# Eating Meat is Ethical/Unethical **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 28, 2012, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064 "2012-03-28T17:22:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![pikey\_pete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pikey\_pete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pikey_pete)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/161 "2012-04-02T04:00:05Z")
just a point that most vegetarians/vegans ignore is that tilling soil actually kills a lot of animals, like moles, voles, mice, snakes and insects. So, OP, I guess you’re basing your least harm argument on the weight of individual animals? a 1/2 ton cow is more deserving of kindness than a 7 gram vole? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2012, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/162 "2012-04-02T04:05:05Z")
> [@Michael63129](#): > > But when one looks at the risks of eating processed meat, the effects of Vitamin C can’t be completely canceling out the effects of nitrites (OK, nitrosamines, but they wouldn’t form without nitrites). Otherwise, something else must be contributing to the risks. Also, [according to Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrite#Nitrosamines), they explicitly state that cancer dropped after nitrites were reduced - and long before Vitamin C started to be added (perhaps some other reactions occur, such as whatever happens when meat is cured): > > Now I know that correlation doesn’t mean causation, but then what other dietary change(s) occurred around that time? You are correct, I didn’t phrase that well, I meant once they knew what was happening they added in the antioxidant requirement. The reduced amount of exposure would have reduced the risk and the cancer rate. But if antioxidants is not the fix, as science claims, we should be avoiding all of the leafy greens and radishes too. Maintaining a healthy weight and doing an hour a day of cardio is probably the best thing that most people can do to improve their health. If they are not over-eating the source of their calories doesn’t matter much assuming they get their needed vitamins and minerals. ---
**Author:** ![Trust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@Trust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trust)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/163 "2012-04-03T02:46:47Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > Other people. Not other species. > If I were an animal, I don’t know how I would know what I want. I don’t know how animals think and feel. What you’re asking me to do is anthropomorphize animals. Clearly, when they do that, animals will desire human things. **Do you really think this is a sound way to understand ethics regarding animals?** I am not asking you to anthropomorphize animals. Again, there is a reason we do not scream bloody murder when someone steps on an ant. Yet we do scream bloody murder when a human is being killed. Why do we not scream bloody murder when someone steps on an ant? Because we study them. We see if they experience pain. We see if they scream out when being hit. We see how they react to stimulus. > **[8lak](https://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTHIODWTqx5E)** > > Share your videos with friends, family, and the world > [@erislover](#): > > I don’t wonder why utilitarianism is difficult. It is plain to see why utilitarianism is difficult. It supposes measures we don’t have. Even if we bypass human-to-human problems of understanding wants and needs, extending utilitarian analysis to animals assumes things for which the human measures would not apply _unless you viewed animals as moral equals to humans_. I do not know how anyone justifies this. > The concepts you mention are not the sole province of utilitarians and those concepts motivate things like democracy, not animal rights. > Again, concepts we apply to humans, because we can hash out, human to human, and come to social agreements, which is the province of ethics. **Pointedly, animals have never been invited to such discussions.** Therefore you need some way to bring their wants and needs into the fray. So far, all you’ve offered me is Walt Disney anthropomorphizing. I am not particularly swayed by imagining myself as a cat. It is an interesting way to start to consider the question, but I don’t think it can stand as a justification. To be able to determine the greater good, you need to take every life into consideration. To deny certain considerations because it benefits us would mean it is no longer Utilitarianism. If you use ethical egoism for the ethical measure then obviously we do not have the same definition of ethics. You freely admit that animals experience pain so you must take that pain into account. You seem to be stuck on this social agreements aspect but I haven’t heard any argument for why this is rational. Why does someone have to be able to do something for us before we should do something for them? How does a baby or mentally retarded child fit into this contract even if I were to completely ignore the fact that getting something in return has nothing to do with ethics? > [@erislover](#): > > **I don’t know how I am supposed to weigh the suffering of an animal with the suffering of a human** , a point I have been repeatedly asking you and which you repeatedly fail to establish. By imagining what they go through and taking their lives into consideration. To make the claim that it is impossible to imagine yourself as anyone else who is different from you is ridiculous. You have to study them the more they become different from you, but it is not impossible. You keep going back to Utilitarianism but the first question is the golden rule. You admit that animals feel pain. If you were that animal, would you want to experience pain? How is that a hard question? > [@Dr.Colossus](#): > > vegans are cute. go to africa, explain the morality of “food” to them and explain they have to limit their already severely limited diet. because of ethics. > > i like this “we have this luxury so let’s pretend we’re higher-minded” attitude. > > what about all the THOUSANDS of critters that die in even organic vegetable farms? uncountable amounts of voles, mice, rabbits, etc are thrashed in combines and harvesters. pesticides (of the harsh chemical or natural variety) kill hundreds of thousands of bugs and small animals. coyotes/deer and other ‘vermin’ are culled. i never hear vegans talk about this…but counting basic living organisms, a great multitude die directly or indirectly in vegetable agriculture. seems to me humans: have to conquer, to whatever degree, nature. and things gotta die. playing this “one way is more ethical than the next” game is kind of arbitrary to me… > > none of this is to mention our biological omnivorous attributes or the fact meat _IS_ food. Please go back and read the thread. If you are needing food to live and there are no other alternatives, it is 100% ethical to kill an animal to eat. This ignores the third point, the least harm principle. What you are ignoring is that we have to produce seven times the amount of crops to end up with one pound of meat. We end up killing more of these animals accidentally with a meat based diet. Even if you want to act like we can somehow magically switch to eating only meat that is grass fed, the vegan diet still kills less animals when you take into account the amount of food produced. Either way you cut it, a non-animal derived lifestyle will cause less harm than systematically raising and killing animals. > [@Tab\_Q.Wertus](#): > > There are quite a few posts that argue that we can invent ethical rules out of thin air because it’s the same way we invented rules against murder and rape. I have to disagree. > > As humans we are the superior species on this planet and we excel in many things. But one thing we can’t do: Surviving alone. > To survive as a species we have to cooperate with others. For example: Because we have a very long childhood we need someone who tends to the kids while some one else is getting the food. At first the groups were small, maybe just one family living in a cave - but with the development of more complex needs the groups had to become bigger to fulfill this needs. And there where always rules against murder between the cooperating individuals, because no one would want to be part of a group if he has to live in constant fear of being killed by the guy next to him. Therefore we evolved into social beings. But there was no big need for rules against killing outside the cooperating group. They were competing for the same resources. They were the enemy. Which explains why our history is full of wars and bloodshed. It may be good to remember that the times of political and social Darwinism are not so long gone (if at all). > Today we have to cooperate with thousands of other individuals just to fulfill a pretty basic and obviously beneficial need like an appendectomy. Think of all the miners, steelworkers, engineers, nurses, doctors and all the others in between. Think of all the stuff in your home. How many does it take to build all that? We have to cooperate and we need a rule against murder to do so. > Rules against rape where also good for the group. Because raising a child is an expensive endeavor, potential fathers want to know that they really are the father. And potential mothers want to choose the best father for their children. And even the child has an interest in not being conceived during a rape. If it is raised by loving parents in a stable household it has a better chance to succeed later in live. (And the duck-rape-article linked in an earlier post shows that nature/evolution is not the biggest fan of rapists.) But the rule against rape was also only valid within the group – giving slave-owners and victorious soldiers ample opportunity to rape the “others”. > > The rules against murder and rape where not pulled out of thin air. They are enforced because they are good for us. For mankind as a species. > > Can we say the same about a rule not to eat meat? You can try to make a case that eating meat is bad for your health and that the production of meat is a waste of resources. But in my opinion both arguments fall short. The big health risk is obesity not the poisonous effects of flesh. Sure, it is easier to over eat with meat and animal fat than with fruits and vegetables but eat enough 100% vegan french fries and you will risk the same heart attack. On the other hand not eating any meat is also unhealthy and especially to little kids outright dangerous. And the OP argues that we shouldn’t eat any flesh at all. As for wasting resources: Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. Let’s eat only half the amount of meat. We should be golden. But again, that is not what the OP want’s us to do. He explicitly want’s us to forgo all consumption of meat. > > But should we base or ethics only on what is god for mankind? Good god! No! But the OP tries to sell his ethics as some kind of universal truth. And if it comes to that, a rule that benefits mankind always trumps one that doesn’t. > > Will future generations look back and think of us as unethical monsters that enslave, torture and kill animals for no good reason? Probably. But not because they are somehow enlighten and have seen the error of our ways. They will be able to synthesize meat that is superior to the best natural beef we have and they will forget that we were not able to do the same. We shouldn’t be concerned about that. Later generations never really grok there ancestors. That’s the way things go. > > PS: There should be a lot more phrases like “seems to me” and “in my opinion” in this post. But to keep it at least somewhat readable I followed the good old tradition of presenting my opinions as facts. And I hope my English is not that bad that “my meaning [got] lost or misconstrued”. You seem to be defining ethics from a naturalistic viewpoint. I reject arguments by nature. You can easily think of thousands of examples where nature is not a good thing. Nature might be good. It might be bad. But to claim that all nature is good is a fallacy. I want to prevent suffering of others. Do I expect everyone to become vegan overnight? Of course not. I expect us to find alternatives that move us away from our current form of exploitation. Eating half the meat would not make us golden because we would still be violating the golden rule. If we eat half the meat, and that meat is cultured meat then I will agree that we reallly are golden! > [@msmith537](#): > > “Mr. McClure? I have a crazy friend who says its wrong to eat meat. Is he crazy?” > “No Jimmy. Just ignorant!” > Clearly the OP has never heard of the “food chain”. Don’t kid yourself **Trust**. If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about! > There really is no argument against eating pigs, cows and chickens that isn’t absurd. If your survival depended on having to catch and kill a chicken for food in the wild, only a lunatic would argue that it was “unethical” to do so. And said lunatic would likely soon starve to death anyway. The fact that modern society largely allows us to separate our work tasks so that most of us aren’t directly involved in food production doesn’t mean that we don’t still have those same dietary requirements. > > This is what we like to call a “rich country problem”. Really? A cow would eat me? A cow has never harmed me in my life. My actions are either ethical or unethical, regardless of some theoretical situation where someone might harm me. I certainly am not disagreeing that if you need to kill an animal to survive that you are justified in killing that animal. If people had to watch what the animal went through everytime before they ate, they probably would be eating something else. > [@msmith537](#): > > The question remains, is there something inherently more or less ethical in killing an animal because survival necessesitates it, versus I just want it killed because I like steak? The answer should be fairly obvious here. Of course there is a difference between killing if you have no other option versus because we like the taste of meat. > [@drewtwo99](#): > > I’ve read a lot of this thread, but not all of it… but I feel like I understand the thrust of the arguments here, and that is to limit the suffering of animals. > > If you want to minimize the suffering of other animals, then the most ethical decision you can make is to kill yourself. Sure, some of your immediate friends and family are going to suffer for a while (maybe even for the rest of their lives to some extent). But you are going to be preventing the suffering of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of animals, to wit: > > \*Any insect/squirrel/bird you would have it while driving in your car will live because you killed yourself. > \*Any vole, gopher, etc that would have been killed in a combine from the wheat used to make the bread you bought in a grocery store would still be alive if you (and others like you) hadn’t been eating all that bread and creating a demand for it > \*Any child you might have who grows up not to be a vegetarian will never exist, and that will prevent tons of suffering. > \*Any fly or mosquito you would swat would be spared (if you do that sort of nasty thing) > \*Bonus points to you if you kill yourself by feeding your corpse to an animal on the endangered species list. Extra bonus points if this animal is pregnant, or about to lay eggs, or nursing, etc. > > What’s that you say? You want to limit the suffering to some arbitrary level that you have determined is ethical? You don’t want to have to feed yourself to some starving/endangered wolf (prevent the suffering of the wolves), or stop buying bread (prevent the suffering of field rodents), or stop driving your car (prevent the suffering of insects and others), or using medicines and products that were made through animal testing because it would inconvenience you too much (prevent the suffering of mice, rats, etc)? > > \*\*Well then you are at best being illogical, and at worst being a hypocrite. \*\* > > Plain and simple. You claim that it’s unethical to do certain things, but the stuff that would be too inconvenient for you is just fine. Ethical arguments for limiting the suffering of animals are just so