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Singer Peter:     more books (100)

The Greens by Bob Brown, Peter Singer, 1996 Democracy & Disobedience by Peter Singer, 1992-03 How Ethical Is Australia? An Examination of Australia's Record as a Global Citizen by Peter and Gregg, Tom Singer, 2004 Landscapes of Ireland: A Countryside Guide (Sunflower Countryside Guides) by Peter Singer, 1998-01 Ireland (Sunflower Guides Ireland) by Peter Singer, 2004-03-01 PRACTICAL ETHICS: Second Edition by Peter Singer, 2006 Leben und Tod by Peter Singer, 1998-01-01 The Bioethics Reader: Editors' Choice Ireland: Car Tours and Walks (Landscapes) by Peter Singer, 2010-08-15 Ariel and Caliban: Selected poems by Peter Singer, 1980 The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears, 1936-1978 by Peter Pears, Peter Reed, et all 1999-05-01 Wie sollen wir leben? Ethik in einer egoistischen Zeit. by Peter Singer, 2002-03-01 Peter Allen: "Between the Moon and New York City" by David Smith, Neal Peters, 1984-02 Ética práctica by Peter Singer, 1995-09-29

lists with details

81. Ten Ways To Make A Difference, By Peter Singer
    Excerpted from Ethics into Action Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement (Oxford, 1998).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1998----02.htm
    
    Extractions: Ten Ways to Make a Difference Peter Singer Excerpted from Ethics into Action , Oxford, 1998, pp. 184-192 The whole forward thrust of the movement Henry has created rests on his shoulders. If Henry disappears tomorrow, there's an interesting question as to how much of it will survive, how much will be nipped in the bud, how much will be lost by there not being some mechanism in place for someone else to pick up that mantle. In the time that I have talked to Henry, he has never come to grips with the issue of who is going to carry on in his footsteps and continue fighting the fight the way he fought it. [1] This comment was made by Barnaby Feder, who profiled Henry for the New York Times Magazine . But Henry doesn't see the continuation of his work in terms of grooming individuals to take over from him. In many interviews, and in articles he has written himself. Henry has described the methods he has used to bring about change. His methods are what count, not who uses them. The following key points are, therefore, set out here so that others can continue to fight as he has done, whether for animals or for the oppressed and exploited more generally. [2] 1. Try to understand the public's current thinking and where it could he encouraged to go tomorrow. Above all, keep in touch with reality.

82. A Better World?, By Peter Singer
    Chapter excerpted from One World The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven, 2002).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/2002----.htm
    
    Extractions: A Better World? Peter Singer Excerpted from One World , New Haven, 2002, pp. 196-201 When different nations led more separate lives, it was more understandable - though still quite wrong - for those in one country to think of themselves as owing no obligations, beyond that of non-interference, to people in another state. But those times are long gone. Today, as we have seen, our greenhouse gas emissions alter the climate under which everyone in the world lives. Our purchases of oil, diamonds and timber make it possible for dictators to buy more weapons and strengthen their hold on the countries they tyrannise. Instant communications show us how others live, and they in turn learn about us and aspire to our way of life. Modern transport can move even relatively poor people thousands of kilometres, and when people are desperate to improve their situation, national boundaries prove permeable. The era after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) was the high water mark of the independent sovereign state. Behind the supposed inviolability of national borders, liberal democratic institutions took hold in some countries while in others, rulers carried out genocide against their own citizens. At intervals, bloody wars broke out between the independent nation states. Though we may look back on that era with some nostalgia, we should not regret its passing: we should be developing the ethical foundations of the coming era of a single world community.

83. Famine, Affluence, And Morality, By Peter Singer
    Article in Philosophy and Public Affairs , No. 1 (1972).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm
    
    Extractions: Famine, Affluence, and Morality Peter Singer Philosophy and Public Affairs , vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972), pp. 229-243 [revised edition] These are the essential facts about the present situation in Bengal. So far as it concerns us here, there is nothing unique about this situation except its magnitude. The Bengal emergency is just the latest and most acute of a series of major emergencies in various parts of the world, arising both from natural and from manmade causes. There are also many parts of the world in which people die from malnutrition and lack of food independent of any special emergency. I take Bengal as my example only because it is the present concern, and because the size of the problem has ensured that it has been given adequate publicity. Neither individuals nor governments can claim to be unaware of what is happening there. What are the moral implications of a situation like this? In what follows, I shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed, the whole way we look at moral issues - our moral conceptual scheme - needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society. In arguing for this conclusion I will not, of course, claim to be morally neutral. I shall, however, try to argue for the moral position that I take, so that anyone who accepts certain assumptions, to be made explicit, will, I hope, accept my conclusion.

