Not sure if anyone has posted this, but I believe Dawkins wrote this (found it online):
Quote:*You mention in the book 'The Ancestor's Tale' that you are appalled at the
works of liberal thinkers from 100 years ago—I think this is part of "The
Grasshopper's Tale." You are appalled at their comments on race, and you
wonder what scholars 100 years from now might be appalled at. You speculate
that it might be our treatment of other species. This made me wonder: Are
you a vegetarian?*
No, I'm not, and that's an interesting question. What I believe is that we
should try to minimize suffering. And so I would have no objection to
killing something to eat it, provided it doesn't suffer. So I'm much more
worried about the suffering in slaughterhouses and in factory farms—the
dread that might enter the mind of a cow or pig when it's being led to the
slaughter. To the extent that slaughtering practices are humane, I see no
objection to using animals for meat.
The objection to using humans for meat would be not just that they are
human, but that they would feel fear, they would know what was coming to
them, they would be in a position to suffer in a way that a pig or a cow, if
it was well treated, would not. So my aim would always be to reduce
suffering, not to take a kind of absolutist position that there is something
special and unique about humans which entitles them to exploit and use other
species of animal for any purpose.
