## 1. Terminology and Overview of Positions



Moral vegetarianism is opposed by moral omnivorism, the view according
to which it is permissible to consume meat (and also animal products,
fungi, plants, etc.). 



Moral veganism accepts moral vegetarianism and adds to it that
consuming animal products is wrong. Whereas in everyday life,
"vegetarianism" and "veganism" include claims
about what one *may* eat, in this entry, the claims are simply
about what one may not eat. They agree that animals are among those
things.



In this entry, "animals" is used to refer to non-human
animals. For the most part, the animals discussed are the land animals
farmed for food in the West, especially cattle, chicken, and pigs.
There will be some discussion of insects and fish but none of dogs,
dolphins, or whales.



Primarily, this entry concerns itself with whether moral vegetarians
are correct that *eating* meat is wrong. Secondarily--but
at greater length--it concerns itself with whether the
*production* of meat is permissible.



Primarily, this entry concerns itself with eating in times of
abundance and abundant choices. Moral vegans need not argue that it is
wrong to eat an egg if that is the only way to save your life. Moral
vegetarians need not argue it is wrong to eat seal meat if that is the
only food for miles. Moral omnivores need not argue it is permissible
to eat the family dog. These cases raise important issues, but the
arguments in this entry are not about them.



Almost exclusively, the entry concerns itself with contemporary
 arguments.[1]
 Strikingly, many historical arguments and most contemporary arguments
against the permissibility of eating meat start with premises about
the wrongness of *producing* meat and move to conclusions about
the wrongness of *consuming* it. That is, they argue that




It is wrong to eat meat




By first arguing that




It is wrong to produce meat.




The claim about production is the topic of SS2.


## 2. Meat Production



The vast majority of animals humans eat come from industrial animal
farms that are distinguished by their holding large numbers of animals
at high stocking density. We raise birds and mammals this way.
Increasingly, we raise fish this way, too. 


### 2.1 Animal Farming



Raising large numbers of animals enables farmers to take advantage of
economies of scale but also produces huge quantities of waste,
greenhouse gas, and, generally, environmental degradation (FAO 2006;
Hamerschlag 2011; Budolfson 2016). There is no question of whether to
put so many animals on pasture--there is not enough of it. Plus,
raising animals indoors, or with limited access to the outdoors,
lowers costs and provides animals with protection from weather and
predators. Yet when large numbers of animals live indoors, they are
invariably tightly packed, and raising them close together risks the
development and quick spread of disease. To deal with this risk,
farmers intensively use prophylactic antibiotics. Tight-packing also
restricts species-typical behaviors, such as rooting (pigs) or
dust-bathing (chickens), and makes it so that animals cannot escape
each other, leading to stress and to antisocial behaviors like
tail-biting in pigs or pecking in chickens. To deal with these,
farmers typically dock tails and trim beaks, and typically (in the
U.S., at least) do so without anesthetic. Animals are bred to grow
fast on a restricted amount of antibiotics, food, and hormones, and
the speed of growth saves farmers money, but this breeding causes
health problems of its own. Chickens, for example, have been bred in
such a way that their bodies become heavier than their bones can
support. As a result, they "are in chronic pain for the last 20%
of their lives" (John Webster, quoted in Erlichman 1991).
Animals are killed young--they taste better that way--and
are killed in large-scale slaughterhouses operating at speed. Animal
farms have no use for, e.g., male chicks on egg-laying farms, are
killed at birth or soon
 after.[2]



Raising animals in this way has produced low sticker prices (BLS
2017). It enables us to feed our appetite for meat (OECD 2017).



Raising animals in this way is also, in various ways, morally
fraught.



It raises concerns about its effects on humans. Slaughterhouses,
processing this huge number of animals at high speed, threaten injury
and death to workers. Slaughterhouse work is exploitative. Its
distribution is classist, racist, and sexist with certain jobs being
segmented as paupers' work or Latinx work or women's
(Pachirat 2011).



Industrial meat production poses a threat to public health through the
creation and spread of pathogens resulting from the overcrowding of
animals with weakened immune systems and the routine use of
antibiotics and attendant creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Anomaly (2015) and Rossi & Garner (2014) argue that these risks
are wrongful because unconsented to and because they are not justified
by the benefits of assuming those risks.



Industrial meat production directly produces waste in the form of
greenhouse gas emissions from animals and staggering amounts of waste,
waste that, concentrated in those quantities, can contaminate water
supplies. The Boll Foundation (2014) estimates that farm animals
contribute between 6 and 32% of greenhouse gas emissions. The range is
due partly to different ideas about what to count as being farm
animals' contributions: simply what comes out of their bodies?
Or should we count, too, what comes from deforestation that's
done to grow crops to feed them and other indirect emissions?



Industrial animal farming raises two concerns about wastefulness. One
is that it uses too many resources and produces too much waste for the
amount of food it produces. The other is that feeding humans meat
typically requires producing crops, feeding them to animals, and then
eating the animals. So it typically requires more resources and makes
for more emissions than simply growing and feeding ourselves crops
(*PNAS* 2013.



Industrial animal farming raises concerns about the treatment of
animals. Among others, we raise cattle, chickens, and pigs. Evidence
from their behavior, their brains, and their evolutionary origins,
adduced in Allen 2004, Andrews 2016, and Tye 2016, supports the view
that they have mental lives and, importantly, are sentient creatures
with likes and dislikes. Even chickens and other
"birdbrains" have interesting mental lives. The exhaustive
Marino 2017 collects evidence that chickens can adopt others'
visual perspectives, communicate deceptively, engage in arithmetic and
simple logical reasoning, and keep track of pecking orders and short
increments of time. Their personalities vary with respect to boldness,
self-control, and vigilance.



We farm billions of these animals industrially each year (Boll
Foundation 2014: 15). We also raise a much smaller number on freerange
farms. In this entry "freerange" is not used in its
tightly-defined, misleading, legal sense according to which it applies
only to poultry and simply requires "access" to the
outdoors. Instead, in the entry, freerange farms are farms that that,
ideally, let animals live natural lives while offering some protection
from predators and the elements and some healthcare. These lives are
in various ways more pleasant than lives on industrial farms but
involve less protection while still involving control and early death.
These farms are designed, in part, to make animal lives go better for
them, and their design assumes that a natural life is better, other
things equal, than a non-natural life. The animal welfare literature
converges on this and also on other components of animal well-being.
Summarizing some of that literature, David Fraser writes,



> 
> 
> [A]s people formulated and debated various proposals about what
> constitutes a satisfactory life for animals in human care, three main
> concerns emerged: (1) that animals should feel well by being spared
> negative affect (pain, fear, hunger etc.) as much as possible, and by
> experiencing positive affect in the form of contentment and normal
> pleasures; (2) that animals should be able to lead reasonably natural
> lives by being able to perform important types of normal behavior and
> by having some natural elements in their environment such as fresh air
> and the ability to socialize with other animals in normal ways; and
> (3) that animals should function well in the sense of good health,
> normal growth and development, and normal functioning of the body.
> (Fraser 2008: 70-71)
> 
> 
> 



In this light, it is clear why industrial farming seems to do less for
animal welfare than freerange farming: The latter enables keeping
animals healthy. It enables happy states ("positive
affect") and puts up some safeguards against the infliction of
suffering. There is no need, for example, to dock freerange
pigs' tails or to debeak freerange chickens, if they have enough
space to stay out of each other's way. It enables animals to
socialize and to otherwise lead reasonably natural lives. A
freerange's pig's life is in those ways better than an
industrially-farmed pig's.



