An Eloquent Plea for Bill and Lou

Will Green Mountain College turn down an offer of over $50,000 to purchase Bill and Lou? To not accept will sure make for some expensive cafeteria burgers.

http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=2553

An Eloquent Plea for Bill and Lou from Edinburgh » October 30th, 2012 The following letter came to me from Antonia Fraser Fujinaga, a graduate student in the UK—she sent it to Green Mountain College as well. It’s especially eloquent. On a related note, I cannot name names but offers of BIG BUCKS have been pouring into GMC to “purchase” Bill and Lou. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars and a sum total close to (or even over) $100,000. You could buy a lot of kale for the cafeteria with that kind of money. In any case, I really would hate to see these animals be slaughtered. What a damn shame that would be. The letter: Dear Sirs, Although the matter of the oxen that your institution plans to slaughter has already received vast amounts of attention, given that lives are on the line it would be remiss of me to fail to do everything in my power to save them (some of you, as philosophers, may understand this). Hence this message, which I hope you will be kind enough to read. The university’s overall programme of promoting sustainability and reducing ecological damage is laudable. However, I fear that the ‘showdown’ that is occurring between the university and opponents of the slaughter may be preventing representatives of the university from backing down from their plan even in the face of reasonable arguments and in spite of the best interests not only of the institution itself, but also of the greater sustainability movement. I fear that this has become a matter of saving face. Furthermore, it is quite clear that whether this is so or not, large numbers of people believe that it is, and consequently, by slaughtering these oxen the university’s representatives would be projecting an image of wanting to appear right at any cost – at the cost of lives (other than their own), and at the cost of following a course of action which may not promote maximal sustainability and may tarnish the university’s reputation in the long term, endangering it and thereby damaging its mission far more than sparing these oxen would. I sha’n't burden you with details of arguments that you have presumably heard before: the fact that the retired oxen would continue to produce valuable fertiliser during their retirement, the fact that resource consumption without concomitant production is not used as a reason to slaughter old or disabled humans, the question of whether meat consumption is ecologically optimal if scaled up globally and therefore whether it genuinely represents GMC’s ethos of ecological sustainability, the similarity of ‘cultural accommodation’ arguments posed in favour of meat eating nowadays with those formerly used in favour of ‘humane slavery’ as opposed to the abolition of slavery, and so on. I shall be only too happy to engage in a discussion of such details with any of you if you wish, provided that it gives the oxen a chance to escape slaughter (this being my goal). However, I would like to make a few simple points of my own. Killing is irreversible, and by nature against the interests of those killed, as manifested by the survival instinct that we all have. Therefore, firstly, ‘not killing’ stands out as the default, with the onus of proof being instead on ‘killing’ and whether it is unavoidable and absolutely necessary. Secondly, given the irreversibility of killing, one should err on the side of caution and refrain from killing if there are still doubts about its absolute necessity. I believe that your university has extensively discussed the pros and cons of killing these unfortunate ruminants, and shall not insult you by claiming otherwise. What is crucial is that there still appear to be ‘cons’ – in other words, there is still doubt, which militates against overriding the ‘no-killing’ default and also against performing irreversible acts. This instance of killing does not appear to be absolutely necessary or unavoidable (and the use of factory farmed meat to compensate the university refectory for loss of protein can be avoided by providing vegetable protein during the days in which the oxen would have been consumed). Another point is that in all this discussion, lives are being subordinated to abstractions. Two living creatures which have clearly shown the capacity for trust and loyalty, along with a host of other ‘higher functions’ including, presumably, fear and the visceral desire to live, are being sacrificed in order to maintain some sort of coherence with previously stated philosophical positions. I submit that lives are more important than abstractions. No matter how noble abstractions are, if they necessitate killing, they are questionable. A lofty principle – sustainability, for instance – which is incompatible with compassion may perhaps have been suboptimally framed; and indeed, sustainability without meat is not only possible but less problematic than sustainability with meat. (I do realise that you may be tired of the meat-free idea, but I cannot with a clear conscience avoid mentioning it, because if reducing ecological damage is one’s goal, then the inclusion of meat production into one’s model of sustainability is a serious obstacle to that goal. In his Subjection of Women, Mill describes female subordination as an isolated, convenient relic of an old system of thought that has been demolished and abandoned in all other respects; I suspect the same of meat consumption, as a culturally ingrained habit which is clung to even when it hinders progress or the common interest, and even though analogous positions in other areas have been abandoned). I could go on. And on. But please allow me to make one final, somewhat ‘unladylike’ suggestion. If indeed you are concerned with the oxen going to waste if they evade slaughter, why not allow them to retire with the proviso that you will retrieve and consume their carcases once they have shuffled off this mortal coil? Then, they will not have gone to waste, their protein will have circulated back into the ‘loop’, and the only damage that will have been caused by their extended life (during which they will have produced useful fertiliser) will be that they will have consumed more resources than if they had died sooner. This will have been offset by the water cost of slaughter, by the compassion and goodwill shown by sparing the oxen (which will be beneficial to the university’s reputation), by the consideration towards the oxen themselves who will not have to suffer terror and agony and have their lives cut unnaturally short, and by the promotion of the concept that sustainability does not have to mean giving up compassion. You can still avoid condemning the oxen while saving face. You needn’t frame it as ‘backing down’ or having ‘bethought ye’ that you were mistaken. You can frame it in any number of ways: being strong-armed by the rabid vegan activists; doing it to protect the university’s reputation; having concluded that it is important to include compassion in the sustainability model; having, in the democratic spirit, acknowledged the vote of the tens of thousands who have asked for mercy for the oxen; or having, as the mature individuals that you are, come up with a compromise whereby you will postpone consumption of your bovine friends until their lives come to a natural end. (I realise that this may mean starving in a paddock when their teeth have gone; perhaps that would be time for euthanasia, but as far as I know, the oxen still have their teeth and can live happily for some time longer). Even if you do frame it as having changed your mind, you will garner praise and respect for that, because for vast numbers of people, saving lives trumps saving face. In closing, I implore you to spare the oxen, because killing them is irreversible, because all that your valuable institution has set out to do can be achieved without killing them, and because if the final say were theirs, irrespective of any abstraction, they would choose life. Respectfully, Antonia Fraser Fujinaga PhD student University of Edinburgh (UK).