 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Jacy Reese Anthis |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Beacon Press |
Publication date | November 6, 2018 |
| ISBN | 0807019453 |
The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System is a 2018 book by Jacy Reese that argues animal farming will end by the year 2100 based on effective altruism reasoning and social movement strategy.
The book outlines the principles of the philosophy of effective altruism and details the history of humanity's moral progress over millennia. It then documents the current state of factory farming and the farmed animal movement that seeks to reform or abolish animal agriculture. The book then discusses various strategies that can be and are being utilized, such as cage-free egg campaigns, vegetarian activism, and innovative food technologies such as plant-based and cellular agriculture. It argues for a strategic focus on changing institutions instead of changing individuals, a focus on "trigger events", rhetoric that emphasizes how to eat animal-free food instead of why, utilizing stories before citing statistics about animal agriculture, and finally a selective use of confrontational activism. It ends by circling back to the expanding moral circle and arguing that advocates should engender a broad moral understanding rather than addressing moral issues one by one.
Coverage of the book was mostly positive, noting the provocative thesis of the book and the contemporary emergence of plant-based and cell-based food products. Some reviewers emphasized Reese's background growing up in Texas near cattle ranches, while noting the challenges of reaching a wide audience with a conventional vegan message. [1] Molly Brown at GeekWire and Kelsey Piper at Vox emphasized the transition happening from the conventional "vegan diatribe" to approaches focused on mass consumer appeal and innovative food technology. [2] [3] The book was praised for its optimistic outlook despite the gravity of factory farming. [4]
The book faced criticism from Current Affairs due to its focus on effective altruism. Nathan J. Robinson wrote: [5]
The End of Animal Farming is written from the "effective altruist" point of view, and carries both that movement's best and worst tendencies. At their best, the effective altruists help hone our moral reasoning, and focus on being useful rather than seeming virtuous. You can see that in Reese's approach: He wants to convince you that ending animal farming is possible, and lay out a series of steps by which it might be achieved, not just show that it's important. In fact, he spends little time making the moral case, which is quite simple, and the bulk of the book is dedicated to solutions. Unfortunately, the "effective altruists'" frustrating qualities are on display too. In a chapter on how we might further "expand our moral circle," Reese discusses some of the EA movement's other pet causes (such as preventing an artificially intelligent creature from enslaving humanity) and mulls on moral questions about space colonization and the civil rights of future robot servants. This eccentric altruism is not based on evidence, but upon thought experiments about possible distant futures (Reese mentions "whole brain emulation"), and causes some EA adherents to think their time is wisely spent trying to help prevent far-fetched hypothetical future-suffering rather than actual present-suffering.
In The New Republic , Rachel Riederer commented: [6]
Reese's book isn't likely to win the hearts and palates of many meat eaters. Its tone is coolly dry, bordering on mathematical. Part of this comes from Reese's commitment to effective altruism, whose adherents say they use “evidence and careful analysis to find the very best causes” rather than "just doing what feels right." It might be a refreshing shift in tone from the extreme compassion and occasional sanctimony that can surround arguments for animal welfare, and it's certainly a sensible way to organize the activities of an advocacy group—but as the engine of a work of nonfiction, the constant emphasis on efficiency runs a little cold. Even Reese's discussion of suffering itself is mathematical, as he calculates the amount of harm a farm does by the number of animals it keeps and the number of hours they spend there, without accounting for differences in their consciousness. He gives the suffering of a fish the same weight as the suffering of a pig. Yet despite its structure and tone, the book's underlying argument itself is important.
Davide Banis in Forbes wrote that The End of Animal Farming is "little more than a thorough overview of the topic, meaning that the author just piles up a series of fairly known facts about animal farming, lacking more original insights. At times, it feels like a 'positioning book': a book written just to position the author as an expert in a burgeoning field." [7]
An excerpt from the book on the topic of humane animal agriculture was featured in The Guardian . [8]
Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of other human beings or animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious and secular worldviews. However, the object(s) of concern vary among cultures and religions. In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness, which is the opposite of selfishness.
