3

EQUALITY FOR ANIMALS?

RACISM AND SPECIESISM

N Chapter 2,1 gave reasons for believing that the fundamental
I principle of equality, on which the equality of all human
beings rests, is the principle of equal consideration of interests.
Only a basic moral principle of this kind can allow us to defend
a form of equality that embraces all human beings, with all the
differences that exist between them. I shall now contend that
while this principle does provide an adequate basis for human
equality, it provides a basis that cannot be limited to humans.
In other words I shall suggest that, having accepted the principle
of equality as a sound moral basis for relations with others of
our own species, we are also committed to accepting it as a
sound moral basis for relations with those outside our own
species - the non-human animals.
This suggestion may at first seem bizarre. We are used to
regarding discrimination against members of racial minorities,
or against women, as among the most important moral and
political issues facing the world today. These are serious matters,
worthy of the time and energy of any concerned person. But
animals? Isn't the welfare of animals in a different category
altogether, a matter for people who are dotty about dogs and
cats? How can anyone waste their time on equality for animals
when so many humans are denied real equality?
This attitude reflects a popular prejudice against taking the
interests of animals seriously - a prejudice no better founded
than the prejudice of white slaveowners against taking the in-
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 Practical Ethics
terests of their African slaves seriously. It is easy for us to criticise
the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed
themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our
own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices
among the beliefs and values we hold. What is needed now is
a willingness to follow the arguments where they lead, without
a prior assumption that the issue is not worth our attention.
The argument for extending the principle of equality beyond
our own species is simple, so simple that it amounts to no more
than a clear understanding of the nature of the principle of equal
consideration of interests. We have seen that this principle im-
plies that our concern for others ought not to depend on what
they are like, or what abilities they possess (although precisely
what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the
characteristics of those affected by what we do). It is on this
basis that we are able to say that the fact that some people are
not members of our race does not entitle us to exploit them,
and similarly the fact that some people are less intelligent than
others does not mean that their interests may be disregarded.
But the principle also implies that the fact that beings are not
members of our species does not entitle us to exploit them, and
similarly the fact that other animals are less intelligent than we
are does not mean that their interests may be disregarded.
We saw in Chapter 2 that many philosophers have advocated
equal consideration of interests, in some form or other, as a
basic moral principle. Only a few have recognised that the prin-
ciple has applications beyond our own species, one of the few
being Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of modern utili-
tarianism. In a forward-looking passage, written at a time when
African slaves in the British dominions were still being treated
much as we now treat nonhuman animals, Bentham wrote:
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may
acquire those rights which never could have been withholden
from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already
discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a
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 Equality for Animals?
human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice
of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the
number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination
of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning
a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should
trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps
the faculty of discourse? But a fullgrown horse or dog is beyond
comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable an-
imal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old.
But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The
question is not. Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can
they suffer?

