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On ANIMAL EQUALITY, by Joan Dunayer

Animal Person

Dunayer devotes a chapter each to the language used in hunting, zoos, "marine parks," vivisection and "animal agriculture." I haven't examined each institutionalized use of animals the way that Dunayer has, with the possible exception of vivisection, and I learned a lot about the details of the language of each industry.

Animal 100
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On SPECIESISM, by Joan Dunayer

Animal Person

"environmentalists" would have to value the life of an Atlantic salmon more than the life of a human because, in environmental terms, there are too few Atlantic salmons and far too many humans. To old-speciesists, nonhumans must justify their existence by proving useful to humans; in contrast, some or all humans have inherent value.

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How to Confront Cruelty

Critter News

The norm of moderate concern for animals - that animals matter albeit less than humans - permits the (ab)use of animals in vivisection, factory farming, bloodsports and other contexts where animals suffer.

Cruelty 100
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Where Does Entertainment Begin and End?

Animal Person

Vamsee Juluri, Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, takes me back to graduate school when he writes of the importance of the stories we tell ourselves in " Use Free Speech to Celebrate Animal Life, Not to Enjoy Their Suffering." Isn't the mere existence of violence and suffering sufficient?

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Deconstructing Slate's "Pepper" Series

Animal Person

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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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the History of Animal Cruelty

Animal Ethics

The degree of restriction placed on human behavior, furthermore, is relatively slight. Whereas it once used to be argued, as by Newman , that the least human good compensates for any possible amount of animal suffering, the current doctrine is that it requires a considerable good to compensate for such suffering.

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John Passmore (1914-2004) on the Moral Status of Animals

Animal Ethics

And by this they mean not only that it is wrong to enjoy torturing animals—which few moralists would ever have wished explicitly to deny, however little emphasis they might have placed on cruelty to animals in their moral teaching—but that it is wrong to cause them to suffer unnecessarily. That, on the whole, is the Christian tradition.

Morals 40