Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?
- Adam Shriver
- … show all 1 hide
Rent the article at a discount
Rent now* Final gross prices may vary according to local VAT.
Get AccessAbstract
Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so.
Look
Inside
Within this Article
- Introduction
- Reducing Unnecessary Suffering
- Knocking Out Pain
- A Potential Argument
- Bruising
- Pure Vegetarianism Advocacy vs. a Mixed Strategy
- Deontological Considerations
- General Objections to Genetically Modified Foods
- Conclusion
- References
- References
Other actions
- Singer, P. 1975. Animal liberation. New York: Random House.
- The Vegetarian Resource Group Poll. 2006. Conducted by Harris Interactive. http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faq.htm#poll . Accessed 10 January 2009.
- Humane Society of the United States Graph. 2006. (using data from the USDA). http://www.hsus.org/farm/resources/pubs/stats_meat_consumption.html. Accessed 10 January 2009.
- USDA Agricultural Projections Report. 2007. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/oce071. Accessed 10 January 2009.
- Varner, G. 1994. The prospects for consensus and convergence in the animal rights debate. In The environmental ethics and policy book, eds. D. VanDeVeer and C. Pierce. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
- Singer, P. 1979. Practical ethics. New York: University of Cambridge Press.
- Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Degrazia, D. 1999. Animal ethics around the turn of the twenty-first century. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 11: 111–29. CrossRef
- Farah, M. 2009. Neuroethics and the problem of other minds: implications of neuroscience for the moral status of brain-damaged patients and nonhuman animals. Neuroethics 1: 9–18. CrossRef
- Hardcastle, V. 1999. The myth of pain. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
- Price, D.D. 2000. Psychological and neural mechanisms of the affective dimension of pain. Science 288: 1769–72. CrossRef
- Rainville, P., G.H. Duncan, D.D. Price, B. Carrier, and M.C. Bushnell. 1997. Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science 277: 968–71. CrossRef
- Ploner, M., H.J. Freund, and A. Schnitzler. 1999. Pain affect without pain sensation in a patient with postcentral lesion. Pain 81: 211–14. CrossRef
- Foltz, E.L. and L.E. White. 1962. Pain relief by frontal cingulotomy. Journal of Neurosurgery 19: 89–100. CrossRef
- Romanelli, P., V. Esposito, and J. Adler. 2004. Ablative procedures for chronic pain. Neurosurgery Clinics of North America 15: 335–42. CrossRef
- Rose, J.D. 2002. The neurobehavioral nature of fish and the question of awareness of pain. Reviews in Fisheries Science 10(1): 1–38. CrossRef
- Shriver, A. 2006. Minding mammals. Philosophical Psychology 19(4): 433–42. CrossRef
- Jones, A.K.P., K. Friston, and R.S.J. Frackowiak. 1992. Localization of responses to pain in human cerebral cortex. Science 255: 215–216. CrossRef
- Hutchison, W.D. 1999. Pain related neurons in the human cingulate cortex. Nature Neuroscience 2(5): 403–5. CrossRef
- Johansen, J.P. and H.L. Fields. 2004. Glutamatergic activation of anterior cingulate cortex produces an aversive teaching signal. Nature Neuroscience 7(4): 398–403. CrossRef
- LaGraize, S., C. Labuda, R. Rutledge, R. Jackson, and P. Fuchs. 2004. Differential effect of anterior cingulate cortex lesion on mechanical hypersensitivity and escape/avoidance behavior in an animal model of neuropathic pain. Experimental Neurology 188: 139–48. CrossRef
- LaGraize, S., J. Borzan, Y.B. Peng, and P. Fuchs. 2006. Selective regulation of pain affect following activation of the opiod anterior cingulate cortex system. Experimental Neurology 197: 22–30. CrossRef
- Wei, F. and M. Zhuo. 2006. Potentiation of sensory responses in the anterior cingulate cortex following digit amputation in the anaesthetized rat. Journal of Physiology 532: 823–33. CrossRef
- Xu, H., L. Wu, H. Wang, X. Zhang, K. Vadakkan, S. Kim, H. Steenland, and W. Zhuo. 2008. Presynaptic and postsynaptic amplifications of neuropathic pain in the anterior cingulate cortex. Neurobiology of Disease 28(29): 7445–53.
- Wei, F. and M. Zhuo. 2008. Activation of Erk in the anterior cingulated cortex during the induction and expression of chronic pain. Molecular Pain 4: 28. CrossRef
- Toyoda, H., L. Wu, M. Zhao, H. Xu, and M. Zhuo. 2006. Time-dependent postsynaptic AMPA GluR1 receptor recruitment in the cingulate synaptic potentiation. Developmental Neurobiology 67(4): 489–509.
- Wei, F., C. Qiu, S. Kim, L. Muglia, J. Maas Jr., V. Pineda, H. Xu, Z. Chen, D. Storm, L.J. Muglia, and M. Zhuo. 2002. Genetic elimination of behavioral sensitization in mice lacking calmodulin-stimulated adenylyl cyclases. Neuron 36: 713–26. CrossRef
- Allen, C., P.N. Fuchs, A. Shriver, and H. Wilson. 2005. Deciphering animal pain. In Pain: new essays on the nature of pain and the methodology of its study, ed. M. Aydede, 352–366. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
- Sun, Y., Y. Gao, Z. Zhao, B. Huang, J. Yin, G. Taylor, and Z. Chen. 2008. Involvement of P311 in the affective, but not in the sensory component of pain. Molecular Pain 4: 23. CrossRef
- Fredeen, H. and A. Sather. 1978. Joint damage in pigs reared under confinement. Canadian Journal of Animal Science 58: 759–73. CrossRef
- Harrison, R. 1972. On factory farming. In Animals, men, and morals: an enquiry into the maltreatment of non-humans, ed. S. Godlovitch, R. Godlovitch, and J. Harris. New York: Toplinger.
- Eisenberger, N., M.D. Lieberman, and K.D. Williams. 2003. Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science 302: 290–292. CrossRef
- Grandin, T. 2000. Bruise levels on fed and non-fed cattle. Proceedings Livestock Conservation Institute. http://www.grandin.com/references/LCIbruise.html. Accessed 30 June 2009.
- Singer, P. and J. Mason. 2006. The way we eat: why our food choices matter. New York: Rodale Books.
- Rollin, B. 1996. Bad ethics, good ethics and the genetic engineering of animals in agriculture. Journal of Animal Science 74: 535–41.
- Title
- Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?
- Journal
-
Neuroethics
Volume 2, Issue 3 , pp 115-124
- Cover Date
- 2009-11-01
- DOI
- 10.1007/s12152-009-9048-6
- Print ISSN
- 1874-5490
- Online ISSN
- 1874-5504
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Additional Links
- Topics
- Keywords
-
- Nonhuman animals
- Animal neuroethics
- Genetic engineering
- Pain
- Suffering
- Bioethics
- Authors
-
-
Adam Shriver
(1)
-
Adam Shriver
- Author Affiliations
-
- 1. Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1073, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63130-4899, USA