THE INTENTIONAL KILLING OF FIELD ANIMALS AND ETHICAL VEGANISM

Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, 2021

“Veganism” is most commonly associated with concern for animal welfare or animal rights. However, veganism can also be justified from an ecological perspective centered on anthropocentric considerations of justice or collective self-interest. Concerns for individual animals and for the environment converge, not least because animal husbandry has a large impact on anthropogenic global heating. This entry focusses on veganconsumerism as a means by which to minimize harm to animals, humans, and the environment. It entertains a broad understanding of vegan consumerism that also covers attempts to influence political decision-making. The use of animals is a legally authorized and institutionalized practice, which means that one must consider both responsibility within consumer interactions, and responsibility to reform social institutions and structures. Reforming or eliminating practices that harm animals would require collective action to create more just national and international laws and institutions. Likewise, slowing climate change requires institutional solutions and collectively binding decisions concerning different societal sectors, including agriculture. Governments arguably bear a primary responsibility to ensure climate justice and the morally appropriate treatment of animals and are consequently obliged to strive for international coordination and cooperation. Industry lobbyists attempt to obscure this with deflection campaigns that shift moral responsibility from governments and companies to individuals. But this does not imply that consumers bear no responsibilities at all with regard to climate and animal justice. Governmental, corporate, and consumer responsibilities are complementary in principle, and each warrant an in-depth treatment. This entry is restricted to a discussion of the responsibilities of individuals for the moral consideration of animals and climate justice – not only in consumer interactions, but also in theirpolitical roles as citizens. It addresses the overarching question of whether concern for animals, human rights, and/or climate justice entails weighty moral reasons to adopt a vegan lifestyle. This entry proceeds as follows. First, veganism is situated within the broader field of ethical consumerism. Second, a variety of motivations and justifications for veganism are detailed. Last, criticisms of vegan consumerism are discussed.

This paper discusses Peter Singer's strict ethical vegetarianism. I argue that utilitarianism does not provide sufficient grounds for vegetarianism to be presented as an ethical obligation. I argue that the boycott style of vegetarianism advocated by Singer is not an effective means of reducing the suffering experienced by animals and, finally, demonstrate that the proper application of the principle of utility to our dietary choices requires the consumption of both ethically sourced meats and roadkill.

Animals, 2020

In their daily practices, many ethical vegans choose what to eat, wear, and buy among a range of options that is limited to the exclusion of animal products: the idea of using such products is not ordinarily rejected, but does not occur as a possibility at all. In other cases, when confronted with the possibility of consuming animal products, vegans have claimed to reject it by saying that it would be impossible for them to do so. I refer to this overlooked phenomenon as 'moral impossibility'. An analysis of moral impossibility in animal ethics shows that it arises when one's very conception of 'what animals are' shifts: through encounter with other animals (physical presence) or when individuals learn in an engaged way about animals and what happens to them in production facilities (imaginative presence). This establishes a link between increased knowledge, understanding, and imaginative exploration on the one hand, and the exclusion, not of the choice, but of the very possibility of using animals as resources on the other. Taking seriously moral impossibility in veganism has two important consequences: one is that the debate around veganism needs to shift from choice and decision, toward an analysis of concepts and moral framing; the other is that moral psychology is no longer to be understood as empirical psychology plus ethical analysis, but the contents of psychological findings are themselves influenced and framed by moral reflection.

WIREs Climate Change, 2020

In this article, we review an array of positions in the contemporary literature that concern the moral reasons for vegan consumerism. We situate veganism within the broader field of ethical consumerism, present a variety of motivations and justifications for veganism and discuss criticisms of vegan consumerism. The arguments presented in the article ultimately pertain to the question of whether concerns for animals, human rights or climate justice entail strong moral reasons to adopt a vegan lifestyle. Additionally, we address issues of particular relevance for political philosophy, such as whether organized vegan consumer campaigns are a politically legitimate means to strive for structural change. We hope to show that there are anthropocentric as well as animal-centred reasons that speak in favour of radically reformed human-animal relations, including diets that are at least predominantly plant-based.

Food Ethics, 2022

New omnivorism is a term coined by Andy Lamey to refer to arguments that-paradoxically-our duties towards animals require us to eat some animal products. Lamey's claim to have identified a new, distinctive position in food ethics is problematic, however, for some of his interlocutors are not new (e.g., Leslie Stephen in the nineteenth century), not distinctive (e.g., animal welfarists), and not obviously concerned with eating animals (e.g., plant neurobiologists). It is the aim of this paper to bolster Lamey's argument that he has identified a novel, unified, and intriguing position (or set of positions) in animal ethics and the philosophy of food. We distinguish new omnivorism from four other non-vegan positions and then differentiate three versions of new omnivorism based on the kinds of animal products they propose we consume. We conclude by exploring a range of argumentative strategies that could be deployed in response to the new omnivore.

Journal of Political Ecology

Many political ecologists and geographers study ethical diets but most are curiously silent on the topic of death in the food system, specifically what or who is allowed to live and what is let die in the "doing of good." This article aims to show how the practice of eating produces the socio-ecological harm most ethical consumers set out to avoid with their dietary choices. I examine the food systems that produce ethical products for 1) the hierarchical ordering of consumer health in the Global North over the health and well-being of workers in the Global South and 2) how vegetarianism involves the implicit privileging of some animals over others. The article takes take a genealogical approach to the political ecology of food ethics using Black and Indigenous studies in conversation with animal geographies. I draw on Mbembe's (2016) necropolitics, Weheliye's (2014) "not quite human" and Lowe's (2015) critique of humanism to develop a conceptual frame...

