Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. 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. Nobody wants existing animals to be slaughtered.

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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. The natural environment, unlike individual animals, is inanimate, unconscious, and insentient.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 27, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. I outline two arguments of this sort in what follows in order to illustrate some of the difficulties in evaluating moral vegetarianism.

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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 Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

What the utilitarian who defends human carnivorousness must say, then, is something like this: that the amount of pleasure which humans derive per pound of animal flesh exceeds the amount of discomfort and pain per pound which are inflicted on the animals in the process, all things taken into account. Is this plausible?

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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. The problem is not new.

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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

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?". Cut to a conversation with the contestant.

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Lions Animal Cruelty Cruelty Chickens 100

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 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

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. Indeed, our feeling of revulsion may be so intense that we simply can no longer bring ourselves to eat meat.

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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

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

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

MAY 24, 2009

Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 87 [footnote omitted]) It seems, generally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in suffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome and harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the cheapest and most humane.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

Animal rights is neither progressive nor conservative. Think of all the progressives— Michael Moore , for example—who either eat meat or go out of their way to ridicule vegetarians. Many conservatives care about animals as well as human beings. Instead, it seeks to reform it.

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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 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

OCTOBER 6, 2009

It’s a terrible but ultimately not surprising tale, given the continued lack of self-regulation and the emphasis on profit over safety in the meat industry. The only way the meat industry will change its ways is for people to stop buying ground beef and cause sales to plummet. Starting today, I’m no longer eating ground beef.

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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

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. Consequently, one ought not to eat meat until actual practice is changed. The question that must be raised, however, is how the conclusion not to eat meat follows from this.

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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

JANUARY 2, 2008

Eat right. Stop supporting unnecessary animal cruelty in all of its forms. Now that 2008 has arrived, I'd like once again to encourage new and old readers alike to make this the year that they stop supporting animal cruelty in all of its forms. If you are already a vegetarian, make this the year that you decide to go vegan.

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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 Person

MARCH 29, 2009

There is a general consensus that vegetarianism and veganism are different philosophically. The underlying premise is that you can know what is right (such as me knowing what's right then eating cow flesh in the form of filet mignon for a year), but that by no means will necessarily manifest in your behavior. How about this?

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

McWilliams highlights the true environmental costs of eating meat: The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. The Bottom Line: One cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist.

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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.

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