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. What animals is it morally wrong to eat? But what is the extent of the universal moral principle?

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Animal Person

AUGUST 16, 2011

Well, as it turns out neither a trip to a slaughterhouse nor killing an animal yourself is powerful enough to make people go vegan. The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical. He watched cockfighting and killed and skinned animals, but won’t eat veal.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

The animals on farms are created for the sole purpose of human consumption. The next argument is usually something along the lines of: But animals in the wild might starve to death, and get injured, maimed or killed by predators! We can choose not to kill and eat someone we do not need to eat in order to survive.

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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. For example, if one could pick up shed animal legs in a pasture in which animals roam freely among their own kind, there might be no moral objection to eating the legs. They suggest that any simple moral vegetarianism is impossible.

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Animal Person

JUNE 20, 2009

Bea sent me a link to an article in Gourmet called " Humane Slaughterhouses ," by Rebecca Marx, that is absurd. And the absurdity is in the reality that the author and the featured person who kills sentient nonhumans for a living, think they're onto something. It’s how we treat humans, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 17, 2014

A new willingness among scientists to consider certain moral and ethical implications with respect to wild animals, where previously utilitarian ideas prevailed, including ideas of intrinsic value. ” This leads to obvious conflicts with the NAMWC prohibition against the frivolous killing and waste of wildlife.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 7, 2016

Further, did those who reacted so strongly to Harambe’s killing go home and serve meat to their children? It is estimated that due to conflicts with humans, the bushmeat and body parts trade, disease and habitat destruction, large mammals in Africa may be extinct by the end of this century. Finally, what of the audience?

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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. If you eat meat you cannot logically find it morally or ethically repugnant to eat a particular meat (I’m setting cannibalism aside here.). I'll set it aside here.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 3, 2008

The argument for vegetarianism is not based on any claim about the wrongness of killing animals—although some careless reviewers read this claim into my book, no doubt because they assumed that any moral argument for vegetarianism must be based on the wrongness of killing.

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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 Person

JANUARY 6, 2010

I did tweet about " Scientists Say Dolphins Should Be Treated As 'Non-human Persons' " yesterday, as I think this is a Gray Matter for a lot of people and might be interesting to explore. Dolphins are so smart that scientists think they should be treated as "non-human persons" and as such it is "morally unacceptable" to use or kill them.

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Animal Person

MARCH 9, 2010

Minus that role, the term implies, such an animal has no place; if they aren't some human's companion, or their companionship fails to please, they can be abandoned or killed" (8). Often it permanently disables or kills. With equal validity, we could say that a human locked inside a room has 'freedom' from muggers" (75).

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

Then again, so do people who kill animals for a living. After all, they "love" the animals they kill. Nonviolence" is much more difficult to finesse if you're killing animals for a living. Both animal rights groups and animal welfare groups use "compassion" frequently. The Nonviolent Carnivore"? Or vegan pumpkin pie.

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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. Henry S.

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Animal Person

MAY 10, 2009

Latimer refers to his previous two posts where he has "documented the ethical and moral shallowness of the 'animal rights' credo itself, which is based more on an anti-human self hatred, taking the form of a 'moral' squeamishness concerned more with stamping out human 'cruelty,' no matter what the social or economic costs might be.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 31, 2011

26), Seamus McGraw says he has a responsibility to kill deer because there are too many. He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Nothing noble there.

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Animal Ethics

NOVEMBER 24, 2009

Farm animals also benefit from the humane farming movement, even if the animal welfare changes it effects are not all that we should hope and work for. If the goal is not moral perfection for ourselves, but the maximum benefit for animals, half-measures ought to be encouraged and appreciated. This made me feel guilty.

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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. Devine seems to think that if humans cease eating meat, they will derive no pleasure from eating. Philip E.

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4 The Love Of Animals

MARCH 17, 2011

Dogs are able to detect diseases such as cancer and diabetes and warn humans of impending heart attacks and strokes. In many ways, human emotions are the gifts of our animal ancestors. I also watched a red fox bury her mate after a cougar had killed him. Grief in magpies and red foxes: Saying goodbye to a friend.

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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. Thus John Harris's reply to the Benthamite defence of meat-eating is quite simply: 'Those who use it are saying that they think more about their stomach than their morals, and so a moral argument will probably not affect them'.

