Question Dear philosophers, I'd currently call myself a 'pseudo-vegetarian', in that I don't eat meat, but I do eat fish and dairy foods, and use other products derived from animals (e.g. leather, wool). I became a vegetarian when I was five; arguably, when it was easier for me to hold a black-and-white moral viewpoint. I would now like to re-evaluate my vegetarianism, so that I can make an informed and (hopefully) ethically coherent decision about the foods I eat and the products I use. Are there any books you could recommend for me to read? I studied some philosophy at university, and would be interested in reading some balanced discussions of animal rights, vegetarianism and veganism. Thank you for reading this e-mail, and thank you in advance for your help.

Accepted:
April 1, 2009

Comments

It's hard to find books that are "balanced" or nuanced. For the most part, people who address the ethics of animal use tend to be on the extreme ends of the spectrum. They are for some sort of radical equality between humans and animals, or they think there are no major problems with the way we now treat animals. There's the further problem that books about animals and ethics tend to look at the big picture instead of the details. Thus, the quite interesting issues about meat vs. fish vs. dairy vs. leather tend not to be dealt with.

The book that comes closest to meeting your needs (that I can think of) is The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Singer is the author of Animal Liberation and by all means a staunch animal advocate, but this is a rather nuanced book, and it's also very practical. It's really about the decisions we all make in our daily lives. The authors look at the ethics of eating "humane" animal products (vs. none or factory farmed), they look at dairy, eggs, and the issue of seafood, and also at environmental and workplace issues. The book's message is really more about "better and worse" choices, as opposed to good vs. evil.

By the way, maybe you don't need to call yourself a pseudo-vegetarian. How about, instead, a "doing your best" vegetarian?

Given the difficulty in finding balanced treatments of these issues, you might try to achieve a balance of your own by reading people with strong opinions on either side of the issue. So in addition to reading Singer's Animal Liberation, which is the classic statement of the position in favor of animal rights, you might also read Peter Carruthers' The Animals Issue, which argues that animals do not have moral standing.