84. Discovering Karl Popper, By Peter Singer
    Article in The New York Review of Books (May 2, 1974).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/19740502.htm
    
    Extractions: Discovering Karl Popper Peter Singer The New York Review of Books , vol. 21, no. 7 (May 2, 1974) Bryan Magee's clear little introduction to the thought of Karl Popper opens with the remark that Popper's name is not yet a household word among educated people. The remainder of the book is an attempt to remedy this allegedly undeserved neglect. The educated reader might think that Popper has received adequate recognition. After all, Popper, an Austrian schoolteacher who left his native land in 1937 in anticipation of Nazi annexation, gained a world-wide reputation in 1945 with the publication of The Open Society and Its Enemies . Later, at the London School of Economics, he became Professor of Logic and Scientific method. He has now been a leading figure in the philosophy of science for many years; his Logic of Scientific Discovery , a translation of a work he had already published before he left Austria, must now be a part of almost every philosophy of science course in the English-speaking world. In 1965 Popper became Sir Karl, and this year the Danish government chose him, at the age of seventy-one, for its Sonning Prize, previously awarded to figures like Bertrand Russell and Sir Winston Churchill, and worth around $45,000. Now, the publication of

85. The Right To Be Rich Or Poor, By Peter Singer
    Article in The New York Review of Books (March 6, 1975).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/19750306.htm
    
    Extractions: The Right to Be Rich or Poor Peter Singer The New York Review of Books , vol. 23, no. 2 (March 6, 1975) When times are hard and governments are looking for ways to reduce expenditure, a book like Anarchy, State, and Utopia is about the last thing we need. That will be the reaction of some readers to this book. It is, of course, an unfair reaction, since a work of philosophy that consists of rigorous argument and needle-sharp analysis with absolutely none of the unsupported vague waffle that characterizes too many philosophy books must be welcomed whatever we think of its conclusions. The chances of Gerald Ford reasoning his way through Nozick's book to the conviction that he ought to cut back the activities of the state in fields like welfare, education, and health are not high. The book will probably do more good in raising the level of philosophical discussion than it will do harm in practical politics. Robert Nozick's book is a major event in contemporary political philosophy. There has, in recent years, been no sustained and competently argued challenge to the prevailing conceptions of social justice and the role of the state. Political philosophers have tended to assume without argument that justice demands an extensive redistribution of wealth in the direction of equality; and that it is a legitimate function of the state to bring about this redistribution by coercive means like progressive taxation. These assumptions may be correct; but after

86. Ethics, By Peter Singer
    Article in Encyclop dia Britannica (Chicago, 1985).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1985----.htm
    
    Extractions: Ethics Peter Singer In Encyclopædia Britannica , Chicago, 1985, pp. 627-648 also called moral philosophy the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: Is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? If conscripted to fight in a war we do not support, should we disobey the law? What are our obligations to the other creatures with whom we share this planet and to the generations of humans who will come after us? Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. The terms ethics and morality are closely related. We now often refer to ethical judgments or ethical principles where it once would have been more common to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. Strictly speaking, however, the term refers not to morality itself but to the field of study, or branch of inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy.

87. Abortion, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----03.htm
    
    Extractions: Abortion Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, pp. 2-3 Those who defend women's rights to abortion often refer to themselves as 'pro-choice' rather than as 'pro-abortion'. In this way they seek to bypass the issue of the moral status of the foetus, and instead make the right to abortion a question of individual liberty. But it cannot simply be assumed that a woman's right to have an abortion is a question of individual liberty, for it must first be established that the aborted foetus is not a being worthy of protection. If the foetus is worthy of protection, then laws against abortion do not create 'victimless crimes' as laws against homosexual relations between consenting adults do. So the question of the moral status of the foetus cannot be avoided. The central argument against abortion may be put like this: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.

88. Animals, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----04.htm
    
    Extractions: Animals Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, pp. 35-36 In Western ethics, non-human animals were until quite recent times accorded a very low moral status. In the first chapter of Genesis, God gives human beings dominion over the animals. In the Hebrew Bible, this dominion was moderated by some injunctions towards kindness - for example, to rest one's oxen on the sabbath. The Christian scriptures, however, are devoid of such suggestions, and Paul even reinterprets the injunction about resting one's oxen, insisting that the command is intended only to benefit humans. Augustine followed this interpretation, adding that Jesus caused the Gadarene swine to drown in order to demonstrate that we have no duties to animals. Aquinas denied that we have any duty of charity to animals, adding that the only reason for us to avoid cruelty to them is the risk that cruel habits might carry over into our treatment of human beings. Descartes's views were even more hostile to animals than those of his Christian predecessors. He regarded them as machines like clocks, which move and emit sounds, but have no feelings. This view was rejected by most philosophers, but Kant went back to a view similar to that of Aquinas when he held that animals, not being rational or autonomous, were not ends in themselves, and so the only reason for being kind to them is to train our dispositions for kindness toward humans. It was not until Bentham that a major figure in Western ethics advocated the direct inclusion of the interests of animals in our ethical thinking.

