NYT Puts Meat Eaters on Trial

This is what it is coming to.  The Ethicist feature in the NYT Magazine—highbrow Dear Abby in my book—has a new contest running in which people who eat meat have to explain why they think it is ethical. From “Tell Us Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat:”

Ethically speaking, vegetables get all the glory. In recent years, vegetarians — and to an even greater degree vegans, their hard-core inner circle — have dominated the discussion about the ethics of eating. From the philosopher Peter Singer, whose 1975 volume “Animal Liberation” galvanized an international movement, to the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote the 2009 best seller “Eating Animals,” those who forswear meat have made the case that what we eat is a crucial ethical decision. To be just, they say, we must put down our cheeseburgers and join their ranks.

In response, those who love meat have had surprisingly little to say. They say, of course, that, well, they love meat or that meat is deeply ingrained in our habit or culture or cuisine or that it’s nutritious or that it’s just part of the natural order. Some of the more conscientious carnivores have devoted themselves to enhancing the lives of livestock, by improving what those animals eat, how they live and how they are killed. But few have tried to answer the fundamental ethical issue: Whether it is right to eat animals in the first place, at least when human survival is not at stake. So today we announce a nationwide contest for the omnivorous readers of The New York Times. We invite you to make the strongest possible case for this most basic of daily practices.       

Notice that the default position is that it isn’t ethical to eat meat.  And the judges are not exactly objective:

We have assembled a veritable murderer’s row of judges — some of the most influential thinkers to question or condemn the eating of meat

Here’s the list:

1. Peter Singer—Author of Animal Liberation and the man who thinks some animals are persons while some people aren ‘t. That “The Ethicist” clearly respects the views of Mr. Infanticide—Singer isn’t a Ph.D.—tells us all we need to know about the “ethics” of “The Ethicist.”

2. Michael Polan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma. His philosophy: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

3. Jonathan Safron-Foer, author of Eating Animals. According to Wikipedia, ”In an article for the Huffington Post, Natalie Portman explains that “Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist.” Yea, well she wisely returned to including eggs and dairy in her diet once she got pregnant, as I noted here.

4. Mark Bitman: Columnist for the New York Times Opinion pages...”he writes frequently about the societal, environmental and nutritional costs of how Americans eat.”

5. Andrew Light, environmentalist lefty philosophier.

Gee, not a pig farmer among the group.

This isn’t about methods of animal agriculture, but contestants have to demonstrate to the “murderer’s row” that the judges’ own positions on this issue are wrong. The NYT would never do this the other way around.  Meat eaters don’t owe anyone an explanation—particularly not this crowd.