Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement.

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Los Angeles Animal Rights Movement Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2010

By carrying out a slaughter system that greatly reduces the suffering of chickens, Bell & Evans and Mary’s Chickens show that animal welfare and good business go hand in hand. While ever more consumers are going vegetarian or vegan, almost every consumer is demanding that companies take steps to reduce animal suffering.

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New York Times New York Los Angeles Ethical Treatment 40

Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2010

If there has been progress in ethics recently it has been through the realization of some ethicists that animal happiness and suffering has to be considered equally with that of human beings. I should draw attention here to the remarkable book Animal Liberation by Professor Peter Singer of Monash University.

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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.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

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

JANUARY 20, 2008

The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. Virtually everyone agrees that: (1) It is wrong to cause a conscious sentient animal to suffer for no good reason. Most people hold that it is wrong to cause animals unnecessary suffering. Carruthers, The Animals Issue , p.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2009

This would not necessarily mean that animals have no rights. Presumably most animals—even infants—would have the right not to suffer. As Tooley puts it, although “something that is incapable of possessing the concept of a self cannot desire that a self not suffer, it can desire that a given sensation not exist.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Currently, I am very interested in social and political philosophy and ethical issues. I felt a strong sense of connection to the ideas of Peter Singer while taking Ethics from Keith. Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 18, 2008

Augustine [354-430] had long ago decided that beasts were incapable of suffering pain, because otherwise God would be unjust. If (a) animals are sentient (i.e., capable of suffering), (b) animals are innocent (i.e., not afflicted by original sin), and (c) animals lack immortal souls, then there is undeserved suffering.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 25, 2008

And by this they mean not only that it is wrong to enjoy torturing animals—which few moralists would ever have wished explicitly to deny, however little emphasis they might have placed on cruelty to animals in their moral teaching—but that it is wrong to cause them to suffer unnecessarily. Controversies no doubt remain.

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Morals 2004 Animal Suffering Vivisection 40

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

20, 2012 To the Editor: Blake Hurst asserts that “production methods should not cause needless suffering,” but the position he takes does just that. Farm Animal Welfare, ASPCA New York, Feb. FEDELE BAUCCIO Chief Executive, Bon Appétit Management Company Palo Alto, Calif., That sounds like a win-win to us. SUZANNE McMILLAN Dir.,

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New York Times New York Gestation Crates Gestation 40

Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2011

He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. Animals suffer when killed. To the Editor: In “ Hunting Deer With My Flintlock ” (Op-Ed, Dec. 26), Seamus McGraw says he has a responsibility to kill deer because there are too many.

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New York Times New York Mountain Lions Deer 40

Animal Ethics

JUNE 8, 2008

A being has interests if it is capable of suffering and enjoyment. This capacity is a prerequisite for having interests at all, and the actual interests that a being has are determined by the particular kinds and degrees of suffering and enjoyment of which it is capable.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

But keep in mind that many lactovo vegetarians care about how animal products are produced, not just the fact that they are animal products. These people abstain from eggs and dairy products the production of which involves suffering for the animals. The same would be true of Martin’s hypothetical animal legs.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2011

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 23, 2008

I can't be sure, since the editorial opinion is so jumbled, but the board seems to be arguing that people should continue to eat meat, provided the animals whose flesh they consume are not made to suffer. Is it permissible to eat human flesh, provided the humans whose flesh one consumes are not made to suffer?

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 25, 2008

" but "Can they suffer?" " So whereas Plutarch and Porphyry thought it necessary to begin their case against treating animals merely as chattels by arguing that animals have a share in reason, for Bentham it is irrelevant whether or not they are rational and to what degree.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Of course even though they may not have the capacity for happiness and suffering that whales have, nevertheless I would suppose that chickens can suffer quite a lot, even though their consciousness should be very much a sort of daze, and this should be taken into account in our dealings with them.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 5, 2010

I'm a dog person, not a bird person, but I understand the loss suffered by my friend Peg today.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 26, 2007

It might be argued that any decrease in suffering for farmed animals is good, morally speaking. Imagine arguing not that human chattel slavery ought to be abolished, but that it ought to be reformed so as to inflict less suffering on the slaves. But doesn't decreasing animal suffering make abolition less likely?