89. Dialectic, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----06.htm
    
    Extractions: Dialectic Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, p. 198 In ancient Greece, dialectic was a form of reasoning that proceeded by question and answer, used by Plato. In later antiquity and the Middle Ages, the term was often used to mean simply logic, but Kant applied it to arguments showing that principles of science have contradictory aspects. Hegel thought that all logic and world history itself followed a dialectical path, in which internal contradictions were transcended, but gave rise to new contradictions that themselves required resolution. Marx and Engels gave Hegel's idea of dialectic a material basis; hence dialectical materialism. Bibliography Peter Singer, Hegel (Oxford, 1983), ch. 5. Utilitarian Philosophers Peter Singer :: 'Dialectic'

90. Fertilization 'in Vitro', By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----08.htm
    
    Extractions: Fertilization in vitro Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, p. 275 Several distinct ethical objections have been made to the use of IVF. Initially, there was concern about the risk that the children born as a result of this procedure would be abnormal. Now that there are tens of thousands of children who were conceived outside the body, these fears can be seen to be unjustified. On the other hand, objections on the basis of the cost of the procedure remain serious, especially where the resources are drawn from a limited national health budget. Because the rate of births per cycle of treatment remains low, generally around 15 per cent, the cost of each child produced is considerable. In addition, there is a human cost for those couples whose hopes of overcoming infertility are raised by reading headlines about IVF, but find that they do not achieve a pregnancy. Many reasonably ask if adoption, including overseas adoption, would not be a better solution to the needs of infertile couples. The Roman Catholic Church objects to fertilization in vitro on several grounds. These include the fact that to obtain the sperm requires masturbation, which in the eyes of the Church is inherently sinful, even when it is the only way to bring children to a marriage. The Church objects to the division that the technique introduces between procreation and the sexual act, believing that this weakens the marital relationship. Finally, the Church condemns the loss of embryonic human life involved both in research directed towards improving IVF, and in the procedure itself.

91. Killing, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----09.htm
    
    Extractions: Killing Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, pp.445-446 Presumably no society could survive unless it had some restrictions on its members killing each other. But the prohibitions that societies have on killing vary greatly. In Greek and Roman times to be a human - that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens - was not sufficient to guarantee that one's life would be protected. Slaves or other 'barbarians' could be killed, under conditions that varied from time to time; and deformed infants were exposed to the elements on a hilltop. The coming of Christianity brought a new insistence on the wrongness of killing all born of human parents, in part because all humans were seen as having an immortal soul, and in part because to kill a human being is to usurp God's right to decide when we shall live and when we shall die. Non-human animals, on the other hand, remained unprotected because they were believed to have been placed by God under man's dominion. This doctrine of the sanctity of all (and only) human life remains the orthodox view on the morality of killing. Some contemporary philosophers, among them Jonathan Glover, James Rachels, and Peter Singer, have challenged this orthodoxy, arguing that membership of a given species - for example

92. Owl Of Minerva, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----05.htm
    
    Extractions: Owl of Minerva Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, pp. 638 Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, was the equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena. She was associated with the owl, traditionally regarded as wise, and hence a metaphor for philosophy. Hegel wrote, in the preface to his Philosophy of Right : 'The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.' He meant that philosophy understands reality only after the event. It cannot prescribe how the world ought to be. Bibliography G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right , tr. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1967). Utilitarian Philosophers Peter Singer :: 'Owl of Minerva'

93. Vegetarianism, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----02.htm
    
    Extractions: Vegetarianism Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, p. 897 The view that we should avoid eating meat or fish has ancient philosophical roots. In the Hindu Upanishads (about 1000 BC) the doctrine of reincarnation leads to opposition to eating meat. Buddha taught compassion for all sentient creatures. Buddhist monks were not to kill animals, nor to eat meat, unless they knew that the animal had not been killed for their sake. Jains hold to ahimsa , or non-violence toward any living creature, and accordingly do not eat meat. In the Western tradition, Genesis suggests that the first diet of human beings was vegetarian, and permission to eat meat was given only after the Flood. After that, vegetarianism gains little support from either the Jewish or Christian scriptures, or from Islam. Philosophical vegetarianism was stronger in ancient Greece and Rome: it was supported by Pythagoras Empedocles Plutarch Plotinus ... Porphyry , and, in some passages, Plato . Pythagoreans abstained from eating animals partly because of their belief that humans and animals share a common soul, and partly because they appear to have considered the diet a healthier one. Plato shared both these views to some extent. Plutarch's essay

