Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

To the Editor: It’s mind-boggling that in spite of overwhelming evidence that the consumption of animal products is directly responsible for a host of human diseases , greenhouse gas production and indescribable animal suffering, the general public continues to satiate its taste buds and support factory farming.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Farm animals are treated essentially as raw materials. Their ethological needs and direct interests are neglected to the extent that their needs are not as congruent with higher productivity and profit. Though factory-farming and biotechnological techniques massively violate the moral rights of farm animals, they have no remedy.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 12, 2010

A Humane Egg The life of animals raised in confinement on industrial farms is slowly improving, thanks to pressure from consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers and legislators. This requirement would at least relieve the worst of the production horrors that are common in the industry now.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Humanity Even for Nonhumans ,” by Nicholas D. Animals raised for food suffer miserably. April 9, 2009 To the Editor: In making the personal decision of where to place ourselves in our ethical relationship with animals, it is important to evaluate the reality of our words. Laura Frisk Encinitas, Calif.,

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2009

Who exactly is not supposed to eat animals or products of animals? This problem is especially acute with respect to carnivorous animals. What animals is it morally wrong to eat? If animals could be created by genetic engineering, could they be created so that there were no moral objections to eating them?

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 8, 2011

Health care skyrockets out of control mainly because we have no convenient access to fresh produce and tasty, humanely raised meat products. Doesn’t it know that our American diet is killing us and our economy? Americans want to eat the good stuff, but it must be readily available. We’re busy and misinformed.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

What Is an Animal Part? The last example suggests the difficulty of making a clear distinction between an animal part and an animal product. If a genetically engineered animal’s legs periodically fell off, would not its legs be more like a product of an animal (analogous to eggs) than a part of the animal?

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 28, 2009

Though factory-style production worsens it, the root problem is animal use. Since using animals is cultural, not part of our biological nature or in any way necessary, animal use is by definition inhumane—unkind where we could as a society choose kind. It is inhumane to humans as well, E.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 29, 2007

There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape. Human activities are producing part of the rise in CO 2 in the atmosphere.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2012

For example, the Treaty of Amsterdam that came into force on May 1, 1999, formally acknowledged that nonhuman animals are “sentient beings” and not merely goods or agricultural products. The European Community and the member states signatory to the treaty are required “to pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals.”

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

Wild animals and native plants have a particular place in nature, according to the land ethic, which domestic animals (because they are products of human art and represent an extended presence of human beings in the natural world) do not have. as is the humane ethic.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 2, 2007

Puck’s Good Idea ” (editorial, March 26): Thank you for writing about the restaurateur Wolfgang Puck and his desire to buy meat raised humanely. March 27, 2007 To the Editor: Livestock producers raise their animals under humane standards and under the care of a veterinarian. That is never humane.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 14, 2007

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about pork production. Notice that the author is not opposed to the use of nonhuman animals as resources for human consumption. Notice that we (including, I assume, the author) would never allow such treatment of a human being. and their bodies dismembered and processed.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof, who takes note of the trend represented by the animal welfare proposition on the ballot in California this fall. If people had to see what these animals are subjected to or take an active role in their deaths, I believe many more people would think before they eat. We know that animals suffer as well.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 27, 2011

What is the optimal temperature for the alleviation of suffering, for both humans and sentient nonhuman animals? How many different species of animal or plant would there be if the globe warmed, as opposed to how many there are today? What is the optimal temperature for food production?

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

VARIETIES OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM Moral vegetarianism will be understood as the view that because of some moral principles one ought not to eat certain edible animals and perhaps animal products. On the traditional position, justification of vegetarianism was in terms of animal welfare, happiness, rights, and so on.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

There is for Singer, then, no escaping the conclusion: if we take morality seriously, a genuine concern for the interests of animals and for the diminution of their suffering requires that we cease rearing and slaughtering animals for food and cease dining upon them. ( This, however, is precisely what factory farming does.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 10, 2010

The United States Department of Agriculture has been broken for a long time, and it is clear that it cannot protect the American public from illness and death from contaminated meat products. Instead of allowing companies to find ways to turn food a dog might reject into cheap human food, shouldn’t the U.S.D.A.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 27, 2008

More greenhouse gas emissions are generated by current methods of meat, dairy and livestock production than by driving cars, so we need to reduce meat consumption and develop alternative food production technologies just as urgently as we need to reduce driving and develop alternative fuel technologies. Scott Plous Middletown, Conn.,

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

What the utilitarian who defends human carnivorousness must say, then, is something like this: that the amount of pleasure which humans derive per pound of animal flesh exceeds the amount of discomfort and pain per pound which are inflicted on the animals in the process, all things taken into account. Is this plausible?

