Slovenian philosopher, Maja Pan, has written an interesting article on our work, at https://www.animot-vegan.com/tehnologizacija-skrbi/
I’ll need to reread it a few times, and think about it, to address specifics.
But for first remarks, just to address the most general concerns:
We’re glad that the artwork is provoking some critical discursion.
After MFRU, the five chickens went on to live a free range life, with a spacious fox-proof coop that we built, in the Maribor hills, with a family that looks after them now. We’ve received (obviously subjective) reports that the chickens are doing well, and are happy.
Philosophically, I think we don’t see improved welfare as counter-productive to abolitionist ideology.
But there are some 40 billion chickens in intensive (factory) farms. So there is, in reality, much room for improvement.
That is not to say we entirely disagree with abolitionist goals: it would probably be ethical to bring about the extinction of the modern broiler chicken.
But at least, personally, I see abolitionism as unrealistic, when juxtaposed with the magnitude of the intensive poultry farming industry, in 2022, and misguided, if suggesting that improving welfare is a bad idea, because it acts as a balm to soothe the unthinking consumer’s conscience, allowing them to continue buying into fundamentally unethical practices. It’s an interesting idea, but people still need to make their choices, with individual responsibility. The hope in a silver bullet legal solution, like the EU outright banning animal farming on ethical grounds is wishful thinking, because of the economic impact. That is also not to say that it’s not possible – one suggestion at the discussion was to subsidize transition of poultry farming to hemp farming, which is capable of producing similar levels of protein, and profit, assuming those are the underlying basic goals of the industry.
Our ongoing collaboration with the poultry scientist, Dr. Brus, is to develop statistical, or machine-learned comparative welfare indicators, based on audio recordings. But it is not done to justify existing industrial practice. It is done to encourage its improvement, by enabling differentiable rankings of environments. Widespread application of objective welfare rankings would likely have the effect of artificial selection for more ‘humane’ treatment of animals, as farms seek to improve their scores. It’s not the binary ethics of abolitionist veganism, but it is at least an idea, to open the ethical gradient between zero and one, for the estimated 99% of the planet who are not vegan. It’s hard to argue with veganism, because it’s correct. But reality is something else.
Anyway, those are my initial thoughts.