Barry on the inhumane slaughter of animals to meet religious requirements

In the news this week: moves in the Dutch parliament to ban the slaughter of unstunned animals (BBC discussion article).

A brief synopsis of the issue:

1. Slaughtering animals without stunning / rendering them unconscious beforehand is increasingly considered to be inhumane, and there is a growing move in many countries to ban the practice.
2. This is in conflict with Jewish and Muslim religious doctrine. Their counter arguments are roughly a) such laws inhibit their religious freedom, and b) their way is just as / more humane than the other proposed methods.

And a side issue that often goes unremarked: in the West there is a growing distaste of 'ritual slaughter' and a growing desire to use methods that are considered more humane. Where ritual slaughter is allowed it can be considered to be allowed on an exception basis, i.e. "we don't like this, but we realise that slaughtering animals in this way is important to some segments of our population". A problem however is that because according to at least one religious doctrine not all of the animal is fit for consumption, so the rest of it finds its way into the 'mainstream food supply chain' in order (allegedly) to make the practice economically viable. This means that people who are against the practice of religious slaughter are financially supporting said practices. There have been moves at the EU level for meat not slaughtered to a standard considered humane by the mainstream to be labelled as such so that it can be identified by the discerning shopper. Apparently such moves have been resisted on the grounds that it would inhibit religious freedom. It is not clear why this should weigh more than the freedom of others to choose not to support practices that they consider inhumane.

Anyway, on with Brian Barry and what he had to say on the matter (p45):

"...we must insist on the crucial difference between a denial of equal opportunities to some group [..] and a choice some people make out of that from a set of equal opportunities [..] as a result of certain beliefs. [...] We all constantly impose restrictions on ourselves in choosing among the options that are legally available to us according to our beliefs about what is right, polite, decent, prudent, professionally appropriate, and so on."

and (p45),

"Assuming that killing animals without prior stunning falls below the prevailing standards for the humane treatment of animals, the point is that those who are not prepared to eat meat from animals killed in any other way cannot eat meat without violating these minimum standards. It is not the law but the facts (assuming the facts bear it out) of neurophysiology that make this so. The law may condone the additional suffering of animals killed without prior stunning, but if it does we should be clear that what it is doing is accommodating the tastes of a subset of carnivores, not observing the demands of religious freedom."

(p35)

"Consider, for example, the way in which people's beliefs may make some job opportunities unattractive to them. Pacifists will presumably regard a career in the military as closed to them. Committed vegetarians are likely to feel the same about jobs in slaughterhouses or butcher's shops. Similarly, if legislation requires that animals should be stunned before being killed, those who cannot as a result of their religious beliefs eat such meat will have to give up eating meat altogether."

From Barry (2001). Culture and Equality. Polity Press.

On equal respect to cultures and ways of life

On liberals (allegedly) having to give equal respect to cultures because liberals are committed to equal respect for persons:

"The obvious problem with this argument is that illiberal cultures typically—I am tempted to say necessarily—are committed to violating the cannons of equal respect. Equal respect for people cannot therefore entail respect for their cultures when these cultures systematically give priority to, say, the interests of men over the interests of women."

- Brian Barry (2001). Culture & Equality. Polity Press. p127 

Multiculturalism failure in Lancashire

I've used the following as a quote a few times in essays and discussion, so I thought it useful to repost it here. It comes from an article on the Lancashire Telegraph website about introducing humanism and atheism as part of the RE curriculum, and is a quote from one Salim Mulla the chair of the Lancashire Council of Mosques.

Broadly speaking a multicultural society is one that supports a plurality of world views and 'cultures' within a polity. To be successful, these world views need to get along with each other even when they are not in harmony. In short, for it to be a multicultural society and not a fragmented one, the people need to at least tolerate, and respect that others hold different views. In practice to allow citizens the freedom to pursue these diverse ends the polity needs to be liberal; one that allows people the liberty to pursue their ends. A liberal society needs to equip it's citizens with the ability, potential, and freedom to choose their way of life, otherwise those citizens don't have liberty. As part of this citizens need to be aware that they have other choices, that other world views exist.

