We eat every day, yet most of us do not understand the moral weight of
what we put on the table. Vegan Ethics explores the many reasons why, as
word gets out, people choose vegan—animal well-being, human health, human
oppressions (such as world hunger, sexism, and homophobia), religious
commitments, and the health of the planet.
With clear and simple prose and an abundance of enlightening and inspiring
quotes, Vegan Ethics is a must-read for anyone interested in animal-studies,
environmental philosophy, intersectionality, social justice, religious
studies, animal activism, and ethics in general. The author, Professor
Emeritus Dr. Kemmerer, is known internationally for her extensive work in
the field of ethics and animals.
The acronym AMORE (“love” in Italian) reminds of five moral concerns that point to a vegan diet:
Internationally known for her work in animal ethics,
Dr. Lisa Kemmerer
is the founder of the educational, vegan umbrella organization, Tapestry.
With a Master of Theological Studies in Comparative Religions (Harvard) and
a Ph.D. in philosophy (specializing in animal ethics at Glasgow University,
in Scotland), Kemmerer taught for 20 years at the university level. She has
written more than 100 articles/anthology chapters and 10 books, including In
Search of Consistency, Animals and World Religions, Sister Species, and
Eating Earth. Dr. K retired in July of 2020 to become a full-time social
justice activist with Tapestry.
Dr. Kemmerer’s sense of wonder in nature, smallness of self, and simplicity
of lifestyle were enhanced by climbing and backpacking, month-long kayak
trips, a bicycle trip from Washington to Alaska, and a number of close
brushes with an early end. Travel abroad also shaped her worldview. She
worked as a forest fire fighter and nurse’s aide in a nursing home to buy a
ticket to the South Pacific, where she hitchhiked aournd, listening to the
views of hundreds of diverse locals. She also traveled parts of Asia, where
her understanding of time, “necessities,” and community were altered by
rural Burma and Bangladesh and in little villages on the high ridges of
Nepal.
She earned her undergraduate degree in International Studies at Reed
College, where she founded her first anymal activist organization and earned
a competitive Watson Fellowship that took her on a two-year journey to
explore the place of women and anymals in religions. She ventured to remote
monasteries and temples in northern China, spent a month at the Dalai Lama’s
school in north India, visited holy sites in Israel, stayed with
Palestinians and visited patients at a West Bank hospital, and traveled to
remote hermitages in mountain ranges of Egypt and Turkey.
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