# Killing animals for food
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [September 4, 2016, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066 "2016-09-04T22:45:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/1 "2016-09-04T22:45:27Z")
Is it right or wrong?
I have mixed feelings. I mean it just tastes so good, but I know saying that makes me a monster.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/2 "2016-09-04T22:48:05Z")
Better than eating them alive.
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### Author:  [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/3 "2016-09-04T22:57:18Z")
But it seems odd, raising so many living things only for them to be slaughtered in the end.
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/4 "2016-09-04T23:03:31Z")
I have no moral issues with eating animals. The fact is that humans are omnivores and always have been. Just because we are intelligent enough to know that we’re eating other creatures doesn’t mean we should abandon the process.
We need protein, and yes, it is available by other means. Most animals eat other animals. We are just animals ourselves and pretty close to the top of the food chain.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/5 "2016-09-04T23:30:37Z")
I don’t have a problem with killing animals for food. Early man used to hunt animals for meat. When man invented agriculture and began keeping herds of animals, it just became easier. Humans do need protein for survival, and meat is just the best source of it.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/6 "2016-09-04T23:40:31Z")
> [@running\_coach](#):
>
> Better than eating them alive.
Do you not like oysters?
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### Author:  [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/7 "2016-09-04T23:44:08Z")
Animals are routinely killed for food in nature. And have been long before there were humans. It’s the circle of fucking life. What’s the problem? It tastes good because you are a carnivore and evolved to eat meat. What crazy blog are you reading this time?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/8 "2016-09-04T23:51:41Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#):
>
> Animals are routinely killed for food in nature.
So are plants. Both plants and animals possess a thing we call ‘life’. If you kill an animal, its life force is gone. If you kill a plant, you just pour more life-force into it and it’s not dead anymore. Right?
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### Author:  [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/9 "2016-09-04T23:52:59Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> So are plants. Both plants and animals possess a thing we call ‘life’. If you kill an animal, its life force is gone. If you kill a plant, you just pour more life-force into it and it’s not dead anymore. Right?
They sell life-force by the 12 pack, right?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/10 "2016-09-05T00:03:52Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#):
>
> They sell life-force by the 12 pack, right?
I wouldn’t know. I’m not a vegetarian. 😉
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/11 "2016-09-05T00:05:39Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Do you not like oysters?
Only time I’ve eaten oysters was in a stew.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/12 "2016-09-05T00:16:56Z")
> [@running\_coach](#):
>
> Only time I’ve eaten oysters was in a stew.
You’re missing out!
(As far as cooked oysters, [charbroiled oysters](http://www.nolacuisine.com/2006/03/19/dragos-style-charbroiled-oyster-recipe/) and [oyster po’boys](http://www.saveur.com/sites/saveur.com/files/styles/large_1x_/public/import/2011/images/2011-12/7-SAV144-OysterPoBoy-400x252.jpg?itok=WGgl1YoC) are delicious.)
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### Author:  [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/13 "2016-09-05T00:18:54Z")
Every living thing dies.
It is physically impossible for us to live a single day without killing something else, even if you can’t see it.
There’s a lot of land in the world suitable only for grazing. You’re not going to grow soybeans or rice on it.
For that matter, a lot of insects, birds and small animals tend to die in the process of farming, and monoculture farming isn’t a paradise for animals even if it doesn’t kill them directly.
Animals in the wild do not live long and happy lives and die surrounded by their children. If they’re not hunted, for example, deer will die from car collisions, starvation, injury or illness. Or freeze to death in winter. Only a lucky few die of ‘old age’, and that’s more like us with no medicine, where a combination of things gets you. None of these is necessarily a more noble death.
I’m not a big fan of industrial farming because it tends to be unnecessarily cruel at times, but it is a necessity of modern life on this scale.
All of these are really my main reasons for having no problems eating meat. I lived on a farm as a teen and I’ve hunted, so I’m well aware that steaks don’t spring fully formed in the grocery store.
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### Author:  [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/14 "2016-09-05T01:09:57Z")
Some questions to ask:
> [@Machinaforce](#):
>
> Is it right or wrong?
>
> I have mixed feelings. I mean it just tastes so good, but I know saying that makes me a monster.
Q: How hungry are you?
Do you own a firearm which is legally acceptable to use for hunting in your state?
Do you have all your licenses & permits and are you in the right hunting season, inside your window of opportunity, and are you within your bag limit?
