Meat can be considered as a regular or even integral part of the human diet, and it has been for around 2.5 million years. Our great ancestors, hominins, were the first ones who started consuming raw meat of animals by hunting down large mammals and cutting the remaining meat from their bones. The practice of cooking meat occurred around 800 000 years ago, along with the discovery of fire. This is how carnivorism started and then evolved millions of years later. Today, meat is associated with large agricultural farms and industries, bought in the supermarkets and consumed on dinner plates. We rarely think of it as an animal that was not so long ago breathing and walking. An ethical dilemma arises since unnecessary pain and suffering is caused towards living beings for our own consumption and nourishment, which can be avoided. Additionally, meat industries are one of the largest contributors to the emission of greenhouse gases, causing enhanced global warming. One could turn towards the naturalistic fallacy and argue that since animals eat other animals to keep the food web in a steady-state equilibrium, and since humans are animals who are part of the food chain, humans, therefore, have the right to consume animals. However, this argument then additionally justifies cannibalism and humans killing humans, and we view those as immoral acts. Is it ethical to raise animals in order to consume them? If not, are we then morally obligated to shift towards a plant-based diet? In this following essay, I will try to offer possible answers to these questions by highlighting arguments for both considering eating meat as an immoral, as well as moral act. I will argue whether or not animals have a moral status and whether or not they live a life worth living in factories.

A small but vocal group of feminists—including Carol J. Adams, Josephine Donovan, Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, and others—have passionately argued that nonhuman animals are oppressed, and the appropriate feminist response includes the adoption of ethical vegetarianism (if at all possible). Though most feminists continue to exclude nonhuman animals from their praxis, remarkably few have responded to these arguments. One exception is Kathryn Paxton George. Her recent publication—Animal, Vegetable, or Woman? A Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism (AVW 2000)—is the culmination of more than a decade’s work and encompasses standard and original arguments against the feminist-vegetarian connection. In this thesis, I sketch the arguments offered in favour of the feminist-vegetarian connection and defend ethical vegetarianism against all of the central challenges that George raises. As she claims to offer A Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism, I set an evaluation of her key arguments within a feminist framework. First then, I review shared precepts of feminism, with a focus on ecofeminism, as it is in this terrain that the feminist-vegetarian connection is most often discussed and defended. Second, I outline George’s arguments against ethical vegetarianism and present the “quasi-ethical” diet she advocates in its stead (feminist aesthetic semi-vegetarianism). Third, I demonstrate that none of her key arguments succeeds. Among other flaws, she equivocates between dietary and ethical vegetarianism, improperly applies the principle of nonarbitrariness, relies heavily on problematic hypotheses, makes false and un-feminist assumptions, and begs the question against central issues of the feminist-vegetarian debate. Fourth, I demonstrate that support can be found throughout George’s book for two inconsistent applications of her preferred dietary proscriptions. I examine each of these and find both to be problematic. On the first count, abidance by George’s “quasi-ethical” theory would require us (Westerners) to live a lifestyle that is nearly reducible to the vegan ideal that she takes great pain to disparage. On the second count, she needlessly condones actions that she takes to be “morally wrong in any case,” while simultaneously encouraging people to protest against them. I conclude that, as each of the key arguments that George offers fails, the cumulative weight of her critique of ethical vegetarianism is nil. She does not prove that feminists cannot consistently or should not ethically advocate vegetarianism. Moreover, an analysis of what is required for opponents of the feminist-vegetarian connection to offer a persuasive defense of their position reveals that their prospects are bleak, if not utterly hopeless.

An argument for the immorality of eating meat and other animal products is advanced. Unlike other arguments for ethical veganism, the present argument is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have rights, nor is it predicated on some contentious ethical theory that you likely reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. The argument shows that even those of you who value humans over nonhumans are committed to the immorality of eating meat, given your other beliefs.

In a recent article, Corey Wrenn argues that in order to adequately address injustices done to animals, we ought to think systemically. Her argument stems from a critique of the individualist approach I employ to resolve a moral dilemma faced by animal sanctuaries, who sometimes must harm some animals to help others. But must systemic critiques of injustice be at odds with individualist approaches? In this paper, I respond to Wrenn by showing how individualist approaches that take seriously the notion of group responsibility can be deployed to solve complicated dilemmas that are products of injustice. Contra Wrenn, I argue that to adequately address injustice, acting individually, often within groups, is significantly more important than thinking systemically.

Bullfighting

The philosophical literature may seem to be replete with arguments for vegetarianism based on harm to animals. However, these arguments turn out to be arguments for veganism, not vegetarianism. This chapter explores whether anything can be said for vegetarianism. Some reasons motivating vegetarianism seem to be very personal, and so not the sorts of things that could be the foundation of a moral argument. Meanwhile, though they may hold some weight, arguments about vegetarianism as a “middle way” between veganism and omnivorism are highly contingent. Both of these routes, then, may seem unsatisfying to the vegetarian. Could there be a principled case for vegetarianism? Tzachi Zamir is the one philosopher who has argued at length for vegetarianism over veganism, but a close examination of his arguments show that they are not as compelling as they first seem. A final option remains open: there may be potential for arguments critiquing the eating of animals’ flesh and/or their bodies that are independent of concerns about harms to animals in food production. Such arguments, which have been hinted at in animal ethics, offer a critique of meat consumption, but not, necessarily, of egg and dairy consumption. Perhaps, then, they could form the basis of a principled case for vegetarianism that does not immediately become a case for veganism. The consequences of such an argument, if one can be made, are not simple.

Abstract Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since they minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism.