Veganism and Animal Rights
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2017
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the less predictable arguments to result from Brexit concerns the rights and wrongs of chlorine-washed chickens. Perhaps chlorinated-chicken-gate made many people feel temporarily smug about UK standards of animal welfare, compared with those in other parts of the world. Yet, at the same time, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a 'Go Vegan World' advert with the headline "Humane milk is a myth" - a claim which suggests we do have much further to go before we can feel morally-superior about our treatment of animals. Veganism is on the rise, driven by animal welfare, health and environmental concerns. According to the Vegan Society, sales of vegan food increased by 1,500% last year and there are now more than half a million vegans in the UK, up from 150,000 ten years ago. Is veganism the next step in the march towards a more morally-enlightened and humane society? Or is it just a city-dwellers' fad, detached from the realities of food production, global economics and evolutionary biology? Whether vegans, vegetarians or meat-eaters, can our food production and consumption ever be compatible with animal welfare? Even if the language of animal 'rights' is unhelpful, do humans have a moral duty to avoid cruelty of any kind to other living things? Or is that an impossible goal while we prioritise the interests of Homo sapiens over the welfare of all other animals? Some believe that a society which is caring towards animals is more likely to be caring towards people. Others say that our conditioning from early childhood to embrace cuddly, friendly, talking animals has made us much too sentimental. As long as basic welfare standards are met, shouldn't important human needs be served by animals - including cheap chlorinated chickens?
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.6 | Good evening. It's no fun being a chicken, either side of the Atlantic. |
| 0:08.4 | Crammed by the million into giant sheds, a month of increasing tottery discomfort without a glimpse of daylight, and then the chop. |
| 0:15.6 | In one of the more bizarre Brexit-related rows this week, the Americans were said to be more cruel than us because they |
| 0:20.9 | spray the corpses with chlorine, though the chickens are surely well past caring. Evolution is cruel. |
| 0:27.3 | We were not so much designed to eat meat, but designed by eating meat. So many more calories |
| 0:32.6 | for far less effort than eating plants. It was what enabled us to grow big, energy-hungry brains, according |
| 0:38.5 | to the scientific journal Nature. Vegetarians either don't agree or don't think it's relevant to |
| 0:43.5 | 21st century moral dilemmas, especially the welfare of those animals we farm on an industrial |
| 0:48.6 | scale. A vegan campaign group has just been given the go-ahead for an advertising campaign that says the dairy industry is inhumane. |
| 0:58.2 | Daisy the cow stares out mournfully while the unashamedly anthropomorphic text talks of mothers calling frantically, daughters trembling piteously, sons slaughtered for their flesh. |
| 1:09.5 | There are half a million vegans in this country now who |
| 1:11.7 | won't touch dairy products. The argument, emotional or rational, has traction. There are important |
| 1:17.8 | unresolved moral issues here about the right relationship between humans, the world we live in, |
| 1:22.6 | and the creatures we share it with, about how much our needs and pleasures should take priority |
| 1:27.1 | over their welfare, |
| 1:28.5 | whether they in any sense have rights and where we draw the line between a moral duty not to |
| 1:33.6 | be cruel and a compelling moral imperative to feed growing numbers of humans. |
| 1:38.5 | That's our moral maize tonight. |
| 1:39.6 | Our panel, Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas, Anne McHlevoy, senior editor on The Economist, |
| 1:43.4 | the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser. Giles, you've eaten your way through a herd or two in your time. Time to repent. I'm an hypocrite and I'm an unrepentantant sinner. I think our addiction to meat is clearly damaging the environment. I think industrial farming treats animals |
| 2:01.8 | in unspeakable and disgusting ways, but I'm afraid I like a big juicy steak in the middle |
... |
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