In everyday life, there are sometimes situations that seem scripted, yet are in fact the product of a lucky roll of the dice that helps govern our actions. It was in just such a way that, a few weeks ago, on my way to meet Peter Singer — the father of anti-speciesism and considered one of the most authoritative and revolutionary philosophers of the modern era — I took a taxi. Behind the wheel was a man just over forty who, shortly afterwards, told me he was "new to the job." That is not common among Italian taxi drivers, who normally pass their licence and trade from generation to generation and start young.

"Until 2022 I worked in a slaughterhouse. One of the ones that supplies the big supermarket chains. But I couldn't take it any more. After ten years I quit. It was terrible. And I wasn't even one of those working in the killing section. I handled the cutting. By now it's all mechanised. The cows are put on a conveyor belt, supervised by mostly foreign staff, and directed towards where the bolt guns are. Bang bang bang, one after another."

With the image of a line of frightened animals heading towards death to become a steak, I meet Peter Singer at the Università Statale di Milan and briefly tell him what has just happened, asking for his comment.

Interest in animal welfare is growing, but very slowly. Too slowly compared to what I expected and hoped. We'll get there in the end, one way or another, but I don't think I'll be around to see the change.

Peter Singer

Singer, 77, originally from Australia and a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, published "Animal Liberation" in 1975, a revised and updated edition of which also appeared in 2023. The book is steeped in logical arguments about why inflicting suffering on other animals has ethical implications that reverberate throughout our entire social system. It is a text destined to change the way many people look at farmed animals.

Professor Singer, is it still possible, in 2024, to justify the killing of approximately 200 billion farmed animals a year by claiming it is a necessary choice to keep the system running and feed the world's population?
At the root of speciesism lies the concept of difference. We constantly live overwhelmed by a cognitive bias that leads us to see other animal species as "other" in relation to ourselves. This reasoning is very similar to what provides the basis for racist and sexist theories, and it finds its foundation in Genesis itself, where the dominion of men over animals is spoken of, and in Aristotelian thought, which holds that plants were created for beasts and animals for men. These instrumental theories are also echoed in Thomas Aquinas, who argued that it does not matter how men behave towards animals because all creatures on Earth have been subjected by God to man, and in Immanuel Kant, who held that animals had no consciousness but were merely instruments.

All of this changes with Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, jurist and economist who for the first time brought together the idea of morality and that of human behaviour towards animals, asking whether animals are indeed capable of suffering. Today we know that animals do suffer and, for this reason, we absolutely must confront the moral question bound up in the way we treat them. And we must stop justifying our choices by the need to have food on the table, to advance scientific research (killing two hundred million animals for experimentation no longer makes sense and can prove counterproductive), or by the defence of anachronistic traditions. The necessary mental shift is entirely possible. History proves it. There were eras in which sodomy and same-sex marriage were abominable practices, openly condemned: today they are not only conceived as matters belonging to the personal and private sphere, but are also defended as part of individual rights.

On that note, in an age when we continue to divide the world into categories and must find physiological, historical or legal grounds for the assignment of a right, what should we compel ourselves to reflect on regarding the way we treat other animals?
Today we have a deeper understanding of the intelligence of many creatures, from pigs to octopuses, and we have evidence showing that veganism, more popular than ever, is good for our health and the environment. And yet global consumption of meat and fish continues to rise, the world's first octopus farm is being planned, and the intensifying ecological crisis is driving many animals to extinction. To understand why the way we treat other animals is wrong, we must investigate the reasons that move us to do so and how we perceive them. The ability to use reason or language cannot be discriminating factors — not only because we know that other species have capacities very similar to our own, but also because, on closer inspection, those capacities do not belong to small children or to those who suffer from cognitive or linguistic disabilities. That is why pain is the most important factor to consider. As human beings, we regard pain as something universally negative. Just as we dislike pain inflicted on ourselves, we should not inflict it on others without justification. The boundary of species is not relevant: pain is pain if a creature is capable of feeling it. This seems to me a simpler and more direct argument than one based on cognitive capacities.