Yet because freerange farming involves being outdoors, it involves
various risks: predator- and weather-related risks, for example. These
go into the well-being calculus, too.



Animals in the wild are subjected to greater predator- and
weather-related risks and have no health care. Yet they score very
highly with regard to expressing natural behavior and are under no
one's control. How well they do with regard to positive and
negative affect and normal growth varies from case to case. Some meat
is produced by hunting such animals. In practice, hunting involves
making animals suffer from the pain of errant shots or the terror of
being chased or wounded, but, ideally, it involves neither pain nor
confinement. Of course, either way, it involves
 death.[3]


### 2.2 The Schematic Case Against Meat Production



Moral vegetarian arguments about these practices follow a pattern.
They claim that certain actions--killing animals for food we do
not need, for example--are wrong and then add that some mode of
meat production--recreational hunting, for example--does so.
It follows that the mode of meat-production is wrong.




Schematically




*X* is wrong.



*Y* involves *X*. Hence,



*Y* is wrong.





Among the candidate values of *X* are:


* Causing animals pain for the purpose of producing food when there
are readily available alternatives.
* Killing animals for the purpose of...
* Controlling animals...
* Treating animals as mere tools...
* Ontologizing animals as food...
* Harming humans....
* Harming the environment...



And among the candidate values of *Y* are:


* Industrial animal farming
* Freerange farming
* Recreational hunting



Space is limited and cranking through many instances of the schema
would be tedious. This section focuses on causing animals pain,
killing them, and harming the environment in raising them. On control,
see Francione 2009, DeGrazia 2011, and Bok 2011. On treating animals
as mere tools, see Kant's *Lectures on Ethics*, Korsgaard
2011 and 2015, and Zamir 2007. On ontologizing, see Diamond 1978,
Vialles 1987 [1994], and Gruen 2011, Chapter 3. On harming humans, see
Pachirat 2011, Anomaly 2015, and Doggett & Holmes 2018.


#### 2.2.1 Suffering



Some moral vegetarians argue:




Causing animals pain while raising them for food when there are
readily available alternatives is wrong.



Industrial animal farming involves causing animals pain while raising
them for food when there are readily available alternatives.
Hence,



Industrial animal farming is wrong.




The "while raising them for food when there are readily
available alternatives" is crucial. It is sometimes permissible
to cause animals pain: You painfully give your cat a shot, inoculating
her, or painfully tug your dog's collar, stopping him from
attacking a toddler. The first premise is asserting that causing pain
is impermissible in certain other situations. The "when there
are readily available alternatives" is getting at the point that
there are substitutes available. We could let the chickens be and eat
rice and kale. The first premise asserts it is wrong to cause animals
pain while raising them for food when there are readily available
substitutes.



It says nothing about why that is wrong. It could be that it is wrong
because it would be wrong to make *us* suffer to raise us for
food and there are no differences between us and animals that would
justify making them suffer (Singer 1975 and the enormous literature it
generated). It could, instead, be that it is wrong because impious
(Scruton 2004) or cruel (Hursthouse 2011).



So long as we accept that animals feel--for an up-to-date
philosophical defense of this, see Tye 2016--it is
uncontroversial that industrial farms do make animals suffer. No one
in the contemporary literature denies the second premise, and Norwood
and Lusk go so far as to say that



> 
> 
> it is impossible to raise animals for food without some form of
> temporary pain, and you must sometimes inflict this pain with your own
> hands. Animals need to be castrated, dehorned, branded, and have other
> minor surgeries. Such temporary pain is often required to produce
> longer term benefits...All of this must be done knowing that
> anesthetics would have lessened the pain but are too expensive. (2011:
> 113)
> 
> 
> 



There is the physical suffering of tail-docking, de-beaking,
de-horning, and castrating, all without anesthetic. Also, industrial
farms make animals suffer psychologically by crowding them and by
depriving them of interesting environments. Animals are bred to grow
quickly on minimal food. Various poultry industry sources acknowledge
that this selective breeding has led to a significant percentage of
meat birds walking with painful impairments (see the extensive
citations in HSUS 2009).



This--and much more like it that is documented in Singer &
Mason 2006 and Stuart Rachels 2011--is the case for the second
premise, namely, that industrial farming causes animals pain while
raising them for food when there are readily available
alternatives.



The argument can be adapted to apply to freerange farming and hunting.
Freerange farms ideally do not hurt, but, as the Norwood and Lusk
quotation implies, they actually do: For one thing, animals typically
go to the same slaughterhouses as industrially-produced animals do.
Both slaughter and transport can be painful and stressful.



The same goes for hunting: In the ideal, there is no pain, but,
really, hunters hit animals with non-lethal and painful shots. These
animals are often--but not always--killed for pleasure or
for food hunters do not
 need.[4]



Taken together the arguments allege that all manners of meat
production in fact produce suffering for low-cost food and typically
do so for food when we don't need to do so and then allege that
that justification for producing suffering is insufficient. Against
the arguments, one might accept that farms hurt animals but deny that
it is even *pro tanto* wrong to do so (Carruthers 1992 and
2011; Hsiao 2015a and 2015b) on the grounds that animals lack moral
status and, because of this, it is not intrinsically wrong to hurt
them (or kill or control them or treat them like mere tools). One
challenge for such views is to explain what, if anything, is wrong
with beating the life out of a pet. Like Kant, Carruthers and Hsiao
accept that it might be wrong to hurt animals when and because doing
so leads to hurting humans. This view is discussed in Regan 1983:
Chapter 5. It faces two distinct challenges. One is that if the only
reason it is wrong to hurt animals is because of its effects on
humans, then the only reason it is wrong to hurt a pet is because of
its effects on humans. So there is nothing wrong with beating pets
when that will have no bad effects on humans. This is hard to believe.
Another challenge for such views, addressed at some length in
Carruthers 1992 and 2011, is to explain whether and why humans with
mental lives like the lives of, say, pigs have moral status and
whether and why it is wrong to make such humans suffer.


#### 2.2.2 Killing



Consider a different argument:




Killing animals while raising them for food when there are readily
available alternatives is wrong.



Most forms of animal farming and all recreational hunting involve
killing animals while raising them for food when there are readily
available alternatives. Hence,



Most forms of animal farming and all recreational hunting are
wrong.




The second premise is straightforward and uncontroversial. All forms
of meat farming and hunting require killing animals. There is no form
of farming that involves widespread harvesting of old bodies, dead
from natural causes. Except in rare farming and hunting cases, the
meat produced in the industrialized world is meat for which there are
ready alternatives.



The first premise is more controversial. Amongst those who endorse it,
there is disagreement about why it is true. If it is true, it might be
true because killing animals wrongfully violates their rights to life
(Regan 1975). It might be true because killing animals deprives them
of lives worth living (McPherson 2015). It might be true because it
treats animals as mere tools (Korsgaard 2011).



