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<\/a>Photo: Yuki Iwaki<\/p><\/div>\n
We are delighted to have invited Prof Daniel Butt from Oxford University as the presenter for last week’s Political Theory Research Group seminar.\u00a0 Dan presented the paper \u2018Should carnivores let their children eat meat?\u2019.<\/p>\n
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The argument and the underlying assumptions<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a morally significant reason why a parent, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, should not feed meat to a child.\u00a0 At least, there is a reason why parents in affluent societies, who have significant discretion over the choice of food, should not give meat to children. \u00a0Dan argues for this claim drawing on children\u2019s interest in their moral integrity and parents\u2019 fiduciary responsibility for children\u2019s moral development.<\/p>\n The claim is based on three assumptions. \u00a0First, a vegetarian diet will not pose a significant threat to children\u2019s health and bodily reproduction.\u00a0 Second, at some point of moral development, a given child may choose to become an ethical vegetarian.\u00a0 It is reasonably possible that a child may come to believe that eating meat is morally bad especially because eating meat entails animal suffering, treating animals in ways they should not be treated.\u00a0 And third, ethical vegetarianism is harmless to others, and also can be considered reasonable by non-vegetarians.\u00a0 Non-vegetarians can believe that eating meat is morally acceptable, without thinking that ethical vegetarianism is entirely unreasonable or ridiculous.\u00a0 Because ethical vegetarianism is harmless and reasonable, a child who chose to become an ethical vegetarian is not involved in any moral wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Meat feeding v. children\u2019s moral integrity<\/strong><\/p>\n A child who chose to become an ethical vegetarian when he\/she became able to make life judgements as a moral agent may believe that his\/her life has not gone as well as it could have gone had he\/she not been fed meat as a child.\u00a0 Eating meat as a child before the point of moral agency does not actually<\/em> undermine one\u2019s moral character, since a child before that point is neither morally responsible nor blameworthy for choosing to eat meat.\u00a0 However, having had the habit of eating meat as a child may still be a source of regret to the child.\u00a0 The child may regret that he\/she was implicated in what he\/she now believes to be morally wrong.\u00a0 So, the child has a good reason to believe<\/em> that his\/her moral integrity has been compromised in a way that cannot be righted now by adopting a vegetarian diet from now on.<\/p>\n There are two complications.<\/p>\n (a) Delay in action.\u00a0 A child may decide to become an ethical vegetarian when he\/she has become able to make life judgements as a moral agent.\u00a0 But the child may not change his\/her diet at the point of that decision.\u00a0 In this case, there is a temporal gap between when the child decided to become an ethical vegetarian (T1) and when that child actually stopped eating meat (T2).\u00a0 In this case, the child is responsible for choosing to eat meat between T1 and T2, unless the child could not have refused to eat meat in this period due to parental sanction, etc.\u00a0 The parents who continued to feed meat to the child during this period are not directly responsible for the child\u2019s action.\u00a0 But they are responsible for something else.\u00a0 The child can blame them for creating the situation where eating meat was his\/her default dietary option, and where the child was therefore exposed to a moral risk which he\/she could have avoided had eating meat not been the default option.<\/p>\n (b) Inability to take action.\u00a0 A child may want to become an ethical vegetarian when he\/she has become able to make life judgements as a moral agent (T1).\u00a0 But the child may find it extremely difficult because he\/she has enjoyed eating meat so much.\u00a0 So, the child may keep eating meat after T1.\u00a0 In this case, parents are responsible for making it difficult for children to become ethical vegetarians even if they want to.\u00a0 Parents are responsible for an avoidable action (feeding meat) that is likely to create a gap between children\u2019s sense of duty and their action.<\/p>\n Meat feeding v. parents\u2019 fiduciary responsibility<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan\u2019s argument is not based on the assumption that eating meat is actually<\/em> morally wrong.\u00a0 It is based on the assumption that children may come to believe<\/em> that eating meat is morally wrong.\u00a0 Parents may or may not share such an ethical-vegetarian belief.\u00a0 So, why is it morally wrong for parents \u2013 in particular, non-vegetarian parents who do not share that belief \u2013 to feed meat to their children?<\/p>\n Dan thinks that it is morally wrong for parents to feed meat to their children because feeding meat may contradict parents\u2019 fiduciary responsibility for children\u2019s moral development.\u00a0 Parents neglect this responsibility by risking compromising children\u2019s moral integrity.\u00a0 Feeding meat to a child is one of such cases where parents let the child do what he\/she may later come to believe to be wrong and thereby risk compromising his\/her moral integrity.\u00a0 This should be a source of regret to parents because, as explained above, from the child\u2019s perspective, his\/her life has not gone as well as it could have gone had he\/she not been fed meat as a child.<\/p>\n A stronger claim?<\/strong><\/p>\n Dan\u2019s argument so far establishes that feeding meat to children compromises their moral integrity and contradicts parents\u2019 fiduciary care responsibility for children\u2019s moral development.\u00a0 This argument grounds Dan\u2019s claim that there is a prima facie<\/em> duty on parents not to feed meat to children.\u00a0 But is it possible to argue for parents\u2019 all-things-considered<\/em> duty not to do so?<\/p>\n Dan explains that, if we want to defend such a stronger argument, we need to consider the costs the duty in question would impose on non-vegetarian parents.\u00a0 There are different kinds of cost.\u00a0 For example, parents may have to pay more attention to their children\u2019s diets; they may have to learn how to cook vegetarian dishes; they may have to spend more time on cooking because they have to cook both non-vegetarian and vegetarian dishes.\u00a0 They may also feel a sense of distance from their children because they are having different dishes.\u00a0 They may feel upset because, when their children ask them to share the meat they are eating, they have to turn the request down.\u00a0 However, Dan suggests inconclusively that such costs (may or) may not be so weighty as to outweigh the moral force of the prima facie duty in question.\u00a0 Perhaps, he suggests, concern for children\u2019s interest in their moral integrity is weightier than those costs to non-vegetarian parents.<\/p>\n Can vegans and fruitarians employ the same argument for their positions?<\/strong><\/p>\n The final question Dan addresses in the paper was: Can vegans and fruitarians employ Dan\u2019s argument to claim that there is a prima facie or even all-things-considered duty on parents not to give children any kind of animal-related food (including dairy and egg products) or any kind of food except fruit.\u00a0 Dan suggests inconclusively that they cannot.\u00a0 Perhaps, he suggests, costs to parents may be too considerable.\u00a0 Perhaps, children may be less likely to choose to become vegans or fruitarians than to become vegetarians.\u00a0 Perhaps, raising children on vegan or fruitarian diets may be not only too demanding for parents but risky for children if parents cannot get it right.\u00a0 Perhaps, the scale of animal suffering in the dairy and egg industry or the scale of plant suffering in agriculture may be qualitatively different from that of animal suffering in the meat industry.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Dan admits that these are not decisive arguments.<\/p>\n Finally\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n As noted above, Dan\u2019s argument is not based on the substantive assumption that eating meat is actually<\/em> morally wrong.\u00a0 Whether it is actually wrong or not, children may come to believe<\/em> that it is morally wrong.\u00a0 So, there is a reason for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian parents to hold the door open for future vegetarianism.\u00a0 Otherwise, parents neglect their fiduciary responsibility and violate children\u2019s interest in their moral integrity.\u00a0 Finally, Dan emphasises that his argument is not \u2018philosophical game-playing\u2019.\u00a0 It is supposed to be action-guiding: \u2018The reasons outlined above are the reasons why I chose not [to] give meat to my own children\u2019.<\/p>\n Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n