Description

Meat production in industrialised nations today would be unrecognisable to anyone who participated in animal farming during the previous 11,000 years of livestock domestication. This lecture will first outline ways in which contemporary modes of intensive meat production impose harms onto consumers, workers, neighboring communities, animals, ecosystems, and the global atmosphere, among other recipients of industrial animal agriculture’s “negative externalities.”

Notwithstanding these extensive impacts, industrial animal agriculture as a sector within the global economy remains largely free of consequential regulatory controls. In the absence of direct legal constraints on the sector, some nations, policymakers, and advocates have turned to the promotion of alternative proteins in hopes that these technologies will eventually offer less harmful substitutes. This lecture will discuss the possibilities and controversies raised by these alternatives, situating them within a larger moral and legal discussion regarding humanity’s obligations to the nonhuman world.