The Ethics Of What We Eat By Peter Singer And Jim Mason

Peter Singer and Jim Mason have written a book entitled The Ethics of What We Eat. Pages 241-248 of this book discuss the idea of whether factory farming is ethical or not. For this short reflection paper I will discuss the ideas that they brought up about the ethics of factory farming, while at the same time bringing in my views of factoring farming and the ethics behind animal treatment. The first issue that they bring up is that, “Factory farms are designed on the principle that ‘animals are machines incapable of feeling pain’ and that to support them requires ‘a willingness to avert your eyes’ from the reality that animals can feel.” This idea is basically that the owners of factory farms view the animals as machines rather than living breathing things. For an animal, which has a brain, to be viewed as an
It is making the animal worthless or unimportant. Yet, all animals that are put in factory farms have a price tag placed upon their heads. If the animals could not make the farmer or owner any money than they would view the animal as worthless. In this process they are saying that the animal is the same as a computer and can be treated in the same manner. However, as the authors point out in the next issue an animal can feel pain. Because of that it is not truly ethical to treat the animal as if it does not have emotions or feelings. The next issues that our authors talk about is where or not the pain the animals feel is ethical. They relate the idea to if a baby feels pain or not. They say that a baby does not understand the feeling of pain or what it is but they still feel it, just as animals still feel pain even if they cannot make since of it. If anyone harms a baby they would go to jail automatically, especially if it was on purpose. Yet, if