The article concerns on the topic of vegetarianism in the context of the importance of animal sacrifice in ancient Greece and Rome. In the first part the author analyses the function of animal sacrifice in ancient world, focusing on the religious and social meaning of eating the meat offered to gods on an altar. In the second part she presents the figures of vegetarians, who had to face the problem of obligatory character of sacrifice. The author focuses especially on the (...) examples of inconsistency between their postulates and the real practice, and inquires its motifs. At the ending she presents the changes of the habit of animal sacrifice and the attitudes toward animals with the development of Christianity at the final period of antiquity. (shrink)

The article is a reductio ad absurdum of assumptions which are shared by a large number of followers of the animal welfare movement and utilitarianism. I argue that even if we accept the main ethical arguments for a negative moral assessment of eating meat we should not promote vegetarianism but rather beefism (eating only meat from beef cattle). I also argue that some forms of vegetarianism, i.e. ichtivegetarianism, can be much more morally worse than normal meat diet. In order to (...) justify these thesis I show that there are significant moral differences in the consumption of animal products from different species. (shrink)