January 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Meat: A Benign Extravagance (Book Review)
With the possible exception of one chapter, Meat: A Benign Extravagance is not a scorching anti-veganism polemic. In looking at the environmental consequences of what we eat and how we produce it, author Simon Fairlie tallies up plenty of points in veganism’s favor. The man is so hard to pin down that many vegans thought his 2008 article “Can Britain Feed Itself?” – a version of which became...
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Meat: A Benign Extravagance (Book Excerpt)
The following is an excerpt from MEAT: A BENIGN EXTRAVAGANCE by SIMON FAIRLIE, available now, from Chelsea Green Publishing.
The Fence
In the 1960s, the American biologist Robert Paine conducted an experiment involving the removal of a predator species from a seashore environment:
When he removed the main predator, a certain species of starfish, from a population of fifteen observable species,...
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It's Easier to be a Consistent Ethical Omnivore...
Vegans are enamored with their own moral consistency, believing that it is inconsistent to love dogs and cats but then to eat pigs and cows. Vegans are the only ones who measure up to the ethics implicit in having a companion animal, they say. Meanwhile, ethical omnivores are inconsistent because they are fine with killing animals as long as they aren’t tortured—yet they don’t...
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Would You Choose a Vegan World From Behind a Veil...
John Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance” concept is a convoluted way of asking “What would you want the world to be like if you were about to be born but didn’t know who you would be?” Rawls takes most of the boring features of the world as a given (we don’t get to have food and sex falling out of the sky, with everyone being immortal and in love) and looks at...