Animal Person

JANUARY 23, 2010

A couple of years ago I catalogued the dozens of excuses/rationalizations from well-meaning, compassionate people about why they eat animals, and all fell into one of six categories: It's what god wanted (and other versions, such as: That's why they were put on the earth. God thinks vegetarians are evil, and we want to please god.

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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 Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. SOME PROBLEMS OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM With respect to traditional moral vegetarianism some problems immediately come to the fore. Who exactly is not supposed to eat animals or products of animals?

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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. I suspect that many readers of this blog are Christians but not vegetarians. KBJ: There are different reasons to abstain from meat.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

A great number of animals owe their lives to our intention to eat them. If we value animal life and animal comfort, therefore, we should endorse our carnivorous habits, provided it really is life , and not living death, on which those habits feed. Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Brutalization The previous argument was based on an alleged indirect effect on human beings of not eating meat. It is argued that the killing and eating of meat indirectly tends to brutalize people.

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Animal Person

JUNE 23, 2010

The commentator says that part of her winnings will go to abolish animal cruelty (yes, abolish). Interviewer: "Are you a vegetarian?". Interviewer: "Wait, so you want to abolish animal cruelty, except for chickens and fish, (pointing at the contestant) because she doesn't like them?". Now you kill turkeys, chickens, fish and--".

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian premises, or he tries to supplement or replace his utilitarianism with some plausible non-utilitarian principles implying the wrongfulness of rearing and killing animals for food. Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian grounds or the vegetarian argues on nonutilitarian grounds.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Some go vegetarian first, then vegan. Then there's me, going vegetarian then vegan, and then eating filet mignon and salmon for a year before going vegan again, and my husband who went vegan overnight after being an omnivore for 38 years. We all know junk-food vegans and vegans who eat "faux meat" products every day.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 21, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Superior Aliens’ Invasion John Harris advances the following consideration to show the immorality of eating meat. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat animals you breed, keep, and kill for food?

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Hal Herzog’s “ Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat ” (Harper 2011), though fascinating, is ultimately depressing for vegans and animal rights activists. Over at Animal Rights and AntiOppression , we’ve been discussing tactics and sharing our thoughts and experiences about what works and doesn’t work when it comes to advocacy.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). product that comes from an animal ). The theory is sound.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

He writes: There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). Do they suffer any more or less in death? I think not.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 18, 2011

I was going to change Animal Person to Vegan Atheist 40+ Parenting and come back to blogging. Doesn't have a ring to it at all, but a young man at Whole Foods yesterday called himself an "animal person" while ordering a roast beef wrap and I thought: Note to self-must change blog name if going to resume blogging.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 30, 2009

Here’s another self-interested reason to not eat meat: Drug-resistant bacteria are routinely found in beef, chicken, and pork sold in supermarkets. To find out more of what the meat industry and pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know, read this Associated Press column by Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 15, 2009

According to Stephanie Woodard's column in Prevention published today, the CDC reports that "certain types of MRSA infections kill 18,000 Americans per year—more than die from AIDS." Just how prevalent is MRSA-infected meat? The most obvious way to limit your risk of contracting MRSA is this: Don't handle or consume meat.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 4, 2009

A second vegetarian strategy is simply to reject as immoral the balancing of animal pains against human pleasures. For a vegetarian to employ a deontological stop against those who defend the eating of meat would be to guarantee that vegetarian views will remain, and deserve to remain, the exclusive property of a sect.

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Animal Person

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

There was no meaningful discussion about our inefficient use of resources (grain and water) in the feeding of animals to kill to feed people. And the wife says that one thing the family does is eat less meat and eggs (and they raise the animals on their land), but even that is glossed over.

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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. a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Beyond the environmental impacts of meat production there is a basic ethical issue involved. So here is an even more modest proposal than roasting Fido: Try eating only what animals you are willing to kill with your own hands. Dogs were bred to be companion animals; pigs and cows are raised as food.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

To the Editor: Re “ Animal, Vegetable, Miserable ,” by Gary Steiner (Op-Ed, Nov. 22): Mr. Steiner might feel less lonely as an ethical vegan—he says he has just five vegan friends—if he recognized that he has allies in mere vegetarians (like me), ethical omnivores and even carnivores. Jean Kazez Dallas, Nov. Jean Kazez Dallas, Nov.

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 27, 2008

To the Editor: Re “ PETA’s Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat ” (news article, April 21): The commercial development of meat from animal tissue won’t result in “fake meat” any more than cloning sheep results in fake sheep. A more accurate name for the end result would therefore be “clean meat.”

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'. 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

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

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof, who takes note of the trend represented by the animal welfare proposition on the ballot in California this fall. It’s time that our tax dollars no longer finance the inhumane conditions—for workers and animals and the climate—of factory farms. To the Editor: Re “ A Farm Boy Reflects ” (column, July 31): Hats off to Nicholas D.

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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. Finally, if you know someone who gravitates toward the philosophical issues around our use of animals, this is a good book. He always refers to himself and his wife and his child as "vegetarian."

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. What Meat Should Not Be Eaten? What is forbidden meat? Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. Vegetarians may attempt to justify the eating of microorganisms in three different ways.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 4, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. In fact, animals used for food do suffer a great deal. Not only are they killed in cruel ways, but it is well documented that they are raised in ways that cause them great discomfort and agony. Consequently, one ought not to eat meat.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 6, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. According to this argument, the view that eating the meat of nonhuman animals is morally permissible but eating the meat of human beings is morally forbidden is analogous to racism or sexism. For this another argument is needed.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 16, 2010

Keith: As a historian or even an anthropologist, one could make the argument that being a vegetarian limits one's ability to understand other cultures. I, like you, am not a complete vegetarian. What if it's customary to allow guests to torture or kill one of the tribe? Food is such an important part of history.

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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. In his fresh and candid first post (available here ), Jonathan admitted that he is struggling with the issue of ethical vegetarianism.

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