There is disagreement about whether the first premise is true. The
"readily available alternatives" condition matters:
Everyone agrees that it is sometimes all things considered permissible
to kill animals, e.g., if doing so is the only way to save your
child's life from a surprise attack by a grizzly bear or if
doing so is the only way to prevent your pet cat from a life of
unremitting agony. (Whether it is permissible to kill animals in order
to cull them or to preserve biodiversity is a tricky issue that is set
aside here. It--and its connection to the permissibility of
hunting--is discussed in Scruton 2006b.) At any rate, animal
farms are in the business of killing animals simply on the grounds
that we want to eat them and are willing to pay for them even though
we could, instead, eat plants.



The main objection to the first premise is that animals lack the
mental lives to make killing them wrong. In the moral vegetarian
literature, some argue that the wrongness of killing animals depends
on what sort of mental life they have *and* that while animals
have a mental life that suffices for hurting them being wrong, they
lack a mental life that suffices for killing them being wrong (Belshaw
2015 endorses this; McMahan 2008 and Harman 2011 accept the first and
reject the second; Velleman 1991 endorses that animal mental lives are
such that killing them does not harm them). Animals could lack a
mental life that makes killing them wrong because it is a necessary
condition for killing a creature being wrong that that creature have
long-term goals and animals don't or that it is a necessary
condition that that creature have the capacity to form such goals and
animals don't or that it is a necessary condition that the
creature's life have a narrative structure and animals'
lives don't
 or...[5]



Instead, the first premise might be false and killing animals we raise
for food might be permissible because



> 
> 
> [t]he genesis of domestic animals is...a matter...of an
> implicit social contract--what Stephen Budiansky...calls
> 'a covenant of the wild.'...Humans could protect such
> animals as the wild ancestors of domestic cattle and swine from
> predation, shelter them from the elements, and feed them when
> otherwise they might starve. The bargain from the animal's point
> of view, would be a better life as the price of a shorter life...
> (Callicott 2015: 56-57)
> 
> 
> 



The idea is that we have made a "bargain" with animals to
raise them, to protect them from predators and the elements, and to
tend to them, but then, in return, to kill them. Moreover, the
"bargain" renders killing animals permissible (defended in
Hurst 2009, Other Internet Resources, and described in Midgley
1983). Such an argument might render permissible hurting animals, too,
or treating them merely as tools.



Relatedly, even conceding that it is pro tanto wrong to kill animals,
it might be all things considered permissible to kill farm animals for
food even when there are ready alternatives because and when their
well-being is replaced by the well-being of a new batch of farmed
animals (Tannsjo 2016). Farms kill one batch of chickens and
then bring in a batch of chicks to raise (and then kill) next. The
total amount of well-being is fixed though the identities of the
receptacles of that well-being frequently changes.



Anyone who endorses the views in the two paragraphs above needs to
explain whether and then why their reasoning applies to animals but
not humans. It would not be morally permissible to create humans on
organ farms and harvest those organs, justifying this with the claim
that these humans wouldn't exist if it weren't for the
plan to take their organs and so part of the "deal" is
that those humans are killed for their organs. Neither would it be
morally permissible to organ-farm humans, justifying it with the claim
that they will be replaced by other happy
 humans.[6]


#### 2.2.3 Harming the Environment



Finally, consider:




Harming the environment while producing food when there are readily
available alternatives is wrong.



Industrial animal farming involves harming the environment while
producing food when there are readily available alternatives.
Hence,



Industrial animal farming is wrong.




A more plausible premise might be "egregiously harming the
environment..." The harms, detailed in Budolfson 2018,
Hamerschlag 2011, Rossi & Garner 2014, and Ranganathan et al.
2016, are egregious and include deforestation, greenhouse gas
emission, soil degradation, water pollution, water and fossil fuel
depletion.



The argument commits to it being wrong to harm the environment.
Whether this is because those harms are instrumental in harming
sentient creatures or whether it is intrinsically wrong to harm the
environment or ecosystems or species or living creatures regardless of
sentience is left
 open.[7]



The argument does not commit to whether these harms to the environment
are necessary consequences of industrial animal farming. There are
important debates, discussed in *PNAS* 2013, about whether, and
how easily, these harms can be stripped off industrial animal
production.



There is an additional important debate, discussed in Budolfson 2018,
about whether something like this argument applies to freerange animal
farming.



Finally, there is a powerful objection to the first premise from the
claim that these harms are part of a package that leaves sentient
creatures better off than they would've been under any other
option.


#### 2.2.4 General Moral Theories



Nothing has been said so far about general moral theories and meat
production. There is considerable controversy about what those
theories imply about meat production. So, for example, utilitarians
agree that we are required to maximize happiness. They disagree about
which agricultural practices do so. One possibility is that because it
brings into existence many trillions of animals that, in the main,
have lives worth living and otherwise would not exist, industrial
farming maximizes happiness (Tannsjo 2016). Another is that
freerange farming maximizes happiness (Hare 1999; Crisp 1988).
Instead, it could be that no form of animal agriculture does (Singer
1975 though Singer 1999 seems to agree with Hare).



Kantians agree it is wrong to treat ends in themselves merely as
means. They disagree about which agricultural practices do so. Kant
(*Lectures on Ethics*) himself claims that no farming practice
does--animals are mere means and so treating them as mere means
is fine. Some Kantians, by contrast, claim that animals are ends in
themselves and that typically animal farming treats them as mere means
and, hence, is wrong (Korsgaard 2011 and 2015; Regan 1975 and
1983).



Contractualists agree that it is wrong to do anything that a certain
group of people would reasonably reject. (They disagree about who is
in the group.) They disagree, too, about which agricultural practice
contractualism permits. Perhaps it permits any sort of animal farming
(Carruthers 2011; Hsiao 2015a). Perhaps it permits none (Rowlands
2009). Intermediate positions are possible.



Virtue ethicists agree that it is wrong to do anything a virtuous
person would not do or would not advise. Perhaps this forbids hurting
and killing animals, so any sort of animal farming is impermissible
and so is hunting (Clark 1984; Hursthouse 2011). Instead, perhaps it
merely forbids hurting them, so freerange farming is permissible and
so is expert, pain-free hunting (Scruton 2006b).



Divine command ethicists agree that it is wrong to do anything
forbidden by God. Perhaps industrial farming, at least, would be
(Halteman 2010; Scully 2002). Lipscomb (2015) seems to endorse that
freerange farming would *not* be forbidden by God. A standard
Christian view is that no form of farming would be forbidden, that
because God gave humans dominion over animals, we may treat them in
any old way. Islamic and Jewish arguments are stricter about what may
be eaten and about how animals may be treated though neither rules out
even industrial animal farming (Regenstein, et al. 2003).



Rossian pluralists agree it is *prima facie* wrong to harm.
There is room for disagreement about which agricultural
practices--controlling, hurting, killing--do harm and so
room for disagreement about which farming practices are *prima
facie* wrong. Curnutt (1997) argues that the *prima facie*
wrongness of killing animals is not overridden by typical
justifications for doing so.


## 3. Fish and Insects



In addition to pork and beef, there are salmon and crickets. In
addition to lamb and chicken, there are mussels and shrimp. There is
little in the philosophical literature about insects and sea creatures
and their products, and this entry reflects
 that.[8]
 Yet the topics are important. The organization Fish Count estimates
that at least a trillion sea creatures are wild-caught or farmed each
year (Mood & Brooke 2010, 2012, in Other Internet Resources). 
Globally, humans consume more
than 20 kg of fish per capita annually (FAO 2016). In the US, we
consume 1.5 lbs of honey per capita annually (Bee Culture 2016).
Estimates of insect consumption are less sure. The UN FAO estimates
that insects are part of the traditional diets of two billion humans
though whether they are eaten--whether those diets are adhered
to--and in what quantity is unclear (FAO 2013).