94. World Soul, By Peter Singer
    Article from Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----07.htm
    
    Extractions: World Soul Peter Singer In Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , Oxford, 1995, p. 919 Hegel was living in Jena in 1806 when Napoleon crushed the Prussian army at the battle named after that city. He wrote in a letter: 'The Emperor - this world-soul - I saw riding through the city to review his troops. It is indeed a wonderful feeling to see such an individual who, here concentrated into a single point, reaches out over the world and dominates it'. Since history has, for Hegel, a goal, the world-soul is the instrument of a larger destiny. Bibliography G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History , tr. J. Sibree (New York, 1956). Utilitarian Philosophers Peter Singer :: 'World Soul'

95. A Philosophical Self-Portrait, By Peter Singer
    Autobiographical article in Thomas Mautner (ed.), The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (London, 1997).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1997----.htm
    
    Extractions: A Philosophical Self-Portrait Peter Singer In Thomas Mautner, The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy , London, 1997, pp. 521-522 The ultimate practical question is: 'How are we to live?' To give a general answer to such a broad question is, however, a daunting task, and most of my writing has focused on more specific practical questions. I am probably best known for Animal Liberation , 1st edn 1975, 2nd edn 1990, a book that gave its title to a worldwide movement. The essential philosophical view it maintains is simple but revolutionary. Species is, in itself, as irrelevant to moral status as race or sex. Hence all beings with interests are entitled to equal consideration: that is, we should not give their interests any less consideration that we give to the similar interests of members of our own species. Taken seriously, this conclusion requires radical changes in almost every interaction we have with animals, including our diet, our economy, and our relations with the natural environment. To say that this idea is revolutionary is not to say that it was especially novel. Similar ideas can be found, for instance, in

96. A Vegetarian Philosophy, By Peter Singer
    Article in Sian Griffiths and Jennifer Wallace (eds.), Consuming Passions (Manchester, 1998).  
    http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer05.htm
    
    Extractions: A Vegetarian Philosophy by Peter Singer Consuming Passions . Manchester, 1998, pp. 66-72 pdf version Issues regarding eating meat were highlighted in 1997 by the longest trial in British legal history. McDonald's Corporation and McDonald's Restaurants Limited v. Steel and Morris, better known as the "McLibel" trial, ran for 515 days and heard 180 witnesses. In suing Helen Steel and David Morris, two activists involved with the London Greenpeace organization, McDonald's put on trial the way in which its fast-food products are produced, packaged, advertised, and sold, as well as their nutritional value, the environmental impact of producing them, and the treatment of the animals whose flesh and eggs are made into that food. […] The case provided a remarkable opportunity for weighing up evidence for and against modern agribusiness methods. The leaflet "What's Wrong with McDonald's" that provoked the defamation suit had a row of McDonald's arches along the top of each page. Two of these arches bore the words "McMurder" and "McTorture." One section below was headed "In what way are McDonald's responsible for torture and murder?" The leaflet answered the question as follows:

97. The Singer Solution To World Poverty, By Peter Singer
    Article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine (September 5, 1999).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/19990905.htm
    
    Extractions: The Singer Solution to World Poverty Peter Singer The New York Times Magazine , September 5, 1999, pp. 60-63 In the Brazilian film "Central Station," Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted —he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor's plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back. Suppose Dora had told her neighbor that it is a tough world, other people have nice new TV's too, and if selling the kid is the only way she can get one, well, he was only a street kid. She would then have become, in the eyes of the audience, a monster. She redeems herself only by being prepared to bear considerable risks to save the boy. At the end of the movie, in cinemas in the affluent nations of the world, people who would have been quick to condemn Dora if she had not rescued the boy go home to places far more comfortable than her apartment. In fact, the average family in the United States spends almost one-third of its income on things that are no more necessary to them than Dora's new TV was to her. Going out to nice restaurants, buying new clothes because the old ones are no longer stylish, vacationing at beach resorts —so much of our income is spent on things not essential to the preservation of our lives and health. Donated to one of a number of charitable agencies, that money could mean the difference between life and death for children in need.

