Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral

In Ben Bramble & Bob Fischer, The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat. New York, US: Oxford University Press. pp. 30-47 (2015)
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Abstract

The most popular and convincing arguments for the claim that vegetarianism is morally obligatory focus on the extensive, unnecessary harm done to animals and to the environment by raising animals industrially in confinement conditions (factory farming). I outline the strongest versions of these arguments. I grant that it follows from their central premises that purchasing and consuming factoryfarmed meat is immoral. The arguments fail, however, to establish that strict vegetarianism is obligatory because they falsely assume that eating vegetables is the only alternative to eating factory-farmed meat that avoids the harms of factory farming. I show that these arguments not only fail to establish that strict vegetarianism is morally obligatory, but that the very premises of the arguments imply that eating some (non-factory-farmed) meat rather than only vegetables is morally obligatory. Therefore, if the central premises of these usual arguments are true, then strict vegetarianism is immoral.

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Donald W. Bruckner
University of Pittsburgh (PhD)

Citations of this work

Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture.Bob Fischer & Andy Lamey - 2018 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (4):409-428.
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The Ethical Basis for Veganism.Tristram McPherson - 2018 - In Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson & Tyler Doggett, The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Oxford University Press.
Veganism, Animal Welfare, and Causal Impotence.Samuel Kahn - 2020 - Journal of Animal Ethics 10 (2):161-176.
Moral vegetarianism.Tyler Doggett - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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