The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Animals don't belong on our plates

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Vegetarianism, Veganism, Pescetarianism, Flexitarianism. Never before have there been so many ways to define how and what we eat.  But are these choices simply a matter of personal taste, or do they reflect a broader ethical conundrum about what we put in our bodies? Ethicists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists increasingly argue that what we eat constitutes a moral choice.  Consuming animals or animal products is inherently unethical, depriving living, sentient beings from living full, productive, and happy lives.  Choosing to eat meat is not merely a preference, but an ethically dubious choice that ignores the health of the planet and the autonomy of other living things.  The only course is to eliminate animals from our diet entirely.  But others argue that the consumption of meat and animal products is not inherently wrong.  Animals can be raised humanely, and brought to our plates with greater attention to their wellbeing.  Humans have been consuming animal products for millenia, and raising livestock is part of the fabric of our shared history and culture.  Steps must be taken to minimize the impact of animal agriculture on the environment, and animals must be treated with respect and care.  But eliminating meat and dairy from our diets altogether is not the solution. Arguing for the motion is Peter Singer, Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University specializing in applied ethics, and author of Animal Liberation (1975) Arguing against the motion is Joel Salatin, Owner of Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia QUOTES: PETER SINGER “We need to start thinking of animals as beings with whom we share the planet and who have their own lives to lead without just being a means to our ends. JOEL SALATIN “You cannot eat without killing something. Something always has to die in order for you to eat.” SOURCES: NBC, CBS The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/ Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Jacob Lewis Editor: Reza Dahya Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Welcome to the Monk Debates. episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Animals don't belong on our plates. The Fourth of July conjures up images of fireworks, beach days and barbecues, hamburgers and hot dogs. But what if you're just not into all of that meat? We took a virtual look at the rise of veganism across the globe and have a lot of the world and how

concerns about the environment could be a factor. Food website Epicurious will no longer publish recipes with beef in an effort to fight climate change. Meatless meat. It's made to look and taste like the real thing. It's also become big business. In just a year, plant-based meat sales, an increase by 26 percent, bringing in more than $800 million. Hello, I'm your moderator, Redyard Griffiths, vegetarianism, veganism, pescatarianism. Flexitarianism, never before have there been so many ways to define how and what we eat. But are these choices simply a matter of personal taste, or do they reflect a broader ethical conundrum about what we put in our bodies? Ethicists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists are increasingly arguing that what we eat constitutes a moral choice.

Consuming animals or animal products is inherently unethical, depriving living living. sentient beings from living full, productive, and pain-free lives. Choosing to eat meat is not merely a preference, but an ethically dubious choice that ignores the health of the planet and the autonomy of other living things. The only course is to eliminate animals from our diet entirely. The nation's largest cattle industry lobby group is fighting to defend the traditional meaning of the word meat. The U.S. Cattlemen's Association filed a petition last month with the Department of Agriculture. It argues lab-grown and plant-based products should not use the terms meat or beef on their labels.

But others argue that the consumption of meat in animal products is not inherently wrong. Animals can be raised humanely and brought onto our plates with greater attention to their well-being. Humans have been consuming animal products for millennia, and raising livestock is part of the fabric of our shared history. history and culture. Steps must be taken to minimize the impact of animal agriculture on the environment, and animals must be treated with respect and care, but eliminating meat and dairy from our diets altogether is not the solution. On this installment of the monk debates, we aim to discover whether we are what we eat by debating the motion, be it resolved, animals don't belong on our plates. Arguing for the motion is Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeChamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and the author of Animal Liberation.

Arguing against the motion is Joel Salatin, owner of Pollyface Farm in Swoop, Virginia, who's been featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore's Dilemma and the award-winning documentary Food Inc. Peter, Joel, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Hello. It's great to be with you. Thank you. It's an honor to be with you, yes. Likewise, gentlemen, I'm really looking forward to this debate. It's been on our books for a number of months. I've been trying hard to pull it together. It's such a interesting constellation of issues, topics, and ideas to explore when it comes to the issues of animals.

