Its called Animal Liberation now. Is the publication of this Update Recognition that your call, your demand for a new relationship between humanity and all the other creatures on this planet, that that call failed . Well, it failed to achieve what i had hoped it would achieve and what i believe ethically it needs to achieve, thats true. It didnt totally fail because there is now an Animal Rights movement which is a powerfulforce in many of the countries in the world and many people kindly credit my book as having triggered or inspired that movement. And that movement has had some achievements in some countries, i wouldnt deny that, but if we look at it globally, there are more animals in factory farms than there were ever before and there are more animals suffering from human use and misuse than there were before, so yes, i have to accept in that sense, it has failed. Isnt your most fundamental principle a simple one . That is, that human beings have no moral, ethical right to exploit in any way other animals on this planet . That we have a moral duty to treat them as equals . I think we have a moral duty to treat their interests in not feeling pain and not suffering as equal to the interests that we humans have in not feeling pain and suffering. So, thats the kind of fundamental moral equality that i believe we should recognise. But, of course, theyre not equals politically, they cant vote, they cant think about the future and plan for the future as we do so, inevitably, we are going to be making decisions that affect them. I object, though, to when those decisions say because theyre not members of our species, they dont really count and we can either discount or even completely ignore their pain and suffering. And on reflection, do you think it was usefulfor you, at the very outset of this argument, to say to all of us human beings in Animal Liberation the original work useful to say, we should view the way that we exploit and abuse animals as well, you use the word � speciesist� but also as akin to slavery or racism, something that we now regard as something completely unacceptable. Do you think that resonated with most of humanity . Well, i said that because i wanted to get people to take the issue seriously. I felt that, at the time the first book came out, issues about animals were just not taken as serious moral questions at all and i do think that i and the Animal Movement have succeeded in making people recognise that these are serious moral issues. So, to that extent, i think i was justified in what i said. That doesnt mean that ive persuaded everybody to look at it in this way but i want people to see the analogies between those racism, sexism and speciesism. Now, you talk about the degree to which you are disappointed and you talked about exploitation of animals through, for example, Factory Farming. Is part of the problem here that the book and the updated book, they have a much wider audience and arguably, much greater influence, in the Western World of which, of course, you are a part than they do in the developing and emerging economies of this world im thinking, for example, of china where, actually, the argument right now is perhaps most humane and most important because its in countries like china that the massive expansion of Meat Consumption and of industrialised Factory Farming is happening . Thats true. And i hope that in some time, these ideas will have resonance in china. Youre right that at the moment, they dont, and china is enormously increasing its production of animals and its all through this industrialised production. Theyre building 26 storey buildings that are just full of pigs who, of course, never leave those buildings. And im very keen for these ideas to become global and to spread to other countries. But can you understand when people in china and other emerging economies, too, might listen to your argument and think to themselves, theres something going on here which is akin to the arguments about Climate Change and about our right to industrialise, to fully industrialise, and to exploit Natural Resources in the way that the west did for hundreds of years to build their economic supremacy . The chinese person might think, i have a right to enjoy consuming meat in a way that westerners have done for decades, if not for centuries. Who is peter singer to tell me thatjust as i acquire enough prosperity and my economy is sufficiently able to produce cheap meat, just as im able to enjoy that, he says � sorry, you cant� . Well, i think you need to move away from it. And, you know, its not me telling you, its rather saying look at what you are doing to animals, look at what this system of production is doing to animals and ask yourself whether you can really defend and justify that. And, of course, within asian traditions, there are traditions that suggest that you need to be compassionate to all animals and buddhism is a part of chinese tradition, part of their ethics and, certainly, i think a True Understanding Of Buddhist Ethics would say this is not acceptable. You talk about Sentient Beings and that, to you, is hugely important because, as you said at the beginning of the interview, animals, as you say, feel pain, experience pain and, indeed, pleasure just as we humans do and thats why its so important to treat them with respect. At what point do you decide that a creature doesnt experience those things . It is no longer sentient . Because you rather famously said, you know what . Im not against eating an oyster because i dont believe that its a sentient creature. So, whats your cut off . I mean, how do you decide whats sentient and what isnt . I think thats an open scientific question and we have to assemble the best evidence we can. Oysters have very rudimentary nervous systems and they dont move, they cant run away from a sense of danger, so i think many other creatures who can move have evolved capacities to feel pain to warn them of danger. That doesnt seem plausible in the case of an oyster. I mean, youre a philosopher and a bioethicist. Are you truly qualified to tell the world what feels sufficient pain to not be consumed by humans . Im qualified to read the scientific literature and to summarise that and to discuss it with some people who are more knowledgeable than i am and im giving my