, Volume 30, Issue 2, pp 193-202
First online:
11 October 2012
Open Access
Abstract
Most ethical discussions about
diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products
rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating
products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented
in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans,
vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat-eaters. However, the common
“all or nothing” discussions between meat-eaters, vegans and vegetarians
bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that
if we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal
products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of
animals during farming or violation of their rights—as is typically
done—but, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time
efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an
assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some
easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of
the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example,
eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking
milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some
types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to
justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for
example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal
products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral
grounds.
