Richard Dawkins Interviews Peter Singer

I am a big fan of Peter Singer and his philosophy. Its always a delight to read his articles and to listen to his interviews/debates. (I will perhaps write more about him in another post). I also appreciate Richard Dawkins and have enjoyed reading his book: 'The God Delusion'. So I was excited to find this interview on youtube:



Peter Singer is terrific as usual and I particularly liked his comments on how people who consume animal products have more responsibility to know how the farm animals are treated, and how the abortion issue is morally insignificant compared to the killing of a sentient non-human animal for food.

Dawkins says that it is morally acceptable to consume animal products if the animals are killed instantaneously and painlessly (though he accepts that this hardly happens in practice). I don't quite think so. For example, the production of dairy requires slaughtering of calves, even if the calves can be slaughtered painlessly in theory, what about the emotional/mental suffering experienced by the cow when her calf gets seperated from her ?

Towards the end of the discussion, Dawkins says that though eating meat is not ethical, he (reluctantly) does that because it is a social custom. Further, he admits that if he was living 200 years ago, he would probably (reluctantly) be a slave owner, as it was a custom then. I have to appreciate him for his moral/intellectual honesty. But on the other hand it is also a bit disappointing to hear this from a person like Dawkins. After all, arguing against religion and god is not exactly a social custom yet, but he does that regularly and passionately.