What do we owe them? What do they owe us in return? We're going to explore all of that with you in our resolution today, be it resolved. Animals do not belong on our dinner plates. You're up first in this debate, Peter. Let's put a couple minutes on the show clock and turn the program over to you for your opening statement. Thank you. Animals don't belong on our plates because animals have lives of their own to live,

and we shouldn't regard them just as food or as means to our ends. I come to this issue from an ethical perspective, and I think that the ethics of how we treat animals needs radical change. In fact, I see it as in some ways analogous to the way in which the white race treated Africans when they captured them, enslave them, and use them as means to work on the plantations. As when it comes to animals, we are still in that situation where we think that they exist to serve us. We don't really consider them as beings who have lives that could go well or badly. And in fact, when we do turn them into food, overwhelmingly, we make their lives go really badly. Because the vast majority of animals who end up on our plates have been living in factory farms, confined indoors, very crowded in systems that have no real interest in their welfare,

but only in interest in producing the animal products as cheaply as possible. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says something like 70 billion animals are reared and killed for food each year. And mostly they are confined in factory farms, tens of billions of chickens, hundreds of millions of pigs or billions of pigs, and many other animals as well. They've been bred to grow as fast as possible. They have nothing to do all day. they're very crowded. The systems do not suit their interests and their needs,

and that's why I don't believe they should end up on our plates. Thank you, Peter, powerful, on point, on time, everything I like in an opening statement. Now, Joel, your opportunity here. Set out your key arguments and ideas in your opening statement, please. Thank you. The central question here is, are humans merely animals, or are animals equal to humans? There are significant questions here, ramifications of animals not being on our plates.

The obvious ramification of that is no animals at all. Animals on our plates is just one element of the animal function in ecology and nature. A central question is, can you have life without death? I would suggest you cannot have life without death. I would suggest that animals are not equal to humans. animals don't sin. They don't make constitutions, and they don't have juries and laws and things like that. And for that matter, there's no religion of which animals are redeemed or anything through any kind of faith community. Can you eat without killing something? I would suggest no, that you cannot eat without killing something.

Something always has to die in order for you to eat. Which brings us to the question, are plants sentient? we now know that plants are sentient, fungus is sentient, mold is sentient, even the microbiome is sentient, everything is sentient. So from an ethical standpoint, is a blanket animal prohibition healthy for ecology, for religion, for healthy living, nutrient density, all these questions. I would suggest that historically, if you could catch it, get it, you could live another day, and to deprive people today of the chance of a democratized nutrient-dense food system that our ancestors enjoyed is not a new plane of ethical nirvana. It's actually a devolution into a profound disconnect of how the ecology functions. Thank you, Joel. Again, a great opening statement. Two sharply

contrasting views. We've got a debate on our hands here. Okay, Peter, over to you now for rebuttals. I'm sure you've got a few. Yes. Firstly, I'm not saying that animals are equal in every respect to humans. You're right that they don't form constitutions, for instance, but then nor do all humans. And we do draw that sharp distinction at the boundary of animals, the boundary of our species, I should say, that we consider that there are many things that would be quite wrong to do to humans that we routinely do to animals. Now, Jell suggested that plants are sentient as well. I don't agree with that. I don't think there is evidence for that. If by sentient we mean possessing consciousness, feeling pain,

then there isn't evidence that plants can feel pain. They can turn their leaves to the sun. They can send their roots down to water, but this can just be a biochemical process. It does not involve consciousness. And I think that's the crucial line that we ought to draw for asking. whether beings are ethically significant.

Can they feel pain? Do they have conscious experiences? In a word, is there something that it's like to be that animal? And if there is, then being that animal in a factory farm or being trucked to slaughter, horrible states to impose on those animals, and I don't think we should be responsible for doing that. And if we buy those products and put them on our plates, we are supporting that system of rearing and keying.

killing animals for food. Thank you, Peter. You are listening to our debate. Be it resolved, animals do not belong on our plates. Joel, your opportunity now for rebuttal taking on Peter's opening statement or what you've just heard from him now. Thank you. Yes.

