I've already became a vegetarian before reading it, but the book gave me the perfect reasons to keep on this diet for the rest of my life.

Singer is a guy blessed with intelligence and power of convinciment. Even a slaughterhouse owner should agree with 90% which is in the book.

Some try to dismiss Singer as a nazi, who would defend testing in disabled people or orphan babies than in pigs or dogs. Those people or have bad intentions or don´t have a clue, cause what Singer does is exactly the other way, claiming the animals should have many rights we have, and not that we should destroy weaker humans like we do on that creatures.

The book is heavy, cruel, sometimes you feel very bad and if you really love animals, have to close it and continue another day. But we live in a real world, and we must read serious subjects.

It´s one to avoid if you are afraid of the reality. If you have a strong sense of justice, this book will make you disturbed and encourage you to do something. Should be in all public libraries in the world.


One of the toughest-to-argue with books I've ever read   October 17, 2005
 19 out of 21 found this review helpful

I read this book partly out of curiosity and partly out of a wish to confront a position that I found challenging to my own hazy sense of ethics. Specifically, I love cooking but was beginning to wonder if I didn't eat more meat than was really a good idea.

The fundamental insight I got from Singer's book is that the human tendency to elevate the interests of our species over those of other species is an entirely irrational prejudice, with no authority other than tradition. This is not to say that the interests of other species are always to be preferred to our own - that would also be illogical. But they must be taken into consideration, if our ethics are to have any rationality whatsoever.

As far as I'm concerned, this argument demolishes the objection often made to Singer's work by e.g. some religious people - that his concern for animals, coupled with his belief that abortion is sometimes morally justified, means that he "dehumanises" people, or "lowers them to the level of animals". The unspoken assumption here is that humans are self-evidently above animals to begin with. This argument fits much ancient theology but is not consistent with reason (or, it might be added, with science). It is nothing more than bigotry for religious authorities to claim that humans are in any way superior to other creatures.

So did it turn me into a vegetarian? No. I probably read too much Nietzsche when I was young. But I know now that the continued presence of meat in my diet is the result of nothing other than force and self-interest working in harmony. Humans eat meat because they can get away with it, and any other attempt to justify it is hypocrisy. One day, when I can't live any longer with the contradiction, I'll probably become a vegetarian, but in the meantime I have to find more ways of making mushrooms interesting.

Incidentally, Singer is also eloquent about the sheer wastefulness and incompetence of the meat industry. If we didn't eat so many hamburgers, it would be possible to do a lot more for the starving in the rest of the world. (If beef, pork, lamb and chicken were farmed less intensively and more in harmony with traditional methods, we would undoubtedly pay more for them, but they'd also start tasting better. But unsurprisingly, Singer doesn't make that particular point.)

This is undoubtedly one of the most challenging and rigorous works of philosophy of the last century. Insofar as it has a power of making us examine our own attitudes and behaviour, it's also one of the best.


Everybody should read this book   June 21, 2005
 4 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book shows how we contribute to cruelty toward animals if we continue eating meat from industrial production, don't boycott cosmetics that test on animals and live in ignorance.
Peter Singer beat everybody with his ethical arguments.
I became vegetarian after reading it.