We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely - or, if that is not possible, to find less cruel and more sustainable alternatives to eating them.

When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that. But what you do find is the idea that gluttony is a sin and that it's something that we ought to be ashamed of.

Grain that is used to feed animals that end up on our tables as turkeys and hams could have gone to feed starving people.

Whatever the reason, for most of the present century, the literature and publicity of the old established [animal welfare] groups made a significant contribution to the prevailing attitude that dogs and cats and wild animals need protection, but other animals do not. Thus people came to think of "animal welfare" as something for kindly ladies who are dotty about cats, and not as a cause founded on basic principles of justice and morality.

Suppose I grant that pigs and dogs are self-aware to some degree, and do have thoughts about things in the future. That would provide some reason for thinking it intrinsically wrong to kill them - not absolutely wrong, but perhaps quite a serious wrong. Still, there are other animals - chickens maybe, or fish - who can feel pain but don't have any self-awareness or capacity for thinking about the future. For those animals, you haven't given me any reason why painless killing would be wrong, if other animals take their place and lead an equally good life.

It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

According to the Dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings.