Is There A Way We Don't Have To Kill Animals For Food

Eating animals

Potential wrongs

Eating animals poses two moral problems.

• Is it wrong in principle to heighten and kill animals and then that human being beings can consume meat and fish?
• Does it stop being incorrect if the processes involved are carried out humanely?

Eating animals is as well criticised on health and ecological grounds, but this article just deals with wrongs to the animals involved.

Violated rights

If you accept that animals have rights, raising and killing animals for food is morally wrong.

An animal raised for food is being used by others rather than being respected for itself. In philosopher's terms it is being treated as a means to human ends and non equally an finish in itself.

This is a clear violation of the animal's rights.

No matter how humanely an fauna is treated in the process, raising and killing it for food remains morally wrong.

But: This is using 'rights' in a rather technical philosophical sense. When people talk about animal rights colloquially, they are usually talking about animal interests.

Violated interests

Fifty-fifty the most humane forms of rearing and killing animals for food always violates the animal's well-nigh basic interest - to continue living.

Modern agriculture often violates other fundamental creature interests as well - for example:

• to alive in natural (or at least, decent) conditions
• to make complimentary choices
• to be free from fear and pain
• to live healthy lives without needing medical intervention
• to eat a natural diet
• to enjoy the normal social/family/community life of its species

Human interests versus animal interests

Many human beings don't believe animals accept rights, but practise think that animals accept important interests that should not be violated.

But some of these people enjoy eating meat and fish, and and then confront a conflict between animal and human being interests: the trivial human interest in eating meat versus the basic animal interest in staying alive.

The human interest is classed as trivial because homo beings don't need to swallow meat in order to live.

The fauna interest in staying alive is classed every bit basic, because if the animal is killed then all its other interests are frustrated as well.

• Ethical question: Should the trivial human involvement in eating meat be satisfied at the expense of the animal interest in staying alive?

The rights statement

The rights argument confronting eating animals

The rights argument is based only on non violating rights. Information technology disregards the consequences of eating animals.

The argument goes like this:

• Higher non-man animals have rights
• The most basic right is the right to exist treated as an end in oneself, not every bit a means to someone else'due south ends
• Raising and killing animals for food uses them every bit a ways to homo gratification, it does not treat them respectfully as ends in themselves
• Eating animals is therefore incorrect
• In that location is no important human demand to be considered in this example
• Philosophers who respect rights and have that animals have rights should be vegetarians

Problem: Surely 1 person not eating animals will take no event on whether animals are raised and killed for food - so at that place's no point in being a vegetarian...

Incorrect! The pointlessness of a single person removing meat from their diet is irrelevant to the rights statement for being a vegetarian - if something is incorrect, a moral person should non do information technology.

The consequentialist (utilitarian) statement

This sort of statement is based entirely on the results of an activeness (or the total issue of a lot of similar deportment). It is merely concerned with the consequences of eating animals.

The argument goes similar this:

• We should human action so as to increment the amount of goodness in the world
• Raising and killing animals for food is cruel and so reduces the total amount of goodness in the earth
• If everyone was a vegetarian, there would exist no demand for meat
• If in that location were no need for meat no ane would enhance and impale animals for food
• Therefore if everyone was a vegetarian, the total amount of goodness in the world would be higher
• Therefore everyone should be a vegetarian

You may want to ask yourself whether information technology matters that private consumers don't themselves commit the wrongful acts of raising and killing the animals.

Problems with the consequentialist argument

Problems with the consequentialist statement

If information technology is true that the world would be a improve place if anybody was a vegetarian, does it follow that any item private should be a vegetarian?

Some philosophers say it doesn't. They say:

The meat business organisation is and so huge that the loss of an private consumer will make no difference to information technology, and so will make no divergence to the amount of goodness in the world.

Other philosophers disagree, and say:

Someone who eats meat is approving of and collaborating in the wrongful acts of the agronomics business, and it is morally wrong to corroborate of and collaborate in wrongful acts, even indirectly.

The first philosopher might reply:

Because the meat business organisation is so huge, the indirect participation or non-participation of an private in whatsoever wrongful acts that the industry may bear will not influence the continuing of those acts.

Since an private'southward acts do not cause or encourage the wrong-doing to have place, they are not themselves morally wrong.

The virtue argument

Virtue ethics regard the motivation and character of a person as crucial to whether an deed is skilful or bad.

A morally good act is one that a virtuous person would carry out, and a morally bad act is one that they wouldn't.

Virtuous people live lives that demonstrate virtue. They are generous, kind and compassionate.

People who participate in a system that treats animals cruelly, and that kills animals to provide trivial pleasures to human beings, are behaving selfishly, and not as a virtuous person would.

Since their behaviour is non virtuous, their behaviour is morally wrong, whether or not it has whatever consequence on whether people continue to raise and kill animals for food.

One must reject (fifty-fifty symbolic) support of essentially cruel practices, if a comparably plush alternative that is not tied to essentially vicious practices is readily available.

Russ Shafer-Landau 'Vegetarianism, Causation and Upstanding Theory', Public Diplomacy Quarterly 8 (1994)

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/eating_1.shtml

Posted by: galvanlaideard.blogspot.com

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