Animal Liberation PETER SINGER. An Imprint of HarperCollinsPub/ishers

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3 Animal Liberation PETER SINGER An Imprint of HarperCollinsPub/ishers

4 ANIMAL UBERATION. Copyright C 1975, 1990, 2002 by Peter Singer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written pennission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical anicles and reviews. For information address HarperCoUins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Sbeet, New York, NY First Ecco paperback edition published 2002 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Singer, Peter. Animal liberation. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN Animal welfare. 2. Vegetarianism. I. Title HV " ISBN (pbk.) 04 OS 06 RRD

5 To Richdrd dnd Md ry dnd Ros dnd Stdn. dnd-especidl!j to-rendtd This revised edition is also!,.all of you who have changed your lives in order to bring Animal Liber ation closer. You have made it possible to believe that the power of ethical reasoning can prevail over the self-interest of our species.

6 Contents Preface to the 2002 Edition Preface to the 1990 Edition Preface to the 1975 Edition ix XV XX 1 All Animals Are Equal... 1 or why the ethical principle on which human equality rests requires us to extend equal consideration to animals too 2 Tools for Research your taxes at work 3 Down on the Factory Fann... or what happened to your dinner when it was still an animal 95 4 Becoming a Vegetarian or haw to produce less suffering and more food at a reduced cost to the environment 5 Man's Dominion a short history of speciesism 6 Speciesism Today defenses, rationalizations, and objections to Animal Liberation and the progress made in overcoming them

7 viti CONTENTS Appendices 1 Further Reading 2 Living Without Cruelty 3 OrganizAtions Notes Acknowledgments Acknowledgments to the 1990 Edition Index

8 Preface to the 2002 Edition As an epidemic of foot and mouth disease swept through Britain in the spring of 2001, the public was treated to the grisly spectacle of animals being shot by the thousands, and their corpses stacked up and burned. On one evening television program, a tearful farmer said: "We're so sorry to see our lambs die-they should be the symbol of spring, of new life. But now they die due to this awful disease." Before you start feeling too much sympathy for that farmer, ask yourself one question: What would have been the fate of the lambs if there had been no outbreak of foot and mouth disease? He would have taken these little symbols of spring away from their mothers, packed them into trucks, and sent them to slaughter. The symbol of new life would become dead meat. Then the farmer would have happily banked the check that he was paid for doing this. (He'll still get his check-the government compensates farmers whose animals are killed to prevent the spread of disease.) The earlier outbreak of mad cow disease taught the European public that agribusiness has changed cows from herbivores to cannibals. To increase the protein in their diet, they are fed ground-up slaughterhouse remnants. Now, with hecatombs of animal corpses on the vening news, millions of people have seen indisputable evidence of the fact that modem animal agriculture is based on treating animals as things, mere means to our ends, with no other reason for existing. Many of these people have been contacting animal groups and vegetarian organizations, seeking alternatives to animal products. Going meat-free is the right decision to make, and better late than never, but the wonder is that it has taken so long for people to understand the real nature of the animal industry today. Animal Liberation was originally published in The text that follows this preface is the revised edition, first published in The revisions

9 X ANIMAL LIBERATION include accounts of the major campaigns and achievements of the Animal Liberation movement up to Since then the movement has continued to make gains, especially in Europe and in the treatment of farm animals. The first real breakthrough against factory farming was in Switzerland, where the battery cage system of producing eggs described in Chapter 3 became illegal at the end of Swiss egg producers now allow their hens the opportunity to scratch on a floor covered with straw or other organic material, and to lay their eggs in a sheltered, soft-floored nesting box. With the Swiss having shown that change is possible, opposition to the cage mounted throughout Europe, and the European Union, covering fifteen member states, has now agreed to phase out the standard bare wire cage altogether. By 2012, European egg producers will be required to allow at least 750 square centimeters, or 120 square inches, per bird-by comparison, the current average in the U.S. egg industry is about 50 square inches-and give their hens access to a perch and a nesting box in which to lay their eggs. If they still want to keep their hens in cages, the cages will have to be much larger, to allow for these additional features. Many producers will find it more economical to switch to a quite different form of housing in which hens are free to roam, either indoors in a large barn that has perches, litter to scratch in and nesting boxes, or with access to an outdoor range. The treatment of laying hens is only one example of the way in which Europe is taking steps to protect the welfare of farm animals. As 1 make clear in Chapter 3, veal calves, deliberately kept anemic, deprived of straw for bedding, and confined in individual crates so narrow that they cannot even turn around, are probably the most miserable of all farm animals. That system of keeping calves had already been banned in Britain when I revised the text of this book for the 1990 edition. Now the European Union has decided that it must go from all its member nations by Confining pregnant sows in individual crates was banned in Britain in 1998, and will be banned in the European Union from 2013, except for the first four weeks of pregnancy. These significant changes have wide support throughout the European Union, and the full backing of the Union's leading scientific experts on the housing of farm animals. They are a vindication of much that has been said by animal advocates for a very long time, going back beyond even the first edition of this book to Ruth Harrison's pathbreaking 1964 classic, Animal Machines. When I joined the campaign against factory farming in 1971, it seemed as if we were taking on a giant of an industry, impervious to anything but the economic imperative. Fortunately, in Europe at least, that has proven not to be the case. Disappointingly, though, the changes that are under way in Europe are scarcely even on

10 PREFACE TO THE 2002 EDITION xi the agenda in the United States, where a typical cage for laying hens allows its inhabitants only 48 square inches of space, and both calves and sows continue to be kept in individual crates or stalls too narrow for them to turn around and too short for them to walk at all. In the United States the brightest hope that hens have of any improvement at all in their living conditions is, startingly, McDonald's. The hamburger chain announced in 2000 that it would require its egg suppliers to provide 72 square inches per hen-a 50 percent improvement for most hens, but still only enough to bring these producers up to the current European standard, one that the Europeans themselves now see as outmoded and unacceptable. Other McDonald's guidelines will exclude starving hens to induce them to molt, a practice already illegal in Europe but common in the United States, where laying hens suddenly find that their food and water is completely cut off. The water comes back on after two or three days, but they are given no food at all for up to two weeks, in order to improve the rate at which they lay eggs once the food is resumed. Burger King and Wendy's have now indicated that they will match McDonald's new space allowance. McDonald's is also considering ways to eliminate the painful removal of much of the hens' beaks to stop them attacking one another. These steps are the first significant improvement in animal welfare in the American egg industry since the original appearance of this book, more than a quarter century ago, but unless other major American users of eggs can be persuaded to follow the McDonald's example, only a small minority of American hens will by then be affected. Americans have often looked down on some European nations-especially the Mediterranean countries-as being less concerned for animals than they are. Now the opposite is the case. Even in Spain, with its culture of bullfighting, the vast majority of animals are already better cared for than in America, and this gap will continue to widen as the European Union goes ahead with its reforms. For the number of bulls killed in the bullring is tiny compared to the number of calves, pigs, and hens that are far more cramped for room in America than they are in Spain. Since moving to the United States in 1999 I have thought about why America lags so far behind Europe in its protection of animals. Are Americans simply more brutal, narrower in their concerns, and lacking the more refined sensibilities of their European counterparts? A case could be made for that view. There are, however, alternative explanations. One is that animal welfare organizations in the United States are themselves to blame for failing to direct public attention to farm animal issues. When animal rights started gaining national attention, in the late 1970s and 1980s, the issues that the movement raised were largely to do with animals used in product testing and research. The cat sex experi-