opinion based on that but no, i dont claim expertise in that area. Crosstalk im not trying to be flippant but this is important. What about insects, for example, because theres a whole school of thought which says as we try to move away from Meat Production not least because of the carbon emissions, the Greenhouse Gas emissions we should embrace the industrialised production of insects as food. What about their sentience . Im agnostic on that. I dont really know if theyre sentient i dont think anybody does and for that reason, i would prefer that we find plant based sources of food or perhaps cellular cultivation of meat, which is another possibility that is now theres a lot of investment going on in producing cellular meat. So, iwould rather that we moved in that direction than possibly, i dont know, but possibly harm tens of millions of insects in order to produce food. Youve highlighted the fact that in some parts of the world, trends are not working in the direction you would like to see them go. In other parts of the world im thinking particularly of europe there are much tougher rules and regulations in place now to get rid of the most sort of egregious, as you would see it, industrialised Factory Farming practices. So, why do you think that some for example, in europe are prepared to listen to you when others in the United States, for example who, again, part of the sort of western community of nations have listened to you and actually ignored you . Well, i dont agree that individuals in the United States have ignored me because. The system has ignored you. The system has, but i if you look at the states like california that are able to have citizen initiated referendums, they vote in the way i want. They passed proposition 12, recently upheld by the us supreme court, which does require that animals all have space to be able to turn around, to stretch their limbs without bumping into the sides of their enclosure, and that is somewhat similar to the european and United Kingdom regulations. The problem with the United States is that the federal political system doesnt allow citizens to vote on these issues and its corrupted by money. The i mean, im not saying that money doesnt have any influence on politics in europe or the United Kingdom it clearly does but it has much more power in the United States and i think the system is really corrupted by the money of lobbyists, including, of course, agribusiness. Youre famously, you draw a lot of your ideas from sort of utilitarianism and the sort of rational pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number. Do you think on that level, it has really helped your argument that since you originally wrote Animal Liberation and now, youve updated it, in the intervening years, there is much greater emphasis on the degree to which the production of animal meat is extraordinarily bad for Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas emissions. I think 15 , possibly, of all the worlds emissions can be ascribed to livestock farming. Does that help your argument . I think it does help, and one of the reasons i wanted to bring out a new version is to include Climate Change in the discussion that i already had in the book about reasons for an ethical diet. What is it to eat an ethical diet . And i think, actually, this is one of the easier ways we can cut Greenhouse Gases. We dont need new technologies, we dont need to redo the power grid, we just have to stop eating meat and, as you say, well cut that 15 and thats really going to be important in the battle to avoid catastrophic Climate Change. Yeah. You dont necessarily need to stop eating meat, do you . You canjust become a different kind of Meat Consumer you can become an ethical omnivore, i think the phrase is where you make a point of saying, i know where the meat im purchasing comes from. It was grown in a farm which is committed to humane practices. The animals are basically happy, until they are killed humanely and on that basis, im good to eat the meat. Would you agree that those people are good to eat that meat . Well, from the Point Of View of the animals, its a defensible viewpoint. I dont do it myself but i can understand people being conscientious about ensuring that the animals do have good lives. Its not that easy to find any more, but its possible. But going back to Climate Change, as you mentioned, if theyre eating Grass Fed Beef or lamb, then theres still the climate problem. It doesnt solve that problem. In fact, eating grass means that it takes longer for the animals to reach market weight, which means theyre going to produce more methane the Greenhouse Gas that is very powerful and accelerates Climate Change over their lifetime than they would if they were factory farmed. So, its hard to find anything that will be both humane and will not contribute to Climate Change. What about Lab Based Meat . Again, science is moving very fast. Now, it is possible to take cells from live animals, develop them, cultivate them in a lab and produce essentially a meat which is both synthetic but drawn from the original animal. Now, you dont like eating meat. You dont think thats good for humanity. But on the basis it was grown in a lab, are you going to give that a pass . Iam. Im fine with that. And if that moves people away from eating meat that comes from animals and that causes harm to animals and Climate Change, yes, iwould welcome that development. Ok, lets talk about a different aspect of your concern about the way we humans treat animals, and thats experimentation particularly medical experimentation. Hundreds of millions of animals each year are used in medical lab based experiments. We can, indeed, thank the inventors of the various Covid Vaccines for using animals to make sure that those vaccines were safe for humanity. Except youre not prepared to thank them, are you . Why not . Well, im not absolutist about animal experiments. There are some circumstances in which maybe the benefits are so great and there is no other way of doing it and the harms to animals are absolutely minimised. Would the race to find Covid Vaccines be one of them . Well, at some stages but, in fact, in the race to find safe Covid Vaccines, the Research Community did not make use of thousands Tens Of Thousands of volunteers who wanted to be