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Whatsapp Professor Gary Francione says we need a better argument for killing 56 billion animals a year than that it's convenient or that we like the taste

Professor Gary Francione, a 31-year veteran of veganism, says that the idea of a compassionate carnivore is analogous to a loving parent who beats their children for pleasure. Here he responds to Professor Mike Archer, who last week on RN argued that vegetarians are hypocrites because millions of animals are massacred to protect fruit, vegetable and grain crops.

Professor Archer’s argument on The Science Show has been circulating around, and people are very interested in this issue. I got probably 20 emails from people telling me about this and expressing concern, outrage, and amusement about it.

I think that Professor Archer is wrong when he says that we’re killing more animals with grain production than we would if we were eating animals. If we were all eating grains, if we all had a plant based diet, if we were all vegans, we’d actually have many, many fewer acres under cultivation.

The problem is it takes between six to twelve pounds of plant protein to produce one pound of flesh. For example in the United States 80 per cent of the grains that we grow are fed to animals that we’re going to slaughter and eat.

If people were consuming those grains directly they’d have to consume many fewer pounds of those grains and we would not have them going through the inefficient conversion process that animals represent. Professor Archer has got it wrong when he says we are killing more animals with grain production—that’s simply wrong.

Vegan pull quote The best justification that we have for inflicting suffering and death on 56 billion animals a year is that they taste good. We are saying it’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals, but on the other hand we participate in this all the time.

Professor Archer also talks about how in Australia you have rodent plagues every few years and the rodents are being killed as a result of these plagues. If we were all consuming grains we would have many fewer grains in storage facilities so the problem would not be on the same scale.

But also think about it this way. We live in a world in which we kill 56 billion land animals—and that’s not counting the aquatic animals—every year.

Most people would agree with the proposition that it’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering and death on animals. We could have an interesting philosophical discussion about what 'necessity' means but the reality is if it means anything, if it means anything at all, it means we can’t justify suffering and death for reasons of pleasure, amusement or convenience.

If we had a rule that said, ‘It’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on children, but it’s OK to beat them if you enjoy watching them suffer’, that would create an exception that would not only be perverse but would make the rule silly.

Similarly if we say it’s wrong to inflict suffering and death on animals, well what’s our justification for eating meat? We don’t need to eat animals to be optimally healthy. I have been a vegan for going on now 31 years and I would daresay that I have more energy and suffer from fewer colds and viruses than most of the people I teach who are young enough to be my grandchildren. So the idea that you need animal products to be optimally healthy is simply false.

The best justification that we have for inflicting suffering and death on 56 billion animals a year is that they taste good. We are saying it’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals, but on the other hand we participate in this all the time.

We’re not on a desert island, or in any situation of conflict with non-human animals. We simply choose to eat them because we like the taste or the convenience of going out to the fast food place next door. It’s simply a matter of pleasure or convenience.

When Professor Archer talks about these plagues and how we’ve got to kill all these rats well yes, that plague occurs in the context in which we engage in absolutely mind-numbing violence, completely unnecessary violence, against billions of animals. We don’t take animal life seriously; we don’t take animals’ suffering seriously. If we had those plagues that Professor Archer talks about and we lived in a vegan world where we did respect animal life we’d come up with better solutions.

It seems that what Professor Archer is saying is that we can’t avoid killing animals in living our lives so therefore eating them is OK. Let’s look at the argument in a human context.

You can get an actuary to tell you that if you build a road and the speed limit is 60 mph you’re going to have X number of deaths, 70 mph X-plus number of deaths, and so on. But building the road is still different from intentionally killing those numbers of people. Whatever activity we engage in, even manufacturing the most innocuous, the most beneficial product, it’s going to involve human beings who will become injured and get killed in the making of those products. But that doesn’t mean then that we should throw up our hands and say, ‘Well violence against humans is just fine because our daily activity involves harming human beings’.

I think that these points rebut Professor Archer and I would one day really enjoy if The Science Show would set up a debate. I think the two of us would enjoy talking to each other.

I teach a course and have been teaching a course with Anna Charlton called Jurisprudence: the Rights of Humans and Non-humans. We talk about racism, sexism, heterosexism, speciesism and how various forms of discrimination all share a common edge. A lot of young people haven’t really thought about these issues. But that’s because we live in a world in which we’re constantly bombarded with media who tell us that if we don’t eat animal products we’re not going to be manly, or healthy. But mainstream health care professionals are every single day telling us that animal products are killing us.

And I’m 31 years without eating meat, dairy, eggs, and I ain’t dead yet.

Gary Francione is Professor of Law at Rutgers University in New Jersey. This article is an edited transcript of his discussion with Robyn Williams for this weekend's upcoming episode of The Science Show.