Even a stopped clock…

Now I think Peter Singer is a philosophical and moral disaster. He has consistently applied utilitarian principles to argue, for instance, that infanticide is justifiable in some cases, and that human beings are not intrinsically more valuable than other animals. Indeed, I would regard that as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism.

Nevertheless, you don’t need to accept his more dubious principles to agree with the thrust of this op-ed. In fact, anyone minimally committed to opposing cruelty to animals and a posessing a certain consistency (e.g. why is it ok to treat a pig in ways you would never dream of treating a dog?) should look askance at many American farming practices.