Size Matters: Animal Size, Contributory Causation, and Ethical Vegetarianism

This article makes the case for why animal size is an important consideration in moral evaluations of killing animals for food, given that animals used for food differ substantially in size and that many more small animals (e.g., chickens) are slaughtered for food than larger animals (e.g., cows).

[Abstract excerpted from original source.]

“Animal size is a relevant and unappreciated consideration in moral evaluations of killing animals for food, especially for utilitarians, who must weigh the gustatory satisfaction of eating meat—the quantity of which varies greatly throughout the animal kingdom—against animal suffering in utilitarian calculations. I argue that animal size can drastically alter not only the extent but even the valence of such calculations.
Then I show how the business ethics literature on vegetarianism is deficient for not taking animal size into account. Last, I argue that market conditions are also relevant in moral assessments of vegetarianism.”