Is the human consumption of animal products fundamentally incompatible with living morally and ethically? For John Sanbonmatsu, American philosopher and author of The Omnivore’s Deception, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Along the moral spectrum from ‘right’ to ‘wrong’, Sanbonmatsu assigns the use of animals in global food systems firmly and unequivocally into the latter category. As its title suggests, the book is framed largely as a rebuttal to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Reference Pollan2006), arguing against Pollan’s proposal that it is possible to both care for, and eat, animals. Sanbonmatsu is not the first to take this stance. From Peter Singer’s foundational Animal Liberation (Reference Singer1975) to Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (Reference Foer2009), many authors have made the moral case for veganism. Sanbonmatsu’s contribution, however, goes beyond the familiar evidence-base that focuses largely on animal rights, extending into an interrogation of the ideological and political structures that allow animal consumption to remain morally palatable.
Cynthia Joanne Naydani (Thu,) studied this question.