Vegan Practically

I just read a paper called “Facsimiles of Flesh“ by philosophers Bob Fischer and Burkay Ozturk that goes against my long-held belief that there is nothing wrong with eating realistic facsimiles of animal products. Indeed, I have even made the case that from a harm reduction perspective these imitators are welcome additions to the vegan options.

Fischer and Ozturk open with a case for consideration to establish an argument by analogy. In their case, an inspector, whom they call Clouseau, is quite taken with the way a particular lampshade at a crime scene — the home of a serial killer — casts light. The lamp in question is made of human skin, part of the serial killer’s collection of trophies made from human remains. The inspector loves the lamp so much that he decides to “make a replica from a synthetic material that closely simulates the feel and peculiar translucence” of the human skin. Keeping the replica in his living room, the inspector “basks in its glow” (p 490). The authors are uncomfortable with the replica and think many people would share their moral discomfort.

They argue that if indeed there is something morally questionable about the replica lampshade, given the original on which it is based, then there is something equally questionable about fake meat made to imitate “the real thing,” given the original on which it is based (p. 491). It’s a nice paper that digs into an interesting point, so I want to consider their argument and offer my thoughts on it. Spoiler alert: I still think that as a means of harm reduction, fake meat is a good thing.

Before we get to fake meat, of course, we might wonder whether the lampshade replica is even problematic, considering it is made of synthetic materials. Sure, those materials are made to mimic human skin, but no human was harmed in the making of the replica lampshade. The authors suggest two lines of argument for what might be wrong with it.

The first has to do with the moral virtue of reverence. Specifically, we might think that in seeking to design a lampshade to mimic the one he encountered that was made of human skin, Clouseau shows a lack of reverence for human lives and human bodies. They quote Paul Woodruff, who defines reverence as “the well-developed capacity to have the feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have” (p. 491). For example, we don’t cheer at funerals and we don’t put swastikas on our walls even if we like the design of them. Such actions would display a lack of reverence–in these cases, not demonstrating appropriate respect or shame. So maybe Clouseau is too callous about human life.

Another angle on what’s wrong with Clouseau’s lampshade picks up on G.E. Moore’s claim that it’s bad to admire things that are bad. Clouseau simply should not admire the lampshade at all. There is no question that the original, having been made out of a murder victim, is very bad. Clouseau should neither admire it nor seek to replicate it.

The crux of the paper is that if indeed there is something morally off-side about Clouseau’s replica lampshade, then there is something morally off-side about meat facsimile products. They’re talking specifically about products like the Beyond and Impossible food lines, where they’re designed to be as close to actual animal products as possible. Though they do extend their conclusion to fake leather and fake fur, they don’t explicitly extend the point to convincing plant-based ice cream, yogurt, milk, cheese or eggs, but I suspect it would apply there too if it applies to meat.

The real question is whether there can be something wrong with Clouseau’s lampshade but not with fake meat, given the assumption that both are meant to replicate the products of atrocities. Clearly if you think Clouseau’s lampshade is just fine, then this particular argument isn’t especially compelling.

They address a number of objections, and I’ll quickly outline them and their responses. And I’ll add some of my own commentary.

1. Real meat is fine. If you think killing animals for food is fine but killing humans mostly isn’t, then you don’t think real meat is the product of bad acts and you don’t think there is something in animals that requires reverence about their bodies. Most ethically-motivated vegans and vegetarians will reject this claim. So they don’t have the “real meat is fine” option available as a response.
2. Maybe you think Clouseau’s first-hand experience at the scene of the crime makes his lampshade different. Most vegans or vegetarians don’t have such an up-close experience, and so unlike Clouseau they don’t have to “quarantine [their] memory from [their] appreciation of the replica” (p 493). To this, Fischer and Ozturk rightly reply that most vegans and vegetarians have seen plenty of footage from factory farms and slaughterhouses, or at least have read detailed accounts and seen pictures. They think that it’s equally disturbing that they are able to quarantine their experience of these details from their appreciation of the replica. I should flag this point as something I feel a bit skeptical about. Partly it’s because I don’t seek out exact replicas — I would prefer no blood and I frankly can’t even tell you whether Beyond burgers taste “just like beef” since it’s been so very long since I’ve had a beef burger. But their point is that if the replica is inspired by carnage, then some compartmentalization is required in order to appreciate the replica. The capacity for that sort of compartmentalization is, they claim, disturbing.
3. They raise a couple of other points on which someone might object. First, someone might claim that the lampshade case involves a distinctly human wrongdoing (murder/serial killing) and doesn’t apply to animals. Second, some might argue that “common reactions” to the two cases point to a difference, since “most people” would find the real lampshade abhorrent but “most people” have no issues with raising and killing animals for food. They don’t pursue the distinctively human wrong line of reasoning, but I might suggest that here might be a good place for a discussion of speciesism. As to the common reactions point, that’s hardly a moral argument. A serious wish of ethically-motivated vegans and vegetarians is that more people would have serious moral qualms about eating animal products, especially those from factory farms. The authors put the point well: “We’ve been trained to so to so deeply discount the value of animals that most of us can ignore the horrors of factory farms” (p 494). But that’s not where we want things to remain.
4. Finally, they consider the objection that the analogy is contingent not necessary. Associations, such as the replica lampshade with the serial killer’s lampshade or the replica meat with meat from factory-farmed animals, can be changed. For example, we can use different names for these things (kind of like how lobbyists in France are trying to make it illegal for plant-based products to use words like “steak” or “ham” in naming their products). The authors have three responses to that objection. First, they express skepticism at whether the association can be so easily revised. Second, if Clouseau came up with some different euphemism for his lampshade that is a human-skin lampshade replica, we might not let him off so easily. Third, breaking the association between real meat and fake meat might indicate a lack of reverence for actual animals and their experience in meat production.

