Is Killing Animals Murder?

Musings on murder, and McPherson's case study on saving the lives of animals.

Saving life and taking life. Image created by Midjourney

To begin…

Tristram McPherson is a vegan philosopher who’s developed a very fascinating case study that supports the view that killing animals (at least those with valuable futures) is wrong. He doesn’t mention anything about murder, though I do think his case study could be utilised to argue that killing animals can, in many instances, constitute murder. This is certainly a controversial view, but I think with a comprehensive understanding of how murder should be understood, in addition to ideas developed by McPherson, there is a strong case to be made to the skeptic. In the final section of this article, I will apply my conception of murder and McPherson’s case study to a real world scenario (with probative results). I will address the question of whether killing animals for unnecessary animal products constitutes murder, and whether there is a tension in the view that making them suffer in factory farms is bad, but killing them isn’t.

Some Things to Take Note of:

1. In this article I’m using the term “wrong” in a pro tanto sense unless specified otherwise (e.g. forbidden). Something is pro tanto wrong if it is wrong to some extent, but not absolutely wrong.

2. When I use the term ‘animal’, I’m referring to sentient animals.

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Musings on Murder

A common understanding of murder appeals to the law, premeditation, and only to those considered ‘human beings’ or ‘persons’. E.g. murder is the unlawful and premeditated killing of another human.

I think there are various issues with this understanding of murder. I take murder to refer to a sort of morally forbidden killing (something that shouldn’t be done). It’s with this in mind that we can appreciate the first issue with the common understanding of murder–with its link to the law–it saps murder of it’s moral forbidden-ness (or in other terms, it’s normative moral significance). That’s because laws don’t necessarily provide us with reasons for action–let alone moral ones.

On a semi-related note, this concern of moral forbidden-ness also leads me to another concern for the common understanding, that being its focus on persons/humans. I think this focus is misleading as it can ignore why the killing of a human being/person is thought to be wrong. It’s because such individuals matter. It’s not as if human beings or persons are just like 5 dollar bills or chairs. We can treat money and chairs however we please (for their own sake)–but not individuals like people and human beings. Chairs and money aren’t moral patients, but we are. We matter in a morally significant sense–a different sense to chairs and money. Let individuals who matter be referred to as ‘someones’ (in contrast to somethings, like chairs). I also think terms like ‘moral patient’ are also fitting titles for individuals who matter.

So far, this captures some of the essence of what murder is, but I think we should add one final caveat, that of moral seriousness. I think murder refers to cases of heinous wrongdoing. Surely to accuse someone of murder is no light criticism. By my lights, denoting that some killing constituted murder designates it as a serious moral crime. With this in mind, I think that if some killing is murder, it must be a case of heinous killing.

With these considerations, let me propose my understanding of murder:

Murder is the morally forbidden and heinous killing of a someone.

I think this accurately captures of what murder really is. I’ve heard some philosophers refer to murder as just ‘wrongful killing’. Whilst all cases of murder are indeed wrongful killing, I don’t think all cases of wrongful killing are murder. In other words, ‘wrongful killing’ is too open. Imagine I promise you not to kill your tree, and I go ahead and do it anyway. Killing the tree would be a case of wrongful killing, yet ‘murder’ doesn’t seem to be the appropriate label for my immoral act. There seems to be something important about who or what is being killed rather than just the killing being wrong, morally forbidden, or heinous on its own. This goes to further support the inclusion of ‘someone’ in the definition, as it seems that I can’t murder a plant because plant’s don’t matter. They’re not moral patients (or so I will assume).

Further, concerning this idea of ‘wrongful killing’, I think the term ‘wrong’ can be a little confusing here, especially given how it can be used in a pro tanto sense (i.e. something is wrong to a given extent) and a forbidden sense (i.e. it should never be done). Something that is pro tanto wrong can be justified given equal or more important countervailing considerations. However, I think the term murder refers only to those cases in which the killing was morally forbidden. For instance, I don’t think it counts as murder to kill someone in order to prevent them from killing your children. Such a case seems to be justifiable homicide. If murder doesn’t have this moral forbidden-ness built in, it seems to lose its status as a necessary critique against the actions and plans of a killer. Something could be murder and be permissible to commit–if not obligatory. But that doesn’t sound right. By my lights, I don’t think we could every be obligated or permitted to commit murder.