Seafood is produced by farming and by fishing. Fishing techniques vary
from a person using a line in a boat to large trawlers pulling nets
across the ocean floor. The arguments for and against seafood
production are much like the arguments for and against meat
production: Some worry about the effects on humans of these practices.
(Some workers, for example, are enslaved on shrimpers.) Some worry
about the effects on the environment of these practices. (Some coral
reefs, for example, are destroyed by trawlers.) Some worry about the
permissibility of killing, hurting, or controlling sea creatures or
treating them merely as tools. This last worry should not be
undersold: Again, Mood and Brooke (2010, 2012, in Other Internet
Resources) estimate that
between 970 *billion* and 2.7 *trillion* fish are
wild-caught yearly and between 37 and 120 billion farmed fish are
killed. If killing, hurting, or controlling these creatures or
treating them as mere tools is wrong, then the scale of our wrongdoing
with regard to sea creatures beggars belief.



Are these actions wrong? Complicating the question is that there is
significantly more doubt about which sea creatures have mental lives
at all and what those mental lives are like. And while whether shrimp
are sentient is clearly irrelevant to the permissibility of enslaving
workers who catch them, it does matter to the permissibility of
killing shrimp. This doubt is greater still with regard to insect
mental lives. In conversation, people sometimes say that bee mental
life is such that nothing wrong is done to bees in raising them.
Nothing wrong is done to bees in killing them. Because they are not
sentient, there is no hurting them. Because of these facts about bee
mental life, the argument goes, "taking" their honey need
be no more morally problematic than "taking" apples from
an apple tree. (There is little on the environmental impact of honey
production or (human) workers and honey. So it is unclear how forceful
environment- and human-based worries about honey are.)



This argument supporting honey production hinges on some empirical
claims about bee mental life. For an up-to-date assessment of bee
mental life, see Tye 2016, which argues that bees "have a rich
perceptual consciousness" and "can feel some
emotions" and that "the most plausible hypothesis
overall...is that bees feel pain" (2016: 158-159) and
see, too, Barron & Klein 2016, which argues that insects,
generally, have a capacity for consciousness. The argument supporting
honey production might be objected to on those empirical grounds. It
might, instead, be objected to on the grounds that we are uncertain
what the mental lives of bees are like. It could be that they are much
richer than we realize. If so, killing them or taking excessive
honey--and thereby causing them significant harms--might
well be morally wrong. And, the objection continues, the costs of not
doing so, of just letting bees be, would be small. If so, caution
requires not taking any honey or killing bees or hurting them.
Arguments like this are sometimes put applied to larger creatures. For
discussion of such arguments, see Guerrero 2007.


## 4. From Production to Consumption



None of the foregoing is about consumption. The moral vegetarian
arguments thus far have, at most, established that it is wrong to
produce meat in various ways. Assuming that some such argument is
sound, how to get from the wrongness of producing meat to the
wrongness of consuming that meat?



This question is not always taken seriously. Classics of the moral
vegetarian literature like Singer 1975, Regan 1975, Engel 2000, and
DeGrazia 2009 do not give much space to it. (C. Adams 1990 is a rare
canonical vegetarian text that devotes considerable space to
consumption ethics.) James Rachels writes,



> 
> 
> Sometimes philosophers explain that [my argument for vegetarianism] is
> unconvincing because it contains a logical gap. We are all opposed to
> cruelty, they say, but it does not follow that we must become
> vegetarians. It only follows that we should favor less cruel methods
> of meat production. This objection is so feeble it is hard to believe
> it explains resistance to the basic argument [for vegetarianism].
> (2004: 74)
> 
> 
> 



Yet if the objection is that it does not *follow* from the
wrongness of producing meat that consuming meat is wrong, then the
objection is not feeble and is clearly correct. In order to validly
derive the vegetarian conclusion, additional premises are needed.
Rachels, it turns out, has some, so perhaps it is best to interpret
his complaint as that it is *obvious* what the premises
are.



Maybe so. But there is quite a bit of disagreement about what those
additional premises are and plausible candidates differ greatly from
one another.


### 4.1 Bridging the Gap



Consider a *productivist* idea about the connection between
production and consumption according to which consumption of
wrongfully-produced goods is wrong because it produces more wrongful
production. The idea issues an argument that, in outline, is:




Consuming some product *P* produces production of *Q*.



Production of *Q* is wrong.



It is wrong to produce wrongdoing. Hence,



Consuming *P* is wrong.




Or never mind *actual* production. A productivist might
argue:




Consuming some product *P* *is reasonably expected to
produce* production of *Q*.



Production of *Q* is wrong.



It is wrong to do something that is reasonably expected to produce
wrongdoing. Hence,



Consuming *P* is wrong. (Singer 1975; Norcross 2004; Kagan
2011)




(The main ideas about connecting consumption and production that
follow can--but won't --be put in terms of
expectation, too.)



The moral vegetarian might then argue that meat is among the values of
both *P* and *Q*: consuming meat is reasonably expect to
produce production of meat. Or the moral vegetarian might argue that
consuming meat produces more normalization of bad attitudes towards
animals and *that* is wrong. There are various
possibilities.



Just consider the first, the one about meat consumption producing meat
production. It is most plausible with regard to *buying*. It is
buying the wrongfully-produced good that produces more of it.
*Eating* meat produces more production, if it does, by
producing more buying. When Grandma buys the wrongfully produced
delicacy, the idea goes, she produces more wrongdoing. The company she
buys from produces more goods whether you eat the delicacy or throw it
out.



These arguments hinge on an empirical claim about production and a
moral claim about the wrongfulness of producing wrongdoing. The moral
claim has far-reaching implications (DeGrazia 2009 and Warfield 2015).
Consider this rent case:



> 
> 
> You pay rent to a landlord. You know that he takes your rent and uses
> the money to buy wrongfully-produced meat.
> 
> 
> 



If buying wrongfully-produced meat is wrong because it produces more
wrongfully-produced meat, is it wrong to pay rent in the rent case? Is
it wrong to buy a vegetarian meal at a restaurant that then takes your
money and uses it to buy wrongfully-produced steak? These are
questions for productivists' moral claim. There are further,
familiar questions about whether it is wrong to produce wrongdoing
when one neither intends to nor foresees it and whether it is wrong to
produce wrongdoing when one does not intend it but does foresee it and
then about whether what is wrong is producing wrongdoing or,
rather, simply producing a bad effect (see entries on the
 doctrine of double effect
 and
 doing vs. allowing harm).



An objection to productivist arguments denies the empirical claim and,
instead, accepting that because the food system is so enormous, fed by
so many consumers, and so stuffed with money, our eating or buying
typically has *no* effect on production, neither directly nor
even, through influencing others, indirectly (Budolfson 2015; Nefsky
2018). The idea is that buying a burger at, say, McDonald's
produces no new death nor any different treatment of live animals.
McDonald's will produce the same amount of meat--and raise
its animals in exactly the same way--regardless of whether one
buys a burger there. Moreover, the idea goes, one should reasonably
expect this. Whether or not this is a good account of how food
consumption typically works, it is an account of a possible system.
Consider the Chef in Shackles case, a modification of a case in
McPherson 2015:



> 
> 
> Alma runs Chef in Shackles, a restaurant at which the chef is known to
> be held against his will. It's a vanity project, and Alma will
> run the restaurant regardless of how many people come. In fact, Alma
> just burns the money that comes in. The enslaved chef is superb; the
> food is delicious.
> 
> 
> 



The productivist idea does not imply it is wrong to buy food from or
eat at Chef in Shackles. If that is wrong, a different idea needs to
explain its wrongness.



