Critter News

APRIL 1, 2009

He asked whether cows, chickens, sheep and some of the other animals that we eat are usually treated and killed in a humane manner. The meat industry will say yes, of course, all animals are treated and killed humanely. In my opinion, the crux of the question touches on what is “humane.” Here is my opinion.

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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. Individual animals, qua sentient beings, have intrinsic value. Others will do so for health reasons.

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Critter News

AUGUST 27, 2009

Is a vegan's efforts at advocacy worth more than a vegetarian's or even a meat eater's if they happen to agree on the same issue? If a meat eater eats meat, but hates the factory farm system or animal experimentation, do we discount anything we can get out of them because they are not "pure."

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Animal Person

APRIL 5, 2011

would call HSUS an animal rights group (after all, HSUS doesn't even do that). Or how a paragraph would refer to animal rights and animal welfare as if they're interchangeable. Isn't my time better spent fighting for actual animal rights than the term "animal rights?".

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Critter News

JANUARY 24, 2012

A state law mandating "humane treatment" of downed livestock headed for the slaughterhouse was unanimously overturned Monday by the Supreme Court. Read the full story at CNN. Several justices had earlier noted the good intentions behind the state action, but all now agreed that it went too far into the traditional federal arena.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 11, 2008

Of course, the meat is more expensive since it takes lots of real estate to freely graze a herd, and it’s tougher than typical supermarket fare (Americans are used to a style of marbling that’s caused by grain diets and flabby cattle, whereas grass-fed cows are trim from their daily ambles). Human beings, like dogs, are omnivores.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

That system may treat sentient animals like car parts, ruin antibiotics we need for human medicine, and destroy rural communities by polluting our air and water, but at least it’s “efficient” (a word Mr. Hurst hammers three times). Farm Animal Welfare, ASPCA New York, Feb. That sounds like a win-win to us.

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Animal Person

APRIL 18, 2009

Yesterday , Abby wrote: Off topic, but I was wondering if you have any advice for those of us who are highly emotionally sensitive and also interested in animal welfare issues? I get so sad when I hear about the mistreatment of animals that it really affects me, but at the same time I want to be able to create change in the world.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Well, as it turns out neither a trip to a slaughterhouse nor killing an animal yourself is powerful enough to make people go vegan. The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical. The campaign to moralize meat has largely been a failure.

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Critter News

APRIL 24, 2012

The reemergence of mad cow disease, discovered in a California dairy cow, could have major implications for the state’s meat industry, even though officials have said that the human food supply is unaffected. Read the full story here at the LA Times. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy hasn’t been found in U.S.

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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. The fact that geese mate for life, and that the mate of the poor goose that was slaughtered would step forward, was enough to make me swear off meat forever, if I hadn’t already.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 9, 2009

For example, we will not claim that Martin is opposed to moral vegetarianism because he likes to eat meat without a guilty conscience. Indeed, two well-known moral and social philosophers, Robert Nozick and Peter Singer, have recently advocated not eating meat on moral grounds. KBJ: There are different reasons to abstain from meat.

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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. Wolves eat sheep.

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Critter News

JUNE 6, 2012

This article reaffirms my belief that it's more humane to slaughter horses in the US than to ship them for slaughter to Canada or Mexico. I don't like it either way, but one is better than the other for sure.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 11, 2012

In responding to Suzie’s post defending wildlife rehabilitation I began to think again about the areas in which animal rights and animal welfare overlap with the field of conservation, and the ways in which they don’t. Not from an environmental perspective but from a “don’t you like animals?

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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. Danielle Kichler Washington, Nov. Lawrence S.

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Critter News

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Here's an example of "joint costs" that says all you need to know about animals as nothing more than inputs in a manufacturing process. The meat packing industry takes a single input, a steer, and produces many different final products.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2010

I also have a rule to eat any cultural food when I am traveling to another country or am a guest or have guests of people from another culture who eat food with meat. So, how you would respond a person like me who cares for animal welfare, consciously stays away from the worse meat he can, and eats it mostly for cultural reasons.

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