Some might worry that murder–as I’ve stated it–could never be morally justified. I think this is the correct verdict. Murder cannot be justified, given that it’s morally forbidden (not just heinously pro tanto wrong). But whilst murder cannot be morally justified, killing someone can be (or so I will assume). The question is whether such a killing counts as murder or not, which will hinge on the context of the situation.

I also want to address the common understandings adherence to premeditation and intentionality. I will remain agnostic as to whether this is actually a necessary feature of murder. If we want to say it is, I think it could feed into the concept of something being morally forbidden/heinous–that intention to kill is a necessary constituent of morally forbidden/heinous killings of someones. Thus, it seems to me that no matter which way we go, my definition will ultimately stay the same.

Given my understanding, whether or not some act of killing counts as murder hinges on three main specifics.

1. First we have to figure out if the individual killed was a ‘someone’. We can. come to know this by considering whether they’re a moral patient or not, e.g. they’re owed moral consideration.

2. Second, we have to deliberate on whether this killing constitutes a case of unjustified/inexcusable wrongdoing–thus morally forbidden. We can come to know this by figuring out if some killing is wrong and isn’t adequately justified.

3. Lastly, we have to figure out if the killing was heinous. We can figure this out by considering the level of wrongdoing present in the act. This is somewhat less precise, but we can begin by asking questions like: was the act wrong enough to legitimise calling the perpetrator a moral monster? Was the act incredibly vicious? And so forth.

With this, we can posit a conditional answer to the question in the title. (1) If animals are someone, (2) if killing them is pro tanto wrong (and heinously so), and (3) if such killing isn’t adequately justified, then killing animals is murder. With this in mind then, let’s consider the first prerequisite mentioned. Do animals count as someones?

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Animals as Someones

I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to think that animals matter. We don’t accept that just any treatment is directly as permissible as any other. It’s clear there are at least some hard limits to how we can treat them (for their own sake). They really do seem to be moral patients. Consider the following thought experiment:

Installation: An artist goes around a city violently seizing all manner of stray animals. They take them to their warehouse and begin to meld them all into a grotesque installation artwork of living flesh. The experience is torturous, and the animals all die within the next few days from blood loss.

It seems clear to me that what happened in installation is very wrong. It also seems clear that the acts taken by the ‘artist’ here are very different to cases in which desks or plants are taken from the street and twisted into artworks.

What it means to be a someone, is to be an individual who matters in a morally relevant sense–it’s to be a moral patient. To be a moral patient is to be an individual who is owed moral consideration from moral agents–they have to be taken into account in their actions. It is not permissible to, say, treat them just like we would treat rocks.

Consider the notion that we have a moral requirement to abstain from making animals suffer. This strikes me as very different from any moral requirements we have to things like money or chairs. It doesn’t seem we owe things like chairs anything directly, as any case of wrongdoing that involves them couldn’t even be partly explained by referencing the treatment of the chair itself. It would have to involve reference to something else, like someone’s property rights, the vice of displaying destructive behaviours, and so forth. But this doesn’t sound correct in our verdicts about wrongdoing with animals. It seems we can point to various cases of wrongdoing where animals are involved and point to things like their harsh treatment. We can appreciate the wrongdoing in Installation by merely appreciating how the animals are being treated as mere things and are made to suffer for the sake of the artist’s ends. If this is right, then it seems animals are indeed someones.

This satisfies what I take to be a plausible conception of what it means to be a someone, to be a moral patient, to be an individual who morally matters, and who’s treatment is morally important for it’s own sake. I’ve supported a position like this before in a previous article, so remaining skeptics are encouraged to read that if they want more in depth arguments. But, I think the case I’ve provided thus far should be decently compelling. Thus, since it’s plausible to think animals count as someones, the next step is to figure out if it’s pro tanto wrong to kill them. It’s here I will introduce McPherson’s case study.

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McPherson’s Case Study

In two essays,¹ McPherson presents a pithy and sophisticated case study and argument in support of the view that killing animals is bad (at least if doing so robs them of a valuable future). In a nutshell, he does this by pointing out the difficulty of denying this view–that killing animals is bad–whilst accepting that making animals suffer is wrong. Let’s see how he does it.

