Eating Trophies

Is there a meaningful difference between trophy hunting, and much of our meat eating?

Trophy hunting brings up strong feelings and moral intuitions. There have recently been some instances of trophy hunting making headlines in South Africa, amongst other places, and alongside the question of whether it is right or wrong, is the question of whether it is right, or wrong, or at least repugnant but acceptable if it benefits conservation efforts. Many people seem to feel that trophy hunting is abhorrent and morally wrong, and as a result, even if it is a practical method of benefiting conservation efforts, they feel it should not be allowed. Many of these same people eat meat for pleasure. I’m going to explore a few different perspectives on this observation, and ultimately pose two questions: ‘Is there a meaningful difference between trophy hunting and much of our meat eating?’, and therefore: ‘Can we sincerely claim that trophy hunting should not be allowed on ethical or moral grounds, but at the same time allow meat eating in the manner in which we do?’

‘Much of our meat eating’?

I say this because I don’t want to talk about all of the times that we eat meat. Sometimes we humans eat meat because we have to, to survive. This is true for some Inuit people, who don’t have other food sources. Whilst many hundreds of millions of people around the world are vegetarian (an estimated 40% of Indians alone — half a billion people — are vegetarian), it is arguable that there are some people who need to eat meat for optimal health. Even if it is the case that for absolute optimal health, everyone needs to eat a certain amount of meat, it is still also the case that the vast majority of meat consumption, especially in Western countries (South Africa included), does not fall within what is required for optimal health. It is this meat eating that is additional to what can be argued is necessary for life or optimal health, that I am referring to when I say ‘Much of our meat eating’.

This distinction is important, because it shows us that we often eat meat purely for enjoyment. If we break down this enjoyment a bit more, it transpires that partly it could be enjoyment of the taste and texture of the meat, and at least in some cultures part of the enjoyment can be derived from the increased social kudos gained from eating meat. In both of these cases it isn’t in any way necessary for us to eat meat, it’s just purely for the enjoyment of it. The question I am grappling with is how we can claim that this enjoyment is in any way meaningfully different from the enjoyment gained just by killing an animal, for sport.

Different kinds of enjoyment

It is a common fact of life that we all enjoy different things, and enjoy the same things in different ways. We do not base our ethical and moral judgements on the kinds of enjoyment different people have of things, but rather on the actual thing they are doing, if appropriate. We do not factor in the type of enjoyment (or any other internal feelings) someone gets from the same act, because it has no relevance, and no consequence outside of their own private experiences.

Animals certainly don’t care whether the person that kills them is doing it for the pure enjoyment of killing them, or for the slightly later enjoyment of eating their flesh — the animal is committed to the cause either way, and the nature of enjoyment to be gained from their death is inconsequential.

It would also I think be unfair and unreasonable for us to require all acts of killing animals for food to be done without enjoyment. To claim that a abattoir worker is being immoral when he enjoys his job, but morally good when he does not is absurd, and we don’t base any of our ethical judgements, or laws on people’s internal emotional states, or levels of enjoyment of different acts.

Emotional reactions vs. Ethical reasoning

I think it is important before delving deeper, to recognise a difference between our emotional reactions to something, and our rational, ethical or moral reasoning about something. The two can often be linked, but we cannot fairly base societal rules and laws on our emotional reactions to things. The reason is that we know that our emotional reactions are not necessarily fair, and they can be highly influenced by a given individual’s community, family, upbringing etc. For example, many Americans of European descent feel a negative emotional reaction (e.g. disgust) to the typical Chinese habit of hawking up phlegm from the back of their throats. Despite this nearly universally negative emotional reaction, we can recognise that this is mostly a result of being brought up to find hawking up phlegm to be impolite and unpleasant, and so we don’t make a rule or law against doing it. There’s no proper argument against it, and people that find it disgusting probably recognise that there are some things they do that Chinese people would find equally disgusting.

I think a lot of people (including myself) have a strong emotional reaction to trophy hunting, but we should recognise that this is not the same thing as a reasoned argument as to why it shouldn’t be allowed. Any rational member of society will admit that a reason for not allowing something cannot simply be that ‘I don’t like it’. I’ll deal now with a few of the arguments that come up, but I’m sure I will have overlooked some, so please comment if you can think of one.

Different kinds of animals

There are a few variations of this line of thinking. One is that the animals we kill to eat are generally bred and raised specifically for that purpose, as opposed to wild animals, which evolved and survive without intervention from humans. The first thing to realise here is that this type of difference is not absolute, but one of degree. All farmed animals are the descendants of once wild animals. Many ‘wild’ animals are also the products of environments in which humans have played an important role over the past few thousands of years, so it’s not the case that ‘wild’ animals all exist in total independence from humans. How would we classify a group of captive, farmed animals that were bred from wild animals just three generations ago? How about one generation ago? Drawing a distinction between a ‘wild’ animal and a farmed animal is not easy, and there doesn’t seem to be a line at which we can meaningfully say that animals on one side should be treated differently from animals on the other, at least not in terms of how and under what circumstances we are allowed to kill them.