In this passage Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as

the vital characteristic that entitles a being to equal considera-
tion. The capacity for suffering - or more strictly, for suffering
and/or enjoyment or happiness - is not just another character-
istic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics.
Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark 'the insu-
perable line' that determines whether the interests of a being
should be considered happen to have selected the wrong char-
acteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a
prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be
satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful
way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests
of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone
does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that
we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare.
A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being
tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this
way.
If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for re-
fusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what
the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that
the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering - in so
far as rough comparisons can be made - of any other being. If
a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment
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 Practical Ethics
or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is
why the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if
not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer or
experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible
boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this
boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality
would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some
other characteristic, like skin colour?
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater
weight to the interests of members of their own race when there
is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of
another race. Racists of European descent typically have not
accepted that pain matters as much when it is felt by Africans,
for example, as when it is felt by Europeans. Similarly those I
would call 'speciesists' give greater weight to the interests of
members of their own species when there is a clash between
their interests and the interests of those of other species. Human
speciesists do not accept that pain is as bad when it is felt by
pigs or mice as when it is felt by humans.
That, then, is really the whole of the argument for extending
the principle of equality to nonhuman animals; but there may
be some doubts about what this equality amounts to in practice.
In particular, the last sentence of the previous paragraph may
prompt some people to reply: 'Surely pain felt by a mouse just
is not as bad as pain felt by a human. Humans have much
greater awareness of what is happening to them, and this makes
their suffering worse. You can't equate the suffering of, say, a
person dying slowly from cancer, and a laboratory mouse under-
going the same fate.'
I fully accept that in the case described the human cancer
victim normally suffers more than the nonhuman cancer victim.
This in no way undermines the extension of equal consideration
of interests to nonhumans. It means, rather, that we must take
care when we compare the interests of different species. In some
situations a member of one species will suffer more than a
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 Equality for Animals?
member of another species. In this case we should still apply
the principle of equal consideration of interests but the result
of so doing is, of course, to give priority to relieving the greater
suffering. A simpler case may help to make this clear.
If I give a horse a hard slap across its rump with my open
hand, the horse may start, but it presumably feels little pain. Its
skin is thick enough to protect it against a mere slap. If I slap
a baby in the same way, however, the baby will cry and pre-
sumably does feel pain, for the baby's skin is more sensitive. So
it is worse to slap a baby than a horse, if both slaps are admin-
istered with equal force. But there must be some kind of blow
- I don't know exactly what it would be, but perhaps a blow
with a heavy stick - that would cause the horse as much pain
as we cause a baby by a simple slap. That is what I mean by
'the same amount of pain' and if we consider it wrong to inflict
that much pain on a baby for no good reason then we must,
unless we are speciesists, consider it equally wrong to inflict the
same amount of pain on a horse for no good reason.
There are other differences between humans and animals that
cause other complications. Normal adult human beings have
mental capacities that will, in certain circumstances, lead them
to suffer more than animals would in the same circumstances.
If, for instance, we decided to perform extremely painful or
lethal scientific experiments on normal adult humans, kid-
napped at random from public parks for this purpose, adults
who entered parks would become fearful that they would be
kidnapped. The resultant terror would be a form of suffering
additional to the pain of the experiment. The same experiments
performed on nonhuman animals would cause less suffering
since the animals would not have the anticipatory dread of being
kidnapped and experimented upon. This does not mean, of
course, that it would be right to perform the experiment on
animals, but only that there is a reason, and one that is not
speciesist, for preferring to use animals rather than normal adult
humans, if the experiment is to be done at all. Note, however,
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 Practical Ethics
that this same argument gives us a reason for preferring to use
human infants - orphans perhaps - or severely intellectually
disabled humans for experiments, rather than adults, since in-
fants and severely intellectually disabled humans would also
have no idea of what was going to happen to them. As far as
this argument is concerned, nonhuman animals and infants and
severely intellectually disabled humans are in the same cate-
gory; and if we use this argument to justify experiments on
nonhuman animals we have to ask ourselves whether we are
also prepared to allow experiments on human infants and se-
verely intellectually disabled adults. If we make a distinction
between animals and these humans, how can we do it, other
than on the basis of a morally indefensible preference for mem-
bers of our own species?
There are many areas in which the superior mental powers
of normal adult humans make a difference: anticipation, more
detailed memory, greater knowledge of what is happening, and
so on. These differences explain why a human dying from cancer
is likely to suffer more than a mouse. It is the mental anguish
that makes the human's position so much harder to bear. Yet
these differences do not all point to greater suffering on the part
of the normal human being. Sometimes animals may suffer
more because of their more limited understanding. If, for in-
stance, we are taking prisoners in wartime we can explain to
them that while they must submit to capture, search, and con-
finement they will not otherwise be harmed and will be set free
at the conclusion of hostilities. If we capture wild animals, how-
ever, we cannot explain that we are not threatening their lives.
A wild animal cannot distinguish an attempt to overpower and
confine from an attempt to kill; the one causes as much terror
as the other.
It may be objected that comparisons of the sufferings of dif-
ferent species are impossible to make, and that for this reason
when the interests of animals and humans clash, the principle
of equality gives no guidance. It is true that comparisons of
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 Equality for Animals?
suffering between members of different species cannot be made
precisely. Nor, for that matter, can comparisons of suffering
between different human beings be made precisely. Precision is
not essential. As we shall see shortly, even if we were to prevent
the infliction of suffering on animals only when the interests of
humans will not be affected to anything like the extent that
animals are affected, we would be forced to make radical
changes in our treatment of animals that would involve our
diet, the farming methods we use, experimental procedures in
many fields of science, our approach to wildlife and to hunting,
trapping and the wearing of furs, and areas of entertainment
like circuses, rodeos, and zoos. As a result, the total quantity of
suffering caused would be greatly reduced; so greatly that it is
hard to imagine any other change of moral attitude that would
cause so great a reduction in the total sum of suffering in the
universe.
So far I have said a lot about the infliction of suffering on
animals, but nothing about killing them. This omission has been
deliberate. The application of the principle of equality to the
infliction of suffering is, in theory at least, fairly straightforward.
Pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or min-
imised, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that
suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and
how long it lasts, but pains of the same intensity and duration
are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals. When we
come to consider the value of life, we cannot say quite so con-
fidently that a life is a life, and equally valuable, whether it is
a human life or an animal life. It would not be speciesist to hold
that the life of a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought,
of planning for the future, of complex acts of communication,
and so on, is more valuable than the life of a being without
these capacities. (I am not saying whether this view is justifiable
or not; only that it cannot simply be rejected as speciesist, be-
cause it is not on the basis of species itself that one life is held
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 Practical Ethics
to be more valuable than another.) The value of life is a no-
toriously difficult ethical question, and we can only arrive at a
reasoned conclusion about the comparative value of human and
animal life after we have discussed the value of life in general.
This is a topic for a separate chapter. Meanwhile there are im-
portant conclusions to be derived from the extension beyond
our own species of the principle of equal consideration of in-
terests, irrespective of our conclusions about the value of life.