I think here at this point, we need to establish very quickly that I think Peter and I could not be in greater agreement about the egregious deplorable conditions of factory farming. Anyone who knows me and knows my writing and work knows that one of our mantras here at our farm in Virginia is we want to provide a habitat that allows each being, plant, animal, microbe, whatever, to fully express its physiological distinctiveness. I do not think there can be a sacred sacrifice of a Tyson chicken, for example. I do think there can be one from one of our chickens that is allowed to chase bugs and live a more chicken-friendly open air. they're not living in its toilet all the time existence. And so I think we would very much agree on our disdain for the factory farming system. And so I would suggest that since the debate topic does not differentiate between industrial factory farming systems and any other, this topic includes

hunting a deer or shooting a wild boar and eating it or even catching a fish and eating it. It is a very, very broad resolution, and to prohibit all of that on our plates has profound ramifications that I'm sure we'll get into as we go into the middle part of this discussion. Thank you, Joel. You're listening to our monk debate on be it resolved animals do not belong on our plates. My opportunity now to join the conversation and think up some questions that are top of mind for our listeners tuning into this fascinating conversation. And Peter, let me come to you first and pick up on something that Joel has raised in this debate. He's doing something at his farm in Virginia that really focuses on sustainability

and the humane raising and slaughtering of animals. Do you give any ground in terms of our resolution on the basis of how Joel brings, say, a chicken or a hog or a cow to his proverbial dinner plate? Because it's not a factory farm. In fact, it's the antithesis of that. He's trying to create a life for these animals that is natural and meaningful to them. And to that extent, has an ethical intent. Let's get your reaction.

Well, I certainly do give some ground in that I think that that is a far, far better system than the industrial farming that we agree on condemning. My problem with it is, perhaps there are two different problems. One is that I don't believe that we can supply the levels of, meat and other animal products that people are consuming today in the United States or in other affluent countries with the kind of farm that Joel has. It's definitely vastly better, but I think we're going to have to move to, let's say, far fewer animals on our plate anyway if we were to limit ourselves to that system. But the other and perhaps deeper issue that I have is if we continue to regard animals as food to put on our plates,

are we ever going to change our fundamental ethics to animals, which will lead to ending the things that we agree are wrong, such as industrial farming, and also some of the other things that we do to animals that are clearly wrong, like using them as tools in laboratories to test new products that we want to put on the market, and a whole lot of other ways in which animals,

are abused. So I think it's important to draw a line and say animals are not just there as means to our ends. They do have their own lives to live. And the best way to try to get change is to get people to stop eating them. And then we'll be able to look at them honestly and without shame and say, yes, we respect you. We welcome the fact that you're here sharing the planet with us and we're going to do our best to live in harmony with you rather than to live in a way that dominates you and uses you in ways that suit our interests. Thank you, Peter. Now, Joel, to come to you, I guess what Peter's saying here is you can't have your chicken and eat it too. You either treat these animals not simply with respect,

but with some sense of agency, with some of the standing and stature that you would convey to a fellow human being. And only in doing that, do we really have a hope of pulling down this horrible system in Peter's view of mass agriculture, the mass slaughter and exploitation of animals, which is such a big part of our society

and our economy today. And some, if you want to get them off, you know, our dinner plates, you can't make exceptions here. You have to understand that, these animals have rights and we're abusing them. Let's get your reaction. Well, I would suggest that that kind of catastrophic response to something that is highly modern, industrial, even abnormal in the history of humankind, first of all, let me deal with you can't feed the world the way we do.

