Animal Ethics

JANUARY 1, 2010

If you have been a regular reader of my posts, you already know that switching to a vegan diet devoid of meat and animal products almost always results in significantly lower plasma cholesterol levels. Switching to a cruelty-free vegan diet is yet another powerful example of ethical synergy at work.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

We should not abandon our meat-eating habits, but remoralize them, by incorporating them into affectionate human relations, and using them in the true Homeric manner, as instruments of hospitality, conviviality and peace. Where there are conscientious carnivores, however, there is a motive to raise animals kindly.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 17, 2008

Should we legalize dog meat for human consumption? Saletan discusses some reader reactions to his first post on legalizing dog meat here. Should we be eating dog meat? For a discussion of the issue, see William Saletan’s recent post at the Human Nature Blog. What's next? Soylent green? What do you think?

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

Here’s another self-interested reason to not eat meat: Drug-resistant bacteria are routinely found in beef, chicken, and pork sold in supermarkets. To find out more of what the meat industry and pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know, read this Associated Press column by Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 23, 2007

This is one of the best essays I have read on the subject of animal ethics. Also I would like to recommend this essay by David DeGrazia to your readers.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2008

Here is a New York Times story about the cloning of animals for meat.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

As examples, I would give the following: (1) abstaining from meat for the sake of the animals; (2) abstaining from meat for health reasons; (3) eating meat because one believes (with, say, Roger Scruton) that doing so redounds to the benefit of the animals themselves; (4) eating meat because one likes the taste.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

I suspect that many regular readers of Animal Ethics are already vegetarians. That's because those who read Animal Ethics with regularity know that there are many compelling reasons to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. Plant-based diets significantly reduce one risk of these chronic degenerative diseases.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 5, 2016

Addendum: The argument seems to be as follows: It is inconsistent both (a) to eat meat and (b) to condemn (or mourn) the killing of Harambe; I condemn (or mourn) the killing of Harambe; therefore, I may no longer eat meat. Good leftist that he is, Peter Singer doesn't let a crisis go to waste.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

31) is simply wrong in suggesting that grass-fed beef produces less methane than feed-lot meat. It is the other way around, with grass-fed animals producing up to three times more methane. To replace factory-farmed meat without further tropical forest destruction is impossible. Geoff Russell is the author of “CSIRO Perfidy.”

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Beyond the environmental impacts of meat production there is a basic ethical issue involved. So here is an even more modest proposal than roasting Fido: Try eating only what animals you are willing to kill with your own hands. To suggest that eating one and not the other represents a conflict of ethics is preposterous.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

The film Partitions (running time: 14 min) by Audrey Kali gives an intimate glimpse of the ethical struggles that five small-scale meat farmers face when their animals are slaughtered. In this film, we see farmers interacting with the animals they will eventually transform into food (chickens, pigs and cattle).

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Niman gives us is to pay attention to the source of meat products and what our mothers always told us: clean your plate. To the Editor: The claims Nicolette Hahn Niman makes for how greenhouse gases might be reduced while still eating meat may very well be true, and I do not have the expertise to challenge them. The best advice Ms.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 4, 2009

A second vegetarian strategy is simply to reject as immoral the balancing of animal pains against human pleasures. Thus John Harris's reply to the Benthamite defence of meat-eating is quite simply: 'Those who use it are saying that they think more about their stomach than their morals, and so a moral argument will probably not affect them'.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

Here is proof (in case you needed it) that human beings will eat almost anything.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 3, 2009

Meat eating as implied by the foregoing remarks may be more ecologically responsible than a wholly vegetable diet. That immoral something is the transmogrification of organic to mechanical processes. (

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 27, 2008

To the Editor: Re “ PETA’s Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat ” (news article, April 21): The commercial development of meat from animal tissue won’t result in “fake meat” any more than cloning sheep results in fake sheep. A more accurate name for the end result would therefore be “clean meat.”

