Arguing for Vegetarianism
The CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations; Cassuto, The CAFO Hothouse) is, belatedly, on the social and political agenda in the U.S.
Witness the following:
- Passage of laws in several states addressing the issue
- Publication of a spate of popular books
- Emergence of the local production movement
- Statistics showing a decrease in consumption of land animals in the US in 2008 and 2009 (http://www.wfad.org/statistics/index.htm)
This
is a major good-news development. But the fight is just beginning as
the animal protection movement faces the daunting challenges of number
of animals beyond comprehension and huge economic investment in these
enterprises.
In a recent book (The Life You Can Save: Acting now to end world poverty,
2009), Peter Singer offers the following proposition for moral
guidance, which I think can be useful in our efforts to make the case
for vegetarianism -- although, as the title indicates, it is directed to a
different social justice issue:
If it is in your power to prevent
something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as
important, it is wrong to do so.
Of course, the "principle" is
within the utilitarian frame of all of Singer's philosophy and comes
down to the question of assessing costs and benefits of an action. But
it does extend an individual's range of moral responsibility beyond that
which most people assume. For example, it demands that an individual
take into account the
"bad" that is happening when he or she reaches for
the cellophane-wrapped chicken breast. It would seem obvious that the
bad prevented by not indulging an acquired taste for a certain cuisine
outweighs the suffering of the animal that is the source of that
cuisine.
I so often find myself put on the defensive by
meat-eaters, particularly carnist colleagues working for animals, and
often lose the opportunity to argue constructively for vegetarianism.
The Singer proposition is useful in this context as it challenges the
self-centered materialism and hedonism that is so much the fabric of the
contemporary moral order.
Ken Shapiro, 11-24-11
Published by admin on 12/26/2011 12:45:34
