If you've ever walked the perimeter of a 99 Ranch Market or an upscale dim sum restaurant, chances are you've seen large tanks of live fish swimming about, aimlessly awaiting their slaughter and consumption. Perhaps, in that moment, you took a second to imagine what it would be like to be one of those fish. Do they see their peers getting pulled out of the tank to their inevitable deaths? Do they wonder where they've gone? Do they know what is coming to them? Maybe this imaginative exercise rendered the fish-containing menu entrees unappetizing to you; maybe you pushed through the momentary unpleasantness and ordered the fish dumplings anyway. But what is the correct decision?
In The Ethics of Killing Animals, Christine Korsgaard maintains that any individual who can be wronged is worthy of moral consideration (Korsgaard, 2015). Korsgaard uses the moral philosophical work of Immanuel Kant as a foundation for her claims.
Kant's categorical imperative states that people must only act according to moral laws that would hold up if they were universally applied (Kant & McGregor, 1998). For example, Kant considers lying to always wrong in every situation, even if it is to help someone. This is because it would be absurd to make dishonesty a universal law. Kantian ethical principles also hold that ethical actors must act from duty. It is important to Kant that people do good things because they feel duty-bound to act morally, not because they want to be rewarded or seen to be a good person. Furthermore, Kant holds that people are ends-in-themselves. This means that it's important to Kant that we don't just treat people well because we want to get something from them or because we are using them to get something else we want. People are worthy of being treated well simply because they are people, and for no other reason.
Notably, Kant himself does not consider non-human animals worthy of moral consideration. However, Korsgaard argues that the underpinnings of Kantian ethics should lead to the conclusion that all beings who have interests can be wronged. And if they can be wronged, then they must be taken into consideration in our moral choices.
What is it to be wronged? Peter Singer writes extensively on this question in Animal Liberation. He uses utilitarian moral philosophy to argue that anything that causes unnecessary suffering is wrong (Singer, 2009). Thus, since it is usually unnecessary to consume meat, killing animals for the sake of consuming their flesh is wrong, because it causes suffering.
But what is it to suffer, anyway? Of course, suffering involves pain. But it also goes further. It involves a state of conscious awareness, memory, and anticipation of pain. In order to prove or disprove whether something suffers, then, it is necessary not only to prove that it feels pain, but also to prove that it is aware of it and remembers it.
The suffering of large mammals such as bears, elephants, cows, whales, and pigs is obvious. It is very clear to anyone who has set foot inside a slaughterhouse or a factory farming operation that the animals suffer. For a more familiar scenario, pet owners might imagine their own pet dogs, cats, or even hamsters. It would be very difficult to argue to a dog owner that their beloved poodle is not a being with interests, capable of pleasure, pain, expectation, fear, and intention.
With pet fishes, it may be harder to demonstrate prima facie that they can suffer. They are often considered to be "lower" beings compared to other non-human animals, especially large mammals. This has clear implications for their treatment. Even people who are otherwise very interested in animal ethics, such as certain pescatarians, may put fish on the back burner of their moral consideration. However, it's important to note that the issue on the table is not whether we humans can empathize with their suffering, or even perceive it. The question is whether they suffer at all. Marc Beckoff, a professor at the University of Colorado, says:
"Most people are familiar with the phenomenal cognitive skills and sentience of animals such as [dolphins] and other charismatic species, but it is only very recently that solid scientific information has been published about pain in fish (Sneddon 2003, Moccia & Duncan 2004, Chandroo et al. 2004a,b). [...] There is evidence that fish such as rainbow trout experience fear (Moccia & Duncan 2004) and that it is entirely reasonable to assume that many fish are sentient and have the capacity to suffer (Chandroo et al. 2004a,b)." (Beckoff, 2007).
In 2012, Rose et. al pushed back against these findings. They published a review of the methodologies of many different studies that were performed with the objective of determining whether fish feel pain. They reported that methods were often unsuccessful at distinguishing between physiological responses to injury and the conscious, subjective experience of pain. Furthermore, many studies' collected data were not replicable. Thus, they concluded that claims that fish feel pain are still unsubstantiated (Rose et. al 2002).
Clearly, the answer to this question remains to be ascertained. To make a definitive claim about fishes' capacity to suffer is to delve outside of established scientific methodology. However, is a lack of certainty a license to assume that humans have a right to exploit fish for our own purposes? The current culinary status quo makes this assumption on the daily. But convenience is not the determiner of justice. Indeed, perhaps the most convenient answers to moral questions ought to be subject to more scrutiny, not less.
The lack of a concrete answer to this question raises only more questions. What are the consequences of treating open questions as closed cases? What happens when we uphold the status quo out of convenience? Who gets hurt when we assume that those who are unlike us are not valuable in themselves? Perhaps these questions can only be answered by each individual's intuitions and life experiences, not by science. But, at the very least, we must ask them, ponder them, draw moral lines that ought not be crossed, and live accordingly.
Essay by Celina Lee.
References
Kant, I., & Gregor, M. J. (1998). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge University Press.
Korsgaard, C. (2015). A Kantian Case for Animal Rights. In T. Višak & R. Garner (Eds.), The Ethics of Killing Animals (pp. 154–177). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199396078.003.0010
PETA Investigations (2021). Animals Abused for Tourists' Cheap Photos and Entertainment. https://investigations.peta.org/samutprakan-zoo-animals-abused/
Rose, J. D., Arlinghaus, R., Cooke, S. J., Diggles, B. K., Sawynok, W., Stevens, E. D., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2014). Can fish really feel pain? Fish and Fisheries, 15(1), 97–133. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12010
Singer, P. (2009). Animal liberation: The definitive classic of the animal movement (Updated ed., 1st Ecco pbk. ed., 1st Harper Perennial ed). Ecco Book/Harper Perennial.
Shutterstock (2022). https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tuna-head-on-ice-1022768590