This somehow never occurred to me. Whatever one thinks of the merits and demerits of the killing of animals for food, I’d always thought that eating a hamburger doesn’t, in itself, cause an animal to be killed. The thing’s already dead.
But I just realized something: In most cases, by buying the hamburger, I’m creating a tiny hole in the inventory of the institution I bought the meat from. They are going to want to fill that hole, hence, they order more meat. That in turn creates an inventory hole in the ledgers of some meat packing place or however it works. They’re going to put an order in for more meat. And in order to fill that order, a slaughterhouse will kill an animal.
This is assuming a few things, for example, it assumes the demand for that meat is constant or rising, but the argument is meant to be about what I can reasonably expect to be probable in the general case.
One can still come up with scenarios where eating a hamburger doesn’t cause an animal to be killed. (For example, there’s one last hamburger at a party, and I know for a fact that if I don’t eat it, someone else will.) But the general idea I’d held that post-killing hamburger-eating doesn’t implicate one in the killing of an animal, it turns out maybe I was wrong about that.
This was probably obvious to everyone but me. Or maybe I’m wrong and someone will explain why.
I wouldn’t say you’re wrong exactly but going back further on the causality chain, without demand there wouldn’t be so many domestic animals to begin with. Therefore, by eating that hamburger, you did your part in creating a new baby cow. (ewww)
When cows rule the earth, and we’re all dragged before a bovine equivalent of Nuremberg, I’ll still claim, “I never actually killed anyone. I was only placing orders.”
But if it makes you feel better, you cause animal deaths just by participating in modern human society. Virtually everything you consume or do involves killing animals.Pop-tarts kill chimpanzees.
I’m a little baffled at your previous line of thinking. Of course eating a hamburger causes an animal to be killed, hamburgers come from dead animals.
Whether or not someone eats the last hamburger at a party doesn’t make a lot of difference to the beef critter that died to provide it.
Maybe it’s because I’m a hunter and a farmer, so when I eat pork chops I know that “I raised and (had) killed Maple (yes, we name them) so that I could eat these pork chops”. Or, “I shot and butchered a deer so that I could eat this Venison Wellington”. I don’t see the distinction between those and “Someone killed a steer so that I could eat this hamburger”.
True enough, and as a hunter (though not farmer) I recognize that too. But we’ve had people on this board argue that killing your own food is somehow morally inferior to going to the butcher.
Hell, back in my single days, I went on a date (ONE date, mind you) with a woman who was horrified that I hunt and lectured me on its immorality, while eating a cheeseburger.
It depends on the circumstance, eating a burger can actually be neutral or even save a animal from getting killed.
An example is someone makes too make burgers and will throw the rest out and you get one of them. In that last case you may actually decrease the killing of animals because now you don’t have to make your own burger.
Wonder how vegans/vegetarians due to animal ethics would feel about consuming no-net-kill meat.
This is why I figure it’s worse to have uneaten shrimp than it is to uneaten chicken or beef or pork. If there’s a piece of uneaten beef left on the buffet line, for example, you figure “Oh, well, they had to kill that cow anyway for all the other beef people ate.” But an uneaten piece of shrimp left on a buffet line means that little animal was killed just to make that one piece of food and then nobody ate it. It’s like his life was sacrificed for nothing.
In college back in the Olden Dayes we once invited the girls from the apartment next door over for a cookout. Stereotypically, all four boys had hamburgers or steak and all four girls brought various chicken parts.
I was dissecting my medium rare sirloin & chatting with my favorite neighbor who was eating a chicken breast with rib meat & ribs attached. This was back before Tyson had discovered the “boneless skinless” or “tender” portions of standard chicken anatomy.
She chided me for eating meat. I pointed out that my uniform slab of red fibrous stuff could have been squirted out of a machine at a factory; there was nothing about it to show it had once been part of an animal. Her meal on the other hand …
I proceeded to give a quick anatomy lesson on all the skeleton parts and cartilages in her meal, and how they were similar to the ones located here, here, and here on myself. Clearly *she *was the one eating an animal. And a pretty hefty percentage of one to boot.
She didn’t finish her meal, and needless to say I didn’t get lucky.
Seemed logical enough to me at the time. Sheesh, what are you gonna do with some folks?