SPECIESISM IN PRACTICE

Animals as Food
For most people in modern, urbanised societies, the principal
form of contact with nonhuman animals is at meal times. The
use of animals for food is probably the oldest and the most
widespread form of animal use. There is also a sense in which
it is the most basic form of animal use, the foundation stone on
which rests the belief that animals exist for our pleasure and
convenience.
If animals count in their own right, our use of animals for
food becomes questionable - especially when animal flesh is a
luxury rather than a necessity. Eskimos living in an environment
where they must kill animals for food or starve might be justified
in claiming that their interest in surviving overrides that of the
animals they kill. Most of us cannot defend our diet in this way.
Citizens of industrialised societies can easily obtain an adequate
diet without the use of animal flesh. The overwhelming weight
of medical evidence indicates that animal flesh is not necessary
for good health or longevity. Nor is animal production in in-
dustrialised societies an efficient way of producing food, since
most of the animals consumed have been fattened on grains
and other foods that we could have eaten directly. When we
feed these grains to animals, only about 10 per cent of the
nutritional value remains as meat for human consumption. So,
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 Equality for Animals?
with the exception of animals raised entirely on grazing land
unsuitable for crops, animals are eaten neither for health, nor
to increase our food supply. Their flesh is a luxury, consumed
because people like its taste.
In considering the ethics of the use of animal flesh for human
food in industrialised societies, we are considering a situation
in which a relatively minor human interest must be balanced
against the lives and welfare of the animals involved. The prin-
ciple of equal consideration of interests does not allow major
interests to be sacrificed for minor interests.
The case against using animals for food is at its strongest when
animals are made to lead miserable lives so that their flesh can
be made available to humans at the lowest possible cost. Modern
forms of intensive farming apply science and technology to the
attitude that animals are objects for us to use. In order to have
meat on the table at a price that people can afford, our society
tolerates methods of meat production that confine sentient an-
imals in cramped, unsuitable conditions for the entire duration
of their lives. Animals are treated like machines that convert
fodder into flesh, and any innovation that results in a higher
'conversion ratio' is liable to be adopted. As one authority on
the subject has said, 'Cruelty is acknowledged only when prof-
itability ceases.' To avoid speciesism we must stop these prac-
tices. Our custom is all the support that factory farmers need.
The decision to cease giving them that support may be difficult,
but it is less difficult than it would have been for a white South-
erner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves;
if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure
those slaveholders who would not change their own way of
living?
These arguments apply to animals who have been reared in
factory farms - which means that we should not eat chicken,
pork, or veal, unless we know that the meat we are eating was
not produced by factory farm methods. The same is true of beef
that has come from cattle kept in crowded feedlots (as most
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 Practical Ethics
beef does in the United States). Eggs will come from hens kept
in small wire cages, too small even to allow them to stretch
their wings, unless the eggs are specifically sold as 'free range'
(or unless one lives in a relatively enlightened country like
Switzerland, which has prohibited the cage system of keeping
hens).
These arguments do not take us all the way to a vegetarian
diet, since some animals, for instance sheep, and in some coun-
tries cattle, still graze freely outdoors. This could change. The
American pattern of fattening cattle in crowded feedlots is
spreading to other countries. Meanwhile, the lives of free-rang-
ing animals are undoubtedly better than those of animals reared
in factory farms. It is still doubtful if using them for food is
compatible with equal consideration of interests. One problem
is, of course, that using them as food involves killing them -
but this is an issue to which, as I have said, we shall return
when we have discussed the value of life in the next chapter.
Apart from taking their lives there are also many other things
done to animals in order to bring them cheaply to our dinner
table. Castration, the separation of mother and young, the
breaking up of herds, branding, transporting, and finally the
moments of slaughter - all of these are likely to involve suffering
and do not take the animals' interests into account. Perhaps
animals could be reared on a small scale without suffering in
these ways, but it does not seem economical or practical to do
so on the scale required for feeding our large urban populations.
In any case, the important question is not whether animal flesh
could be produced without suffering, but whether the flesh we
are considering buying was produced without suffering. Unless
we can be confident that it was, the principle of equal consid-
eration of interests implies that it was wrong to sacrifice im-
portant interests of the animal in order to satisfy less important
interests of our own; consequently we should boycott the end
result of this process.
For those of us living in cities where it is difficult to know
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 Equality for Animals?
how the animals we might eat have lived and died, this con-
clusion brings us close to a vegetarian way of life. I shall consider
some objections to it in the final section of this chapter.