First, he identifies that it would be wrong to make a calf suffer for the sake of creating some kind of aesthetic art video. Suppose they perform a painful surgery on the calf and document her discomfort. Clearly performing this painful surgery on the calf is wrong.²

But in contrast, if a similarly painful surgery could be performed to save the life of a different calf, then it would seem permissible, and even nice, to perform it. That is, it would be at least permissible to make the calf suffer if it was necessary to save their life, provided they would go on to have a decent future.³

The takeaway is that since saving the life of an animal can justify making them suffer, that an animals life must have a morally relevant sort of significance.

‘… if saving an animal’s life can justify inflicting suffering that would otherwise be wrong, it is hard to understand how taking that animal’s life could be a matter of ethical indifference,’ (McPherson, 2017, 824).

McPherson explains that taking an animal’s life is wrong given that it will rob them of a valuable future–a future filled with activities, relationships and experiences.⁴ This strikes me as a plausible explanation on its face. This needn’t be the only possible (or whole) explanation as to why killing animals is wrong, but it’s certainly constitutes a plausible story–at least regarding cases where animals will have a valuable future.⁵ We’re justified in inflicting the suffering on the calf, because in doing so we are non-trivially benefitting them by allowing them to go on to have a valuable life.

In Summary

McPherson attempts to show a tension between the beliefs that it is wrong to inflict suffering on animals, but not wrong to kill them, through the use of a case study and further argumentation. He offers that it would be good to perform a painful, but life-saving surgery on a calf if it was necessary to save their life. But if saving the life of an animal has this justificatory strength, then it seems there should be something wrong with taking their lives too.⁶

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Beneficence, Justification, and Murder

I think it would benefit this case study to contemplate a handful of considerations that may or may not be at work here. In particular we need to focus on what considerations are justifying the harms to the calf, as well as the transition from the permissible and supererogatory saving of the calf’s life, to the wrongful killing of animals more generally.

For two asides on what supererogation is, and moving from specific cases of permissibility to general moral facts, see this footnote.⁷

To begin, let’s consider the following: it would be wrong to conduct the surgery if the calf stood to gain no benefit whatsoever. Saving their life–providing them with an important benefit–is what justifies inflicting the harm of the surgery. Saving their life could involve supererogatory considerations (or not⁸), but what truly matters is that the considerations at work are justificatory.

I will suppose that the considerations justifying the painful surgery are not moral requirements to preserve the calf’s valuable future. I don’t want to make things too easy for myself. If we’re required to save the lives of animals, at least in cases where it’s no cost to us or others, then it would be absurd to think that killing them isn’t wrong too.⁹ So, I’ll focus on a weaker interpretation, where the only considerations involved are supererogatory and justifying–if not purely justifying.¹⁰ The interpretation is this:

We are required to refrain from making animals suffer. But, perhaps the considerations around preserving their lives are purely supererogatory and justificatory. If this is right, then saving the calf’s life could make performing the surgery permissible, possibly nice, even if we have no requirement to save the lives of animals or to refrain from killing them.¹¹

At first glance, this interpretation can look like a decent reply to McPherson’s case study. But this is too quick! I think this interpretation still provides strong support for the conclusion that killing animals is wrong.¹²

At first, I thought this view–that it’s permissible to break a moral requirement to someone for some supererogatory reason–was paradoxical. How could it be appropriate to violate things that demand our attention, in order to act in line with things that merely favour our attention, but don’t demand it? But then I realised something crucial. Even though acting on supererogatory reasons is optional, this needn’t entail that the benefit to someone else in our acting on these reasons would be trivial. For instance, it’s a non-trivial benefit to someone if they receive a kidney they need, even if giving this person a kidney is merely supererogatory. This get’s us to why I think this interpretation can still support the view that killing animals is wrong. The idea is simple:

If we’re justified in harming someone provided that it’s necessary to give them some benefit, then we should also think this benefit is significant enough more generally to determine that taking it from someone innocent who already has it is wrong.

Essentially, since the benefit to the calf in saving their life is non-trivial enough to justify harming them, this benefit must also be non-trivial enough to make it wrong to take it away from others who already have it (e.g. another calf).

I think this principle is extremely plausible. Imagine if it weren’t true. It would entail that it would be perfectly okay to take some benefit away from someone, even if that benefit was significant enough to warrant us being permitted to give it to them at some important cost to themselves.¹³ It would imply that some benefits, despite being significant enough to warrant us giving them to others even at important costs to the recipients, are also trivial enough as to make it perfectly fine to take away from someone. In other words, the benefit would have to be small enough that taking it away was perfectly fine, but important enough to make it permissible to harm someone to provide it to them.

