# Moral Dilemma: How Can We Eat Without Killing Anything For Food? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 26, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929 "2012-10-26T13:45:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/41 "2012-10-26T16:05:32Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Will no one think of the soil? Each and every year plant life the earth over rapes the soil of it’s nutrients. The soil is defenseless against this violent attack by plants plunging their roots deep into the soil without the soils consent and then sucking away by force what it wants giving nothing in return. > If dirt could scream it would. And if you die, weak from starvation while sticking to your moral stance of not killing anything, the various plants and animals who aren’t so burdened by such sill things will enjoy eating you with relish…and they won’t ask the relish either whether it’s ok.. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/42 "2012-10-26T16:08:11Z")
Death is a part of life, and not an evil thing. Plants **[choke each other out](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolvulus)** to survive, **[outgrow/overarch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_tree)** the other competing plants so they get the best light, and **[some](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe)** even prey on each other in order to live. Do you want to live or not? If you do, make peace with the idea that somehow, some way, things will die in order for you to survive. And not just for sustenance either. This does not mean you should stop being concientious and quit work to do no harm. But you need to find some equilibrium. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/43 "2012-10-26T16:09:52Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > Death is a part of life, and not an evil thing. Plants **[choke each other out](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolvulus)** to survive, **[outgrow/overarch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_tree)** the other competing plants so they get the best light, and **[some](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe)** even prey on each other in order to live. My god, we need to kill off these merciless bastards for self-defense purposes! I’m going out for a salad! ---
**Author:** ![JellyBeanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@JellyBeanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JellyBeanz)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/44 "2012-10-26T16:12:19Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If you’re serious, **JellyBeanz** (and I very much doubt this), please describe what you’ve eaten in the last 24 hours. I don’t know why you want to know what I have eaten in the last 24 hours but sure I will make a list of the top of my head… Soy yogurt mixed with granola. Tortilla chips and salsa. A banana smoothie with coconut milk yogurt. A vegan burger. A coconut curry with tofu and rice. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/45 "2012-10-26T16:16:09Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > My god, we need to kill off these merciless bastards for self-defense purposes! I’m going out for a salad! Awful, isn’t it? :eek: 🙂 Leave me some celery and carrots dagnabbit! You can have the radish, but I want some onion! ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/46 "2012-10-26T16:17:02Z")
> [@JellyBeanz](#): > > I don’t know why you want to know what I have eaten in the last 24 hours but sure I will make a list of the top of my head… > > Soy **yogurt** mixed with granola. > Tortilla chips and salsa. > A banana smoothie with coconut milk **yogurt**. > A vegan burger. > A coconut curry with tofu and rice. “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/47 "2012-10-26T16:17:40Z")
Worse than that, the cultivation of plants causes the slaughter of thousands of animals. Can you imagine the carnage among the meadow mice, moles, voles, shrews, and other small beings as the field is plowed? They certainly don’t run in front of the thresher warning the little bunnies to “Run away, run away!”. If you kill a grass fed cow for food you’ve extinguished one life, raising the equivalent calories by cultivation kills hundreds. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/48 "2012-10-26T16:18:24Z")
> [@JellyBeanz](#): > > I don’t know why you want to know what I have eaten in the last 24 hours Because we’re asking how serious you are about your proposals. Since you’re not practicing them, the answer appears to be not very or not at all. But your meals sound pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/49 "2012-10-26T16:18:34Z")
> [@JellyBeanz](#): > > I don’t know why you want to know what I have eaten in the last 24 hours. I wanted to know if you’re practicing what you preach. You’re not. That’s OK, of course, because it’s impossible to practice what you preach - and what you’re preaching doesn’t hold water in any case. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/50 "2012-10-26T16:19:40Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” 😃 _Lactobacillus midichlorianus_ ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/51 "2012-10-26T16:20:41Z")
The act of living means that you kill other creatures, even incidentally. You step on bugs as you walk, you crush them as you move. Growning plants means killing insects and small animals in the process. Even breathing means inhaling and killing microbes. You can be overwhelmed and paralyzed by this, but that would be pointless. You can say ‘fuck it’ and become a complete murdering sociopath, but likewise that would not be a good thing. Or you can take the Middle Path and realize that everything has it’s place in the Universe and that to live, other things must die. That for Life in general, each creatures entire purpose is in fact to feed other things. The Universe doesn’t really give a shit that you have the capacity to think about it or that you’re bothered by it. It simply is. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/52 "2012-10-26T16:25:02Z")
