Damn tricky… Cockfighting cocks live magnificent lives: pampered, well-fed, free, and happy—except for the occasional fights. Meanwhile, factory-bred meat chickens live pretty bad lives… By “quality of life” arguments, maybe meat should be illegal…but cockfighting should be legal!
Slavery advocates didn’t seem to find it hard at all. The premise that there are some types of humans who don’t qualify for certain crucial rights that apply to humans by default was not a difficult sell for them.
AFAICT, the analogy with childhood was one of the most frequently used. The argument was that children aren’t trusted to supervise themselves, have to do what they’re told, etc., and since “those people” are mentally no better than children, then enslaving them is okay, and even necessary for their own good.
First, you haven’t come anywhere near to showing that farm animals (at least, those in feeding lots) aren’t subject to suffering. You also haven’t said what you mean by “unnecessary.” After all, if your first premise is that humans have an absolute right to eat meat, then just about any level of animal suffering could be defined as necessary. That’s certainly how some meat-eaters seem to feel about it.
Is it your claim that Americans struggle with hunger and food insecurity because there is insufficient food in the United States to feed them? Is it your argument that it would be impossible to feed everyone in the United States on a vegetarian diet? If not, then these statistics are basically irrelevant.
I’ve already said that I’ve got no problem with eating meat, but you’re not exactly making a compelling case here.
First, Jefferson was a jerk in so many ways. He was really good at writing lofty thoughts, and was a quirky visionary, but hypocrite really doesn’t even cover what he was. Virtually everything he did or said was tainted with ‘cognitive dissonance’. Tree of Liberty watered with the blood of patriots, noble yeoman farmers, what a piece of shit. But I digress!
Myself, I have zero issues with hunting for meat, or eating meat that is humanely naturally raised. I do not think it is morally wrong to take life to feed ourselves. All animals take, only plants give. We’re animals.
I do very much object to factory farming. Just about every practice in it is morally objectionable. It is degrading to the animals, the environment, the quality of the food it produces, and the people who farm that way. It enriches mega-global corporations and impoverishes everything and everyone else.
That is why I only buy meat and other animal products from non-factory-farmed sources whenever I can. But I don’t eat much meat at all. Probably four to eight meals a month have meat in them. I also get a lot of meal for the meat I use – meat is a smallish part of any meat dish I cook – plus I will always make stock from the bones. One chicken’s bones makes at least a gallon of broth. In this way I’m trying to be both frugal and thoughtful for the planet.
Highly debatable. Yes, us omnivorous human-animals can derive every nutritional need from non-animal sources, provided we have exceptional access to and vigilance at alternative food sources.
Contrary to popular belief, vegans are not especially healthy, precisely because obtaining proper nutrition without animal-based foods is so difficult, even in the 1st world in the 21st century.
Iron is found in both animals and plants, but animal-based iron is heme iron, which is utilized by the body markedly better than the non-heme iron found in plants. Few plants have appreciable amounts of even that, while any old piece of red meat has plenty of the best kind. Accordingly, studies have shown vegans typically suffer from low iron levels and / or anemia.
B12 vitamin can be bought in pill form today in affluent societies, but outside that narrow scenario, vegans are screwed. In contrast, any old piece of meat has all the B12 a person needs for a good while.
Any piece of meat, whether pork, chicken or lizard, contains all the essential amino acids human-animals need. Obtaining all the essential amino acids from plant foods requires carefully combining different plant protein sources.
Millions of people, like me and my children, have IBS-type intestinal issues that prevent us from eating vegetarian, gas-producing protein staples such as beans. We kinda have to eat meat, which is one of the few foods (alongside sugar) completely benign to our gastrointestinal tracts.
Fatty fish contain ample amounts of essential fatty acids, that are only found in select few, expensive plant foods, such as walnuts and flaxseed oil.
