This is a follow-up guest post from UWT Alum Lucas Waggoner

On February 28, Ed Winters, or Earthling Ed, gave a talk here at the University of Washington Tacoma. He spoke on veganism and ethics.

Winters discussed how animal rights are about the acknowledgment of rights related to non-human animals. He argued that non-human animals are “deserving of applicable and relevant rights” directly related to the nature of animals, rather than simply applying broad human rights to animals.

One of the more compelling points Winters raised was the way in which broad categorization is employed to alter the reactions people have to animal suffering. He explained that we “assign traits” to make it appear that all animals of a certain kind “are the same.” That way, we don’t think of an animal on an individual level, even if interacting with that animal. We deny animals the right to be viewed or perceived as individuals, despite the fact that no two animals are truly the same.

This act of categorizing animals and denying them individuality helps make their suffering more “palatable” to humans. Despite humans lacking the capacity to truly know what any given animal experiences in life or how it experiences events, distinctions are made regarding consciousness. And the distinctions between which animals it is moral to harm, or under what circumstances harm is accepted, quickly become — according to Winters — arbitrary.

One example he offered was how people tend to respond to animal abuse. A person kicking an animal is typically met with disdain, regardless of a person’s stance on either animal testing or animal consumption. However, when people subject animals to similar levels—or often drastically worse levels—of suffering for animal testing or animal consumption, the responses are not as overwhelmingly against the actions. And the “arbitrary distinctions” people are left with, he argued, lack any coherent moral distinction.

Lucas Waggoner is a UWT alum, writer, and English teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland

A guest post from UWT Alum Lucas Waggoner

Ed Winters — known worldwide for his extensive efforts as a vegan educator, an author, and as a public speaker — is giving a talk on ethics and veganism. Presented as part of the guest speaker series for TPHIL 361 Ethics in Society, the talk will be held virtually at UW Tacoma on February 28, 2023 (Zoom link), starting at 8:00 am.

An outspoken advocate for animal rights, “Earthling Ed,” has spoken across the globe and on virtually every platform imaginable. While he found popularity and notoriety initially through his early lecture called “You Will Never Look at Your Life Again,” he has since taught ethics courses at Harvard University and given numerous Ted talks.

Most of his work follows a consistent and steady theme: evaluating the classical arguments given opposing veganism as a philosophy to test their merits. One-by-one, he presents each argument against veganism. He then examines it to determine whether, under proper scrutiny — often by way of analogy — the argument possesses real merits. Through this method, he has led countless people in his audiences to accepting a vegan lifestyle.

Ed Winters is also well-known for his extremely successful 2022 book, This Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You). Beyond challenging common misconceptions about veganism, the book also discusses an element of the production of meat and other animal products that is rarely discussed in conversations about veganism: the human cost in production. This includes issues such as dangerous working conditions, pollution in primarily lower-income areas, and all manner of abuse from supervisors.

The book, like Winters’ other work, is deeply rooted in ethics. “Veganism”, he explains, “is an ethical stance against needless animal exploitation — it’s not specifically about diet.” It is more of “a social justice issue that recognizes that non-human animals deserve autonomy, moral consideration and the recognition that their lives are far more valuable than the reasons we use to justify exploiting them” (p. 12).  Every dimension of Winters’ work highlights questions of a person’s ethical obligations to both animals and nature. Typically, when trying to expose any flaws in the logic for anti-vegan argumentation, he questions whether the positions they hold are viable in a moral sense.

One of his more compelling arguments is the connections he draws between the aforementioned human cost and the nature of animal suffering within the factory farm system. Namely, he discusses how both the exploitation and abuse of humans working at farms, like that of animals, is systemic. The abuses aren’t isolated cases — they aren’t mere aberrations. The suffering is inherent to the way the system functions. The modern system of factory farming exists because of the suffering of both the animals being bred and slaughtered, as well as the humans abused and exploited in those processes.

I encourage you to take the opportunity to hear this provocative and engaging speaker.

Lucas Waggoner is a UWT alum, writer, and English teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland