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Meat, Cancer, and the Cumulative Case for Ethical Vegetarianism

Animal Ethics

Even the most ardent defenders of the morality of using animals for food and as “tools” in scientific experiments admit that premises (1) and (2) are true and acknowledge that (1) and (2) capture something central to our moral relationship to animals. Premise (4) is widely acknowledged. Trivial or insignificant reasons won’t do.

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Prima Facie vs. Ultima Facie Wrongness

Animal Ethics

But the wrongness and vileness of factory farming does not show that eating meat is morally wrong, because it is theoretically possible to raise animals outdoors in idyllic settings, to give them wonderful, enjoyable, rich lives, and then after 6 months to a year of such blissful existence, to kill them entirely painlessly.