Opinion|Reader’s opinion
It is difficult to discuss animal rights and the ethics of caring for farm animals if livestock production is not accepted in principle.
Agrarian Union the ideologue Santeri Alkio wrote in 1896 that “all crimes against nature are sins”. The Christian basis of the peasant relationship with nature is crystallized in the sentence. Over time, interpretations of Christianity have varied. Alkiok also considered the peasant to continue the work he had started as the “gardener of the Creator”. The Bible’s call for the cultivation and preservation of the land thus received a productive developmental task.
In just over a hundred years, agriculture has become vastly more efficient, in part even industrialized. The basic question is still the same: is food production cooperating with nature and natural objects or their greedy exploitation? Journalist Marko Junkkari ended up with the latter (HS Sunday 6.2.) after interpreting a dispute over one concept of the Animal Welfare Act under preparation. According to Junkkari, for the peasant – who is represented by the center as a party – “nature has only an instrumental value”.
It is difficult to discuss animal rights and the ethics of caring for farm animals if livestock production is not accepted in principle. I’m not saying Junkkari does that, but the journalist’s conclusion starts from a very straightforward perspective.
The current Animal Welfare Act says that an animal must not be subjected to unnecessary pain and suffering. The law determines how animals should not be treated. The forthcoming legal text on the absolute value of an animal would guide the consideration of the needs of the animal’s natural behavior but does not remove the basic question of the acceptability of livestock production.
In organic production – which I know well – the starting point is to enable species-specific behavior. The principle is natural but very difficult to define. In chickens, for example, there is a conflict between grazing and animal health. In the initial phase, the boundary was drawn as to whether there could be two hundred more organic chickens on one farm. It must be understood that in a modern food system, units of that size can have only a marginal value.
Organic principles have in many respects been mainstreamed in livestock production, but unit size has increased under market pressure. Improvements in animal welfare are mainly paid for by the entrepreneur himself. This experience is reflected in the caution of politicians in animal husbandry legislation.
My own dissertation in preparation deals with the environmental policy of the Center Party. It is not at all so contradictory and tearful, for example, in the direction of the greens, which Junkkari suggests. Junkkari does not specify what “promoting animal welfare and meeting essential behavioral needs” is in practice. A processed production animal differs substantially from its speciesmate thousands of years ago. Does it give it a different absolute value?
The concept of sustainable, intergenerational development launched by the UN is rooted in Nordic peasant thinking. Therefore, emphasizing the absolute value of an animal in the basics of the Animal Welfare Act would fall within the scope of my embryonic nature relationship. It is problematic if the details of the law lead to an unsustainable investment compulsion in the midst of a severe profitability crisis. It is malicious to see only the instrumental value in it.
Timo Kaunisto
Master of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Doctoral Researcher
chairman of the downtown nature working group
The reader’s opinions are the speeches written by HS’s readers, selected and delivered by HS’s editorial staff. You can leave a comment or read the principles of writing at www.hs.fi/kirjtamielipidekirjoitus/.
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