George Will(!) on factory farming

Will discusses Matthew Scully’s essay “Fear Factories” (via Marcus).

The rhetoric of animal “rights” is ill-conceived. The starting point, says Scully, should be with our obligations—the requirements for living with integrity. In defining them, some facts are pertinent, facts about animals’ emotional capacities and their experience of pain and happiness. Such facts refute what conservatives deplore—moral relativism. They do because they demand a certain reaction and evoke it in good people, who are good because they consistently respect the objective value of fellow creatures.

[…]

Animal suffering on a vast scale should, he says, be a serious issue of public policy. He does not want to take away your BLT; he does not propose to end livestock farming. He does propose a Humane Farming Act to apply to corporate farmers the elementary standards of animal husbandry and veterinary ethics: “We cannot just take from these creatures, we must give them something in return. We owe them a merciful death, and we owe them a merciful life.”

Says who? Well, Scully replies, those who understand “Judeo-Christian morality, whose whole logic is one of gracious condescension, or the proud learning to be humble, the higher serving the lower, and the strong protecting the weak.”