Absolutely right, food animals should not be subjected to unnecessary suffering. We have laws that cover this.
Yes, yes, it is a very controversial view since 90% of American eat meat.
This is absolutely false. The South was pushing hard to allow more slave states into the Union. Lincoln was elected NOT on a abolitionist platform, but on a platform to stop the expansion of slavery.
And of course there is the rights of the slaves themselves.
Domestic abusers are clearly abusing another human.
Dogfighters are being unnecessarily cruel to animals. They are being cruel for fun, not for food.
And I wanna point out that Michael Vick, convicted for dog fighting, went on to be hired by the Eagles in 2009 then the New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers, and had a large rabid fanbase, and was sponsored by Nike. So, that makes millions of football fans, three teams and a shoe company all of whom decided that dogfighting is “perfectly OK”. Vick should never have worked in professional sports after that.
Myself, hearing how he “trained” his dogs, would have subjected Vick to the same sort of thing the victim dogs were subjected to.
Does the OP feel that animals that eat meat are immoral? Or does the concept of morality apply to animals?
If you accept that sharks or lions can eat meat without being immoral, why can’t humans?
If you feel that a different standard applies to humans, then you’re accepting that animals are not like humans, which weakens the argument against eating them.
I am one hundred percent sure this will be the case. That day will come. (I am defining “meat” as being from an animal, not meat grown in labs that was never part of a sentient being.)
I still eat meat. Can’t bear not to.
?? Nothing I said contradicted this, so you haven’t demonstrated that anything I said was “false”. I wasn’t talking about antebellum party politics, but simply about the resentment that many slaveholders felt for the mere existence of abolitionist disapproval of slaveholding.
Well, I think the OP’s point was that carnivory is likewise unnecessarily cruel to animals when practiced by people who don’t need meat for healthy nutrition. Most meat-eating in a modern developed society is more “for fun”, that is, for a particular type of taste experience, than for nutritional necessity.
Mind you, I’m not trying to meat-shame you or anything, I’m a non-vegetarian myself. I just think that it’s not implausible that you and I will end up definitively on the wrong side of history here, and spending our time now coming up with elaborate ethical defenses of why we’re not wrong, dammit!, is just going to make us look more like a horse’s ass in the eyes of future historians.
Yes, and for enslaving dolphins and chimps, and maybe for not letting them vote. Trust me, we will all be immoral scum in the light of 2200 highsight- assuming that isnt a post apocalyptic dystopia where we are looked upon for being ivory tower overly fragile people cause we dont eat people.
Industrialized animal farming for food is inherently unnecessary because people don’t need to eat animal products.
The logic is uncontroversial, the conclusion is controversial because most people (including me) either accept their own immorality or have cognitive dissonance.
Humans have canine teeth designed for eating meat. Our eyes are close together, to give us binocular vision; whereas herbivores’ eyes are far apart, to increase the chances that they will see predators. Our digestive system is set up to handle meat.
How could anybody take a look at the human body and conclude that a vegetarian diet is logical or desirable?
Maybe, although I think the argument for “give highly developed non-human animals exactly the same basic rights as humans” is always going to seem less self-evident than “don’t kill and eat non-human animals when you don’t need to”.
I think we can just accept that we all make some morally ambiguous choices—some of which may be condemned by a more enlightened future society in the same way that we currently condemn abusive practices like slavery and dogfighting—without defensively ruffling our feathers up and pre-emptively mocking our potential future critics for their ridiculous “wokeness”. Or constructing elaborate rationalizations for why our own current choices are obviously and unassailably morally justifiable.
I look back at neolithic man and don’t find his probable meat consumption disturbing, independent of the absence of Snackwells or tofu. And if future generations have concerns about the environment, meat is hardly the only demand placed upon it. Decent people minimize cruelty, to be sure. There is something of a precedent to people enjoying meat. Reasonable alternatives to this are, in biological terms, very recent.
Sure, I don’t think the OP or anybody else is arguing that the meat-eating practices of prehistoric humans are in any way morally indefensible.