I can tell you that our farm is about five times more productive than the average farm in our County. Not only can we feed the world this way, we can do it far superior. In fact, a lot of people don't realize that 500 years ago, North America produced more nutrition than it does today. Think about that. Five hundred years ago, North America produced more nutrition than it does today. Now, that doesn't mean people were eating all of that. We had two million wolves eating 20 pounds of meat a day. We had 200 million beavers eating as much vegetable material as all the people in North America today. We had flocks of birds that blotted out the sun for three days, according to John Audubon. So the sheer abundance was here actually long before colonialism,

Europeans, or the white person. In fact, it was more abundant before than afterward. We could even argue that in Australia, the greatest estate, what a wonderful book, describes the Aboriginal caretaking of the land and how that was done. And so in none of these cases is overall production actually increased by these factory farms or industrialism. And in fact, I would suggest that more biological, eco-friendly, animal-friendly systems are actually far more productive per square foot per square yard. So we have a pretty fundamental difference here in how we actually get to abundance. But I can assure you that our system is far more abundant. it takes more people. It takes more management to be able to do it this way without pharmaceuticals,

without chemicals, without all the other, you know, the buildings and the concrete and the fans and the energy intensity. It takes more people management. But we think that actually having people on farms is a good thing and that we should not be just thinking about how do we get rid of people on farms. So we don't mind trading concrete cages and abhorrent infrastructure for the caress of the human hand and touch in the production itself. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a

10-plus year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. and you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www. www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. Peter, I want to hear a bit more from you about how you feel that animals have this agency and how it's real.

And what are the moral claims that they place on us? Because I think it's difficult for a lot of laypeople to wrap their heads around this idea that animals are something other than things that we have brought into existence for us. Therefore, they owe their existence to us, and therefore we can do whatever we want with them. So what are the roots, the bases of the moral claims that you think animals have on humankind? Right. But let me say agency wasn't my term. I don't think that agency is required for a being to matter morally or for it to matter what we do to that being and whether we affect its life for the better or the worse. After all, our own babies are not moral agents. They don't have agency. Yet if somebody is cruel to a child, somebody, you know, hits a child or something like that or stamps on the child's fingers when

the child is lying on the floor, we think that would be a horrendous thing to do. So it's the capacity to suffer that matters, I believe, rather than agency. And yes, it's true that there are religions that have said that we have dominion over the animals, but personally, I'm not a believer in those religions or indeed in any religion. I believe that we evolved from other animals, that we are, in fact, animals. Yes, we are more intelligent. We have greater cognitive abilities. We can use complex language that they can't.

We can learn from our previous generations. We can develop technologies, all of those things. But in a fundamental sense, we are animals and we have evolved alongside them. We find ourselves on a planet in which they also exist. and then we have used our greater power and abilities to capture them and to domesticate them and to use them for our purposes. And maybe that, you know, in some cases, is not objectionable, but I think given the industrial systems that we've developed, we really need to get away from that and we need to do so

by developing a different attitude to animals, one that does acknowledge that they exist on the planet with us, that we have no inherent right to use them, and that to give less concern, less attention to their interests than we give to similar interests of human beings is just wrong. As I say, wrong in a way that is loosely analogous to the way in which when Europeans enslaved Africans and brought them over here and used them as means to our ends, that was also, of course, a great wrong. And we've moved past that, I hope, maybe not completely worldwide, but generally we all accept that that is wrong. But our attitudes to animals are still

often quite similar to the attitudes of those racists to the Africans that they enslaved. And we need to change that attitude in a fundamental way. Thank you, Peter. So, Joel, let's go deeper into this point. Peter is bringing up the notion of instrumental. reason here that we're using animals as means to our ends. And in doing so, we're ignoring their suffering. We're ignoring their pain, their trauma. I understand you have a view that the food chain is a natural phenomenon. Your assertion is that it's our right, maybe our God-given right, that we sit at the top of that food chain. Am I characterizing your interpretation, your understanding of the interaction of man and animal correctly here? Yes, unlike Peter, I actually

am a Christian, and I do not think that humans are merely highly evolved animals. Jesus didn't come and die for the animals. Animals don't sin. I mean, I've never seen a big pig give way to a smaller pig and say, you know, this little pig needs some extra help. I mean, humans are capable of mercy. Our animals do not suffer. Yes, they die, but they don't suffer. And they have a wonderful life and, you know, a full expression of their individuality. But they are not human and no religion recognizes that. So for me, I think it's important to appreciate that we see animals not as slaves, but we see animals as fellow parts of this journey. And they've been placed here like apples and they've been placed here like oranges and tomatoes and microizia and fungi

