Racism, sexism and ... speciesism: A tasty bite

What I read

As soon as I saw the title "Offended by Koreans eating dog? I trust you’ve never had a bacon butty", I guessed what Chas Newkey-Burden would argue in his article in The Guardian. I wasn't disappointed. But he doesn't go as far as he could have. 

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What it says

Newkey-Burden argues that Western people are irrational when they criticise South Koreans for killing and eating dogs while they themselves are treating equally intelligent animals in the same brutal way before turning them into tasty meals. 

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My response 

Although Newkey-Burden hints at it, he does not directly state what seems to me a much more serious argument here. We think that racism is morally wrong; that is, it's not OK to say that black people, or Chinese people or Isaan people should be discriminated against because they are black, Chinese or Isaan. We also think that sexism is wrong. For example, it would be wrong to say that a woman can't study engineering because ... she is a woman. Or that she can't vote because she is a woman. In contrast, we discriminate between children and adults for good reasons: four year old children do not get driver's licences because they are not physically or mentally able to control a car – that is a morally relevant reason, so the discrimination is not prejudice.

But what about discriminating between animal species? It can't be right to treat human animals differently to other animals merely because they are humans. That would be exactly the same sort of unjustified prejudice as sexism and racism. We need a good reason to treat animals like dogs, pigs, ducks, cows and other tasty animals differently to human animals. And it is is not at all obvious that there is any such criteria that justifies the common discrimination that humans indulge in.

Newkey-Burden points out in his article that pigs are as intelligent as dogs, so that intelligence cannot be a criteria that justifies treating dogs differently to pigs when it comes to eating them. But although he does not explicitly make the connection, he also cites research from Cambridge University which shows that a pig is as intelligent as, or more intelligent than, a human baby at least in the first years of a human baby's life. So, not only can intelligence not justify treating dogs differently to pigs, neither can it justify treating human babies differently to pigs.

So, is there any significant difference that makes it morally acceptable to treat pigs and dogs, and ducks, and cows, differently to at least some human beings? Can you suggest one?

In case your wondering, I enjoy meat every day: duck, pork, beef, lamb, lobster and others are some of my favourite things. But that's not a good reason to think that my discrimination is not speciesism, the same sort of unjust prejudice as sexism and racism. Do I and my fellow human beings  have a good reason for our discrimination against non-human animals?