Peter Singer in his essays expands on the concept of speciesism to the public and discusses how the criterion of applying rights to animals and humans is logically inconsistent. The designation of Homo Sapien being the only attribute required for moral importance is too arbitrary. Singer suggests we are to use the clearer requirement of sentience and capacity to feel pleasure and pain to assign moral importance. If this is to be universally applied non-human sentient animals deserve increased moral consideration fitting of their sentient status compared to humans. In this essay I will discuss Peter Singer’s definition of speciesism and through critical analysis look at the roll vegetarianism plays and its incompatibility with his arguments.
Singer argues that a “mental switch” needs to occur in regard to animal treatment during
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Many impaired humans exist well below intelligent animals on most measurable qualities that could be deemed “human”. Despite this Singer feels those animals receive far inferior moral consideration than the lowliest human. His solution of vegetarianism though is insufficient as it does not consider the roll animals of plants and the economic outcomes. Meat is considered by him to not be entirely inherently wrong as his argument relies on protein based alternatives feeding the masses. Plants may even fit some of his criteria for moral consideration but regardless animals who could be engineered artificially to have the same sentience as plants would be equally as acceptable a substitute. If the masses suddenly become vegetarian their lives are not “free of cruelty” as the meat industries would need to continue to function now with tighter margins. Switching likely to producing cheaper meat based animal feed or billions of livestock would be slaughtered needlessly