Arguments for Consuming Animal Products

What can be said in favor of consuming animal products? This chapter surveys the options, with special focus on attempts to exploit pro-vegan principles for anti-vegan ends. Utilitarian, rights-based, contractualist, and agrarian proposals are explored, as well as some recent arguments that attempt to revive a form of speciesism. Ultimately, the chapter considers how such arguments might inform a broad case for consuming animal products—that is, one that might earn respect from those in a variety of moral camps—and it suggests that there may be good reasons to eat roadkill, bugs, bivalves, in vitro meat, animal products that will be wasted, and the bodies and byproducts of animals that live full, pleasant lives.