The ethical principles on which human equality rests require us to extend equal consideration to animals.
A wild statement from a crank? A bit of guff from a sentimental pet-lover? Half-baked thinking from a person with an untrained mind? No, these are the words of a professor of philosophy, who has spent much of his professional life wrestling with the ethical conundrum of the way humans treat non-human animals.
I have always believed that people have moral duties to non-humans. It is now intellectually respectable to hold such beliefs. Many of today's university courses on philosophy consider, as a matter of routine, the moral status of non-human animals.
The professor is Peter Singer, who has taught at Oxford, New York, California and elsewhere. Newsweek magazine said of his main work: "The modern (animal rights) movement may be dated to the 1975 publication of 'Animal Liberation'." A new edition has just been issued, but in the intervening 15 years, the intellectual acceptability of Mr Singer's beliefs has changed drastically. The treatment of animals (and birds) has not.
This column's bird of the week is the battery chicken. The way some battery chickens are treated is not just horrible; it is more horrible than you would believe possible. When Mr Singer writes on factory farming, he does not quote from people who share his beliefs, but from people in the industry. When one reads cheerfully approving stuff about five chickens sharing a space 10in by 20in, one needs no unusual qualities of squeamishness to be disquieted.
Am I becoming emotional? To quote Mary Midgley on this subject: "Anyone accused of being emotional about injustice or oppression or war or bad science or anything else can quite properly reply: 'Of course I feel strongly about this, and with good reason. It is a serious matter. Anyone who has no feeling about it ... has got something wrong with him.' Strong feeling is fully appropriate to a well-grounded belief."
Mr Singer and others have demonstrated that one can argue rationally about the moral rights of animals and, at the same time, feel strongly about the issue.
The essentials of the argument for animals were expressed well in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham. Considering dividing lines of moral responsibility, he asked: "What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But even suppose it were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'"
As one cheers for a campaign to protect nightjar habitat, or chooses a box of free-range eggs, it is good to know that one has the support, not of cranks and nitwits, but of the sharpest minds on the cutting edge of ethical philosophy.
"Animal Liberation", by Peter Singer, published by New York Review. "Animals and Why They Matter", by Mary Midgley, published by The University of Georgia Press.
