Animal Vegetable Miserable Analysis

Losing Our Relationship With Animals by Losing our Omnivorous Ways Throughout history, meat has always had a presence as a major part of the human diet. Gary Steiner argues in “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable” that everyone should forswear their meat-eating ways and instead turn to veganism, while many of the respondents in “The Ethical Choices in What We Eat: Responses to Gary Steiner,” either provide support or denounce Steiner’s argument. By using Steiner’s point of view, many of the assumptions people have about the human-animal relationship are revealed and stand out in the comments of, “The Ethical Choices in What We Eat” such as how most Americans have normalized killing animals, how people don’t care about what animals feel, and how most …show more content…
Steiner makes the claims that, “people who are ethical vegans believe that differences in intelligence between human and non-human animals have no moral significance” (847) assuming that most meat eaters justify their consumption based on the principle that they are more significant and above them; however, L. David Peters comments in “The Ethical Choices in What We Eat” claims that “humans can acceptably consume animals precisely because we are not superior to them at all” (851) and further explains that animals consume other animals and because we are animals, we should not be above consuming other animals. From Steiner’s viewpoint, because we are of the same status as animals, we shouldn’t kill them, but this contradicts itself. To not eat animals would mean vegans consider themselves more significant and more capable than animals. If vegans are to hold humans at the standard that they should not eat animals, then it would be un-vegan like to allow animals, the equal, to prey on each other. Furthermore, this illustrates within the human-animal relationship, humans actually consider themselves equal to animals. The human race would be losing its relationship with animals if it was