# "Don't eat meat," says Pope. Is he right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 19, 2015, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847 "2015-09-19T21:57:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/41 "2015-09-20T12:28:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Care to tell us what that is? It’s not a point i would like stressing, especially as English is not my first language, but to me “exterminating” conveys the meaning of “by any and all (usually rather cruel) means, get rid of that pest” while “stop breeding” would in practice amount to “stop inseminating”, which wouldn’t add any pain to the already existing. > [@](#): > > That said, if the question is: “Would it be a moral thing to keep some species from extinction by breeding them in captivity?” my answer would be: only if they can be kept in far better (i.e. more natural) conditions than most livestock in developed countries today. > > Why? Well, my view may be Eurocentric (or, indeed, Scandinavia-centric!), but from what I have seen of medium-scale farming, the animals live most if not all of their lifes in very cramped conditions; they are often subjected to mutilations like dehorning or castration without pain relief; and they subsist on a very monotonous, exceedingly nutritious diet which causes them to suffer from constant diarrhea. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/42 "2015-09-20T12:44:52Z")
Note that most domesticated breeds are not separate species, but merely variants. Ceasing to breed them would not cause the extinction of a species, only a small subsection of one. In the long run vat-meat and other alternatives will probably replace most or all livestock farming, but I doubt that any species will become entirely extinct. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/43 "2015-09-20T13:08:16Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > But are these calories really supplied in a way that would be readily usable to humans? I mean, grazing fram animals basically convert non-accessible calories to accessible ones, as far as humans are concerned; additionally, not all land is arable, but much may still be suitable to farm cattle on. So in this way, cattle could be a means to convert inaccessible sources of nutrition to accessible ones. > > This is not something I know the numbers on, by the way, so I’d be glad to hear from somebody better versed in this sort of thing. What’s this ‘grazing’ that you refer to? I kid. My late uncle used to be a rancher in south-central Kansas. I think he had about 200 head of cattle at any given time, on 2000 acres of arid Kansas grassland. And even then, he had to give them additional feed each day. But that’s not where most beef (or any other animal flesh we eat in the U.S.) comes from. Nowadays, it comes from factory ‘farms’, with animals kept in huge barns, with their fodder entirely brought in. And whatever they’re fed, it’s grown on an industrial scale, and food for humans could be planted in those vast fields in lieu of food for cattle and pigs and chickens. If we Americans suddenly didn’t eat meat, it wouldn’t be a matter of, say, deer grazing the same grass, because no grazing is going on. The next generation of those factory farm-raised animals simply wouldn’t exist, because there’d be no market for them. And the generation of methane by those animals would cease, and some portion of the crops raised to feed those animals would be replaced by crops to feed humans, and some portion of it would no longer get raised. The energy used to raise and transport that latter portion wouldn’t be used, resulting in less carbon being pumped into the atmosphere. Obviously, this is strictly about how things are done in America. If people living at a subsistence level in the third world can get some additional nutrition by dint of their pigs and chickens turning their garbage into protein, then more power to them. If Europeans have goats and sheep grazing on slopes too steep for crops, then why the hell not? But the animals raised in American factory farms, which are the vast majority of the beef and chicken and pork we Americans consume, unquestionably add to the greenhouse gases we’re putting into the atmosphere, and in both climate change and nutritional terms, we’d be way better off if those farms ceased to exist. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/44 "2015-09-20T13:18:34Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > It’s an interesting question, since of course wild animals suffer terribly most of their lives. They are plagued from without and within by parasites, riddled with disease, suffer from appalling wounds and most often die horribly. Either ripped apart by predators or succumbing to disease or injury-mediated starvation if an old macro-predator themselves. > > Is getting shot in the head worse than dieing slowly of sarcoptic mange? Serious ( if probably unanswerable ) question by the way - I’m not trying to bait anybody. But the fact is that most animals do not have idyllic existences. It’s an interesting point, but I would say that the fact that some animals may live hard lives doesn’t mean we have the right to shorten them. > [@Blake](#): > > Why only “directly”? If suffering is bad, why does