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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now is the Princeton bioethicist, Peter Singer. In 1975, he released the seminal book Animal Liberation, which has often been credited for helping to launch the modern animal rights movement. Now Peter Singer is out with an updated edition called Animal Liberation Now. Peter Singer joins us to discuss what's changed in the world and in his own moral evolution, as he experiences it, in these nearly 50 years. Dr. Singer, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Peter Singer: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Can you start by taking us back, and including for people completely unfamiliar with your work, taking us back to how you first got interested in the topic of animal rights?

Peter Singer: I got interested in the topic of animal rights in 1970 when I was a graduate student at the University of Oxford. I happened to have lunch with another graduate student who, when offered spaghetti with a brown sauce on top as the main course that we were eating at his college, asked if there was meat in the sauce, and when he was told there was meat in the sauce, he refused it and took a salad plate.

Now, in 1970, this was very unusual to meet somebody who was a vegetarian, at least somebody who was not from an Indian background or other background where perhaps their culture might lead them to be a vegetarian, but someone who was rather like me. He was a Canadian graduate student. I asked him what his problem with meat was, and he simply said, "I don't think it's right to treat animals the way they're treated to turn them into meat."

I was surprised by that because I knew nothing about factory farming in 1970. I did not know that millions of animals had been taken indoors, never to go outside during their entire lives, crowded together in dim sheds and essentially leading miserable lives. I'd imagine they're all out in the fields leading good lives until, of course, I knew they got trucked to slaughter and killed. I imagine that was pretty horrible.

This was a different perspective on it, that the way we were producing them in itself was disregarding their interest entirely in order to produce those products more cheaply than they would otherwise be. That started me thinking about are we really justified in doing this, was my friend right, perhaps, that we're not justified? That eventually took about another five years, led me to write and publish Animal Liberation in which I described those systems of factory farming, but as a philosopher, I also situated them in an ethical framework, and considered whether there was a defensible, ethical framework for treating them that way, and argued that there simply isn't, that we were doing a massive wrong to a vast number of other animals with whom we share the planet.

Brian Lehrer: When you say no ethical framework for treating them that way, do you just mean factory farming or do you mean killing them after any kind of life for the animals in order to eat them?

Peter Singer: Well, really, what I was arguing was about the suffering we were inflicting on them. I think the question about whether we are justified in killing them, if they do have good lives, is a more difficult philosophical question. I'm prepared to say that there are other views, which I could not clearly say I can reject or that I can refute them, whereas I do think I can refute all of the defenses for factory farming today.

That's my focus. To me, that's the overwhelming priority. This is such a vast system for treating, and now it's actually hundreds of millions of animals a year, treated this way. It's a massive atrocity, I believe. That's my priority to try to alert people to that and to get them to cease to buy its products so that eventually it fades away.

Brian Lehrer: For people who read the original 1975 version of Animal Liberation, where would you start in describing how the new edition called Animal Liberation Now is most different?

Peter Singer: I think that there are two different kinds of difference. One is the previous sections that described how we treat animals, and that includes factory farming, as well as their use in research, are fully updated so that the facts don't date from the '70s or '80s or even '90s, but really date from the present and from the immediate past. I think that's important if the book is to remain relevant, that it is talking about the conditions we have today.

The other differences are talking about things that have happened, or that we've become aware of since that first edition was published, such as the connection between meat consumption and climate change, which people were not talking about climate change in the '70s, so that's important. Also, a lot of people ask me, have we made progress since the '70s? The answer to that is, yes, we have made some progress, at least in some countries, but the progress has not been nearly as much as it needs to be.

In the United States, in particular, it's been very patchy so that you see states like California which have, through citizens-initiated referendums, have made some improvements, still small, but they're worthwhile in terms of how animals can be farmed, whereas the states that have the majority of America's animals that are raising, states like Nebraska, Iowa, and North Carolina, they don't have any regulations. Essentially, people can still keep animals in the conditions that they think will produce the cheapest products, irrespective of the welfare of those animals.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your questions for Princeton moral philosophy professor and bioethicist, Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation in 1975, few dozen books since then, but now the newly released updated edition Animal Liberation Now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Everything you've always wanted to ask Peter Singer but never had him over for a vegetarian dinner. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. You can also text a question to that number. I'm curious for you, as a moral philosopher, the term that's often applied to you, or bioethicist, if your own moral philosophy has changed or evolved over the course of these decades in any way, or in any way that is most striking to you.