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 7, 2016

Further, did those who reacted so strongly to Harambe’s killing go home and serve meat to their children? The zoo, surely, carries responsibility for deficiencies in its enclosure. The hysteria of the crowd surely played a part in escalating an already frightening situation. This horrible incident has raised some tough questions indeed.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

Kristof writes, by way of apology for his "hypocrisy," that he eats meat ("albeit with misgivings") and has "no compunctions about using mousetraps." Eating meat and using mousetraps are as different (morally speaking) as night and day. Eating meat cannot be so justified. Eating meat cannot be so justified.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

The strongest part of [Peter] Singer's case against meat eating is his brief discussion of the world food crisis. More specifically, they eat far more meat than is necessary to maintain adequate nutrition. Michael Fox , "'Animal Liberation': A Critique," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 106-18, at 116-7)

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Animal Ethics

JULY 2, 2007

The site uses a unique interactive technology to offer "human-like" interviews that probe the ethical dimensions of diet and lifestyle choices. Please stop by for a visit, take the interview as a meat eater to see how it works (regardless of whether you eat meat), and consider adding a link to eInterview.org from your web site.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 28, 2008

Someone sent a link to this blog post, which shows why economics is known as "the dismal science." It also lends credence to the dictum that economists know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

Perhaps it can be unpacked in this way: the blood and gore of slaughter houses is disgusting and is enough to turn many people’s stomachs; so if people saw what went on in slaughter houses, they would not eat meat; consequently one should become a vegetarian. The explanation is ignorance: These people do not know how their meat is produced.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 22, 2009

Here is a New York Times op-ed column by philosopher Gary Steiner.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 4, 2007

I worked in ethics. Years later, after he had gone off to teach at Northern Illinois University and I had gone off to teach at the University of Texas at Arlington, we discovered that we had a shared interest in animal rights. I consider Mylan's essay " The Immorality of Eating Meat " the best thing I've read on the topic.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

Here is a New York Times story about mixed couples, and no, I'm not talking about race, religion, or politics.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 6, 2009

CONCLUSION There is no doubt that moral vegetarianism will continue to be a position that attracts people concerned with the plight of animals and with humanitarian goals. Nevertheless there is, as far as I can determine, no moral duty not to eat meat, and one who eats meat is not thereby committing any moral error.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

(..)

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 8, 2007

Bob Smith sent a link to this. My first reaction was revulsion. But is it any more revolting than factory farming?

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 13, 2008

Vegetarianism is overdetermined, in the sense that there is more than one sufficient reason for being a vegetarian. Here is one determination of it.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 27, 2009

The doctor would toss a juicy beefsteak to the suspicious animal. The chimp would examine it and quickly slam the meat right back at him. Is he assuming that man’s meat eating is a perversion of his natural instincts, which are inherited from monkeys? Kellogg was using this stunt to show the moral superiority of vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 6, 2009

It’s a terrible but ultimately not surprising tale, given the continued lack of self-regulation and the emphasis on profit over safety in the meat industry. The only way the meat industry will change its ways is for people to stop buying ground beef and cause sales to plummet. Ann Calandro Flemington, N.J.,

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 27, 2009

One of my students directed my attention to this news story.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

Animals raised for food suffer miserably. The overwhelming passage in November of Proposition 2 in California, which banned tight confinement of many of the animals raised for food, is a fine example of the power of publicity to educate people about the atrocities we commit to those animals who have no voice of their own.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 4, 2007

Hello Keith: I recently completed a documentary on the science, ethics, and politics of animal agriculture entitled "Beyond Closed Doors." The film contains personal interviews with prominent professionals such as Dr. Temple Grandin, Dr. Bernard Rollin, Dr. John Webster, Steve Wise, and many others.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

The Argument from Brutalization The previous argument was based on an alleged indirect effect on human beings of not eating meat. It is argued that the killing and eating of meat indirectly tends to brutalize people. People who do not eat meat tend to be less cruel and inhumane to persons than people who do eat meat.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 5, 2008

On Day 1 of her 21-day experiment with veganism, Oprah aptly asked: "How can you say you're trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?" I had been focused on what I had to give up—sugar, gluten, alcohol, meat, chicken, fish, eggs, cheese.

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