Cultured meat is a lab grown product that aims to tackle the cravings of omnivores who struggle to switch to a plant-based diet, while still being friendly to animals and the environment. Possibly, in time, the curiosity to apply this technology towards human meat production will emerge. However, when presented with the thought of eating cultured human meat potential consumers’ reaction greatly varies from pure disgust to indifference to excitement. This instinctive response indicates a lack of preformed judgements towards the (...) topic. Without a clear vision on the possibility of cultured human meat, scattered and uncertain regulations will fail to uphold paramount moral values. The risk is that we would either dig into this option out of excitement, or ban it without convincing motivations. The ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism can be followed to investigate this divisive issue. With an evaluation based on disgust I argue that the deontological perspective is mostly concerned with values of identity and humanness, while with a chain-reaction reasoning I argue that consequentialism would be concerned with health safety, privacy and equality. I conclude that cultured human meat is not acceptable. (shrink)

: Many environmentalists criticize as unecological the emphasis that animal liberationists and animal rights theorists place on preventing animal suffering. The strong form of their objection holds that both theories ab-surdly entail a duty to intervene in wild predation. The weak form holds that animal welfarists must at least regard predation as bad, and that this stance reflects an arrogance toward nature that true environmentalists should reject. This paper disputes both versions of the predation critique. Animal welfarists are not committed (...) to protecting the rabbit from the fox, nor do their principles implicitly deprecate nature. (shrink)

Many environmentalists criticize as unecological the emphasis that animal liberationists and animal rights theorists place on preventing animal suffering. The strong form of their objection holds that both theories absurdly entail a duty to intervene in wild predation. The weak form holds that animal welfarists must at least regard predation as bad, and that this stance reflects an arrogance toward nature that true environmentalists should reject. This paper disputes both versions of the predation critique. Animal welfarists are not committed to (...) protecting the rabbit from the fox, nor do their principles implicitly deprecate nature. (shrink)

David DeGrazia (2009) and Stuart Rachels (2011), among others, offer moral arguments in favor of adopting a vegetarian diet that have, they claim, broad appeal. Rather than relying on an account of animal rights or a particular ethical theory, these arguments rely on the moral principle that an extensive amount of pain requires moral justification. Since people do not need to eat meat in order to survive, the arguments conclude that the pain that animals experience in factory farming is unjustified. (...) I argue that these very same arguments support a more radical conclusion, namely, vegetarians morally should avoid eating vegetables from industrialized farming. Thus, if vegetarians are convinced by the moral arguments for vegetarianism offered by DeGrazia and Rachels, then they should be convinced, by analogous reasoning, that they should not eat vegetables from industrialized farming. (shrink)

Scientists will soon be able to grow human-transplantable organs in pigs. This paper focuses on the question of whether it is morally permissible to eat genetically altered pigs after harvesting their organs. Despite a lack of scholarly discussion of this question, the impetus for it is straightforward. There is no reason to think that peoples’ taste for pig will subside when scientists reach the point of being able to growing mature human organs inside them. In this paper, I argue that (...) there is a good reason why we should eat genetically altered pigs and currently no compelling reasons to the contrary. (shrink)