Richard Dawkins on minimizing suffering to animals raised for slaughter

[Guest guest]

This would hold true for animals raised exclusively for slaughter to feed

carnivorous animals in captivity. However I disagree with him regarding the

comparative nature of suffering of animals as compared to humans that are

destined for slaughter.

 

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/richard-dawkins

 

You mention in the book 'The Ancestor's Tale' that you are appalled at the

works of liberal thinkers from 100 years ago—I think this is part of " The

Grasshopper's Tale. " You are appalled at their comments on race, and you

wonder what scholars 100 years from now might be appalled at. You speculate

that it might be our treatment of other species. This made me wonder: Are

you a vegetarian? *

 

*No, I'm not, and that's an interesting question. What I believe is that we

should try to minimize suffering. And so I would have no objection to

killing something to eat it, provided it doesn't suffer. So I'm much more

worried about the suffering in slaughterhouses and in factory farms—the

dread that might enter the mind of a cow or pig when it's being led to the

slaughter. To the extent that slaughtering practices are humane, I see no

objection to using animals for meat.*

*The objection to using humans for meat would be not just that they are

human, but that they would feel fear, they would know what was coming to

them, they would be in a position to suffer in a way that a pig or a cow, if

it was well treated, would not. So my aim would always be to reduce

suffering, not to take a kind of absolutist position that there is something

special and unique about humans which entitles them to exploit and use other

species of animal for any purpose.*

 

Professor Richard Dawkins is the first holder of the newly endowed Charles

Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of

Oxford.

 

A graduate of Oxford, he did his doctorate under the Nobel-prizewinning

ethologist Niko Tinbergen. In 1967 he was appointed Assistant Professor of

Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, returning to Oxford in

1969. He has been a Fellow of New College since 1970.

 

Professor Dawkins's first book, The Selfish Gene(1976; second edition, 1989)

became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into all the major

languages. Its more technical sequel, The Extended Phenotype, followed in

1982. The Blind Watchmaker(1986) won the Royal Society of Literature Award

and the Los Angeles Times Prize, both in 1987. His other bestsellers include

River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable(1996), Unweaving the

Rainbow(1998), and A Devil's Chaplain (2003). His most recent book is The

Ancestor's Tale(2004). He has lectured all around the world, and in 1991 he

gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London.

 

Professor Dawkins's awards have included the Silver Medal of the Zoological

Society of London (1989), the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Award (1990),

the Nakayama Prize for Achievement in Human Science (1990), The

International Cosmos Prize (1997) and the Kistler Prize (2001). He has

Honorary Doctorates in both literature and science, and is a Fellow of the

Royal Society.

 

More information about Professor Dawkins is available on this site in the

form of a downloadable biography in a PDF format and a list of his writings.