2016

In this essay, we argue for dietary veganism. 1 Our case has two steps. First, we argue that, in most circumstances, it is morally wrong to raise animals to produce meat, dairy products, most eggs (a possible exception we discuss is eggs from pet chickens) and most other animal food products. Turning animals into food, and using them for their byproducts, causes serious harms to animals that are morally unjustified: that is, the reasons given to justify causing these kinds of harmsgoods or alleged goods that result from animal farming and slaughterare inadequate to justify the bad done to animals. This is true for both conventional 'factory farming' methods of raising and killing animals and small-scale, boutique animal farming and slaughter: so-called 'humane' farming is actually inhumane and is wrong. Some will conclude from this argument that each individual has a moral obligation to be vegan because they are morally obligated to not support wrongdoing. Our second step supports that reasoning. It is often morally wrong to support those who act wrongly. So, when it is wrong to produce a particular product, it can be wrong to purchase or use that product or otherwise encourage the product's production. We develop a plausible general moral principle concerning when consumers are obligated not to purchase a product. This principle justifies a moral obligation to not support the wrongful treatment of animals by purchasing or consuming animal food products. Thus, it's wrong to not be a vegan. We discuss a variety of attempts to explain why these harms to animals are morally justified, that is, alleged good reasons to justify treating animals badly. Focusing on some of the most philosophically challenging justifications, we argue that none succeed: no defense points to goods that justify the serious harms done to animals, and so these harms are unjustified. Arguments for veganism often appeal to many other considerations, such as personal and public health, environmental protection, and world hunger, but our arguments do not appeal to them. Some of these concerns support steps toward veganism but, unlike harm-based concerns, 1 While the focus of our essay is on our dietary obligations, we believe our arguments can be extended to 'lifestyle veganism,' e.g., not buying and wearing leather and not buying and using personal care products tested on animals. Unlike arguments for veganism that appeal to 'equality' for animals, animal 'rights' or the 'moral status' or 'standing' of animals, 4 this argument depends on an uncontroversial moral principle that most people already accept: it is wrong to cause serious harms that are morally unjustified. 5,6 We use the concept of 'harm' in a regular, everyday sense. To harm someone is to make them worse off in some way. 7 Harms are bad for someone, at least when the harms are considered in themselves. We focus on harms because of their explanatory power in ethics. Imagine some of the worst ways that individuals can be treated. Why are these actions wrong? What is it about these actions that made them wrong? One fundamental answer is that the individuals affected by the action are harmed by them, it is bad for them to be treated those ways. 8 When we add that these harms lack justificationeither there was no benefit from the action, or too little of a benefit to justify the harm, or a benefit or good that otherwise does not

2013

Are animals not ours to use? According to proponents of veganism such as Gary Francione, any and all use of animals by humans is exploitative and wrong. It is wrong because animals have intrinsic worth and humans' use of animals fails to respect that worth. Contra Francione, I argue that that there are conditions under which it may be morally appropriate to collect, consume, sell, or otherwise use animal products. Francione is mistaken in his belief that assigning intrinsic worth to a being is impossible if said being is also conceived as a resource. Using and (non-instrumental) valuing are not mutually exclusive; if they were, many if not most human relationships would be deemed morally unacceptable. Through a series of thought experiments involving intra-human relationships, I suggest that moral condemnation of relationships within which a less dependent party regularly takes from a more dependent party is indefensible. In fact, relationships of use between asymmetrically dependent parties are essential to the functioning of cooperative society, and are therefore desirable. My aims with this article are to convince readers of the need to reject principled veganism, and to garner support for new philosophical accounts of morally appropriate human-nonhuman animal relationships.

The ethical food movement signals a significant transformation of cultural consciousness in its recognition of the intimate politics of what we eat and what kind of socio-political systems we sustain. The recent resurgence of economic localization exemplifies a grass roots attempt to undermine the hegemony of transnational corporations and build ecologically and economically sustainable communities. Social justice plays a key role in the guiding philosophies of these movements, and yet, while many ecocritical discourses examine the uncomfortable relationship of anthropocentricism and sustainability, some contemporary texts of the ethical food movement evidence a reluctant embrace of omnivorous eating, while simultaneously indicating a gendered, if ironic, machismo at odds with the principles of ethical eating. An analysis of the rhetoric of three popular nonfiction books that construct a similar narrative of the story of meat—Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Susan Bourette’s Meat, a Love Story, and Scott Gold’s The Shameless Carnivore—reveals an attempt by these authors to naturalize what is essentially an economic and lifestyle activity. Working within a vegetarian ecofeminist framework, though recognizing that multiple compelling philosophical positions exist for considering the ethics of meat eating, this paper intends to argue, not that “ethical” and “omnivorous” are contradictory terms, but rather that a moral ambivalence prevails in these texts despite these authors’ claims to the contrary. In elucidating these authors’ reactions to their own participation in “the omnivore’s dilemma” this paper pinpoints those areas where a resistance to a deeper examination of human-nonhuman relations is in operation.