Is cruelty to animals right, is it good? Well no clearly its neither of these things but is it a moral or ethical horror as some Anti Live Export folk claim? Firstly Live Export in this case refers to the international trade that exports live animals overseas (in this case from Australia).
Often overlooked or ignored is its actually a lawful and legal pursuit, with its own set of guidelines and regulations so ethically it is overall OK if it sticks to the guidelines & regulations set down by the authorities. If there is a breach, it is an "ethical" breach because the rules have not been followed. If it were to be compared to the illegal drug trade, you can forget comparisons, its illegal so there are no more train stops after illegal except moral, ethical doesn't come into it, because there are no ethics to apply. It has no guidelines, no regulations, no formal rules that are to be adhered to which will allow fairness to all stakeholders...no ethical standards. If heroin and cocaine were legalised tomorrow and sets of rules, guidelines etc were legislated there are your ethics in place.
Now if you're lucky enough to get a anti Live Export person to concede the points thus far, is it possible therefore for a trade to be legal, ethical but to some people immoral? That's the next fall back position once legality & ethics are finally removed from the equation. Well, is it moral or immoral to export animals which are destined to be processed into food?
Well, lets look at morals. Ethics are the professional standards that surround an activity. Doctors lawyers and many other professionals have ethics we expect them to adhere to. They are closely linked to morals in that they're to do with "right" and "wrong" but they are different things. But what are morals, why are they linked yet different to ethics and where do both of them come from. Well its a little like salt & pepper really. Two completely different things that are often found together, associated together in add taste and savoury to a meal, but due to the different smell, taste & texture people generally do not confuse the two. We see the difference, even though in some ways they are closely linked, closely associated with one another.
Ethics being the professional standards by which an activity is carried out, some may be legally binding with penalties and consequences attached but they're formulated by a human authority, a government or some other governing body. they are man made
Morals however I would argue are different. They come from a moral authority. For those who follow Christianity its rather easy to distinguish morals (alone or from ethics), the morals come from a Moral Authority. We know that moral authority as God through the God breathed Word of the Bible.
For those who reject the notion of an Almighty Creator, its a little different and seems to have some variance. As in some atheists, who believe morals are an innate inner feeling of what is "right" and what is "wrong". Other add to that saying everyone's moral awareness varies but general society as a group settles in some sort of group think way and morals are some how, sort of, sorted out.
So in conversations with non believers in a deity/creator I've come to understand a range of views which point to morals being either some mystical inner compass that we all have (for reasons unknown and to some unknowable) and the "better" compasses will eventually influence all the other compasses to arrive at society norms...or morals.
Or to others, morals are nothing more than an evolutionary tick, a quirky brain behaviour that is wired into all of us as some sort of Darwinian like survival of the fittest/strongest mechanism.
Both these have some problems.
Why are we the only animal with this evolutionary tick?
Not sure any lion gets depressed, resentful, regretful or suffers from pangs of guilt because it just down an antelope and is currently eating its flesh as it apologise on each chewing motion of the jaw. Indeed if part of Darwin's survival of the fittest is correct, the moral tick non believers talk about is opposing the "survival of the fittest" notion and disproves it...because morals are not dog eat dog at all. Seems to self implode even before pulling the pin on its own grenade. The closest answer I have heard so far states that over a period of time, somehow (time and mysticism again replace Science but its still called Science) we as a species evolved and became organised and sought the need to be organised as a group to overcome threats like lions and each other. Interesting, however it still shows a naturally evolving contradiction to survival of the fittest. Still heralded and held high by some, still implosion through lack of logic for others. This concerted effort to get organised is what we previously called ethics, not morals...oops funny that.
That leaves the non believer with another option. If there is no God, then everything that happened since the first cell generated way back when right up to today is just chemical and electrical cellular snaps of random action or in the later species chemical & electrical snaps in the brain, brain farts...its all nature, its all random and if enough random things happen enough, then things just naturally get organised into morals and when we come together to formalise rules we then have ethics. Problem with that, if we're just animals doing the animal thing we could quite easily look at all actions upon ethical grounds as being useful when they work and a hindrance to personal advancement over competitors at other times. So it all being nature doing what nature does as the rule, we can stick to ethics (man/society formulated) when it suits us best (as nature intended) and ignore them when it suits us best because advancement, dog eat dog/survival of the fittest IS NATURE and IS NATURAL. There is therefore, for some non believers in a deity, a serious ethics vs nature thing going on & whichever personally advances the individual IS the natural choice of nature (us) and there is neither anything moral or immoral. It is totally AMMORAL and we need as a species to individually decide what is definitely best for our own selves, our advancement and species survival.
