Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 13, 2008

One of the more distressing aspects of the animal liberation movement is the failure of almost all its exponents to draw a sharp distinction between the very different plights (and rights) of wild and domestic animals. Domestic animals are creations of man. It is, to speak in hyperbole, a logical impossibility. (

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Animal Liberation Sheep Factory Farm Factory Farming 40

Animal Ethics

JANUARY 28, 2008

From this perspective, the animal-rights debate seems considerably less urgent and a relatively "safe" area of controversy. One wonders why here (as elsewhere) there is so much concern for the plight of animals and evidently so little for that of humans.

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Fox Animal Liberation For Animals Animal 40

Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

The land ethic, it should be emphasized, as Leopold has sketched it, provides for the rights of nonhuman natural beings to a share in the life processes of the biotic community. The conceptual foundation of such rights, however, is less conventional than natural, based upon, as one might say, evolutionary and ecological entitlement.

Ethics 40

Ethics Animal Liberation Whales Whaling 40

Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. On the traditional position, justification of vegetarianism was in terms of animal welfare, happiness, rights, and so on.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

A column entitled "Ag Industry Threatened by Animal Rights" appeared in today's High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal [ HPMAJ ]. The column, which you can read here , is a call to arms to factory farmers to fight back against those individuals and organizations working to protect farm animals from the abuses inherent in factory farms.

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Factory Factory Farm Factory Farming Gestation Crates 40

Animal Ethics

MARCH 23, 2009

There are intractable practical differences between environmental ethics and the animal liberation movement. Very different moral obligations follow in respect, most importantly, to domestic animals, the principal beneficiaries of the humane ethic. I hope you enjoyed them and learned from them.

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Ethics Animal Liberation Animal Rights Movement Morals 40

Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

KBJ: Nobody in the animal-rights or animal-liberation movement views intelligence as a morally significant property, at least intrinsically. If they have a right to life because they have a self-concept, they surely also have a right to die and the right to suffer pain in the process if they desire.

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Morals Vegetarian Meat Killing 40

Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

As he puts it, “Until we boycott meat we are, each one of us, contributing to the continued existence, prosperity, and growth of factory farming and all the other cruel practices used in rearing animals for food” ( Animal Liberation, 167). Certainly, not eating meat could have this protest function.

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