Ethical Veganism is Wrong

we focus intense moral concern on animals successfully bred to tolerate their conditions

What do you mean?

I don't think factory farmed animals tolerate their conditions well at all, because they suffer a lot. I'd recommend Welfare Footprint Project's research on egg-laying hens and meat chickens, and RP's similar research on shrimp to get an idea of what factory farmed animals' lives are often like. In particular, egg-laying hens live with chronic frustration and meat chickens often with disabling chronic pain. And they don't have ways to effectively relieve these.

If factory farming seems like a bad thing, you should do something about the version happening to you first. The domestication of humans is particularly urgent precisely because, unlike selectively bred farm animals, humans are increasingly expressing their discontent with these conditions

Why do you believe discontent (or its expression) is increasing? On what time scale? And do you expect this trend to continue for long?

Plus, factory farming is also increasing, especially in developing countries and for farmed insects.

Your response to 2 in general seems totally insensitive to the relative numbers involved wrt farmed animals and humans, and our potential impacts on each group. Shouldn't there be a point where you'd prioritize farmed animals?

You say:

"But this assumes the other party can engage in the kind of reciprocal decision-making that grounds such rights. Most animals' decision processes don't mirror ours in the way needed for this kind of relationship - they can't make or honor agreements, or intentionally retaliate based on understanding our choices. The question returns to welfare considerations: whether their lives are net positive."

I'm generally confused about this argument. If someone says "you can break your promises and violate trust if your counterparty is never able to find out or retaliate" they will get the retort "no no no decision theory doesn't work that way". If that person says "don't worry, I really picked out those that really are unable to retaliate. I will be super careful with folks who are able to retaliate.", they will get the response "nope, that doesn't work". 

When you hurt those who might have interests but are in no position to exercise agency, don't you send a similar signal that "if you're unable to understand what I'm doing, then I might hurt you". You might say "don't worry, I really picked out those that lack agency from birth, it will be fine" but I'm struggling to see a principled distinction.

I also think many animals have some capacity to communicate, understand promises, feel anger and spite over betrayal and hold grudges. It's possible to lie to many mammals and it's also possible to trade with them.

Question for you: would it be morally good to factory farm permanently and severely cognitively impaired human orphans, assuming a) the conditions that matter to you are met (e.g. their lives are net positive, they've been "successfully bred to tolerate their conditions") and b) there are no negative externalities (e.g. the rest of society isn't upset or scared by this factory farming)?

The main points for ethical veganism as I understand it are:

1. Killing other animals is unjust aggression; you wouldn't like to be killed and eaten, so don't kill and eat them.

Veganism (and, relatedly, taking animal ethics seriously) isn't about not killing or eating animals; it's about not exploiting (non-consensually using) and inflicting suffering on them if you can avoid it. The golden rule is probably why.

2. Factory farming causes animals to have bad lives.

Veganism (and taking animal ethics seriously) is about all forms of animal exploitation, not just factory farming.

If you're really worried about reducing the number of animal life years

This isn't what vegans and animal ethicists are worried about. We're worried about harm (maybe suffering, maybe exploitation, maybe rights violations) being done to sentient beings, unnecessarily.

they [animals] can't make or honor agreements, or intentionally retaliate based on understanding our choices

Neither can many humans, including infants and adults with severe dementia.

Declaring a group's existence repugnant and acting to end it is unambiguously a form of intergroup aggression.

I don't this is a helpful framing. Where does it leave enslaved humans?

I'm not arguing here that domesticates' preference to exist outweighs your aesthetic revulsion

Is the revulsion moral, or aesthetic, or both?

If factory farming seems like a bad thing, you should do something about the version happening to you first.

This is what factory farming looks like: www.watchdominion.com

[humans are] increasingly failing even to reproduce at replacement rate

If this is a measure of badness, you should explain why.

animals successfully bred to tolerate their conditions

www.watchdominion.com

I'm a bit disappointed, if not surprised, with the community response here. I understand veganism is something of a sacred cow (apologies) in these parts, but that's precisely why Ben's post deserves a careful treatment -- it's the arguments you least agree with that you should extend the most charity to. While this post didn't cause me to reconsider my vegetarianism, historically Ben's posts have had an outsized impact on the way I see things, and I'm grateful for his thoughts here.

Ben's response to point 2 was especially interesting:

If factory farming seems like a bad thing, you should do something about the version happening to you first.

And I agree about the significance of human fertility decline. I expect that this comparison, of factory farming to modern human lives, will be a useful metaphor when thinking about how to improve the structures around us.

The ethical vegan must therefore decide whether their objection is to animals dying or to animals living.

One might object to animal suffering, rather than living/dying. So a utilitarian might say factory farming is bad because of the significantly net-negative states that animals endure while alive, while being OK with eating meat from a cow that is raised in a way such that it is living a robustly net positive life, for example.^[1]
 

If you're really worried about reducing the number of animal life years, focus on habitat destruction - it obviously kills wildlife on net, while farming is about increasing lives.

This isn't an obvious comparison to me, there are clear potential downsides of habitat destruction (loss of ecosystem services) that don't apply to reducing factory farming. There are also a lot of uncertainties around impacts of destroying habitats - it is much harder to recreate the ecosystem and its benefits than to re-introduce factory farming if we are wrong in either case. One might also argue that we might have a special obligation to reduce the harms we cause (via factory farming) than attempt habitat destruction, which is reducing suffering that exists ~independently of humans.
 

...the instrumentalization of animals as things to eat is morally repugnant, so we should make sure it's not perpetuated. This seems to reflect a profound lack of empathy with the perspective of a domesticate that might want to go on existing. Declaring a group's existence repugnant and acting to end it is unambiguously a form of intergroup aggression.

I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly. Are you saying animals in factory farms have to be able to indicate to you that they don't want to go on existing in order for you to consider taking action on factory farming? What bar do you think is appropriate here?
 

If factory farming seems like a bad thing, you should do something about the version happening to you first.

If there were 100 billion humans being killed for meat / other products every year and living in the conditions of modern factory farms, I would most definitely prioritise and advocate for that as a priority over factory farming.
 

The domestication of humans is particularly urgent precisely because, unlike selectively bred farm animals, humans are increasingly expressing their discontent with these conditions, and - more like wild animals in captivity than like proper domesticates - increasingly failing even to reproduce at replacement rates.

Can you say more about what you mean by "the domestication of humans"? It seems like you're trying to draw a parallel between domesticated animals and domesticated humans, or modern humans and wild animals in captivity, but I'm not sure what the parallel you are trying to draw is. Could you make this more explicit?
 

This suggests our priorities have become oddly inverted - we focus intense moral concern on animals successfully bred to tolerate their conditions, while ignoring similar dynamics affecting creatures capable of articulating their objections...

This seems like a confusing argument. Most vegans I know aren't against factory farming because it affects animal replacement rates. It's also seems unlikely to me that reduced fertility rates in humans is a good proxy/correlate for the amount of suffering that exists (it's possible that the relationship isn't entirely linear, but if anything, historically the opposite is more true - countries have reduced fertility rates as they develop and standards of living improve). It's weird that you use fertility rates as evidence for human suffering but seem to have a extremely high bar for animal suffering! Most of the evidence I'm aware of would strongly point to factory farmed animals in fact not tolerating their conditions well.
 

...who are moreover the only ones known to have the capacity and willingness to try to solve problems faced by other species.

This is a good argument to work on things that might end humanity or severely diminish it's ability to meaningfully + positively affect the world. Of all the options that might do this, where would you rank reduced fertility rates?

1. ^{^}

   Though (as you note) one might also object to farming animals for food for rights-based rather than welfare-based reasons.