Summary
Carnivore and steak-lover Jo Fidgen attempts to work out whether killing cows for food can be morally justified
Many meat eaters believe animal suffering should be avoided. They buy higher welfare products or free range eggs and hope the animal they plan to eat has had a good life and a painless death. But if animal suffering matters, surely animal death does too?
Omnivorous Jo Fidgen explores the ethics of killing cows for food. She discusses cow psychology, fart spray and cannibalism with leading philosophers like Peter Singer and Jeff MacMahan. And she tests her own intuitions about meat eating as she looks a bullock in the eye before picking up some of his his minced and butchered body a few weeks later. And eating it.
While on this ethical journey Jo confronts big questions about where morals come from, what is bad about killing humans and how we decide what beings are worthy of our moral attention.
Producer: Lucy Proctor.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading analysis from the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | This week we consider a moral issue that most of us rarely think about, |
| 0:07.0 | even if we do make decisions about it at least once a day. |
| 0:10.0 | Here's Joe Fitchin. |
| 0:12.0 | I do hope you're not in the middle of dinner because for the next half hour we're going to talk about meat. |
| 0:18.0 | And the question we're posing is this, is it morally acceptable to kill animals for food. I should say straight away that I eat meat, I like meat and I don't want to give it up. This is not a lecture about why you should be vegetarian. But here's what happened. |
| 0:35.0 | A year ago I went on holiday to a small holding in East Sussex. |
| 0:43.0 | Hello. |
| 0:45.0 | Hello, how you doing? |
| 0:47.0 | I'm doing fine. |
| 0:48.0 | Good. |
| 0:49.0 | The farm has about 20 cattle, 30-odd sheep, |
| 0:51.0 | and these animals have a fantastic life. |
| 0:54.2 | They're well cared for, they live outside, |
| 0:56.2 | except when it's kinder to bring them in. |
| 0:58.1 | They're healthy and organic. |
| 1:00.4 | And because like an increasing number of us in this country, I want the animals that I eat not to have suffered, |
| 1:06.0 | I ordered a quarter of a bullock for collection this autumn. |
| 1:10.0 | Then a short time ago, my editor Hugh Hugh Levinson asked me this question. |
| 1:14.8 | So Joe, most people care or seem to care very strongly about reducing animal suffering, |
| 1:20.4 | stopping animal cruelty, and yet they seem quite happy to go along with the fact that animals |
| 1:25.5 | are killed and then are eaten. |
... |
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