Since I recently reposted an explanation of one method for dispatching snails and slugs, it seems only fair that I also repost my discussion of whether it’s ethical for me to be killing the snails in my garden to begin with.
In the comments of one of my snail eradication posts, Emily asks some important questions:
I’m curious about how exactly you reason the snail-killing out ethically alongside the vegetarianism. Does the fact that there’s simply no other workable way to deal with the pests mean the benefits of killing them outweigh the ethical problems? Does the fact that they’re molluscs make a big difference? Would you kill mice if they were pests in your house? If you wanted to eat snails, would you? Or maybe the not-wanting-to-kill-animals thing is a relatively small factor in your vegetarianism?
Killing the snails is not something I relish (and not just because of what a slimy job it is). Although they are molluscs, I’m inclined to think they experience something like pain while the salt is sucking all the water out of them. I suppose it’s also likely that they would experience pain while being eaten by a chicken, or while being cooked to be eaten by a human. Would drowning in beer be painless to snails? I don’t know. (I do know, however, that the beer method has been less effective for us than pick and destroy.)
Anyway, what I’m doing to the snails probably causes pain. If I knew of a painless (for them) way to destroy them, I’d probably use it. From the point of view of animal welfare, my snail eradication plan is suboptimal.
So what is the interest pulling against minimization of snail pain here?
The short answer is that the current snail population makes it next to impossible for us to successfully raise food crops in our yard. On its face, this looks like a practical consideration rather than an ethical situation. However, our gardening is motivated at least in part by other ethical issues.
Raising food in our back yard is not just a way to feed the family a variety of fresh and nutritious fruits and vegetables (and maybe someday grains). It is also an effort to reduce our toll on the environment by removing a significant proportion of the food we consume from the big agriculture (and even the big organic agriculture) system. The food we are growing has fewer petroleum inputs, since we aren’t applying petroleum-derived synthetic fertilizer, nor driving tractors or other motorized farming vehicles, nor putting what we grow on trucks to get to the store (and driving to the store to buy it). There is also less packaging generated, since we keep using the same bowls and baskets to carry our crops from the garden into the kitchen.
I suspect we’re making more efficient use of water in raising our food crops, too. In addition to our bucket system, we also plant crops close enough to each other that they provide “living mulch” that reduces evaporative loss.
And, I strongly suspect that fewer animals are killed in our garden than are killed in the fields that big ag (even big organic ag) uses to raise crops. Mechanized tilling routinely kills small mammals who may be living under the soil, and pesticides and herbicides kill identified pests while running the risk of killing wildlife (either directly or when they wash into streams and such).
Slug and snail infestation at the commercial growers? I’m willing to bet they’re killing those gastropods promptly.
It’s probably not the case that everyone with a back yard garden intends it as a means by which to unplug from the big agriculture/supermarket/fast food cycle. However, for us, it is; while we might not be able to unplug completely, we can drastically reduce our participation in the cycle. And this, in turn, is intended to have a positive environmental impact, and thus a positive effect on the prospects of the human community as far as not rendering the earth unlivable.
But we can’t have that positive effect without getting a handle on the snail population in our garden.
At this point, you might wonder if we could keep the garden snail population down without killing the critters. I don’t see relocating them as much of an option. They’re endemic to this region, and seeing as how they were brought here from elsewhere (France, I’m told) and became an invasive species, I would not want to risk doing the same thing to another region.
If I were to buy all our produce at the store, rather than raising it myself in the snail killing fields, that would not necessarily reduce the number of critters that die to make it possible for the peas, the tomatoes, the potatoes, or the carrots to grow to maturity. It would just be the case that I wasn’t intimately involved in these killings (whether intended or accidents following upon mechanized tilling or pesticide use), an so would not be directly aware of them.
Plenty of people are happy just to get the food without knowing the details of its provenance. I’d rather shoulder the responsibility of doing my own dirty work here. The karmic costs of my food are not hidden out back in the fields behind the farm stand.