I think we can fully appreciate this in an example. Suppose it was permissible to harm someone without their consent in order to provide them with the benefit of a new heart. Clearly this benefit must be significant enough to justify the harm done to the patient. But we can also appreciate that it would be wrong to take a heart away from someone else who already has one. My point is just this: since giving the heart is a significant enough benefit to justify the non-consensual harm, that this also infers that it would be wrong to rob someone of the same benefit who already has it.

I think we can plausibly extrapolate from the idea that performing the painful surgery on the calf would be wrong if the calf didn’t stand to benefit at all, to the idea that that it would also be wrong if the benefit wasn’t great enough to justify the harm. It seems the benefit would have to be great enough to warrant our disobedience to our moral requirement to the calf not to make them suffer. But if this is right, then surely the benefit in question cannot just be permissibly taken away from someone innocent who already has it. Such a benefit would be important, and so much so, that it wouldn’t be permissible to take it away from someone innocent on a whim. If a benefit could be permissibly taken away from someone innocent, then I think it would be plausible to believe that such a benefit was largely–if not almost entirely–unimportant.

If someone insists that the calf’s life isn’t so important as to make it wrong to kill them, then it becomes hard see how it could justify the harm done in order to save them. For instance, it would be very wrong to punch a kid, even if it was necessary to benefit them with a lollipop. Provided how wrong inflicting suffering on an animal is, and how saving their life at least justifies inflicting this level of harm on them, it seems clear that their life cannot be something with frivolous significance (both to the calf, and morality).

Presumably, if it’s not wrong to kill an animal, we’re not robbing them of some benefit with non-frivolous significance. But to justify the harm done in McPherson’s case study, the benefit must be sufficiently significant–at least as equally important as not making them suffer (if not more-so if it was nice to perform the surgery).

Thus, if saving an animal’s life is a significant enough benefit, it can justify cases of ordinary wrongdoing on those who would benefit. But if such a benefit is as significant as suggested (and as need be, provided it’s justificatory strength) then it’s also wrong to take it away from someone innocent. Hence, it’s wrong to take an animal’s life (at least provided they have a valuable future)

The Benefit Argument*

*This is my own understanding of McPherson’s case study mixed with other considerations explored here if turned into an argument to entail that killing animals is pro tanto wrong.

1. If saving the life of an animal can justify treating that animal in ways that are ordinarily wrong, then the benefit to an animal of preserving their valuable future is significant enough to justify inflicting such harm.

2. If the benefit to an animal of preserving their valuable future is significant enough to justify inflicting such harm, then it is pro tanto wrong to take such a life away from other animals by killing them.

3. Saving the life of an animal can justify treating that animal in ways that are ordinarily wrong–even in ways that are typically morally heinous.

4. So, it is pro tanto wrong to kill animals (with valuable futures).

1. P → Q
2. Q → W
3. P
4. ∴ W

Tightening the Bolt

Some folks might find it morally suspect (or even wrong) to perform the painful surgery on the calf since they really insist that saving the life of a calf is no benefit at all to the calf, or at least, not a very significant one. It really would be like punching a kid to give them a lollipop, if not just like punching a kid with no promise of benefiting them. I don’t think this will be a popular view, but it’s certainly possible to hold. But lets see if we can–to borrow a phrase–tighten the bolt.

For instance, would it be impermissible to kick a dog if it were necessary to save their life? It seems it would be at least morally permissible, if not also nice or required of us. The detractor will either have to accept that, essentially, saving an animal’s life cannot justify any level of wrongful harm to them, or that acts like killing them are at least as bad as actions like kicking them. I think the former is clearly difficult to swallow, whilst the latter view doesn’t escape the verdict that killing animals it wrong–though it might attribute the killing of animals with less moral seriousness.

The one difficulty (for me) that I can see with this view however, is that it would deny that killing animals is morally heinous, even if there are plentiful cases where it’s morally forbidden (e.g. cases in which killing animals isn’t justified). This still gets me part way in making the point that killing animals is murder, in that it’s at least pro tanto wrong to kill animals per se. I think this will have important practical results for us in our lives, even if killing animals isn’t murder. For instance, it would still affirm that we shouldn’t kill animals.