ridiculous, there’s no logically consistent framework for it. > > There are PLENTY of reasons to become a vegetarian. PLENTY. Many have been mentioned here already, if not all. Vegetarians tend to have a healthier diet. There’s lest waste involved. There’s less energy spent producing only vegetarian foods. Less green house gasses. Spend your time hammering on those points, but not this whole “limit the suffering” business. Those points are the ones that benefit humans. My argument does not rely on only listing arguments that benefit humans. It is essentially a given that we are causing massive amounts of pollution, hurting out health and massively wasting resources that could go to help other humans. Even if eating meat was neutral to humans, it would still be unethical. My argument relies simply on taking all lives into consideration. A very simple argument that even a child can grasp. For some reason we like to think that slavery required a degree in ethics to understand if it was ethical or not. It is self evident. The only ones who could not see this are the people reaping the benefits of slavery. What would you want if you were them? Funny how I have never seen anyone volunteer to be a slave. Who would ever volunteer to go through a factory farm if they were an animal? You are presenting an argument that if you can’t stop all suffering, you should not stop any suffering. It does not take a long time to see how this is illogical. > [@msmith537](#): > > At this point you don’t have anything that I disagree with. Certainly there are negative consequences to modern industrialized meat production. But it is a stretch to declare “eating ALL meat is unethical” based on that. > I’m arguing it’s ok to eat animals because they taste good!😃 There really are two arguments here. The first is based on the 99% of animals that go through factory farms to create our food. This should be an open and shut case to anyone who has seen a factory farm and all but those who _have_ to come up with a way to rationalize how they view their own ethics that are not in line with their own actions. The second is the “more ethical” meat argument. I fully admit that before I did the research and was educated on the issue, I thought nothing of this. I thought that as long as the animal is killed humanely, there is no issue. Luckily I have seen the error in my ways. There are many issues with this. The first is that it is impossible to separate all of the suffering out when we exploit others for our own purpose. Even if you buy the highest rated meat, the animal most likely was still mutilated in some form (some possibilities include having testicles cut off or horns cut off without any anesthetic, having beak burnt off without any anesthetic, possibly was not killed humanely, etc.). The second is based on non-violent principles similar to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Is the “more ethical” meat better? Sure, it could possibly be better. Just like treating a slave “more ethically” is better. However, there is the potential for people to make the mistake that animals are ours to misuse then. Similarly, this was a huge argument used by slave owners. Just cause them less suffering was the argument. Am I against slavery? Hell us. Am I against exploiting animals for our own gain? Hell yes. Every reason we will give to justify ourselves has essentially already been given here [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past/ten-reasons-not-to-abolish-slavery/](http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past/ten-reasons-not-to-abolish-slavery/) Ask yourself if there is any parallel between the two? " \*Forget abolition. A far better plan is to keep the slaves sufficiently well fed, clothed, housed, and occasionally entertained and to take their minds off their exploitation by encouraging them to focus on the better life that awaits them in the hereafter. We cannot expect fairness or justice in this life, but all of us, including the slaves, can aspire to a life of ease and joy in Paradise. At one time, countless people found one or more of the foregoing reasons adequate grounds on which to oppose the abolition of slavery. Yet in retrospect, these reasons seem shabby—more rationalizations than reasons.\*" > [@pikey\_pete](#): > > just a point that most vegetarians/vegans ignore is that tilling soil actually kills a lot of animals, like moles, voles, mice, snakes and insects. So, OP, I guess you’re basing your least harm argument on the weight of individual animals? a 1/2 ton cow is more deserving of kindness than a 7 gram vole? This ignores the fact that we have to create many more crops to feed the animals. One animals worth compared to another is not based on size. i would never claim that a human that is shorter or smaller is worth less than a taller or larger human. What I would claim is that an ant is worth less than an animal. An animal is worth less than a human. These are based on rational reasons including pain, perception of the world, etc. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/164 "2012-04-03T03:08:41Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > To be able to determine the greater good, you need to take every life into consideration. I don’t disagree. But the question is _how much different lives count_. Out of one side of your mouth, you want us to count animal suffering as much as human suffering, while out of the other side, you don’t want to anthropomorphize animals and don’t consider them equals. This is a position I have asked you several times to explain. There seems little point in continuing in light of your refusal to illuminate this unfortunate inconsistency. ---
**Author:** ![Trust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@Trust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trust)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/165 "2012-04-03T03:40:40Z")
It seems some people are trying to limit the definition of the golden rule. The golden rule has been around for ages and has been expressed in many different ways. Some have been more elementary. Some have been more advanced. Some have been more advanced but only look at a particular aspect of the golden rule. If you take the familiar Christian golden rule, you will see that Christ expands on one particular example of the golden rule but this is in no way saying that the golden rule is restricted. The Torah, written way before the time of Christ had various laws to follow. These laws ranged from incredibly cruel (you can own a slave and beat them half to death Exodus 21:20-21, the adulteress should be stoned Deuteronomy 22:22), all the way to logical but easily abused (keep the Sabbath Exodus 20:8, love your neighbor as yourself Leviticus 19:18). Christ “broke” all of these laws. When he cleaned the feet of the disciples, he showed us that there is no slave and there is no master. When he said he without sin cast the first stone and it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, he showed us to practice mercy and love over law. When he expanded on who our neighbor is, he was quoting from Leviticus. To claim that the golden rule is restricted to humans is to miss the whole point of the Good Samaritan. The whole point of the Good Samaritan is how those people who wanted to follow the law of the day tried to twist the law to only benefit themselves. The story of the Good Samaritan teaches us that we naturally want to limit who we follow the golden rule with. We naturally want to only follow the golden rule to our literal neighbor. We naturally only want to follow the golden rule to humans. We naturally want to follow the golden rule, as long as"others" represents anyone who is exactly like us. Only as long as they are in the exact same socioeconomic class as us. The point is that we need to resist this urge and treat “others” for what it is; all-encompassing. That “others” can suffer and that “others” means just that; _others_. Anyone aware of the world and especially those who can suffer is _others_. \*“I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing”. \* Christ chooses not to relate himself to a human to show selfless love, but he instead relates himself to a chicken of all things. Mother hens who experience some of the worst suffering seems fitting. ---
