Among the Problems Affecting Animals, Which Are the Most Important?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VIII, p. 24 of the PDF edition · English translation

3.1. Introduction

As a result of speciesism, most people have prioritized human problems and, in doing so, have neglected problems that affect an astronomically greater number of victims. We discussed this point in the previous chapter.

We will now see how the same problem (neglect of situations that affect a vastly greater number of victims) also affects animal advocates. Below are four examples.

3.2. Neglect of animals exploited for food

The following data concern a single country and certain kinds of animals, but they represent well what happens in general.

Of all the terrestrial vertebrates exploited in the US¹⁷:

• More than 99.7% are killed in animal agriculture.
• 0.2% are killed in laboratories
• 0.07% are killed in the clothing industry
• 0.03% are killed in shelters.

However, the amount of donations is not proportional to the number of animals affected in each situation. In fact, it is almost inversely proportional.

Of all the donations made to the animal cause in the US¹⁸:

• 66% go to shelters.
• 32% go to groups with mixed activities.
• 0.7% go to organizations focused on animals in laboratories.
• Only 0.8% goes to organizations focused on farmed animals.

3.3. Neglect of the exploitation of aquatic animals and invertebrates

Even when the animals used for consumption are mentioned, the vast majority of the animals used for this purpose are neglected. For example, animal advocates often mention that around 80 billion animals are killed annually for consumption. However, this estimate refers only to the number of deaths of mammals and birds, which leaves out aquatic animals (vertebrates and invertebrates) and terrestrial invertebrates, who are the overwhelming majority of the animals exploited for consumption.

Below are some data on the annual deaths of animals exploited for food. These statistics are given in the short scale, used in Brazil, in which 1 billion corresponds to 10^9, one trillion corresponds to 10^12, and so on.

• Mammals and birds: about 80 billion¹⁹.
• Fish raised in factory farms: between 51 and 167 billion²⁰.
• Fish caught directly in the sea: between 787 billion and 2.3 trillion²¹.
• Aquatic animals used as feed for the fish that humans raise in factory farms for direct consumption: between 462 billion and 1.1 trillion²².
• Decapods (shrimp, crabs, and lobsters) raised in factory farms: between 255 and 604 billion²³.
• Silkworms killed for silk production: between 420 billion and 1 trillion²⁴.
• Insects killed for consumption: between 2 and 3.2 trillion²⁵.
• There are no data on the number of bees killed for honey production, but the population of bees raised for honey production is between 1.4 and 4.8 trillion individuals at any given moment²⁶.
• Cochineal insects killed in the production of carmine dye: between 4.6 and 21 trillion²⁷.
• Shrimp caught directly in the sea and killed: around 25 trillion²⁸.

The sum of these numbers suggests that somewhere between 34 and 54 trillion animals are killed for consumption annually at the global level. This means that the 80 billion usually mentioned by advocates represent only somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2% of the animals killed for consumption. Shrimp, who represent somewhere between 46% and 73% of the animals exploited, are rarely mentioned by advocates and by authors in the field of animal ethics.

This neglect may occur due to various factors. Here are some examples:

• One of them is the possibility that advocates and authors themselves give less consideration to animals such as insects, crustaceans, and fish. This, in turn, may happen for various reasons, such as, for example, the fact that these animals arouse less empathy in humans, the fact that they are smaller, the fact that they have lesser cognitive capacities, and so on.
• Another is the bias of scope insensitivity (also called scope neglect or insensitivity to scope). When we compare two very large quantities, this bias keeps us from perceiving the difference in magnitude between them. So it is possible that even someone who gives equal consideration to all sentient beings neglects the problems that affect a vastly greater number of animals simply because they do not realize how much greater that number is.

3.4. Neglect of animals in the wild who are victims of natural processes

The situation of animals in the wild as a result of natural processes is even more neglected. Again, this happens due to various factors. Here are some examples:

• There is widespread ignorance of the fact that natural processes maximize the number of animals who are born only to suffer intensely and die prematurely.
• Because of this ignorance, many people mistakenly think that the number of animals suffering in the wild is smaller than the number of exploited animals. Here you can see a comparison of these numbers.
• There is a prevalent belief that we should limit our attention to the harms that animals suffer as a result of human practices.
• Another very common belief is that, if we let nature take its course, the result will be predominantly positive for animals.
• The belief that intervening in natural processes (as long as it is to help animals) is an arrogant attitude is also common.
• When people think of animals in the wild, they tend to think of animals who are not representative of typical life in the wild²⁹. They tend to think of large animals, such as lions, zebras, gazelles, and elephants, and they think of adults of these species. These animals are a tiny minority of the animals in the wild. The vast majority of animals in the wild are small, and the vast majority of the individuals who are born usually die very young.

As a result of these and other beliefs, animal advocates have neglected a problem whose scale of harm is so gigantic that it makes even the numbers of animal exploitation (which, as we have seen, are already gigantic) nearly vanish in comparison. There are no statistics on the number of annual deaths of animals in the wild resulting from natural processes. But, to get an idea of the difference in proportion, we can compare the sizes of the populations at a given moment.

• The total population of sentient animals in the wild at a given moment is, according to some estimates, between 1 and 10 quintillion individuals³⁰.
• Let us compare this, for example, with the world population, at a given moment, of animals raised as stock to be exploited:

o Terrestrial vertebrates: 24 billion³¹. o Fish: 180 billion³². o Shrimp: 230 billion³³.

o The sum of these numbers is 434 billion.

If we draw an analogy with the span of a year, the sum of the populations of exploited animals would represent at most 14 seconds. All the rest of the year (364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 46 seconds) would be the animals in the wild. This gives us a rough sense of how large the number of animals in the wild is.

3.5. Neglect of the future

The way our decisions influence the history of the world from now on (and, consequently, how they affect the sentient beings who will exist in the future) is a widely neglected question. People in general (including animal advocates) are usually concerned almost exclusively with the problems of the present. When deciding which strategies to adopt to benefit sentient beings, usually only the impact on the sentient beings alive now (or, at most, those who will live in the near future) is taken into account.

This is due in part to the presence of temporal bias, which makes an event receive less importance the further away it is in the future. However, if our goal is to achieve the best for all sentient beings, what will matter to us is the magnitude of the harms, not the time at which they occur. Thus, if this is our goal, when deciding which problems to prioritize and which strategies to adopt, we have to imagine as best we can how the consequences of our choices will affect the future, and choose the course of action that is best over time (and not just best in the present or in the near future)³⁴.

The number of future sentient beings may turn out to be very vast, whether diachronically (because the future may be very long) or synchronically (since the population of sentient beings may come to increase greatly at each moment). Thus, the number of sentient beings we will affect in the long term with these decisions exceeds by many orders of magnitude the sentient beings who exist now or who will exist in the near future. For this reason, this topic is of crucial importance³⁵.

3.6. Conclusion

The four examples above seem sufficient to show that the amount of attention given to each problem has not been proportional to the magnitude of each problem. In fact, it has generally been inversely proportional (that is, the most serious problems have also been the most neglected).

This gives us twofold reasons to focus on these problems. First, simply because they are among the most serious problems. Second, because, since they are highly neglected, this is exactly where we can make the greatest difference.