A Critique of the Cultural Defense of Animal Cruelty

Abstract

I argue that cultural practices that harm animals are not morally defensible: Tradition cannot justify cruelty. My conclusion applies to all such practices, including ones that are long-standing, firmly entrenched, or held sacred by their practitioners. Following Mary Midgley, I argue that cultural practices are open to moral scrutiny, even from outsiders. Because animals have moral status, they may not be harmed without good reason. I argue that the importance of religious or cultural rituals to adherents does not count as a sufficiently good reason to harm or kill animals, since rituals are inherently symbolic, and cultures are able to adapt and change, making adherence to cruel traditions unnecessary.

The racialization of animal advocacy in South Africa

“…Thirdly, I argue that the Africanization of institutions is linked to animal justice and I illustrate this by using the Shona 1 concept of Ukama. Fourthly, contrasting with the literature carried out about advocacy in South Africa and the specific case of the proposal in question having rejected that the campaign was morally problematic, I argue contrary to what has been previously defended and suggest that the campaign took an approach that was not sensitive enough to the racialized context of animal advocacy in South Africa and that cultural norms play a morally relevant role in the assessment of practices and forms of activism (Bilchitz, 2017;Galgut, 2019;Glover, 2017).…”

On what matters: Reply to Glover and Galgut

“…When referring to cultural practices regarding animals, academics routinely use the examples of ritual animal slaughtering (Casal, 2003;Cochrane, 2012Cochrane, , 2018Elder et al, 1998); in fact, ritual animal slaughtering and cruel cultural practices towards animals are used in almost interchangeable ways. Galgut herself, in an article about the cultural defense of animal cruelty, uses ritual slaughtering as the prime example of a cruel cultural practice (Galgut, 2019). If the proponents are using it not to refer to ritual slaughtering, they are using a term in a way that is not how the academic community usually understands it; thus, it becomes some kind of private language which cannot be engaged with.…”

A Critique of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Putative Justifications of Bullfighting

“…Further reasons should be given in defense of it and its preservation. That is why justifying animal cruelty on the sole basis of culture and tradition is fallacious (see Galgut, 2019). Traditions and culture are not immune to criticism.…”