Rhys Southan – Vegan Invasion

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The vegans have landed

A dominant species is a dominant species. If you really care

about animal rights, vegan ethics don't go far enough

by Rhys Southan2400

Read later or Kindle

Saladby Till Nowak.

The animal rights movement wants to prevent the most powerful species on the planet from

oppressing every other species, just as human rights campaigners try to stop the most powerful people

from oppressing those who are least powerful. The problem, they say, is human privilege, a

privilege that almost all of us abuse. Yet the injustice theyre fighting is not the entire apparatus of

human domination (even if some activists think thats what theyre against). Rather, it is onesignificant aspect of it: our treatment of animals as resources as food, clothing, entertainment, and

subjects of research. Animals feel pain and care about their survival, and so their advocates say we

should expand our circle of concern beyond humans to the rest of the animal kingdom.

According to animal rights theory, respecting the interests of animals in this way would mean

abolishing the use of them as resources. So wed all have to become vegans who neither eat animalsnor use any other animal products. Vegan advocates face a daunting challenge, though, since most of

us have a strong prejudice in favour of humans. This makes it relatively difficult for us to empathise
http://aeon.co/magazine/author/rhys-southan/http://aeon.co/magazinehttp://aeon.co/filmhttp://aeon.co/magazine/about


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with non-humans, so we are reluctant to give up the spoils of animal domination meat, eggs,

cheese, wool, fur and leather and exchange them for tofu, pleather (plastic leather) and animalliberation.

In the face of this inertia, some have asked us to imagine ourselves in the position of the animals that

we exploit and kill. Jonathan Safran Foer puts this in the form of an alien invasion in his anti-factory

farming treatise,Eating Animals(2009):

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and

it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?

Suppose that we are doing our usual thing of exploiting animals because they arent smart or

powerful enough to fight back. An alien species that is smarter and more powerful than us lands on

Earth and decides to follow our example by exploiting and killing us. Why shouldnt aliens use theirtechnological and cerebral edge to turn us into food, clothes, entertainment and research subjects, just

as we do to animals now?

This is, of course, a sci-fi repackaging of the Golden Rule that is, one should treat others as one

would like to be treated oneself. This argument resonates because most of us have picked up a version

of do as you would be done by somewhere along the way, no matter how secular our upbringings.

Could it be, then, that if we want to be consistent with our own values, the animal activists are right

that we need to go vegan?

We might object that there is something misleading about the alien scenario. It wants to make us see

things from the animals point of view, yet fudges it by putting us in the animals place while

maintaining our human cultural beliefs and cognitive abilities. There are certainly similarities between

human and non-human experiences, especially when it comes to pain, but as with the Epsilons in

Aldous Huxleys novelBrave New World(1932) who are genetically designed to tolerate asubservient existence, we assume that cows, pigs, lambs and chickens who are raised on farms and

killed in slaughterhouses do not suffer the horror and existential anguish that humans would in the

same circumstances. This is why the alien hypothetical is something of a cheat, and equally why

comparing factory farms to the Holocaust and human slavery rings false.

Universal veganism would accomplish next to nothing for free-roaming wild animals

Even so, if animals want to avoid suffering and want to live, as surely they do, using them as

resources violates those interests. Given that humans cause animals so much suffering and death while

offering them so little in return, theres no denying that for most other animals on this planet, we

might as well be a malevolent invasion.

So, my objection to the alien invasion scenario is more sweeping. If we want to take the interests of

animals seriously, then the biggest failure of the analogy is that it underestimates just how malign we

are. Sure, if we were replaced as the dominant animals on the planet, wed probably prefer the new

ruling species to be vegan. But if aliens with superior technology and minds came here and weredetermined to treat us the way that vegan humans treat animals on this planet, wed still be in serious

trouble. Veganism would hardly figure as a safeguard of our wellbeing.

