Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. It assumes that not eating meat is one way to conserve grain.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. You will, therefore, agree with Martin about moral vegetarianism but not about Christianity. Another reason is moral.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Thus a morally good action need not be the doing of a right act, and the doing of a right act need not be a morally good action.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 21, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Superior Aliens’ Invasion John Harris advances the following consideration to show the immorality of eating meat. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat animals you breed, keep, and kill for food?

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Of all the ways of influencing behavior, rational persuasion is the most effective, the most secure (in the sense of long-lasting), and the most defensible from a moral point of view. Some will reduce their consumption of meat for the sake of the animals. Others will do so for the sake of the environment.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

It is asking the burger-stuffer to come clean ; to show just why it is that his greed should be indulged in this way, and just where he fits into the scheme of things, that he can presume to kill again and again for the sake of a solitary pleasure that creates and sustains no moral ties.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 10, 2009

Nor is it only among schoolboys that over-eating is rampant, for the tables of the wealthy are everywhere loaded with flesh-meat, and the example thus set is naturally followed, first in the servants' hall, and then, as far as may be, in the homes of the working classes. A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland!

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 4, 2009

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'. Deontological stops are not uncommon in philosophical discussions of moral questions.

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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

JUNE 17, 2008

For we must realize that the question is whether this justifies the eating of animals in comparison with alternatives. And there are two relevant kinds of alternatives here: one is treating the animals better before we eat them, the only disadvantage of which is that it would make meat considerably more expensive.

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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 hysteria of the crowd surely played a part in escalating an already frightening situation. This horrible incident has raised some tough questions indeed. In my opinion, neither Harambe nor the child should ever have been at the zoo.

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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 5, 2010

The predicament in such a non-moral case will concern only the individual and a few associates. When the ultimate values concerned are moral ones, on the other hand, and more particularly altruistic ones, the case is different; for the individual in such a dilemma has all society on his conscience. It need not.

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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

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

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

There are two approaches a vegetarian might take in arguing that rearing and killing animals for food is morally offensive. He might argue that eating animals is morally bad because of the pain inflicted on animals in rearing and killing them to be eaten. Or he could object to the killing itself.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Indeed, our feeling of revulsion may be so intense that we simply can no longer bring ourselves to eat meat. In other words, we become vegetarians, not through any decision of principle, but through being unable to bring ourselves to continue to dine upon the flesh of animals.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Animal, Vegetable, Miserable ,” by Gary Steiner (Op-Ed, Nov. 22): Mr. Steiner might feel less lonely as an ethical vegan—he says he has just five vegan friends—if he recognized that he has allies in mere vegetarians (like me), ethical omnivores and even carnivores. Jean Kazez Dallas, Nov. Wolves eat sheep.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'. According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 28, 2009

Some people abstain from meat for religious rather than moral reasons. See here.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

In the first case, there is no way around the suggestion, which many people appear to believe, that animal experience is so lacking in intensity that the pains of animals are overridden by the pleasures experienced by human beings. Devine seems to think that if humans cease eating meat, they will derive no pleasure from eating.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

(Peter Singer more broadly examines the moral standing of animals here.) While this belief might not compel us to be vegetarians, it does demand significant changes in the way we raise animals for food, and it forbids wolf hunting as a form of entertainment. Is meat-eating necessary?

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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. 4): Your article about E. Ann Calandro Flemington, N.J.,

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

The dark secret behind factory farm profits—cruel and inhumane animal husbandry—is getting out. Factory farmers treat animals inhumanely for no good reason. Since morally decent individuals oppose treating animals inhumanely for no good reason, factory farming is becoming an increasingly hard sell.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2011

He says he hunts out of a need to take responsibility for his family, who evidently live where the supermarkets offer no meat. He says meat tastes more precious when you’ve watched it die. I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 4, 2008

If I can show you that one of your moral principles entails that it's wrong to eat meat, then, to avoid contradiction, you must either abandon the principle or abstain from meat. If you're unwilling to abandon the principle, then you must abstain from meat. Here is a brilliant example of this approach.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Farm animals remain helpless, because they are legally incompetent, and assertion of their interests are barred by the traditional legal doctrine of "standing," a concept that is sound only when applied to competent human beings. Instead it aids industry boards that exist solely to sell animal products.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

That system may treat sentient animals like car parts, ruin antibiotics we need for human medicine, and destroy rural communities by polluting our air and water, but at least it’s “efficient” (a word Mr. Hurst hammers three times). The idea that eggs from free-range chickens are somehow morally superior to other eggs is, frankly, weird.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 30, 2007

25): Thank you for another thoughtful piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg, who admirably makes the point that taking an animal’s life should not be a cavalier endeavor. There is no moral difference between eating a dog or a pig, a cat or a chicken. To the Editor: Re “ Two Pigs ” (The Rural Life, Oct.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

The fact that geese mate for life, and that the mate of the poor goose that was slaughtered would step forward, was enough to make me swear off meat forever, if I hadn’t already. Doesn’t he realize that he does not have to engage in this voluntary activity, which causes moral conflict for himself and suffering for the animals?

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. Consequently, one ought not to eat meat until actual practice is changed. The question that must be raised, however, is how the conclusion not to eat meat follows from this.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. What Meat Should Not Be Eaten? What is forbidden meat? Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. We do not need meat, let alone pork, in order to live. But what about microorganisms?

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Animal Ethics

MAY 23, 2007

It’s appalling that anyone would think that a diet based on a dubious morality would build a human infant. Although I am a 5-foot-1, 98-pound woman, and my husband is 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, both of us having grown up on meat and dairy, our son was a long 22 inches and 8 pounds 9 ounces at birth. Children need protein.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2008

There is a difficulty about drawing from all this a moral for ourselves. But then we can say this because we can say that all those are bad moralities, whereas we cannot look at our own moralities and declare them bad. It is natural to feel sympathy for animals who are suffering. This is bad faith.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

Now that 2008 has arrived, I'd like once again to encourage new and old readers alike to make this the year that they stop supporting animal cruelty in all of its forms. If you currently eat meat, make a commitment to reduce your consumption of animals in January and stop eating them altogether in February.

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