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

APRIL 16, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Glass-Walled Slaughter Houses Mel Morse, former president of the Humane Society of the United States, once remarked: “If every one of our slaughter houses were constructed of glass this would be a nation of vegetarians.”

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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. She portrays them as adolescents. “In

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Animal Person

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

The Factual table I posted yesterday annoyed me a bit, and here's why: the categories "vegan," "vegetarian," and "vegan-friendly." Whether or not vegetarians equate that fact with "friendly" is a different story--it's the people at the establishment who think they're being "friendly." Vegan: Got it. Which brings me to.

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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. At no point will we speculate about Martin’s motives.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 15, 2006

According to this study published today in the British Journal of Medicine , "Higher IQ at age 10 years was associated with an increased likelihood of being vegetarian at age 30." The study itself doesn't explain why individuals with higher IQs are more likely to be vegetarians as adults, but Catharine L.

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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

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. Vegan vegetarians who eat only vegetables, fruit, and nuts do not completely remove all microorganisms from their food, even with repeated cleaning.

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Critter News

MAY 26, 2009

You see people shut down if you talk about how a rat can suffer," says Chad Sandusky, director of toxicology and research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that fights for animal rights and advocates vegetarianism. Tags: rats animal experimentation laboratories medical research.

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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. The case for ethical vegetarianism starts with several uncontroversial premises. It is not just a few outspoken animal rights fanatics who hold this view. We all do.

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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. Do they suffer any more or less in death? It's a bit difficult to take on the soul question for human or nonhuman animals, particularly for an atheist. Are they any more or less sentient? I think not.

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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

MARCH 29, 2009

There is a general consensus that vegetarianism and veganism are different philosophically. Hence the psychological continuum described (below) by Austria's Association Against Animal Factories from about a year ago. Why can't you talk about the right to freedom when you're showing a caged animal? ). How about this?

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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. But they too lead one to accept "ethical meat" as an option because their focus is on suffering.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Bea directed me to an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Parker , the "chair man " (my emphasis) of the Animal Agriculture Alliance at CattleNetwork, which apparently is "The Source for Cattle News." If any "drastic measures" are employed, they are to remove animals from suffering, not to impose our dietary choices on others.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 3, 2008

In setting out to write this paper, my intention was to fill a gap in my book Animal Liberation. There I argued that the interests of animals ought to be considered equally with our own interests and that from this equality it follows that we ought to become vegetarian.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Do they suffer any more or less in death? There is a rational, and for some people a spiritual, case for being a vegetarian: Killing animals is wrong. I repeat: If you eat meat (I'd say: products that come from animals) , you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (i.e.,

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 31, 2010

By carrying out a slaughter system that greatly reduces the suffering of chickens, Bell & Evans and Mary’s Chickens show that animal welfare and good business go hand in hand. While ever more consumers are going vegetarian or vegan, almost every consumer is demanding that companies take steps to reduce animal suffering.

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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

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

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

This passage puzzles me: Unsurprisingly, I believe it is wrong to inflict pain and death unnecessarily on a creature capable of suffering. Peter Singer more broadly examines the moral standing of animals here.) Why does this belief not "compel us to be vegetarians"? Is meat-eating necessary?

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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

MAY 4, 2008

It does not settle such questions as to whether it is right to kill them if they are a burden or if they are enduring pointless suffering, but it does bear in an important way on such questions. Similarly, important conclusions follow from the question as to whether animals have rights.

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Animal Person

MARCH 18, 2010

As someone who's about to have a one-year old in her life, I was particularly aware of the part animals play in the lives of the children and how animals are talked about. Also, the have families (as if other animals don't). All animals except the dog are called "it" (I did a little experiment to see what would happen).

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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

JANUARY 2, 2011

I propose that the moral significance of the suffering, mutilation, and death of non-human animals rests on the following, which may be called the overflow principle: Act towards that which, while not itself a person, is closely associated with personhood in a way coherent with an attitude of respect for persons.

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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 Ethics

JULY 7, 2008

What have humane people to say to the tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted in the interests of the Table? Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 42 [italics in original])

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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. With regard to cruelty and suffering, it's clear from the film that the human animal has been profoundly negatively affected by climate change, but there is no attention given to nonhuman animals.

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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

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

AUGUST 17, 2008

The plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a very common one with flesh-eaters, but it must be pointed out that what-might-be can afford no exemption from moral responsibility for what-is. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 51-2 [italics in original])

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

If we judge this moral elite by its adherence to something like the Golden Rule of the New Testament, there is not all that much room for its improvement, except, as I suggested earlier, for the extension of our moral sympathies to nonhuman animals. I am myself not so heroic.

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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. Life without meat seems unbearable to them.

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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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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. Mr. Kristof is attuned to issues of human suffering and injustice.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

But this question of Butchery is not merely one of kindness or unkindness to animals, for by the very facts of the case it is a human question of no slight importance, affecting as it does the social and moral welfare of those more immediately concerned in it.

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