Mind what you eat

Ending the live animal export trade and improving the conditions of animals we eat are moral issues that we should all be able to unite on, whether we are committed meat eaters or vegetarians.

At the personal level, there is enormous scope for meaningful moral action through our considerable power as consumers. We can make our vote count at the check-out.

Peter Singer argues in The Ethics of What We Eat that we should choose food that causes the least suffering to animals, the least environmental damage, the least negative impact on climate change, has the least adverse effect on global poverty and is the most just to workers.

Some food systems cause much more harm than others. The prevailing large scale industrialized factory farming of chickens, turkeys, pigs and dairy cattle is at one extreme. Most supermarkets, groceries, fast-food outlets and restaurants source their food from these. There is an overwhelming moral case for avoiding all such foods.

The small scale, organic, free-range farming of animals, where animal welfare is a priority, is at the other extreme of commercial food production. While still problematic, it is ethically preferable for people who believe it is permissible to eat such products to source them from the best available farms for the animals.

Because some people find it is just too onerous to be constantly researching and monitoring their ethical food choices, they find it easier to choose a vegan or vegetarian diet by default and make occasional decisions to depart from it when they are satisfied that it can be justified. For example, they may sometimes happily eat wild wallaby/kangaroo meat or a chook, pig, sheep or cow that they know has been killed instantly in the paddock after a good life.

For those who believe it is wrong to kill animals for food, choosing a totally vegan diet is clearly the best option. Provided they supplement their diet with vitamin B12, they can lead a perfectly healthy life. Peter Singer sees this as the most ethically defensible diet. However, he recognises that most people won't choose it and so he encourages people to take whatever steps they can to improve the situation.

We could start by eliminating just some of the most problematic meat from our diet, eg. chicken and/or pork, to alleviate their suffering. We could refuse to eat factory farmed eggs, or search for genuinely free-range alternatives, for the same reason. Alternatively, we could choose to start with one or more vegetarian days per week and build up progressively – like those in the "Meat Free Mondays" movement.

There are multiple options available to consumers, depending on their priorities. I know some people who choose to pay more for their dairy products by buying from producers for whom animal welfare is a top priority, because they are concerned about the suffering of the cows and their calves. Others are more concerned about climate change and so concentrate on reducing their consumption of all cattle products. There are those concerned about global poverty who avoid grain-fed animals because they believe the huge quantity of grain involved would be much better used to feed the poor. Coffee drinkers can choose Oxfam's Fair Trade Coffee because they want to reduce exploitation of local workers.

Increasingly, people are choosing to avoid intensively farmed fish, like salmon. This can be because of the suffering (if they agree that fish experience pain), because the fish are fed factory-farmed animal products and unsustainable wild fish, or because of the extreme degradation to the marine environment. Others have decided to reduce significantly or stop eating wild fish. The main reason is the huge by-catch that is wasted and the threat of extinction to so many fish species brought about by commercial fishing operations.

There are many choices open to the conscientious ethical eater who wants not only to experience the pleasures of eating but also to feel good about what they eat. We do not need to build our happiness on the suffering of our fellow creatures. Whatever we do will have moral consequences. Anything we can do to improve the situation will make a difference.

So let's all step up! Let's make a stand on moral principle and commit to making more ethical food choices in the future to reduce animal suffering.