This lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch ’ entrate 6 focused my concern about the fate of domesticated animals in environmental ethics. This burgeoning branch of philosophy seems in large part to cloak the old macho mystique of unrestricted power, conquest, and disdain for the defenseless, idolized by our culture, in pseudoscientific, pseudopoetical distinctions between beings who are “ natural, wild, and free ” and things that are “ unnatural, tame, and confined ” (Leopold 1966, xix). Pity — look down on but do not sympathize or identify with — all the dodos and dunces in the history of the world too dumb to succeed in the cosmic power plays wherein the metaphysical autonomy of just one species is ensured.
This attitude contains errors of fact and logic and draws attention to certain unfavorable elements in our cultural and even species psychology. In Where the Wasteland Ends historian Theodore Roszak says, “ The experience of being a cosmic absurdity, a creature obtruded into the universe without purpose, continuity, or kinship, is the psychic price we pay for scientific ‘ enlightenment ’ and technological prowess ” (1973, 154). The fact is, we are not the only ones paying this price, nor is a psychic price the only one paid, as 16 billion chickens worldwide can tell us now. A Nietzschean analysis might suggest that the “ rational ” relegation of domesticated animals to the moral wasteland in environmental ethics is yet another instance in our species ’ history of the “ irrational ” heaping onto other creatures, to be punished and banished in our stead, of things that we fear and hate in ourselves, such as the capacity for enslavement and the destructibility of our personality, identity, and will by conquerors more powerful than ourselves. We project our existential anxiety and inanity onto our victims: “ I am not the creature obtruded into the universe without purpose, continuity or kinship but this genetically altered cow, this egg-laying machine of a dumb-ass chicken. I created them, which gives me the right to despise and abuse them. They let me ‘ create ’ them, which gives me the right to despise and abuse them. ” The next step is to assert that these animals wanted, even chose, to resign their metaphysical autonomy to the will of humans on the darkling plain of evolution.
Environmentalism challenges us to think about how we view and treat the weaker and more pacific beings in our midst, be they nonhuman or otherwise. It invites us to explore how we want, on principle, to regard these beings. Are we content to maintain that a genetically altered creature, or a docile and perhaps even stupid one, deserves to be morally disdained or abandoned? Do we believe that a weaker creature is less entitled to justice and compassion than more vigorous types? Do we suppose that creatures whose lives we humans have wrecked do not have paramount moral claims on us?
Environmentalism has a tendency to blame such victims. There are implications that ecological sophistication comports with turning away from them sniffily, like a bored husband, or Dr. Frankenstein, to things more “ interesting ” and grand, like a mountain or, more aptly, to “ thinking ” like one.
Adherents of environmentalism have rapped animal rights advocates on the knuckles for caring about “ little things, ” like individuals and beings with feelings. By contrast, environmentalists operate in the big realm:
They at least attempt to listen to the entire fugue of rocks and trees, amoebas and heavy metals, dodos and rivers and styrofoam. Animal rights, by contrast, is a one-note samba. Where environmentalists worry about salt marshes and all the plants and creatures therein, animal rights activists worry about the suffering of individual animals. Where environmentalists worry about the evolution of island endemics, animal rights activists worry about the suffering of individual animals. Where environmentalists worry about species extinctions, animal rights activists worry about the suffering of individual animals. (Knox 1991, 31 – 32)
A question for environmentalism concerns the nature of the big realm it claims to represent and worry about. 7 If, ecologically regarded, the concrete manifestations of existence are inconsequential, what substance does this realm possess? What are its contents and where do they reside exactly? Can the ecosphere be thus hollowed out without being converted to a shell? An ecologist once said in an interview that the individual life is a mere “ blip on a grid ” compared to the life process. 8 Yet, it may be that there is no “ life process ” apart from the individual forms it assumes, whereby we infer it. The “ process ” is an inference, an abstraction, and while there is nothing wrong with generalizing and speculating on the basis of experience, to reify the unknown at the expense of the known shows a perversity of will. How is it possible, as the environmentalist asserts, to worry about “ all the plants and creatures ” of a system while managing to avoid caring about each and every one? Why would anyone want not to care?