Universal veganism wouldnt stop the road-building, logging, urban and suburban development,

pollution, resource consumption, and other forms of land transformation that kills animals by the

billions. So what does veganism do exactly? Theoretically, it ends the raising, capture and

exploitation of living animals, and it stops a particular kind of killing that many vegans claim is the

worst and least excusable: the intentional killing of animals in order to use their bodies as material

goods.

Veganism, as a whole, requires us to stop using animals for entertainment, food, pharmaceutical

testing, and clothing. If it were to become universal, factory farming and animal testing would end,which would be excellent news for all the animals that we capture or raise for these purposes. But it

would accomplish next to nothing for free-roaming wild animals except to stop hunting, which is the

least of their problems.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature in Switzerland, the worlds first global


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environmental organisation, says:

Analyses of the data on threats to bird, mammal and amphibian species show that the most

pervasive threat that they face is habitat destruction and degradation driven by agricultural and

forestry activities.

Animal agriculture is responsible for plenty of that, but is far from the only culprit. Purely arablefarmers accidentally kill insects, snails, small mammals, and other animals with farm machinery, and

they intentionally kill these animals with pesticides that often unintentionally go on to harm wildlife

through drift and secondary poisonings. Farmers also allow hunters onto their land to reduce thepopulations of deer and other pest species that might eat their crops. Redirecting water for irrigation

kills fish, as does spill-off from fertiliser and pesticides. We run over animals with our cars. We

destroy animal habitats to build our cities, and we extract resources from areas that then become eitheruninhabitable or dangerous. The wild land that we do leave untouched is often fragmented into little

bits that dont give animals the space they need to make homes and roam for food, and so cannot

sustain them.

Some vegan aliens might enjoy keeping a few human pets,

naming us, cuddling us, and feeding us veggie treats

If our intergalactic superiors landed here, but had no interest in eating us or our fellow animals, thefirst thing they could do is rob our stores, homes, farms, and warehouses of all our fruits, vegetables,

beans, grains, and vegan convenience products. Without violating any vegan principles there would

be no limit to the amount of food vegan aliens could steal from us vegan ethics allows for humans

using all the plant matter they want in the world, no matter how many animals starve as a

consequence. Aliens could cause the worst famine humanity has ever seen, but it would be entirelycompatible with vegan ethics. Thats because it would all fall under the rubric of good intent. They

wouldnt be killing us deliberately to eat us, but rather because they wanted our food and had the

power to take it our starvation would be a foreseeable, yet accidental, side effect. We might try to

fight the vegan invaders over this mass plunder, but then they could kill us outright for threatening

their lives. Thats because humans killing animals in self-defence is also no crime in veganism, even if

weve wandered onto the animals own territory.

Since veganism doesnt stop us from wrecking animal habitats to make space for ourselves, vegan

aliens could knock down all our buildings to construct new ones that better fit their pan-galactic

design aesthetic. They could evict us from our homes, businesses and veganic farms without

compensation, and then, to keep us from returning, they could set up fences, noise barriers and other

humane deterrents. To them, we would be hungry pests who threaten their vegan food supply, so theymight even be justified in trapping us or killing us with poisons if we got too close. Humans would

now largely be without food and shelter, but the vegan aliens wouldnt need to lose sleep over it,

since none of this contradicts any vegan tenets.

Depending on how much land was required for the vegan alien cities to accommodate all their alien

vegan restaurants, alien anarchist bookstores and alien warehouse lofts, the vegan aliens might or

might not set aside some land for humans to live on. Because our habitat would be fragmented to suitaliens desires regardless, it would be difficult or impossible for us to redevelop agriculture of our

own, or gather enough food to survive. Any habitat they left for us would never truly be ours

anyway, because if the aliens ever wanted to increase their population or just spread out, veganism

doesnt stop them from taking more land.