and maple syrup to feed us through. And my faith does not allow for placing animals higher than a fellow being. Yes, reverence, respect, absolutely. but it is here for sustenance for humans that God created for his purpose and to redeem himself. I don't believe that animals were created for us. As I said, I believe that we evolved from them as they involved. Religions have taught many things that I disagree with and that many people today would disagree with. If you're going to appeal to religious teachings and to the culture that grew up around them, then the changes that we have seen in the status of women, things that religion very often resisted,

plenty of quotes from the Bible or from Paul about women having an inferior place, for instance, that I think we have fortunately moved beyond. And I think we also need to move beyond the idea that the religious teachings that say that animals are out, us to use. And in fact, if you go back in the Christian tradition earlier to somebody like Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, you find that he interprets this in a much harsher way and says, we can't sin against animals. There's no sins against animals because they are not part of everlasting life. And the only reason for not being cruel to an animal, Aquinas says, is that you might develop a cruel disposition and then you might be cruel to humans. But it really implies

that if that was not the case, you could do whatever you like. animals. So I think we should move past those teachings. I think we have more progressive and enlightened ethical attitudes today than we get from religions that are 2,000 or more years old. So, Joel, let's talk a little bit more about your farm and how you actually approach the husbandry and care of the animals that you're ultimately killing and eating and selling. If you could just paint a bit of a picture for us to help our listeners understand a bit more about this tension between you and Peter around these issues of what animals experience, possibly the pain and suffering, and how this plays out in the context of a moral system

that we have that governs a society or a farm like yours in rural Virginia. I want to hear a bit more from you about whether you think we are conscious of the pain and suffering that animals experience and what if any responsibilities or duties we have towards them in this regard? Certainly. There is suffering in the human condition as well. How many people suffer? So the fact is that you can't eliminate suffering and I ask the question, is an earthworm that determines to eat a microbe, you know, is that microbe suffering?

Or when you slice an earthworm and kill it planting a cabbage, does that that earthworm suffer. You know, Lairkeith wrote this wonderful book, The Vegetarian Myth, in which she tried to eat without killing something and eventually gave up because she realized she could not eat without killing something. And so right now, everything is eating and being eaten, whether it's a compost pile or whether it's a lion in the jungle, whatever. The basis of ecology is life, death, decomposition, regeneration, life, death, decomposition, regeneration. Everything is eating and being eaten. So there's this regenerative capacity that comes out of sacrifice. And I would say this, that right now, 25% of all meat in America is consumed by

pets, pet dogs, pet cats. And so when you start down this path of prohibiting that animals should not be on our plates, you eliminate all animal agriculture, you eliminate pet food, you eliminate leather, you eliminate cosmetic soaps. Many pharmaceuticals have animal bases. You know, the people fleeing socioeconomic upheaval in Africa, the reason animals have always been the choice of poverty-stricken people is because they're transportable in real time. You know, they have legs they can move with you as opposed to carrying watermelons and squash. And so there are just massive nutritional, ecological things about this. So on our farm, we use animals as an ecological soil builder. And so they are pruners. They manure. They democratize fertility by moving fertility from low ground

to high ground and its gravitational move downhill. The ultimate democratizer of fertility. They build soil through pruning the biomass for carbon sequestration and soil structure. We've moved our soil from 1% organic matter to 8% organic matter. matter in 60 years. That's, that's a, a massive soil building structure because of perennials, not annuals, which of course, if you take away the animals, then you're going to have to eat everything, you know, get the nutrition with, with beans and soybeans and whatever. And that's a whole different ballgame. So I think that the, that while it's interesting to have some sort of an academic discussion about this in reality, in practice, it would be much better if

