# "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:** 5
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/81 "2015-09-22T16:19:43Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > But unfertilized eggs would not be produced if people didn’t set it up that way. Assuming someone is vegetarian because they don’t want animals to be mistreated, the production of unfertilized eggs is based on mistreatment of chickens, which are then slaughtered when they cease to be prolific layers. No. Hens lay eggs at a roughly regular rate _regardless_ of whether they are fertilized. Even when a rooster is present and the birds are free to do as they will, many eggs come out unfertilized. While factory-farm battery layers are surely mistreated, by any reasonable ethical-vegetarian interpretation, such treatment is not _necessary_ for egg production. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/82 "2015-09-22T16:45:53Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Ah - Popeye - a prime example of a muscular vegan. > [@kayaker](#): > > From what I’ve read he had a very high fat diet; always eating olive oil. Well, recent studies found that eating olive oil reduces the risk of cancer and heart disease… Wait a tick… You are talking about his girlfriend. Well, blow me down! 😃 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/83 "2015-09-22T16:51:00Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Eggs won’t survive if you don’t eat them. They will rot. People don’t (normally) eat fertilized eggs. True, eggs and honey are meant for young chicks and bee larvae to eat, not people, but they _are_ meant to be eaten, and no animal dies when we do. Well yes. The original post was contrasting things like leaves, roots etc, which are not made to be eaten with fruit which is. The poster included eggs in the first category as the animal producing them would not want them to be eaten by Predators. It’s true that they are ‘meant to be eaten’ by the animals young, but there is an important difference between that and the sense in which a fruit is ‘meant to be eaten’. You asked if you were missing something, so I was just trying to clarify the distinction. A wild chicken would ideally ‘want’ all of it’s eggs to be fertilized and the yolk to nourish only it’s own chicks. A fruit is only useful if it is eaten by something else. As I said though, since domestication this is not entirely true. A domestic chicken might ‘want’ it’s eggs to be particularly delicious to humans as this will likely result in their having more offspring. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/84 "2015-09-22T17:01:52Z")
> [@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] Sure FOILEM is a moral case. Morality is a matter of convention. If you wish to persuade me that I shouldn’t hunt, kill, & eat deer, or purchase and eat chicken, you must make the case that deer and chicken have moral worth, rights that should be respected by humans , in the same sense that humans. You must also make the cse, I think, think, that there’s some moral difference between a wolf stalking and killing Bambi and me doing it. ---
**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 22, 2015, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/85 "2015-09-22T17:21:59Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Sure FOILEM is a moral case… To flesh out that moral case a bit… I think we can all agree that a good moral calculus includes “reduce suffering”. But that’s hardly a complete moral calculus. Surely we ought to also strive to increase joy. So to make the case against eating meat, one ought to be able to show that the suffering produced outweighs the joy in eating the resulting meat. And that is why you need to consider the moral worth, capacity for suffering, etc., of animals we eat. I have observed that the majority of people who become vegetarians didn’t like meat all that much to begin with, and did enjoy eating vegetables. (not every single one, but it’s a common theme.) So I suspect they underestimate the degree to which eating meat increases joy. On the other hand, most meat eaters avoid looking too closely into the source of that meat, and tend to underestimate the degree of suffering they have caused. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/86 "2015-09-22T18:17:19Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > To flesh out that moral case a bit… > > I think we can all agree that a good moral calculus includes “reduce suffering”. But that’s hardly a complete moral calculus. True. I make a lot of moral decisions using a utilitarian framework, but it can’t stand alone. Followed to its logical conclusion, utilitarianism would have you extinguish all life as painlessly as possible (gas maybe) to avoid the eons’ worth of future suffering that is certain to come. What doesn’t exist can’t suffer. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/87 "2015-09-22T18:48:09Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > True. I make a lot of moral decisions using a utilitarian framework, but it can’t stand alone. Followed to its logical conclusion, utilitarianism would have you extinguish all life as painlessly as possible (gas maybe) to avoid the eons’ worth of future suffering that is certain to come. What doesn’t exist can’t suffer. True, but since most of us make the decision to cling to life even knowing that there is suffering ahead, we must implicitly believe that the joys and rewards it brings outweigh the pain. And if we believe that for ourselves, by any objective moral standards we must surely grant the same benefit to other sentient creatures, even if their sentience isn’t necessarily matched by the same level of conscious decision-making. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I think we can all agree that a good moral calculus includes “reduce suffering”. But that’s hardly a complete moral calculus. Surely we ought to also strive to increase joy. So to make the case against eating meat, one ought to be able to show that the suffering produced outweighs the joy in eating the resulting meat. ISTM that the moral calculus here falls apart when the entity experiencing the joy and the entity suffering for it are not the same entity, and when the suffering of the latter is involuntarily imposed by the former. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > … On the other hand, most meat eaters avoid looking too closely into the source of that meat, and tend to underestimate the degree of suffering they have caused. ISTM that there’s something fundamentally illogical about enjoying something but being averse to knowing too much about its origins because we know it will be distasteful or repulsive. Call it cognitive dissonance or call it hypocrisy, but it doesn’t hang together as a moral philosophy. ---
**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 22, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/88 "2015-09-22T19:21:04Z")
A moral philosophy that says “don’t ever hurt anyone else for any reason except to help that entity” is doomed to failure. At best you might live in a cave and slowly starve. I don’t deny the hypocrisy of ignoring the suffering caused by factory farming. But I think the rest of your claims fall short. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/89 "2015-09-22T19:59:24Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I don’t care if the Pope gets more people to go vegan - it just means more barbecue available for me. Good quip…up to a point. But when BBQ shops start closing because of a shortage of customers, carnivores like you (and me) can find ourselves orphaned. This seems to happen to me all the time with soda pop. My favorite brands always go away, because they aren’t popular enough! I really miss Aspen, and Diet Rite had a Peach soda that was just luscious! ---
**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 22, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/90 "2015-09-22T21:12:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, blow me down! 😃 😉 Wow, wow, WOW ! Do that kind of stuff in PMs, guys. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/91 "2015-09-22T22:12:09Z")
A long, long, time ago, I worked in a packing house. They processed 2,000 sheep and 1,000 cattle per day. The normal kill required stunning of the animal before slitting the throat. I believe it was per Humane Society. But it also was a kosher kill house. These animals were exempt from stunning due to the religion. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/92 "2015-09-22T22:27:05Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > A moral philosophy that says “don’t ever hurt anyone else for any reason except to help that entity” is doomed to failure. At best you might live in a cave and slowly starve. > > I don’t deny the hypocrisy of ignoring the suffering caused by factory farming. But I think the rest of your claims fall short. I’m not actually trying to make any particular moral claim, such as an imperative argument for vegetarianism, for instance. I’m just trying to think through the logic. And I’m certainly not trying to make the claim that you stated – it’s more like, “don’t hurt a sentient being if there are reasonable alternatives to a survival necessity”, which is a different argument entirely. For the record, if the conclusion is that eating meat constitutes hypocrisy, then I’m guilty, too, but with mitigating circumstances. I eat very little red meat and if everyone was like me – not that I claim they necessarily should be, but if they were – then the beef market would collapse and the treatment of cattle might be entirely different – perhaps their remains would only be available in a small number of specialty shops, and most slaughterhouses would go out of the slaughter business and maybe convert to something else – like greenhouses that grow vegetables or something. I fully recognize the moral dilemma around eating meat and that I’m mired in it to at least some extent. There is no such dilemma around, say, planting, growing, harvesting, and consuming your own garden tomatoes, which is a rather lovely holistic experience and the kind that I much prefer. 🙂 > [@harmonicamoon](#): > > … But it also was a kosher kill house. These animals were exempt from stunning due to the religion. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those religious fucks react to having their own throat cut. I suspect they might find some really religious reason why it’s wrong in their particular case, when the particular knife is applied to their own particular throat. But it’s apparently terrific for tasty sentient animals and infidels of opposing religions. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/93 "2015-09-23T00:08:27Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#): > > Therefore stop feeding food to animals and instead feed the poor. Here’s a thought. If poor people stopped having children then the ever constant increase in population would stabilize. It’s a noble cause to help someone in need but if people are not held responsible for their actions then simply feeding the poor just creates more poor people to feed. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/94 "2015-09-23T01:59:19Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > . . . I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those religious fucks react to having their own throat cut. . . . It’s actually a relatively merciful manner of death and killing. A really sharp blade doesn’t hurt very much (per Sweeney Todd, “It stung a little but not for long.”) And the loss of blood pressure to the brain leads to almost immediate unconsciousness. It’s very similar to guillotining, sans the short sharp shock to the spine. ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/95 "2015-09-23T04:25:57Z")
Um… he’s a pope. No moniker of relevance. I’m a straight doper. Also no moniker of relevance. I say eat meat if you want to. Does the pope make more sense than me? ---
**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 23, 2015, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/96 "2015-09-23T04:42:54Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > …I fully recognize the moral dilemma around eating meat and that I’m mired in it to at least some extent. There is no such dilemma around, say, planting, growing, harvesting, and consuming your own garden tomatoes, which is a rather lovely holistic experience and the kind that I much prefer… The dilemma around growing my own tomatoes has more to do with not actually getting much food for the effort expended. I do it most years, because I love me a good home-grown tomato. But If I get half a dozen tomatoes I did well. And I kill lots of stuff to get those fruits. I pull up all sorts of innocent seedlings that tried to grow too close to the tomato plant. I might have killed some insects, too. We really don’t know how sentient plants are, or how capable of suffering they are. :shrug: > [@Trinopus](#): > > It’s actually a relatively merciful manner of death and killing. A really sharp blade doesn’t hurt very much (per Sweeney Todd, “It stung