it matter whether it is caused directly or indirectly? Shouldn’t a moral person try to avoid causing suffering whenever possible, whether directly or indirectly? It’s impossible to live in any way without causing indirect suffering. If you build a shelter, you’re going to kill an insect. If you have a child, they’re going to get sick. The question must always be “Does the good outweigh the harm?” So, with that in mind… > [@Blake](#): > > We needed to kill dozens of squirrels, birds, rats, lizards etc. to construct the mine that provides the coal needed to run your computer and the SDMB servers. Why is that more moral than killing 5 squirrels and eating them? Why does it matter whether the suffering was caused directly or indirectly? I’m not so enamoured with animal rights that I value their lives above the lives of people. Progress saves human lives. If we have to kill some animals to achieve that progress, so be it. Similarly, if a person has no _choice_ but to eat meat, I wouldn’t consider them immoral for doing so. But in the West we _do_ have a choice. A vegetarian diet is cheaper and healthier than that of the average American carnivore. Yet we eat meat anyway, because it’s fun. And in order to have our fun we subsidise industries that treat animals _horribly_. It’s difficult to argue that our fun is so much more important than the lives of the animals who suffer and die for it. In the specific case of the squirrels who died to allow me to have a computer…well, the fact that _I_ have a computer is merely an incidental byproduct the of fact that computers exist. The fact that computers exist has brought about tremendous good. What good is achieved by you killing and eating those same squirrels. You have a full belly for a few hours, but since you could have easily filled that belly with fruits and vegetables instead, I can only conclude that no good has come of it whatsoever. > [@Blake](#): > > And if your morality only requires that people avoid causing suffering directly, then there is nothing morally wrong with most people eating meat. Most people eat purchased from a butchers shop. The animal is already dead when they buy it, therefore they are not directly responsible for that animal’s death, only indirectly. And that’s OK. Right? By that logic, if I pay a hit man to kill somebody, I’m not directly responsible for their death. I’m no lawyer, but I think I’d have a hard time arguing that in court. The fact is that people who buy meat from a butchers shop _are_ directly responsible for the deaths of the animals on the butcher’s counter because they’re creating the demand for dead animals in the first place. Just because they find it more convenient to pay someone else to do the actual killing for them, doesn’t mean they’re not directly responsible for the killings themselves. > [@Blake](#): > > We know that using electricity causes animals to suffer. Since it is possible to live a healthy life without using electricity, then shouldn’t a moral persona also refrain from using electricity whenever possible? It isn’t possible to live a healthy life without electricity. How would we make antibiotics or vaccines without electricity? > [@Blake](#): > > So why do you feel that it is OK to use the internet for enjoyment when that causes animals to suffer, but not OK to eat meat for enjoyment? The internet already exists, and is responsible for tremendous good throughout the world. I don’t see how my using it to procrastinate on the Dope actually increases harm, either directly or indirectly. I concede that creating the internet has caused some amount of harm, but now that it’s here, what difference does it make if I use it or not? Besides, what I personally do doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, I could be the biggest hypocrite imaginable; I could be sitting here in snakeskin shoes and leather pants wearing a fleece made out of hamster skins and shovelling Siberian tiger steaks in my mouth with one hand while punching kittens in the face with the other, and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to my actual _argument_. All it would prove is that I wasn’t living up to it. That’s an indictment of _me_, certainly, but not my argument itself. And now a few questions for you: 1. How would you feel if I were to open a wildly successful restaurant that only served blue whale, white rhino burgers, and bald eagle fritters? 2. How do you feel about traditional Chinese medicine? As you know, there’s high demand in China for medicine made from the parts of numerous endangered species. You and I both know this “medicine” is a load of bollocks. The customers, however, genuinely believe that they’re essential for their health. Do you think the Chinese medicine industry is morally superior or inferior to the American fast food industry? Or do you think there’s no difference? 3. When it comes to what is and what isn’t acceptable to eat, where do you draw the line? For example, if I _really_ wanted to eat somebody, how would you dissuade me? What if the person I wanted to eat had no friends or family? What if they were so brain damaged they were less intelligent than the average pig? 4. If aliens invaded Earth and started eating people, how would you convince them not to? If, after listening to your arguments, they just said “We don’t care. You taste good.” how would you respond? And would you consider them immoral? ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/45 "2015-09-20T13:39:19Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I suppose if you’re a devout Roman Catholic, it doesn’t matter if the Pope is right or not. You’d obey him, right? Not necessarily, it’s not something that’s required unless it’s a matter of church doctrine. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/46 "2015-09-20T14:00:34Z")
