Really!? That seems insane to me, but here in recent posts we have people positing that there is such a thing as “no-net-kill meat” and that there is a moral distinction between wasting part of an animal vs. wasting an entire animal.
Well, duh, because her cheeseburger was already dead, it’s not like she had anything to do with it! 
Yeah, and when you eat a salad, you cause plants to die!
Come to think of it, when you eat an animal, you cause plants to die, too! Is there no way out of this madness?
I think I’ll just stand over here and try to photosynthesize.
When I was a kid we always had Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ house.
Grandpa always did the invocation in a profoundly secular fashion as fit everyone’s beliefs. And first on the list to be thanked was “the bird who gave his/her all for our meal”. Which never failed to get a groan from Grandma who had just spent umpteen hours converting said bird into said feast. Not that she thought she deserved first billing for all her work, merely that pointing out the dead bird was unseemly.
To this day when I do a formal dinner we have an invocation for the dearly deceased donor.
and when you eat plants, you cause some animals to die what with all the tilling of the ground and disposing of vermin.
There’s no way to win.
This post should not go unnoticed. Well played, sir. 
I only eat meat from animals that committed suicide. I get my fur coats that way too.
Yeah. Might as well shoot your neighbor as well. I mean, you’re always causing something do die, so there’s no point in drawing meaningful distinctions.
In the immortal words of “Cows with Guns” Cows With Guns - The Original Animation - YouTube
…
They eat to grow
grow to die
die to be et at the hamburger fry
On the topic of the Simpsons: "I’m a level 5 vegan. I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow. "
How can my eating it now cause an animal to have died in the past?
It could cause another one in the future, to replenish the supply chain.
You’re including the supply chain in your thinking, which is…misleading?
If there were not a network of supermarkets, trucking companies, slaughterhouses, CAFOs, etc available, and you wanted to eat a hamburger, you would have to kill a cow or steer (it occurs to me that we are sincerely lacking in a singular form for “cattle”) to get a hamburger.
The fact that those things exist to supply you with a pre-made hamburger for 99¢ at the drive-thru is a matter of convenience, but it doesn’t nullify your culpability.
Here’s an even simpler explanation, now that I’m thinking about it, how could you be eating it now if it hadn’t died in the past?
True, but when I eat a hamburger, there is not some philosophical future cow that is dying to provide it, there is a real dead cow. It died because someone anticipated that I (or you, or Frylock) would want a hamburger.
Therefore, by eating hamburgers we are culpable for the death of the animals that provide them, because we have created the demand.
They say “it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters.”
Ludovic!
Did you read the OP?
I am not sure what you mean when you refer to my including the supply chain in my thinking. I included it in my later thinking–that’s what led me to see I’m causing animal deaths usually when I eat meat. But I did not include it in my former thinking.
To clarify, and summarize the OP:
My former thinking was: The animal is already dead, so eating it does not cause its death. There’s no other relevant animal to think about than the one that died to make this meat, therefore, when one eats a piece of meat, one does not thereby cause an animal death. (Animal deaths are necessary for meat eating, but the eating of the meat does not cause the death.)
Does that clear up how one can reasonably think eating a piece of meat does not cause an animal death? That was what you said you were baffled by.
New thinking: When I buy this meat to eat it, I cause a hole in the supply chain which will propagate back to the source, issuing in the death of another animal. Hence, eating meat usually does cause animal deaths.
The new thinking is where I start taking the supply chain into account.
Best Username/Post combo I’ve seen in a while! Well played!
Yeah right Lisa, a wonderful “magical” animal.
Of course it doesn’t. The animal was only killed because of the anticipation that people like us would want to eat them. They didn’t kill the cows on the vague hope that someone would eat them, they had past demand to prove to them that we would. By eating the burger you prove them right.
Are you guys familiar with the idea that there is no such thing as backward causation? In other words, the idea that no effect can precede its cause in time?
Do you see the relevance here?