Selective Opposition to Animal Cruelty?

I actually think that Tia, responding to a criticism of people using the outrage about Michael Vick to criticize factory farming processes, makes a reasonable point here:

Without reading them, but with familiarity with the line of argument, I think all those op-eds are actually…a recognition that we make arbitrary distinctions about what animals’ pain matters, and an effort to make the case for non-arbitrary distinctions that have a basis in something other than totally culture-dependent taboos. I, too, find silly the spectacle of someone who is not in any discernible way opposed to factory farming practices fulminating about dogfighting, and there’s just as much a cultural diversity argument against a prohibition of dogfighting as there is against a prohibition of any kind of law against animal cruelty. It’s much easier to justify encroachments into someone else’s cultural practices if they’re based on some kind of gesture towards a coherent ethical scheme; “factory farmed meat for me, but no dogfighting for thee” strikes me as the most baseless sort of imperialism. You could make an argument that the spectacle of dogfighting is brutalizing to people, and so it should be banned not because of animal suffering, but because of its effect on the participants. I might agree about its likely effects, but I don’t necessarily think that’s the proper province of law to regulate; I don’t generally favor laws designed to protect people from seeing bad things and thinking bad thoughts.

As someone willing to eat bald eagle omelets garnished with panda veal, I must admit that I don’t really have a serious principled response to this. I don’t think think there’s any ethical compulsion to forego meat altogether (health is another question); the production of vegetables, wheat, etc. in our society generally involves the destruction of animal life too. Eating meat humanely raised and killed perfectly defensible. But I have to admit I don’t actually adhere to that kind of meat-eating. And since I consume the products of factory-farmed meat, I’m not sure that selective moral outrage at Michael Vick is particularly justifiable.

There are, I think, some colorable substantive distinctions; in particular, Vick’s actions (not just the dogfighting but the additional torture-killing of the dogs) represents a sadism for its own sake that factory farming doesn’t, and hence it’s reasonable for the law to treat them differently. But is this distinction enough to justify significant federal jail time for Vick in a country where factory farming is not only legal but subsidized? Seems like a hard case to make. Can eaters of mass-produced meat (or, even more so, people who see nothing wrong with mass-produced meat) justify intense outrage at Vick? It’s hard to rationally justify, I think. A little humility is on order for those of us with bad faith eating practices.