Archives of Animal & Poultry Sciences

The Ethics of Rearing Animals for Meat: Can Sentience Provide a Meaningful Threshold for Moral Concern? A Defence of Compassionate Speciesism

Author: Neil Craven

Published: March 24, 2024

DOI: 10.19080/AAPS.2024.02.555594

Abstract Content: Rearing and killing animals for meat poses a few ethical questions. Sentientism holds that a being has moral status if and only if it is sentient. The philosopher Peter Singer considers that the suffering of a sentient being should count equally with the like suffering of any other being and thus prioritising human interests over those of non-human animals amounts to an unjustifiable speciesism. I argue that sentientism is false and that suffering and sentience are separate considerations. Prioritizing human interests may be justifiable since species relativism but, a fortiori, I argue that we have ample reasons for endorsing and embracing speciesism. I present the case for conscientious omnivorism and compassionate speciesism.