So consider instead an *extractivist* idea according to which
consumption of wrongful goods is wrong because it is a benefiting from
wrongdoing (Barry & Wiens 2016). This idea can explain why it is
wrong to eat at Chef in Shackles--when you enjoy a delicious meal
there, you benefit from the wrongful captivity of the chef. In
outline, the extractivist argument is:




Consuming some product *P* extracts benefit from the production
of *P*.



Production of *P* is wrong.



It is wrong to extract benefit from wrongdoing. Hence,



Consuming *P* is wrong.




Moral vegetarians would then urge that meat is among the values of
*P*. Unlike the productivist argument, this one is more plausible
with regard to *eating* than buying. It's the eating,
typically, that produces the benefit and not the buying. Unlike the
productivist argument, it does not seem to have any trouble explaining
what is wrong in the Chef in Shackles case. Unlike the productivist
argument, it doesn't seem to imply that paying a landlord who
pays for wrongfully produced food is wrong--paying a landlord is
not benefiting from wrongdoing.



Like the productivist argument, the extractivist argument hinges on an
empirical claim about consumer benefits and a moral claim about the
ethics of so benefiting.



The notion of benefiting, however, is obscure. Imagine you go to Chef
in Shackles, have a truly repulsive meal, and become violently ill
afterwards. Have you benefit ted from wrongdoing? If not, the
extractivist idea cannot explain what is wrong with going to the
restaurant.



Put so plainly, the extractivist's moral claim is hard to
believe. Consider the terror-love case, a modification of a case Barry
& Wiens 2016 credits to Garrett Cullity:



> 
> 
> A terrorist bomb grievously injures Bob and Cece. They attend a
> support group for victims, fall in love, and live happily ever after,
> leaving them significantly better off than they were before the
> attack.
> 
> 
> 



Bob and Cece seem to benefit from wrongdoing but seem not to be doing
anything wrong by being together. Whereas the productivist struggles
to explain why it is wrong to patronize Chef in Shackles, the
extractivist struggles to explain why it is permissible for Bob and
Cece to benefit from wrongdoing.



A *participatory* idea has no trouble with the terror-love
case. According to it, consuming wrongfully-produced goods is wrong
because it cooperates with or participates in or, in
Hursthouse's phrase, is party to wrongdoing (2011). Bob and Cece
do not participate in terror, so the idea does not imply they do
wrong. The idea issues an argument that, in outline, goes:




Consuming some product *P* is participating in the production of
*P*.



Production of *P* is wrong.



It is wrong to participate in the production of wrongful things.
Hence,



Consuming *P* is wrong. (Kutz 2000; Lepora & Goodin 2013)




Moral vegetarians would then urge that meat is among the values of
*P*. Unlike the productivist or extractivist ideas, the
participatory idea seems to as easily cover buying and eating for each
is plausibly a form of participating in wrongdoing. Unlike the
productivist idea, it has no trouble explaining why it is wrong to
patronize Chef in Shackles and does not imply it is wrong to pay rent
to a landlord who buys wrongfully-produced meat. Unlike the
extractivist idea, whether or not you get food poisoning at Chef in
Shackles has no moral importance to it. Unlike the extractivist idea,
the participatory idea does not falsely imply that the Bob and Cece do
wrong in benefiting from wrongdoing--after all, their failing in
love is not a way of participating in wrongdoing.



Yet it is not entirely clear what it is to participate in wrongdoing.
Consider the Jains who commit themselves to lives without
*himsa* (violence). Food production causes himsa. So Jains try
to avoid eating many plants, uprooted to be eaten, and even drinking
untreated water, filled with microorganisms, to minimize lives taken.
Yet Jaina monastics are supported by Jaina laypersons. The monastic
can't boil his own water--that would be violent--but
the water needs boiling so he depends on a layperson to boil. He kills
no animals but receives alms, including meat, from a layperson. Is the
monastic participating in violence? Is he participating because he is
complicit in this violence (Kutz 2000; Lepora & Goodin 2013)? Is
he part of a group that together does wrong (Parfit 1984: Chapter 3)?
When Darryl refuses to buy wrongfully-produced meat but does no
political work with regard to ending its production is he party to the
wrongful production? Does he participate in it or cooperate with its
production? Is he a member of a group that does wrong? If so, what are
the principles of group selection?



As a matter of contingent fact, failing to politically protest meat
exhibits no objectionable attitudes in contemporary US society. Yet it
might be that consuming certain foods insults or otherwise disrespects
creatures involved in that food's production (R.M. Adams 2002;
Hill 1979). Hurka (2003) argues that virtue requires exhibiting the
right attitude towards good or evil, and so *if* consuming
exhibits an attitude towards production, it is plausible that eating
wrongfully produced foods exhibits the wrong attitude towards them.
These are all *attitudinal* ideas about consumption. They might
issue in an argument like this:




Consuming some product *P* exhibits a certain attitude towards
production of *P*.



Production of *P* is wrong.



It is wrong to exhibit that attitude towards wrongdoing. Hence,



Consuming *P* is wrong.




Moral vegetarians would then urge that meat is among the values of
*P*. Like the participatory idea, the attitudinal idea explains
the wrongness of eating and buying various goods--both are ways
of exhibiting attitudes. Like the participatory idea, it has no
trouble with Chef in Shackles, the rent case, the food poisoning case,
or the terror-love case. It does hinge on an empirical claim about
exhibition--consuming certain products exhibits a certain
attitude--and then a moral claim about the impermissibility of
that exhibition. One might well wonder about both. One might well
wonder why buying meat exhibits support for that enterprise but paying
rent to someone who will buy that meat does not. One might well wonder
whether eating wrongfully-produced meat in secret exhibits support and
whether such an exhibition is wrong. Also, there are attitudes other
than attitudes towards production to consider. Failing to offer meat
to a guest might exhibit a failure of reverence (Fan 2010). In
contemporary India, in light of the "meat murders"
committed by Hindus against Muslims nominally for the latter
group's consumption of beef, refusing to eat meat might exhibit
support for religious discrimination (Doniger 2017).



The productivist, extractivist, participatory, and attitudinal ideas
are not mutually exclusive. Someone might make use of a number of
them. Driver, for example, writes,



> 
> 
> [E]ating [wrongfully produced] meat is *supporting* the
> industry in a situation where there were plenty of other, better,
> options open...What makes [the eater] *complicit* is that
> she is a *participant*. What makes that participation morally
> problematic...is that the eating of meat *displays* a
> *willingness to cooperate* with the producers of a product that
> is produced via huge amounts of pain and suffering. (2015: 79; all
> italics mine)
> 
> 
> 



This seems to at least incorporate participatory and attitudinal
ideas. Lawford-Smith (2015) combines attitudinal and productivist
ideas. McPherson (2015) combines extractivist and participatory ideas.
James Rachels (2004) combines participatory and productivity ideas.
And, of course, there are ideas not discussed here, e.g., that it is
wrong to reward wrongdoers for wrongdoing and buying wrongfully
produced meat does so. The explanation of why it is wrong to consume
certain goods might be quite complex.