a little but not for long.”) And the loss of blood pressure to the brain leads to almost immediate unconsciousness. It’s very similar to guillotining, sans the short sharp shock to the spine. There’s a problem with kosher slaughter in the US. The problem is neither the kosher rules nor the USDA rules, each of which are reasonably humane on their own. The problem is that they interact badly. The USDA rules required the animal to be suspended before slaughter for hygiene. This isn’t usually a problem, as the animal is stunned, first. But for kosher kills, the animal is suspended alert, and I’m sure that’s terrifying. In a normal kosher slaugher without those rules, the butcher just walks up to the animal and quickly slits the throat, and the animal dies with little pain and little fear. But not if it was commercially slaughtered in the US. ---
**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 23, 2015, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/97 "2015-09-23T05:00:35Z")
> [@Locrian](#): > > Um… he’s a pope. No moniker of relevance. I’m a straight doper. Also no moniker of relevance. I say eat meat if you want to. > > Does the pope make more sense than me? Hard as he might have tried, Cecil has so far failed to turn the Straight Dope into a global, powerful and influential organized religion 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/98 "2015-09-23T05:35:11Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those religious fucks react to having their own throat cut. Really? You’re trying for a ‘don’t hurt sentient beings unless necessary for survival’-morality, and then come up with this? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/99 "2015-09-23T05:40:06Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > ISTM that there’s something fundamentally illogical about enjoying something but being averse to knowing too much about its origins because we know it will be distasteful or repulsive. Call it cognitive dissonance or call it hypocrisy, but it doesn’t hang together as a moral philosophy. Are you suggesting that vegetarians have a more in depth knowledge of the number and ways in which rats and birds are killed to produce their vegetable food? Because if you are you will need to provide a cite for that claim. In my experience exactly the opposite is true. While all omnivores are aware that animals are slaughtered to produce their food and the basic way that it is done, very few vegetarians can tell you how rats or groundhogs are killed to protect corn fields. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/100 "2015-09-23T06:00:41Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The amount of life which can be supported is basically the Surface Area of the Earth X The Amount of Sunlight that Gets Through the Atmosphere. And then the end result of evolution is that all spare energy that is available, thanks to the Sun, will be eaten. If there’s some niche that is avoiding consumption, that’s an easy niche to invade, and consequently it will disappear and, again, 100% of energy will be consumed by life. > > On the other hand, if the total energy available is less than the needs of life, then some number of lives will be lost. > > But in no case does food go uneaten. > > So while it may be true that a large number of life forms may have been collected into one location, since man has no control over the Sun, we are still limited to the available energy that the Sun has naturally produced. We aren’t producing bonus energy and thereby bonus vegetaion to feed our slaughter animals. We’re just aggregating our vegetation to a single location to feed a localized population, where naturally that vegetation would have stayed in its original location and been eaten by a distributed and varied population of animals. Sorry, but that’s wrong on almost every point. 1)The amount of life which can be supported is not in any sense the Surface Area of the Earth X The Amount of Sunlight that Gets Through the Atmosphere. Sunlight is not a limiting resources anywhere much south of the Arctic circle. There is a reason why there is more life in Brazil than at the same latitude in Australia, or why there is more life in New York than comparable latitudes in western China. 2) The end result of evolution is not that all spare energy that is available, thanks to the Sun, will be eaten. Plants are only about 1% efficient even where sunlight is a limiting resource, which is almost nowhere. 1. Niches that avoid consumption are not easy to invade. In fact quite the opposite is true. Niches that are stable and resilient usually have a buffer capacity that makes them resilient. Niches with no buffer capacity are generally disturbed, sub-climax environments that are transitioning to that buffered state. 2. The total energy available in any ecosystem is \*always \* less than the needs of life. As Charlie Darwin and Tommy Malthus pointed out, there is a massive loss of lives, equivalent to around 99%, in any stable ecosystem. 3. Food always goes uneaten. As noted, most stable ecosystems are net carbon sinks or exporting to carbon sinks because more food is fixed than i consumed. 4. While it is indisputably be true that a large number of life forms have been collected into one location by man, the salient point is that we have collected large number sof methane producers, not large numbers of plants. 5. We are not limited to the available energy that the Sun has naturally produced. The largest limiting resources are predator resistance, competition, water, temperature, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in about that order. Sunlight in most places doesn’t even rate in the top 20 limiting resources. And man has managed to remove or reduce the other 19. 6. We are indeed producing bonus energy and thereby bonus vegetation to feed our slaughter animals. Net primary productivity in farmland is in almost all cases much higher than the natural environment from which it was derived. 7. We’re aren’t just aggregating our vegetation to a single location to feed a localized population. We are redistributing limiting resources such water and nitrogen, removing competition and eliminating predation. We are then aggregating methanogenic animals to feed upon the resulting flush of plant growth. 1o)Naturally that vegetation would never have been produced. The lack of water and nutrients alone would have resulted in less vegetation. Then you factor in the removal of competition and alleopathic effects, disease, predation etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=6)