Killing Animals as Morally Heinous

I think there is much to be said on this subject, but my support here will be brief. As mentioned earlier, it seems that we can begin to appreciate if some act is morally heinous if the perpetrator is plausibly deserving of being called a moral monster. Furthermore, we should also reflect on whether the act is incredibly vicious. Animals are amongst the most innocent amongst us, and more often than not, they’re at the total mercy of those much mightier than they are. It strikes me quite clearly that making animals suffer and taking advantage of their vulnerability is incredibly vicious–their assailant a moral monster. Consider the extreme example painted in Installation. Someone who makes innocent animals suffer (e.g. tortures them) is surely someone deserving of the charge of heinous wrongdoing.

We can then rely on McPherson’s case study to express how important an animal’s life is in comparison to making them suffer. If we can permissibly perform a painful but life-saving surgery on a calf (that would feel torturous), then it seems this benefit of life is greatly important–so great as to be able to counterbalance a requirement to refrain from making them suffer. With this in mind I think I can comfortably posit that if making animals suffer is morally heinous, then killing animals (at least with valuable futures) is also morally heinous. It robs them of something greatly important, a life of valuable experiences, relationships, and activities.

An animal is someone innocent with a life of her very own.
A life that is uniquely hers.

So, is Killing Animals Murder?

Thus far it’s been argued that animals are someones and that it’s heinously wrong to kill them. The remaining question is whether such killings are ever morally forbidden. This is an easy hurdle to pass provided that all we’d need to accomodate this, is a case where an animal is killed (e.g. robbed of a valuable future) and the act isn’t adequately justified. A killing is morally forbidden just when it is morally unjustified. Thus, killing animals (taking away their valuable future) without adequate justification is murder. It’s the morally forbidden and heinous killing of a someone.

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Meat and Murder: On Killing Animals for Food

It’s common to hear after someone watches violent factory farm footage, that the practice of killing animals for food should be done more ‘humanely’. Putting aside whether this is a coherent statement or not, what the speaker usually means is just that we should kill animals more painlessly, or as close as we can get (e.g. painless killing).¹⁴

I think this view shows a commitment to both the idea that it’s wrong to inflict suffering on animals, but that killing them isn’t wrong. McPherson’s case study is probative here in obvious ways. If benefiting an animal with a valuable future is morally weighty enough to justify harming them in some non-trivial way, then it also seems wrong to take that benefit away from other animals who already have it, e.g. living animals.¹⁵ In addition, the level of wrongdoing in taking the benefit away may be worse, if not just as bad, as the harm that was justified in providing it to the calf in McPherson’s case study. Thus, it stands to reason that if it would be wrong to harm an animal (e.g. kick them or make them suffer) in order to get some unnecessary food item, service, or product, then it would also be wrong to kill them to acquire such things (if not more-so).

Almost nobody actually needs to eat animal products, save for those whose food choices are restricted by factors beyond their control. So we cannot justify killing or harming animals with this idea that we need to eat meat and/or other animal products if there are viable alternatives available to us. It’s not clear how killing someone for unnecessary food is going to do any justificatory work here. It just seems to be positing some motivation rather than justifying anything.

Getting pleasure from eating these products won’t be a legitimate justification either.¹⁶ If the wrongdoing of killing animals is just as, or more wrong, then acts like making them suffer or kicking them, then it seems that getting pleasure out of these acts could make these acts morally justified too. Suppose that the calf in McPherson’s example didn’t stand to benefit at all from the painful surgery. Clearly it would be wrong to perform this surgery. However, what if someone added the caveat that they would really like performing the surgery? Should that change our previous verdict about the wrongness of inflicting suffering on the calf? I don’t think it should. Merely wanting to bring harm to animals shouldn’t thereby justify such treatments. Just like how merely wanting to get something out of killing animals (e.g. meat) shouldn’t be thought to justify such wrongful acts either.

Meat is Murder

This slogan is particularly apparent here. It captures the idea that animals are someones, and that killing them for food like meat is heinous and morally forbidden without adequate justification.

It goes without saying then, that if meat is murder, then animals shouldn’t be killed to make animal derived products without adequate justification. We should also ask about the possible moral demerits of buying and eating things like animal products considering their production thrives and hinges on the mass murder of the innocent.

