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Moral Vegetarianism, Part 6 of 13

Animal Ethics

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.”

Morals 40
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Moral Vegetarianism, Part 11 of 13

Animal Ethics

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. Nobody wants existing animals to be slaughtered.

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Jan Narveson on Moral Vegetarianism

Animal Ethics

And the other is taking up vegetarianism. But what about the vegetarian alternative? How do we know but what, once we got used to a vegetarian diet, we would find that our pleasure is scarcely diminished at all? Here what one needs to do is calculate the pleasure, interest, satisfaction, etc.,

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Philip E. Devine on Vegetarianism

Animal Ethics

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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Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on "Humane Slaughter"

Animal Ethics

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. Salt , The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 51-2 [italics in original])

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Meat, Cancer, and the Cumulative Case for Ethical Vegetarianism

Animal Ethics

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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R. G. Frey on Feeling and Principle

Animal Ethics

In other words, we become vegetarians, not through any decision of principle, but through being unable to bring ourselves to continue to dine upon the flesh of animals. What the vegetarian wants, surely, is that we should stop eating meat even if our liking for it exceeds our revulsion at the suffering endured on factory farms.