Slaughter of the singing sentients: measuring the morality of eating red meat (original) (raw)

The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and animal welfare, but if you want to minimise animal suffering and promote more sustainable agriculture, adopting a vegetarian diet might be the worst possible thing you could do. Princeton University professor and oft-cited spokesperson for the animal liberation movement, Peter Singer, has advocated the view that if there is a range of ways of feeding ourselves, we should choose the way that causes the least unnecessary harm to animals (Singer & Mason, 2006). In general, this is interpreted by most animal rights advocates to mean that we should, if possible, eat plants rather than animals.