Dr Michael Plant, a philosopher focusing on happiness, and who eats meat, argued that it can be justifiable to not save people like himself.
Dr Plant has previously described himself as a ‘welfatarian’ – someone who eats animals only if the creature has experienced a happy life prior to their death.
Dr Plant’s argument, published in a academic journal, stems from a conflict of what he called two commonly held beliefs.
The first is human beings have a duty to rescue each other when doing so comes at a trivial cost. For example, jumping into a pond to save a drowning child but ruining your clothes in the process.
The second belief, Dr Plant claims, is it is wrong to eat meat because of the suffering animals can experience in factory farms.
Livestock, like chickens, can often be kept in cramped, dirty conditions before they are slaughtered.
He says this conflict leaves people who subscribe to the second belief in a morally interesting position if they encounter someone who eats meat drowning in a pond, and that allowing them to die might, in fact, be the lesser evil.
‘It seems universally accepted that doing or allowing a harm is permissible — and may even be required — when it is the lesser evil,’ he wrote in the Journal of Controversial Ideas.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11391525/Would-save-dying-stranger-vegan.html
Know Thyself 