Experimenting on Animals
Perhaps the area in which speciesism can most clearly be ob-
served is the use of animals in experiments. Here the issue stands
out starkly, because experimenters often seek to justify exper-
imenting on animals by claiming that the experiments lead us
to discoveries about humans; if this is so, the experimenter must
agree that human and nonhuman animals are similar in crucial
respects. For instance, if forcing a rat to choose between starving
to death and crossing an electrified grid to obtain food tells us
anything about the reactions of humans to stress, we must as-
sume that the rat feels stress in this kind of situation.
People sometimes think that all animal experiments serve
vital medical purposes, and can be justified on the grounds that
they relieve more suffering than they cause. This comfortable
belief is mistaken. Drug companies test new shampoos and cos-
metics they are intending to market by dripping concentrated
solutions of them into the eyes of rabbits, in a test known as
the Draize test. (Pressure from the animal liberation movement
has led several cosmetic companies to abandon this practice.
An alternative test, not using animal, has now been found.
Nevertheless, many companies, including some of the largest,
still continue to perform the Draize test.) Food additives, in-
cluding artificial colourings and preservatives, are tested by what
is known as the LD50 - a test designed to find the 'lethal dose',
or level of consumption that will make 50 per cent of a sample
of animals die. In the process nearly all of the animals are made
very sick before some finally die and others pull through. These
tests are not necessary to prevent human suffering: even if there
were no alternative to the use of animals to test the safety of
the products, we already have enough shampoos and food col-
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 Practical Ethics
ourings. There is no need to develop new ones that might be
dangerous.
In many countries, the armed forces perform atrocious ex-
periments on animals that rarely come to light. To give just one
example: at the U.S. Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute, in
Bethesda, Maryland, rhesus monkeys have been trained to run
inside a large wheel. If they slow down too much, the wheel
slows down, too, and the monkeys get an electric shock. Once
the monkeys are trained to run for long periods, they are given
lethal doses of radiation. Then, while sick and vomiting, they
are forced to continue to run until they drop. This is supposed
to provide information on the capacities of soldiers to continue
to fight after a nuclear attack.
Nor can all university experiments be defended on the
grounds that they relieve more suffering than they inflict. Three
experimenters at Princeton University kept 256 young rats with-
out food or water until they died. They concluded that young
rats under conditions of fatal thirst and starvation are much
more active than normal adult rats given food and water. In a
well-known series of experiments that went on for more than
fifteen years, H. F. Harlow of the Primate Research Center, Mad-
ison, Wisconsin, reared monkeys under conditions of maternal
deprivation and total isolation. He found that in this way he
could reduce the monkeys to a state in which, when placed
among normal monkeys, they sat huddled in a corner in a
condition of persistent depression and fear. Harlow also pro-
duced monkey mothers so neurotic that they smashed their
infant's face into the floor and rubbed it back and forth. Al-
though Harlow himself is no longer alive, some of his former
students at other U.S. universities continue to perform variations
on his experiments.
In these cases, and many others like them, the benefits to
humans are either nonexistent or uncertain, while the losses to
members of other species are certain and real. Hence the ex-

