Animal Rights Without Controversy?

For about two years, Jeff Leslie, Julie Roin, Martha Nussbaum, and I have been working on a project on animal welfare (under the leadership of Saul Levmore and with the assistance of a large group of students). The project has focussed on the following question: Is it possible to activate market forces in a way that might promote animal welfare, not because some moral account requires protection of animals, but because (many? most?) ordinary people already want to protect animals against serious suffering, at least to some degree?

The simple idea can be illustrated with a thought experiment. Imagine that every consumer of food could know, instantly and automatically, about the treatment of the animal that is being purchased as food. Imagine, that is, that every consumer could know if the animal was treated very well or very cruelly. It is likely that a certain percentage of consumers would be willing to pay some kind of premium to ensure better treatment. (Of course we don't know what percentage, or how much they would be willing to pay.)

On this view, a serious underlying problem is that mistreatment of animals, and cruelty to animals, are largely invisible. If they were more visible, at least some people would object, and their objection would be registered in their consumption choices. Our motivation, then, is modest; it is not that people's moral convictions are wrong or insufficiently reflective. It is that people's behavior ensures practices that already violate widespread moral convictions. The trick is to help bring people's consumption patterns in line with their existing moral judgments.

To accomplish that trick, we have been considering ways to increase the likelihood that consumers will actually know about the treatment (whether good, bad, or somewhere in between) of the particular animals that they are eating. Certification practices of various sorts provide a start. (One of the more interesting and widely unknown stories of the last decade has been the largely voluntary, and often expensive, efforts by large companies to reduce animal suffering.) But there is no consistency in those practices, and it is hard for ordinary people to learn a lot about them.

Labelling and related practices do a good deal more; consider free range chicken. It would surely be possible to build on such labelling to give consumers relevant information in an economical form. The ultimate goal would be to create a kind of market with respect to animal welfare, just as we have markets in other product characteristics that matter to consumers. (Jeff Leslie and I are now working on a paper on this subject, slated for Law and Contemporary Problems.)

Of course a well-functioning market of this kind will hardly satisfy everyone who is concerned with animal welfare and animal rights (and it will not satisfy everyone who is involved in this project). Why -- it might be asked -- should the protection of animals against cruelty and abuse depend on how much human beings are willing to pay to prevent cruelty and abuse? And for those who believe that animals should not be eaten, even if they live pretty decent lives, our proposal will seem hopelessly inadequate. (But perhaps it would be a step in the right direction, among other things because it would increase information and discussion.)

For those who do not much care about animal welfare, there are other objections. Why single out animal welfare? Why not have labelling for every product characteristic with moral dimensions, such as the treatment of workers in the relevant plant, the level of wages, the number of accidents, the level of ecological damage? What makes animal welfare so special?

All of these questions are legitimate. But it is nonetheless a real problem if human beings inadvertently contribute to forms of suffering and abuse that they would seek to reduce if they had better information and knew how to help. Almost everyone agrees that animal welfare matters at least to some extent, and that it would be good if we could find ways to reduce the suffering of animals raised for food. The question is whether some kind of disclosure regime, preferably voluntary, might enlist market pressures in that endeavor -- and do so without any kind of government mandate or ban.

Comments

[Rue Des Quatre Vents]

Prof Sunstein,

Price Discrimination: just a conjecture, but consider a tactic Costa Coffee employed with its fair trade coffee blend. I don't have a precise source location, but this is covered in Tim Harford's Freakonomics spin-off called "The Undercover Economist." Costa coffee would offer two sorts of coffee, one more expensive than the other, on the grounds that the coffee beans were bought at a fair price. That is, the farmers who harvested the coffee beans were given a greater price than they might otherwise be given in an open market. The appeal was that these farmers deserved to be remunerated better than market conditions would allow. But when the coffee was sold in the store the increase in price of the fair trade coffee over the regular blend did not reflect the proportionate price increase Costa Coffee paid to the famers. What it reflected was that some people were willing to pay more not only for doing good, but also for thinking that they were doing good. Suppose, if the regular coffee was $1.50, the fair trade was $1.65. But if the additional cost of paying the farmers at a fair price were accurately reflected in the price of the coffee in the store, it'd be more like $1.55. So whoever bought the fair trade coffee self-selected themselves as people willing to pay more based upon their implicit if vague belief in international social justice. So perhaps such a market advantage might be employed by the chicken/cattle industry with respect to people sensitive to animal rights?

