ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I discussed the ways in which the human health and climate change impacts of animal agriculture may compromise its sustainability. I would suggest that the relationship between animal ethics and sustainability is more complex. In one understanding it may be argued that ‘sustainability’ is an anthropocentric concept and thus has no clear relationship to animal ethics. If it envisions care to ecosystems, it does not go as far as considering animals. Moreover, it could be argued that climate change imperatives entail that animal ethics are somehow of less importance. is could be exacerbated by new systems of production that try to control GHG emissions by using more intensive methods of animal rearing. Similarly, the control of zoonotic diseases could threaten organic production methods, even if many would side with the counterargument that it is precisely intensive conditions that facilitate such risks. Indeed this chimes with the opposite argument that animal ethics are in fact highly integral to sustainability precisely because of the multiple unsustainable impacts of animal agriculture. In this understanding sustainability is a relational term that accounts for the ethical import of the more-than-human. If we switched to a system of vegan agriculture, a whole array of benets to this notion of sustainability could be realized (Visak, 2007).