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 Equality for Animals?
periments indicate a failure to give equal consideration to the
interests of all beings, irrespective of species.
In the past, argument about animal experimentation has often
missed this point because it has been put in absolutist terms:
would the opponent of experimentation be prepared to let thou-
sands die from a terrible disease that could be cured by exper-
imenting on one animal? This is a purely hypothetical question,
since experiments do not have such dramatic results, but as long
as its hypothetical nature is clear, I think the question should
be answered affirmatively - in other words, if one, or even a
dozen animals had to suffer experiments in order to save thou-
sands, I would think it right and in accordance with equal
consideration of interests that they should do so. This, at any
rate, is the answer a utilitarian must give. Those who believe
in absolute rights might hold that it is always wrong to sacrifice
one being, whether human or animal, for the benefit of another.
In that case the experiment should not be carried out, whatever
the consequences.
To the hypothetical question about saving thousands of peo-
ple through a single experiment on an animal, opponents of
speciesism can reply with a hypothetical question of their own:
would experimenters be prepared to perform their experiments
on orphaned humans with severe and irreversible brain damage
if that were the only way to save thousands? (I say 'orphaned'
in order to avoid the complication of the feelings of the human
parents.) If experimenters are not prepared to use orphaned
humans with severe and irreversible brain damage, their read-
iness to use nonhuman animals seems to discriminate on the
basis of species alone, since apes, monkeys, dogs, cats, and even
mice and rats are more intelligent, more aware of what is hap-
pening to them, more sensitive to pain, and so on, than many
severely braindamaged humans barely surviving in hospital
wards and other institutions. There seems to be no morally
relevant characteristic that such humans have that nonhuman

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animals lack. Experimenters, then, show bias in favour of their
own species whenever they carry out experiments on nonhu-
man animals for purposes that they would not think justified
them in using human beings at an equal or lower level of sen-
tience, awareness, sensitivity, and so on. If this bias were elim-
inated, the number of experiments performed on animals would
be greatly reduced.

Other Forms of Speciesism

I have concentrated on the use of animals as food and in re-
search, since these are examples of large-scale, systematic spe-
ciesism. They are not, of course, the only areas in which the
principle of equal consideration of interests, extended beyond
the human species, has practical implications. There are many
other areas that raise similar issues, including the fur trade,
hunting in all its different forms, circuses, rodeos, zoos, and the
pet business. Since the philosophical questions raised by these
issues are not very different from those raised by the use of
animals as food and in research, I shall leave it to the reader to
apply the appropriate ethical principles to them.

SOME OBJECTIONS
I first put forward the views outlined in this chapter in 1973.
At that time there was no animal liberation or animal rights
movement. Since then a movement has sprung up, and some
of the worst abuses of animals, like the Draize and LD50 tests,
are now less widespread, even though they have not been elim-
inated. The fur trade has come under attack, and as a result fur
sales have declined dramatically in countries like Britain, the
Netherlands, Australia, and the United States. Some countries
are also starting to phase out the most confining forms of factory
farming. As already mentioned, Switzerland has prohibited the
cage system of keeping laying hens. Britain has outlawed the
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 Equality for Animals?
raising of calves in individual stalls, and is phasing out individual
stalls for pigs. Sweden, as in other areas of social reform, is in
the lead here, too: in 1988 the Swedish Parliament passed a
law that will, over a ten-year period, lead to the elimination of
all systems of factory farming that confine animals for long
periods and prevent them carrying out their natural behaviour.
Despite this increasing acceptance of many aspects of the case
for animal liberation, and the slow but tangible progress made
on behalf of animals, a variety of objections have emerged, some
straightforward and predictable, some more subtle and unex-
pected. In this final section of the chapter I shall attempt to
answer the most important of these objections. I shall begin
with the more straightforward ones.

How Do We Know That Animals Can Feel Pain?

We can never directly experience the pain of another being,
whether that being is human or not. When I see my daughter
fall and scrape her knee, I know that she feels pain because of
the way she behaves - she cries, she tells me her knee hurts,
she rubs the sore spot, and so on. I know that I myself behave
in a somewhat similar - if more inhibited - way when I feel
pain, and so I accept that my daughter feels something like what
I feel when I scrape my knee.
The basis of my belief that animals can feel pain is similar to
the basis of my belief that my daughter can feel pain. Animals
in pain behave in much the same way as humans do, and their
behaviour is sufficient justification for the belief that they feel
pain. It is true that, with the exception of those apes who have
been taught to communicate by sign language, they cannot
actually say that they are feeling pain - but then when my
daughter was very young she could not talk, either. She found
other ways to make her inner states apparent, thereby dem-
onstrating that we can be sure that a being is feeling pain even
if the being cannot use language.
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 Practical Ethics
To back up our inference from animal behaviour, we can
point to the fact that the nervous systems of all vertebrates, and
especially of birds and mammals, are fundamentally similar.
Those parts of the human nervous system that are concerned
with feeling pain are relatively old, in evolutionary terms. Unlike
the cerebral cortex, which developed fully only after our ances-
tors diverged from other mammals, the basic nervous system
evolved in more distant ancestors common to ourselves and the
other 'higher' animals. This anatomical parallel makes it likely
that the capacity of animals to feel is similar to our own.
It is significant that none of the grounds we have for believing
that animals feel pain hold for plants. We cannot observe be-
haviour suggesting pain - sensational claims to the contrary
have not been substantiated - and plants do not have a centrally
organised nervous system like ours.