I know of no composer or lover of music who disparages the individual notes of a composition the way some environmentalists scorn the individual animals of this world. Maybe this is because the musically educated person perceives in each note the universe of song that note in turn helps to create. The poet William Blake said that we must learn to see the universe in a grain of sand. We must learn with equal justice and perception to hear the music of the spheres in the cluck of a chicken, starting with the hen who, historian Page Smith says, “ is rich in comfortable sounds, chirps and chirrs, and, when she is a young pullet, a kind of sweet singing that is full of contentment when she is clustered together with her sisters and brothers in an undifferentiated huddle of peace and well-being waiting for darkness to envelop them ” (Smith and Daniel 1975, 334). If I think like a mountain, will I be able to hear this hen singing?
This sensibility has placed many environmentalists at a distance from so-called “ farm ” animals and allowed them to patronize the nature of these animals without checking the facts. Environmentalism has two major moral arguments against agricultural animals. One is that agricultural animals disrupt the natural environment. Environmentalists and animal rights advocates agree that large-scale, intensive animal agriculture is ecologically inefficient and unseemly, and ethically obscene. The United States poultry industry pollutes fields and streams with 14 billion pounds of manure and 28 billion gallons of waste water each year. According to a report, “ Thousands of poultry farms and processing factories churn out millions of birds everyday — along with carcasses and chemicals that contaminate the land and poison the water with toxic wastes ” (Giardina and Bates 1991, 8). This is detestable, but it is not the chickens ’ fault. It is ours.
Environmentalism ’ s second major moral complaint against domesticated, farm animals is that they lack the behavioral repertoire and é lan vital of wild animals, including their own ancestors. As a result, farm animals are disentitled to equal moral consideration with wild animals. If this is true, the blame is not on them; it is on us. Morally, we owe them more, not less, for bungling their birthright. But how diminished is the nature of these animals genetically? Two researchers who have been studying the behavior of “ laying ” hens for years state:
A good place to begin thinking about what a hen needs for a decent life would be in the jungles of Southeast Asia where, with persistence, one can track the red jungle fowl ancestors of the domestic chicken. These wary birds live in small groups of between four and six, and are highly active during the day — walking, running, flying, pecking and scratching for food, and preening. At night they roost together in the trees. Domestic chickens released on the islands off Queensland, Australia, and the west coast of Scotland showed remarkably similar patterns of behaviour. David Wood-Gush and Ian Duncan, of the Agricultural and Food Research Council ’ s Edinburgh Station, observed that the Scottish birds formed small, discrete social groups which spent much of their day foraging either separately or together, then returning at dusk to roost. The hens concealed their nests and raised and defended their broods. In short, there is no evidence that genetic selection for egg laying has eliminated the birds ’ potential to perform a wide variety of behaviour. (Nicol and Dawkins 1990, 46)
This snookers the industry claim, whic
h has been brought by environmentalists, that “ laying ” hens have been “ bred ” for the battery cage and are genetically accommodated to a sterile, docile, and slavish existence that would drive humans and wild animals mad. How many environmentalists are aware that, in addition to the routine debeaking and sometimes even claw removal of these birds (to help “ adaptation ” along), efforts have been made to fit them with contact lenses to “ calm ” their “ uneconomical ” frenzy by destroying their vision (Davis 1992)? 10 Dr. Nedim Buyukmihci, a veterinary ophthalmologist at the University of California, Davis, says of even these birds that upon release from the cage and removal of the lenses, following a period of adjustment, those hens in his care “ would do all the things hens normally would do if allowed: scratch for food, dustbathe, spend time with one another or apart from one another, make attempts at flight, stretch their wings and legs simultaneously, preen, and the like. Preening, of course, was severely curtailed due to the mutilation of their beaks ” (Buyukmihci 1992).
