Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Introduction: The New Animal Debate

  • Andy Lamey, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    Duty and the Beast
    Published online:
    25 March 2019
    Print publication:
    28 March 2019, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    Animal rights and related notions of animal protection have long been thought to entail a plant-based diet. An increasingly popular view in the animal ethics debate challenges this idea by arguing that even if animals warrant a high degree of moral standing we are permitted or even obliged to eat meat. Some arguments to this effect maintain that greater harms accrue to animal in plant agriculture than in certain forms of free-range animal husbandry. Others cite a loss in value that would occur if animals raised for food no longer existed. Still other arguments for ethical omnivorism cite new technologies such as humane slaughter systems, which are said to painlessly kill animals in a manner consistent with Peter Singer's philosophy of animal liberation, or in vitro meat, which is sourced in a petri dish rather than the body of a living animal. Finally some philosophers invoke plant "neurobiology" to challenge the possibility of not eating sentient beings. Despite their differences these arguments all defend a new omnivorism, one that justifies eating meat within a framework of animal protection.