In the UK this is one of the reasons we have RE lessons. RE teaches about different world views to broaden horizons, and help people to understand that others may have fundamentally different world views and that's okay. RE is about religious understanding. This should probably be subsumed into a broader citizenship and ethics class, but that's a whole different story. Religious instruction is left to parents and whatever temple is attended. (Important exception here: the varyingly applied rule for collective worship in schools).

So.. we want our children to know about other religions as part of their education. It allows them to choose. It broadens their horizons and exposes them to novel ways of thinking. It helps them to understand The Other, and in a school where children have a wide range of faiths and world views it helps them to understand that people who believe radically different things to them are still people just like you. Because, you know, apartheid is bad.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the quote from Lancashire Telegraph and the chair of the local muslim council of mosques on the subject of letting children know that not everyone believes in God:

“We believe it is important to have faith values whether that is Christian, Islamic or any other religion.

"The values are very, very important. I don’t think the non-God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum.

“I don’t think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that’s how it should stay.

“The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them.”

Interesting stuff. I think this underestimates children, and suggests that people shouldn't be free to choose their beliefs. Mr Mulla is of course entitled to his belief that those without faith are wrong, that's what being in a liberal society is all about, but I believe that saying "this world view on the matter of the existence of God, which is held by 30-60% of the nation [depending on the polls and phrasing of the question], shouldn't be mentioned in a class that is supposed to teach children about other world views and should in effect be censored" seems ... well... a little insular.

Rawls - The Status of Majority Rule

Next up on the reading list is section 54 of Rawls' A Theory of Justice: The Status of Majority Rule.

I have difficulty reading Rawls. I largely agree with him and think he has sound arguments, but I tend to get a little lost in his exposition. So, this attempt at a summary will be a cheeky walkthrough to produce only a sentence from each paragraph.

1. Majority rule (e.g. democracy) is, hopefully, an instrumental good in that it brings about a legislative state of affairs grounded on the principles of justice (loosely liberty and equality).
2. It does not follow that what the majority wills is right, which is why we need constitutional limitations, though (interesting multiculturalism angle) we should be wary that entrenched minorities may use these limitations to preserve their illicit advantages.
3. A just constitution is "...defined as a constitution that would be agreed upon by rational delegates in a constitutional convention who are guided by the two principles of justice" and the Viel of Ignorance (VI) and Original Position (OP) come into play here as part of a conceptual ideal procedure.
4. A law or policy is just if it could be arrived at via the ideal procedure (VI and OP).
5. A problem with majority decision as an instrument of reaching a correct decision is that people influence each other (lots of human interaction stuff here: group think, evaluation apprehension, social loafing, etc... hmm... perhaps law making needs a fresh looking using the group decision making and creativity literature)
6. There are some benefits from having lots of people involved in decision making though, the exchange of opinion "...checks our partiality and widens our perspective"
7. So we want an ideal procedure.. but don't have it at the moment
8. An ideal political process is different to an ideal market process, because you won't get an efficient outcome if everyone only considers their own interest
9. We can't really bring about an ideal procedure (where people make the laws), we must rely on a certain extent on the people being just, but we should still aim to move towards it
10. Because of the equality principle, in the ideal procedure everyone's vote has equal weighting; one *cough* man one vote, which is a bit different to the ideal market, though I don't know why we should be caring about the ideal market at this stage
11. For any given legislative choice there may be a range of possible outcomes in the 'outcome landscape' that could be considered to be just
12. The role of majority decision making is to choose policies that lie on the 'justice peaks' in the 'outcome landscape', which will make the decision authoritative though not definitive.


Interesting aside: (some) theists claim that only God can provide objective morality. Setting aside the truth value of that, the subjectivity of interpreting that morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma... can the Original Position be considered a basis for objective morality? It appears to be in all but name in A Theory of Justice. Well, to be fair I've not read the whole thing so it could be in name as well.