Contrary to the unexamined assumption that “ laying ” hens are our metaphysical slaves, Dr. Page Smith, the cultural historian of the chicken, correctly observes: “ Chickens are, on the whole, very sturdy creatures or they could not have survived the experiments that have been performed on them in the last fifty or seventy-five years in the name of scientific chicken raising ” (Smith and Daniel 1975, 331). 11
To accept the environmentalist argument that the suffering of individual animals is inconsequential compared to the ozone layer, we must be willing to admit that the sufferings of minority groups, raped women, battered wives, abused children, people sitting on death row, and our loved ones are small potatoes beneath the hole in the sky. To worry about any of them is, in effect, to miniaturize the big picture to portraits of battered puppy dogs. 9 Or does environmentalism shift to the more convenient ground, when it comes to humans and oneself, where all species are equal but one species is more equal than others and membership has its privileges? An environmentalist writes: “ We care about bears and buttercups for themselves, but also for us humans. That ’ s the selfish, Cartesian bottom line: I think, therefore I deserve a hospitable environment ” (Knox 1991, 37). The reasoning may or may not be sound; the sensibility makes my hackles rise.
Paradoxically, like most of us, chickens are sturdy and vulnerable and, in situations that insult their nature, pitiable. Their experience of being alive in the flesh — be it one of pain, joy, or learned helplessness — is as much a part of the biosphere as the composite experience of a mountain. It feels good to think like a mountain and experience the Romantic Stone Age sensations of a predator (not prey) and a hunter (who in ecology has taken equal trouble to ramify the gratifications of being a gatherer?). It does not feel good to think like a battery hen and view oneself and one ’ s species through her eyes, not as an autochthonous Hero in Chains but as a bewilderingly cruel creature who punishes her and has no mercy.
Epilogue
I submitted “ Clucking Like a Mountain ” to Environmental Ethics, “ an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the philosophical aspects of environmental problems, ” because it seemed to provide the best opportunity to meet the environmentalist community on its own conceptual grounds. The editor turned it down. 12 Of the two referees, one favored and the other opposed publication. The one in favor did not “ share the author ’ s views, ” but considered it a “ highly worthwhile essay . . . a provocative piece, challenging the views that generally dominate the pages of Environmental Ethics . ”
The second reader, seemingly a poultry researcher, insisted that the arguments ignored “ much factual information, ” for instance, that “ it is in the interest of those individuals that raise hens in battery cages that the welfare of those hens is not so ignored that egg production is impaired ” and that “ the industry has made considerable strides in determining the proper mesh size for battery cages to avoid leg entrapment. ” The two major problems of hens in battery cages, as in all intensive animal agriculture, are (1) that when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way and (2) waste disposal. I had failed to mention the major benefit of “ increased productivity through a savings in time and labor. ” Moreover, I had implied that hens could care about the death of other chickens and ignored the disadvantages of free-range production, making the imaginary viewpoint of a factory-farm battery hen via a human interpreter read like “ lopsided anthropomorphism. ”
In rejecting the manuscript, the editor said it ignored much material that readers of the journal are familiar with, including Callicott ’ s “ ‘ Triangular Affair, ’ which discusses chickens in some detail, ” and Birch and Cobb ’ s The Liberation of Life, “ which specifically contrasts the lives of chickens with chimpanzees ” (Hargrove 1992). The editor has a policy of not publishing papers on animal welfare ethics unless they pertain specifically to environmental ethics. The point of a revised paper would have to continue to be that domestic chickens should be a concern of environmental ethicists from an environmental perspective, supporting Callicott ’ s argument in “ Back Together Again ” (1988a) that we need a single ethic.