**Author:** ![Trust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@Trust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trust)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/166 "2012-04-03T03:47:58Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > I don’t disagree. But the question is _how much different lives count_. Out of one side of your mouth, you want us to count animal suffering as much as human suffering, while out of the other side, you don’t want to anthropomorphize animals and don’t consider them equals. This is a position I have asked you several times to explain. There seems little point in continuing in light of your refusal to illuminate this unfortunate inconsistency. How much is a dog worth? Now how much is a pig worth? While I would never claim that intelligence has anything to do with who lives and who dies, pigs are as intelligent and in some areas are more intelligent than dogs. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player\_embedded&v=AU7\_Ar9C\_iI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AU7_Ar9C_iI) How do we justify loving on dogs as pets, yet putting pigs through factory farms. The problem is that it is not logically consistent. Animals and humans lives are not equal. However, animals lives are incredibly valuable. The issue is that we are purposefully devaluing some animals just so we can continue to exploit them. If we valued farm animals the same as our pets, we would never be in this situation where we have to rationalize. Just as we see the absurdity of claiming that whites are meant to be free and blacks are meant to be slaves, we will soon see the absurdity of claming that some animals are meant to be loved on as pets while others are meant to be put through incredible amounts of suffering. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/167 "2012-04-03T04:12:41Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > You are presenting an argument that if you can’t stop all suffering, you should not stop any suffering. It does not take a long time to see how this is illogical. First of all, I am not presenting any argument that we should keep eating meat. There are plenty of good reasons to not eat meat. \*\*None \*\*of them involve ethics. At the end of the day, we are ALL working to limit the suffering of animals. Whether we choose to eat meat or not. But to say that the only/best way to prevent/limit suffering is to become vegetarian/vegan is hypocritical and silly. There is no human being on this planet who openly engages in wanting to increase the amount of suffering of animals. If they do, they do it in secret or they get punished for it. If I eat meat 350 days out of the year instead of my usual 365, I’ve “limited the suffering.” Why do you, or anyone else, get to decide what an acceptable amount of preventing/limiting suffering is? It’s arbitrary and ridiculous. Why is it better to be a vegetarian/vegan and not eat meat? You do realize that if everyone were going to subsist purely off of wheat and other stuff, we’re going to be crushing hundreds of thousands of rodents and rabbits and lord knows what else in our combines and tractors and such. Animals are still going to be suffering and dying at the hands of humanity. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/168 "2012-04-03T07:04:53Z")
This whole thing drives me crazy. The eating of flesh is completely natural, healthy, and morally neutral. Even the killing to do the eating. Creating **suffering** for sentient beings is not an ethically or morally neutral act. Killing does **not** equal suffering. Every living thing dies and the vast majority of living things are killed to be food for other living things. (Often in agony and terror over a long period- which would you rather: a bolt to the brain that knocks you senseless or to be chased down and torn apart while conscious?) There is nothing remotely wrong with that. Those of you who are emotionally tortured by the idea of animals dying so that we can eat them are projecting _ **your** _ own human, self-aware understanding and fear of death on to animals. Animals do not fear death because animals do not comprehend death in the same way we do, as the ending of their own existence.Animals do not contemplate their existence the way we do, animals are very much in the now. What animals do fear is pain and suffering. What animals do not want to experience is pain and suffering. Animals welcome “lights out” if they are suffering. Try to step away from the kneejerk “Death bad!” reaction you have and ponder it in more depth separate from how or why death comes about. If you can really get in touch with why death upsets you, you will almost certainly find yourself far less distraught over the idea of killing animals for food. _Especially_ if the _ **life** _ each animal who dies to be dinner is natural and free and comfortable until the end, because death comes to us all, and it usually involves some measure of pain for us all, but if we are fortunate it is very brief, and once we are gone there is no memory existing to relive the suffering. The only thing that really matters is how we live, whether “we” are cows and chickens and pigs and dogs or people. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/169 "2012-04-03T12:16:15Z")
> [@](#): > > The eating of flesh is completely natural, healthy, and morally neutral. 1. Naturalistic fallacy. 2. Not necessarily. 3. Begging the question. > [@](#): > > Killing does not equal suffering. Every living thing dies and the vast majority of living things are killed to be food for other living things. (Often in agony and terror over a long period- which would you rather: a bolt to the brain that knocks you senseless or to be chased down and torn apart while conscious?) There is nothing remotely wrong with that. Two wrongs fallacy / conflating commission (killing for taste) with omission (failing to prevent a more painful death). Our purpose in rearing animals isn’t to prevent them from a worse death, it’s to harvest their flesh. This is demonstrated by the fact that domesticated animals that are euthanised are not permitted to be eaten, even if the methods of euthanisation were conducive to consumption. > [@](#): > > Try to step away from the kneejerk “Death bad!” reaction you have and ponder it in more depth separate from how or why death comes about. If you can really get in touch with why death upsets you, you will almost certainly find yourself far less distraught over the idea of killing animals for food. Unsubstantiated, special pleading and rounded off with an ad hom. ---
**Author:** ![Trust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@Trust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trust)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/170 "2012-04-03T16:27:34Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > First of all, I am not presenting any argument that we should keep eating meat. There are plenty of good reasons to not eat meat. \*\*None \*\*of them involve ethics. > > At the end of the day, we are ALL working to limit the suffering of animals. Whether we choose to eat meat or not. But to say that the only/best way to prevent/limit suffering is to become vegetarian/vegan is hypocritical and silly. > > There is no human being on this planet who openly engages in wanting to increase the amount of suffering of animals. If they do, they do it in secret or they get punished for it. If I eat meat 350 days out of the year instead of my usual 365, I’ve “limited the suffering.” Why do you, or anyone else, get to decide what an acceptable amount of preventing/limiting suffering is? It’s arbitrary and ridiculous. > > Why is it better to be a vegetarian/vegan and not eat meat? You do realize that if everyone were going to subsist purely off of wheat and other stuff, we’re going to be crushing hundreds of thousands of rodents and rabbits and lord knows what else in our combines and tractors and such. Animals are still going to be suffering and dying at the hands of humanity. We partially