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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. Causing an animal to suffer for no good reason is cruel, and our ordinary commonsense morality tells us in no uncertain terms that cruelty is wrong. No one disputes premise (3).

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 3, 2008

Its validity is limited by other moral imperatives. The interests in nourishment and in gustatory pleasure lead man to kill and eat cattle, fish, and fowl. But enlightened public opinion in human society approves of man's carnivorous behavior. But sound reason denies that love is the whole duty of man. But few people do this.

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 16, 2007

To inflict death or pain on animals for scientific or medical research is wrong morally, and ought to be prohibited. They may be killed in order to protect the health of humans (and other animals) if they are infected with a serious disease and cannot be quarantined. Animals cannot give consent.

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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

MARCH 14, 2007

Notice that the author is not opposed to the use of nonhuman animals as resources for human consumption. She simply wants to minimize their suffering before they are killed (painlessly?) Notice that we (including, I assume, the author) would never allow such treatment of a human being. and their bodies dismembered and processed.

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Animal Person

MAY 30, 2009

Let's deconstruct: The interview reminds me of how the industry views us and how little they know about the community of people who care about the lives of the animals brought into this world for one reason only: to kill and eat them. The Humane Society of the United States is the big bully on this strange playground.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 17, 2011

It is asking the burger-stuffer to come clean ; to show just why it is that his greed should be indulged in this way, and just where he fits into the scheme of things, that he can presume to kill again and again for the sake of a solitary pleasure that creates and sustains no moral ties.

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Animal Ethics

JANUARY 20, 2007

Here are three paragraphs from a recent essay by Roger Scruton : As I suggested, science provides authority for this weird morality only when clothed in moral doctrine. They, unlike human beings, “return our affection regardless of our merits.” To live with a human being is hard; to live with a mere animal is easy.

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Animal Person

JUNE 8, 2009

For Engber, who dispassionately describes procedures most of the time, the "advances" in the medical care of humans are all well worth what he and other vivisectionists do to dogs and other sentient nonhumans. By the end of my time as researcher, I was performing behavioral experiments on humans. It "guarantees humane treatment?"

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Animal Ethics

MARCH 21, 2007

What we are doing is raising and then killing animals so that we can eat them. If we’re going to raise farm animals and then kill them to eat them, we should say so. They do so because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do, and it’s in their best economic interest. They don’t volunteer. Catherine di Lorenzo Woodbine, Ga.,

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

That system may treat sentient animals like car parts, ruin antibiotics we need for human medicine, and destroy rural communities by polluting our air and water, but at least it’s “efficient” (a word Mr. Hurst hammers three times). The idea that eggs from free-range chickens are somehow morally superior to other eggs is, frankly, weird.

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Animal Ethics

DECEMBER 18, 2006

Currently, I do not believe that killing an animal is prima facie morally wrong. I simply believe that when animals are killed it ought to be for a good purpose, and in a manner that is respectful to their capacity to suffer. I do not believe that the current factory farm system in place lives up to both of those standards.

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Animal Ethics

FEBRUARY 6, 2007

September 7, 2006, a bill banning the slaughter of horses for human consumption( H.R. Since morally decent individuals oppose treating animals inhumanely for no good reason, factory farming is becoming an increasingly hard sell. There is no ethical justification for killing an animal for no good reason.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This precept is variably stated as follows: Avoid killing or harming any living being. One might think that eggs and dairy products are still preferable to meat on the grounds that "At least I am not contributing to the unnecessary killing of animals" but that too is false.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

Since our food is delivered to us on a bun or in big bags of frozen parts, it’s easy to eat it and not think about what it was or how it was killed. We pay lip service to more humane treatment of the animals that we eat, but how many of us look beyond the label on the package of chicken cutlets? We know that animals suffer as well.

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Animal Person

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In this morning's New York Times editorial " There Is No 'Humane' Execution ," we have an imperfect yet nevertheless baby step toward acknowledgment of the HumaneMyth. Let's summarize and deconstruct: After a botched execution, Ohio adopted a single-drug formula to replace the three-drug cocktail previously used to kill people.

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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. The ability to feel pain is not an obviously plausible way of morally distinguishing microorganisms from other organisms. Killing a hog can be avoided.

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