.
In saying this, I am not concerned with the claim that commercialisation may push some species of animals over the brink of extinction. This may be true or it may not be true. In any case, it is a mistake to focus only on whether a wild animal is a member of an endangered species, or whether commercialisation threatens the very existence of the species. This is till the "resource" mentality - it is just the enlightened resource mentality, that wants to make sure that the resource continues to exist so that it can continue to be exploited. But wild animals are sentient beings, with lives of their own to lead. They do not exist for our benefit, or for us to use.
Are human and animal deaths morally equivalent?
The argument I have presented does not require us to regard the death of a non-human animal as morally equivalent to the death of a human being, since humans are capable of foresight and forward planning in ways that non-human animals are not. This is surely relevant to the seriousness of death, which in the case of a human being capable of planning for the future, will thwart these plans, and thus causes a loss that is different in kind from the loss that death causes to being incapable even of understanding that they exist over time and have a future. It is also entirely legitimate to take into account the greater sense of loss that humans feel when people close to them die; whether non-human animals will feel a sense of loss at the death of another animal will depend on the social habits of the species. These differences between causing death to human beings and to non-human animals do not mean that the death of a non-human animal should be treated as being of no account. On the contrary, death still infl
When is a life worthwhile?
What, though, if the future lost to the animal by the death we inflict is likely to be short and filled with suffering? This would be the case, for example, where animals are in an area affected by drought, and are suffering so badly from lack of food, that even if the weather were to break, they could not be expected to survive until new food grew. Then it can properly be argued that the death of the animal is not contrary to its interests. In the case of humans who are dying and in distress, we can ask them if they wish to continue to live; and many Australians believe that if they say no, they should have the option of an easy death. In the debate on voluntary euthanasia , it is often said that we would not force an animal to live through the kind of death we force humans to endure; and I agree that this is perhaps the one respect in which we treat animals better than we currently treat human beings. Since animals cannot be consulted about their fate, we are justified in acting paternalistically on their
Can we use the dead remains?
If we do have to kill animals for reasons that are ethical because they are based on the interests of the animals themselves, and it is possible to make a profit by selling parts of their bodies, may we ethically do that? In theory, it is hard to find a strong objection to doing so. It does not make a difference to the dead animal. It may remove bodies from the ecosystem that ought to have remained part of it, but this will often be a very minor infringement of good ecological practice, compared to other things we do. So in itself, there seems little to object to about it.
Unfortunately, in practice, with human motivation being what it is, allowing the commercialisation of any wild animal will have various undesirable effects. It will increase the pressure to find circumstances of "justifiable euthanasia", and make us less than impartial judges in when it is in an animal's interests to die. It will create a market for a product that can only be obtained from wild animals, and may make illegal killing more difficult to detect and prevent. Finally, it is likely to lead to a different attitude to wild animals, one that sees them through a mist of dollar signs. Commercialisation sees sentient beings as things, and asks how we can best profit from them. An ethical attitude sees wild animals as sentient beings, and asks how we can best protect and preserve their interests, while recognising that our own interests must also count, especially where our own survival is at stake.
Markets and values - the blood bank example
Some years ago, the British sociologist R.M. Titmuss wrote a book called The Gift Relationship . The core of the book was a comparison of two different methods of obtaining blood for medical purposes. One method, which Titmuss studied in Britain, but is also the method we use here in Australia, is that of voluntary donation, for no reward other than an indifferent cup of tea, through a Red Cross blood bank, to a stranger in need. The other method, then prevalent in the United States, was the method of the market. In the market system, blood has a price and can be bought and sold like any other product.
According to the economic rationalists who subscribe to the ideology of the free market, if people want to buy and sell blood, they should be free to do so. They are not interfering with the freedom of anyone else who prefers to go to the Red Cross and donate their blood. But Titmuss showed that the situation was not so simple. It was precisely because, in the British system, blood had no market price, that people were prepared to come forward and donate their own blood to strangers. If it could be bought and sold like any other commodity, the incentive to this special kind of altruism falls away. Moreover, Titmuss suggested, it is altruistic institutions like the national blood service that enable strangers to relate to other strangers, and so help to bind communities together. Although it cannot be proven, it seemed to Titmuss that the dramatically differing rates of crime in British and American cities might have some connection with the fact that in Britain there was still scope for forms of altruism tha
What does this have to do with the commercialisation of wildlife? I mention The Gift Relationship only in order to show that there are some things that the market cannot value properly. To justify the destruction of an ancient forest on the grounds that it will earn us substantial export income fails to take into account the value of the forest as a link with the past that, once felled, can never be replaced. Similarly, commercialisation turns wild animals into a product with a market price, It changes their population dynamics, thus changing the physical nature of the animals themselves. For example, selective pressure on the larger kangaroos will lead to a pattern of evolution that favours smaller kangaroos. Even if this does not happen, the way we think about kangaroos has to be different when they end up neatly sliced and packaged in supermarkets, than when we see them only living freely in their natural habitat. Economic growth based on the exploitation of living sentient creatures can be seen as someth
Conclusion
I began by talking about the era of exploitation of Australia's wild animals that began with European settlement. This era of exploitation is not over yet. We are more concerned about endangered animals than we were a generation or two ago, but when animals are relatively abundant we still regard them as a resource. This is how the kangaroo, Australia's national symbol, is still being treated. Each year, about four million of these animals are killed by professional shooters, who sell the bodies so that their skins can be used to make the leather that goes into athletic shoes, their fur can decorate homes and cars, and their meat can be fed to pets, or to those who dine out and want a new taste for their jaded palates.
To drive a species into extinction is a crime against the ecology of out planet, and against all who will come after us, inheriting a world that has lost something irreplaceable. The same is true of the destruction of wild places, and the loss of entire ecological systems. It is also true of the death and suffering we inflict on individual animals. The fundamental problem is one of attitude: is this planet and all its non-human inhabitants to be regarded as the rightful possession of those humans who presently live on it? Can it be ethically acceptable that forests that have existed for thousands of years and are home to creatures of many kinds should be felled to raise the living of one generation of human beings? Are sentient creatures, whether rare or plentiful, a resource for us to use as best suits us? Or do they have interests of their own, that we should respect?
We have only to ask such questions to see what the answer should be. At least since Darwin, we have known that the forests and animals were not placed on earth for us to use. They have evolved alongside us. Once felled, the virgin forests can never be restored. The animals we kill for their skins or for pet food have similar nervous systems to our own, and can presumably feel pain, or enjoy life, as we do. Why should the fact that they are not members of our species entitle us to disregard their interests? The interests of other animals may be different from our own, but that is no justification for failing to give them the same consideration that we give to similar interests of human beings.
When I think about how obvious this is, I am staggered that anyone could really think that the meagre amount of oil obtained from a penguin could justify seizing these birds and boiling them down. Yet when we remember that the attitude of the first European settlers to the aboriginal inhabitants of our continent was little better that it was to the animals they so ruthlessly slaughtered, it is not surprising that many of us still do not question what we are doing to Australia's wildlife. Human beings seem to find little difficulty in classifying those different from themselves as an "other", and putting those "others" outside the circle of morality, whether the difference is one of race or species.
One day Australians will look back at what we are doing to wildlife in horror, as we not look back at what the first Europeans to land in Australia did to the aboriginal people who were living here. We need a Mabo decision for Australia's wild animals - a legal recognition of their special status as original residents of Australia, alongside its original human inhabitants. The only ethical approach to Australia's wild animals is one that gives their interests equal consideration alongside human interests.