Norcross's Argument Analysis

Norcross believe that one should not eat meat that is raised in a factory. He uses an argument about torturing puppies and eating their brains. Although his argument about Fred and his extreme cruelty to feel the sensation of eating chocolate is cruel, it puts one in a state of mind to pay close attention to his point. What is his point? Eating animals that are raised in factories are just is cruel as torturing puppies for one’s own pleasure. He states that Fred’s pleasures do not make it morally permissible to torture puppies. This is compared to livestock in factory farms because, they undergo the same kind of torture and abuse. His conclusion is that, torturing puppies and eating meats from factory raised cattle are one in the same and is immoral.

Machan addresses two different issues in his argument, animal rights, and animal liberation. Although they are fundamentally different subjects they are both contributed to animals for the same reason. He continues to look at the “rights” of moral agents and that moral agents can only be if they themselves can make moral decisions. Animals cannot make moral

The treatment of animals should defiantly be considered when one is raising them for meat or using them for science experiments. One objection can be made about Norcross’s argument, he compares puppies to live stock and factory raised meat to torturing puppies in someone’s basement. I feel that this argument was a good attention grabber but to compare puppies to live stock in my opinion is not a good comparison. Why? In our culture puppies and dogs are part of the family and live stock is a food source. One would hunt and kill a deer in the backyard and serve it for dinner; however, they would not shoot the neighbor’s dog in their yard and eat him for dinner. If Norcross would have used another food source as an example his argument could have been