Analysis Of Alastair Norcross's Article Puppies, Pigs

Often, we as people, are faced with a difficult question: is it morally right or morally wrong to eat meat. Alastair Norcross discusses this in his article, “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases.” In this article Norcross tells the story of Fred, a man who lost the ability to taste chocolate due to a car accident. He sets up twenty-six cages of puppies, and leads them to live stress induced lives. This is because when the puppies are under stress, they produce a hormone called cocoamone, which can give Fred the ability to taste chocolate again. He then mutilates the puppies to extract the cocoamone, killing them. Once Fred was caught, he argued to a judge that torturing the puppies is no different compared to the torturing involved in the selling of factory raised meat (Textbook, 407-408). Norcross states that if you believe that torturing and killing puppies for gustatory pleasure is morally wrong, we must believe that the torturing and killing of factory raised animals for gustatory pleasure it morally wrong as well (Textbook, 409). I find this statement to be true because there is no difference between the two ideas, both types of animals are being tortured …show more content…
Norcross states, “Most of the chicken, veal, beef, and pork consumed in the US comes from intensive confinement facilities, in which the animals live cramped, stress-filled lives and endure anaesthetized mutilations,” (Textbook, 408). This statement allows the readers to see that what Fred is doing, unfortunately, is not any different compared to what millions of factory workers are doing to factory raised animals, making both equally as wrong. Chickens are one of the most abused animals worldwide. If abusing one type animal is immoral, abusing any type of animal is also