If this is a question that has bothered you, a very interesting piece of writing just appeared in the New York Times. The author is Dr. Jeff McMahan, a professor of ethics at Rutgers. At one point in the essay, he writes:
Our primary duty with respect to animals is therefore to stop tormenting and killing them as a means of satisfying our desire to taste certain flavors or to decorate our bodies in certain ways. But if suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims.I sort of liked his conclusion: "it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation."
Thanks to this post at Vegan Soapbox for referencing the essay, you might want also to read the post because it points out that the essay had another sub-theme about the destruction caused by our appetite for food from animals.
