Gary Varner

In defense of the vegan ideal: Rhetoric and bias in the nutrition literature

Much of the scientific literature on vegetarian nutrition leaves one with the impression that vegan diets are significantly more risky than omnivorous ones, especially for individuals with high metabolic demands (such as pregnant or lactating women and children). But nutrition researchers have tended to skew their study populations toward “new vegetarians,” members of religious sects with especially restrictive diets and tendencies to eschew fortified foods and medical care, and these are arguably the last people we would expect to thrive on vegan diets. Researchers also have some tendency to play up weakly confirmed risks of vegan dietsvis-à-vis equally weakly confirmed benefits. And, in spite of these methodological and rhetorical biases, for every nutrient which vegans are warned to be cognizant of, there is reason to believe that they are not at significantly greater risk of nutritional deficiency than omnivores.

Utilitarianism and the evolution of ecological ethics.

R.M. Hare’s two-level utilitarianism provides a useful framework for understanding the evolution of codes of professional ethics. From a Harean perspective, the codes reflect both the fact that members of various professions face special kinds of ethically charged situations in the normal course of their work, and the need for people in special roles to acquire various habits of thought and action. This highlights the role of virtue in professional ethics and provides guidance to professional societies when considering modifications to their codes. From a Harean perspective, a professional society should ask both “Are there kinds of situations that members of this profession will normally encounter which members of other professions and/or the general public will not?” and “What habits of thought and action would it be good for individuals encountering such situations to have?”

Rejoinder to Kathryn Paxton George

In “Use and Abuse Revisited: Response to Pluhar and Varner,” Kathryn Paxton George misunderstands the point of my essay, “In Defense of the Vegan Ideal: Rhetoric and Bias in the Nutrition Literature.” I did not claim that the nutrition literature unambiguously confirms that vegans are not at significantly greater risk of deficiencies than omnivores. Rather than settling any empirical controversy, my aim was to show how the literature can give the casual reader a skewed impression of what is known about the risks of a vegan diet. In this brief rejoinder, I illustrate how two essays by nutritionists in the same volume as Georges and my essays, and a referees report on my manuscript which was authored by a nutritionist, confirm the soundness of this basic insight.

Speciesism and Reverse Speciesism

Implicit in Schmidtz’s essay (Schmidtz, this issue, pp. 127–138) is a distinction between two meanings of ‘anthropocentrism’ for which I once suggested labels: ‘As I use the terms, a view is valuationally anthropocentric just in case it involves attribution of intrinsic value only to human beings, and a view is axiologically anthropocentric if its principles favor at least some human interests when these are in conflict with the interests of non-humans’ (Varner, 1998, p. 121). As Schmidtz presents the view, species egalitarianism rejects both kinds of anthropocentrism. Schmidtz argues, however, that properly respecting humans and animals requires both axiological anthropocentrism and recognizing that the lives (or certain interests) of animals from various other species have varying moral significance. I agree with Schmidtz that valuing equally the lives and interests of all animals and humans is a failure of respect. In this comment I will only take issue with his use of the term ‘speciesism.’ Like ‘anthropocentrism,’ ‘speciesism’ gets used in two very different ways: some authors write as if favoring any members of one species over another is speciesist, whereas others equate speciesism with ignoring or differentially weighing the similar interests of different species. Schmidtz confuses the two. I do not mean to be pedantic; to insist that we be clear that the charge of ‘speciesism’ means two different things in these two senses contributes to clear communication. However, I also think that the second of these two senses is the more fundamental and the less controversial, for reasons given at the end of this comment. When Singer adopted the term in Animal liberation, he clearly intended it in this second sense. There he defined ‘speciesism’ as ‘a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species’ (Singer, 1975, p. 7). What this prejudice or bias consists of becomes more clear when Singer says that ‘Normal adult human beings have mental capacities that will, in certain circumstances, lead them to suffer more than animals would in the same circumstances’ (Singer, 1975, p. 16), and that,

Animals in Agriculture: Beef, Milk, and Eggs

Interactive exercise for class discussion of ethical issues associated with production of beef, milk and eggs.