I am a vegetarian and was glad to see so much coverage of meat-free diets in Friday’s paper. Yet I have some qualms with the column Vegan lifestyle logical decision (SN 1/30).
Drew Winter is correct: Just because people have committed a certain action throughout history does not mean that this action is justified. However, he has only identified a fallacy in someone’s argument and has not demonstrated why the consumption of meat is immoral. If someone were to say that slavery is justified because humans have been doing it for centuries and are still doing it today, I would say they are wrong because all people have the right to live their own life freely without being considered another person’s property. The same is true with racism as well; people have equal rights and should not be denied these rights because they are of a certain ancestry.
If you go though the list of examples that Winter provides in his opinion column, you will find that in each instance a practice has been denounced by expanding the range of individuals who are considered to have rights. However, he fails to demonstrate that animals have rights, or that these rights are of equal value to the rights of humans.
Additionally, Winter’s argument about an animal’s capacity to suffer is not sufficient to prove that all meat eating is immoral. All this argument does is demand that the meat industry eliminate any suffering in the raising and slaughtering of animals, which is not impossible, just not well implemented.
Finally, the child rapist analogy was in really poor taste. If you wish to convince people not to eat meat, it is best to avoid discussing their argument in the context of pedophilia.
Alex Seddon
plant biology sophomore
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