agree on a minor point here. On one hand, if we are attempting to limit the amount of suffering to others, then that is certainly a step in the right direction. However, this is rarely the case, at least from what I have seen. What unfortunately seems to be the rule instead of the exception is people who make up rationalizations instead of actually looking at the facts. “Plants have feelings too”. “Animals don’t feel pain”. “God said so”. Except if we literally spent two seconds thinking through these scenarios we would easily see that plants do not have a brain or a central nervous system to feel pain. Animals clearly scream out in pain. The same parts of the bible that talk about eating animals also say it’s okay to own a slave and beat them half to death, as long as you don’t kill them. But that’s the point. We don’t want to admit the truth. We want to use the first rationalization we come up with and act like there is no better option. Show a group of people footage of a factory farm and most will turn their head and refuse to admit the truth. We would rather reap the benefits than “think occassionally of the suffering of which we spare ourselves the sight”. We shouldn’t set out to treat slaves X good enough to become ethical. We should set out to abolish the system altogether. If everyone went to a vegetarian/vegan diet, we would need to create far less crops in the first place since animals are very inefficient. This in turn ends up killing less animals. The solution is not, in my opinion, as closed as going vegetarian/vegan. This would take far too many years for all hearts to change. I have no doubt that oour hearts will change, but to the animals in factory farms, they do not have time for this. It requires exploring many other alternatives such as cultured meat that will still satisfy our craving while also preventing just about every negative aspect of meat production. > [@Stoid](#): > > This whole thing drives me crazy. The eating of flesh is completely natural, healthy, and morally neutral. Even the killing to do the eating. > > Creating **suffering** for sentient beings is not an ethically or morally neutral act. > > Killing does **not** equal suffering. Every living thing dies and the vast majority of living things are killed to be food for other living things. (Often in agony and terror over a long period- which would you rather: a bolt to the brain that knocks you senseless or to be chased down and torn apart while conscious?) There is nothing remotely wrong with that. > > Those of you who are emotionally tortured by the idea of animals dying so that we can eat them are projecting _ **your** _ own human, self-aware understanding and fear of death on to animals. Animals do not fear death because animals do not comprehend death in the same way we do, as the ending of their own existence.Animals do not contemplate their existence the way we do, animals are very much in the now. > > What animals do fear is pain and suffering. What animals do not want to experience is pain and suffering. Animals welcome “lights out” if they are suffering. > > Try to step away from the kneejerk “Death bad!” reaction you have and ponder it in more depth separate from how or why death comes about. If you can really get in touch with why death upsets you, you will almost certainly find yourself far less distraught over the idea of killing animals for food. > > _Especially_ if the _ **life** _ each animal who dies to be dinner is natural and free and comfortable until the end, because death comes to us all, and it usually involves some measure of pain for us all, but if we are fortunate it is very brief, and once we are gone there is no memory existing to relive the suffering. > > The only thing that really matters is how we live, whether “we” are cows and chickens and pigs and dogs or people. Your argument relies on two extremes… Either you get a bolt to the head OR you get chased down and killed in the wild. That is like saying either you die because someone murdered you OR you die from being burned alive. This ignores the millions of other possibilites. You are also acting like we can separate the natural suffering that occurs as a result of their exploitation in factory farms. What is important, is recognizing that if we did not have our current form of exploitation, we would no longer need to artificially inseminate billions of animals. As demand would slowly lower over time, and less animals were recreated, we would have animals living out natural lives in farm sanctuaries. Don’t you desire to live out a full, natural life? What makes you think the animals don’t want this as well? Just because we _could_ live out a terrible life, it does not mean that we should wish for that for anyone else. None of them asked to be born as an animal that is only exploited and has no opportunity to live out a natural life. ---
**Author:** ![Caracatacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4da419/32.png) [@Caracatacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caracatacus)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/171 "2012-04-03T16:56:40Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > To me this seems an open and shut case. I evaluate this based on three ethical > principles. > > 1. The Golden Rule. To treat others how we would want to be treated _if we were > them_. There are some pretty crazy people out there but I I have yet to meet > anyone who would volunteer to go through a factory farm or be killed so someone > could eat them. No one in their right mind would want to live the life of the > animals which we all contribute to. Strike one. > > 2. Utilitarianism. It is our duty to imagine ourselves as everyone else in the > world and to ask what we would want if we were them. It is hard to see how > putting ourselves through a factory farm benefits the greater good. In fact, it > is impossible to see, because, even forgetting justice for a moment, no reward > we get comes close to the suffering they receive. Strike two. > > 3. The Least Harm Principle. None of us are able to completely prevent all > suffering. It would be a monumental mistake to then claim we should not prevent > _any_ suffering. We are causing massive amounts of suffering. Strike three. We’re > out. > > There is no doubt that finding alternatives are needed to be able to follow > these three ethical principles, but I fail to see how any future civilization > would ever look back at our history and think to themselves we were ethical in > our actions. Rather, I think they would ask themselves how generations could own > slaves or raise animals just to kill them. I realize we are sucking on the teet > so our conscience loves to rationalize the hell out of this. It took me a long > time to finally admit this but there are only so many excuses we can come up > with before we admit the truth. > > Thoughts? Though I don’t really agree with your moral reasoning here based off of these three issues, if I were to agree with them simply for the sake of argument, how would you go about explaining the morality of letting 6 billion people starve? Clearly humankind _could_ survive on a vegetarian diet, but the reality of our current foodstuffs don’t exactly make it a convenient time to start implementing it. I also can’t help but wonder, that if you were starving, and meat was the only option, would you not eat based off moral grounds? If you would consume just to survive, how then, after other food becomes available, could you then insist its immoral? ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/172 "2012-04-03T17:26:45Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > Your argument relies on two extremes… Either you get a bolt to the head OR you get chased down and killed in the wild. That is like saying either you die because someone murdered you OR you die from being burned alive. This ignores the millions of other possibilites. You are also acting like we can separate the natural suffering that occurs as a result of their exploitation in factory farms. What is important, is recognizing that if we did not have our current form of exploitation, we would no longer need to artificially inseminate billions of animals. As demand would slowly lower over time, and less animals were recreated, we would have animals living out natural lives in farm sanctuaries. Don’t you desire to live out a full, natural life? What makes you think the animals don’t want this as well? Just because we _could_ live out a terrible life, it does not mean that we should wish for that for anyone else. None of them asked to be born as an animal that is only exploited and has no opportunity to live out a natural life. Actually no, I just made the mistake of thinking that anyone who was reading this thread would automatically have read all the other threads on similar topics. Which was silly. I made my argument more fully in my own thread on this topic a couple of months ago. The OP’s argument seems to be focused on the suffering aspect as well as the “death is bad” aspect that comes naturally to us to feel because we want to live long life. Therefore my point is to focus on the suffering aspect and realize that if that is important to you then you should focus on that by focusing on how food animals are treated during their lives, not the fact of food animals existing at all, because that fact isn’t going to change. I believe my thread was titled something along the lines of “vegetarianism is a lousy way to reduce animal suffering”. > [@](#): > > Don’t you desire to live out a full, natural life? What makes you think the animals don’t want this as well ? The fact that animals don’t consider the question at all, because they don’t understand the question. Animals do not ponder their futures. They are only conscious that they are alive in this moment. If you’re going to project your feelings about living a long life on to an animal simply because you are an animal your self, why not project all of your feelings on animals? You probably want to have friends, don’t you? You probably want to have satisfying work, don’t you? You would probably be embarrassed to be naked in public, wouldn’t you? And a thousand other things that you can feel because of the extraordinary nature of your human brain that our brethren on this planet do not because they are not made that way. It is not a judgment of good or bad, or better or worse, it is simply the truth. Of course animals are emotional, we know that for fact. They fear they love they have joy and sorrow. But your fear of being robbed of a long life is a direct consequence of your ability to consider the question in the first place, something animals do not share. ---
**Author:** ![Trust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b38774/32.png) [@Trust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trust)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/173 "2012-04-03T18:57:56Z")
> [@Caracatacus](#): > > Though I don’t really agree with your moral reasoning here based off of these three issues, if I were to agree with them simply for the sake of argument, how would you go about explaining the morality of letting 6 billion people starve? > > Clearly humankind _could_ survive on a vegetarian diet, but the reality of our current foodstuffs don’t exactly make it a convenient time to start implementing it. > > I also can’t help but wonder, that if you were starving, and meat was the only option, would you not eat based off moral grounds? If you would consume just to survive, how then, after other food becomes available, could you then insist its immoral? If you need to kill animals to survive, it is ethical to kill animals. For most people, the question is not whether to eat animals or die. The moment we no longer need animals to survive, it becomes about giving ourselves a minor pleasure and ignoring all other considerations. If I were starving, I would probably kill the animal. Only because I am too selfish to be able to give up my life. I would certainly be more than hesitant since I am breaking someone else’s free will, but I unfortunately think I am too weak to sacrifice that much for the greater good. > [@Stoid](#): > > Actually no, I just made the mistake of thinking that anyone who was reading this thread would automatically have read all the other threads on similar topics. Which was silly. > I made my argument more fully in my own thread on this topic a couple of months ago. The OP’s argument seems to be focused on the suffering aspect as well as the “death is bad” aspect that comes naturally to us to feel because we want to live long life. > > Therefore my point is to focus on the suffering aspect and realize that if that is important to you then you should focus on that by focusing on how food animals are treated during their lives, not the fact of food animals existing at all, because that fact isn’t going to change. I believe my thread was titled something along the lines of “vegetarianism is a lousy way to reduce animal suffering”. > > ? > > The fact that animals don’t consider the question at all, because they don’t understand the question. Animals do not ponder their futures. They are only conscious that they are alive in this moment. > > If you’re going to project your feelings about living a long life on to an animal simply because you are an animal your self, why not project all of your feelings on animals? You probably want to have friends, don’t you? You probably want to have satisfying work, don’t you? You would probably be embarrassed to be naked in public, wouldn’t you? And a thousand other things that you can feel because of the extraordinary nature of your human brain that our brethren on this planet do not because they are not made that way. It is not a judgment of good or bad, or better or worse, it is simply the truth. > Of course animals are emotional, we know that for fact. They fear they love they have joy and sorrow. But your fear of being robbed of a long life is a direct consequence of your ability to consider the question in the first place, something animals do not share. While I certainly agree that focusing on the suffering is a more open and shut case, I still do not want to ignore the taking of anothers life. Even if there were no suffering and the impact of eating meat for humans was neutral, it would still be unethical to take the animals life. That would be like telling someone today that they are being ethical slave owners. Ethical and slave do not go very good together. Likewise, while we can certainly come up with reasons why we can justify it, killing and ethical do not usually go together. Can I come up with some bogus situation where it is ethical for me to kill an animal? Sure. Are these very realistic examples based on an everyday occurrance? Not really. I am not projecting my feelings onto animals as you think I am. I am studying them to undestand what they enjoy doing. Chickens want to dust bathe. Pigs want to play in the mud or root soil. All of these activities make no sense to humans, but they make perfect sense to these animals. However few or many their differences, animals don’t want to die just like us. They experience pain and have evolved to avoid death just as we do. This is not isolated to humans. Your argument assumes we can isolate killing and suffering. Right now we only have about a 96% success rate. Tell the millions of animals scalded alive that they are only 4%, so it does not matter. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/174 "2012-04-03T19:39:27Z")