Meat is unethical as is, but I’m too selfish and lazy to change. I am hoping in vitro meat hits the market ASAP so I can switch to that for the reasons given (more sustainable, more humane/less suffering, less impact on climate, etc) ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/47 "2015-09-20T18:22:00Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > Even leaving aside the environmental implications of an omnivorous diet, I submit it is impossible to make a moral case for eating meat\* > > While there _may_ be some people who need to eat meat for health reasons, they are very few in number. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy vegetarians proves that we don’t need to eat meat and inflict suffering on animals to sustain ourselves. > > [sub]\*And no, “Fuck off. I like eating meat.” _isn’t_ a moral case.[/sub] It is rather easy to make a case for humans eating meat being moral. As John Mace pointed out, it depends on your premises. Please lay out all the premises required to prove eating meat is immoral. I suspect that your case will have one or more premises that can be refuted. Slee ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/48 "2015-09-20T20:20:35Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > . . . Person A: If humans stop eating meat then our domestic meat-animal lineages will simply die out. that would be immoral > Person B: Those lineages don’t care whether they die out, therefore it is unimportant whether they die out. > Me: No species aside from humanity cares whether its lineage dies out. So you see no moral problem with letting any species die out. > Trinopus: That’s one of the wildest leaps of illogic I’ve ever seen. . . . It’s grossly fallacious. You jump from a claim about what animals care about to what Person A cares about, without the least justification. Animals don’t care about whether they go extinct. They don’t know anything about the subject. It’s too abstract for them. To conclude from this that I don’t care if animals go extinct is absurd, offensive, illogical, uninformed, foolish, and damnable. To defend such illogic is stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/49 "2015-09-20T20:23:26Z")
> [@Ignotus](#): > > . . . That said, if the question is: “Would it be a moral thing to keep some species from extinction by breeding them in captivity?” my answer would be: only if they can be kept in far better (i.e. more natural) conditions than most livestock in developed countries today. We certainly would; if beef-cattle or dairy-cattle ever were anywhere close to extinction, they would be maintained in zoos and preserves. We do that (or try to) with many other animal species of far less immediate interest to our own species. We saved the Californian Condor from extinction; we certainly would do it for cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/50 "2015-09-20T21:09:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . Who would the Argentinians have preferred to see cast in an English-language musical/opera about Evita? Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Estefan were both considered for the role. Hollywood hadn’t yet caught on to the idea of casting ethnically-appropriate actors yet, though. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/51 "2015-09-20T21:20:20Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Jennifer Lopez and Gloria Estefan were both considered for the role. Hollywood hadn’t yet caught on to the idea of casting ethnically-appropriate actors yet, though. Madonna is of (half) Italian ancestry, which is very accurate considering it is the largest or second largest ancestry group in Argentina. Latino/Hispanic isn’t a homogeneous group except for the language that they speak. Census data is hard to come by, but Argentina might even be whiter than Canada. I’d think more people had a problem with the fact that she’s Madonna. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/52 "2015-09-21T00:17:04Z")
> [@Ignotus](#): > > I think there’s a slight difference between “exterminating” and “stop breeding”… Is there? What do you think happened to America’s millions of horses when the Model T came along and made them obsolete? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/53 "2015-09-21T01:07:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Is there? What do you think happened to America’s millions of horses when the Model T came along and made them obsolete? They became more of a luxury item. And, of course, we kept breeding them. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/54 "2015-09-21T02:33:26Z")
