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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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 18, 2013

My only hint that this program — actually a Fuji TV production rebroadcast by the Canadians — was based on literature was the theme song, which promised “the stories you’ve read about all come to life.” Children’s programming concocted by educators instead of marketers was ok, and so were nature programs.

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Animal Person

JULY 22, 2009

What about Bittman's shoes and suits and household products, not to mention those of the woman across the street? I'm not talking about morality here, I'm talking about language. And the real question is, is there thought--or is there morality-without language? Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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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. milk production. The question arises: Why should such indirect causal influence have any moral import? Consequently, a moral principle and what might seem like an inconsistent practice can be consistent given other appropriate beliefs.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Most interesting for me was the mental lock most people have that we vegans are always looking to break or find the key to: Why do good people who understand what happens to animals for unnecessary products such as “steak” or eggs, continue to consume such things? The campaign to moralize meat has largely been a failure.

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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.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Each of us can help bring an end to these terrible things by not eating animals, not wearing animals, not purchasing products tested on animals, and not consuming animal products.

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Animal Person

JULY 26, 2009

I mean, where do they get their morals from? Luckily, I think I've found a way to assuage my conscience about all of the suffering, environmental devastation and negative health impacts of eating animal products all day. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language. How do they know what's right?

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2015

Forty years ago, the suggestion that nonhuman animals have moral rights—indeed, many of the same rights as human beings—would have been met with incredulous stares, if not outright ridicule. Fast forward to the present. Other results from this Gallup poll can be found here.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 7, 2019

Many essays, especially in the later sections, end with a question, hopefully getting us to think more about questions of ethics, conservation, and the puzzles posed by nature. The sections are also labeled according to the months of the year, the idea being that the book will take us through a year of birding.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2015

Forty years ago, the suggestion that nonhuman animals have moral rights—indeed, many of the same rights as human beings—would have been met with incredulous stares, if not outright ridicule. Fast forward to the present. Other results from this Gallup poll can be found here. Note from KBJ: This post is by Mylan Engel.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2008

It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one.

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 17, 2014

But the tenets of the North American Model were developed in the 19th century, when wildlife ethics and science were a mere glimmer of what we understand today. The system was intended as a hunter-centric model, both guided by and benefitting consumptive interests. But is there validity to these commonly held ideas?

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

The predicament in such a non-moral case will concern only the individual and a few associates. When the ultimate values concerned are moral ones, on the other hand, and more particularly altruistic ones, the case is different; for the individual in such a dilemma has all society on his conscience. It need not.

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Animal Person

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Yet he spends time describing the miserable deaths of day-old male chicks and understands what happens in dairy production, and I assume he doesn't partake of anyone's eggs or milk. There's not enough evidence for an accusation of moral relativism, but for me the message is a mixed one. Tags: Activism Books Ethics Language.

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Animal Person

MARCH 9, 2010

To rest easy, those who buy or sell products from nonhuman bodies must forget that each victim suffered personal loss of freedom, well-being, and life" (140). I'd rather extend moral consideration to something that can't suffer than fail to extend it to someone who can" (154). Tags: Activism Books Ethics Language.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

Beyond the environmental impacts of meat production there is a basic ethical issue involved. To suggest that eating one and not the other represents a conflict of ethics is preposterous. In the name of moral consistency I became a vegetarian four years ago. 31), while humorous enough, masks more serious issues.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

There are two approaches a vegetarian might take in arguing that rearing and killing animals for food is morally offensive. He might argue that eating animals is morally bad because of the pain inflicted on animals in rearing and killing them to be eaten. Or he could object to the killing itself.

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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. One cannot produce eggs or dairy products on a large scale without the wholesale exploitation of animals.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Perhaps it is the industry's inability to evolve morally that is behind the times. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language ALF Animal Agriculture Alliance Animal Rights Animal welfare ELF HSUS PeTA SHAC Vegan education veganism. Besides, is the "modern" veal crate something to be proud of?

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Their ethological needs and direct interests are neglected to the extent that their needs are not as congruent with higher productivity and profit. Though factory-farming and biotechnological techniques massively violate the moral rights of farm animals, they have no remedy. Farm animals are treated essentially as raw materials.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

Since morally decent individuals oppose treating animals inhumanely for no good reason, factory farming is becoming an increasingly hard sell. According to the HPMAJ column, "Loos told cattle producers the livestock industry must show the public that there are moral and ethical justifications for taking the life of an animal to feed a person.

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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. 22, 2009 To the Editor: I am an ethical vegan. Mr. Steiner rightly rejects this view as morally flawed.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

There is no doubt a good deal of truth in this last point as well, and we are here presented with a serious moral problem concerning the world food supply. Michael Fox , "'Animal Liberation': A Critique," Ethics 88 [January 1978]: 106-18, at 116-7) But even this fails to establish a case for vegetarianism.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 7, 2008

This is a moral principle, and states that 'the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being'. According to Singer , the principle of the equal consideration of interests 'requires us to be vegetarians'.

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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

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

I served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which released a report in 2008 that detailed exactly how much these “efficiencies” are costing America. 20, 2012 To the Editor: Blake Hurst asserts that “production methods should not cause needless suffering,” but the position he takes does just that.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 21, 2007

March 14, 2007 To the Editor: Contrary to the assertions in Nicolette Hahn Niman’s attack on modern pork production, America’s 67,000 pork producers treat their animals humanely. They do so because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do, and it’s in their best economic interest. Catherine di Lorenzo Woodbine, Ga.,

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 2, 2008

b) Stop eating animal products. (c) e) Don’t purchase cosmetics or personal care products that were tested on animals when equally effective cruelty-free products are available. (f) f) Don’t purchase cosmetics or personal care products that contain animal ingredients. (g)

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 5, 2007

To the Editor: “ A Factory Farm Near You ” (editorial, July 31) does not mention any issue of the morality of factory farming—treating living beings as factory products. Cruelty to animals on such a scale should be the centerpiece of any discussion on raising animals for food.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 15, 2006

As such, they are likely to be better moral reasoners , as well, both in their ability to identify moral reasons and in their ability to appreciate these reasons. Given their knowledge of nutrition already hinted at in Gale's reasoning above, they realize that no one needs to eat animals or animal products in order to be healthy.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2006

b) Stop eating animal products. (c) e) Don’t purchase cosmetics or personal care products that were tested on animals when equally effective cruelty-free products are available. (f) f) Don’t purchase cosmetics or personal care products that contain animal ingredients. (g)

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I have had no other animal products (no beef, pork, lamb, or turkey, for example) since 1982. That depends on whether there are morally relevant differences between chickens and fish on the one hand and cows, pigs, and sheep on the other. (I Surely that counts for something, morally. I, for example, am a demi-vegetarian.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 14, 2007

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about pork production. Perhaps she would argue that there is no double standard, i.e., that there is a morally relevant difference between human animals and nonhuman animals that justifies the difference in treatment. She simply wants to minimize their suffering before they are killed (painlessly?)

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 30, 2012

For example, the Treaty of Amsterdam that came into force on May 1, 1999, formally acknowledged that nonhuman animals are “sentient beings” and not merely goods or agricultural products. Properly interpreted, the common law is meant to be flexible, adaptable to changes in public morality, and sensitive to new scientific discoveries.

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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. Henry S.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 6, 2009

But for more than 20 years, consumer groups led by Public Citizen have worked to scare the public about food irradiation and threatened to boycott companies that market irradiated products. Coli Shows Flaws in Ground Beef Inspection System ” (front page, Oct. 4): Your article about E. Serge Scherbatskoy Arcata, Calif.,

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