Some vegan aliens might enjoy keeping a few human pets, naming us, cuddling us, and feeding us

veggie treats. Even now, pet ownership is a controversial issue in animal rights, but most activists saythat its okay for vegans to keep some animals as dependents since they have been domesticated and,

as a result, would suffer in the wild. Vegan aliens could justify keeping humans as pets for similar

reasons if they saw that some of us couldnt make it on our own. That might be a pretty fair deal if the

aliens were friendly and loving owners, but the downside is that they could spay and neuter us, as

even People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says vegans should spay and neuter their pets. Ofcourse, the aliens would say this was for our own good, as we tend to overpopulate when left incharge of our own reproduction.

Any sacrifices we make this side of human extinction are token


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compromises

Theres a chance that not all aliens would thrive on a plant-based diet. Some of the aliens might suffer

from an unfortunate confluence of intolerances, allergies, digestive troubles, and medical conditions,

or they could be living in harsh climates without enough plant material to sustain them. There couldbe any number of alien-centric conditions that made veganism too difficult for some of them. Vegan

ethics makes exceptions in cases like this when a vegan diet just cannot work for some individuals,

which means some of the aliens would be allowed to eat meat for their health. For example, aliens

with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome who cant produce enough of their own cholesterol might benefit

from an external animal source. And aliens with epilepsy might need to be on a high-fat, low-carbketogenic diet to control their seizures, but it would be nearly impossible for them to get the rightbalance of macronutrients without eating animals, especially if they also happened to be allergic to

soy, gluten, and nuts.

So which animals would they kill for this purpose? Since the vegan aliens would claim to be anti-

speciesist, it would be unjust discrimination for them to value the lives of humans over those of other

animals such as deer, squirrels, pigeons, rabbit, or fish. So if the aliens couldnt tolerate soy, wheat,

fructose, oxalates, or nuts, or if they lived somewhere without much in the way of vegan foods, theycould eat us with a clear conscience.

A vegan alien invasion could then all but destroy humanity while rationalising most of our suffering

and death as accidental or unfortunate but necessary, just as vegans now rationalise the harms thata plant-based human civilisation would cause nonhuman animals. What the argument from alien

invasion ultimately shows, then, is that humans cannot consistently apply the Golden Rule to the rest

of the animal kingdom without going a lot further than vegans are asking us to go. Animal rightsphilosophers are positing a problem that might have no practical solution. Yes, nonhuman animals are

thinking and feeling individuals who want to live, but attempting to correct the power imbalance

between humans and other animals would require much more than humans giving up animal

products. We would have to stop spaying and neutering animals, reverse our destruction and

fragmentation of animal habitat, give up agriculture and civilisation, refuse to eat animals even when

our wellbeing requires it, and become pacifist gatherers who never foraged food that other animalsneeded for themselves. Even then, other animals would have nothing to gain from our presence here.

This is why some people believe that the logical conclusion of animal rights is human extinction.

The Golden Rule works for humans because it isnt necessarily a zero-sum game between us all. The

conflicts between humans of different races, genders and sexual orientations are socio-cultural and

thus subject to betterment there is no inherent reason that men and women of all colours cannot

work together for our mutual benefit. The conflicts between humans and other species, however, aregenetic and inevitable: our DNA and accumulated knowledge and technology currently makes us the

cleverest, most powerful species on the planet, and since we cannot cooperate with wild animals for

the mutual benefit of all sentient beings, we have little choice but to dominate instead.

Neutrality is impossible in a world with limited resources. Everything we take is a loss for other

animals, and since we want to live, enjoy our lives and reproduce (just as they do), we will never stop

bypassing animals desires for our own, so long as we are here. We can give up some of the luxuries

of domination for the sake of non-humans, but any sacrifices we make this side of human extinctionare token compromises that selfishly maintain our fundamental position. Worldwide veganism

wouldn't allow us to live in harmony with other animals its just one of those token compromises.

No matter what ethical philosophy we hold on to, on the day that brilliant, powerful aliens invade our

planet, wed better hope that they dont try to be anything like us.

22 January 2013

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Rhys Southan – Vegan Invasion