Kurt Zouma and All Nonvegans and Benedict Cumberbatch: Perfect Together

Gary L. Francione
3 min readFeb 10, 2022
Kurt Zouma, who is in trouble for doing what everyone else does — harming animals. (source: CNN)

English Premier League football player Kurt Zouma is in big trouble. He kicked and slapped one of his cats. He has been fined £250k by West Ham, the team for which he plays. The cat he kicked and slapped, and another cat he has, were taken from him by the RSPCA, which is investigating him for possible prosecution that could lead to a prison sentence of five years. He’s lost endorsement deals and his native France is thinking of prosecuting him as well.

Why is everyone upset with Zouma?

Zouma acted wrongly because he harmed the cat unnecessarily. He had no good reason to harm the cat. He apparently got some perverse pleasure from kicking and slapping the cat. That’s bad.

What Zouma did was wrong but the reaction to what he did makes no sense whatsoever given what just about everyone else does.

We kill approximately 80 billion land animals, and an estimated one trillion sea animals, every year for food alone. Think about that, we kill for food every year more animals than the total number of humans who have ever lived on the earth. That’s a breathtaking amount of suffering and death. And it’s completely unnecessary. We do not need to eat animal foods for nutrition. Indeed, an increasing number of mainstream health care professionals are telling us…

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Gary L. Francione

Gary L. Francione is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lincoln.