Author's Introduction
- If you care about animals, you should eat them. It is not just that you may do so, but you should do so. In fact, you owe it to animals to eat them. It is your duty. Why? Because eating animals benefits them and has benefitted them for a long time. Breeding and eating animals is a very long-standing cultural institution that is a mutually beneficial relationship between human beings and animals. We bring animals into existence, care for them, rear them, and then kill and eat them. From this, we get food and other animal products, and they get life. Both sides benefit. I should say that by ‘animals’ here, I mean nonhuman animals. It is true that we are also animals, but we are also more than that, in a way that makes a difference.
Author NarrativeNotes
- I found the first half of the paper very convincing: that well-kept farm animals have - on balance – a life worth living, which would not be lived were they not bred for the purpose of being eaten. Also, that most lives – and especially those of wild animals – end pretty dreadfully, so the ultimate slaughter of farm animals isn't a serious objection unless death is an objection to all life (but see "Benatar (David) - Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence").
- I wasn’t so impressed by the second half; trying to argue for human exclusivism based on rights. My thoughts are more that it has to do with plans: humans don’t just live from day to day, at least not when they are flourishing, and the badness of death – for a human being – has much to do with the curtailment of their plans.
- There was no mention of "Ishiguro (Kazuo) - Never Let Me Go".
- Some interesting discussion of Pigs. See "De Waal (Frans) - Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved" and Lori Marino – “Thinking Pigs: A Comparative Review of Cognition, Emotion,
and Personality in Sus domesticus” (downloaded but not yet in my database!).
- There are lots of comments (169, a fair few suppressed for contravening the guidelines!). Unfortunately, the vast majority are worthless rants. The author is very patient with them.
- See "Zangwill (Nick) - Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat" for the author's published paper on this topic.
Comment:
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