Josh Milburn, "Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully" (Oxford UP, 2023)

·1 hr 16 min·5 clips

Philosopher Josh Milburn argues an animal rights-respecting state should allow some non-vegan food production.

The episode is an interview on the New Books Network Animal Studies channel, hosted by Kyle Johansson with guest Dr. Josh Milburn, a lecturer in political philosophy at Loughborough University. Milburn's book argues that a commitment to animal rights does not necessarily entail a fully vegan food system as an ideal. He explains his work brings together two concerns: rigorously exploring edge cases where animal rights might not require veganism, and envisioning a future food system for a just state where humans and animals coexist. Milburn clarifies he is vegan and supports animal rights, but challenges the idea that a vegan food system is a panacea. He frames his argument using ideal theory from political philosophy, contrasting it with non-ideal pragmatic arguments. Key reasons for a non-vegan ideal include better accommodating reasonable pluralism in liberal democracies, where conceptions of the good life (e.g., cultural meals, professional pastry work) involve animal products. He distinguishes between justice (enforceable rights) and mere morality (personal dietary choices). The discussion covers specific cases: possibly non-sentient invertebrates like oysters, cellular agriculture (including cultivated meat), and treating animals like chickens as rights-bearing workers in slaughter-free systems. Milburn details challenges like chickens bred to lay excessive eggs developing ovarian cancer and proposes solutions like retirement ages. He briefly discusses implications for activism, noting his vision is compatible with various approaches but encourages openness to technologies like cellular agriculture. The interview concludes with Milburn mentioning his next projects on Robert Nozick's views on animals and the ethics of animals in warfare.

As heard by us

A food ethics conversation becomes an inquiry into when moral commitments can change with the social world around them.

Josh Milburn's discussion turns a question about acting on ideas of the good into a useful test for political philosophy. If those commitments involve, or help produce, rights violations, are they unreasonable as such, or only because the surrounding social conditions make them…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if one hard question about moral commitments can open into animals, rights, social conditions, and the ethics of war.

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