The tradition argument: when history is used to justify harm

Tradition is one of the most powerful words in any debate about animal welfare. But being old does not make something right. Here is why that argument deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets.

Historical image of an extinct animal.

Somewhere in the world right now, an animal is being harmed in the name of tradition. A whale is being driven into shallow water. A bull is being released into an arena. A bear is being made to dance. And the defence offered, almost without fail, is the same: "We have always done this. It is part of who we are."

The tradition argument is not unique to any one culture or country. It appears on every continent, in every language, dressed up in the language of heritage, identity, and cultural pride. And it is one of the most effective tools for shutting down ethical debate, because it reframes a question about harm as a question about respect.

But here is what that framing quietly does: it asks us to treat the length of a practice as evidence of its legitimacy. And that is a logical leap worth examining very carefully.

What the tradition argument actually claims

When someone invokes tradition to defend a harmful practice, they are making at least one of three implicit claims. The first is that longevity confers moral authority. The second is that cultural identity is so tied to the practice that ending it would cause irreparable loss. The third is that outsiders have no standing to question what insiders have always done.

Each of these claims sounds reasonable on the surface. Examined more closely, each one starts to unravel.

"If longevity were proof of moral acceptability, we would never have abolished anything. Slavery had centuries of tradition behind it. So did child labour. So did denying women the right to vote."

Tradition tells us what has been normalised, not what is right. These are two very different things, and conflating them is one of the oldest rhetorical moves in the book.

When traditions have changed before

Human history is not a straight line of preserved traditions. It is a long record of practices that were once defended as essential to cultural identity and were later abandoned, often because the people within that culture chose to evolve.

Abandoned tradition

Foot binding in China

Practiced for nearly a thousand years as a mark of femininity and status. Ended through a combination of internal advocacy and changing values.

Abandoned tradition

Duelling in Europe

Centuries-old practice among nobility to defend honour. Gradually outlawed as societies reconsidered the value of human life over reputation.

Abandoned tradition

Bear baiting in Britain

Popular public entertainment for hundreds of years. Eventually prohibited not because it lacked tradition, but because the suffering it caused became impossible to ignore.

None of these traditions disappeared because outsiders steamrolled a culture. They ended because people within those cultures asked harder questions and arrived at different answers. Culture is not a museum. It is a living thing that changes because human understanding changes.

The identity argument is worth taking seriously

There is something genuinely important in the concern that criticising a tradition feels like an attack on identity. When a practice is woven into community life, into seasonal rhythms, into shared memory, challenging it can feel like a challenge to belonging itself.

That emotional reality deserves acknowledgment. It is not nothing.

But it is also worth asking: which parts of an identity are we actually trying to protect? Community. Memory. Shared experience. The sense of belonging to something larger than yourself. All of those things are real and valuable. None of them require an animal to suffer.

The question is never whether culture matters. It is whether the specific harmful element of a practice is what actually carries the cultural meaning, or whether that meaning could survive without it.

In most cases, it can. Communities that have moved away from harmful traditions have not lost their identity. They have carried it forward in a different form.

The standing problem

A common response to animal welfare criticism is that outsiders have no right to judge another culture's practices. This argument has some validity in genuinely colonialist contexts, where powerful outside forces impose values on marginalised communities.

But it has limits. When the subject of the debate is not a human community but the animals being harmed within it, the standing argument starts to collapse. Animals cannot advocate for themselves. They cannot invoke their own cultural context. They experience the pain regardless of the tradition in which it is embedded.

Concern for their suffering is not cultural imperialism. It is the most basic extension of moral consideration to beings who cannot speak for themselves.

Tradition as a starting point, not an ending point

None of this means tradition is worthless. Traditions carry meaning. They transmit knowledge, build community, and anchor people to their histories. Acknowledging that is not a concession to cruelty. It is an honest starting point for a more nuanced conversation.

But a starting point is not a conclusion. The fact that something has been done for a long time is a reason to understand it carefully, not a reason to stop asking whether it should continue.

The strongest cultures are not the ones that resist all change. They are the ones that hold onto what is genuinely meaningful while finding the courage to let go of what causes unnecessary harm.

Tradition, at its best, is a living inheritance. It is not a cage.

Further reading

For a deeper look at how culture and animal ethics intersect, Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson's Zoopolis offers a rigorous and compassionate framework for thinking about animal rights within political and cultural life.