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If snails were at all aesthetically appealing to me as a source of food, I’d be eating them instead of just killing them. They aren’t, so I don’t.
I have a fondness for rodents, so if we had an infestation of mice or rats, we’d be using the “live” traps. Grain moths, however, we swat.
One more utilitarian?
From my experience, at this point someone may ask you to prove that there was no way possible to grow your vegetables without killing the critters.
Hydroponics perhaps?
Back home, we used lizards to deal with the snails, though it could be a bit of a laugh when they bluetongues were a bit full and sluggish and wound up with snails sitting on top of their heads.
Also, what’s a snail endemic to your region doing coming from France?
Grain moths can be controlled with pheromone traps, so at least they die happy.
You didn’t answer all Emily’s questions.
Hydroponics isn’t an answer – it just moves the costs out of sight (the fertilizer, medium and containers still need to be made and shipped, electricity produced and transmitted etc).
Chickens could be a partial answer – at least that way snails are recycled. You can also cut their heads off with sharp loppers or pruners – gory but quick death.
“From my experience, at this point someone may ask you to prove that there was no way possible to grow your vegetables without killing the critters. ”
There is no way to have agriculture (or, for that matter, a large “civilised” human population) of any kind without disrupting ecosystems, and disrupting ecosystems kills critters. Doesn’t matter how you try and shift the parts around, you always have to destroy something’s habitat and use resources which would otherwise be used by something else. The trick is to try and minimise the damage – but to imagine that you can completely eliminate it is naive.
As far a minimising the damage goes, attempting to eradicate snails from a small area is pretty good. It’s not like they’re at risk of dying out, is it?
Won’t someone please think of the plants?!
Dunc is right. If you exist, you are “displacing” other organisms, by killing them, removing their habitat, removing resources, etc. As for snails, I would ask if they are native and/or are they threatened in any way. If not, off with their heads! (Or whatever they have).
I would think it’s only an issue depending on your reasons for being vegetarian. If you were vegetarian to spare the lives of animals then I might see there being a point. But if you are vegetarian to reduce your environmental footprint, be as efficient as possible, and use the fewest resources possible then this approach makes sense as it both justifies not purchasing meat and when necessary killing the skills.
We have such a weird relationship with our food. I think of the Native Americans killing buffalo with arrows and what a slow and painful death that must have been, how many arrows it must take to kill a buffalo. And yet we consider that far more humane than the europeans who would show up to kill them quickly with a bullet but kill far too many of them, wiping out the wild populations.
Everything we do in our gardens kills invertebrates! Digging (even just to bed out transplants), hoeing, and other soil-disturbances chop worms in half. Fertilising, mulching, watering: they all will change the species balance of your soil. Even the choice of plants may mean starvation for some and glut for others. Being aware of the damage you do, and keeping a cost-benefit analysis running, is the only way to stay sane. Because even abandoning your plot and pulling the blankets over your head will affect populations.
I was once helping someone with their research into native plant seedling herbivory, and it was my job to collect slugs (non-native) on a nature preserve and keep them alive and healthy for the experiments. There was a surprising dearth of information out there for keeping slugs and their day to day needs, and I was very inexperienced at the time (long before grad school) so it was taking me forever to figure out how to keep them alive and frisky, and hopefully hungry enough for our experiments.
At one point during this mini-obsession I dropped by a drug store chain, While looking for something I took a short cut down the gardening aisle and suddenly found myself surrounded on all sides by suggestions, all in large loud type, on how to KILL slugs. It felt very surreal at the time, and kinda sad, but in the long run I agree we have to kill them!
Maybe there is some use for them, recycling them? For fertilizer or pet food or something. Do you throw them in the garbage?
I consider it extraordinarily unlikely that snails “feel” pain in the sense of having a subjective experience of suffering, such as we attribute to our fellow human beings and also to other mammals.