Utilitarianism and the Dairy Industry
Australian philosopher Peter Singer has popularized utilitarianism, a moral theory that identifies all actions as worth a certain number of “utils” or units of moral good or bad. This is a form of consequentialism that identifies only the end result of an action (and its total effects on the world) as relevant to its status as a morally good or bad thing to do. This means every action has either a positive, negative, or neutral impact on the world. Something as mundane as what you choose to pour over your cereal in the morning becomes an ethical choice with real-world ramifications. And Singer identifies exactly this kind of personal consumer choice as integral to whether a person is good or bad.
In Practical Ethics, Peter Singer argued that people who eat meat are evil and support the evil meat industry. He urges people to go vegan or vegetarian rather than support an industry that profits off of the monumental suffering of hundreds of thousands of animals, who die and exist in poor living conditions only to provide humans with the nourishment we could acquire elsewhere. This claim rests on the assumptions that the lives of humans and animals have equal (or similar) worth and that humans’ choices as consumers can change the world for the better.
I have a similar question to Singer: can humans ethically consume animal milk? I try to take up the practical questions I believe Singer ignores; namely, if we take Singer at face value and doom the dairy industry with our consumer choices, are we actually doing the right thing? Should a utilitarian not also consider the jobs that improve the lives of people working in the dairy industry, or the fact that more than half of workers in the dairy industry are migrant workers? What about someone who cannot afford the more expensive alternative plant-based milks? Are poor people inherently less moral than wealthy people under utilitarianism? Perhaps more directly, what happens to the cows that no longer provide milk to millions of people? Are they to be sterilized and culled in the name of ending their suffering?
Singer would likely argue that yes, it is preferable to kill all the dairy cows in America and end the suffering of future cows on this scale. This is the problem with utilitarianism as a whole; it is not human in scale, nature, or practice. It is the greatest irony that Singer titled his seminal work “Practical” Ethics when he promotes an ideology that is anything but.
What does that mean for the average consumer? Singer would likely say it is better to do without the meal or drink that you use the alternative milk for if you cannot afford it, to ensure you do not perpetuate the dairy industry by giving it your money. This seems short-sighted to me. The “moral consumer” cannot exist this plainly, and cannot make real political change as expeditiously as concerted political action. I think this is simply an effort on the consumer’s part to keep their hands clean from the evils they see in the world, rather than a coherent protest that can actually change the industry they dislike. This also means that the consumer who cannot afford alternative milk cannot afford to keep their hands clean. Instead, I think it is preferable to choose whichever type of milk you prefer, and concentrate your political action in favor or in opposition to the dairy industry directly, rather than the less effective method of political consumerism.
