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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Critter News

OCTOBER 26, 2008

I came across this 2005 book from the Society & Animals Journal titled Confronting Cruelty Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Readership: This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the animal rights movement in England, the United States and Australia. Sounds interesting.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Then there are the myriad entry points to thinking about how we use animals and the impact that has on the animals, the planet, our bodies and our consciences. The discussion about the environment usually originates in the massive problems created by the factory farming of sentient nonhumans. because we've done it for years).

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 14, 2007

Notice that the author is not opposed to the use of nonhuman animals as resources for human consumption. She simply wants to minimize their suffering before they are killed (painlessly?) Are the lives of nonhuman animals less important, to them, than your life is to you? and their bodies dismembered and processed.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e., To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism. (

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Animal Person

MAY 6, 2009

The book, which I have not read, that saved Derrick Jensen 's life is called The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith, who was a vegan for 20 years, suffered serious medical problems, and started feeling better when she recommenced eating animals. Throughout the book, Keith mocks vegetarians and vegans.

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Animal Person

JUNE 22, 2009

It's impersonal and hideously ugly and the animals suffer greatly. However, the solution they have created, which harkens back to before industrialized agriculture, is simply to still raise animals for their flesh and secretions, and for profit, but to do it the old-fashioned way. No argument here. It's just not right.

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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. This, however, is precisely what factory farming does.

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Critter News

APRIL 26, 2009

It made me think though about the animal rights movement. Humans get all wrapped up in stories of those who can communicate their sufferings. Animals can't do that. The animals can't say, "This hurts me," "Stop it," or "I have a right to my life." Just the sorry animal rights movement.

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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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Animal Ethics

JULY 21, 2010

July 13, 2010 To the Editor: Today tens of thousands of American farmers don’t even own the livestock they raise, and the conditions they raise animals in are dictated to them by a handful of extremely powerful companies that are concerned only with the bottom line. Gene Gregory President, United Egg Producers Alpharetta, Ga.,

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

An enormous volume of material has already appeared on the conditions under which animals live and die on factory farms, and more is almost certainly on the way. In other words, we become vegetarians, not through any decision of principle, but through being unable to bring ourselves to continue to dine upon the flesh of animals.

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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

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

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof, who takes note of the trend represented by the animal welfare proposition on the ballot in California this fall. And thanks to federal corn and soybean subsidies, factory farms saved an estimated $3.9 Mr. Kristof is attuned to issues of human suffering and injustice.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

What Is an Animal Part? The last example suggests the difficulty of making a clear distinction between an animal part and an animal product. If a genetically engineered animal’s legs periodically fell off, would not its legs be more like a product of an animal (analogous to eggs) than a part of the animal?

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10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 16, 2012

As a result, animals like the Florida panther and diminishing habitats like the prairie grasslands stand a fighting chance. Without adequate funding, habitats are not restored, invasive species are left unchecked, poaching and other illegal activities occur and our nation’s wildlife suffers 1.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

Isn’t it obvious that Morse is trying to explain something, namely, why decent, sensitive people participate in an institution that inflicts a great deal of suffering on animals? It should be noted that people might have strong negative gut reactions to large-scale food preparation having nothing to do with meat or animal products.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2009

Animals raised for food suffer miserably. The overwhelming passage in November of Proposition 2 in California, which banned tight confinement of many of the animals raised for food, is a fine example of the power of publicity to educate people about the atrocities we commit to those animals who have no voice of their own.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 24, 2007

Most people are shocked and appalled when they first read descriptions of factory farming and learn about the horribly inhumane conditions in which the billions of animals destined for dinner tables are raised, and they are even more appalled when they first see documentary footage of the institutional cruelties inherent in factory farming.

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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. Domestic animals are creations of man. This is equally true of caged wild animals.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

My personal perspective regarding Animal Ethics is not fully formed, which is one of the reasons why Keith and I felt it would be a good idea for me to post on here. I have always felt a sense of connection to animals since as far back as I can remember, and the current manner in which they are treated in factory farms disturbs me.

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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. Virtually everyone agrees that: (1) It is wrong to cause a conscious sentient animal to suffer for no good reason. Animal abuse is a crime in all fifty states, and rightly so.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2012

Today I’m exploring a couple questions that have been bouncing in my head for a while…I’d love to hear your thoughts…I’m not calling into question animal rights, just the focus of the movement. – The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive Animal rights. This makes perfect sense.

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 26, 2009

I immensely enjoyed "EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED" (even on the big screen) and eagerly anticipated "EATING ANIMALS" by Jonathan Safran Foer. The good news is that if you know someone who needs to be schooled on all of the sordid details of factory farming, and appreciates good writing, this is a great book. Ever, in fact.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 23, 2007

It is not enough to simply cut animal products (or carbohydrates, or calories) out of one’s diet. Although vegans do not eat foods derived from animals, we do eat everything else—and enjoy a delicious array of high-nutrient foods, including grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits and herbs prepared in tantalizing combinations and textures.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

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. Nobody wants existing animals to be slaughtered.

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Animal Person

MARCH 29, 2009

There is no philosophical continuum, but there is a psychological continuum, as evidenced by everyone at the workshop taking steps back or forward, denoting their increase in animal use (including no meat to meat, or backsliding, like I did a decade ago), or their decrease (such as when vegetarians go vegan).

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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

DECEMBER 15, 2006

If they are like most people, they believe that a world with less unnecessary suffering is intrinsically better than a world with more unnecessary suffering. Given that belief, they no doubt also believe that it is wrong to knowingly contribute to unnecessary suffering. It serves no significant human interest whatsoever.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2008

Jonathan Bennett , "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn," Philosophy 49 [April 1974]: 123-34, at 133 [italics in original]) Note from KBJ: I thought of animals when I read this. Many people exclude animals from moral consideration, even though they would never think to neglect, much less harm, a dog or a cat.

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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. It goes something like this: Yes, I agree that factory farming is morally unjustifiable and ought to be abolished.

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4 The Love Of Animals

JULY 3, 2010

Four lions, rescued by Animal Defenders International (ADI) from a Bolivian circus when the country banned the use of animals in circuses have a new home, and a life of luxury at the ARK 2000 sanctuary in Calaveras County. As with every animal at PAWS, we are committed to providing life-time care.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 24, 2006

According to the HSUS press release, HSUS revealed earlier this week that Burlington Coat Factory was falsely advertising real fur garments as faux fur in newspaper circulars, on its web site, and in store displays at its 350 locations nationwide. One of the questions on the survey is: "Is it morally permissible to kill animals for fur coats?"

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