### 4.2 Against Bridging the Gap



Driver, Lawford-Smith, McPherson, and James Rachels argue that it is wrong to
consume wrongfully produced food and try to explain why this is. The
productivist, extractivist, participatory, and attitudinal ideas, too,
try to explain it. But it could be that there is nothing to
explain.



It could be that certain modes of production are wrong yet consuming
their products is permissible. We might assume that *if*
consumption of certain goods is wrong, then that wrongness would have
to be partly explained in terms of the wrongness of those goods'
production and then argue that there are no sound routes from a
requirement not to produce a food to a requirement not to consume it
(Frey 1983). This leaves open the possibility that consumers might be
required to do *something*--for example, work for
political changes that end the wrongful system--but permitted to
eat wrongfully-produced food.



As SS4.1 discusses, Warfield raises a problem for productivist
accounts that they seem to falsely imply that morally permissible
activities like paying rent to meat-eaters or buying salad at a
restaurant serving meat are morally wrong (2015). Add the assumption
that *if* consumption is wrong, it is wrong because some
productivist view is true, and it follows that consumption of wrongful
goods need not be wrongful. (Warfield does not assume this but instead
says that "the best discussion" of the connection between
production and consumption is "broadly consequentialist"
(ibid., 154).)



Instead, we might assume that an extractivist or participatory or
attitudinal view is correct if any is and then argue no such view is
correct. We might, for example, argue that these anti-consumption
views threaten to forbid too much. If the wrongness of producing and
wrongness of consuming are connected, what *else* is connected?
If buying meat is wrong because it exhibits the wrong attitude towards
animals, is it permissible to be friends with people who buy that
meat--or does this, too, evince the wrong attitudes towards
animals? If killing animals for food is wrong, is it permissible
merely to abstain from consuming them or must one do more work to stop
their killing? The implications of various arguments against consuming
animals and animal products might be far-reaching. Some will see this
as an acknowledgment that something is wrong with moral vegetarian
arguments. As Gruen and Jones (2015) note, the lifestyle some such
arguments point to might not be enactable by creatures like us. Yet
they see this not as grounds for rejection of the argument but,
rather, as acknowledgment that the argument sets out an aspiration
that we can orient ourselves towards (cf. SS4 of Curtin 1991 on
"contextual vegetarianism").



A different sort of argument in favor of the all things considered
permissibility of consuming meat comes from the idea that eating and
buying animals actually makes for a great cultural good (Lomasky
2013). Even if we accept that the production of those animals is
wrong, it could be that the great good of consuming justifies doing
so. (Relatedly, it could be that the bad of *refusing to*
consume justifies consumption as in a case in which a host has labored
over barbequed chicken for hours and your refusing to eat it would
devastate him.) Yet this seems to leave open the possibility that all
sorts of awful practices might be permissible because they are
essential parts of great cultural goods. It threatens to permit too
much.


## 5. Extending Moral Vegetarian Arguments: Animal Products and Plants



Moral veganism accepts moral vegetarianism and adds to it that
consuming animal products is wrong. Mere moral vegetarians deny this
and add to moral vegetarianism that it is permissible to consume
animal products. An additional issue that divides some moral vegans
and moral vegetarians is whether animal product *production* is
wrong. This raises a general question: If it is wrong to produce meat
on the grounds adduced in
 SS2,
 what other foods are wrongfully produced? If it is wrong to hurt
chickens for meat, isn't it wrong to hurt them for eggs? If it
is wrong to harm workers in the production of meat, isn't it
wrong to harm workers in the production of animal products? If it is
wrong to produce huge quantities of methane for meat, isn't it
wrong to produce it for milk? These are challenges posed by moral
veganism. 



But various vegan diets raise moral questions. If it is wrong to hurt
chickens for meat, is it wrong to hurt mice and moles while harvesting
crops? If it is wrong to harm workers in the production of meat,
isn't it wrong to harm workers in the production of tomatoes? If
it is wrong to use huge quantities of water for meat, isn't it
wrong to use huge quantities of water for almonds?


### 5.1 Animal Products



As it might be that meat farming wrong, it might be that animal
product farming is wrong for similar reasons. These reasons stem from
concerns about plants, animals, humans, and the environment. This
entry will focus on the first, second, and fourth and will consider
eggs and dairy.


#### 5.1.1 Eggs



Like meat birds, egg layers on industrial farms are tightly confined,
given on average a letter-sized page of space. Their beaks are seared
off. They are given a cocktail of antibiotics. Males, useless as
layers, are killed right away: crushed, dehydrated, starved,
suffocated. As they age and their laying-rate slows, females are
starved so as to force them to shed feathers and induce more laying.
They are killed within a couple years (HSUS 2009; cf. Norwood &
Lusk 2011: 113-127, which rates layer hen lives as not worth
living).



Freerange egg farming ideally avoids much of this. Yet it still
involves killing off young but spent hens and also baby roosters. It
often involves painful, stressful trips to industrial slaughterhouses.
So, as it is plausible that industrially and freerange farming
chickens for meat makes them suffer, so too is it plausible that
industrially and freerange farming them for eggs does. The same goes
for killing.



The threat to the environment, too, arises from industrial farming
itself rather than whether it produces meat or eggs. Chickens produce
greenhouse gas and waste regardless of whether they are farmed for
meat or eggs. Land is deforested to grow food for them and resources
are depleted to care for them regardless of whether they are farmed
for meat or eggs.



In sum, arguments much like arguments against chicken production seem
to apply as forcefully to egg production. Arguments from premises
about killing, hurting, and harming the environment seem to apply to
typical egg production as they do to typical chicken production.


#### 5.1.2 Dairy



Like beef cattle, dairy cows on industrial farms are tightly confined
and bereft of much stimulation. As dairy cows, however, they are
routinely impregnated and then constantly milked. Males, useless as
milkers, are typically turned to veal within a matter of months.
Females live for maybe five years. (HSUS 2009; cf. Norwood & Lusk
2011: 145-150).



Freerange milk production does not avoid very much of this. Ideally,
it involves less pain and suffering but it typically involves forced
impregnation, separation of mother and calf, and an early death,
typically in an industrial slaughterhouse. So far as arguments against
raising cows for meat on the basis that doing so kills them and makes
them suffer are plausible, so are analogous arguments against raising
cows for dairy.



The threat to the environment is also similar regardless of whether
cattle are raised for meat or milk. So far as arguments against
raising cows for meat on the basis that doing so harms the environment
are plausible, so are analogous arguments against raising cows for
milk. Raising cows for meat and for milk produces greenhouse gas and
waste; it deforests and depletes resources. In fact, to take just one
example, the greenhouse-gas-based case against dairy is stronger than
the greenhouse-gas-based case against poultry and pork (Hamerschlag
2013).



In sum, arguments much like arguments against beef production seem to
apply as forcefully to dairy production. Arguments from premises about
killing, hurting, and harming the environment seem to apply to typical
dairy production as they do to typical beef production.


### 5.2 Plants



As it might be that animal, dairy, and egg farming are wrong, it might
be that plant farming is wrong for similar reasons. These reasons stem
from concerns about plants, animals, humans, and the environment. This
entry will focus on the first, second, and fourth.