Was there consensus at the time that slavery was immoral, or were there still many people who believed owning slaves was not immoral? Many people believed that black people were “lesser beings” unworthy of rights, much as it seems people nowadays see animals. Of course, animals clearly ARE inferior in ways that black people are not, so raising and eating animals is clearly not on the same level as slavery. Yet, I feel like given what we know about biology, it is pretty clear that mammals feel pain in a very similar way that humans do. I guess that is what I am trying to understand - for those who do not believe eating meat is immoral, why do they not believe, at a minimum, causing death and/or pain to an animal is a bad thing to do? Is is that people think it IS a bad thing to cause pain, but the good gained from the nutrition/enjoyment gained from eating the meat outweighs the bad, so that ultimately it is a net good?
So much of what humans do is unnatural that this seems like a pretty weak defense to me. Why do people get mad at their partners cheating on them when monogamy is unnatural?
I hear you, and I feel like most people have convinced themselves in one way or another that eating meat is fine. I mean, I still eat meat even though I think it’s wrong. But I can’t help but think eating meat is a selfish thing to do - that pretty much everyone does. I put it on a similar level to, say, flying around the world for fun. It contributes to climate change, which I think most on this forum agree is a bad thing, but my enjoyment from travelling overrides my understanding that it has a negative impact.
I’m not trying to push my morals on anyone - as I mentioned, I still eat meat. I’m just trying to understand WHY people think that there’s nothing inherently wrong with causing pain to animals.
No, I don’t think carnivorous animals that kill other animals are acting immorally. Animals don’t have the mental capacity to have concepts of right and wrong, while humans do. I do think that if they were as mentally and technologically advanced as humans and had the capability of growing or synthesizing food that allowed them to survive without killing others (especially if that method used fewer resources than growing meat), then I would think they would be acting immorally by continuing to kill animals to enjoy eating their meat.
I fully agree that animals are different than humans, but that doesn’t mean that I think it is right for humans to kill animals for pleasure - which, ultimately, is what eating meat is (the pleasure of the taste of meat).
While I agree dogfighting and meat eating are on different levels, I see it as a difference of degree, not in nature. I think eating meat is primarily for pleasure as opposed to sustenance (humans can easily get their nutrition from non-meat options these days).
That’s pretty much where I’m at right now.
No, but the relativity of it may come up in deciding what future generations think of us. Me, I think they’ll come down harder on Trump supporters.
Are there really people out there that are kept awake at night worrying about what some jerkoff in 3010 thinks of what they ate for breakfast?
Yes, we do, there is no vegan source of B12 . And our food economy is set up so that we have to. Not to mention, when you do Industrialized plant farming for food you must kill billions of animals. Insects, nematodes, etc. Likely more animals die than from meat farms. But nematodes and bugs arent cute, so it’s Ok for them to die, I guess.
Ok, let us assume we declare a Vegan paradise. Millions of poor kids get calcium, protein and vitamin D deficiencies as milk is the cheapest way to get those. Kids die. Poor kids. Is that OK? Sure there are substitutes, but they are expensive. I think having poor kids die is quite a bit more immoral than killing animals raised solely for food- for food
Then, what do we do with the 70 million beef cattle? You cant turn them loose, that would be a environmental disaster. So, we- the taxpayers- have to make perfect little homes for them all, and feed them corn, etc- food that we will now need. Once they die they will rot and pollute. And then the 20 Million milk cows, we have to milk them daily then dispose of that milk. Not to mention the 500 million chickens. We have to keep feeding them, and move them to nicer homes. What do we do with all the eggs?
Then, of course, human food sources will fail, since keeping bees is "slavery. " Without beehives the honeybee will likely die out along with every food plant that depends on them for pollination.
Sure, high quality protein can be gotten for vegan sources- at a very high cost. We do need to eat meat since the substitutes are expensive and we dont grow enuf of them- and no, we cant "just grow more’ since we need all the land to grow food for those unemployed meat animals. Poor people and the homeless die in droves. Can we eat them?
People starve, but that’s Ok, since we are moral.
The argument that eating meat is immoral is totally bogus. It doesnt hold water.
We blame people only 200 years ago for being immoral bastards since they dont hold up to our current moral standards.
Natural is might makes right. In terms of whether or not something is moral depends on applying logic to sets of axioms. Problem is that different people accept different sets.
From my point of view, I don’t think eating most species is wrong. I think at a certain level of average species intellect the critter should be off the menu.
My moral defense for eating animals is that it’s not immoral to eat animals.
Yep. Exactly.
If a superior species arrived/developed on earth what moral principles would you appeal to for your survival?