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

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. But this distinction lies at the very center of the land ethic. Domestic animals are creations of man.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 21, 2008

It represents an increase in the efficiency of the conversion of solar energy from plant to human biomass, and thus, by bypassing animal intermediates, increases available food resources for human beings. Baird Callicott , "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," Environmental Ethics 2 [winter 1980]: 311-38, at 335 [italics in original])

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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. They have become, in Ruth Harrison 's most apt description, "animal machines."

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 12, 2008

Wild animals and native plants have a particular place in nature, according to the land ethic, which domestic animals (because they are products of human art and represent an extended presence of human beings in the natural world) do not have. as is the humane ethic.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

Modern livestock farming on a grand scale also wastes a colossal amount of feed grains on animals which, in times past, would simply have fed off the land. Michael Fox , "'Animal Liberation': A Critique," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 106-18, at 116-7) One can only agree.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 1, 2008

Baird Callicott , "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," Environmental Ethics 2 [winter 1980]: 311-38, at 326 [ footnote omitted])

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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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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

JUNE 20, 2008

If, in other words, any genuine ethic is possible, if it is possible to value people for the sake of themselves, then it is equally possible to value land in the same way. (

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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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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly. Now there is no doubt that the actual treatment of animals used for food is immoral, that animals are made to suffer needlessly.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. First, it may be argued that only animals who can feel pain are not to be eaten. KBJ: Nobody in the animal-rights or animal-liberation movement views intelligence as a morally significant property, at least intrinsically. If not, why not?

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