Every Day We Act In Ways That

Sometimes We Know The Best Thing To Do, But Fail To Do It. New Year's Resolutions Are Often Like That. We Make Resolutions Because We Know It Would Be Better For Us To Lose Weight, Or Get Fit, Or Spend More Time With Our Children. The Problem Is That A Resolution Is Generally Easier To Break Than It Is To Keep.

Somebody Who Eats Twice As Much Factory-farmed Products As He Or She Needs To Is Clearly Doing Twice As Much Damage To The Planet. From A Utilitarian Point Of View, That's Twice As Bad.

For Most Humans, Especially For Those In Modern Urban And Suburban Communities, The Most Direct Form Of Contact With Nonhuman Animals Is At Meal Time: We Eat Them.... The Use And Abuse Of Animals Raised For Food Far Exceeds, In Sheer Numbers Of Animals Affected, Any Other Kind Of Mistreatment.

If Animals Are No Longer Quite Outside The Moral Sphere, They Are Still In A Special Section Near The Outer Rim. Their Interests Are Allowed To Count Only When They Do Not Clash With Human Interests. If There Is A Clash - Even A Clash Between A Lifetime Of Suffering For A Nonhuman Animal And The Gastronomic Preference Of A Human Being - The Interests Of The Nonhuman Are Disregarded. The Moral Attitudes Of The Past Are Too Deeply Embedded In Our Thought And Our Practices To Be Upset By A Mere Change In Our Knowledge Of Ourselves And Of Other Animals.

The Future Of The World Depends On How Well We Meet It.