Description
The protest against meat eating may turn out to be one of the most significant movements of our age. In terms of our relations with animals, it is difficult to think of a more urgent moral problem than the fate of billions of animals killed every year for human consumption.
This book argues that vegetarians and vegans are not only protestors, but also moral pioneers. It provides 25 chapters which stimulate further thought, exchange, and reflection on the morality of eating meat. A rich array of philosophical, religious, historical, cultural, and practical approaches challenge our assumptions about animals and how we should relate to them. This book provides global perspectives with insights from 11 countries: US, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Israel, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, and Sweden. Focusing on food consumption practices, it critically foregrounds and unpacks key ethical rationales that underpin vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. It invites us to revisit our relations with animals as food, and as subjects of exploitation, suggesting that there are substantial moral, economic, and environmental reasons for changing our habits.
This timely contribution, edited by two of the leading experts within the field, offers a rich array of interdisciplinary insights on what ethical vegetarianism and veganism means. It will be of great interest to those studying and researching in the fields of animal geography and animal-studies, sociology, food studies and consumption, environmental studies, and cultural studies. This book will be of great appeal to animal protectionists, environmentalists, and humanitarians.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Vegetarianism as Ethical Protest (Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey) Part One: Killing Sentient Beings 1.1. Why Foods Derived from Animals are Not Necessary for Human Health (Stephen Patrick Kieran Walsh) 1.2. Against Killing "Happy" Animals (Andrew Fisher) 1.3. Food Ethics and Justice Toward Animals (Corine Pelluchon) 1.4. Animals as Honorary Humans (Bob Fischer) 1.5. Nonhuman Animals’ Desires and Their Moral Relevance (Robert Patrick Stone Lazo) 1.6. Why Vegetarianism Wasn’t on the Menu in Early Greece (Simon Pulleyn) 1.7. The Ethics of Eating in "Evangelical" Discourse: 1600–1876 (Philip Sampson) 1.8. Myth and Meat: C. S. Lewis Sidesteps Genesis 1:29–30 (Michael J. Gilmour) 1.9. The Moral Poverty of Pescetarianism (Max Elder) 1.10. There is Something Fishy about Eating Fish, Even on Fridays: On Christian Abstinence from Meat, Piscine Sentience, and a Fish Called Jesus (Kurt Remele) Part Two: The Harms or Cruelty Involved in Institutionalized Killing 2.1. "The Cost of Cruelty": Henry Bergh and the Abattoirs (Robyn Hederman) 2.2. "All Creation Groans": The Lives of Factory Farmed Animals in the United States (Lucille Claire Thibodeau) 2.3. L’enfer, c’est nous autres: Institutionalized Cruelty as Standard Industry Practice in Animal Agriculture in the United States (Patricia McEachern) 2.4. Welfare and Productivity in Animal Agriculture (Jeff Johnson) 2.5. Taking on the Gaze of Jesus: Perceiving the Factory Farm in a Sacramental World (Jim Robinson) 2.6. "A Lamb As It Had Been Slain": Mortal (Animal) Bodies in the Abrahamic Traditions (Marjorie Corbman) 2.7. Cattle Husbandry without Slaughtering: A Lifetime of Care is Fair (Patrick Meyer-Glitza) 2.8. Are Insects Animals? The Ethical Position of Insects in Dutch Vegetarian Diets (Jonas House) Part Three: The Human and Environmental Costs of Institutionalized Killing 3.1. Our Ambivalent Relations with Animals (Jeanette Thelander) 3.2. From Devouring to Honouring: A Vaishnava-Hindu Therapeutic Perspective on Human Culinary Choice (Kenneth Valpey Krishna Kshetra Swami) 3.3. The Other Ghosts in Our Machine: Meat Processing and Slaughterhouse Workers in the United States of America (Rebecca Jenkins) 3.4. Animal Agriculture and Climate Change (Tobias Thornes) 3.5. The Intentional Killing of Field Animals and Ethical Veganism (Joe Wills) 3.6. How Visual Culture Can Promote Ethical Dietary Choices (Hadas Marcus) 3.7. Leadership, Partnership and Championship as Drivers for Animal Ethics in the Western Food Industry (Monique R. E. Janssens and Floryt van Wesel)
