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Meat, Cancer, and the Cumulative Case for Ethical Vegetarianism

Animal Ethics

Ethical vegetarianism is the thesis that killing and eating animals is morally wrong whenever equally nutritious plant-based alternatives are available. The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. Premise (7) is clearly true, but don’t take my word for it.

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From the Mailbag

Animal Ethics

Keith: As a historian or even an anthropologist, one could make the argument that being a vegetarian limits one's ability to understand other cultures. I, like you, am not a complete vegetarian. In fact, my diet is worse, but I do justify my eating habits. In many ways, it has a lot to do with defining one's culture.

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Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Sophistry

Animal Ethics

The wolf devours the lamb, and is no worse a wolf for it; but if he seek, as in the fable, to give quibbling excuses for his wolfishness, he becomes a byword for hypocrisy. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 77-8 [italics in original])

Lamb 40
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Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Consistency

Animal Ethics

which may be called the Consistency Trick—akin to that known in common parlance as the tu quoque or "you're another"—the device of setting up an arbitrary standard of "consistency," and then demonstrating that the Vegetarian himself, judged by that standard, is as "inconsistent" as other persons.

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From Today's New York Times

Animal Ethics

Children naturally love animals, but the many “uses we have found for them” lead us to teach our children to save their compassion for companion animals exclusively. There is no happy ending for even the most humanely raised animal. We call ourselves vegetarians. More and more people do not. Patti Breitman Fairfax, Calif.,