"The 'Babe' Vegetarians: Bioethics, Animal Minds and Moral Methodology"

From Bioethics and the Movies
Questions for Discussion:

1. Bioethicist Bernard Rollin suggests that “there is perhaps no set of social issues on which otherwise sane people on either side of the question allow themselves to be as overwhelmingly irrational as in matters pertaining to the treatment of animals, and our moral obligations to them.” Is this true? If so, what is it about ethics and animals issues that might explain why people respond these ways? Is it bad when people respond “irrationally” to moral issues? What can be done to lessen this kind of response and encourage better responses (what are these?)?
2. Some people argue that movies like “Babe” and “Charlotte’s Web” “anthropomorphize” animals. What does it mean to “anthropomorphize” something? Is it a mistake to anthropomorphize any animals? It is a mistaken to anthropomorphize all human beings (or all beings who are biologically human?)? Why or why not?
3. Some people claim that there are “more important” moral issues to address than the treatment of animals in farms, labs, slaughterhouses, etc. How does one argue that one moral issues is “more important” than another? Is the number of beings affected relevant? Is it the severity of the harms relevant? How does one decide this? If one issue is more important than another, does that mean another is not important? Discuss these issues as they relate to animal issues.
4. Some animal advocates argue that there are important similarities between (past) movements for women’s rights, rights for minorities (e.g., African-Americans) and other oppressed humans and the (present) movement for animal rights. What are these similarities? What are the differences? Which are more morally important here, the similarities or the differences? Why?
5. Most people would not eat their pet dog or cat. What would their best reasons for not doing this imply for whether they should eat chickens, pigs and cows?