But Wild Animals Suffer Too

“Wild animals probably suffer more that animals in captivity! So either accept that animals will always suffer, and eat meat or think about reducing the number of wild animals altogether!”

Without a doubt, animals suffer in the wild. So if I become vegan and my main goal is to reduce animal suffering, then couldn’t it be argued that:

1. If animals suffer with or without human intervention, then what’s the point of me being vegan at all if suffering is inevitable?
2. If veganism is about reducing animal suffering, then should my ultimate goal be to reduce wild animal suffering?

If either of those holds up, I might have found my way back to meat.

Perfect is the enemy of good

The first point relies on what is called the perfectionist fallacy which is covered here. Essentially, if a solution isn’t perfect then why bother at all, which is established as flawed in the article.

Just because suffering exists doesn’t mean we should actively add to it. As we established, humans are Moral Agents. I can’t just use the inevitability of wild animal suffering as an excuse to personally contribute to it.

One Giant Zoo then?

Being vegan means I should reduce suffering so if possible shouldn’t we just lock all wild animals in a giant zoo where they can’t harm each other?

The defintion of veganism is to exclude “as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose”. So yes we should aim to reduce suffering but only as far as is possible and practicable.

So should we lock all wild animals in a giant zoo? In a perfectly magical utopian world, maybe. But in the real world, we run into two massive problems:

Ecological Hubris: Try as we may, we aren’t actually that good at managing ecosystems. They are tremendously complex and delicate, and our interventions often lead to worsening conditions rather than improving them. Livescience Top 10, Four Pests Campaign, European Rabbits in Australia

Intentional vs. Inevitable: There is a huge difference between factory farming which is 100% within our control, and wild animal suffering which is essentially completely beyond our control. Stopping factory farming is a practicable reduction of suffering that we can achieve.

The Bottom Line

Factory farming is 100% within our control. I don’t need to fix the entire circle of life, when I can just have some tofu?