It's about morals
Cameras in slaughterhouses are not the solution
Sometimes things happen in the workplace that we as a society find immoral. More rules and more control is often the answer. For example, cameras in slaughterhouses to safeguard animal welfare. But does that work?
Business Insider spoke with professor Wim Dubbink about the functionality of this 'solution'.
We don't want this
Animal Rights went undercover in March at a pig slaughterhouse in Tielt, Flanders, to film how horribly the animals were treated. The action club's horror film has been viewed almost a million times and the public outcry was great. Rightly so, the images are terrible. We as a society do not want this. We find it immoral to treat animals in this way.
The Flemish Minister of Animal Welfare, Ben Weyts, is now going to ensure that more cameras are installed in slaughterhouses, the training courses for slaughterers are improved and an independent party will screen all Flemish slaughterhouses. The Netherlands reacted similarly. Last month, the Party for the Animals (PvdD) received a majority behind its motion to install camera surveillance in Dutch slaughterhouses. If the sector does not cooperate, if necessary by law.
Not only does the PvdD argue for cameras in all slaughterhouses, but also “for live streams of the entire slaughter process, whereby the images must be accessible to the public”. In addition, the animal rights party wants “better (camera) surveillance of animal transport and livestock farms”. Slaughter, transport, 'livestock farming'. In fact, everything in the slaughtering world should ideally be supervised full-time by rotating cameras.
Result: more rules
Imagine that we would react like this every time a driving instructor is caught drunk behind the wheel, a journalist turns out to make up stories or a VVD member gets discredited. At some point a society will reach the limits of law, if we are not already there.
Wim Dubbink, professor of business ethics at Tilburg University, gave Business Insider his vision on integrity and morality in business. 'After every incident there is an investigation to look for a solution', Dubbink analyzed. 'The funny thing is that the solution is always the same: more rules.'
After it was discovered at the end of 2010 that Robert M. had sexually abused dozens of children in an Amsterdam crèche, the four-eyes principle was applied in 2013. This measure means that a crèche employee should never be alone with children. Never. Magazine Kinderopvang Totaal explains: 'Whether you put a baby to bed, take a walk with toddlers or are in the group, from 1 July 2013 it should always be possible for another adult to watch or listen.'
Besides the fact that it does not make a society more pleasant, Dubbink also does not think that these kinds of measures work. 'With those cameras in slaughterhouses, you will just see that the tapes are full, the cameras get dirty or that there are corners that are not properly monitored.'
On autopilot
In fact, too much regulation and control can be counterproductive. 'What happens with more rules and supervision is that people then think: 'well, I'm following the rules, so it's fine after all.' But what you want is for people to start thinking for themselves, to appeal to their morality. That comes from within yourself, not from the legal point of view.'
The fact that more rules and supervision does little to improve morality can be seen especially in the banking sector. Despite the fact that the number of measures has grown enormously since the crisis, bankers do not seem to behave more ethically. In fact, bank employees are forced to put their minds to zero even more. After all, there are so many rules that have to be complied with. They call it 'Compliance'. Anyone who has ever applied for a mortgage knows the story.
Moreover, if Dijsselbloem ensures that bonuses are only allowed to be 20 percent of the fixed salary (a rule), do not they just increase the base salary? While we want to appeal to good behaviour, bankers can again quietly screen with: what I do is allowed. Morality, in contrast to rules, according to Dubbink, is something uncomfortable, comparable to an angel and a devil talking to you. To listen to your own morality, you must be able to see what you are doing. 'Let bankers feel what they are doing to me,' says the professor.
A banker should therefore actually help the entrepreneur himself to whom he has sold a devastating interest rate swap. And a commodities trader could travel to the Sahara to see what the effect of food price speculation could be.
This should be different in slaughterhouses
But in Tielt, didn't the butchers also see what they were doing? Not quite, the Tielt slaughterhouse has mechanized the slaughter method.
'If you choose slaughtering methods in which you no longer see each pig as an animal but as a thing, as in Tielt, then you are doing it wrong,' says Dubbink. 'There is also a video on the internet of a butcher slaughtering a cow, where he first reassures the animal, and later slaughters it with his own hands. A much better method, because this butcher pays attention to what he is doing.'
There is, of course, also a small group of people who lack morality. Maybe the butchers in Tielt fall under that. They won't be stopped by cameras or rules anyway. “There are immoral people. We can't prevent everything, we have to accept that.'
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