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. Nor ought we kill them without reason.

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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

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 21, 2007

To the Editor: I appreciate Nicolette Hahn Niman’s efforts in raising awareness about the conditions in which pigs are raised (“ Pig Out ,” Op-Ed, March 14), but I was struck by her comment that it is incumbent on us to ensure that animals have decent lives because we ask them to make the ultimate sacrifice for us.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 11, 2008

4): There is a solution to at least some of the beef industry’s sustainability woes, and that is to raise cows in a pasture-based system. For this to happen, subsidies that keep animal feed artificially low, and encourage producers to raise as many animals as possible, should end. Human beings, like dogs, are omnivores.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

And I suspect that people become vegetarians for precisely that reason: that by doing so they overcome the residue of guilt that attaches to every form of hubris, and in particular to the hubris of human freedom. Where there are conscientious carnivores, however, there is a motive to raise animals kindly.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I foresee a day, perhaps not far in the future, in which it is illegal to raise cows, pigs, and other animals for food. The ground for this will not be animal welfare, as you might expect, but environmentalism. I believe that as time passes, humans will, for various reasons, change their diets.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2007

Just think of the savings in water use if we didn’t have the need to raise millions of animals for human consumption! On top of that, think of the growth of a healthier and slimmer population that wasn’t burdened by the costs of poor health brought on by animal consumption. Christy (Op-Ed, Sept.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 22, 2007

Though it may be too late for too many, we can only hope that diseased animals are not left in pain but are humanely euthanized to end their suffering. In 2005, a survey commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare showed that the Chinese are similar to Americans in their concern for animals.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 27, 2008

There is no happy ending for even the most humanely raised animal. And there is no good reason to breed, confine and kill animals for food unless we believe that economic benefit justifies killing. More and more people do not. We call ourselves vegetarians. Patti Breitman Fairfax, Calif.,

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

The proposition outlaws raising pregnant sows in gestation crates and raising calves in veal crates , making Arizona the first state in the Union to ban veal crates. To learn more about Arizona's precedent-setting victory for farm animals, see here. Calling an inhumane practice "humane" does not make that practice humane.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2009

Vegetarians certainly cannot think that only vegetarians have a prima facie duty not to eat animals or animal products. Presumably it would include all human beings, whether they are in the habit of eating animals or not. But why would it not extend to all animals, including carnivorous animals?

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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 3, 2009

But the method she advocates for reaching those goals—raising grass-eating, pasture-foraging farm animals—would appear to be notoriously difficult to reproduce on a scale large enough to harvest enough meat, at a reasonable cost, for all the people wanting to eat meat in this country, let alone the world.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

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. If the goal is not moral perfection for ourselves, but the maximum benefit for animals, half-measures ought to be encouraged and appreciated. Chris Taylor Lawrence, Kan.,

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2008

Raising livestock is the best use of most pasture land, not growing crops. Animals turn grass, a k a sunlight, into high-quality proteins, minerals and fats that are an ideal food for humans. Do not confuse the garbage output of confinement animal feeding operations with healthy meat. Michelle Gordon Gulfport, Miss.,

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

By forgoing meat in our diets, we can reduce, if not eliminate, this massive suffering of animals, merely through bringing market forces to bear upon factory farming. This, however, is precisely what factory farming does.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2009

The Argument from Animal Rights A stronger argument is made by people who maintain that animals have rights. In particular, it has been argued that animals have a right to life. So, even if animals are killed painlessly and raised for food in humane ways, it is wrong to kill them.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

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 pay lip service to more humane treatment of the animals that we eat, but how many of us look beyond the label on the package of chicken cutlets?

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

First, I will raise some questions that usually are not asked, let alone answered, by moral vegetarians. On the traditional position, justification of vegetarianism was in terms of animal welfare, happiness, rights, and so on. What seems to be absent in some recent vegetarian arguments, however, is any consideration of animals.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 23, 2007

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. It’s appalling that anyone would think that a diet based on a dubious morality would build a human infant.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

For example, if one could pick up shed animal legs in a pasture in which animals roam freely among their own kind, there might be no moral objection to eating the legs. This sort of question can also be raised without benefit of hypothetical examples from future genetic engineering.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 16, 2008

But there is a net loss in all meat production, not just of farmed fish or feeding fish to land animals being raised for food. Feeding grain to chickens, pigs and cows is even more inefficient, with 70 percent of grain grown in the United States going to animals raised for food. Laura Frisk Encinitas, Calif., Lawrence S.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

According to this argument, the view that eating the meat of nonhuman animals is morally permissible but eating the meat of human beings is morally forbidden is analogous to racism or sexism. Moreover, since it is morally wrong to kill and eat human beings, it is morally wrong to kill and eat animals. If not, why not?

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

The question can be raised: Why should these organisms be killed and others not be killed? If some microorganisms must be killed in the process, this is unfortunate but necessary for human life. Why should microorganisms be sacrificed rather than humans? Why is human life more valued than the life of microorganisms?

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 29, 2006

There is one animal product that Dr. Spock recommends feeding newborns and infants. That animal product is human breast milk. Human breast milk is a near perfect food for human newborns and infants. 105-6) Dr. Spock is not alone in his endorsement of breast-feeding human infants. The answer is "Yes."

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

Not only are they killed in cruel ways, but it is well documented that they are raised in ways that cause them great discomfort and agony. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly. Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 15, 2006

If they are at all informed about modern animal agricultural practices, they know that raising animals intensively in factory farms greatly increases the amount of animal suffering in the world. It serves no significant human interest whatsoever.

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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. Since it would not be wrong to eat the flesh of animals raised in that manner, eating meat is not morally wrong! [As

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 24, 2006

On the blog Animal Ethics (which I visited because of your reference to it) is the sentence "Let us temporarily assume for the sake of argument that it would be permissible to eat the flesh of an animal who was raised humanely and killed entirely painlessly." Did you notice that "who" the writer slipped in there?

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