#### 5.2.1 Plants Themselves



Ed drenches Fatima's prized cactus in pesticides without
permission. This is uncontroversially wrongful but only
uncontroversial because the cactus is Fatima's. If a cactus
grows in Ed's yard and, purely for fun, she drenches it in
pesticides, killing it, is that wrong? There is a family of unorthodox
but increasingly common ideas about the treatment of plants according
to which any killing of plants is at least *pro tanto* wrongful
and that treating them as mere tools is too (Marder 2013; Stone 1972,
Goodpaster 1978, and Varner 1998 are earlier discussions and Tinker
2015 discusses *much* earlier discussions). One natural way to
develop this thought is that it is wrong to treat plants this way
simply because of the effects on plants themselves. An alternative is
wrong to treat the plants this way simply because of its effects on
the biosphere. In both cases, we can do intrinsic wrong to
non-sentient creatures.



The objection raises an important issue about interests. Singer,
following Porphyry and Bentham, assumes that all and only sentient
creatures have interests. The challenge that Marder, et al. raise is
that plants at least seem to do better or worse, to flourish or
founder, because they seem to have interests in a certain amount of
light, nutrients, and water. One way to interpret the position of
Porphyry, et al. is that things are not as they seem here and, in
fact, plants, lacking sentience, have no interests. This invites the
question of why sentience is necessary for interests (Frey 1980 and
1983). Another way to interpret the position of Porphyry, et al. is
that plants do have interests but they have no moral import. This
invites the questions of when and why is it permissible to deprive
plants of what they have interests in. Marder's view is that
plants have interests and that these interests carry significantly
more moral weight than one might think. So, for example, as killing a
dog for fun is wrong, so, too, is killing a dandelion. If killing a
chicken for food we don't need is wrong, so, too, is killing
some carrots.



If it is impermissible to kill plants to provide ourselves food we
don't need, how far does the restriction on killing extend: To
bacteria? Pressed about this by Gary Francione, Marder is open-minded:
"We should not reject the possibility of respecting communities
of bacteria without analyzing the issue seriously" (2016:
179).


#### 5.2.2 Plant Production and Animals



Marder's view rests on a controversial interpretation of plant
science and, in particular, on a controversial view that vegetal
responses to stimuli--for example that "roots...are
capable of altering their growth pattern in moving toward
resource-rich soil or away from nearby roots of other members of the
same species" (2016: 176)--suffice to show that plants have
interests, are ends in themselves, and it is pro tanto wrong to kill
them and treat them as tools.



Uncontroversially, much actual plant production *does* have
various bad consequences for animals. Actual plant production in the
US is largely large scale. Large-scale plant production
involves--intentionally or otherwise--killing a great many
sentient creatures. Animals are killed by tractors and pesticides.
They are killed or left to die by loss of habitat (Davis 2003; Archer
2011). The scope of the killing is disputed in Lamey 2007 and Matheny
2003 but all agree it is vast (cf. Saja 2013 on the moral imperative
to kill large animals).



The "intentionally or otherwise" is important to some.
While these harms are foreseen consequences of farming, they are
unintended. To some, that animals are harmed but not intentionally
harmed in producing corn in Iowa helps to make those harms permissible
(see entry on
 doctrine of double effect).
 Pigs farmed in Iowa, by contrast, are intentionally killed. Chickens
and cows, too. (Are any intentionally hurt? Not typically. Farming is
not sadistic.)



The scale is important, too. Davis (2003) and Archer (2011) argue that
some forms of meat production kill fewer animals than plant production
and, because of that, are preferable to plant production.



The idea is that if animal farming is wrong because it kills animals
simply in the process of producing food we don't need, then some
forms of plant farming are wrong for the same reason. More weakly, if
animal farming is wrong because it kills *very large* numbers
of animals in the process of producing food we don't need, then
some forms of plant farming are wrong for the same reason.



An outstanding issue is whether these harms are necessary components
of plant production or contingent. A further issue is how easy it
would be to strip these harms off of plant production while still
producing foods humans want to eat at prices they are willing to
pay.


#### 5.2.3 Plant Production and the Environment



A final objection to the permissibility of plant production: There are
clearly environmental costs of plant production. Indeed, the
environmental costs of plant farming are large: topsoil loss; erosion;
deforestation; run-off; resource-depletion; greenhouse gas emissions.
To take just the last two examples, Budolfson (2016: 169) estimates that
broccoli produces more kilograms of CO2 per thousand
calories than pork and that almonds use two and a half times the water
per thousand calories that chicken does.



If some forms of animal farming are wrong for those environmental
reasons, then some forms of plant farming are wrong for those reasons
(Budolfson 2018).



Again, an outstanding issue is whether these harms are necessary
components of plant production or contingent. A further issue is how
easy it would be to strip these harms off of plant production while
still producing foods people want to eat at prices they are willing to
pay.


### 5.3 Summary of Animal Product and Plant Subsections



Moral vegetarian arguments standardly oppose treating animals in
various ways while raising them for food that we do not need to eat to
survive. This standardly makes up part of the arguments that it is
wrong to *eat* animals.



These arguments against meat production can be extended *mutatis
mutandis* to animal product
 production.[9]
 They can be extended, too, to some forms of plant production. This
suggests:




The arguments against industrial plant production and animal product
production are as strong as the arguments against meat production.



The arguments against meat production show that meat production is
wrong. Hence,



The arguments against industrial plant production and animal product
production show that those practices are wrong.




One possibility is that the first premise is false and that some of
the arguments are stronger than others.



Another possibility is that the first premise is true and all these
arguments are equally strong. We would then have to choose between
accepting the second premise--and thereby accepting the
conclusion--or denying that meat production is wrong.



Another possibility is that the argument is sound but of limited
scope, there being few if any alternatives in the industrialized West
to industrialized plant, animal product, and meat production.



A final possibility is that the parity of these arguments and evident
unsoundness of an argument against industrial plant production show
that the ideas behind those arguments are being misexpressed. Properly
understood, they issue not in a directive about the wrongness of this
practice or that. Rather, properly understood, they just show that
various practices are bad in various ways. If so, we can then ask:
Which are worse? And in which ways? The literature typically ranks
factory farming as worse for animals than industrial plant farming if
only because the former requires the latter and produces various
harms--the suffering of billions of chickens--that the
latter does not. Or consider the debate in the literature about the
relative harmfulness to animals of freerange farming and industrial
plant farming. Which produces more animal death or more animal
suffering? Ought we minimize that suffering? Or consider the relative
harmfulness of freerange and industrial animal farming. Some argue
that the former is worse for the environment but better for animals.
If so, there is a not-easy question about which, if either, to go in
for.


## 6. Conclusion: Where the Debate About Vegetarianism Stands and Is Going



Given length requirements, this entry cannot convey the vastness of
the moral vegetarian literature. There is some excellent work in the
popular press. *Between the Species*, *Journal of
Agricultural and Environmental Ethics*, *Journal of Animal
Ethics*, *Environmental Ethics*, and *Journal of Food
Ethics* publish articles yearly. Dozens of good articles have been
omitted from discussion.