98. Who Deserves The 9/11 Cash Pile?, By Peter Singer
    Article on Slate (December 12, 2001).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20011212.htm
    
    Extractions: Who Deserves the 9/11 Cash Pile? Peter Singer Slate , December 12, 2001 An "avalanche," a "flood"—these terms have been used to describe not natural disasters but the money flowing to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the time of writing, the total given to public appeals has reached $1.3 billion. Of this, according to a New York Times survey, $353 million has been raised exclusively for the families of about 400 police officers, firefighters, and other uniformed personnel who died trying to save others. That comes to $880,000 for each family. Families of victims who were not in uniform will receive much less, because the remaining funds must be spread over a much larger number of people, including those who have lost their jobs because of the attacks. Questions of justice immediately arise. At a New Jersey support meeting for the families of those killed on Sept. 11, a "screaming match" broke out when a widow of a Port Authority police officer argued that her family deserved more charity than other families because her husband had died saving others. That argument was hotly contested by the widow of a financial executive, who insisted that all casualties deserved equal treatment. The New York Times quoted Mary Ellen Salamone as saying that she was "heartbroken about the inequities—that people could value the lives of those men more than they would value the lives of our men." It makes sense for the community to reward the families of those who die while bravely trying to save others, for doing so both recognizes and encourages acts of great benefit to the community. This is not a matter of equity or distributive justice but sound social policy. How big the difference between the reward for these and the "civilian" victims ought to be is another question. It could be argued that the families of the firefighters killed would have been adequately provided for even if there had been no donations at all. Their spouses will receive New York state pensions equal to the lost salaries, and their children will be entitled to full scholarships to state universities. The federal government is giving an additional $250,000 to families of police officers and firefighters killed on duty. For families to receive close to a million dollars in cash on top of all that may well leave us thinking that something has gone awry.

99. A Response To Martha Nussbaum, By Peter Singer
    Article in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (November 13, 2002).  
    http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20021113.htm
    
    Extractions: A Response to Martha Nussbaum Peter Singer Reply to Martha Nussbaum, 'Justice for Non-Human Animals', The Tanner Lectures on Human Values , November 13, 2002 I begin in the same friendly spirit of alliance that Martha Nussbaum refers to when she notes that “Utilitarianism has contributed more than any other ethical theory to the recognition of animal entitlements.” In purely practical terms, I welcome her attempt to show that a distinct approach to political justice not only includes animals, in a fundamental way, within its scope, but also leads to consequences that in major respects are very similar to those that have for some years been advocated by utilitarians . Of the greatest possible importance, in this respect, is our agreement on the ethical imperative that we end factory farms as we know them.Every year, worldwide, tens of billions of animals suffer - and, one could add, are unable to exercise their most basic capabilities – through being crowded indoors, unable to form the social groups natural to them, in many cases unable even to stretch their limbs, some of them so tightly caged that they are unable even to turn around or walk a single step. Undoubtedly, in terms of the sheer numbers involved and the vast amount of suffering that results, ending factory farming should be the priority issue for all concerned with either the welfare, the preference satisfaction, or the capabilities, of nonhuman animals. The European Union has, following advice from its own veterinarians and other experts in animal behavior, begun to phase out the worst aspects of this confinement. Indeed, the European consensus against factory farming is extremely broad. Even Roger Scruton, a conservative English philosopher who supports not only eating meat, but also foxhunting, has written: “Someone who was indifferent to the sight of pigs confined in batteries, who did not feel some instinctive need to pull down these walls and barriers and let in light and air, would have lost sight of what it is to be a living animal…” [

100. Back At The Ranch: A Horror Story, By Peter Singer
     (with Karen Dawn) Article in Los Angeles Times (December 1, 2003).  
     http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20031201.htm
     
     Extractions: Back at the Ranch: a Horror Story Peter Singer Los Angeles Times , December 1, 2003 A ranch owner in San Diego County disposes of 30,000 nonproductive egg-laying hens by feeding them into a wood chipper. Live hens are dumped into the shredder, some likely to hit feet first, some breast first. Sound like a scene from a horror movie? It's a true story. One would surely expect the ranchers to be prosecuted, but California humane slaughter laws do not cover unproductive egg-laying hens. "Spent hens" are often packed into containers and bulldozed into the ground — buried alive. Or they are often gassed using carbon dioxide distributed unevenly among tens of thousands of birds; it's common for them to die slow, painful deaths. California's anti-cruelty statutes, which are separate from the humane slaughter laws, supposedly cover these animals, but it can be difficult to prosecute what is called "standard industry practice." And district attorneys don't like to bring cases they don't think they will win. When a horrified neighbor saw ranchers cramming live chickens into a chipper, animal advocates thought they had a winning case. Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns led the push for prosecution.

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