Response To Pete Singer & Mark Sagoff

Mark Sagoff’s “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce,” is a refreshing response to Pete Singer’s “All Animals Are Equal.” He says:
“Singer does not stop with the stultifying platitude that human beings ought not to be cruel to animals. No; he argues the controversial thesis that society has an obligation to prevent the killing of animals and even to relieve their suffering wherever, however, and as much as it is able, at a reasonable cost to itself.”(39)

Here, Sagoff effectively contrasts what is likely the most reasonable course of action, that is, consuming animals as food while treating such creatures with respect as opposed to Singer’s proposal, which appears to elevate the right of an animal’s to life and comfort over the rights of humans to consume the meat of animals to meet their nutritional needs. Sagoff then proceeds to dismantle the effectiveness of Aldo Leopald’s argument by introducing the biological reality of natural selection. He says:

“The principle of natural selection is not obviously a humanitarian principle; the predator prey relation does not depend on moral empathy. Nature ruthlessly limits animal populations by doing violence to virtually every individual before it reaches maturity; these conditions respect animal equality only in the darkest sense.”

In this instance, the credibility of Aldo Leopald’s “community of organisms” with moral obligations to one another is severely diminished as the natural world is unconcerned with moral distinctions. Instead, organisms must either kill or escape being killed in order to survive. Unfortunately, within the midst of the wilderness, genteel philosophical notions are omitted. Consequently, Sagoff presents an inverted application of the traditionally heralded ideal of equality, that all organisms are confronted with either predators or disease before they reach maturity. Thus, the suffering and danger organisms suffer inside of the wilderness is an equalizing factor among them. However, equality as such is a sharp deviation from the genteel notion of equality which desires equality of treatment and of opportunity for organisms.