SE

• The main issue for this topic is that of ‘personalism’.

  · By definition, Fletcher’s situation ethics is concerned with persons.

  · Agape love in the Bible is also primarily concerned with persons.

  · This does not mean that animals are of no concern in situation ethics, but it does mean that human interests will generally be put first.
• Agape love is inclusive rather than exclusive, and there is no intrinsic reason why it should not apply to animals as objects of human care.
• In life or death situations, most situation ethicists would put human life before animal life.
• The use of animals as food would seem to be a habit as old as humanity itself.

  · Without the existence of animals, it is probable that the human race would have died out, since hunting for food went on for thousands of years before the development of agriculture.

  · The human digestive system is adapted to eating meat, so it would seem ‘natural’ for humans to use animals as food.
• Two main things have affected this point of view:

  1. First, the introduction of intensive farming of animals means that ‘hunting animals for food’ has changed to ‘exploiting animals for food’, since the methods used in factory farming are almost universally exploitative, cruel and unjust.

  2. Further, the mechanisation of agriculture has contributed to a huge population increase globally.
• Some who follow situation ethics would argue that the most loving thing to do in this global situation is to increase intensive animal farming and the mechanisation of agriculture, since this puts persons first.

  o They might argue that the spectacle of starving children is worse than the practice of intensive animal farming.
• Other situation ethicists could argue that this is not loving, because the calculations maximise misery rather than love, and look for short-term rather than long-term solutions to the problem.
• o The fact is that the meat industry contributes to human starvation, since, for example, cattle consume around fifteen times more grain than they can produce as meat and it could be seen as more loving to abandon intensive animal farming for more productive methods.

  o Factory farming of animals should therefore be abandoned in favour of the production of crops.

  o Moreover, new technologies should be developed for growing meat in laboratories, where the meat does not come from any kind of animal.

  o Solutions such as these are pragmatic and treat animals as objects of loving concern.