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REFERENCES:

1. Baron-Schmitt, N., Muñoz, D. (2023). ‘Supererogation and the Limits of Reasons’. In: Heyd, D. (eds) ‘Handbook of Supererogation’. Springer, Singapore, pp. 165-180

2. McPherson, T. (2016). ‘Why I Am a Vegan (and You Should Be One Too)’. In: ‘Philosophy Comes to Dinner. Arguments about the Ethics of Eating’, edited by Chignell, A. Cuneo, T. & Halteman, M. New York: Routledge, pp. 73-91

3. McPherson, T. (2017). ‘How to Argue for (and Against) Ethical Veganism’. In: The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, edited by Pojman, L. & Vaughn, L. USA: Oxford University Press, (6), pp. 822-845

4. Rulli, T. (2016). ‘Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating’. Notre Dame, Philosophical Reviews. University of California. Review of: ‘Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating’. Edited by: Chignell, A. Cuneo, T. & Halteman, M. Routledge.

1. McPherson (2016); McPherson (2017)

2. McPherson (2016) 79

3. McPherson (2016) 79

4. McPherson (2017) 824

5. There may be further explanations that can supplement this account, such as the notion that animals deserve to be treated as ends, and that killing them to produce things like animal products constitutes treating them as a mere means (a significant moral disrespect).

6. McPherson (2017) 824

At least provided that they’re being robbed of a valuable future.

7. A quick aside on supererogation. Something is ‘supererogatory’ if it’s morally good for you to do, but not morally required. Something that is morally optional (and nice) for you to do, but not something you must do. Classic examples include rescuing a child at extreme personal risk, making someone smile, giving someone a lollipop, and so forth.

A quick aside on moving from specific cases of permissibility to general moral facts. Performing the painful surgery on the calf to save their life is permissible. But how do we move from that, to a general moral fact such as, ‘performing painful life-saving surgeries on animals with valuable futures is permissible’? McPherson argues that since saving the life of the calf (with a valuable future) is sufficient for making the surgery permissible, and that there’s nothing special in the case of the calf, we can generalise from the particular case study he’s constructed (McPherson, 2016, 78).

8. The supererogatory considerations are just what would make the act of saving the calf’s life a nice thing to do. It would be perfectly coherent to say that performing the painful surgery on the calf was permissible, but not really in the business of being nice/non-nice.

9. Suppose this weren’t true. We could be required to go out of our way to save their life, only to be morally permitted to kill them immediately afterwards. But this is absurd. It seems quite clear to me that if we were required to preserve and save their life, that we would also be required not to take that life away from them.

10. This is notion of a purely justifying consideration was made apparent to me by Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt and Daniel Muñoz in their paper ‘Supererogation and the Limits of Reasons’.

11. Rulli (2016)

This interpretation was directly inspired by a position that Rulli posits in response to McPherson in her review of his 2016 essay ‘Why I Am a Vegan (and You Should Be One Too)’. My interpretation however, conserves the ‘very nice’ aspect of saving the life of the calf in McPherson’s case study. That being said, I think her purely justifying position could just as easily fit into the discussion here.

12. McPherson actually anticipates an interpretation like this and warns us that it threatens to entail that killing the calf immediately after performing the painful surgery could be permissible (McPherson, 2016, 79).

13. I’d like to thank my friend Paqe for providing feedback on this article (especially on my grammar).

14. I affirm that the ‘humane killing’ of animals for products isn’t coherent. I think the only sort of humane killing could be something like legitimate euthanasia. I think of the term ‘humane’ in a normatively significant sense such that it describes that some act was morally permissible and probably even something nice to do (perhaps even required).

15. Some folks my try to partially squeeze out by arguing that since the animals in factory farms aren’t living good lives, that it must be fine to kill them. This is a mistake. McPherson’s argument says that taking a valuable life from an animal is bad. It doesn’t claim that taking the life of an animal who is currently living in poor conditions (that don’t need to be) is good or permitted. That’s another subject matter. Regardless, if we have duties to not make them suffer, it seems such a factory farm should be abolished anyway. In addition, if an animal is raised in an environment where they won’t have a valuable life, it seems this would constitute harmful behaviour too, as they wouldn’t have any experiences, relationships, pleasures, etc. It’ arguably its own form of suffering.

16. I’d like to thank my friend MehtaEthics for highlighting this objection.