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

But this question of Butchery is not merely one of kindness or unkindness to animals, for by the very facts of the case it is a human question of no slight importance, affecting as it does the social and moral welfare of those more immediately concerned in it. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 4, 2007

The documentary is not short on topics for substantive debate including "humane meat," productivity vs welfare, "animal terrorism laws," and of course the American Veterinary Medical Association's role in welfare reform. If you are able to post something on this documentary I would be grateful.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

In the 1970s, the FDA proposed a ban on penicillin and tetracycline in animal feed, but the proposal was defeated after criticism from interest groups. In 2008, the FDA issued its second limit on the use of cephalosporins in cows, pigs, and chickens, citing the importance of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

In fact, a whole lot of semi-vegans can do much more for animals than the tiny number of people who are willing to give up all animal products and scrupulously read labels. Farm animals also benefit from the humane farming movement, even if the animal welfare changes it effects are not all that we should hope and work for.

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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. Niman’s argument amounts to lowering an ethical standard to fit the demands of our meat-centric culture and Western privilege. Need we feel guilty about being carnivorous? The best advice Ms.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

Modern livestock farming on a grand scale also wastes a colossal amount of feed grains on animals which, in times past, would simply have fed off the land. Michael Fox , "'Animal Liberation': A Critique," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 106-18, at 116-7) But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 21, 2007

March 14, 2007 To the Editor: Contrary to the assertions in Nicolette Hahn Niman’s attack on modern pork production, America’s 67,000 pork producers treat their animals humanely. They do so because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do, and it’s in their best economic interest. Catherine di Lorenzo Woodbine, Ga.,

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 13, 2008

9): Thank you for encouraging California voters to support the state’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, or Proposition 2, on the November ballot. This modest proposal would bring a smidgen of comfort to millions of hens used for egg production. To the Editor: Re “ Standing, Stretching, Turning Around ” (editorial, Oct.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

To learn more about Arizona's precedent-setting victory for farm animals, see here. September 7, 2006, a bill banning the slaughter of horses for human consumption( H.R. Calling an inhumane practice "humane" does not make that practice humane. We can refuse to purchase products of pain deceptively marketed as "humane."

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

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. New moral vegetarianism, however, rests on moral arguments couched in terms of human welfare. It is argued that beef cattle and hogs are protein factories in reserve.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

The Argument from Glass-Walled Slaughter Houses Mel Morse, former president of the Humane Society of the United States, once remarked: “If every one of our slaughter houses were constructed of glass this would be a nation of vegetarians.” For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 5, 2007

Anticorporate activists have campaigned against this and other ag biotech products for years in denial of the demonstrated environmental, economic and health benefits. Susan Levin Washington, June 29, 2007 To the Editor: Urging more hormone injection of cows to increase milk production is backward. George Entenman Chapel Hill, N.C.,

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I have had no other animal products (no beef, pork, lamb, or turkey, for example) since 1982. Human beings are, and always will be, imperfect, morally and otherwise. If nothing but perfection is acceptable, then, given human imperfection, nothing is acceptable. I, for example, am a demi-vegetarian. Am I a hypocrite?

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

Even the most ardent defenders of the morality of using animals for food and as “tools” in scientific experiments admit that premises (1) and (2) are true and acknowledge that (1) and (2) capture something central to our moral relationship to animals. Cohen, The Animal Rights Debate , p. Ethical synergy at work.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 29, 2006

In my earlier post "Children and Heart Disease" available here , I noted that, in the seventh and final edition of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care: A Handbook for Parents of the Developing Child from Birth to Adolescence , Dr. Benjamin Spock no longer recommends feeding animal products to children after two years of age.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 23, 2007

It is not enough to simply cut animal products (or carbohydrates, or calories) out of one’s diet. Generalizing from a handful of ignorant vegans to the entire vegan population does a disservice to those of us who have spent years educating ourselves on human nutritional needs and how to meet them on a plant-based diet.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

What can I do to stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty, and is it difficult to do so?Here Here are some surprisingly simple things you can do to stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty: (a) Stop eating animals. (b) b) Stop eating animal products. (c) A list of Humane Charities is available here.

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