I think less is more when it comes to explaining why it's wrong to use animals for food. Animals taste good, but that's too trivial a reason for imposing serious harm on them--suffering and death. (As I'm sure you know, in intensive farming laying hens suffer in many ways, and for each layer, a male chick is killed right off the bat. The layers wind up being killed when they stop producing eggs efficiently.) It really doesn't take any fancy talk about rights to see the problem--it's essentially a matter of balance. Great harms can only be justified by great goods--and the pleasure of egg-eating is not a great good. If you were to make this argument, you might encounter a dismissive attitude that says animals don't count at all, so there's no need for balancing harms and goods. But that attitude is pretty superficial--people tend to give it up when you talk to them about their cats and dogs. No doubt they would taste good too. You might also encounter the thought that it must at least matter ...

I think you would really enjoy a new anthology from Wiley-Blackwell-- Hunting . It is written largely by and for hunters, and looks at the sort of ethical questions you raise in a way you will find hospitable. I think hunting is extremely difficult to justify. Though once necessary to obtain necessary nutrients, clothing, etc., killing animals to obtain these things is no longer necessary. It doesn't really help justify hunting/fishing to eat what you kill, if you could have eaten something else. Even assuming it was necessary to eat meat, it would still be problematic to engage in killing as a recreational leisure activity--which is what hunting/fishing are for most people. If the main goal of sport hunting/fishing are having fun, and food is just a byproduct, something odd is going on (as I argue here ). But now getting to you question... Hunters who are concerned about fairness at least see animals as "subjects" instead of merely as "objects." That's all to the good. Fair...

Really good question. I think you ought and can stand up for animals in a variety of ways (by not eating them, not wearing them, not mistreating them, etc), but your effort is unlikely to ever be the one you would have made on behalf of the persecuted in Nazi Germany. That's OK, I think, for two reasons. (1) PETA had a campaign in the 1990s that invited comparison of factory farms and Nazi death camps. It's a bad analogy, I think, and so does "the father of the animal rights movement," Peter Singer. (I discuss this issue in my recent book Animalkind , if you'll pardon the book plug.) (2) Living in Nazi Germany, you could have completely separated yourself from Nazi persecution of Jews and taken a firm and effective stand against it. You cannot do exactly the same thing, where animal mistreatment is concerned. The low status of animals is just too ubiquitous and too deeply woven into life. If you want to do more than you're doing, there are lots of avenues, many that wouldn't...

I would be reluctant to decide all questions about the treatment of animals on the basis of pain and pleasure. That standard leads to some strange results. Say you put a wild bird in a cage, and you anticipate that he will suffer from the frustration of not being able to fly. So first you give him No Fly Drug, which is guaranteed to eliminate his frustration. Or perhaps you keep your dog in a crate 24 hours a day, and after a year she completely gives up, zones out, and stops suffering. Does her adaptation now give you an excuse to leave her there forever? The offense in each case is not a matter of causing pain (or decreasing pleasure) but--intuitively--a matter of being disrespectful. I'm inclined to think we owe respect only to things at least capable of consciousness, though what we owe them is not exclusively sensitivity to their pain and pleasure. So if ants have no conscious life whatever, they do have the moral status of flowers, and nothing we ever do to them is disrespectful. But...

I think it's unnatural to describe the problem for the dog or bird (in my 5/21 examples) simply as missed happiness, but we can easily just block that explanation by supposing they are drugged into feeling no pain and feeling happy. I still see the severe restriction of the animals' lives as morally problematic. Many people do find it quite intuitive to say that such treatment is disrespectful, though there are other ways of describing what's going wrong (for example, in terms of capacities not being used or rights being violated). I grant, though, that for some philosophers all that matters ethically is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. That's certainly one venerable position.

No. I think there's a very basic sort of respect for living things that's lacking in someone who smashes ants just for fun. This isn't respect in the full-blown sense Kant had in mind when he said persons are owed respect, but it's not completely different either. Ants aren't just rocks or clumps of dirt, but little centers of living (whether sentient or not) that ought to be left alone if they're not doing any harm. Which means: it's different if they're biting your toe or eating your lunch. The kid who smashes ants for fun is committing a little sin right then and there, I think, but I'd also worry about possible follow-ups. What other living things may he or she see as totally valueless and disposable? Perhaps we don't need to worry that ant-smashers will graduate to people-smashing, but I'd worry about associated disrespectfulness toward nature and other animals.

