New York Times: Room for Debate Not Just a Ride in the Park The topic: Are horse carriages abusive to animals? Should they be banned? My view (from my essay in the Debate): This seems like a no-brainer. Conventional wisdom about animal ethics tells us that we should not impose suffering or distress on animals unless it is necessary to do so. There can be no doubt that these horses have very sad lives on the congested streets of New York. Surely, the pleasure or amusement of a ride around Central Park cannot constitute any sort of necessity that would serve to justify this use of horses. But this issue demonstrates that when it comes to animals, we suffer from a sort of moral schizophrenia. Why are some of the people who are upset about several hundred carriage horses not concerned about the many billions of animals killed annually for food? These animals, like horses, are sentient; they have subjective awareness and can experience suffering, fear and distress. Their lives, like those of many of the horses, end in the violence of the slaughterhouse. We don’t need to consume animals for optimal health, and animal agriculture is destroying the environment. The best justification that we have for consuming animals is that they taste good. We get pleasure from eating animals just as some people get pleasure from carriage rides around Central Park. So it’s apparent that our thinking about animals is very confused. Given the grand scheme of animal use, it is somewhat arbitrary to target the carriage-horse industry. Indeed, opposition to that industry by those who criticize it while chomping down on their burgers is based on nothing more principled than that we fetishize horses but not cows. It is like sitting around the dinner table eating animals while we discuss what a bad person Michael Vick was for fighting them. nytimes/roomfordebate/2014/01/17/horse-carriages-are-not-just-a-ride-in-the-park
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 14:55:33 +0000
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