Peter Singer
Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher, Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. and author of the seminal 1975 book Animal Liberation A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. In this book he put forward the ethical arguments against exploiting animals for food, fashion and experimentation and it has gone on to be what many consider one of the most important books in the animal rights movement.
Despite being considered one of the grandfathers of animal rights, Peter Singer isn’t a strict vegan. He has been vegetarian since the early 1970s and calls himself a “flexible vegan.” In the introduction of his 2020 book Why Vegan? he states: “I call myself a ‘flexible vegan.’ I’m predominantly vegan, but I don’t treat veganism like a religion. I judge actions by their consequences, and the consequences that matter are the benefit or harm we cause to sentient beings.” Agree or disagree with Singer’s philosophies, there’s no denying he’s been, and continues to be, a very influential voice in the world of animal rights.
When asked if he would urge vegetarians to go a step farther and embrace veganism, he told the Harvard Political Review:
“I think being largely vegan is certainly the right thing to do. It means that you’re not complicit in various forms of animal suffering and that you are eating a diet that is more sustainable for the planet. So yes, there are certainly reasons for doing that, but I don’t think it’s important to be a hundred percent vegan […] If you eat cellular meat or cultured meat, then you would not be vegan, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. There’s no sentient animal being harmed, and it’s likely to be highly sustainable. So I don’t think it’s a matter of purity in being vegan. I think it’s a matter of avoiding animal products that either cause suffering to animals or are harmful to the environment.”
