Having argued that the interests of animals deserve equal consideration, Singer goes on to argue that factory farming is unjust discrimination against animals: “It is not merely the act of killing that indicates what we are ready to do to other species in order to gratify our tastes.

Singer’s central argument is an expansion of the utilitarian idea that “the greatest good” is the only measure of good or ethical behavior. He argues that there is no reason not to apply this principle to other animals.

a. All creatures that can suffer deserve equal consideration of their interests, regardless of their species. Since each creature’s moral importance depends on its individual capacities, not on the normal capacities of its species, some nonhuman animals deserve greater consideration than some humans.

Singer is a utilitarian, a follower of the 19th-century philosophers Jeremy Bentham and J S Mill, who formulated the treatise that the best moral good was the happiness of the greatest number. In utilitarianism, an action is judged not by its intrinsic nature, but by its consequences.

1 : a doctrine that the useful is the good and that the determining consideration of right conduct should be the usefulness of its consequences specifically : a theory that the aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Main argument Peter Singer’s core argument in ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’ is as follows: “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

As an alternative to the Kantian conception, I propose a conception in which the basic unit of moral reasoning is not an action but rather what I call an ‘ethical position’—where an ethical position is where, at any given moment and with respect to the matter at hand, you stand, and where moral reasoning consists in …

The normative ethical theories that are briefly covered in this chapter are:

• Utilitarianism.
• Deontology.
• Virtue ethics.
• Ethics of care.
• Egoism.
• Religion or divine command theory.
• Natural Law.
• Social contract theory.

Four Branches of Ethics

• Descriptive Ethics.
• Normative Ethics.
• Meta Ethics.
• Applied Ethics.

Ethics are a set of moral values an individual establishes for one’s self and your own personal behavior. Laws are structured rules utilized to govern all of society. Not only do retail companies have an obligation to act ethically but so do the professional individuals working there.

Deterrence