The Summary
In a very imaginative paper, Alastair Norcross defends his view that buying and consuming factory-farmed meat is unethical. He morally compares it to tormenting puppies for gustatory pleasure. He asserts that people who love meat should understand that buying factory-farmed meat is wrong. The author urges them to become vegetarians. If not, they should stop buying meat of animals bred in factories.
The author gives several reasons that those people who love factory-farmed meat attempt to use to distinguish the morality of actions of Fred from the practice of purchasing meat produced in factories. The reasons include the fact that many consumers of factory meat never torment or kill, many consumers do not know how animals in factories are handled, and becoming a vegetarian cannot stop animal torture. The reason is that one person cannot causally affect this agribusiness since the misery of factory-farmed animals is not an intentional way of getting gustatory pleasure. Fred mutilates puppies intentionally to pleasure himself.
The paper states that someone who eats meat of animals bred in factories is causally ignorant. Fred is not causally ignorant and he could have stopped the torture of the puppies. Since agribusiness has been a large industry for decades, the act of ignoring factory-farmed meat may not affect improve the situation. The action of one person to surrender factory-farmed meat could potentially have no effect. Essentially, the conclusion of the author implies that if it should be considered morally incorrect to torture puppies for human pleasure, then lovers of meat from animals that are held in confinement should consider the act of eating this meat morally incorrect as well.
Critical analysis
The author raises many important moral issues. However, his argument that we should consider Fred’s act of mutilating puppies for his gustatory pleasure and the act of purchasing meat of animals from factories as morally incorrect is false. The author needs to note that Fred’s actions are stimulated by his personal love for chocolate. Not everyone in the world loves chocolate. Every human being has a passion for something in life. However, there are some animals that are considered food and their consumption should not be considered unethical. Animals such as chickens, pigs, cows, goats, and sheep have been accepted as food. If one was to be found eating a dog, then it would be considered morally wrong. It is not surprising that dog is food in certain countries such as South Korea.
My contention depends on what culture considers morally right or wrong. If the meat of certain animals is acceptable as food to the general society, then eating them is morally justified. The fact that a certain society would openly disagree with Fred’s actions suggests that Fred’s behavior is unethical. To justify his argument above, the author needs to explain why certain farm animals like chickens, cows, goats, and sheep that have been used as food for decades should suddenly be considered not edible. Fred knew it was morally incorrect to do what he was doing to the puppies.
That is why he hid them in the basement. Factory-farmed meat comes from an agribusiness that is acceptable and licensed in many nations. By providing his argument, the author tries to support the idea that why farm animals should not be used as food.