Peter Singer: I think the most important way in which my views have changed is that in the 1970s, I was still of the view that it's very difficult to say that there are objective truths in morality and ethics. I was influenced by movements that were around then, which essentially said that when we make moral judgments, we're expressing our own views, but there's no necessarily single, rational way of thinking about ethics on any particular issue.

Over the years, I've now adopted a more objectivist view. I do think that there are some basic moral truths. I think, for example, the infliction of pain and suffering is something that in itself is bad, but that doesn't mean it can never be justified, or that it might not lead to good consequences. I think the claim that it is bad in itself, and, therefore, to cause it with no reason or with no sufficient reason or overriding reason is wrong. I now think that that's something that we can understand.

When we look at the universe, we look at ourselves, we think about how we respond to suffering, and we have to extend that to other sentient beings who can suffer as well.

Brian Lehrer: When you say sentient beings, that's a big word. Could you define sentience and where it comes in to your thinking about animal rights or, for that matter, how we treat other human beings?

Peter Singer: Yes. By sentient being, another word would be to say conscious being. I mean a being who is a subject of experiences. To put that in simple words, there's something that it's like to be that. If you put a hen in a narrow wire cage crowded with other hens, there's something that it's like to be that hen, and it's something that's negative for that hen. That contrasts with those things that are not sentient being. I don't believe, for example, that if you cut a cabbage, there's something that it's like to be that cabbage being cut. That's the difference for me.

I think a lot of animals clearly are sentient. I think there's no question about vertebrates being sentient, I think, and that includes fish, of course. I think it's extremely probable that an octopus is sentient, though it's not a vertebrate. I'm doubtful that an oyster is sentient, although zoologically it is an animal, but I don't think it has the nervous system, and I don't think it would have evolved sentience given that it can't move away from a source of danger.

Brian Lehrer: Eating oysters would not pose the same moral questions for you as eating a more sentient being.

Peter Singer: Exactly, that's right.

Brian Lehrer: Since you brought up the word sentient, and correct me if I'm characterizing this incorrectly, but I think you've also been very controversial in your life for endorsing euthanasia for newborn infants in very rare circumstances of extreme disability and likely early death. Again, correct me if I'm mischaracterizing that, but I think part of your moral rationale for that was that the newborn isn't yet really sentient. How much is that right?

Peter Singer: Everything you said about my position on euthanasia for very severely disabled newborns is correct, except that it's-- I'm not claiming that the newborn is not sentient. I think newborn infants are sentient, but I think they are different from you and me because they don't have an awareness of their life and its possible biographical course. They don't have a sense of the future and of what they want to do in the future.

In that sense, there's not something that is lost to them by the loss of the future in the way that there would be to you and me, or to anybody, younger people who are planning their career, studying so that they can do something professionally. I think it's a much greater wrong to kill somebody who has those wishes and hopes and is a autonomous being controlling their own fate than it is to end the life of a newborn who doesn't have those capacities.

When, as you correctly said, the newborn is going to suffer when there's an extreme disability, that there is no prospect of really overcoming that, then my view is that parents should be able to choose to end the life of their newborn in a swift and humane way, just as an adult might choose that when they're terminally ill and they see nothing more than suffering coming for them.

Of course, many states of the US now allow them to get the aid of a physician to end their life. I think that parents consulting with their physicians and perhaps with people from the disability movement who know about the nature of this condition should be able to make that choice.

Brian Lehrer: I see. Only in those extreme terminally ill situations to be clear about that. Wouldn't, by your definition, a one-year-old not also be aware of the future in that way and not, therefore, in the way you're describing it, if I'm hearing you correctly, the moral or equivalent of an older child who might have a sense of the future?

Peter Singer: I agree that the sense of the future is one that develops. I think it has started to form in a one-year-old. I think maybe it starts to form in a few months after birth. It's not as fully developed, but I would still respect that. I think if parents felt that they could not care for that infant, hopefully, there would be some other couple who would want to adopt it.

