Singer argues that the basic principle of equality should be extended to all beings, male or female, black or white, human or nonhuman. According to Singer, the basic principle of equality requires that we give all beings equal consideration, but this does not necessarily entail identical treatment. Singer uses the capacity for pain and pleasure (sentience) as the criterion for equal consideration. He observes that using intelligence as the criterion would result in the exclusion of babies and mentally handicapped people from our moral sphere and using our species, Homo Sapiens, would just be blatant speciesism. Singer defines speciesism as a bias towards the interests of one’s own species over the identical interests of another. Moreover, using characteristics such as intelligence as the criterion for equal consideration would open up the door to various forms of discrimination such as racism and sexism, for using skin color or sex as the criterion would be no different than using intelligence. Therefore, Singer argues that speciesism, like sexism and racism, should be condemned. If a being can suffer, there is no valid moral justification for failing to take the interests of that being into consideration.
I agree that we should give all sentient beings equal consideration because we cannot call ourselves a moral species without taking the sentience of others into account. There is clearly a distinction between exploiting an animal and leaving it alone, so by admitting there is a distinction we also admit that one option is morally preferable: leaving the animal alone. Therefore, unless we are in a situation of necessity, we have a moral obligation to leave the animal alone because it has an interest not to be exploited and killed. To think that we have the right to override that interest for trivial purposes such as sensory pleasure is inherently selfish and immoral.
However, one might argue that an animal’s interest in not being exploited and killed is far less than a human’s interest in not being exploited and killed because they are only self-conscious to a small degree, so therefore we have a right (which is not speciesist) to prioritize ourselves. However, this misses Singer’s point. It is a question of whether our interest to exploit and kill the animal for pleasure outweighs the animal’s interest to keep living, which any sane person would say it does not. Furthermore, put into a different context than eating meat, the exploitation and killing of animals for pleasure seems sadistic and cruel even to the strongest proponents of carnivorism. There is no difference between gassing a pig for a sandwich and gassing a pig to enjoy the sound of it squealing violently as it suffocates. Because it does not matter to the pig what happens to its corpse once it is dead or why it is being killed, the difference is our perception.
However, as a utilitarian, Singer explains that the interests of a nonhuman animal can be overridden if the happiness brought about to humans outweighs the suffering of the animal. For example, it would be morally justifiable to cause a dozen rabbits to suffer for a groundbreaking scientific experiment to develop a cure for cancer which would save millions of people. However, he acknowledges that a situation like this is rare since the vast majority of scientific experiments using animals are trivial, duplicative, or for educational purposes. I disagree that the pain and suffering of animals can be offset by a good end. To me, bringing innocent animals into a situation like this is a violation of their rights. Moreover, a surprising proportion of cancers are caused by the consumption of processed meat, a class one carcinogen. This makes using animals for experimentation even more immoral since we are exploiting and killing animals to save people from illnesses which have been caused by exploiting and killing animals for human consumption. So if we just stopped exploiting and killing animals for food in the first place, this utilitarian dilemma would fade away.
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet" - Albert Einstein
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