Thanks everybody for participating in this discussion. I spent some more time on this, here are my final thoughts. I thought they would be useful to share for people who stumble on this in the future:
Empirical findings: Very uncertain that organically farmed animals have a life worth living After posting this, I contacted Animal Equality Germany and Albert Schweizer Stiftung for their thoughts on this. Both made the point that while these labels might be marginally better, how they are implemented in practice is often far from theory (e.g., link, link) and even the highest Naturland standard is not ideal (e.g., 3.000 laying hens in one shed, temporary tethering is allowed for cattle, calves separated from mothers). When I challenged Naturland with an email about this, they claimed that due to data privacy they cannot share any animal welfare checkup reports (announced visits yearly and non-anounced visits for a randomly selected 10%) or make something like live webcams mandatory. They did link to Tierwohl.TV as a project that implemented live webcams but the project pretty much died. Given that these are probably the top 1% of organic farms and the pigs and hens donât look like living their best life, I think itâs safe to conclude that âweâre not there yetâ. Side note: check out https://ââwelfarefootprint.org/ââ, they do great work, exactly what I was looking for with the first question I raised above (thanks @Vasco Grilođ¸ for the pointer).
Theoretical considerations: Very uncertain that a ânet positive lifeâ is justification enough to farm As @Stijn and @MarcKrĂźger pointed out, even on a theoretical level we are getting into murky territory here. Most importantly, following this logic where âa net-positive life is enough to farm animalsâ quickly leads us to the repugnant conclusion, which I canât stand behind. My personal ethics were strongly influenced by Singerâs Practical Ethics, where he argues for preference utalitariansim, and while this of course also has itâs problems, itâs clear that the farmed animals would have the preference to live in shelters vs on those farms. I donât claim to have the solution to population ethics but these considerations make me uncertain enough to avoid advocating for net-positive animal farming.
Personal conclusion: Be vegan Given all this uncertainty, for me personally the conclusion is to be vegan. A bit of history because I think itâs an interesting case study on how slippery slopes work: After reading Practical Ethics 15 years ago, I decided to be vegetarian because it seemed like the easy solution. I tried the vegan at home, vegetarian when eating out for a while but always ended up eating eggs and cheese again, mostly triggered by living with people who did, inviting people over, or saying âwell, I eat it anyway when eating outâ. Then this slowly escalated to eating meat when travelling, making exceptions for fish and sushi, and most recently eating meat when eating out after my personal trainer put me on a high protein diet, justifying this with âitâs not that different from being vegetarian because animals suffer in both cases and are killed in both casesâ, which eventually led to this post. I think the red line that goes through this is conflict avoidanceâI didnât want to go into conflict with friends, partners, colleagues, and people in general. So from now on, Iâll embrace the conflict and carry some emergency vegan snacks. Wish me luck ;)
Broader conclusion: Donât advocate for consuming net-positive animal products I think my personal story is exactly the reason why we shouldnât advocate for consuming animal products of animals that âhad a good lifeâ. Itâs super easy to get from there into a habit of eating all kinds of animal products, especially because the places where itâs most difficult to be vegan will probably care the least about animal welfare. Following this, I think the answer to question 3 in this post would be âwe would consumer moreâ. As also pointed out by @MarcKrĂźger and question 2, when it comes to advocacy we of course should also take into account sustainability. Itâs clear that farming with higher welfare standards needs more land, and probably more resources because the animals would live longer, so also not a good idea to advocate for this (vs veganism) from a sustainability perspective. Nevertheless we should of course keep advocating for higher welfare standards for the animals that are still being farmed.
Thanks everybody for participating in this discussion. I spent some more time on this, here are my final thoughts. I thought they would be useful to share for people who stumble on this in the future:
Empirical findings: Very uncertain that organically farmed animals have a life worth living
After posting this, I contacted Animal Equality Germany and Albert Schweizer Stiftung for their thoughts on this. Both made the point that while these labels might be marginally better, how they are implemented in practice is often far from theory (e.g., link, link) and even the highest Naturland standard is not ideal (e.g., 3.000 laying hens in one shed, temporary tethering is allowed for cattle, calves separated from mothers). When I challenged Naturland with an email about this, they claimed that due to data privacy they cannot share any animal welfare checkup reports (announced visits yearly and non-anounced visits for a randomly selected 10%) or make something like live webcams mandatory. They did link to Tierwohl.TV as a project that implemented live webcams but the project pretty much died. Given that these are probably the top 1% of organic farms and the pigs and hens donât look like living their best life, I think itâs safe to conclude that âweâre not there yetâ. Side note: check out https://ââwelfarefootprint.org/ââ, they do great work, exactly what I was looking for with the first question I raised above (thanks @Vasco Grilođ¸ for the pointer).
Theoretical considerations: Very uncertain that a ânet positive lifeâ is justification enough to farm
As @Stijn and @MarcKrĂźger pointed out, even on a theoretical level we are getting into murky territory here. Most importantly, following this logic where âa net-positive life is enough to farm animalsâ quickly leads us to the repugnant conclusion, which I canât stand behind. My personal ethics were strongly influenced by Singerâs Practical Ethics, where he argues for preference utalitariansim, and while this of course also has itâs problems, itâs clear that the farmed animals would have the preference to live in shelters vs on those farms. I donât claim to have the solution to population ethics but these considerations make me uncertain enough to avoid advocating for net-positive animal farming.
Personal conclusion: Be vegan
Given all this uncertainty, for me personally the conclusion is to be vegan. A bit of history because I think itâs an interesting case study on how slippery slopes work: After reading Practical Ethics 15 years ago, I decided to be vegetarian because it seemed like the easy solution. I tried the vegan at home, vegetarian when eating out for a while but always ended up eating eggs and cheese again, mostly triggered by living with people who did, inviting people over, or saying âwell, I eat it anyway when eating outâ. Then this slowly escalated to eating meat when travelling, making exceptions for fish and sushi, and most recently eating meat when eating out after my personal trainer put me on a high protein diet, justifying this with âitâs not that different from being vegetarian because animals suffer in both cases and are killed in both casesâ, which eventually led to this post. I think the red line that goes through this is conflict avoidanceâI didnât want to go into conflict with friends, partners, colleagues, and people in general. So from now on, Iâll embrace the conflict and carry some emergency vegan snacks. Wish me luck ;)
Broader conclusion: Donât advocate for consuming net-positive animal products
I think my personal story is exactly the reason why we shouldnât advocate for consuming animal products of animals that âhad a good lifeâ. Itâs super easy to get from there into a habit of eating all kinds of animal products, especially because the places where itâs most difficult to be vegan will probably care the least about animal welfare. Following this, I think the answer to question 3 in this post would be âwe would consumer moreâ. As also pointed out by @MarcKrĂźger and question 2, when it comes to advocacy we of course should also take into account sustainability. Itâs clear that farming with higher welfare standards needs more land, and probably more resources because the animals would live longer, so also not a good idea to advocate for this (vs veganism) from a sustainability perspective. Nevertheless we should of course keep advocating for higher welfare standards for the animals that are still being farmed.