I really want to separate the question of what people feel like doing or what people think they can accommodate in their lives. I want to separate that kind of question from what I think is a moral question, which is, do we have a right? Are we entitled to eat animals? And I want to be very, very clear that in my judgment we don’t have that right.

Halo, intelligent viewers, and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. On today's program, we feature Part 2 our interview with Dr. Gary Steiner, a John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University, USA and author who calls himself an “ethical vegan,” meaning that he has adopted a vegan lifestyle because he believes animals are sentient beings and we have a moral duty toward them.

He has written several books including “Descartes as a Moral Thinker,” “Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents” and his most recent work, “Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship.” Dr. Steiner now explains why he uses the word “moral” when discussing the relationship between animals and humans.

I think the reason it's important here is because it carries a weight that a lot of other words that we might use don't carry. So, here's an example. Sometimes people think: you shouldn't go out of your way to be cruel to animals but there's nothing that you really owe them in terms of moral obligations.

But I think the idea of a moral obligation is something that's very important. To say that we have a moral obligation means there's something like a brick wall there that we're not supposed to breach. And I think once we're able to say that we have moral obligations towards animals, that's something like a kind of armor that animals get to wear that says, there are certain things we must never ever do.

And I think that the notion of a moral obligation toward animals is exactly that. It's a very powerful kind of commitment that we ought to recognize ourselves to have. If we recognize that animals and humans are really comparable to each other morally then we have to recognize that we have the same sorts of obligations of non-harm and non-violence and obligations of respect toward animals that we have toward humans.

Dr. Steiner explains that, like humans, animals have deep emotions and a great capacity for love.

Pindar is a rescue cat. I got him a couple of years ago. I wasn't really looking for another cat. I had had a couple of cats for a long time and I loved them very much and had, what I felt was a very, very intimate bond with them. A kind of bond that I think, it was very much like the bond that many people have, say with their children. So, these two cats had lived a long life with me and they had both recently passed away of old age and then this rescue cat got sort of presented to me, foisted upon me.

So I took this cat in and after he got healthy again, this wonderful personality emerged. And he turned out to be this really, really gentle, wonderful creature. And I would say that there is a kind of love bond between us. It seems very clear to me that Pindar has a loving feeling toward me. And it might be the kind of loving feeling that a little child has when it's two or three or four years old towards its parent.

I don't think anybody would say that little human children are incapable of love even though they can't think about their love. And I think that what's going on in Pindar is something like that. And I think in many animals there's all sorts of signs of affection and regard that animals show toward each other and that they show toward humans.

For many people there is a sad contradiction present in their relationship with animals. Dr. Steiner provides his perspective on this inconsistency.

It’s a very, very troubling reality that there are these contradictions and conflicts in people’s lives. The pet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. And people who have pets quite often love them almost like a family member, and are very upset when bad things happen to their pets, and if they are in a financial position to do it, will spend an enormous amount of money on their pets, on treats and toys and high quality food and go to great lengths to lavish love and consideration on their pets.

So it’s particularly conspicuous and troubling that the very same people, or many of the very same people, who love their pets, are willing to gamble on dog fighting, or cockfighting show a pretty blatant disregard for animals, in being willing to subject them to experiments that are pretty gruesome.

When we return, we will learn more from Dr. Gary Steiner about the moral obligation of humanity to adopt the vegan lifestyle. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

We need to be able to find a way to articulate clear principles about the rights of animals, not to be used by human beings, establishing clear legal and moral principles that tell us it’s wrong to inflict violence or inflict harm on animals.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants as we continue our interview with Dr. Gary Steiner, a John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University, USA, author, and a pure vegan who has chosen this lifestyle for ethical reasons.

Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology which describes a condition where anxiety is created when there is a gulf between what one believes and one’s actual actions. Previously Dr. Steiner gave the example of people who adore and shower affection upon their animal companions being inconsistent when they view other animals as merely objects for consumption, experimentation or entertainment.

They find themselves able to turn a blind eye towards what really goes on in the production of the meat that they eat and so forth. And I think that there is a kind of cognitive dissonance there. They can’t allow themselves to acknowledge the reality of what goes on. And also they’re coming out of a very, very long history of practices, such as meat eating.

So I have not infrequently encountered people who’ve said: “Boy, I’ve heard that the way that veal is raised, or the way that chickens are raised, or the way that pigs are raised, is kind of gruesome. So I don’t really want to know anymore about that.”

I think the only thing that’s going to get people to overcome that sort of contradiction or tension, is a willingness to look at the facts and really think about the inconsistencies in their own behavior. That thinking has to get to the point of altering our feelings, so that when I start to think about the fact that the food on my plate is essentially the same as me, it might make me feel differently about eating that food. Only when that happens, I think will people really recognize this contradiction and try to resolve it.

In Dr. Stein’s view what is our foremost obligation in fulfilling our moral duties toward animals?

I think that we have obligations toward animals. Our obligation, I think first of all is to lead a vegan lifestyle at the very minimum. There's no justification for inflicting the terrible harms that things like factory farming and experimentation on animals and all sorts of other things that we do.

So from square one, I think the first thing that we have is an obligation not to harm animals, not to exercise violence or visit violence upon them. And the, the most straightforward way to understand that obligation is to become vegan and to stay vegan.

So being a vegan I think is a very important thing.

On December 1, 2009, the Lisbon Treaty came into effect and per Article 13 the European Union now formally recognizes all animals as sentient beings. We asked Dr. Steiner about the role of government in regulating the relationship between humans and animals.

Professor Francione at Rutgers (University USA) argues that if it were possible through legislation to abolish the property status of animals, that’s the single most important thing that either government or the law or the legislation could do.

Because in the Anglo-American legal tradition going back centuries, animals have been classified as property, they are things that we own; they’re chattel. And that enables people to do all sort of things because you can destroy your own property. It might not be a smart thing to do, but there is no law prohibiting you from doing it.

And that means you can raise animals and kill them for human consumption, you can sell them, you can use them, you can experiment on them. If it were ever possible to classify animals legally as non-property, as something like legal persons, then that would prevent people from killing animals, experimenting on them and so forth.

It would essentially put animals in the situation of really being considered morally comparable to human beings, in the sense that if you can’t do it to a human being, you’re not going to be allowed to do it to an animal. I think that’s the best thing that either government or legislation could possibly do is abolish the property status of animals.

According to Dr. Steiner, if we truly care for our planet, each one of us must take personal responsibility to lead more thoughtful and conscientious lives. I think all the things that we do that inflict violence upon animals in nature and perhaps to ecosystems, that’s something that we have to think very, very carefully about.

So anytime, I buy something that involves packaging, things like that or anytime I consume something that’s going to end up polluting the waterways or wetlands, I have to be thinking very carefully about all of those things. But square one, the starting point, I think, is our relation to sentient life, to animal life. And I think the first thing that most people can do, is to become vegan. And be a strict vegan.

Be Veg, Go Green, Save the Planet.

We deeply thank Dr. Gary Steiner and all those like him who not only live the vegan lifestyle, but also seek to raise the awareness of others regarding our moral duty toward our animal friends, thus saving countless numbers of their precious lives. We look forward to the day soon in coming where all sentient beings on Earth live in harmony and peace.

For more details on Dr. Steiner, please visit www.FacStaff.Bucknell.edu/GSteiner
Books by Dr. Steiner are available on Amazon.com

Thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment right after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May joy and tenderness fill your heart each day.