3 cases study

Animals and the Environment-CASES

You may choose one of the following cases or do a comparison of two of them. (from Contemporary Moral Problems, 4th ed., James E. White, pp. 454-455)

1) Beyond Beef:

Beyond Beef is a grassroots coalition formed to protest beef eating and production. The group has targeted over 3,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States, Canada, and Mexico with its so-called Adopt-A-McDonald’s Campaign. The goals of the campaign are to reach one million customers with their message about the evils of eating beef, to get McDonald’s to offer a vegetarian burger as an alternative to the standard beef hamburger, to get McDonald’s to devote 25 percent of its advertising budget to promoting the vegetarian burger, and to make McDonald’s pledge to avoid dairy products and meat tainted with Bovine Growth Hormone.

The tactics of the campaign involve telephone calls to McDonald’s management, standing in front of the restaurants with signs having slogans like “Red Meat-Early Death,” and handing out informational leaflets and brochures. The brochures claim that the synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone injected into animals to stimulate growth is unnatural and likely to cause health problems apart from those associated with a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol. They assert that beef production has bad consequences for the environment in the form of pollution, water depletion, and global warming. Latin American countries have cleared land to create pasture land for grazing cattle, destroying fifty-five square feet of rain forest for every quarter pound of beef they export.

McDonald’s asserts that their menu reflects consumer demand—market research shows the consumer wants beef hamburgers, not vegetarian burgers. Besides, they already offer their customers alternatives to beef such as salads, fish, and chicken.

For the sake of discussion, lets agree that beef eating is unhealthy and that beef production is bad for the environment. What should be done?

2) The Draize Test:

The Draize eye test is used by cosmetic companies such as Revlon and Proter and Gamble to test the eye irritancy of their products—cosmetics, hair shampoos, and so on. The substance to be tested is injected into the eyes of rabbits; more specifically, 0.1 milligrams (a large volume dose) is injected into the conjuctival sac of one eye of each of six rabbits with the other eye serving as a control. The lids are held together for one second and then the animal is released. The eyes are examined at 24, 48, and 72 hours to see if there is corneal damage. Although the test is very painful, as you can imagine, anesthetics are not used. The eyes are not washed. Very large doses are used (often resulting in permanent eye damage) to provide a large margin of safety in extrapolating for human response. Should companies continue to test their products in this way?

3) Mechanical Mothers:

Researchers at the Primate research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, have been conducting experiments to gauge the effects of child abuse on monkeys. One experiment involves putting baby monkeys with mechanical surrogate mothers who eject sharp brass spikes when the babies try to hug them. Another experiment consists of impregnating females who have been driven insane by social isolation. When given their babies, the mothers crush their skulls with their teeth. Are these experiments justified or not?

4) Guerrilla Warfare in Cathedral Forest:

Cathedral Forest in Oregon is one of the last stands of virgin forest remaining on the North American continent. The forest is called old growth because the trees (Douglas firs) are among the oldest and biggest on the planet. Old growth constitutes an almost infinitesimal percentage of forested lands in the United States. Even though there is no commercial demand for the timber, the United States Forest Service has made the harvesting of the last of the old trees a priority. The Forest Service has sold Cathedral Forest to Willamette Industries, a large wood-products company.

To prevent the forest from being cut down, radical environmentalist Mike Roselle has resorted to an illegal guerrilla action called tree spiking. He has driven long nails into trees in a spiral pattern. Chain saws and saw blades will shatter when they hit the buried nails. Mike hopes that the spiked trees will prevent Willamette from cutting down the forest. Is this tree spiking morally justified?

5) The Burning of the Amazon Rain Forest:

Farmers and cattle ranchers in Brazil are burning the rain forests of the Amazon river to clear the land for crops and livestock. According to an article in Time, an estimated 12,350 square miles have been destroyed so far, and the burning continues. Conservationists and leaders of rich industrial nations have asked Brazil to stop the destruction. They claim that if the Amazon rain forests are destroyed, more than one million species will vanish. This would be a significant loss of the earth’s genetic and biological heritage. Furthermore, they are worried about changes in the climate. The Amazon system of forests plays an important role in the way the sun’s heat is distributed around the earth because it stores more than seventy-five billion tons of carbon in its trees. Burning the trees of the Amazon forests will produce a dramatic increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The trapping of heat by this atmospheric carbon-dioxide—the greenhouse effect—will significantly increase the global warming trend.

Brazilians reply that they have a sovereign right to use their land as they see fit. They complain that the rich industrial nations are just trying to maintain their economic supremacy. Brazilian President Jose Sarney argues that the burning is necessary for Brazilian economic development, particularly when Brazil is struggling under an $111 billion foreign debt load. Should Brazil continue burning the Amazon rain forests?

See the story from the New York Times about the Rubber Tappers in the Course Documents section