Is all of your paperwork laminated and easily seen by any game warden for inspection at any time?
Are you wearing clothes that you can literally strip off of you and hose down later (and this is before they get Anywhere Near a washing machine)?
You might need a hose down afterward too… and before you set foot inside of your home. You may need a change of clothes bag in your garage for after all of the hard work, after your first scrub-down, and before you step inside your home too.
Do you have both the equipment and the fortitude to kill and then gut an animal quickly… with knives, cleavers and saws… to wrap up the usable meat before it spoils, and to bury the rest so it doesn’t rot, draw flies, and/or possibly spread disease?
Is your vehicle prepared to carry bloody shanks of meat home with you without destroying the carpet or the upholstery?
Do you have a clean work table home to further prep the meat before freezing it?
Do you have a separate freezer to freeze the meat in and did you clean it spotless before you went hunting?
Do you have a special “skunk can” garbage can that you can drop your Hefty bags into?
(You are going to have to clean up the left over parts and bits and hefty bag them as well as hose off the table and the floor. You’ll also have to scrub that table and floor down later with Bleach and Lysol as well as your car/truck. No, Really.)
Are you going to Use all of that meat? All of it, I mean. If not, do you have friends who will and do they have freezer space for it?
Its a lot of hard work, study and prep work that into go hunting; at least it is anywhere within several states of me.
That is the question you are asking, right?
Look, you’re right, I have no hunting experience. Still, after gutting, scaling, and filleting 4-5 ice chests of (best guess 40 or 50) blue fish, I kind of get a small portion of some of the hard work that it has to involve.
You Will throw away clothes… and maybe sneakers too.
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### Author:  [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/15 "2016-09-05T01:14:42Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#):
>
> But it seems odd, raising so many living things only for them to be slaughtered in the end.
At least it gives their lives a purpose. Unlike mine.
Excuse me while I go watch some more Swedish movies.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/16 "2016-09-05T01:54:22Z")
FWIW, fake meats are getting better and better every year. Mock duck is truly yummy. It probably won’t be long till genetically modified yeasts can produce actual animal proteins, at which point the difference really starts to fade.
Meanwhile, we’ve made (and continue to make) great progress in making farming and ranching less cruel. There are still abuses, but we’re ahead of where we were.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/17 "2016-09-05T02:35:44Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#):
>
> At least it gives their lives a purpose. Unlike mine.
Your life has a purpose: to sustain the flora and fauna that will feast off your body when you’re dead … who will, in turn, provide sustenance to other life that feasts off them.
Unless, of course you’re cremated (assuming, of course, you’re not lactose-intolerant).
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### Author:  [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/18 "2016-09-05T02:37:28Z")
Another chapter from TheForbiddenTruth manifesto for our perusal?
Man was a hunter gatherer (note the hunter part), the easily digestible nature of cooked meat is supposedly one of the things that led to our advanced mental development. Then we learned domestication. So it’s something humans have been practicing since before we had a written history, and it’s one of the reasons we are what we are today.
Don’t like it? Become a vegetarian/vegan.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/19 "2016-09-05T02:44:16Z")
I’m a vegetarian because I hate vegetables and want them all to die. Is that morally wrong?
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-animals-for-food/765066/20 "2016-09-05T02:46:21Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#):
>
> At least it gives their lives a purpose. Unlike mine.
> [@panache45](#):
>
> Your life has a purpose: to sustain the flora and fauna that will feast off your body when you’re dead … who will, in turn, provide sustenance to other life that feasts off them.
My _living_ human body contains around 3 times as many microorganisms as human cells, each a little independent life of its own, entirely dependent on me for its survival.
> **[List of human microbiota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiota#Relative_numbers)**
>
> Human microbiota are microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea) found in a specific environment. They can be found in the stomach, intestines, skin, genitals and other parts of the body. Various body parts have diverse microorganisms. Some microbes are specific to certain body parts and others are associated with many microbiomes. This article lists some of the species recognized as belonging to the human microbiome and focuses on the oral, vaginal, ovarian follicle, uterus and th Th...
So for me, it’s simple utilitarian ethics. If by eating a single cow I can sustain the life of 100 trillion bacteria, I would have to be some kind of genocidal monster to refuse to eat that cow (medium rare, preferably, green salad with balsamic dressing on the side; or some nice asparagus if it’s in season).
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