Written by Vegetarian Star on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 in Animal Issues, Food & Drink, Politicians.
When a known (or even suspected) vegetarian takes a position of power, some meat eaters get a little testy. Just look at what happened when that poor Montana GOP candidate was suspected of eating Boca versus regular burgers.
Obama’s appointed regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein is a vegetarian and co-authored the book Animal Right: Current Debates and New Directions. Some groups are alleging he will try to outlaw meat eating and hunting.
While banning all activities that harm or kill animals, like hunting, may be a long shot (bad pun intended), Sunstein has expressed an interest in banning hunting unless it’s for food and thinks Americans should put animal suffering on the front burner. (But not the front burner for cooking. Another bad pun, indeed.)
He published a paper in 2002 titled The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer. Here are a few excerpts:
We should focus attention not only on the “enforcement gap,” but on the areas where current law offers little or no protection. In short, the law should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific experiments, entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against unnecessary animal suffering. It is easy to imagine a set of initiatives that would do a great deal here, and indeed European nations have moved in just this direction.
If we focus on suffering, as I believe that we should, it is not necessarily impermissible to kill animals and use them for food; but it is entirely impermissible to be indifferent to their interests while they are alive. So too for other animals in farms, even or perhaps especially if they are being used for the benefit of human beings. If sheep are going to be used to create clothing, their conditions must be conducive to their welfare. We might ban hunting altogether, at least if its sole purpose is human recreation. (Should animals be hunted and killed simply because people enjoy hunting and killing them? The issue might be different if hunting and killing could be justified as having important functions, such as control of populations or protection of human beings against animal violence.)
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