In short, constructing a balanced, not just sort of adequate, non-animal diet is pretty difficult, expensive and non-optimal to millions and millions of 1st world people. Eating animal-based foods means lower food bills, less time spent shopping groceries and cooking, and less intestinal distress, all the while acquiring every necessary nutrient with certainty.
If they are going to eat us, they are going to eat us, I don’t think that our practices will sway them one way or another. The only reason they would make that argument is that they want to troll their food.
Besides, I bet vegans taste better anyway.
That’s a good argument for improving our agricultural practices, I’ll agree. It’s not a good argument for ending them.
I would say that it is because there is insufficient food that is affordable.
I would say that that would likely make food more expensive, and therefore less affordable.
I wasn’t talking about children. It’s pretty obvious that there are stupider white adults than black adults. Even their own narratives of how devious a black person can be would show that they knew this.
But, more importantly, I’m not talking about what they were able to convince people at the time. I’m talking about the validity of their arguments in a more objective sense. And their arguments failed.
From what I can tell (and is usually the case in the “meat is immoral” argument) the whole point of bringing up the arguments used to justify slavery is to show they were wrong in the same way the arguments in defense of eating meat are wrong.
That’s the whole point of showing that even they knew they were human, and had to go to special lengths to come up extra rhetoric to justify mistreating them. And, even then, they didn’t actually raise them for meat and consume them.
Whether or not an argument manages to prevail in practice is IMO not a reliable guide to its “objective” moral validity.
A superior species could only morally justify eating humans if they had already done it for 30,000 years in the absence of healthy alternatives.
No, this is not true.
But indeed, if we simply stopped eating them, the animals would suffer greatly.
Do understand, these are prey animals, it is part of the circle of life for them to be eaten.
Other than the repulsiveness of trying to force your morals on the rest of the population, and the blandness of an all-plant diet, it’s would be a foolish policy to eliminate the major food source of much of the planet. Say we went into another Little Ice Age, and crops failed all over the planet. Millions would die that might have been sustained by a non-plant food supply. Besides, plants have feelings, too.
True, and unlike animals, many plants are eaten while they are still alive.
You’re begging the question. You’re treating your position as a given and telling the rest of us we have to prove you wrong. If we can’t prove there’s a moral argument for eating meat then you’ve won the argument that it’s immoral.
Consider this counter-example: I declare that wearing a hat is immoral. If you disagree, present the argument that wearing a hat is moral. If you can’t do that, then you have to concede that wearing a hat is immoral.
There’s a flaw in this argument. Most people would say that wearing a hat is neither moral or immoral. It’s an act with no moral significance. I can’t say wearing a hat must be immoral if it isn’t moral because I’m ignoring this third possibility. If I want to argue that wearing a hat is immoral, I have to start by making the argument that it is an issue in which morality applies.
The same flaw exists in your argument. You can’t start at the point of saying eating meat must be either moral or immoral. And that therefore it must be immoral if it isn’t moral. You have to go back and make the argument that eating meat is a moral issue.
Well, we are talking about forced breeding, life long captivity and slaughter of living creatures. There’s easily an argument for its immorality, wouldn’t you agree?
@k9bfriender being vegetarian is generally just more hassle rather than more expensive in North America. Vegetarians in China or India aren’t eating bland expensive food.
Not really. Don’t project human values on to animals. Is there any evidence that animals suffer due to forced breeding or life long captivity? Especially domestic animals that have no capacity to live in the wild.
As for the slaughter, I’ve already pointed out that every animal (including humans) dies at some point. Is a cow being killed in a slaughterhouse really all that much worse off that a gazelle being torn apart by a lion?
Human values? Why would you think disliking captivity is a “human value”? It’s more an animal instinct. It’s at different levels for different animals but this isn’t some value judgment. Animals have a natural range and natural curiousity. Fences restrict that, unless they are wide enough to encompass that animal’s natural range.
Your rather ugly defensiveness is even worse in that case. The OP admits they still eat meat, just less than they used to. You got a Highland dancer’s level of knee jerk going on.
How could it possibly be?