everyone who hates animal suffering would actually patronize people who do everything to eliminate animals suffering whose animals do not suffer. Let's do that incrementally first rather than a blanket prohibition on animals being on our plates. So, Peter, what's your view here about our ability to live without animals on our dinner plates? I mean, to Joel's point, he seems to be painting a pretty compelling picture here that these animals are contributing more than that. than just calories in our stomachs. It's about an ecosystem that they're part of, that they have a symbiotic relationship with. It's about the renewal of those ecosystems through farming and husbandry and other processes. I mean, is all of that out the window if we take animals off

our dinner plates? And if so, what is the, what's the cost of this to the natural world? Well, first, let me say that I totally agree with Joel that if we are going to make incremental steps, it would be a good thing if people would move away from industrial animal production and move to the kinds of systems of animal production that Joel has. I would welcome that. That would eliminate a great deal of the problems that I'm talking about. But I do think that it's going to be difficult to do that with the kinds of populations that we have now. Joel earlier talked about the productivity of the country in earlier times. But if you have 300, 50 million Americans occupying large parts of the United States and building freeways across it and

using lots of land, it's going to be hard to produce the food that you could previously. That's one part of it. Secondly, let me say, when I'm talking about getting animals off our plates, I'm not thinking of people who are living traditional hunter-gatherer lives. If there are innuets who are doing that, for example, then, you know, fine, I'm not going to interfere with them. I don't think I have any business to tell them what to eat when our kind of civilization is producing so much more environmental destruction

as well as animal suffering than those traditional lifestyles. So let's focus on what presumably most of the listeners to this debate are actually putting on their plates. Now, I don't deny that we have to kill some living things in order to eat. my focus is on trying to avoid inflicting suffering on animals and to try to produce a better attitude towards them. As I said, I don't think that plants are conscious. Joel introduced the earthworm eating the microbe. I don't think the microbe is conscious. I'm unsure about the earthworm, I have to say, and I do grow vegetables myself, and I have a compost heap, and I know

that while the compost heap is allowing a large amounts of earthworms to thrive, they do occasionally get sliced by my spade when I try to move out some compost. I hope that they're not suffering. If they are suffering, I regret that, but I'm trying to minimize the amount of suffering that I'm causing by producing the food that I do. And that's true also, of course, of the much larger proportion of what I eat, which is purchased. I look for ways of doing that in ways that,

reduce suffering and I think that eating plants is causing less suffering than eating animals. I'm perfectly happy on a plant-based diet. I think it's a enjoyable diet. It's nutritionally adequate and a healthy diet has been for me. So that's really what I'm recommending people do. And I think that if more and more people move in that direction, then we will be able to, as I say, look at animals, more honestly and take their suffering more seriously than our society typically does. Thank you, Peter. I'm conscious of our time here. So, Joel, do you want to have another

pass at the issues that Peter's just raised and then we'll go to closing statements? I'd be glad to. You're definitely talking about production and ability to feed, you know, 350 million Americans. And absolutely, I get that. However, people don't generally don't realize we've got 35 million acres of yards and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses in America. That's 71 million acres. That's enough to feed the entire United States without a single farm. We are not overpopulated or have a lack of production. Our lack is being able to tap into these ancient patterns, these ancient platforms and achieve the level of abundance that nature did long before we, We brought John Deer tractors and chemical fertilizers and factory farms and petroleum to the plate. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here on our farm.

And so I think the fact that Peter here is conceding that there are lots of areas on the planet that animals can belong on plates indicates a major shift. The topic is animals don't belong on our plates. It doesn't say unless you're in Eskimo or unless you're a. a masai or unless you're in a bad situation. And the blanket resolution does not give itself for variations. And so I would suggest that with that concession alone, perhaps I've won the debate. Peter, what do you propose to that? Well, that's a good debating trick. I know when I was in my high school debating team, I would use tricks like that as well. But I am addressing the vast majority, as I say, of people who are listening to this and who are putting industrially produced