I've thought about this issue a lot, as a vegetarian with two children (now both 12). We decided it would be better to let them choose for themselves. My thinking was: if we raised them as vegetarians, they would inevitably come into contact with meat and feel curious, tempted, guilty. Out of concern for their wellbeing, I wanted to avoid that. I also thought they would experience vegetarianism as an imposition and eventually rebel against it. Plus, I wanted them to have the experience of confronting a moral issue for themselves. This is how things have turned out (so far)--When my kids were very young, all the food I prepared was vegetarian, but I bought cold cuts for sandwiches, let them order meat in restaurants and at school. At age 6, my daughter decided to stop eating meat. I practically discouraged this, giving her permission to change her mind, give in to temptation, etc. In fact, she became steadily more consistent, resolute, and outspoken. At age 12, my son made the same decision. ...

I'm inclined to think there is rudimentary morality in non-human animals. Rather than try to convince you, I'll suggest a good book on the matter (with "objections" at the back)-- Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved , by Frans De Waal. As to whether ethics (our ethics) is natural or made up (I'd say some of each, but it's crucial to explore what "natural" means), you might like to read: Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil and (for a different view) Richard Joyce's The Evolution of Morality .

I really don't think there's an equivalent of Animal Liberation on the other side. That's a classic because it's very clear and philosophically acute, very accessible to the public, full of information, and broad in scope. There are books on the other side, but they tend not to have all those virtues. The book that Amy Kind suggests is a good option, though it's mainly about animal experimentation, not meat-eating. Another book on the other side is The Animals Issue , by Peter Carruthers. It's clearly written and some would say acute, but it's primarily oriented to the academic philosopher. It's nowhere near as readable as Animal Liberation and it's not a source for "real world" information about the treatment of animals. Carruthers wouldn't be interested in such things, since he argues animals don't suffer at our hands--they're not even conscious, on his view. A very accessible and pretty interesting book on the other side by a non-philosopher is Covenant of the Wild : ...

There is an answer excusing peoples fromagriculturally poor countries (and I would add the Inuit) yet, lackingsuitable abattoirs, their trapping and/or killing of animals would beseen as cruel by our delicate western standards. If this is morallyacceptable, what is "unacceptable suffering"? To whom is isunacceptable and what changes that it becomes acceptable? Isn't it quite commonsensical to ask ourselves, when we are causing death and suffering, "Is it necessary or is it gratuitous?" Despite all the skepticism you express in your question, I'm going to bet you actually think that's a reasonable question. I have read that in some parts of the world dogs are tenderized while still alive, and then killed and eaten. Basically, people beat dogs to produce meat with a special, delicious taste. (If it's not actually true, at least it makes a good thought experiment.) Now, I strongly suspect you would agree with me that causing suffering in that manner is not necessary. What's the thought...

The phrase "insensitive to suffering" might mean--(1) "culpably unaware of it" or "unsympathetic to it." Or it might mean (2) "trivializing it" or "giving it too little weight." If you shoot a rabbit, that's got to cause the rabbit to suffer quite a lot. Surely there's a good chance of not achieving a "clean kill." If you think the suffering you cause is worth it, for the pleasure of eating rabbit stew, then arguably you are trivializing the animal's suffering. So you are insensitive to it in the second sense. It could be, but doesn't have to be, that you are also insensitive in the first sense. In fact, hunters I speak to (I teach an animal rights class in Texas) often seem very invested in the notion that it doesn't hurt animals much to be shot. They don't respond with sympathy to animals that surely are, in fact, suffering. Even humanely raised beef cattle do suffer--when they are branded, castrated, dehorned, and probably when they are slaughtered. I don't think we can...

If you said all of that, I think you'd be putting your point a little too strongly. I can innocently prefer not to witness how some things are produced, and prefer not to do the producing. I might just be claustrophobic, and prefer not to go down into the mines. I might hate the smell of a paper mill. It's another matter to deliberately remain in ignorance, to purposely avoid knowing whether or not some wrong is taking place. How can you convince the meat-eater to learn? I think the key concept here is complicity. If you are buying a product, then you are complicit in whatever went on to produce it. If we buy products made by child workers, we sustain those practices. If we refuse, we help bring them to an end. If necessary, you might want to resort to a thought experiment. If his favorite after shave could only be produced by torturing a thousand grandmothers, wouldn't he want to know that...and stop buying it? Hopefully you can convince your meat-eating friend that he's complict, and...

What's crazy about your thinking? I see nothing crazy about it. You are following an extremely plausible moral principle--that you shouldn't cause serious harm to other creatures for trivial reasons. I think you should stick by that principle, and in fact recommend it to others! Now about the lawn. If it bothers you to have a shaggy lawn, you might want to think through how your altogether plausible moral principle applies in this case. Do you really cause serious harm by mowing the lawn? You might also want to think about how trivial it is to want a nicely groomed lawn. On the first question, it will be relevant to delve into the nature of insects. The lawnmower would do them more harm if they suffered pain or had goals or desires. But do they? Some do think so, but some don't. If you conclude they don't have such sophisticated mental states, there might still be harm (in some sense) in killing them, but mowing down insects might be like mowing down dandelions. If so, then even a...