ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

Vegetarianism as ethical protest

part I|2 pages

Killing sentient beings

chapter 1.2|8 pages

Against killing “happy” animals

chapter 1.4|11 pages

Animals as honorary humans

chapter 1.7|12 pages

The ethics of eating in “evangelical” discourse

1600–1876

chapter 1.8|9 pages

Myth and meat

C. S. Lewis sidesteps Genesis 1:29–30

chapter 1.9|14 pages

The moral poverty of pescetarianism

chapter 1.10|10 pages

There is something fishy about eating fish, even on Fridays

On Christian abstinence from meat, piscine sentience, and a fish called Jesus

part II|2 pages

The harms or cruelty involved in institutionalized killing

chapter 2.1|11 pages

“The cost of cruelty”

Henry Bergh and the abattoirs

chapter 2.2|12 pages

“All creation groans”

The lives of factory farmed animals in the United States

chapter 2.3|11 pages

L’Enfer, c’est nous autres

Institutionalized cruelty as standard industry practice in animal agriculture in the United States

chapter 2.5|9 pages

Taking on the gaze of Jesus

Perceiving the factory farm in a sacramental world

chapter 2.6|10 pages

“A lamb as it had been slain”

Mortal (animal) bodies in the Abrahamic traditions

chapter 2.7|9 pages

Cattle husbandry without slaughtering

A lifetime of care is fair

chapter 2.8|12 pages

Are insects animals?

The ethical position of insects in Dutch vegetarian diets

part III|2 pages

The human and environmental costs of institutionalized killing

chapter 3.2|10 pages

From devouring to honoring

A Vaishnava-Hindu therapeutic perspective on human culinary choice

chapter 3.3|13 pages

The other ghosts in our machine

Meat processing and slaughterhouse workers in the United States of America‬‬‬‬‬