The human use of animals, especially of their bodies for food or clothing, has often generated ethical debates in a way that harvesting vegetables has not. These debates draw on the linguistic resources available in the prevailing culture (Maasen and Weingart 2013; Derrida 2001, 360). Thus, the use of animals as āpetsā draws upon a language usually reserved for humans, especially children within families, in order to discuss how we should treat them. Indeed, pets are sometimes said to be āpart of the familyā; they are to be fed when hungry, and taken for treatment when ill, just like other family members. It is easy to see how such language makes it natural to claim that beating or starving Fido is cruel, and that cruelty is ethically reprehensible.
Thus pet lovers talk about their dog or cat in a distinctive way, with its own lexicon and syntax. Pets are referred to as āhimā or herā, and may be given gendered personal names; their āownersā speak of Fido or Moggie as though they have their own personalities, preferences and favourite meals. Pets often have their own eating bowls labelled with their personal name, have special toys to play with and their own pet beds. A family pet is often āincludedā in special occasions by being given gifts, or may even āgiveā presents in their personal name; in both the UK and the US, over half of all family dogs receive a Christmas present. This language can become quite nuanced in emphasising the affinities between human and āpetā, depending upon the speakerās view of animals more generally. Thus, ācompanion animalā may be preferred to āpetā, using the language of human friendship to highlight the relationship formed. Others might prefer āhuman keeperā or āguardianā to āownerā, accenting the fact that an animal is not a thing, let alone chattel (Linzey and Cohn 2011). Encoded within this way of talking about āpetsā is the ethical decision not to eat them, just as we do not eat other members of our family. This is so, even though āpetsā are āownedā, and humans are usually free to eat their property if it is edible (or even if it isnāt). All culturally adept speakers tacitly understand these things.
But this is a specialised and relatively recent way of talking about animals. There are others. The most common is, and probably always has been, a pragmatic discourse of using animals for human survival and, more recently, human progress. When we wish to eat animals, wear their skin or experiment upon them, we usually choose different linguistic resources from those framing āpetā discourse. These resources have their own vocabulary and grammar. Thus food animals are rarely addressed as independent sentient beings, and are usually referred to by a number or as āitā rather than as āheā or āsheā (Linzey and Linzey 2017, v). To speak of them having their own personalities or preferences does not promote industry productivity. The exception to depersonalisation is the language of abuse and often obscenity revealed by undercover filming in industrial animal facilities. Female food animals perceived as recalcitrant or deliberately uncooperative are typically addressed with a lexicon drawn from the language of misogyny, a particular instance of the gendered discourse of the meat industry (Adams 2010). Moreover, food animals do not have personal toys, eating or sleeping arrangements; indeed, environmental deprivation is an issue in many facilities. When ill, a strict cost-benefit calculus determines whether they are healed or killed. As Michael Pollan (2002) has noted, the linguistic resource drawn upon here is that usually used of industrial products or machines: āTo visit a modern CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) is to enter a world that, for all its technological sophistication, is still designed according to Cartesian principles: animals are machines incapable of feeling pain.ā
Resources and Meanings
The resources we draw upon when we talk about animals affect the meaning we assign to them, and their place in our world. They create particular forms of significance for the native language user which generate and reinforce forms of animal-human relationships (Bernstein 2003, 93f). These different ways of speaking often coexist, and each uses its own vocabulary and grammar to express ethical responses to animals. For any particular culture at any one time, there is no single way to make sense of the animals in our world; rather, there are plural, contested ways of speaking which shift historically and culturally; a field of meanings imposed by humans on the creatures surrounding us, generating what we call āanimalsā (Derrida 2002, 408f). Each language is suited to its purpose. Language about āpetsā is suited to talking about human-pet interactions, and tacitly assumes a shared experience and knowledge of āpetsā among speakers. It indexes mutual understandings which remain unspoken. Such language is readily accessible to experienced pet owners, although some outside the pet-owning community might find it inappropriately anthropomorphising, even mawkish. By contrast, language about food animals is suited to culinary enjoyment, and is highly unsuitable to talking about pets. We sharply distinguish Fido from the pig whose ābaconā we eat for breakfast; this makes it hard or even impossible to say of Fido what we find it easy to say of the nameless pig: that it was succulent and tasty.