I actually think the final objection, about the contingency of the association, is relevant in ways that Fischer and Ozturk under-describe. Now, this might be in part because, as I noted earlier, I really have no idea what actual meat tastes like anymore, so I’m a terrible judge of whether a particular replica is a good replica or is just food that I find enjoyable. One time I took an omnivore friend to Odd Burger and told him their “Famous Burger” tastes “just like a Big Mac.” After his first bite, his question to me was “when was the last time you tasted a Big Mac?” (Answer: 35-ish years ago).

But I do think it matters that in seeking a particular taste and texture, it is not necessary to that taste and texture that its original source has to have been a dead animal. As I said the last time I wrote about “fake meat,” anyone committed to the view that, when “faced with a choice between real meat and an indistinguishable substitute (which is, let us say, at least as nutritionally sound) they would insist on the version that comes from a dead animal are on questionable ground. It’s hard to understand how that one fact about a menu item could make it better.” In other words, being from a dead animal isn’t an essential feature of either the taste or the texture of meat.

Now you might try to say the same thing of the lampshade, I suppose. But I note two things about that. The lampshade is made more macabre because it was originally inspired by one made from, not just a dead human, but human murdered by a serial killer. And additionally, the serial killer held it as a trophy, part of a collection. It wouldn’t have the value it did for him without being human remains from someone who died at his hands. This is a very different origin story than factory farmed meat, where the treatment of animals (presumably) adds no value for anyone to the products that result.

If we could get the same result and harm no animals at all, that would surely be just fine with lots of people. And wait…we can do just that, at least to some degree.

Of course not all vegans and vegetarians crave that taste and texture. Some have an aversion to it that they have developed over time after really letting the origins sink in. But for those who have not developed that aversion, it still seems to me that these products remain a good option and they have a different normative valence than the replica lampshade.

Another thing worth noting, and I’m not sure where this fits exactly into this discussion but I want to say it anyway, is that a lot of animal products actually don’t resemble in any way the animals that they originate from. Indeed, it’s more often than not that you really can’t tell. When I talked about working on this post, a friend said that she hoped Fischer and Ozturk are wrong because she loves vegan “chick’un” nuggets. My reassurance was that their argument wouldn’t really apply to them since even chicken nuggets don’t resemble chicken.

Let me close by saying that I really like Fischer and Ozturk’s paper. I think the question “how realistic does an animal product ‘replacement’ need to be?” is a really good think to think through. It’s already a short paper, and my blog post has tried to condense the main ideas into an even shorter account. So I’ve inevitably glossed over some of the details for their view.

In the end, I think there’s a difference between the lampshade and fake meat. The clear moral wrongness contained in the origin story on which these meat (etc.) replicas are based doesn’t fully transfer to the fake versions.

That said, perhaps my favourite idea in the paper is that it would be better if vegan food weren’t just plant-based, but “plant-inspired” (p 495). That way it wouldn’t be designed and engineered to resemble any animal products at all. And we might name them differently. This has already started to happen — Buffalo Cauliflower is less frequently called “Cauliflower Wings” these days. And I don’t know anyone who actually tries to shape their homemade “tofurkey” so that it looks like a bird.

I’m going to take seriously how a “plant-inspired” outlook might shape my own choices. And though I don’t actually crave meat, I might think more carefully before I order another Beyond Burger.