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 29, 2008

Whereas it once used to be argued, as by Newman , that the least human good compensates for any possible amount of animal suffering, the current doctrine is that it requires a considerable good to compensate for such suffering.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 6, 2009

It might be suggested that although becoming a vegetarian as a protest against animal suffering or a way of committing oneself to helping the hungry people of the world is not a moral duty, it is still a moral act; it is a supererogatory act. One final point. This view is not implausible, but it needs to be qualified in certain ways.

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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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New York Times New York Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

MAY 8, 2008

It’s not just the injured horses that suffer. It’s the thousands of faceless colts and fillies we never see that suffer from this so-called sport. Even the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand ended up in a Japanese slaughterhouse because he wasn’t proving his monetary value as a stud. Jane Shakman Ossining, N.Y., May 6, 2008

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New York Times New York Stud Horses 40

Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

This passage puzzles me: Unsurprisingly, I believe it is wrong to inflict pain and death unnecessarily on a creature capable of suffering. Peter Singer more broadly examines the moral standing of animals here.) Here is a New York Times blog post about wolf hunting.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If our liking for meat is in fact more intense than our revulsion at the suffering endured on factory farms, then we are going to remain meat-eaters, with the result that, if the vegetarian has grounded his case in an appeal to our feelings, then that case is in jeopardy.

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Factory Farm Factory Farming Vegetarian Meat 40

Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2011

And all of this trouble and suffering for what? Wild animals belong in the wild, and in their native habitats. They may be set free once people realize they are in over their heads, ultimately facing premature death in the wild by starvation or extremes of climate.

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New York Times Wayne Pacelle Humane Society Of The United States New York 40

Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2008

What have humane people to say to the tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted in the interests of the Table?

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Vegetarian Animal Suffering Suffering Humane 40

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 3, 2009

From the perspective of the land ethic, the immoral aspect of the factory farm has to do far less with the suffering and killing of nonhuman animals than with the monstrous transformation of living things from an organic to a mechanical mode of being.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 24, 2008

Not all meat eaters are cold, cruel, selfish individuals insensitive to animal suffering. Many, if not most, of the meat eaters I know are deeply concerned about the fact that the animals they eat are raised in factory farm conditions. They realize that factory farming is inhumane.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 22, 2008

Our findings follow many other studies demonstrating mental anguish in traumatized animals. Suffering is far from a uniquely human experience. I was astonished by how many displayed behaviors that overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other trauma-related disorders.

New York Times 40

New York Times Humane Society Of The United States New York Apes 40

Animal Ethics

MAY 18, 2007

If fruit flies have free will, then it's possible for them to suffer from weakness of the will. Do fruit flies have free will? See here for what appears to be an affirmative answer.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 24, 2009

It seems, generally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in suffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome and harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the cheapest and most humane.

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Meat Vegetarian Morals Cattle 40

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

MARCH 5, 2007

To the Editor: The euthanasia of more than 1,000 dogs and cats at the main animal shelter in Las Vegas is surely a major tragedy in the sheltering field (news article , Feb. 16), and the rapid spread of diseases at a facility packed with 1,800 animals required swift action to prevent even more suffering and loss of life.

New York Times 40

New York Times Las Vegas Wayne Pacelle Humane Society Of The United States 40

Animal Ethics

JULY 21, 2010

Inhumane confinement, illegal anticompetitive practices and factory farming hurt animals, the environment, the consumer, the public health and the farmer. Reversing the agricultural trends of the last half century is a policy area where almost everyone’s interests are aligned.

New York Times 40

New York Times New York Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

AUGUST 30, 2011

Ross, The Right and the Good [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988], 137 [first published in 1930]) Note from KBJ: Since the concepts of desert and good or bad disposition do not apply to animals (who are not moral agents), their pleasure is intrinsically good and their pain intrinsically bad.

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