Animal Ethics

JUNE 7, 2016

As an intelligent primate, I’d much rather be an ambassador for my species in a secure environment—served the best food and tended to by top-notch veterinarians—than take my chances in a national park where poverty and corruption result in little or no protection for the non-human residents. Lisa Edmondson, Los Angeles

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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. I shall endeavor to protect and take care of all living creatures.

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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. How far do we go in protecting them?

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 23, 2009

I will conclude with some remarks about the rights of animals. When it is asked whether animals have rights, and whether human beings have duties to them, the question, I think, is partly moral and partly verbal. Let us consider the moral question first. Even congenital idiots look like men.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. The animal rights movement is not for the faint of heart. How we change the dominant misconception of animals—indeed, whether we change it—is to a large extent a political question.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

The column, which you can read here , is a call to arms to factory farmers to fight back against those individuals and organizations working to protect farm animals from the abuses inherent in factory farms. The dark secret behind factory farm profits—cruel and inhumane animal husbandry—is getting out.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Their interests are primarily protected, if at all, through archaic state anti-cruelty statutes that were not passed in contemplation of the factory-farm or genetic engineering. Though factory-farming and biotechnological techniques massively violate the moral rights of farm animals, they have no remedy.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

In order to protect himself, therefore, he is not likely to rest his case upon (an appeal to) the state and intensities of our feelings. What the vegetarian wants, surely, is that we should stop eating meat even if our liking for it exceeds our revulsion at the suffering endured on factory farms.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 21, 2007

They do so because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do, and it’s in their best economic interest.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 16, 2007

To inflict death or pain on animals for scientific or medical research is wrong morally, and ought to be prohibited. This follows from everything said in the text about the rights of animals. This does not mean that animals may never be deliberately harmed or become subjects of research. Animals cannot give consent.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2012

The European Community and the member states signatory to the treaty are required “to pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals.” In 2002 the German Parliament amended Article 26 of the Basic Law to give nonhuman animals the right to be “respected as fellow creatures” and to be protected from “avoidable pain.”

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2011

I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed. It is only the prejudice of our species that justifies culling the deer population while protecting our own. He says meat tastes more precious when you’ve watched it die. MARIE BROWN Baldwin, N.Y.,

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 11, 2008

So far McCloskey is on solid ground, but one can quarrel with his denial that any animals but humans have interests. I should think that the trustee of funds willed to a dog or cat is more than a mere custodian of the animal he protects. The animal itself is the beneficiary of his dutiful services.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 14, 2009

It is that coercion (via legal prohibition) is not a proper method of protecting animals, at least if the aim is to protect animals. The best thing that one can do for animals, in the long run, is to persuade people to stop eating them. The reason is that it has a backlash effect.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 5, 2007

If they are to be swayed, the change is likely to come from witnessing the realities of the fate endured by animals. Nor have I dealt with advances in the legal protection of animals both in practice and in theory. I have focused exclusively on moral theory. I hope that this book will help this cause along.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 6, 2009

It also offers an equally harsh negative judgment of the federal authorities whose mandate is to protect the integrity of the public’s food supply chain but who have chosen to interpret this responsibility so lightly as to let such claims stand while ignoring repeated offenses by the industry. 4): Your article about E.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

They’re about protecting a system that produces cheap food. 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. We have a hard enough time figuring out what makes people happy, but chickens?

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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

JULY 14, 2012

The concept of moral rights differs in important ways from that of legal rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal. An individual's race, sex, religion, place of birth, or country of domicile are not relevant characteristics for the possession of moral rights. a despot) or any group (e.g.,

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 20, 2007

12): While this is a step in the right direction toward reducing the animal abuse inherent in all factory farming (from the chicken’s point of view), it’s still a long way from what nature intended. Let chickens be chickens, and avoid the whole moral dilemma by going vegan. Jean Bettanny Port Townsend, Wash.,

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 23, 2006

Jonathan Hubbell, a philosophy major at the University of Texas at Arlington, is the newest member of the Animal Ethics blog, and once again, I would like to welcome him aboard. In his fresh and candid first post (available here ), Jonathan admitted that he is struggling with the issue of ethical vegetarianism.

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