Animals Eat Each Other, So Why Shouldn't We

Eat Them?
This might be called the Benjamin Franklin Objection. Franklin
recounts in his Autobiography that he was for a time a vegetarian
but his abstinence from animal flesh came to an end when he
was watching some friends prepare to fry a fish they had just
caught. When the fish was cut open, it was found to have a
smaller fish in its stomach. 'Well', Franklin said to himself, 'if
you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you' and
he proceeded to do so.
Franklin was at least honest. In telling this story, he confesses
that he convinced himself of the validity of the objection only
after the fish was already in the frying pan and smelling 'ad-
mirably well'; and he remarks that one of the advantages of
being a 'reasonable creature' is that one can find a reason for
whatever one wants to do. The replies that can be made to this
objection are so obvious that Franklin's acceptance of it does
testify more to his love of fried fish than to his powers of reason.
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 Equality for Animals?
For a start, most animals who kill for food would not be able
to survive if they did not, whereas we have no need to eat
animal flesh. Next, it is odd that humans, who normally think
of the behaviour of animals as 'beastly' should, when it suits
them, use an argument that implies that we ought to look to
animals for moral guidance. The most decisive point, however,
is that nonhuman animals are not capable of considering the
alternatives open to them or of reflecting on the ethics of their
diet. Hence it is impossible to hold the animals responsible for
what they do, or to judge that because of their killing they
'deserve' to be treated in a similar way. Those who read these
lines, on the other hand, must consider the justifiability of their
dietary habits. You cannot evade responsibility by imitating
beings who are incapable of making this choice.
Sometimes people point to the fact that animals eat each other
in order to make a slightly different point. This fact suggests,
they think, not that animals deserve to be eaten, but rather that
there is a natural law according to which the stronger prey upon
the weaker, a kind of Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' in which
by eating animals we are merely playing our part.
This interpretation of the objection makes two basic mistakes,
one a mistake of fact and the other an error of reasoning. The
factual mistake lies in the assumption that our own consump-
tion of animals is part of the natural evolutionary process. This
might be true of a few primitive cultures that still hunt for food,
but it has nothing to do with the mass production of domestic
animals in factory farms.
Suppose that we did hunt for our food, though, and this was
part of some natural evolutionary process. There would still be
an error of reasoning in the assumption that because this process
is natural it is right. It is, no doubt, 'natural' for women to
produce an infant every year or two from puberty to menopause,
but this does not mean that it is wrong to interfere with this
process. We need to know the natural laws that affect us in
order to estimate the consequences of what we do; but we do
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not have to assume that the natural way of doing something is
incapable of improvement.

Differences between Humans and Animals

That there is a huge gulf between humans and animals was
unquestioned for most of the course of Western civilisation. The
basis of this assumption has been undermined by Darwin's dis-
covery of our animal origins and the associated decline in the
credibility of the story of our Divine Creation, made in the image
of God with an immortal soul. Some have found it difficult to
accept that the differences between us and the other animals
are differences of degree rather than kind. They have searched
for ways of drawing a line between humans and animals. To
date these boundaries have been shortlived. For instance, it used
to be said that only humans used tools. Then it was observed
that the Galapagos woodpecker used a cactus thorn to dig insects
out of crevices in trees. Next it was suggested that even if other
animals used tools, humans are the only toolmaking animals.
But Jane Goodall found that chimpanzees in the jungles of
Tanzania chewed up leaves to make a sponge for sopping up
water, and trimmed the leaves off branches to make tools for
catching insects. The use of language was another boundary
line - but now chimpanzees, gorillas, and an orangutan have
learnt Ameslan, the sign language of the deaf, and there is some
evidence suggesting that whales and dolphins may have a com-
plex language of their own.
If these attempts to draw the line between humans and an-
imals had fitted the facts of the situation, they would still not
carry any moral weight. As Bentham pointed out, the fact that
a being does not use language or make tools is hardly a reason
for ignoring its suffering. Some philosophers have claimed that
there is a more profound difference. They have claimed that
animals cannot think or reason, and that accordingly they have

