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 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 Ethics

OCTOBER 22, 2007

Vegetarianism is overdetermined. If all you care about is animals, you should be a vegetarian. If all you care about is the natural environment, you should be a vegetarian. If all you care about is yourself , you should be a vegetarian. If all you care about is human beings, you should be a vegetarian.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 8, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. If so, the lactovo vegetarian should have no qualms about someone’s eating such legs. But keep in mind that many lactovo vegetarians care about how animal products are produced, not just the fact that they are animal products.

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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 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. The contrast would be, for example, “health vegetarianism.”

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 11, 2008

," Andrew Revkin explores the brave new world of growing meat cultures in vitro as a more humane and possibly more environmentally friendly way of producing meat. In his post, Revkin cites Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University. At the same time, try a vegetarian diet for a month.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Several designers, one of whom is a vegetarian, are using parts of dead animals they found on the side of the road to make everything from shoes to hats to cufflinks, which evidently are difficult to produce because "[f]inding two animals who have little heads roughly the same size is just a nightmare.”.

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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.). But as Cohen experiences, humans don't live "in theory." The theory is sound.

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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 Should Not Eat Meat, or What Does a Vegetarian Feed His Dog? Human beings can do without meat.

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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. But it is not clear that it is inconsistent if there is a relevant moral difference between animals and humans not found between humans and superior aliens. Most human beings and presumably all of Harris’s aliens are persons.

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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

NOVEMBER 12, 2010

But what of the many individual failures, it is asked, among those who make trial of Vegetarianism? The doctor looks wise, shakes his head, and informs a sorrowing circle that it is the direct result of "his vegetarianism." Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 114-5)

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

Even if, contrary to fact, none of this feed grain could be used to nourish humans elsewhere in the world, at least the land which yields the grain could be sown with high-protein-yielding crops, such as soybeans, according to Singer. But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 7, 2009

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. So, even if animals are killed painlessly and raised for food in humane ways, it is wrong to kill them. It is also probable that very subnormal adult human beings do not. This would not necessarily mean that animals have no rights.

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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. It is argued that beef cattle and hogs are protein factories in reserve.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 15, 2008

Earlier this year, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced that it will offer a $1 million X Prize for the creation of affordable, humane, and "commercially viable" test-tube meat by 2012. Tags: meat alternatives PETA vegetarian.

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Animal Person

JULY 21, 2009

One manager told PETA Eats that most people prefer the vegetarian lettuce wraps over those with chicken. Oh, the humanity! M: (long, long pause) So the spring rolls, the vegetarian lettuce wraps and the Ma Pa Tofu I've been eating for years are not vegan? Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Food and Drink Language.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 14, 2009

To the so-called ethical, no less than to the political school of thought, the question of Vegetarianism is unwelcome, obtruding as it does on the polite wordiness of academic discussion with an issue so coarsely downright: "You are a member of an Ethical Society—do you live by butchery?"

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 16, 2008

It cannot be too strongly stated that the appeal of Vegetarianism, as of all humane systems, is not to heart alone, nor to brain alone, but to brain and heart combined, and if its claims fail to win this double judgment they are necessarily void and invalid.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 21, 2007

The author, Daniel Lazare, is hostile to vegetarianism. In fact, as anyone with any sense knows, it destroys human life, depriving fetuses of activities, experiences, projects, and enjoyments. Here is an essay from The Nation, which bills itself as " a progressive journal."

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 17, 2008

More barbarous, or less barbarous, such slaughtering may undoubtedly be, according to the methods employed, but the "humane" slaughtering, so much bepraised of the sophist, is an impossibility in fact and a contradiction in terms.

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Animal Person

DECEMBER 7, 2009

I've also found that there are all kinds of activists and videos and concerts and demonstrations and books that I've never even heard of, that cause omnivores and vegetarians to go vegan. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics. As someone who's about to be a parent, I found him a bit worrisome. But that's just not the way it works.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 21, 2009

My husband has two friends (a male/female couple) who are transitioning from vegetarian to vegan and I also have two friends (both women) who are transitioning from omnivore and all are dreading Thanksgiving. Not humans, not animals." Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Food and Drink Language.

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Animal Person

JULY 9, 2009

I do know people who became vegan (also after watching " Earthlings ") who are now vegetarians, pescetarians and run-of-the-mill omnivores. Just that we humans can know one thing to our core, we can believe it entirely, and yet, we can do what basically is the opposite. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

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. Go vegan, go vegetarian, go humane or just eat less meat. 22, 2009 To the Editor: I am an ethical vegan.

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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 Person

JANUARY 23, 2010

God thinks vegetarians are evil, and we want to please god. If you're going to claim that it was good for Native Americans so it's good for us, please know that they had an ecological ethic that we simply don't share. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Film. Not to be confused with #1, this one comes directly from The Bible.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical. Thousands of studies have demonstrated that human thinking about nearly everything is surprisingly irrational” (65). . Much of the book deals with topics vegans have likely pondered, likely frequently.

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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 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 Ethics

DECEMBER 28, 2010

This last implies of course an improvement in ethics, as opposed to morality, as I have defined it, unless we already understand 'Do as you would be done by' as applicable to whales, cattle, chickens, and so on, as it is to human beings. Smart , "Ethics and Science," Philosophy 56 [October 1981]: 449-65, at 453 [italics in original])

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground. Often confused with American Humane Association, they raise tens of millions, not to ‘save the animals’ as most people assume but to further the causes of vegetarianism and ending animal agriculture."

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Animal Ethics

APRIL 18, 2007

Since a number of "Animal Ethics" readers reside in the northern Illinois area, I thought I would call your attention to an exciting lecture that is taking place on Northern Illinois University's campus. She specializes in Environmental Ethics, Human-Animal Ethics, and Moral Psychology. Jenni, Ph.D.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 12, 2010

Does Vegetarianism progress? Revolution in personal habits, be it remembered, is even more difficult than revolution in political forms, and needs a greater time for its fulfilment; and looked at in this light, Vegetarianism has made as much progress, during the past half-century, as any other cause which aims at so far-reaching a change.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

And I suspect that people become vegetarians for precisely that reason: that by doing so they overcome the residue of guilt that attaches to every form of hubris, and in particular to the hubris of human freedom. Piety is the remedy for religious guilt, and to this emotion we are all witting or unwitting heirs.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 24, 2008

Before leaving this question of "consistency," as affected by the gradations of our duty of humaneness to animals, a few words may be said on the practice of fish-eating. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 57-8 [italics in original])

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