[QUOTE=Trust] For most people, the question is not whether to eat animals or die. [/QUOTE] Who are ‘most people’, in your estimation? Are you talking about ‘most people who live like I do’, or ‘most people in the US or other 1st world countries’, or are you talking about ‘most people on earth’? Because if the later, then where are you getting this idea from? ‘Most’ people on this plant live a more marginal, substance level existence, and a hell of a lot of them are have issues with malnutrition. I the real world I mean, not your fantasy world of farm sanctuaries where it’s easy and carefree to eat a wholly vegan diet, and everyone can do it, taking far less agricultural cultivation and resources to do it, etc etc. Sadly, your worldview IS a fantasy, and the reality far different. I have to question whether you’ve actually ever TRIED to go on a fully vegan diet, and what it entails to do so. I’d also have to question where you get the idea that for ‘most people’ it’s a CHOICE whether to eat meat or not eat meat. > [@](#): > > The moment we no longer need animals to survive, it becomes about giving ourselves a minor pleasure and ignoring all other considerations. Sort of like the ‘minor pleasure’ of drinking a coke, instead of water…or a beer, instead of water…or anything that isn’t water. Sort of like the ‘minor pleasure’ of expending ANY resource that isn’t absolutely necessary, right? Sorry, but your little soap box antics in this thread scream ‘hypocrite’ to me. > [@](#): > > If I were starving, I would probably kill the animal. Only because I am too selfish to be able to give up my life. I would certainly be more than hesitant since I am breaking someone else’s free will, but I unfortunately think I am too weak to sacrifice that much for the greater good. So, it’s ok when YOU are starving, but if it’s not you starving then it’s not ok, since it’s all about a ‘minor pleasure’ otherwise. And, of course, it’s you who judges what is or isn’t a ‘minor pleasure’…right? Yeah, that works, especially someone who thinks that a vegan diet is something simple and easy that everyone in the world COULD do, no sweat and less resources, and that really ‘most people’ don’t need to eat meat anyway. 😛 > [@](#): > > I am studying them to undestand what they enjoy doing. Would they enjoy non-existence more than brief existence and then being consumed? Because, contrary to your fantasy world, if we, as a species, stop eating, say, chickens, then at a minimum there will be millions less chickens on the planet. All those potential chicken will never exist. Is that better for them? Worse? Would they care (my guess is that if they could think about it, then some life would be better than no life at all, but that’s just my human-centric view point so MMV). And that would go for all food animals we currently cultivate. We wouldn’t need so many (or really any) domestic cows, for instance, if we didn’t eat meat (it would also have a negative effect on leather goods, though I guess we could use more synthetic products at the cost of more resources put towards that, instead of using all of the cow as we current do). Do you like, say, jello? So sorry…no more of that for you. It’s made out of animal products after all, though I’m sure there is a vegan substitute (in fact, I know there is…but it would mean a major shift to attempt to move even this vertical product to a non-animal based one. And this is just ONE product type, with a lot of other products that would be impacted by such a shift), but I don’t think you really grasp the magnitude of such a shift on not just Americans and first world countries, but world wide. And that leave aside the whollier-than-thou attitude of being able to tell people what is or isn’t a ‘minor pleasure’…or why it being a ‘minor pleasure’ really matters at all, in the greater scheme of things, or why a sentient beings ‘minor pleasure’ is trumped by a non-sentient beings death, especially when you consider that without human use most of the members of those species would simply not exists…and some of the species themselves wouldn’t exist. Which, to my mind, is definitely more ‘unethical’…i.e. non-being is more ‘unethical’, as well as just being generally more sucky, than being, even if eventually that leads to becoming a hamburger or Chicken-Mc-Nuggets. YMMV, but I’d rather be alive and eventual food than never exist at all. -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/175 "2012-04-03T22:20:07Z")
I don’t think that animals equate to humans and so they don’t get the benefits of most issues of morality or ethics. Animals aren’t concerned about the ethics of eating me, and I’m not concerned about the ethics of eating them. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/176 "2012-04-03T22:21:54Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > It requires exploring many other alternatives such as cultured meat that will still satisfy our craving while also preventing just about every negative aspect of meat production. And then what? We’re still killing and causing pain to other animals by even existing. By driving our cars. Or eating our bread. In manufacturing plants. In building roads. Or any number of other things. Should we stop all that too? What amount of “limiting the suffering” is sufficient to you, and why? Don’t you see that the level you are choosing to limit the suffering of other animals is what you find to be convenient, just like EVERYONE ELSE does? You COULD cause less suffering to other animals by doing a whole host of things (growing your own crops and carefully making sure that no animals are killed when you harvest your crops). You could refuse to drive or buy manufactured goods. Doing all of those things would limit the suffering of animals even more, so why stop at where you do? Because it’s too inconvenient to live that kind of life, that’s why. And each person has a different threshold for what they find too inconvenient. Trying to say that you are any better than anyone else is like saying a murderer who only kills 100 people in cold blood is any less evil than someone who kills 1000 or 10,000. It’s ALL bad. We are all bad people who are causing suffering to animals. The difference of course is that we can all live reasonable lives without ever murdering someone, but we can’t all live reasonable lives without EVER causing suffering to other animals. Should we try to limit it? Absolutely. But let each person decide what that limit should be and stop thinking that you are doing better than anyone else at limiting the suffering. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/177 "2012-04-03T22:35:46Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > How much is a dog worth? Now how much is a pig worth? While I would never claim that intelligence has anything to do with who lives and who dies, pigs are as intelligent and in some areas are more intelligent than dogs. I thought we had already agreed that intelligence is not a good basis for valuing life. > [@](#): > > How do we justify loving on dogs as pets, yet putting pigs through factory farms. I’d eat dog if it were served. > [@](#): > > The problem is that it is not logically consistent. It is if we just don’t really care about animals, as a society, except inasmuch as they serve us. Which is precisely how I think society should be organized. And which it roughly is. > [@](#): > > Animals and humans lives are not equal. However, animals lives are incredibly valuable. The issue is that we are purposefully devaluing some animals just so we can continue to exploit them. A bunch of links laid down is not a chain. Furniture and housing are extremely valuable. Time is extremely valuable. Animals are valuable. The issue you wish us to consider is that animals should be valued as ends in themselves, to some extent—not means to an end (pleasure, appearance, taste). > [@](#): > > If we valued farm animals the same as our pets, we would never be in this situation where we have to rationalize. The only reason you see rationalization is because you assume things other people don’t assume. I don’t rationalize having a pet. I just have pets. I don’t rationalize eating meat. I think it is just fine to eat meat for the same reason I think it is fine for wolves to eat deer or baby bison or god knows what. > [@](#): > > Just as we see the absurdity of claiming that whites are meant to be free and blacks are meant to be slaves, we will soon see the absurdity of claming that some animals are meant to be loved on as pets while others are meant to be put through incredible amounts of suffering. Good luck with that. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/178 "2012-04-03T23:07:20Z")
