Why do animals matter?

Do to a dog what we do to a factory-farmed pig, and you’d be arrested.

Do it to ten thousand pigs in a shed, and it’s breakfast.

Most of us say cruelty to animals is wrong.

And then most of us are happy to have them killed and eat them.

Both our panellists think the way we treat animals is a moral catastrophe.

But they get there by opposite roads. One says animals matter because they suffer. The other says they matter because they’re God’s creatures.

GUESTS:

Peter Singer

Emeritus Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University. Host of the podcast Lives Well Lived. 50 years ago exactly, his book Animal Liberation launched the modern animal liberation movement as we know it.

David Clough

Professor of Theology and Applied Sciences, University of Aberdeen. Author of the two-volume work On Animals. He’s a Methodist Preacher and Co-founder of CreatureKind which aims to transform Christian attitudes and practices toward animals.