Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt?
In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat—and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar’s examination forcefully echoes vegetarians’ concerns about the meat industry’s impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world’s problems to tackle, in what ways, and to what extents, and hence people can decline to take up this particular form of activism without doing anything wrong.
Key Features
- First book-length defense of meat-eating written for a popular audience
- Punchy, accessible introduction to the multifaceted debate over the ethics of eating meat
- Includes pioneering new examinations of humane labeling practices
- Shows why appeals to universalized patterns of behavior can’t vindicate vegetarians’ claims that there’s a duty to avoid meat
- Develops a novel theory of ethical activism with potential applications to a wide range of other issues
1. Is It OK to Eat Meat?
2. Conscientious Omnivorism
3. The Other 99%
4. Making a Difference
5. What If Everyone Did That?
6. Hanging Our Hats
Biography
Dan C. Shahar is Assistant Professor of Philosophy—Research at the University of New Orleans and a member of the Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute. He is the winner of the International Society for Environmental Ethics’ 2020 Holmes Rolston III Early Career Essay Prize for Environmental Philosophy and co-editor (with David Schmidtz) of the latest edition of Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works (2018).
"This is a fantastic volume. Shahar offers an accessible, compelling, and compact defense of the permissibility of eating meat—it’s perfect for the classroom. At the same time, he's written a book that's full of material that pushes this important conversation forward. (His discussion of the Stag Hunt alone is worth the sticker price.) Whoever you are and whatever you make of his conclusions, Shahar's arguments are worth careful consideration."
Bob Fischer, Texas State University"Anyone asking themselves whether they should become a vegetarian will find this book to be an invaluable resource. For the difficult to balance criteria of accessibility and comprehensiveness, Why It’s Okay to Eat Meat is unsurpassed. To Shahar’s credit, the issues are given such a balanced treatment that some readers will surely reach the opposite conclusion to the one expressed in the title."
Paul B. Thompson, Michigan State University"In the course of presenting state-of-the-art arguments that it's OK to eat meat, Shahar succeeds in getting us to focus on the bigger picture. What actions and attitudes actually help us advance justice and wellbeing? Which are just virtue-signaling sideshows? Vegetarians and meat-eaters alike owe it to us all to take these challenging questions seriously."
Mark Budolfson, Rutgers University
