Animal Rights No Longer for Vegetarians Only

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 9, 2009 9:55 AM CDT

(Newser) – Electing a black man president wasn’t the only historic thing voters did last November, writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. California voted, by nearly a 2-1 margin, for an animal-rights initiative that bars farms from keeping calves, pregnant hogs, or hens in cages too small for them. And such ethical-treatment initiatives are gaining momentum across the US and Europe, 30 years after Princeton philosopher Peter Singer raised the issue of our moral obligations to animals.

“There’s some growth in numbers of vegetarians, but the bigger thing is a broad acceptance of the idea that animals count,” Singer tells Kristof. “For most of history, all of this would have been unimaginable even to people of the most refined ethical sensibility,” writes Kristof. Then again, “those refined ethicists were also untroubled by slavery.”

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) pose for the media during an anti-fur demonstration in front of a fur store in Seoul, Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man)

In this Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008 file photo, chickens huddle in their cages at an egg processing plant at the Dwight Bell Farm in Atwater, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Nathan Runkle, executive director of the animal rights group Mercy for Animals, talks about an undercover video showing chickens at a major California egg farm being mistreated by workers. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)

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The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham, in response to Kant's disinterest in animals

For my part, I eat meat, but I would prefer that this practice not inflict gratuitous suffering. - Nicholas Krisof

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