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no conception of themselves, no self-consciousness. They live
from instant to instant, and do not see themselves as distinct
entities with a past and a future. Nor do they have autonomy,
the ability to choose how to live one's life. It has been suggested
that autonomous, self-conscious beings are in some way much
more valuable, more morally significant, than beings who live
from moment to moment, without the capacity to see them-
selves as distinct beings with a past and a future. Accordingly,
on this view, the interests of autonomous, self-conscious beings
ought normally to take priority over the interests of other beings.
I shall not now consider whether some nonhuman animals
are self-conscious and autonomous. The reason for this omission
is that I do not believe that, in the present context, much de-
pends on this question. We are now considering only the ap-
plication of the principle of equal consideration of interests. In
the next chapter, when we discuss questions about the value
of life, we shall see that there are reasons for holding that self-
consciousness is crucial in debates about whether a being has
a right to life; and we shall then investigate the evidence for
self-consciousness in nonhuman animals. Meanwhile the more
important issue is: does the fact that a being is self-conscious
entitle that being to some kind of priority of consideration?
The claim that self-conscious beings are entitled to prior con-
sideration is compatible with the principle of equal considera-
tion of interests if it amounts to no more than the claim that
something that happens to self-conscious beings can be contrary
to their interests while similar events would not be contrary to
the interests of beings who were not self-conscious. This might
be because the self-conscious creature has greater awareness of
what is happening, can fit the event into the overall framework
of a longer time period, has different desires, and so on. But
this is a point I granted at the start of this chapter, and provided
that it is not carried to ludicrous extremes - like insisting that
if I am self-conscious and a veal calf is not, depriving me of veal

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causes more suffering than depriving the calf of his freedom to
walk, stretch and eat grass - it is not denied by the criticisms I
made of animal experimentation and factory farming.
It would be a different matter if it were claimed that, even
when a self-conscious being did not suffer more than a being
that was merely sentient, the suffering of the self-conscious
being is more important because these are more valuable types
of being. This introduces nonutilitarian claims of value - claims
that do not derive simply from taking a universal standpoint in
the manner described in the final section of Chapter 1. Since
the argument for utilitarianism developed in that section was
admittedly tentative, I cannot use that argument to rule out all
nonutilitarian values. Nevertheless we are entitled to ask why
self-conscious beings should be considered more valuable and
in particular why the alleged greater value of a self-conscious
being should result in preferring the lesser interests of a self-
conscious being to the greater interests of a merely sentient
being, even where the self-consciousness of the former being is
not itself at stake. This last point is an important one, for we
are not now considering cases in which the lives of self-con-
scious beings are at risk but cases in which self-conscious beings
will go on living, their faculties intact, whatever we decide. In
these cases, if the existence of self-consciousness does not affect
the nature of the interests under comparison, it is not clear why
we should drag self-consciousness into the discussion at all, any
more than we should drag species, race or sex into similar dis-
cussions. Interests are interests, and ought to be given equal
consideration whether they are the interests of human or non-
human animals, self-conscious or non-self-conscious animals.
There is another possible reply to the claim that self-
consciousness, or autonomy, or some similar characteristic, can
serve to distinguish human from nonhuman animals: recall that
there are intellectually disabled humans who have less claim to
be regarded as self-conscious or autonomous than many non-
human animals. If we use these characteristics to place a gulf
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 Equality for Animals?
between humans and other animals, we place these less able
humans on the other side of the gulf; and if the gulf is taken
to mark a difference in moral status, then these humans would
have the moral status of animals rather than humans.
This reply is forceful, because most of us find horrifying the
idea of using intellectually disabled humans in painful experi-
ments, or fattening them for gourmet dinners. But some phi-
losophers have argued that these consequences would not really
follow from the use of a characteristic like self-consciousness or
autonomy to distinguish humans from other animals. I shall
consider three of these attempts.
The first suggestion is that severely intellectually disabled hu-
mans who do not possess the capacities that mark the normal
human off from other animals should nevertheless be treated
as if they did possess these capacities, since they belong to a
species, members of which normally do possess them. The sug-
gestion is, in other words, that we treat individuals not in ac-
cordance with their actual qualities, but in accordance with the
qualities normal for their species.
It is interesting that this suggestion should be made in defence
of treating members of our species better than members of an-
other species, when it would be firmly rejected if it were used
to justify treating members of our race or sex better than mem-
bers of another race or sex. In the previous chapter, when dis-
cussing the impact of possible differences in IQ between
members of different ethnic groups, I made the obvious point
that whatever the difference between the average scores for dif-
ferent groups, some members of the group with the lower av-
erage score will do better than some members of groups with
the higher average score, and so we ought to treat people as
individuals and not according to the average score for their
ethnic group, whatever the explanation of that average might
be. If we accept this we cannot consistently accept the suggestion
that when dealing with severely intellectually disabled humans
we should grant them the status or rights normal for their spe-
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cies. For what is the significance of the fact that this time the
line is to be drawn around the species rather than around the
race or sex? We cannot insist that beings be treated as individ-
uals in the one case, and as members of a group in the other.
Membership of a species is no more relevant in these circum-
stances than membership of a race or sex.
A second suggestion is that although severely intellectually
disabled humans may not possess higher capacities than other
animals, they are nonetheless human beings, and as such we
have special relations with them that we do not have with other
animals. As one reviewer of Animal Liberation put it: 'Partiality
for our own species, and within it for much smaller groupings
is, like the universe, something we had better accept . . . The
danger in an attempt to eliminate partial affections is that it
may remove the source of all affections.'
This argument ties morality too closely to our affections. Of
course some people may have a closer relationship with the
most profoundly intellectually disabled human than they do
with any nonhuman animal, and it would be absurd to tell
them that they should not feel this way. They simply do, and
as such there is nothing good or bad about it. The question is
whether our moral obligations to a being should be made to
depend on our feelings in this manner. Notoriously, some hu-
man beings have a closer relationship with their cat than with
their neighbours. Would those who tie morality to affections
accept that these people are justified in saving their cats from
a fire before they save their neighbours? And even those who
are prepared to answer this question affirmatively would, I trust,
not want to go along with racists who could argue that if people
have more natural relationships with, and greater affection to-
wards, others of their own race, it is all right for them to give
preference to the interests of other members of their own race.
Ethics does not demand that we eliminate personal relationships
and partial affections, but it does demand that when we act we