> [@Trust](#): > > If you need to kill animals to survive, it is ethical to kill animals. For most people, the question is not whether to eat animals or die. The moment we no longer need animals to survive, it becomes about giving ourselves a minor pleasure and ignoring all other considerations. It is, I think, nearly impossible to discuss this from a purely ethical viewpoint because it presupposes agreement about the role of meat in the diet. No such agreement exists; in other words, eating meat is not merely a “minor pleasure” or a taste preference. But it’s also not strictly necessary for survival, at least, survival in the core evolutionary terms of needing to live at least long enough to reproduce. But in terms of health, happiness and longevity, I would argue that meat is vital for an enormous number of people. (Definitely for me, it forms 80% of my diet! And adopting that diet has transformed my health and happiness in myriad ways.) So if you accept that this question is itself a debate, then to discuss the ethical issues you have to at least agree that it isn’t a mere matter of satisfying one’s taste buds. If you can’t debate with at least that core agreement, then you have to back up to the diet debate itself. > [@](#): > > Even if there were no suffering and the impact of eating meat for humans was neutral, it would still be unethical to take the animals life. Without a clearer explanation of why you think this, I will have to disagree completely. Killing to eat is not unethical - it is the design of life itself! How can it possibly be inherently unethical to participate in the most fundamental process crucial to living, without which virtually all life would cease to exist at all? > [@](#): > > That would be like telling someone today that they are being ethical slave owners. No, it is not. Slavery is not a fundamental design of nature. Nor is it meaningful to equate the keeping of food animals, no matter how it is done, with enslavement of human beings, for exactly the same reasona it isn’t meaningful to assert that they “want” to live a long life: they do not experience any and all forms of being “owned” as equally onerous simply because their fundamental freedom has been taken away and they desire it because they desire freedom isolated from experience, as an idea. So long as they are sufficiently free to be physically and psychologically normal, healthy, and unmolested, they don’t care that they are actually under the ownership and control of people. (This is true of food animals, not as completely true of all animals. Animals with more highly developed brains need greater degrees of personal freedom in order to be free of any of the psychological pains of being “enslaved” by us.) > [@](#): > > I am not projecting my feelings onto animals as you think I am. I am studying them to undestand what they enjoy doing. Chickens want to dust bathe. Pigs want to play in the mud or root soil. All of these activities make no sense to humans, but they make perfect sense to these animals. However few or many their differences, animals don’t want to die just like us. They experience pain and have evolved to avoid death just as we do. This is not isolated to humans. Your argument assumes we can isolate killing and suffering. Right now we only have about a 96% success rate. Tell the millions of animals scalded alive that they are only 4%, so it does not matter. Of course chickens want to scratch and pigs want to wallow, and I am passionately for making sure they can and do- that is a question of suffering and creating suffering is wrong. It is unethical to treat food animals as “things” with no ability to suffer from being overcrowded, tightly caged, robbed of normal movement and experience. It’s especially horrible for pigs, which are very intelligent animals- its hideously cruel what most pig farms do (and I LOVE McDonalds for taking a stand that is now causing the whole pigfarming industry to change. YAY!). But you are making the mistake I pointed out earlier: you are equating an animal’s ability to suffer and be afraid with having a genuine desire to “stay alive” or an active fear of their lives ending, vs. pain. All living things, even plants, are programmed to do things which lead to survival, because that is how evolution works: the living thing that lives the longest does the most reporoducing, so whatever survival strategies they possess get passed along. As you move up the brain chain, you go from simple nerve reactions to stimuli that have no consciousness connected at all to more and “awareness” leading to a fear reaction. The bellows of cows, the screams of pigs, the sight and smell of struggles and blood in one’s fellows send signals to the brain that something bad is happening and to be afraid, (which is why the industry is working on ways to remove as much of that as possible). Animals that failed to perceive personal threat and react with fear to the suffering of their fellows didn’t live long enough to reproduce. But if you think for a second that a cow heading down the alsughter chute and seeing other cows die is _ **thinking** _ to itself: “My life will be over and I will cease to exist and I don’t want that and therefore I’m afraid!”, you are anthropomorphizing them. There are scientists working on using oxygen deprivation as an affordable, peaceful, highly ethical means of slaughter. Death from oxygen deprivation is actually very pleasant: one becomes euphoric first, then unconcious, then dead. No pain, and even human beings who know what’s happening are so chemically altered that they do not experience concern or fear. If they succeed, and a bunch of cows can see a bunch of other cows dying like that, simply passing out and dying without any fear or pain of any kind that they then communicate to their fellows with behavior or sound or smell, the observing cows would not then experience fear of following in their footsteps because of fear of dying. Even if they saw the bodies of the dead cows being dragged away and in some dim sense understood that their fellows were no more, that would never translate into fear for the ones who saw. Because their fear of death isn’t a fear of death itself, it’s a fear of suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/179 "2012-04-03T23:14:52Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > I thought we had already agreed that intelligence is not a good basis for valuing life. You did? > [@](#): > > It is if we just don’t really care about animals, as a society, except inasmuch as they serve us. Which is precisely how I think society should be organized. And which it roughly is. > > The issue you wish us to consider is that animals should be valued as ends in themselves, to some extent- My favorite quote about how to view animals, which, if you embrace it, in no way demands that you stop eating them, but does ask you to respect them, and therefore to avoid creating suffering for them: > [@](#): > > “We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.” > ― [Henry Beston](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/182465.Henry_Beston) ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064/180 "2012-04-03T23:22:10Z")
> [@](#): > > the observing cows would not then experience fear How is this any less of an anthropomorphic value judgement? > [@](#): > > How can it possibly be inherently unethical to participate in the most fundamental process crucial to living, without which virtually all life would cease to exist at all? Again, naturalistic fallacy. No evidence has been given to support the necessity of an omnivorous diet, other than the possibility of B12 deficiency leading to complications with a pregnancy (and the counter evidence that those that consume meat - at least processed meat - tend to have lower lifespans than a cohort of vegetarians). > [@](#): > > Trying to say that you are any better than anyone else is like saying a murderer who only kills 100 people in cold blood is any less evil than someone who kills 1000 or 10,000. You’ve projected your own fallacious argument (two wrongs) onto a stawman. What of the murderer that says “you’ve inevitably committed a crime in your life, you just want the law to apply to me because it’s convenient for you, you hypocrite!”. Edit: > [@](#): > > You did? Within reason: otherwise the cannibalism of the comatose or brain damaged would be permitted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eating-meat-is-ethical-unethical/617064.md?page=10)