Modern factory farms may soon be
raising animals that are “pain free,” and so not able to suffer physically from
the abominable conditions under which they live.  So says a story in this week’s New Scientist, my favorite
science magazine. (It is not up on the web yet, but a similar older one is.)  Adam Shriver, a philosopher at
Washington University argues we should do this.   The argument that breeding pain-free
animals will be more humane is a seductive one. 

I believe it is also deeply wrong.
 

Factory farms are the reason such a
trait is valuable.  They raise
animals under appalling conditions. 
A growing minority of consumers are refusing to buy from such moral
monsters.  But if animals no longer
suffered there, the corporate mind believes, and the mildly sociopathic mind
agrees, that there would be no more such arguments against buying their ‘product.’    Breeding pain free animals
exists to maintain the profitability of the most destructive form of “farming”
that has ever plagued the world. 
It destroys not only any quality in the lives of animals, it destroys
the land, the water, local farming communities, and the reservoirs of local
knowledge that any successful form of agriculture relies on.     

Pain free animals would exist solely to
assist the perpetuation of an abomination.   

It is as if we drugged people with ‘happiness’
drugs so they would not notice the hideous conditions under which they work and
live, and so contribute willingly to the fortunes of those who exploit
them.  The South could still
practice slavery.  We would never
need unions.  Or if we fed prison
populations bliss drugs, so they will never become restive.  We would not need to spend nearly as
much on their physical care, or on guards. In both cases the ‘ethical’ approach
exists to help us, not them.      

Whether through
drugs or by genetically eliminating the capacity to feel pain, these measures
exist primarily to help those with the power to impact how care is given to not
need to actually care anymore.  The
real drugging would be to the humanity of those who approve. They would become
less human than their victims.  The
parallel is exactly the same.     

Developing pain free animals so they
will not suffer under the hideous conditions that are the willing choice of
those who desire them to be pain-free is one of the most amoral goals of the
amoral catastrophe that is modern corporate America.  It spits in the eye of respect and love of the earth and its
inhabitants that is a foundation of any Pagan ethic worthy of the name.  It also spits in the eye of our
humanity.