Another distinction that people draw is on the grounds of aesthetics, but I don’t think anyone can intend this argument with sincerity. A lot of the bemusement around trophy hunting goes something like this: “I don’t understand how someone can want to kill such a beautiful/majestic/powerful animal just for fun!”. We all know that people generally find lions to be more majestic than sheep, and elephants to be more beautiful than pigs, but I can’t think how this is a reasonable argument for allowing one to be killed and not the other.

The same is true for arguments relating to intelligence. There are farmed animals (e.g. pigs) that have higher levels of average intelligence than many animals that are trophy hunted (e.g. Kudu), so there’s no argument here that some animals have more of a right to life based on their levels of intelligence (and therefore perhaps conscious experience).

There seem to be no grounds on which we can claim that an animal that is to be trophy hunted has an inherent right to live, whilst at the same time eating meat in the way that we do, and therefore denying many other, farmed animals the right to live, purely for our enjoyment.

Endangered animals

Another distinction often made between animals that are trophy hunted, and animals we farm to eat, is that the populations of some trophy hunted animals are endangered, or even close to extinction. The immediate response to this is that trophy hunted individuals are rarely actually part of the endangered populations. They have often been bred exclusively for hunting, or at least exist in populations of animals in private reserves, where their populations there are maintained either for hunting, or game viewing. Because of this, we can’t claim that trophy hunting is a direct threat to conservation, in the sense that it is depleting the numbers of endangered populations of animals.

Could it be that we think that by allowing the trophy hunting of individual animals that are members of endangered species, we are condoning the killing of actual ‘wild’ individuals, and somehow damaging conservation efforts by endorsing the message that it is okay for these animals to be hunted for fun? This is a fairly reasonable line of argument I think, but it isn’t one based on morality, but rather on practical considerations. It accepts that it would be okay to trophy hunt an animal if all things were equal, but since it comes from an endangered species, even though this individual has been bred to be hunted, it is of practical advantage not to allow it to be hunted. The ‘practical advantage’ being in conserving its ‘wild’ cousins by putting out the message that it is illegal to kill individuals of this species, no matter the circumstances. We can look at it another way and take an animal that is regularly culled — the elephant. It is arguable whether or not the elephant is a threatened species at the moment, but it is certainly not endangered, and this is irrelevant to the point I am trying to make: A lot of people would have the same negative moral intuitions and feelings about an individual elephant being trophy hunted, even though it is not from an endangered species. Therefore the argument that trophy hunting is wrong because it endorses the hunting of animals from endangered species is not always valid, and even when it is, it is only a practical argument, not an ethical one.

Waste

A point often raised when comparing trophy hunting to killing animals for food is that trophy hunting is wasteful. I think the claim is that it is okay to kill an animal for the enjoyment of eating it, since we are using its body in the best way possible (eating it). Trophy hunting, on the other hand, can result in a dead carcass that is not eaten, and this is therefore wasteful, and wrong. Well, firstly many trophy hunted animals are in fact used for food. Of course however some are not, so let’s continue on the assumption that they are not eaten by people. First we must properly define ‘waste’: It can be defined as ‘use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.’ Well, trophy hunting is certainly not careless, nor is it extravagant, at least not when compared to much of our meat eating, and it certainly has a purpose, as much of our meat eating does (the personal enjoyment of the person hunting, or eating). A trophy hunter pays to hunt one animal, and then does just that. Many millions of animals are bred and killed for us to enjoy eating them above and beyond any amount that is necessary for health. I don’t think that we can claim then that trophy hunting is extravagant, if we do not also admit that our meat farming and killing practices are as well.

As far as the literal waste of the bodies of individual animals that have been trophy hunted is concerned — the animals will be reused by the earth’s natural cycles in the same way that any other dead animal is. The only difference is that it does not pass through the digestive system of a human first. Unless we define anything that has not been consumed by a human, as waste, this argument doesn’t really work.

In conclusion

So to recap, there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful difference between ‘wild’ animals that are trophy hunted, and the kind of animals we farm to eat — no difference that could result in us saying that we should be allowed to kill/eat one of them, but not the other. There also doesn’t seem to be any sound moral argument on the grounds of conservation — trophy hunting is generally done with animals bred for the purpose, and trying to curb instances of wild animals from endangered species being hunted by making any hunting of them illegal is a practical measure, not a judgement that killing them for sport is actually wrong. We may well have very strong emotional reactions to trophy hunting, but they often turn out to be on aesthetic grounds, or based on peculiarities of our culture that are not shared in lots of others, and these are not strong enough reasons to say that trophy hunting is wrong, but rather just that we do not like it.

People who trophy hunt, do so for the pure enjoyment gained from the killing of an animal. There is a living (‘wild-ish’) animal, a human kills it, and extracts enjoyment. Every time someone eats meat above and beyond what they need for optimal health, they also do so for the pure enjoyment of eating it (or being seen to be eating it). There is a living (farmed) animal, a human kills it, and extracts enjoyment. Since there is no meaningful difference between the animals here, and no meaningful difference between the different kinds of enjoyment, I ask: ‘is there a meaningful difference between trophy hunting and much of our meat eating?’, and therefore: ‘Can we sincerely claim that trophy hunting should not be allowed on ethical or moral grounds, but at the same time allow meat eating in the manner in which we do?’