animals on their plate. If some of them are putting Joel's animals on their plates, well, that's a bit better, but I still think you could do better than that as well. Let's go to our closing statements. You've been listening to a terrific debate today, be it resolved, animals don't belong on our plates. Joel, you've been arguing against our motion. Let's have your closing argument, please. Yes, so I think I'll start with this idea that Peter is appealing to the vast majority. of our listeners who are no doubt eating factory food. And his appeal is eliminate animals from your life, you know, eliminate your pet cat, your pet dog, eliminate everything regarding

animals from your life. I would make a different sort of plea. I would plea that for your own health, we haven't talked about the health consequences of, and I'm glad that a plant-based diet agrees with Peter, but I can tell you that we have hundreds of customers who try to plant-based diet. These are not dumb people. These are smart people. They've given it they're all and have almost died because one size doesn't fit all. A blanket statement does not fit all. Any understanding of biochemistry and the human condition realize that the genetics and, you know, different people thrive on different things. That's what's fueled the paleo and, you know, all these other movements. And so I would appeal to the mass majority of people like Peter has listening to

this and say, if you really want to be healthier and save the planet and enjoy the abundance that animals, all the benefits that animals have brought to ecology, there is no animalist ecology on the planet. It's for a reason. It's because you cannot build soil. You cannot have a biomass accumulation. You cannot have pruning without a healthy dose of animals. So we either need to vacate and go back to beavers, bison, and fire, and Native Americans, or we need to adopt those historically abundant templates that did indeed respect the life of the animals and saw the animals as yes for our benefit and sustenance, but having a respectful honoring life of their own that then serves a greater purpose, which is the functionality and the abundant production,

the flourishing, if you will, the flourishing of the planet. And that's why all of us can flourish better if we're thinking about how the animals are treated, how we respect them in life, gives us the moral ability to have them come alongside us as partners in a greater planetary healing way. Thank you, Joel, for your contribution to this debate. It's been an important one. We've been diving deep into the resolution, be it resolved, animals, don't belong on our plates.

Peter, you've been arguing in favor of the motion, and as per debate convention, you get the last word. Thank you. As Joel mentioned, you know, healing the planet. One thing that we haven't really talked about is the impact that animals have on climate change, particularly ruminant animals, cows and sheep, major producers of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.

And even if we do succeed in replacing fossil fuel with clean energy, we are still going to have to do something to stop the increase in meat production that is going on worldwide, particularly in parts of East Asia, that is going to warm up the planet. So that's a further reason why, we should avoid that kind of consumption. But as I said, my major argument has been in terms of trying to think of animals as beings who have lives to lead that can go well or badly and trying to develop an ethic

in which we recognize animals as other beings that we have no particular right to use for our own purposes and that very often we harm in doing so. and to really develop a different attitude to animals, I think we need to stop thinking of them as food so that we can think of them as those beings with whom we share the planet and who have their own lives to lead without just being means to our ends. Thank you, Peter, and thank you, Joel. You guys both know that this is a super hot, super controversial at times,

extremely incoherent debate, but I think you've both modeled the very best of what we try to do here at the Monk Debates, which is civil and substantive conversation, listening to each other's arguments, engaging with each other's ideas. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, Joel, Peter, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thank you very much. Thanks for organizing this, everybody at Monk Debates, and thank you, Joel, for agreeing to discuss this with me. I'm sure it's been helpful and informative to all of our listeners. Yes, I'm sure it has. And thank you to Monk Debates for putting this on.

It's a fantastic and important topic. Peter, you're a great partner in this. And thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Peter Singer, and Joel Salatin. If you've got reflections, comments on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Also a reminder that our Monk members-only podcast,

That comes out every Friday exploring current events and big trends and ideas in our world. Is yours free to listen to any time as part of our complimentary basic membership at the Monk Debates. You can grab that membership right now at triple W monkdebates.com forward slash membership. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion to geopolitics to the future of human progress, visit our website. www.munkdebates.com. And thank you for spending some time with us today and helping our efforts as an organization as a charity to bring back the art of public debate one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Reddyer Griffith. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation.

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