Again, unless there was simply severe suffering that could not be relieved, then even with a one-year-old, I would not oppose parents who, after carefully consulting with others who understand this situation, thought that it was better for the child not to live. In a way, that's the practice in terms of withdrawal of treatment. If you have very severely disabled infants, and they need life support, so they need some medical treatment to stay alive, or they need to be on a respirator, doctors will consult with parents, and they will say, "Do you want us to continue to treat your child despite the very poor prognosis?"

We allow that. We recognize that in the case of withdrawal of treatment. I don't think there's a huge moral difference between saying, "Let's withdraw the respirator because of the poor prospects for the child," and, "Let's make sure that the child dies humanely because of the poor prospects for the child."

Brian Lehrer: We'll get back to animals in a minute, but on this whole thread of sentience and awareness and consciousness, where for you as a moral philosopher, does abortion lie?

Peter Singer: Abortion lies on the side where I don't think there is consciousness, at least until very late in the pregnancy, maybe 24 weeks, into the third trimester. I support a woman's right to have an abortion, certainly up to that point, and in emergency situations where there's a risk to her life or health, serious reason for the abortion, even beyond that point because I think the woman's right to life or to health is still more weighty than that of the fetus even close to birth.

Because as I say, that fetus still does not have that sense of their future awareness. They may have a capacity to feel pain, and that may affect the way that we should carry out the termination of the pregnancy, but I don't think the fetus has a right to life even in that late stage.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is the Princeton bioethicist, Peter Singer. His classic 1975 book, Animal Liberation, has now been updated in a new edition just out called Animal Liberation Now. Lori in Morristown, you're on WNYC with Dr. Peter Singer. Hello.

Lori: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Hello, Dr. Singer. I was influenced very early, back in the '70s when I was a kid, and I went to get my tonsils out, and the woman who was in the bed next to me was a vegetarian. She had read your book. As a child, I was exposed to it. It wasn't until 1991 that I decided to do it myself. It's something I've never regretted.

In the meantime, with the climate crisis, I've become more and more committed as well as to my feelings that animals are sentient beings. I recently read an article in New York Times a few days ago about the Colorado River and the difficulties they're having appropriating water. As the New York Times reported that 55% of the Colorado River is diverted to animal agriculture, so worrying about people not watering their lawns, these are minuscule.

I think that if we really are serious about the climate and serious about the potential water shortages that we could be facing, in certain areas, we have to look at animal agriculture and change the way we do things.

Brian Lehrer: Lori, thank you very much. Go ahead, Dr. Singer.

Peter Singer: I think that's absolutely correct. Lori, you've given all of these reasons, the concern for the animals suffering, concern for the climate of the planet as a whole, and individual local issues, it's not so local, but it's across the whole west of this country, and it's true of other countries too, of the inordinate water use of animal agriculture of the dairy industry, for example.

I'm really hopeful we can move away from this. I'm hopeful that we can replace a lot of these products with plant-based products, or possibly in the future with products that are produced at a cellular level, so they're identical, but they don't involve animals, and they don't involve the water use or the greenhouse gas emissions. I think we really need to find better ways of producing food.

Brian Lehrer: Avi in Freehold, you're on WNYC with Peter Singer. Hello, Avi.

Avi: Hi, good morning. How are you? I have a question for you, Dr. Singer. If morals are based on what someone thought up and someone thinks, and they think deeply about, and you decided after much thought that it's immoral to kill animals to eat, let's say. I think, let's say, not that I think this really, but I think maybe that animals were created solely for me to eat, enjoy the meat.

Why are your morals better than my morals? If something is divine, it comes from a divine source, then you say, "Okay, you got to listen to what God says," if you believe in God. If it's just your morals against mine, so why are you going and being a missionary and saying, "This is what I think it's moral." I think it's moral to just eat steak. Why is your morals better than my morals?

Peter Singer: In the case that you mentioned your morals, I think you said this is not you, but a possible person. The morals depended on a belief, firstly in a God, secondly in a belief that God has a particular moral view, and that God has put animals on earth for humans to eat. I would, in this case, it would mean not so much the morals that I would challenge as the basis for those beliefs.

