During the past four decades, four questions have shaped the debate over eating meat: (1) What hurts the most? (2) Are animal lovers nature haters? (3) Are vegetarians bigots? (4) Do animals have rights? The following conclusions are advocated: (1) Where general welfare is the issue, numbers count, and they will always count against a small minority profiting by repeatedly exploiting the majority. However, how most effectively to respond to this injustice is not obvious. (2) Despite disagreements about the relationship (...) between biology and morals, vegetarians and environmentalists agree that factory farming is immoral because of what it does either to suffering animals or to the natural order. (3) Whether humans using animals for food can be a respectful relation-especially when we humans make all the decisions-is the real question here. So far, this extension of fairness beyond our own species is one for which we have shown little capacity. (4) Whether or not animals have "rights," morally concerned Westerners should not partake of factory-farmed products and should work for the abolition of such farms. (shrink)

Future global food insecurity due to growing population as well as changing consumption demands and population growth is sometimes suggested to be met by increase in aquaculture production. This raises a range of ethical issues, seldom discussed together: fish welfare, food security, human health, climate change and environment, and public concern and legislation, which could preferably be seen as pieces in a puzzle, accepting their interdependency. A balanced decision in favour of or against aquaculture needs to take at least these (...) issues into consideration. It is further argued that in the parallel discussion on increased livestock production animal welfare is an inevitable element both in relation to current legislation in many countries but also in relation to our perception of moral, whereas awareness of fish welfare is low. Both EU legislation and labelling concerning fish is mainly limited to environmental aspects. It is argued that EU shows a split perception of fish, on the one hand acknowledging scientific evidence of fish capacities but on the other excludes fish from detailed legislation. Combining the claim of the Treaty of Lisbon to pay full regard to animal welfare and scientific evidence fish are sentient it is concluded that fish welfare need to be considered in any farming practice and any ethical consideration of increased aquaculture. This might be facilitated taking a basis in our own vulnerability and interdependence, combined with moral responsibility to show sentient beings a ‘loving kindness’—an extension of Cora Diamond’s argument regarding mammals. (shrink)

This article offers a historical perspective on the bearing of the Christian tradition on humans’ ethical relations with other animals. Instead of focusing on major theologians and canonical texts, this article turns to the initiatives taken by laity and clergy in the mobilization of their antivivisection cause in the last quarter of the 19th century. It reveals that despite the lack of institutional support from major Churches, many reformers sympathetic to Christian ideals relied on Christianity as their moral foundation, utilizing (...) various recourses associated with it in their fight against animal experimentation. These reformers appropriated the concepts of sin and self-sacrifice and the notion of the incarnate Christ, as well as critiques against scientific knowledge and materialism permeating the wider conflict between religion and science at the time. In this wideranging mobilization of resources associated with the Christian religious tradition, they sustained a generation of activism against animal experimentation while, at the same time, recreating a positive Christian subtradition in animal ethics. (shrink)