Is slaughter an act that can be performed humanely? Is it moral to wring the neck of non-human animals even if they do not possess rational agency?
“Someone has to do it,” some people might think. Anyone may have killed an animal — insect or even mammal. But, it’s best not to do that work, at least continually.
We have a duty to relinquish purely profit-motivated interests from our public boards like Ohio’s Livestock Care Standards Board because those people who think we need to use government to help slaughter non-human animals are probably not specifically positioned to answer that.
But the main idea is that public officials need moral guidance to implement policies, especially policies concerning non-human animals and policies of environmental integrity. They should know the history of “care standards” in Ohio, know reform proposals of existing care standard agencies and what alternatives exist to what corporations are selling consumers.
In 2009, voters in Ohio approved the multi-million dollar Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board. The ballot initiative, put up by corporate veal and cattle farmers, was designed to guard against calls by the Humane Society, ASPCA and other groups to restrict the slaughter of particular animals. The Livestock Care Standards Board was promoted by many 4-H groups around the state.
Now, as the governor cuts our way from deficit and debt, voters are looking for wasteful, idle, outright inefficient and flatly unsustainable bodies to scrap. And the Livestock Care Standards Board should, of course, be an item put under serious consideration for removal.
The board has assisted being responsible toward the revenue of only select entities — mainly out-of-state corporations. But, “meat brings massive amounts of money to the fractional revenue of our state,” they say. Not so fast. Numbers are subject to change.
The thought that slaughtered meat largely contributes to Ohio’s whole economy is conclusively false. “What about milk and eggs?” The last time generating those goods impacted our state economy was when milk and eggs were sold by family farmers. And the truth is milk and eggs are primarily sold by large factory farmers in semi-arid Western states.
Ohio is mostly dependent on human services, natural resources and crops to thrive economically — and those are shifting as we power through the 21st century.
Energy is becoming a major factor in our economy. And so the board’s current activities are even more peculiar in that they serve no one at all: The board has spent millions of tax- payer dollars over two years to advertise meat production and hand jobs to out-of-state corporations.
Most people I know who voted for the board thought that it would help stop the slaughter of animals — not because they deem animals to be persons — but because they deem animals to be moral agents in subjective reality; that is, they think animals can identify the arbiter between subjective reality and objective moral truth.
What role would animals being moral agents play in public deliberation? And if the killing of animals for profit is not a good reason to establish a public board, why does it persist?
The board should at least be reformed without the amount of stakeholder interest it seats, replace current members with an independent jury similar to those in the court system instead of partisan appointees, allow specialists who concentrate in applied ethics to oversee the operations of the Board and then, after the Board has finished implementing policies that do not destroy animals, dissolve it and return millions of dollars back to the state of Ohio.
What a tale that would be: unbridled justice!
Then that money can be invested in our public school system to teach students about health and wellness. Fruit and vegetable farmers in Ohio deserve more credit than we give the Care Standards Board—and that board needs to be disintegrated as long as its interests are as profit- motivated as they have remained.
One of the three things I have learned only at Ohio University is that keeping particular diets is possible.
Officials should know that the funny vegetarian diet is sustainable. Many vegetarians eat whole pastas, fruits, legumes and vegetables and slim down. Those vegetarians have found any weight they do gain is faster to lose during exercise, perhaps because they are not eating things saturated in fat or cholesterol.
I like to think its because they’re not eating animals. They also bulk up and tone quickly when they lift, and continually stay active if they seek to maintain the tone.
Christopher Myers is a senior studying philosophy.
