A Utilitarian Argument for Vegetarianism

Abstract

Although supporters of vegetarianism (and animals' interests in general) come in many varieties, we may distinguish two groups. First, utilitarians such as Singer base their argument on the suffering that factory farming causes to nonhumans and the absence of comparable benefits to humans. l Second, the animal rights view, as expressed by Regan, extends Kant's respect for persons principle to include nonhumans and argues that meat eating wrongly treats nonhumans merely as means.2 Similarly, I find it useful to distinguish two types of defense of meat eating. My division is based on how each group responds to Singer's demand that we extend the equal consideration of interests principle3 to include nonhumans and to his parallel between speciesism and, on the other hand, racism and sexism. Some grant Singer's premise that nonhumans do deserve equal consideration of interests, but they argue either that animals actually benefit from being raised on farms or that their suffering is outweighed by human gains. Others, paralleling Regan's rights approach, reject utilitarian calculations of interests. However, thcy argue, in direct opposition to Regan,