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 is argued that beef cattle and hogs are protein factories in reserve.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

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. And the other is taking up vegetarianism. But what about the vegetarian alternative?

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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. a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism. All it establishes is that we should eat far less meat so that factory farms become obsolete and that, in conjunction with this, arable land should be turned over to the production of high-protein crops, where possible, so that world hunger can be alleviated somewhat.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2008

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. How might one defend premise (6)? The answer, according to the ADA, is “No.”

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 23, 2007

Hi Keith, I am writing to request a copy of "Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism." This is one of the best essays I have read on the subject of animal ethics. Also I would like to recommend this essay by David DeGrazia to your readers. Thanks in advance for the essay.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

To the Editor: The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases is generated by livestock production, more than by transportation. 9, 2008 Note from KBJ: Some reasons for vegetarianism apply to all animals, from cows, pigs, and sheep to turkeys, chickens, and fish.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'. Interests arise, Singer contends, from the capacity to feel pain, which he labels a 'prerequisite' for having interests at all; and animals can and do suffer, can and do feel pain.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

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. Go vegan, go vegetarian, go humane or just eat less meat. Jean Kazez Dallas, Nov. David Peters New York, Nov.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

In my 40s, I became a vegetarian because I was saving sick and injured birds, and I just couldn’t eat them and save them. Egg production, including on free-range farms, entails the mass killing of newborn male chicks, a point made in Nicholas D. Blithe images of all forms of animal production hide the bleak realities.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

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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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

To demand a product which can only be procured at the cost of the intense suffering of the animal, and the deep degradation of the butcher, and by a process which not one flesh-eater in a hundred would himself under any circumstances perform, or even witness, is conduct as callous, selfish and unsocial as could well be imagined.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

Second , and most importantly, refuse to support the meat industry’s unsafe practice of adding antibiotics to animal feed by refusing to purchase their products. Protect your own health and the future effectiveness of antibiotics: Go vegetarian in 2010! Make a conscious choice to not eat meat.

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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. My interactions with farm animals have been as affectionate and fun as any I've had with dogs or cats.

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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. As a recent convert to vegetarianism, I found that it reinforced my feeling that the eating of living, thinking, emotional creatures is just plain wrong. To the Editor: Nicholas D. Kristof’s column broke my heart.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 2, 2007

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, management and husbandry are more important than the type of production system for ensuring the health and well-being of pigs. Eating dead animals and animal products is bad for people, bad for animals and bad for the planet. That is never humane.

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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. We call ourselves vegetarians.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 6, 2009

But for more than 20 years, consumer groups led by Public Citizen have worked to scare the public about food irradiation and threatened to boycott companies that market irradiated products. Serge Scherbatskoy Arcata, Calif.,

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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. Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. First, it is dubious that becoming a vegetarian would have much effect on present practice. milk production.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 15, 2006

According to this study published today in the British Journal of Medicine , "Higher IQ at age 10 years was associated with an increased likelihood of being vegetarian at age 30." The study itself doesn't explain why individuals with higher IQs are more likely to be vegetarians as adults, but Catharine L.

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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.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Livestock production consumes 70 percent of the water in the American West -- water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound. McWilliams insists that vegetarianism is "the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food.

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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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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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