It Is A Mistake To Assume That

It Is Now Generally Accepted That The Roots Of Our Ethics Lie In Patterns Of Behavior That Evolved Among Our Pre-human Ancestors, The Social Mammals And That We Retain Within Our Biological Nature Elements Of These Evolved Responses. We Have Learned Considerably More About This Responses, And We Are Beginning To To Understand How They Interact With Our Capacity To Reason.

To Protest About Bullfighting In Spain, The Eating Of Dogs In South Korea, Or The Slaughter Of Baby Seals In Canada, While Continuing To Eat Eggs From Hens Who Have Spent Their Lives Crammed Into Cages, Or Veal From Calves Who Have Been Deprived Of Their Mothers, Their Proper Diet, And The Freedom To Lie Down With Their Legs Extended, Is Like Denouncing Apertheid In South Africa While Asking Your Neighbors Not To Sell Their Houses To Blacks.

What You Could Say, And What I Do Argue In The Book, Is That He Doesn't Have As Much Concern For The Lives Of Iraqis As He Does For The Lives Of Americans, Or Even Frozen American Embryos.

All The Particular Moral Judgments We Intuitively Make Are Likely To Derive From Discarded Religious Systems, From Warped Views Of Sex And Bodily Functions, Or From Customs Necessary For The Survival Of The Group In Social And Economic Circumstances That Now Lie In The Distant Past.

If We Are Concerned About The Exploitation Of Human Workers In Countries With Low Standards Of Worker Protection, We Should Also Be Concerned About The Treatment Of Even More Defenceless Non-human Animals.