This is made

philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warberton.

Philosophy bites is available at

www

philosophy bites dot com.

Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham was way ahead of his time.

He wrote of animals that the question was not can they reason nor can they talk but can they suffer

Taking animals suffering seriously was rare in the late 18th century

Over 200 years on and there were laws about how animals can be treated, but there are still relatively few vegetarians in the developed world.

Jeff McMahon from Rutgers University is a vegetarian who thinks that it's quite wrong to eat meat and moreover that the case

for not doing so is extremely clear cut.

Jeff McMahon, welcome to Plus a Bites.

Hi, thanks. We're going to focus on the top. of you're

think

think we're gonna focus on the topic of eating animals. I know you think eating animals is wrong why?

Because animal suffering matters morally and the good experiences that animals can have matter morally, the gains that people derive from eating animals simply don't outweigh the harms that are

inflicted on animals in the process of providing them as a food resource for people.

Well what about the idea that you could rear an animal in a very humane way

and that the animal seems to lead a contented life and then without warning it's suddenly painlessly killed.

Why couldn't I eat an animal reared under those circumstances?

When you come to the point at which you would be ready to kill the animal. The question you should

...