The Chicken and the Bath Water: Exploring a Basic Limit to the Vegetarian Ideal
Critics of the animal rights movement often point out that a perfectly vegetarian world would result in a drastic reduction of the number of farm animals. This article is the first to systematically analysis the merits of this objection. The article provides several alternative ways of naming the ob...
| Published in: | The expository times |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
[2012]
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| In: |
The expository times
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| Further subjects: | B
theology of animals
B farm animals B Stewardship B Animal welfare B Animal Rights B cruelty to animals B Domestic animals B VEGETARIAN foods B Vegetarianism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Critics of the animal rights movement often point out that a perfectly vegetarian world would result in a drastic reduction of the number of farm animals. This article is the first to systematically analysis the merits of this objection. The article provides several alternative ways of naming the objection, including "the animal elimination problem," "the carnivore's claim," and "the chicken and the bathwater dilemma." It also compares the animal elimination problem to the goal of humane societies to spay and neuter companion animals. The ways in which the animal welfare movement avoids this problem by substituting compassion for rights is also explored. A potentially fatal flaw of the "animal elimination" objection is the difficulty of talking about future or theoretical entities. Can animals not yet born have rights? Moreover, does it make sense to say that animals born into suffering might wish to never have been born? Several hypothetical scenarios are developed to address these questions. The author argues that the animal elimination problem does stall on the puzzle of assigning interests to hypothetical animals, yet there is a moral intuition about our relationship to the future that is worth considering. On secular grounds, there are no strong reasons to claim that we have duties to animals not yet existing, but Christian theology complicates the picture. The article ends with an exploration of the commands in Genesis to both humans and nonhuman animals to procreate and fill the world. The author concludes that Christians do have a duty to bring future animals into existence if they can do so within moral limits prescribed by the Genesis narrative itself. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-5308 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The expository times
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/0014524612451224 |