In a world reeling from a global pandemic, never has a treatise on veganism—from our foremost philosopher on animal rights—been more relevant or necessary. “Peter Singer may be the most controversial philosopher alive; he is certainly among the most influential.” —The New Yorker Even before the publication of his seminal Animal Liberation in 1975, Peter Singer, one of the greatest moral philosophers of our time, unflinchingly challenged the ethics of eating animals. Now, in Why Vegan?, Singer brings together the most consequential essays of his career to make this devastating case against our failure to confront what we are doing to animals, to public health, and to our planet. From his 1973 manifesto for Animal Liberation to his personal account of becoming a vegetarian in “The Oxford Vegetarians” and to investigating the impact of meat on global warming, Singer traces the historical arc of the animal rights, vegetarian, and vegan movements from their embryonic days to today, when climate change and global pandemics threaten the very existence of humans and animals alike. In his introduction and in “The Two Dark Sides of COVID-19,” cowritten with Paola Cavalieri, Singer excoriates the appalling health hazards of Chinese wet markets—where thousands of animals endure almost endless brutality and suffering—but also reminds westerners that they cannot blame China alone without also acknowledging the perils of our own factory farms, where unimaginably overcrowded sheds create the ideal environment for viruses to mutate and multiply. Spanning more than five decades of writing on the systemic mistreatment of animals, Why Vegan? features a topical new introduction, along with nine other essays, including: • “An Ethical Way of Treating Chickens?,” which opens our eyes to the lives of the birds who end up on so many plates—and to the lives of their parents; • “If Fish Could Scream,” an essay exposing the utter indifference of commercial fishing practices to the experiences of the sentient beings they scoop from the oceans in such unimaginably vast numbers; • “The Case for Going Vegan,” in which Singer assembles his most powerful case for boycotting the animal production industry; • And most recently, in the introduction to this book and in “The Two Dark Sides of COVID-19,” Singer points to a new reason for avoiding meat: the role eating animals has played, and will play, in pandemics past, present, and future. Written in Singer’s pellucid prose, Why Vegan? asserts that human tyranny over animals is a wrong comparable to racism and sexism. The book ultimately becomes an urgent call to reframe our lives in order to redeem ourselves and alter the calamitous trajectory of our imperiled planet.

Eating Ethically helps readers trace the history of ethical eating and human ways of treating animals, explore the science behind it, and discuss controversies from an objective viewpoint. The title will engage readers on the topic and help them to weigh the pros and cons as they make their own food decisions. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Intensive animal agriculture wrongs many, many animals. Philosophers have argued, on this basis, that most people in wealthy Western contexts are morally obligated to avoid animal products. This book explains why the author thinks that’s mistaken. He reaches this negative conclusion by contending that the major arguments for veganism fail: they don’t establish the right sort of connection between producing and eating animal-based foods. Moreover, if they didn’t have this problem, then they would have other ones: we wouldn’t be obliged to abstain from all animal products, but to eat strange things instead—e.g., roadkill, insects, and things left in dumpsters. On his view, although we have a collective obligation not to farm animals, there is no specific diet that most individuals ought to have. Nevertheless, he does think that some people are obligated to be vegans, but that’s because they’ve joined a movement, or formed a practical identity, that requires that sacrifice. This book argues that there are good reasons to make such a move, albeit not ones strong enough to show that everyone must do likewise.

In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the highly successful Ecological Ethics, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public.

The protest against meat eating may turn out to be one of the most significant movements of our age. In terms of our relations with animals, it is difficult to think of a more urgent moral problem than the fate of billions of animals killed every year for human consumption. This book argues that vegetarians and vegans are not only protestors, but also moral pioneers. It provides 25 chapters which stimulate further thought, exchange, and reflection on the morality of eating meat. A rich array of philosophical, religious, historical, cultural, and practical approaches challenge our assumptions about animals and how we should relate to them. This book provides global perspectives with insights from 11 countries: US, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Israel, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, and Sweden. Focusing on food consumption practices, it critically foregrounds and unpacks key ethical rationales that underpin vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. It invites us to revisit our relations with animals as food, and as subjects of exploitation, suggesting that there are substantial moral, economic, and environmental reasons for changing our habits. This timely contribution, edited by two of the leading experts within the field, offers a rich array of interdisciplinary insights on what ethical vegetarianism and veganism means. It will be of great interest to those studying and researching in the fields of animal geography and animal-studies, sociology, food studies and consumption, environmental studies, and cultural studies. This book will be of great appeal to animal protectionists, environmentalists, and humanitarians.

Academic food ethics incorporates work from philosophy but also anthropology, economics, the environmental sciences and other natural sciences, geography, law, and sociology. Scholars from these fields have been producing work for decades on the food system, and on ethical, social, and policy issues connected to the food system. Yet in the last several years, there has been a notable increase in philosophical work on these issues-work that draws on multiple literatures within practical ethics, normative ethics and political philosophy. This handbook provides a sample of that philosophical work across multiple areas of food ethics: conventional agriculture and alternatives to it; animals; consumption; food justice; food politics; food workers; and, food and identity.

An interesting and accessible introduction to ethical issues raised by various forms of human use of animals. This textbook avoids moral lecturing and presents a range of ethical viewpoints without defending or applying any specific stance. Readers are encouraged and provoked to reflect for themselves, and to sharpen their own points of view regarding the ethical limits on our use of animals. They will also gain further understanding of the views held by other people. Early chapters of this interdisciplinary book cover changes over time in our view of animals, the principles of animal ethics, and different views of what counts as a good animal life. Later chapters apply the conceptual tools to specific issues including: food animal production, advanced veterinary treatment of pets, control of infectious diseases, wildlife management, as well as the use of animals in research. Specifically designed for students of veterinary medicine, animal science, welfare and behaviour, and veterinary nursing. Also of interest to those wanting to combine an up-to-date, science-based account of animal issues with clear-headed moral reflection. "The book covers an impressive range of topics with accuracy and fairness. Despite its ambitious scope, the authors have achieved remarkable unity in the book, and have produced a book that is easy and pleasant to read. Their work will surely provide a major tool for rationalizing the debate about the ethics of animal use, and I commend them for their invaluable contribution." From the Foreword by Professor Bernard Rollin, Colorado State University.

In Very Practical Ethics David Benatar discusses some of the moral problems that ordinary people face in their everyday lives. These are not moral problems that arise only in extraordinary circumstances, nor those which are confronted only by select people in their professional or public roles; rather, they are problems that most people face on a daily basis. Written accessibly and covering topics not often discussed by moral philosophers, Very Practical Ethics will be of interest to students and other readers who care about how we might resolve the kinds of ethical issues we all face every day.

This book engages with the topic of ethical consumption and applies a critical-realist approach to explore the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. By integrating Margaret Archer’s theory of identity formation and Christian Coff’s work on food ethics, it develops a theoretical account explicating the generative mechanism that gives rise to ethical consumer practices and identities. The second part of the book presents the findings from a qualitative study with self-perceived ethical food consumers to demonstrate the fit between the proposed theoretical mechanism and the actual experiences of ethically committed consumers. Through integrating agency-focused and socio-centric perspectives on consumer behaviour, the book develops a more comprehensive and balanced approach to conceptualising and studying consumption processes and phenomena.