Liberal political philosophy and animal rights: a reply to commentators

In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully, I sketch a food system in which people have access to animal-based foods and animals’ rights are respected. I present this as an ideal theoretic vision in the liberal tradition of political philosophy. In this article, I respond to the commentaries provided in this symposium by Bardon, De Bernardi, and Gentile; Pellegrino; Bailey; Fischer; Chiang and Sebo; and Williams. I group my responses around the three themes identified by Bailey in his introduction: public reason, political constituencies, and markets.