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assess the moral claims of those affected by our actions with
some degree of independence from our feelings for them.
The third suggestion invokes the widely used 'slippery slope'
argument. The idea of this argument is that once we take one
step in a certain direction we shall find ourselves on a slippery
slope and shall slither further than we wished to go. In the
present context the argument is used to suggest that we need
a clear line to divide those beings we can experiment upon,
or fatten for dinner, from those we cannot. Species member-
ship makes a nice sharp dividing line, whereas levels of self-
consciousness, autonomy, or sentience do not. Once we allow
that an intellectually disabled human being has no higher moral
status than an animal, the argument goes, we have begun our
descent down a slope, the next level of which is denying rights
to social misfits, and the bottom of which is a totalitarian gov-
ernment disposing of any groups it does not like by classifying
them as subhuman.
The slippery slope argument may serve as a valuable warning
in some contexts, but it cannot bear too much weight. If we
believe that, as I have argued in this chapter, the special status
we now give to humans allows us to ignore the interests of
billions of sentient creatures, we should not be deterred from
trying to rectify this situation by the mere possibility that the
principles on which we base this attempt will be misused by
evil rulers for their own ends. And it is no more than a possi-
bility. The change I have suggested might make no difference
to our treatment of humans, or it might even improve it.
In the end, no ethical line that is arbitrarily drawn can be
secure. It is better to find a line that can be defended openly
and honestly. When discussing euthanasia in Chapter 7 we shall
see that a line drawn in the wrong place can have unfortunate
results even for those placed on the higher, or human side of
the line.
It is also important to remember that the aim of my argument

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is to elevate the status of animals rather than to lower the status
of any humans. I do not wish to suggest that intellectually
disabled humans should be force-fed with food colourings until
half of them die - although this would certainly give us a more
accurate indication of whether the substance was safe for hu-
mans than testing it on rabbits or dogs does. I would like our
conviction that it would be wrong to treat intellectually disabled
humans in this way to be transferred to nonhuman animals at
similar levels of self-consciousness and with similar capacities
for suffering. It is excessively pessimistic to refrain from trying
to alter our attitudes on the grounds that we might start treating
intellectually disabled humans with the same lack of concern
we now have for animals, rather than give animals the greater
concern that we now have for intellectually disabled humans.

Ethics and Reciprocity

In the earliest surviving major work of moral philosophy in the
Western tradition, Plato's Republic, there is to be found the fol-
lowing view of ethics:
They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice,
evil; but that there is more evil in the latter than good in the
former. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice
and have had experience of both, any who are not able to avoid
the one and obtain the other, think that they had better agree
among themselves to have neither; hence they begin to establish
laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law
is termed by them lawful and just. This, it is claimed, is the origin
and nature of justice - it is a mean or compromise, between the
best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the
worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of
retaliation.
This was not Plato's own view; he put it into the mouth of
Glaucon in order to allow Socrates, the hero of his dialogue, to
refute it. It is a view that has never gained general acceptance,
but has not died away either. Echoes of it can be found in the
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