September 2012 Blog Posts (9)

If you needed to torture puppies in order to enjoy the taste of chocolate, would doing so be wrong? Wouldn’t doing so be obviously wrong? Most who would say ‘yes’ regularly purchase and consume factory-farmed meat, seeing no problem with the latter, and yet, the two may not be morally distinguishable. According to at least one philosopher, they are not. In a highly provocative and creative paper,…

Like factory farming, animal experimentation is an entrenched practice, one which causes extensive suffering to millions of animals per year despite the…

Both from a strategic and moral standpoint, it is no surprise that when military action is contemplated, governments tend to favor effective tactics involving the least risk to human lives. Even better are effective tactics involving low risk to all human lives. If the goal of the military action is justified, what could be morally problematic with using such means? These widely held notions likely motivated the U.S. Navy’s…

ZOOPOLIS: A Political Theory of Animal Rights - by Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

http://www.amazon.com/Zoopolis-Political-Theory-Animal-Rights/dp/0199599661

http://books.google.es/books?id=GppRuyOQLSwC&printsec=frontcover…

My take on the ethics of eating "happy meat."

Suppose animals could be raised humanely, live considerably long lives, and then painlessly killed for food. Would eating such happy creatures be wrong? That question is suggested in a recent article by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who answered it in the negative. According to…

This is another recent post of mine over at Animal Blawg, about the encouragement of youths to take up hunting.

In our culture, the moral divide between humans and animals is sharp in numerous areas, but perhaps most consciously so in one: the sport of hunting. Since the activity involves consciously deciding to kill another sentient, sensitive being, the issue of inflicting suffering and death cannot be avoided, at least for the hunter. At some point every hunter will inevitably…

I posted the following entry over at Animal Blawg: http://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/bullfighting-justifying-cruelty-with-tradition/#like-5094

In December of 2010, Jemaal Peter Roy Large of Wairu Valley is alleged to have beaten 23 seals to death with a galvanised steel pipe.

The dead include 2 bulls, 13 females and 8 pups; some of which were only a few days old. According to the Dept. of Conservation, other live seals also had injuries suggesting that they too had been struck.

These seals were knowingly and willfully beaten to death while they lay sleeping on the beach at night. This blatant, cowardly act of cruelty…

Reposted from Eating Consciously - by Ed Coffin

If you’re vegan and on Facebook, it’s almost impossible to avoid seeing racist and disgusting statements SUCH AS THESE.  These ones were picked from merely a handful of posts in a matter of minutes.  They’re almost always related to photographs of dogs being slaughtered for meat somewhere in Southeast…