This entry has omitted quite direct arguments against consuming meat,
arguments that do not derive from premises about the wrongness of
*producing* this or that. Judeo-Islamic prohibitions on pork,
for example, derive from the uncleanliness of the product rather than
the manner of its production. Rastafari prohibitions on eating meat,
for another example, derive in part from the view that meat
consumption is unnatural. Historically, such prohibitions and
justifications for them have not been limited to prohibitions on
consuming meat. The *Laws of Manu*'s prohibition on
onion-eating derives from what consuming onion will do to the consumer
rather than the manner of onion-production (Doniger & Smith
(trans.) 1991: 102). The Koran's prohibition on alcohol-drinking
derives from what consuming alcohol will do to the consumer rather
than the manner of alcohol-production (5:90-91).



Arguments like this, arguments against consumption that start from
premises about intrinsic features of the consumed or about the
consumed's effects on consumers, largely do not appear in the
contemporary philosophical literature. What we have now are arguments
according to which certain products are wrongfully produced and
consumption of such products bears a certain relation to that
wrongdoing and, *ipso facto*, is wrong. Moral vegetarians then
argue that meat is such a product: It is typically wrongfully produced
and consuming it typically bears a certain relation to that
wrongdoing. This then leaves the moral vegetarian open to two sorts of
objections: objections to the claims about
production--*is* meat produced that way? Is such
production wrongful?--and objections to the claims connecting
consumption to production--*is* consuming meat related to
wrongful production in the relevant way? Is being so related wrong?
Explaining moral vegetarian answers to these questions was the work of
 SS2
 and
 SS4.



There are further questions. If moral vegetarian arguments against
meat-consumption are sound, then are arguments against animal
*product* consumption also sound? Might dairy, eggs, and honey
be wrongfully produced as moral vegetarians argue meat is? Might
consuming them wrongfully relate the consumer to that production?
Explaining the case for "yes" was some of the work of
 SS5.



Relatedly, some plants, fruit, nuts, and other putatively vegetarian
foods might be wrongfully produced. Some tomatoes are picked by
workers working in conditions just short of slavery (Bowe 2007);
industrial production of apples sucks up much water (Budolfson 2016);
industrial production of corn crushes numerous small animals to death
(Davis 2003). Are these food wrongfully produced? Might consuming them
wrongfully relate the consumer to that production? Explaining the case
for "yes" here, too, was some of the work of
 SS5.



Fischer (2018) suggests that the answers to some of the questions
noted in the previous two paragraphs support a requirement to
"eat unusually" and, one might add, to produce unusually.
*If* meat, for example, is usually wrongfully produced, it must
be produced unusually for that production to stand a chance of being
permissible, perhaps as faultless roadkill (Koelle 2012; Bruckner
2015) or as the corpse of an animal dead from natural causes (Foer
2009) or as a test-tube creation (Milburn 2016; Pluhar 2010; see the
essays in Donaldson & Carter (eds.) 2016 for discussion of
plant-based "meat").



If consuming meat is usually wrong because it usually bears a certain
relation to production, it must be consumed unusually to stand a
chance of being permissible. Some people eat only food they scavenge
from dumpsters, food that would otherwise go to waste. Some people eat
only food that is given to them without asking for any food in
particular. *If* consuming is wrong only because it produces
more production, neither of these modes of consumption would be
wrongful.



As some unusual consumption might, by lights of the arguments
considered in this entry, turn out to be morally unobjectionable, some
perfectly usual practices having nothing to do with consumption might
turn out, by those same lights, to be morally objectionable. Have you
done all you are required to do by moral vegetarian lights if you stop
eating, for example, factory-farmed animals? Clearly not. If it is
wrong to eat a factory-farmed cow, it is *for very similar
reasons* wrong to wear the skin of that cow. Does the wrongful
road stop at consumption, broadly construed to include buying, eating,
or otherwise using? Or need consumers do more than not consume
wrongfully-produced goods? Need they be pickier in how they spend
their money than simply not buying meat, e.g., not going to
restaurants that serve any meat? Need they protest or lobby? Need they
take more direct action against farms? Or more direct action against
the government? Need they refuse to pay rent to landlords who buy
wrongfully-produced meat? Is it permissible for moral vegetarians to
befriend--or to stay friends with--meat-eaters? As there are
questions about whether the moral road gets from production to
consumption, there are questions about whether the road stops at
consumption or gets much farther.



As discussed in
 SS5,
 the moral vegetarian case against killing, hurting, or raising
animals for food might well be extended to killing, hurting, or
raising animals in other circumstances. What, if anything, do those
cases show about the ethical treatment of pets (Bok 2011; Overall
(ed.) 2017; Palmer 2010 and 2011)? Of zoo creatures (DeGrazia 2011;
Gruen 2011: Chapter 5; Gruen 2014)? 



What, if anything, do they show about duties regarding wild animals?
Palmer 2010 opens with two cases from 2007, one of which involved the
accidental deaths of 10,000 wildebeest in Kenya, the other involving
the mistreatment and death of 150 horses in England. As Palmer notes,
it is plausible that we are required to care for and help domesticated
animals--that's why it is plausibly wrong to let horses
under our care suffer--but permissible to let similar harms
befall wild animals--that's why it is plausibly permissible
to let wildebeest suffer and die. And yet, Palmer continues, it is
also plausible that animals with similar capacities--animals like
horses and wildebeest--should be treated similarly. So is the
toleration of 10,000 wildebeest deaths permissible? Or do we make a
moral mistake in not intervening in such cases? Relatedly, moral
vegetarians oppose chicken killing and consumption and yet some of
them aid and abet domestic cats in the killings of billions of birds
each year in the United States alone (Loss, et al. 2013; Pressler
2013). Is this permissible? If so, why (Cohen 2004; Milburn 2015;
Sittler-Adamczewski 2016)? McMahan (2015) argues that standard moral
vegetarian arguments against killing and suffering lead (eventually)
to the conclusion that we ought to reduce predation in the wild.



What, if anything do moral vegetarian arguments show about duties
regarding fetuses? There are forceful arguments that if abortion is
wrong, then so is killing animals for food we don't need (Scully
2013). The converse is more widely discussed but less plausible
(Abbate 2014; Colb & Dorf 2016; Nobis 2016).



Finally, in the food ethics literature, questions of food justice are
among the most common questions about food consumption. Sexism,
racism, and classism, are unjust. Among the issues of food justice,
then, are how, if at all, the practices of vegetarianism and
omnivorism or encouragement of them are sexist (C. Adams 1990) or
racist (Alkon & Agyeman (eds.) 2011) or classist (Guthman 2011).
Industrial animal agriculture raises a pair of questions of justice:
It degrades the environment--is this unjust to future generations
who will inherit this degraded environment? Also, what makes it so
environmentally harmful is the scale of it. That scale is driven, in
part, by demand for meat among the increasingly affluent in developing
countries (Herrero & Thornton 2013). Is refusing to meet that
demand--after catering to wealthy Western palates for a long
stretch--a form of classism or racism?



The animals we eat dominate the moral vegetarian literature and have
dominated it ever since there has been a moral vegetarian literature.
A way to think about these last few paragraphs is that questions about
what we eat lead naturally to questions about other, quite different
topics: the animals we eat but also the animals we don't; eating
those animals but also eating plants; refusing to eat those animals
but also raising pets and refusing to intervene with predators and
prey in the wild; refusing to eat but also failing to protest or
rectify various injustices. Whereas the questions about
animals--and the most popular arguments about them--are very
old, these other questions are newer, and there is much progress to be
made in answering them.