challenged themselves. There was an organisation called one day sooner, which said, we can get the vaccine sooner if you make use of these fully informed Human Volunteers who are prepared to have candidate vaccines tested on them and then be challenged with a virus. And i think it was a mistake not to do that. It would have saved animals but, perhaps more importantly, you might think, it would have saved human lives. Now, this is where you, as an ethicist, get into really hot water, isnt it . Because now weve gone into that territory of using humans for experiments. You say, as i understand it tell me if i am wrong that there is no more ethical justification for Experimenting On A Rat or a mouse than a severely intellectually disabled human that is a human who is sort of in a vegetative state. You are saying, you know what . Use those humans for tests of medicines. Well, if somebody is in a vegetative state and if weve done Brain Imaging to show that they can never recover from that state, then, yes, i think it doesnt really harm them, theyre not conscious, theyre not capable of suffering. And as models, in fact, they would be more valuable because weve done all sorts of things in Curing Cancer in mice, for example, but they dont translate to humans. If you could use humans who are incapable and would never recover consciousness, i do think that would be a more valuable and more ethical thing to do. Well, you, as the detached rational utilitarian, might think that. What do you think the families of people who are currently in Comas In Hospital are going to think when they hear that the famous philosopher peter singer says, you know what . That alive human being should be taken off and experimented on for radical new drugs. Well, families of people who are brain dead will allow their organs to be used to benefit others. I think they will recognise that there is no benefit to the human in continuing to have a heart that could save the life of someone else. So, perhaps they will also feel that out of this tragedy, some good can come. You do appear to have a view of what it means to be severely disabled and often, you focus on intellectual disablement, but sometimes on physical disablement, too. You have a view which seems to say that those human beings have less value and you say that when a new human is born, if they are born with conditions, for example, down� s, spina bifida, haemophilia, then the parents of that newborn should have the right to end the childs life. Many people many people find that deeply disturbing. I agree, people do find it disturbing, but those same people would probably say that it is a womans right to have prenatal diagnosis when shes pregnant and if she discovers that her child is going to have one of those conditions you mentioned, to terminate the pregnancy. I dont really see a big difference in terms of our attitude to disabilities, whether you do that when youre pregnant to end the life of the foetus or whether you do it in the weeks after birth. Really . So, in a sense, youre with those anti abortion campaigners in the United States who say that life begins at conception and all of the rights that apply to somebody alive in this world of ours, those rights also apply to the foetus in the mothers womb . I agree that life begins at conception it seems to me an undeniable claim that a human life begins at conception. I dont agree that you have the rights at conception that you or i have because you are obviously not capable of having wants or preferences or being able to consent to anything, but i agree that birth in itself, the line between a foetus and a week old infant is not really a line of sharp moral distinction. I want to put to you the words of the late harriet mcbrydejohnson. Now, she was a lawyer, she was a Disability Rights Campaigner who used a wheelchair, and she said i think back in 2003 about you and your ideas, she said, i am horrified by what peter singer says, by the fact that i have been sucked into a discussion of whether i ought to exist. Whats your response to that . I invited her to princeton and she spoke to my class, so we had, i think, a very fruitful discussion that helped the class to see both sides of that argument, and thats the way i teach. We should have those discussions, yes. But, of course, the same would have happened if she if her mother had terminated the pregnancy in utero, again, and every person with Down Syndrome could say that to any woman who terminates the pregnancy because the foetus has Down Syndrome. But about 85 of women who are told that their foetus does have Down Syndrome will terminate the pregnancy. Itjust seems to some that you have such a complete commitment to the rights of animals but you dont have quite such a commitment to the rights of all human beings. I dont think thats true. I think i have at least as greater commitment to the rights of human beings. What im trying to do is to reduce the suffering and unnecessary pain and distress of Sentient Beings everywhere, and i give weight to the interests of animals, i give weight to the interests of humans. But forgive me for being personal, and correct me if im wrong, but i think perhaps you had to reflect very carefully on this when your own mother was very ill toward the end of her life, when you, as it was reported, spent a great deal of money trying to keep her alive and to give her medical assistance when the utilitarian in you, given the state she was in, might have regarded it as of greater utility to end her life. But when it came personal, you didnt. Well, it wasnt my decision alone. I have a sister and we had adult. My mother had Adult Grandchildren who wanted to participate, and it was a family decision. So, it does get complicated . It gets complicated, i agree. Because maybe utilitarian and rationality cant quite caterfor human emotion, for compassion, for empathy, for family bonds and loyalties and ties which are a part of the philosophical mix, even if you try to exclude them. I mean, in the end, it becomes certainly becomes a complicated discussion, and you have to try to take the interests of all family involved and, obviously, i did not want to have a serious breach with my sister or with my nieces, so i went along with that decision. I think had i been the only one looking after my