I’m avid reader and admirer of Peter Singer, his columns with Project Syndicate (my ex-employer) are well worth reading. This month he used the recent tragic death of a trainer at Sea World by a killer whale to talk about the cruelty of animal parks and circuses. I find myself in total agreement; if I had kids I would not take them to the zoo or a circus for the exact reasons he lays out.
I had the good fortune spend a bit of time with Professor Singer when I was in Melbourne and starting to work on a story on animal welfare in China. I read his seminal book Animal Liberation at that time and, more recently, The Ethics of What We Eat, and his views have really influenced me. One thing I was struck by in the introduction to Animal Liberation was the fact that Professor Singer isn’t a particular animal lover per se—he just feels strongly that our views on animals are a form of speciesism that we need to rethink. His views made me question the way I eat, something that has been an ongoing process. Lately I’ve been reading reviews of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” and I was struck by something I read by him in an essay on the Huffington Post. He talked about how eating ethically doesn’t have to be a zero sum game—you can strive to eat ethically without going vegan, or even fully vegetarian. He compares it to an environmentalist who accepts that he/she will sometimes drive in a car. That was really an epiphany for me. People sneer at the term, but I like the idea of the conscientious omnivore and that is what I strive for these days, trying to avoid eating meat that has been intensively raised.
I’d love to do a Junta on this issue. People so frequently just snicker or denigrate these ideas, but I think they are being defensive and there is a lot to explore philisophically about it and it has such a direct impact on our health and how we live.
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