Sure, but in the meantime many went to the knackers due to the sharp drop in demand/commercial value. You can’t expect most farmers to keep feeding, housing, caring for beasts that bring nothing in return. This shit is expensive and exhausting. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/55 "2015-09-21T03:04:04Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Sure, but in the meantime many went to the knackers due to the sharp drop in demand/commercial value. You can’t expect most farmers to keep feeding, housing, caring for beasts that bring nothing in return. This shit is expensive and exhausting. In fact, millions of horses – the vast majority of those living in the U.S. at the time – were slaughtered in the space of a few years. The horses now living, mostly pets and toys rather than work or transportation animals, descend from the lucky few who were spared (or escaped because they were already feral mustangs). I recall a made-for-TV movie, set not long before or after WWI, about some U.S. Army officers who are ordered to machine-gun a vast herd of now-obsolete cavalry mounts, and balk at it on the grounds that the horses are their comrades in arms (I forget how it ends). ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/56 "2015-09-21T03:14:59Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > It would be a strange moral code which didn’t have “minimise harm” as a founding principle. We can easily go some way toward minimising harm by not eating animals… It is the nature of being an animal that we have to kill other life to survive. In some sense, the only truly moral way to live is to survive on fruit, which is produced to be eaten. Eating a root or a leaf or a seed it killing, just as eating meat and eggs is. > [@Tithonus](#): > > Animals are capable of suffering. A moral person should, ideally, try to avoid directly causing suffering whenever possible… I am pretty sure that cows are capable of more suffering than insects are. I am not sure how to compare either to an ivy vine, or a carrot. It is not obvious that plants “behave” because they do so very slowly from the perspective of an animal, but plants pull away from things that hurt them, warn other plants of dangers, call certain animals to their aid, and otherwise act as if they suffer pain. I assume that some plants are more capable of suffering than other plants, but I honestly have no clue which ones are more of less capable of suffering. (Half Man Half Wit went into more detail on this.) I do believe that we should try to minimize the suffering we cause. But careful slaughtering does not cause all that much suffering. I try to eat meat that was humanely reared and slaughtered quickly. And, as a practical matter, I don’t worry too much about how much my plant-foods suffered, because I don’t know which of my choices even matter. But I know that I am a lot happier when I can eat meat. I could probably live without it, but I could probably live with uncomfortable clothes in a dark hut, too. And as much as we should avoid causing suffering, we should also try to create joy. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/57 "2015-09-21T14:55:27Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I suppose if you’re a devout Roman Catholic, it doesn’t matter if the Pope is right or not. You’d obey him, right? No. As long as you go to confession and tell the priest all about it, of course… ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/58 "2015-09-21T15:01:21Z")
> [@Ignotus](#): > > I don’t think domestic animals really care about the preservation of their races. All species are programmed by evolution to pass on their genes. That’s why they’re still here. Domesticated animals bred by humans for food are very successful at doing so. So are cats. For reasons only known to themselves… ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/59 "2015-09-21T17:36:48Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’m still of the opinion that animals fart. If you get rid of cows, some other animal will eat the grass and fart. CO2 and methane production isn’t an artifact of human agriculture, it’s an artifact of life. Have you ever been to a factory farm? Those domesticated animal farts would not be replaced with wild animal farts if we slaughtered all those factory farmed animals and shut down the factory. There would simply be fewer living things on the planet. That life is artificially sustained by the efforts of humans that want to eat meat. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/60 "2015-09-21T17:39:59Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > Even leaving aside the environmental implications of an omnivorous diet, I submit it is impossible to make a moral case for eating meat\* > > While there _may_ be some people who need to eat meat for health reasons, they are very few in number. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy vegetarians proves that we don’t need to eat meat and inflict suffering on animals to sustain ourselves. > > [sub]\*And no, “Fuck off. I like eating meat.” _isn’t_ a moral case.[/sub] Why is it morally impossible to make a moral case for eating meat? How much moral significance are you attaching to a cow, a chicken or a fish anyway? Doesn’t it all depend on how much moral significance you attach to meat animals? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=4)