[Timothy Zimmerman]

Professor Sunstein,

One of the best examples of what you talk about that I have seen is the Mexican food chain Chipotle. In the last three or four years they have moved rapidly changed their offerings to be solely free-range pork, chicken, etc. It seems that they established themselves as a great restaurant prior to really embracing the cause of animal welfare in their menu choices however. Do you think that the most successful way for animal welfare to be economically beneficial would come from the largest companies down to the smallest ones? There will always be niche stores that fulfill a need in large markets where consumers demand such products, but in order to truly make animal welfare a priority motivated by economics, does the $1 McChicken have to become the $2 free-range McChicken?

[Liam Jackson]

Professor Sunstein,

Might you say something about the manner in which you think such labeling practices could be regulated and enforced? A current problem with so-called "free range" products is that there exist no formal industry-wide standards defining "free range" practices. As such the free-range label is absolutely meaningless (especially since free-range conditions create new possibilities for abuse - including the potential for violence between and among the animals themselves). Any serious attempt to enlist market support (in the form of labeling) for self-initiated reforms must involve the articulation of formal industry-wide standards governing the treatment of animals as well as some regulatory mechanism which allows for the intermittent inspection of factories and farms to ensure compliance.

Another obvious issue concerns the impact of such welfare reforms on attempts to publicize and articulate the moral significance of non-human animals. Would market-driven improvements to animal welfare discourage some consumers from going vegetarian/vegan (believing it sufficient to purchase "cruelty-free" products)? I am always suspicious that the ultimate effect of "welfare reforms" is merely to make the consumption of meat socially acceptable - if meat and dairy consumption rose as a result of welfare reforms, have we actually reduced animal cruelty according to any meaningful calculus?

On the other hand, attention to the treatment of animals might possibly make the production process more visible in the minds of consumers (it is exactly this invisibility, and the meat industry knows well, which allows injustice against non-human animals to flourish), and might have the consequence of discouraging overall meat and dairy consumption.

Have you studied the results of dolphin-safe tuna labeling practices (as well as the troubles such practices got into from the WTO, etc.)?

[Kimball Corson]

I am working on my paper on 'gnat standing' and will get back to you all shortly. (Don't they feel pain too?)

[Kimball Corson]

Is a discussion of animal rights really meaningful when we murder so many daily for food? Or is it only that we want to address visible and imminent cruelty that offends us so we can keep our sensibilities intact and feel we have done something? Does the purpose for which an animal was killed really matter? Is it not dead either way? Do we not simply rationalize here instead of coming to grips with the real problems?

[BCombs]

I wrote a business plan for a company that would do this sort of branding science. Consumer report/good house keeping seal...pay to have your product screened, neutral information made available online, beautifully typeset mind you.

It's behavioral economics, object relations, knowledge management, and graphic design among other things.
Good stuff yeah.

I it, I you, I thou...

[jenny]

i like what u wrote im with animal rights

[Barbara Barzilai]

I absolutely support your perspective and would like to help in any way I can. I thought your presentation was thorough, intelligently stated and yet was not "too pushy" as to turn off non-vegetarians. Most meat-eaters actually do care about animal welfare, and as you stated are just ignorant to facts.

[Bekir L. Yildirim]

The cyniststs "why" questions are tenous at best. Such "whys" always exist on any issue with moral dimensions. A certification by appropriate organizations would be a step in the right direction. That cannot be deemed to leave the animal welfare to the consumers' buying habits, for it does not hinder other mechanisms, but provides an aditional means. Just as Kosher or Halal labeling does not substitute for the prudence by the faithful. Like any other soscial issue, the solutions do not come in a revultionary fashion, but with incremental changes, such as the one proposed in the article. I fully support, and would be willing to pay the premium commensurate with the additional cost.

[maryann rollins]

hey i am maryann rollins and i am looking for a college i want to go to. so that i no what kind of grades i have to have to get in cause i have pretty good grades. and the prices like for trimesters or how ever you do it so please reply with some answers!!!

Maryann Rollins