Whether we start with the idea that the planet was created by a divine creator or the universe was created by a divine creator, and I have to say, I don't see evidence of that. Seems to me much more likely that it evolved in the way that science has generally explained. Or if you do want to believe in such a divine creator, why would we think that that creator would have created animals for us to use, and even accepted the idea that we use them in the ways we do by giving them miserable lives in factory farming?

Interestingly, Pope Francis, who obviously does believe in a divine creator, recently issued an encyclical in which he rejected what has been a traditional view in the Roman Catholic Church. The verse in Genesis, which says, "God gave dominion to us over the the animals," should be interpreted in a way that says, "We can do what we like with the animals."

Pope Francis was suggesting that that's wrong, and we have moral responsibilities, we have to look after God's creation, we have to be stewards for it, and we have to care for the animals. I think even within that religious tradition that you mentioned, there are better views and better understandings of the texts that do not allow us to do with animals what we're doing now.

Brian Lehrer: Avi, thank you for the question. Call us again. To put a pin in this part of the conversation, here's a text that came in from a listener that says, "The notion of animal rights is reflected in the Torah to avoid creating suffering of animals that is prohibiting yoking a strong and weak animal together, cruel to the weaker, or barring the muzzling of animals in harness while plowing in a way that kept them from eating the grain before them or prohibiting taking the eggs of a mother bird in her sight."

The listener writes, "Obviously that was in the context of an era that both allowed animal sacrifice as part of ritual and that in other culture's permitted sacrifice of human beings to idols," but still interesting to hear that biblical reference.

Peter Singer: Yes, definitely. In fact, most religious traditions show some concern for animals. We can certainly see that as you said there in the Jewish tradition. There are some Christian thinkers who've expressed that as well. In the Islamic tradition, it's said that the prophet cut the corner of his cloth that a cat was sleeping on rather than disturb the cat, which is a rather nice idea. Buddhism and Hinduism perhaps have more respect for animals than those western traditions.

Brian Lehrer: Adida in Queens, you're on WNYC with Peter Singer. Hi, Adida.

Adida: Hi, there. Thank you for having me on. I've been vegan and an animal rights advocate for over 20 years. I was very influenced by Animal Liberation. I work now for an animal rights organization called [unintelligible 00:22:03] here in the city. Being that you're here in New York City, Peter, my question is, how do you feel about the fact that New York City officials, the mayor, the city council, is still allowing horse-drawn carriages to operate all over Midtown in spite of the fact that there's so much documented abuse and horse deaths and cruelty going on?

We've been working to get these horses off the streets for years and passed Ryder's Law in the city council, but yet, it is still being enabled by our officials and I want to get your feel on that.

Peter Singer: Yes, I definitely feel that it's time for the horse-drawn carriages to go. I'm aware that in Turkey, in an island near Istanbul where they also had horse-drawn carriages serving tourists. A few years ago, they retired the horses to a sanctuary and replaced them with electric vehicles that were taking the tourist around, and if Turkey can do it, I think we can do it too.

Let me add a couple of things, I do praise Mayor Adams for the fact that he has been introducing vegan food to schools in New York. That's a huge step forward. Also, it's become the default in hospitals now unless you request-- you can request an alternative, but otherwise vegan, or I'm not sure if it's vegan or vegetarian meals will be provided. I give Mayor Adams great credit for that. While we're talking about New York City, can I just mention that I am in New York today, and I'm speaking this evening at the Cooper Union about these topics and others at 7:00 PM. If anybody is still able to come, we do have some spare seats. If you google Peter Singer, Cooper Union and the ticket agency, which is called Humanitix, like human and then I-T-I-X, you'll be able to get tickets for that event still tonight.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Seven o'clock tonight at Cooper Union. Is that what you said?

Peter Singer: That's correct, yes. I'm delighted to be speaking in such a historic venue where Abraham Lincoln made a great speech against slavery. As we've put slavery in the past or maybe not completely, but we certainly have legally, I'm hoping that we'll put animal slavery in the past eventually too.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It is a great space, Cooper Union. I've had the privilege of moderating a few things there, fabulous space. I'm thinking about you doing a live event, maybe taking questions from the audience, and obviously, you take questions from the audience here, but is there a most common question about animal rights that you've gotten over the years just from members of the general public?

