Caregivers, Kids, and Carnist Structural Injustice

ABSTRACT Numerous arguments concerning harms to animals, the environment, and children plausibly establish a defeasible moral duty to avoid training and encouraging kids to regularly eat animal products – practices we call ‘carnist caregiving’. Yet existing social structures make avoiding carnist caregiving unreasonably difficult or unthinkable for many caregivers. We argue that these caregivers are unjustly induced and/or pressured into carnist caregiving. For social structures are unjust when they make it unreasonably difficult for caregivers to avoid wronging dependent children. So justice requires reforming the social structures, like school meal programs, that systematically prevent caregivers from providing plant‐based caregiving for kids.