The language of āpetsā uses the obvious similarities between humans and other animals to provide a foundation for kinship. āPetsā may enjoy the same ethical consideration as family members: to be fed when hungry, protected from cold, treated when ill. In many ways, they are guest members of human culture. However, this is a human choice. If we wish to eat the animal or wear her skin, it would not be desirable to speak of āitā as gendered or as a member of the family. So we usually use a language which tacitly emphasises human uniqueness rather than the features we share with other animals. The potential ethical difficulty of eating a family member is thereby avoided. Within each discourse, our ethical choices are coded within the tacit meanings of the language itself, so that they appear to be natural rather than chosen. But there is no ānaturalā or neutral way to talk ethically about animals. Meaning is made, not found.
Strategies of Segregation
Commonly, a number of incompatible ways of talking about animals coexist in public discourse, and the potential for ethical conflict is minimised by clear boundaries between them. But as there are so many similarities between āpetsā and food animals, the boundary which separates animals we love from animals we love to eat, is prone to fail. In January 2018 a red Limousin beef cow staged āa miraculous escapeā on her way to slaughter in Poland and dived into Lake Nysa to gain sanctuary. She briefly won international fame as an āicon of freedomā, variously described as āheroicā, a ācelebrityā and āvaliantā. Food animals are not usually portrayed in this way. When they are, we find it harder to eat them, and soon a campaign began to save her from slaughter. A breakdown in segregation can affect our behaviour, although in this case it proved ineffectual as the terrified cow died of stress on being recaptured.
Skilled native speakers have a variety of segregation strategies to minimise inconvenience, and most people are adept at switching from one discourse to another without evoking a sense of dissonance. Most people know not to ask what Fido tastes like. But close daily contact with food animals is liable to make segregation harder, and its failure more distressing. If you donāt detach yourself from the animals, observed one farmer, āyouād go off your headā. Another family farmer described the āemotional trauma of sending for slaughter two lambs that were so pet-like they followed her into the trailerā. She felt she had betrayed their trust, a virtue usually reserved for interactions with other humans (Wilkie 2010, 152 and 150, my emphasis).
Animals can appear in discourses other than those of āpetsā and food. For example, in March 2018 a puppy called Kokito was taken aboard a plane in an animal carrier but, as luggage must be stowed in the overhead compartments, the flight crew decided that this was where the carrier be placed. By the end of the journey, Kokito was dead. Kokitoās appearance in the two incompatible discourses of luggage and pets affected the way speakers perceived her, with serious consequences for all concerned.
In the discourses of experimental science, the human-animal boundary becomes an important distinction, and manipulating it can conceal or generate cognitive dissonances which may even affect our perceptions. Thus, in the literature on animal modelling for human medical research, similarities are emphasised between humans and the experimental animal āmodelā in order to give the research plausibility. Sometimes conflict arises. For example, a researcher may be concerned to document similarities between his experimental animal and humans, whilst asserting that an experiment which would be unethical on a human is justified on an animal because the āmodelā is different from humans. Particular difficulties arise when the experimental model is a dog or cat which naturally evokes the language of pets, overly blurring the animal-human boundary and heightening the discomfort of dissonance.
The strategy of avoiding giving personal names to food animals is especially important for children who may be less skilled than adults at maintaining a segregating boundary between a live animal and livestock. Rhoda Wilkie (2010, 156) describes the young son on a family farm who was told that they were eating one of their own pigs for Sunday lunch. He asked which one, and the conversation developed:
- Mother:
- āOpheliaā
- Son:
- āWhich leg are we eating? Is it a front one or a back one?ā
- Mother:
- āA back one, I thinkā
- Son:
- āIs it the left leg or the right leg?āāAt that pointā, says Wilkie, āthe mother gave up on her Sunday lunchā.
The contents of the motherās plate did not change, but once segregation failed, her perception of it did.
Perception is an active not a passive process, an...