WHAT WE OWE WHAT WE EAT

Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is the most interesting conservative you have never heard of. He speaks barely above a whisper and must be the mildest disturber of the peace. But he is among the most disturbing.

If you value your peace of mind, not to mention your breakfast bacon, you should not read Scully's essay "Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism--for Animals." It appeared in the May 23, 2005, issue of Pat Buchanan's magazine The American Conservative--not where you would expect to find an essay arguing that industrial livestock farming involves vast abuses that constitute a serious moral problem.

The disturbing facts about industrial farming by the $125 billion-a-year livestock industry--the pain-inflicting confinements and mutilations--have economic reasons. Ameliorating them would impose production costs that consumers would pay. But to glimpse what consumers would be paying to stop, visit factoryfarming.com/gallery.htm. Or read Scully on the miseries inflicted on billions of creatures "for our convenience and pleasure":

"... 400- to 500-pound mammals trapped without relief inside iron crates seven feet long and 22 inches wide. They chew maniacally on bars and chains, as foraging animals will do when denied straw... The pigs know the feel only of concrete and metal. They lie covered in their own urine and excrement, with broken legs from trying to escape or just to turn..."

It is, Scully says, difficult, especially for conservatives, to examine cruelty issues on their merits, or even to acknowledge that something serious can be at stake where animals are concerned. This is partly because some animal-rights advocates are so off-putting. See, for example, the Feb. 3, 2003, letter that Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--animals other than humans--sent to the terrorist Yasir Arafat, complaining that an explosive-laden donkey was killed when used in a Jerusalem massacre.

The rhetoric of animal "rights" is ill-conceived. The starting point, says Scully, should be with our obligations--the requirements for living with integrity. In defining them, some facts are pertinent, facts about animals' emotional capacities and their experience of pain and happiness. Such facts refute what conservatives deplore--moral relativism. They do because they demand a certain reaction and evoke it in good people, who are good because they consistently respect the objective value of fellow creatures.