And therein lies the rub.
Morals come from a moral authority, not mystical nature with a bogus science stamp logoed over it.
Ethics come from humans, when we as a group formalise rules and guidelines on responsible behaviour and actions that are acceptable or not.
Laws are those rules we make as sovereign nations to rule our sovereign nation. Live Export is a legal trade and a lawful pursuit, right out to the edge of our territorial waters. Our laws do not extend beyond our sovereign nation borders. (LAWS)
Live Export as a trade, based in Australian has a very prescriptive set of standards, which are formalised as laws, rules, guidelines, codes of practices that hang over all the segments that make up Live Export, from the animal producers, to truck drivers, to feedlot operators, to ship loaders as well every legal part of contract law, product traceability and a raft of other things to set how things are supposed to be done and in most cases have consequences attached for transgressions. (ETHICS)
(MORALS) - again if you do not believe in God, a deity, a creator and you are some sort of believer in Naturalism, Natural Relativism or another mystical natural science of accidents, the morals don't actually fit in to your world view at all without bringing the hole house of cards down. For you Live Export is just a highly evolved version of nature doing what nature does to other lower members of nature to keep oneself, ones own species competing and performing and surviving better. Live Export therefore has from a philosophical angle no moral and no immoral angle. It is immoral, but we can turn to our ethics and adhere to them if something breaches the cruelty test.
At the end of that, there's a double barrelled batch of irony here, one for both the supportive and the opposing camps of Live Export.
Pro Live Export Folk - Its ironic here, because if you're atheist and a total non believer, you have sound ground to stand upon to say there is no god, there is only nature, this is highly evolved nature doing natural things like a lion to an antelope. No moral dilemma for you, none to be had full stop, but you'd have to stick with adhering to laws and ethics as the law decrees. If you're a follow of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit of the Bible, well eating meat and keeping animals for the purpose of eating them is a Biblically supported activity. As long as you're not cruel, you're a good steward and you're adhering to the law of the land (as your Bible tells you) you have no moral dilemma either if you stick to the laws (of the land), the ethics and stick to adhering to the Bible. Two diametrically opposed (religious) worldviews who, if they stick to the letter of the law both end up with NO MORAL DILEMMA, they're not IMMORAL.
Anti Live Export Folk - Hard here, there's no world view (religion) that rules out the eating of meat or the exporting of meat or the stewardship of animals for the purpose of food. Hindus, it is argued are vegetarians. The Anti Live Export folk that mention this so far have not been Hindu, they have been in some cases vegetarians or vegans but in any case they fail to realise that the Hindi religion does not enforce veganism on its followers, in fact there are sects which are very much meat eaters as any worldview. So no Moral Authority can be pointed to as saying, it is IMMORAL to eat, export or keep meat for food. NO MORAL DILEMMA, because there's nothing to say it is IMMORAL. Now for those totally godless folk, who just hate Live Export...that's quite ok to have, to hold and to share that view. It is philosophically untenable however for such a person to say Live Export is immoral when its just nature, highly evolved nature, doing what nature does. NO MORAL DILEMMA. Their outrage or disgust at animals being kept, exported, killed and eaten is fine, but in their zeal to project their displeasure, they shouldn't grab the MORAL card, because in their hand it doesn't work at all.
Are there bad operators failing badly. Have been in the past, there could be in the future. Those 2 pervious sentences can be applied to every trade from Mid-Wifery to Constitutional Law to Selling of Tobacco products, to teachers...or Live Export. But we would not be looking at Moral Failure unless the breach was a Biblical or religious one. If it was not a religious breach, its not immoral its more likely unethical practice. If its against the law, ethics aren't involved, its illegal.
Next time someone tells you Live export is unethical or immoral, please don't fall for it. Don't think you'll automatically change their minds either, just don't be fooled. Is cruelty wrong? Yes indeed it is...but I'm going to point to a Moral Authority to tell me its wrong, but in some cases, wrong as it might be, it can still be AMMORAL. Zealots will pick up and twist any emotion receptor they can...they have no ethical standards as it happens, nor moral authority. Lying to win an internet ping pong point is ok by some ;-)
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