The Meat Eaters
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| Author | Jeff McMahan |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subjects | |
| Genre | Animal ethics essay |
| Published | September 19, 2010 |
| Published in | The New York Times |
| Website | The Meat Eaters |
"The Meat Eaters" is a 2010 essay by American philosopher Jeff McMahan, published as an op-ed in The New York Times. In the essay, McMahan argues that humans have a moral obligation to stop eating meat and that, if it could be done without causing greater harm, humans would also have reason to prevent predation by carnivorous animals.
McMahan was prompted to write on the topic after discussions with the moral philosopher Oscar Horta, who introduced him to the subject of wild animal suffering. In the summer of 2010, McMahan accepted an invitation from Gary L. Comstock, editor-in-chief of "On the Human" at the National Humanities Center, to write on the issue. McMahan subtitled that essay, "Would the controlled extinction of carnivorous species be a good thing?" The essay was published in The New York Times on September 19, 2010.[1]
Summary
McMahan argues that humans should stop eating animals because, in his view, doing so is harmful and morally indefensible.[2] He also argues that the suffering of wild animals is morally relevant and that humans should intervene to reduce it when they can do so without causing greater harm.[1] From this position, he contends that humans may have an obligation to prevent carnivorous animals from preying on other animals, while discussing several objections and qualifications.[2] He concludes that the controlled extinction of carnivorous species would be morally good if it could be achieved without causing more harm than the suffering it would prevent.[3]
Reception
Max Fisher, writing in The Atlantic, described McMahan's argument as "interesting to consider", if readers were willing to suspend disbelief.[2] Alexandre Erler, writing for the Practical Ethics blog, described the essay as "thought-provoking" and argued that it made a case for at least reducing the number of carnivorous animals or changing carnivorous species to become herbivorous.[3] Rainer Ebert and Tibor R. Machan noted that McMahan's arguments could appear consequentialist, but argued that the essay was framed in rights-based terms.[4]
The essay also received criticism. Brian Switek called McMahan a "poor armchair ecologist".[5] Wesley J. Smith criticised the essay as reflecting what he called an "unhealthy obsession with suffering".[6] Erler argued that some negative responses to the essay reflected a resistance to interventions regarded as going "against nature".[3]
In the same year, McMahan published a follow-up essay, "Predators: A Response", in which he replied to objections and used a thought experiment involving the possible extinction of the Siberian tiger.[7] McMahan later developed the argument in "The Moral Problem of Predation", published in the 2015 book Philosophy Comes to Dinner.[8] "The Meat Eaters" was included in The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley.[9]
