Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Boycotting products that do not involve suffering strikes me as a disproportionate
form of protest. Deciding whether an act of protest is or is not “disproportionate” is
not arbitrary. Everyone will agree that some types of pro-animal protest are moral
overkills (not talking to meat-eaters; not letting one's children play with the children
of a farm owner; leaving one's town because a new abattoir has opened). Determin-
ing what makes for “reasonable” protest is not mysterious and involves straightfor-
ward considerations. Morally informed consumer actions have to retain some plausible
relation with the suffering involved. The considerations that determine the plausibility
of a form of protest include effectiveness, the ideal being envisaged, the need to bal-
ance one's morals with other goals, whether the specific sphere of action involved is
one in which nothing less than doing the best will do, whether the act turns one's
protest into an antisocial eccentric act, thus diminishing the political force of one's
ideological agenda. and so on.
In focusing on suffering and loss as the important moral factors, in focusing on
promoting morally better farm-animal husbandry through selective purchasing, veget-
arians maintain a plausible relationship between their protest and their consumption.
To conclude: there are limits to what is required of vegetarians. The best a moral ve-
getarian can do is to eat only products that come from free-roaming breeding.
Purchasing and consuming other products is still excusable.
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