An Australian academic once compared to Hitler’s deputy and described as “the most dangerous man on earth”has been given a major national award, the Companion in the Order of Australia. Peter Singer, a philosopher, bioethicist and animal rights activist, was recognized for his contributions in the fields of animal welfare, global poverty and the human condition, according to news reports.
As a professor and activist, Professor Singer is no stranger to controversy.
In 1975, he generated headlines around the world with the publication of his seminal book “Animal Liberation,”which most observers credit with helping launch the global animal activist movement. In the book and in his subsequent writings, Singer’s central argument is based on the so-called utilitarian idea of “the greatest good of the greatest number” as the best measure of moral or ethical behavior.
For animal rights activists, Singer has been lauded as a champion of the notion of “speciesism” as a description of people assuming dominance over animals. That idea has become the touchstone of the more extreme animal rights advocates. The catch phrase attributed to PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk, “When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” is a direct descendant of Singer’s radical philosophy.
Of course, his animal rights beliefs aren’t the only controversy he’s encountered in his outspoken career. On several ethical issues, Singer has staked out positions far outside the mainstream, including these gems:
- On abortion. Singer’s belief that morality demands a utilitarian calculation comparing the preferences of a woman against the preferences of the fetus generated massive pushback. He argued that a fetus has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction, so it’s not possible for a fetus to hold any preferences. Therefore, abortion is morally permissible.
- On euthanasia. In writing about voluntary euthanasia, Singer noted that if he had been solely responsible for making decisions regarding his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, she might not have continued to live.
- On infanticide.Similar to his position for abortion, Singer argued that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood, which he defined as “rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness,” therefore, he has written, “Killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, a being who wants to go on living.”
Singer’s radical views once prompted disability activist Diane Coleman to describe him as a “public advocate of genocide” and “the most dangerous man on earth today.” In 1989, on a trip to Germany for a scientific conference, he was compared to the leaders of the Third Reich for his views on disabled children and infanticide.
That is truly ironic, as Singer’s parents were Jews living in Vienna who were forced to emigrate to Australia in 1938 after Austria’s annexation by Hitler’s Germany. His grandparents were later taken by the Nazis to concentration camps, where they died.
But it is his views on animal agriculture that have given Singer his greatest notoriety. In a 2006 interview on Australian network television, his views on meat-eating in a statement that echoes today in virtually every vegetarian activist pronouncement:
“If someone is in great poverty, I wouldn’t blame them at all if they use whatever there is that’s nutritious and that’s available to them and their family. But if we are fortunate enough to be living in a society where we walk into the supermarket and we have a choice between buying some miserable chicken that’s come out of a factory farm and has never walked on grass or seen the light of day, or a slab of tofu that will make a nutritious and delicious dish with vegetables, then I think that we ought to be doing the thing that reduces harm, that doesn't support the suffering that we put the chicken through in order to turn it into that supermarket product.”
That perspective underlies the entire “we no longer need to eat animals” argument, although virtually every veggie activist ignores the first part of Singer’s statement: “I don’t blame someone [in poverty] if they use whatever’s available to them.”
That would seem to condone the diets of approximately three of the nearly seven billion people alive on Earth at the moment, hardly a ringing endorsement of the philosophy that we’re all vegetarians now.
Nor does such a viewpoint address the central dilemma inherent in the vegetarianism-for-all argument: It is the very science and technology so quickly condemned as “factory farming” that is solely responsible for modern society to have the luxury of choosing a slab of tofu, rather than the meat and milk from dozens of livestock species that humanity has depended upon for millennia.
In accepting his award, Singer told reporters,
“There will be people in the community who are opposed to [my ideas], but I think that what this shows is that you don’ have to be a conformist to get honored.”
Nor do you need a consistent philosophical worldview, apparently.
Ultimately, nobody can dispute Singer’s influence. It’s just too bad that it’s been used by activists to promote a philosophy that is at odds with the very elemental ethics he and his followers pretend to embrace.
Dan Murphy is a food-industry journalist and commentator
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