Do animals have a right to not be eaten? What are the ethical implications of tanimal agriculture’s contribution to environmental destruction and food scarcity? Join a panel of distinguished ethicists and legal scholars to discuss the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals for food.
Moderator:
Marianne Sullivan, Program Director, Our Hen House
Presenters:
Julian Franklin, author, Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy, will offer a very brief prospect on the history of animal rights thought. He will crtically explain the positions of Peter Singer and Thomas Regan and will conclude very briefly with some suggestions of my own.
John Maher, Adjunct Professor of Law, Touro College will present, a discussion of the possibility of rejection of Speciesism as the only possible prototype for animaljustice.
Gary Francione, author, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog?, will challenge the idea that although animals matter morally, we can still use and eat them because animals don’t have an interest in continued existence and explain how modern theorists (Regan, Singer) don’t address the problem.
Lori Gruen, author, Ethics and Animals: An Introduction, will discuss the ethical implications of food choices including, but moving beyond eating animals and animal products (including impact on climate change, environmental destruction, food insecurity, and endangering wildlife).
Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home:
Gary: Participants will be exposed to the idea that “happy” meat makes no more sense than “happy” human exploitation.
John: Participants will learn that in the neo-liberal consumer state all ethics are situational and morals are a luxury good which are both dispensed with through the paradigm of ‘convenience.’
Participants will be encouraged to challenge their assumptions and think critically about their government and whether “choice” continues to exist in the neoliberal state in terms of food or political dissent as concerns animal interests.”
Lori: Expanded sense of the ethical complexity of our food choices.
About the Moderator:
Mariann Sullivan is the program director and co-founder of Our Hen House, a multimedia hive of opportunities to change the world for animals. She also teaches animal law at Brooklyn, Cardozo and Columbia Law Schools.
Gary Francione, Distinguished Professor Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers Law School, authors books and articles on animal ethics and law, including Animals as Persons and The Animal Rights Debate,
John Maher is an animal lawyer and adjunct professor of Animal Law at Touro Law Center. He represents Best Friends Animal Society and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and NYLS.
Julian Franklin is a professor emeritus in the Columbia University Department of Political Science. After he retired, he became deeply interested in animal issues and taught an undergraduate course in animal rights as an adjunct.
Lori Gruen is the author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge: 2011). She is Professor of Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University.