Peter Singer: There are a number of questions that are quite familiar. One of them, for example, is how do you know that plants don't feel pain? We already mentioned that or discussed that. People used to ask about can we be really healthy and nourished without eating meat. I think that one has faded because there's so many vegans around now that people realize that they're healthy, in fact, that they're even healthier without it. That question has gone.

Another question that occasionally you get from somebody who says, "Look, I accept the arguments that you make, but I just enjoy eating meat." What do you say about that? That's quite a challenging question to answer really because it's a question that goes right back to the beginning of philosophy. You can find that question in Plato's dialogues where Socrates is one character and there's often someone else who challenges him and says, "Well, look, if we could get away with things, why wouldn't it be rational to do it?"

Socrates is trying to persuade people to act ethically. I'm in that tradition. I'm trying to persuade people that living ethically is an important part of anyone's life and actually adds meaning and fulfillment to your life. If you know that something is wrong, and you continue to do it, which you're doing every day with eating meat, that produces psychologists call it cognitive dissonance, which is a fancy word for saying you feel a bit uncomfortable about it and your life is not really going as well as it would if your values and your actions were in harmony.

Brian Lehrer: Is medical research involving animals ever justified in your opinion?

Peter Singer: If you say ever justified, yes, it can be and at least certainly we can hypothetically describe cases where it's justified, and perhaps some of them are actual cases. I think the great majority of research is not just research on animals is not justified, and a lot of the research on animals incidentally is not medical at all. There's research that goes on in psychology to test various theories. Clearly there's product testing where the products are not necessary, but animals suffer greatly to produce them.

That's true even of say cosmetics, where cosmetics testing has been prohibited on animals in the European Union and the United Kingdom, but it's not prohibited in the United States. Maybe some experiments to cure major diseases if there's really no other way of finding answers you could defend. Even there I quote in the book Health Officials, including a former director of the National Institutes of Health who said, "As a result of the vast amount of experimentation we've done on animals, we are very good at curing cancer in mice, but it just doesn't translate to humans." So many of the drugs that we test on animals they look like they're going to do good don't do good when we transfer them to humans.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure there are researchers who will say that even the relatively small percentage where it does translate does make it ethically worth it, but that's the conversation between you and them. Before you go, a question off-topic, but being in a university environment for so long as you're talking about a book that you wrote almost 50 years ago in the new edition, I realize it's the rarefied air of Princeton in your case. I'm curious how you think college students today are most different than when you started teaching, in any way that comes to mind in your experience, or maybe you'll say not so much?

Peter Singer: Well, there's lots of ways in which they're not so different, and I think my students still are very concerned about ethics and about how to live an ethical life, they're young, and what sort of career to have. What really concerns me about universities in general, and not so much Princeton, is that there's less respect for freedom of thought and discussion than there used to be. I think, both from the left and from the right, we have more intolerance of ideas. We've seen that from the right just recently in the banning of the poem by the poet laureate that was read in the inauguration.

Brian Lehrer: At the presidential inauguration, yes.

Peter Singer: That's right. We see it from the left too, intolerance of ideas of canceling people because they express ideas that are not those favored by people on the left. That seems to me to be a mistake I think especially in universities, but not only in universities, we really should have the ability to conduct wide discussions without abuse, without vilifying. I'm not talking about freedom for people to vilify and stir up hatred against marginalized peoples or minorities.

I'm talking about having a serious discussion about controversial issues, and I think that has become harder for some people. There's more sensitivity, people take offense more easily, and then they say that because they're offended the view shouldn't be expressed. Right back in the 19th century, John Stewart Mill said, "If you prevent people saying things because they'll offend somebody, there'll be no freedom of thought and discussion at all because everything can offend someone."

Brian Lehrer: Peter Singer, his seminal book, Animal Liberation, was originally published in 1975. He's got a new, updated edition out now called Animal Liberation Now. He will be doing an event tonight at Cooper Union at 7:00 PM as he mentioned. Dr. Singer, thank you so much for coming on with us. Really appreciate the conversation.

Peter Singer: Thank you. I've really enjoyed it as well. Thanks to the listeners too.

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