I believe that we need a single ethic in which we are a voice not only for life but for lives — for all of the soft and innocent lives who are at our mercy. I share Callicott ’ s Darwinian view that we and other animals have a common biosociality rooted in evolutionary kinship and, in the case of domesticated animals, direct interactions that often include mutual affection. However, I do not share his position in “ Back Together Again ” that “ barnyard ” and other domesticated animals have an a priori ontological status whereby their very being is synonymous with the diminished roles humans have assigned to them as food sources, plow pullers, and pets. Nor do I believe that there is a kind of evolved, unspoken social contract between “ man and beast ” in the so-called mixed community of humans and domestic animals (Callicott 1988a, 167), in which the “ beasts ” just happen to be our slaves and inferiors whom we treat exactly as we please, as in our manipulation of their reproductive systems for market efficiency and other purely human ends rather than species fitness or their individual and social happiness. The will of the domesticated animal is no different from that of a human slave in being at the mercy of an “ owner ” backed by a legal system that defines the slave as property.
The editor of Environmental Ethics cites Birch and Cobb ’ s contrast between the life of a chicken and the life of a chimpanzee. In Matters of Life and Death, John Cobb, a professor of Christian theology, raises contemporary issues including whether humans have the right to destroy the environment and exterminate or cause extreme suffering to other species. In a section on animal rights, he distinguishes between the life of chickens, veal calves, tuna, and sharks and the life of humans, nonhuman primates, and marine mammals, arguing that while God ’ s perspective comprises both groups, “ the right to life applies much more to gorillas and dolphins than to chickens and sharks ” (Cobb 1992, 36). Understandably, chickens and sharks regard their lives as most important. However, “ judgment ” regards their death to preclude further experiences of much less distinctive value than does the death of a primate or sea mammal, and their contribution to the divine life to be much less significant. In Cobb ’ s view, the potential experiences of veal calves, chickens, and others consigned to their class are “ not remarkably distinctive ” ; these animals ’ fear of death is “ not an important factor in their lives, ” and their death “ does not cause major distress to others ” (Cobb 1992, 40).
In short, the editor ’ s letter, with its suggested reading, acts out my own analysis. It seeks to shout down the voice of the individual animal and author and to delegitimize me as a speaker who knows chickens in deference to the “ experts ” with whom the world order and divine mind just happen to agree that animals humans like to eat (such as chickens, veal calves, and tuna) and animals who like to eat humans (such as sharks) have less valuable personal and interpersonal experiences and a lesser part in the universe. How d
o the experts know? They decided.
I have been impressed by the realization that a few men have virtually “ decided ” what experiences count and even exist in the world. The language of Western science — the reigning construct of male hegemony — precludes the ability to express the experiential realities it talks about. Virtually all the actual experiences of this world, expressed through the manifest and mysterious characteristics of all the different beings, are unrepresented in the stainless steel edicts of experts. Where is the voice of the voiceless in the scientific literature, including the literature of environmental ethics? Where do the “ memory of suffering and the truths of subjugated knowledge ” fit into the domineering construct of our era (Adams and Procter-Smith 1993, 302)?
Carol J. Adams and Marjorie Procter-Smith ironically observe that “ the voice of the voiceless offers a truth that the voice of the expert can never offer ” (1993, 302). This voice requires a different language from the language of experts, a verbal and lyrical equivalent of the subjective and intersubjective experiences linking humans to one another and, through an epistemology rooted in our evolutionary history, to other animals and the earth. Significantly, the poultry science referee of my “ Clucking ” essay chides me with “ too much first person singular ” and snorts that “ sixteen billion chickens cannot tell me the psychic price of scientific enlightenment. ”
If women feel bludgeoned by this oppressive mentality, how must the animals be affected by it? Let us consider not only the pain that we impose on them, but the moral ecology within which we inflict it — the belittling, sniggering atmosphere of pompous hatred and contempt that we emanate in which countless billions of beings are forced to live. This moral ecology is as distinctive a human contribution to the range of experiences in the world as anything else that our species has conferred. 14
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