Post 3 mar 2010, o 13:32

Filozof Wayne Sumner o polowaniu na foki

Polowanie na foki jako kwestia moralności. Kanadyjski filozof Wayne Sumner przedstawia utylitarystyczną analizę kosztów i korzyści z polowania na foki. Kosztów i korzyści ludzi i fok. Nie znajduje etycznego usprawiedliwienia dla rzezi fok.

całość:

The sea hunt as a matter of morals

On tiny Hay Island off the coast of Cape Breton, two dozen men are scheduled today to begin killing their federal-government-approved quota of 2,220 juvenile grey seals.

It is the first Atlantic commercial hunt of the year, and with it comes the annual impassioned debate over the clubbing and exsanguinating of cute baby animals. The propaganda war over which side is right has become stalemated. Thus some ethicists propose disregarding the aesthetics of the hunt in order to assess - as impartially as possible - whether the kill is morally just.

The main question is not how seals are killed, says University of Toronto philosopher Wayne Sumner, but why they are killed - and whether a cost-benefit analysis of their deaths meets a minimum standard of decency.

What does a moral cost-benefit analysis of animal exploitation look like?

With guide dogs for the sightless, there is substantial benefit for humans at minimal cost to dogs. With rhinoceros horn for aphrodisiac and fever-reduction, there is non-existent or limited benefit for humans at high cost to rhinoceroses. Using this equation, taking rhinoceros horns does not meet a minimum standard of decency.

What is the moral worth of a seal?

The hierarchy of sentience (capacity to feel pain) and intelligence determines a species' moral weight. Primates outrank other mammals; vertebrates outrank invertebrates. Seals rank with dogs, wolves, sea otters and bears - and ahead of cows. But the Department of Fisheries and Oceans labels seals a "natural resource," like fossil fuel. It calls the hunt a "fishery," reducing seals morally to fish. It refers to their annual killing, in numbers of about 300,000 individuals, as a "harvest," akin to threshing wheat.

What is the benefit to humans?

1) The 2006 landed value of the harp-seal hunt was $33-million, the most valuable in memory. It represented 0.14 per cent of the Newfoundland and Labrador gross domestic product. A more normal year was 2008 when the value was $12-million, or 0.04 per cent of provincial GDP. Charged against this is the government cost of managing the hunt, promoting seal products and, now in 2010, legally challenging the European Union ban before the World Trade Organization, estimated in total at, say, $3-million.

2) Sealing licences in 2008 were used by 6,000 people, or less than three-quarters of 1 per cent of the population of the Atlantic region - mainly Newfoundland - where sealing occurs. No one is a full-time sealer. Income returns are hugely unequal.

3) With no market for pelts - about 80 per cent of gross receipts - there would be no hunt. Luxury clothing has less moral weight than necessities of clothing. Sealskin clothing serves primarily a luxury market.

When are the interests of different species equal?

Ethicists say a precise answer to that question may not be possible. Seals - especially harp seals - are blamed for eating fish that otherwise would be consumed by humans. (In addition, they are blamed for retarding the regeneration of groundfish stock for which scientific evidence does not exist. Seals, for example, don't eat a lot of cod.)

What is the cost of the hunt to seals?

Death. The life expectancy of a harp seal - comprising 95 per cent of the annual kill - is 20 to 25 years (grey seals live longer). The younger the seal at the time of death, the more of its potential life it loses. The cost to the seal of being killed as a pup, therefore, must be greater than being killed as an adult. Three-quarters of the seals killed annually are pups. Plus suffering occurs when killing regulations are not met, which logically occurs with 300,000 deaths.

Are the Europeans hypocrites for banning the import of Canadian commercial seal products?

Yes. Put European foie gras from force-fed ducks and geese and chorizo from factory-farmed pigs on the table, and see who has a clear conscience.

Does it matter?

Likely not. To many ethicists, each case of exploiting animals has its own moral equation of benefits and costs. You can't say, as Newfoundland Lieutenant-Governor John Crosbie has said, "Cows are killed and produce roast beef. The seal hunt is no different." But you can say, as Guelph Veterinary College's Dr. David Waltner-Toews says, "Every animal has a right to an honest ecological living and to die an honest, hopefully sudden and necessary death."