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book Animal Liberation (1975), in which he argues in favour of veganism, and his essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", in which he argues in favour of donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian, but he stated in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. Distinctions may be made between several categories of veganism. Dietary vegans, also known as "strict vegetarians", refrain from consuming meat, eggs, dairy products, and any other animal-derived substances. An ethical vegan is someone who not only follows a plant-based diet but extends the philosophy into other areas of their lives, opposes the use of animals for any purpose, and tries to avoid any cruelty and exploitation of all animals including humans. Another term is "environmental veganism", which refers to the avoidance of animal products on the premise that the industrial farming of animals is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.
A meat alternative or meat substitute is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn.
Bruce Gregory Friedrich is co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute (GFI), a Y Combinator funded non-profit that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products. He is also a co-founder of the alternative protein venture capital firm New Crop Capital. Friedrich previously worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary.
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.
Conversations regarding the ethics of eating meat are focused on whether or not it is moral to eat non-human animals. Ultimately, this is a debate that has been ongoing for millennia, and it remains one of the most prominent topics in food ethics.
Jefferson Allen McMahan is an American moral philosopher. He has been White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford since 2014.
Abolitionism or abolitionist veganism is the animal rights based opposition to all animal use by humans. Abolitionism intends to eliminate all forms of animal use by maintaining that all sentient beings, humans or nonhumans, share a basic right not to be treated as properties or objects. Abolitionist vegans emphasize that the production of animal products requires treating animals as property or resources, and that animal products are not necessary for human health in modern societies. Abolitionists believe that everyone who can live vegan is therefore morally obligated to be vegan.
Animal-free agriculture, also known as veganic agriculture, stockfree farming or veganic farming, consists of farming methods that do not use animals or animal products.
Eating Animals is the third book by the American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2009. A New York Times best-seller, Eating Animals provides a dense discussion of what it means to eat animals in an industrialized world. It was written in close collaboration with Farm Forward, a US nonprofit organization promoting veganism and sustainable agriculture.
Effective altruism (EA) is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism are labeled effective altruists.
Vegetarian ecofeminism is an activist and academic movement which states that all types of oppression are linked and must be eradicated, with a focus on including the domination of humans over nonhuman animals. Through the feminist concept known as intersectionality, it is recognized that sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of inter human discrimination are all connected. Vegetarian ecofeminism aims to include the domination of not only the environment but also of nonhuman animals to the list. Vegetarian ecofeminism is part of the academic and philosophical field of ecofeminism, which states that the ways in which the privileged dominates the oppressed should include the way humans dominate nature. A major theme within ecofeminism is the belief that there is a strong connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, and that both must be eradicated in order to end oppression.
Erica Meier is an animal rights advocate and was the president and executive director of Animal Outlook from 2005 to 2021.
The Good Food Institute (GFI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, particularly meat, dairy, and eggs. It was created in 2016 by the nonprofit organization Mercy For Animals with Bruce Friedrich as the chief executive officer. GFI has more than 150 staff across six offices in the United States, India, Israel, Brazil, Asia Pacific, and Europe.
Sentience Politics is a Swiss anti-speciesist political organization with the goal of reducing the suffering of non-human animals. Founded in 2013, their activities include political campaigns, such as ballot initiatives for sustainable food, fundamental rights for primates or a ban on factory farming.
Jacy Reese Anthis, who has written under the name Jacy Reese, is an American social scientist, writer and co-founder of the Sentience Institute with Kelly Witwicki. He previously worked as a Senior Fellow at Sentience Politics, and before that at Animal Charity Evaluators as chair of the board of directors, then as a full-time researcher.
The march to close all slaughterhouses is an international event in the form of annual demonstrations in support of the abolition of the meat, dairy, egg, and fish industries and their practices, including the breeding, fishing, and killing of animals for food products.
The Sentience Institute (SI) is an American interdisciplinary think tank that specializes in effective altruism and social movement research. It was founded by Jacy Reese Anthis and Kelly Anthis in June 2017 and has published research reports on various social movements and new technologies.
Moral circle expansion is the process of increasing the number and type of entities given moral consideration over time and potentially into the future. While the general idea of moral inclusion underlies many social movements such as human rights and animal rights, the focus on general expansion has more recently developed, especially in relation to the animal rights and effective altruism movements, particularly the philosopher Peter Singer and the think tank Sentience Institute. There is significant debate on whether humanity actually has an expanding moral circle, such as the lack of a uniform border of growing moral consideration and the disconnect between people's moral attitudes and their behavior. Research into the phenomenon is ongoing.