I'll be the asshole and say that I think most of this vitriol comes from the fact that people, deep down, have a pretty strong sense that killing and eating animals is not as benign as they'd like it to be. That's, of course, unprovable and unanswerable, but it's the only way I can figure out why this article would elicit this type of reaction from reasonably rational people -- it's digging at something deeply buried.

I suppose I'm not saying anything other people haven't said before, but it bears repeating: The point is that it sucks to be a chicken, period. And we have no nutritional need to impose this kind of suffering on chickens; we do it because they taste good, period. (And, in particular, we don't do it in retribution for the crimes chickens visit on other chickens -- which, by the way, are not as bad as some of the crimes humans have invented to visit on other humans, although we still condescend to judge them on their own merits and not cage, kill and eat them out of hand. No one thinks nature is "cuddly", but you'd be outraged, and rightly so, if people justified the torture of circus tigers on the grounds that the tigers would kill the elephants if they could.)

Fine, the chicken's not a Jew. Fine, the chicken's not even a nice creature -- the chicken is red in tooth and claw, whatever. Fine, Peter Singer could donate more of his salary. Fine, growing grain and vegetables has its own problems. But Singer never claimed to be leading a perfect life, or that going vegan and donating all your money would make him or you or anyone else a perfect person. The point is, there are some simple things you can do to make the world marginally but significantly less crappy for other organisms, some of which are not human. He's doing those things -- not all of them, not all the time, not to the maximal extent, but he's trying; and he believes in what he does, so he's encouraging other people to try. I can't quite figure out why that deserves such a vicious response.

[i]I find Peter Singer's work challenging, uncomfortable, stimulating and basically everything that a philosopher should be.[/i]

Notice logically and compelling is missing. That's because none of Singer's work is ever internally logical or compelling. It's drivel that is easily refuted.

[i]When he makes an argument, it's extremely hard to refute.[/i]

Hard to refute is laughable. Singer refutes it himself in both his writing and his own life. Why did he spend money on his demented mother when he himself stated many times that such spending is immoral?

[i]When you read his books, you simply can't accuse him of being overly emotional or anything but highly, clinically rational.[/i]

He applies emotional factors where they do not exist, such as expanding emotions to all animals, and ignores them where they do exist such as advancing arguments that spending money of those with dementia is immoral because it takes resources away from where they could be better spent, when he himself can't accept this emotional hurdle.

[i]Arguing against a utlitiarian with emotions is a non-starter.[/i]

No it is not, because humans are emotional to try and ignore this fact negates any possiblity of a working model. People will spend thousands of dollars saving their pet when millions of other animals are killed every year. Cold logic dictates this is a waste, but the fact is we have pets for other than utlitiarian reasons and we spend money on our pets for the same reason we don't allow your elderly mothers to starve to death, because of love and caring.

[i]Generally, when someone says something that makes us feel really uncomfortable, it means they've hit on something important. Agree or disagree, but dismiss at the peril of our species.[/i]

Do you really believe this? That is so demonstrably wrong. How exactly is gang rape of 8 year old girls something important? Your statement requires either that the thought of young girls getting gang raped does not make you uncomfortable, or that if you feel discomfort that somehow this illicits something important. It makes you uncomfortable because it is wrong. There is no deeper meaning.

You could have stopped after your first four words because that's where you nailed it.

A traveling salesman's car breaks down, and he asks to stay at the home of a farm family until morning, when the tow truck will arrive. The family graciously takes him in. At dinner the salesman comments on the 3-legged pig hobbling around the kitchen.

"Oh, that's Elmer," the farmer says proudly. "He's a special pig!"

"Oh?" asks the salesman.

"Why, sure," says the farmer. "Just last month, my tractor tipped over and pinned me in a ditch. Elmer went and got help."

"Wow," the salesman says.

"And then just a few weeks ago," the farmer continues, "Elmer woke up the whole family when a small fire started in the kitchen."

"That is some pig," the salesman agrees.

"You ain't heard the whole of it," the farmer says. "Just yesterday, a grizzly bear came on our land, and Elmer fought it off."

"Wow," said the salesman. "Is that how he lost one of his legs?"

"No, not really," the farmer says. "A pig that good you don't eat all at once."

I think you misinterpreted my intent when I described a food cycle in a natural ecosystem. We don't kill animals for retribution. We don't kill animals because they might kill other animals. We kill animals because they are food.

In the real, actual, living, world that's outside your window, animals are food.

Once you accept that fact, it will liberate you from the utopian view of nature that shackles many vegetarians to a pointless and often unhealthy lifestyle.

Chickens are food. They also happen to be birds, but in terms of the human/chicken relationship, there's no denying that chickens have been food for a very, very long time. That's not to say that they should be needlessly tortured, but there is nothing inherently wrong, morally speaking, about killing and eating a chicken.

Factory farming, on the other hand, is very definitely morally wrong, but that's a topic for another discussion.