Animal Liberation © Valeria Barbi

During the conference Singer showed the reality of factory farms © Valeria Barbi

The conditions of farmed animals, where the animal is merely an object © Valeria Barbi

What scientific evidence do we have regarding animal suffering?
What tells us that animals suffer just as we do is the existence of a similar physiological system, the tests on reactions and behaviours (have you ever accidentally stepped on your dog's tail? Did it seem to you that it felt no pain?). It is the sharing of the same evolutionary history. All characteristics that apply to fish as well — often ignored, despite studies on their pain having begun as far back as 1975, demonstrating that they too suffer as we do. Not to mention the environmental effects of our induced need to feed on animals. An adult salmon, such as the one placed at the centre of a Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve feast, usually comes from fish farms that are destroying Chilean Patagonia and its precious ecosystems. Before being killed, that salmon had been fed at least 66 kilograms of caught fish. Multiply this figure by millions of specimens, confined in cages placed in the sea or in large tanks, and you will have a measure of how sustainable fish farming is.

In a world where the individual mistreatment of animals is a crime but the systematic kind is considered a business model, is the system improving?
Around seventy billion chickens are killed every year. Broilers — the ones you find cling-wrapped at the supermarket, or that you happily go to eat on a Saturday evening at one of the many chains that use a smiling little cockerel as their mascot — are bred to grow so fast that they can no longer support their own body weight. A couple of weeks after birth, they are so fat that they cannot stand, and they cannot sit down either because they are raised on a kind of litter full of their own excrement, with ammonia levels so high that, when they crouch, they burn their legs and chest. If human children grew at the same rate as today's broiler chickens, they would weigh 660 kilograms at two months old. This information is now easily available. And yet demand is still so high that chicken farming has intensified.

A landscape that makes it hard to feel hopeful. And yet, is there any good news? Have there been any positive changes, at least since the first edition of your book?
Despite no truly widespread cultural leap having taken place, there is some good news. Among these, the fact that controls and regulations on farming and slaughter methods have been introduced: at least nine US states and the European Union ban veal crates, battery cages for hens or sow stalls. The main US supermarket chains have decided to sell only eggs from cage-free farms by 2026, and McDonald's has done the same. Denmark, a major exporter of pork and dairy products, will instead introduce a carbon emissions tax on livestock starting in 2030. And many people's perception is changing. Vegans and vegetarians are no longer viewed with a critical eye as a matter of course: a general acceptance of different dietary regimes is spreading in a promising way.

Peter Singer @PeterSinger

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Let’s give credit where it is due: @McDonalds's have reached their goal of sourcing 100% their U.S. egg supply from cage-free hens, as they pledged they would. Of course “cage-free” usually still means confined indoors, crowded with thousands of other hens in a giant shed. It’s

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Professor Singer, one last question: how did your reflection on the treatment we reserve for other species begin?
Although many take it for granted, I am not an animal lover in the strict sense. I understand the attachment and affection one can feel for them, but that is not what drives me. My reasoning finds its foundations in philosophical studies, for which the ethical question, with regard to these subjects, is objective: it is necessary to minimise animal suffering and maximise shared happiness. This is the basis of my work and my thinking.

As the room empties and Singer makes his way towards the exit, where a group of devoted fans is waiting for him, clutching his book and hungry for answers, I think about a conversation I had with a friend the evening before. He was eagerly curious to discover as soon as possible the potential that artificial intelligence holds; I was increasingly convinced that our extreme faith in engineering genius could lead us into an evolutionary trap.

Alongside attempts and studies to replace animals with robots capable of responding to our personal emotional needs, in the painstaking work of substituting nature and various outcomes of natural evolution, artificial intelligence (AI) has now arrived in farms too. The major economic results that can be achieved by entrusting it with control over the feeding and growth of animals held in confinement while awaiting slaughter are now being applauded. No knowledge of them or experience in their management is required. In the event of problems, the staff in charge can resolve them remotely. And when the time comes, no human being is needed: the animals live and die alone, in a black box from which they emerge only as ready-to-use products, in the ultimate great act of cognitive dissociation created by humankind.

And so even the last bastion in defence of the rights of these creatures falls away: the relationship between human being and animal, governed by empathy and by that shared evolutionary path which ought to remind us that their pain is also our own.