‘Humans treat animals like slaves, taking even their flesh from them — speciesism boosts this’

Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses animal suffering — and why humans cause this:
How do you define speciesism — and is this linked to the current environmental crisis?
■ Speciesism is an attitude of bias or prejudice against beings who are not members of our species. This also works sometimes against some beings whom we favour over others, such as dogs and cats who we prefer over pigs or chickens. This attitude does have environmental significance because it means we give less consideration to the interests of free-living animals in their natural habitat than to members of our own species — we are far more ready to cut down forests or bulldoze land for our purposes without giving weight to the interests of animals living there.

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Why do we victimise non-human animals?■ For very long, humans have victimised those they regard as ‘others’ — they have made war against them, enslaved them, denied them all kinds of rights. I think a self-interested attitude drives this behaviour where we see some as ‘us’ and others as different and regard the latter as ‘things’ which we can use for our own purposes. This has happened with people of different races who have been colonised or enslaved. It also happens with other species. At least, at some level, we now recognise that slavery, colonialism and racism are wrong — but we do not yet recognise this with regard to other species. We don’t have universal declarations of the rights of animals.
Animals eat animals in nature’s food chain — in ‘Animal Liberation’, why do you write humans eating animals is problematic?
■ Firstly, we have the capacity to make choices about what we eat — humans are omnivores and can be very healthy as vegetarians or vegans. A tiger simply cannot live without eating other animals. Also, environmentally, we have developed this immense technological ability to change the entire planet — we burn massive amounts of fossil fuels and are altering Earth’s atmospheric balance. We deforest huge tracts of land — other animals don’t have the ability to change planetary systems in the way we are doing. Our speciesism and preying on other animals is much more significant than predators existing in nature.
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Critics argue if eating sentient animals, who can feel suffering and enjoy life, is wrong, so is eating plants which are similar — what is your view?■ I do not believe plants are sentient in this way. Plant species do not have the same kind of nervous system or the capacities animals have, so there is no strong reason to argue they are sentient thus. However, even if plants were so, consider how, when we put animals into factory farms for our food, we have to feed them. This involves growing plants and animals need many times the number of plants humans would need if we were to eat plants directly. Cows up for slaughter need to be fed ten times the food value that we get out of them — so, by eating plants directly, we’d actually be destroying far fewer of their numbers than growing them to feed the animals that we then eat.

What should we know about how animals for slaughter are treated in order to make an informed choice?
■ The question here is not just slaughter where, of course, animals suffer greatly, both being transported to slaughterhouses and in the process of being killed when they go through agonising pain. But they also suffer greatly when they are raised in confinement in factory farms. Here, they are crowded indoors in sheds and cages, closeted together in huge numbers, treated as commodities and not beings with lives. There is no interest taken in whether they should be living a natural life or have any conditions which suit their well-being. The entire system is geared towards extracting a ‘product’ out of them as cheaply as possible — their welfare is neglected entirely.
These animals live their entire lives indoors, bereft of sunshine or fresh air, crowded into tiny cages which are completely unsuitable and made very vulnerable to diseases, in addition to the pain and fear they undergo. We need to think about these factors linked to eating meat — nearly all the meat eaten globally now comes from these factory farms. This is as true of India as of the United States, Europe and Australia, particularly for chickens and pork.
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You used the word ‘commodity’ — are there parallels to slave labour in the way we treat animals today?
■ Absolutely. There is no doubt that these animals are enslaved and treated as objects for our gain. In chicken production, if a producer has, 5,00,000 birds in captivity, there is no interest paid to any individuals. If a bird falls sick, none of these producers is likely to call in a vet to help them — that would not be economical for them. They will let the bird suffer and perish. These animals are indeed slaves, raised for the flesh, milk and eggs we take away from them.

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Why do human beings find it so difficult to accept that we are all animals?
■ We like to make this gulf between ourselves and other animals — we like thinking we are special. There are parallels with earlier times when people thought humans were the centre of the universe and the sun revolved around Earth. Our pride is boosted by imagining we are superior to other beings. We consider ourselves spiritual, with reflections of the divine, as many religious traditions suggest, when, in fact, we are animals who have evolved from earlier stages. All other animals are like us, part of nature, each holding the capacity to suffer and enjoy life — if only we will let them.

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