mother, because she had reached the stage where she no longer recognised anybody and i dont think she was capable of enjoying her life in any way, i would have asked the doctor to withdraw life support at an earlier stage. A final thought, peter singer. People around the world are fascinated by your thoughts on all sorts of Different Things and i do want to ask you about the rise and the power of Artificial Intelligence because, again, it seems to me, philosophically, it gets into areas of rights and relationships with us, the human species. There is talk now of Intelligent Machines acquiring a degree of intellectual autonomy in a sense, a form of consciousness. Can you imagine a time when you are not only fighting for the rights of animals but for the rights of Intelligent Machines . Yes, ican. I certainly think its possible at some stage that we will have conscious machines, machines with desires, perhaps machines who can suffer or enjoy their existence and if that happens, then i think they will also have rights and we will need to treat them better than we are treating animals today because we still havent given them the rights they should have. Or, alternatively, if they are super intelligent and perhaps way more intellectually capable than we humans, we may be pleading with them to give us some rights. Yes, and thats a problem were trying to work on to make sure that if they are more intelligent than us, their values are aligned with ours, so that they will recognise that. But its a risk, and a lot of philosophers and other thinkers are concerned about that risk and are saying, well, perhaps it will be foolish to create something more intelligent that we are. Perhaps thats a bad move in darwinian terms. What do you think . Are you confident that we human beings can get this right . No, i couldnt say im confident. I think it is i think it is a risk. I think it would be wise if we could have a pause now so we can reflect before we go further. But given that this is a global issue and, again, you have to go back to many other countries that are working on al including china are we going to get global agreement to pause and take stock before we go too far . Im not at all confident that we will. Peter singer, its been a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you for being on hardtalk. Thank you, steve. Thank you. Hello, there. Wednesday was a wet and a windy day starting off across northwest wales, capel curig, where we had gusts of wind of 70 miles an hour. It was here where we also saw some very heavy rain. Over the space of 36 hours, 133 millimetres fell a good chunk of the september average. And so far this month, weve actually had 226 millimetres of rain, so it has already been a wetter september than average. And, of course, theres more of septemberjust around the corner. The same area of low pressure that brought all of us wet and windy Weather Conditions stays to the north of the uk over the next couple of days, and certainly windy at the moment with rain in scotland. Another rain band slowly pulling away from east anglia and southeast england. What follows essentially for england and wales is a day of sunny spells and showers. However, that low pressure will continue to bring strong winds to scotland and to Northern Ireland. And, in fact, its notjust windy this band of rain will push its way southwards, so the rain does return to the Central Lowlands and to Northern Ireland after a sunny start. For england and wales, those showers really get going into the afternoon, and i think across parts of wales and south west england, some of the showers will merge together to give some really intense downpours. It could be pretty prolonged, as well. Temperatures quite close to average, really about 15 to 19 degrees celsius. On into friday, its the same story. The low pressure is still there for northern scotland. These strong northwesterly winds bringing frequent showers to the north and western side of the uk, but into the afternoon therell be showers popping up in the east, as well. Some of them could be heavy again, with the odd rumble of thunder and the temperatures not really changing too much, about 15 to 18 degrees celsius. Feeling cool in the north, given those strong winds. Now, heading into saturday, another change well get a ridge of High Pressure building in ahead of this next weather system. What all this means is that saturday, actually, is going to be an ok day. Ok, therell be a few showers for northern scotland, but most of us will have a fine and sunny morning. Make the most of that because cloud will tend to build in, and certainly into the afternoon well start to see some Rain Arriving in Northern Ireland, and perhaps fringe into western scotland, but that is towards the end of the day and, overall, saturdays looking ok. By sunday, well, the low pressure in the atlanticjust nudges a bit closer, weve got another band of rain moving into the west, and so it does turn quite windy and increasingly unsettled with rain and showers around, and thats probably going to stay with us, as well, into the early part of next week. Live from london, this is bbc news. Poland says it will no longer send weapons to ukraine as a diplomatic row over grain escalates. Here, the Prime Minister defends a number of Climate Policy pledges including a Delay On Banning New Petrol and diesel cars. And in a historic first, king charles is expected to address the French Senate as he he continues his three day state visit. Hello, im sally bundock. A warm welcome to the program. Poland says it will no longer send weapons to ukraine. The move comes after a day of escalating diplomatic tension between the two. Poland has banned the sale of ukrainian grain, arguing the imports is hurting polish farmers. Ukraine says the ban indirectly helps russia. Our reporter Bartosz Kielak is in the newsroom and has more on this story. The dispute over ukrainian grants stretcher several months back when several key eu states tried to block imports, the span has ended on friday but hungary, poland and slovakia have extended it to the future. This has led to a strike on the nation from ukraine and yesterday at the Un General Assembly the president said indirectly these countries are setting the stage for a this has led to the Ukrainian Ambassador talking to the