\*\*Moral Dilemma: How Can We Eat Without Killing Anything For Food? \*\* There is no moral dilemma. We kill to eat in order to survive. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/53 "2012-10-26T16:25:29Z")
I really think that if the OP is so concerned with the suffering caused by eating living things, she should just stop eating. Problem solved. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/54 "2012-10-26T16:26:43Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > There’s no practical way to feed the human race without exploiting other living organisms. Indeed, there’s no way to support most known forms of animal life without exploiting other living organisms. (How do serious vegetarians reconcile themselves to the realities of intestinal bacteria?) If you truly find any participation in death morally intolerable, the only acceptable course may be to stop eating and hope for reincarnation in some universe where some alternate set of physics allows for a different sort of scheme of life. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/55 "2012-10-26T16:27:05Z")
This is a moral dilemma only for moral imbeciles. ---
**Author:** ![JellyBeanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@JellyBeanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JellyBeanz)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/56 "2012-10-26T16:31:59Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > \*\*Moral Dilemma: How Can We Eat Without Killing Anything For Food? \*\* > > There is no moral dilemma. We kill to eat in order to survive. So basically your just going to give in an say “Circle of life” and “Nature is cruel”. But is doesn’t have to be. What if you could lab-grow our food from one dead source and save the lives of countless billions of plants. What if we could lab-grow animal meat for the morally inept people of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/57 "2012-10-26T16:37:14Z")
I fail to see any sort of moral issue here. If we eat meat, we’re causing harm to animals. If we eat plants, we’re causing them harm. If we wash our hands, we’re killing microbes. The point is, it is completely impossible for any lifeform that doesn’t photosynthesize to live without harming, killing, and consuming other forms of life. That it’s necessary for other lives to end for ours to exist isn’t a moral question, it is ammoral because it is how it has arisen through the process of natural selection. The point is, we’ve naturally arisen as omnivores, to consume meat and plants, and we’re no more or less moral than any other creature that does so. Yes, we have higher intellect and moral reasoning, but that application isn’t in maintaining our livelihood but rather in minimizing the suffering. Lives lower on the foodchain MUST be killed, harmed, and consumed or we must also judge any lifeform that isn’t 100% photosynthetic as imoral. But as we see, even of those creatures that consume other lifeforms, all of them kill and consume them in a reasonably efficient manner. That we have the knowledge and technology to end those lives even more efficient and less painfully, that is how we can apply morality to our needs. So, I feel no shame in consuming plants, or meat for that matter. I only hold that we should do so in a way that causes the least harm we reasonably can, with consideration for their ability to suffer. For instance, a cow or a pig must die to be eaten, but we can slaughter them quite humanely, and so we should. Fish are less developed and less able to sense pain, and in many cases it is more difficult to slaughter them as humanely, so our moral imperative is lessened. And though plants have some methods to sense damage, to call it pain on the level of a fish or a cow or a pig isn’t a fair representation and, depending on the part of the plant, it can be anything from relatively harmless to pick an apple to thoroughly destructive to harvest a potato. We do not have the same moral obligation toward protecting an apple tree from harm as we do with a slaughtered pig. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/58 "2012-10-26T16:49:47Z")
> [@JellyBeanz](#): > > So basically your just going to give in an say “Circle of life” and “Nature is cruel”. But is doesn’t have to be. > > What if you could lab-grow our food from one dead source and save the lives of countless billions of plants. What if we could lab-grow animal meat for the morally inept people of the world. So what? The world is still full of barbarians like me who not only eat meat, but we also go out and…kill it ourselves! Nothing like the rush of looking Bambi’s mother square in the eyes and then blowing her brains out with a .30-30. ---
**Author:** ![JellyBeanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@JellyBeanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JellyBeanz)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/59 "2012-10-26T16:57:53Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I fail to see any sort of moral issue here. If we eat meat, we’re causing harm to animals. If we eat plants, we’re causing them harm. If we wash our hands, we’re killing microbes. The point is, it is completely impossible for any lifeform that doesn’t photosynthesize to live without harming, killing, and consuming other forms of life. That it’s necessary for other lives to end for ours to exist isn’t a moral question, it is ammoral because it is how it has arisen through the process of natural selection. > > The point is, we’ve naturally arisen as omnivores, to consume meat and plants, and we’re no more or less moral than any other creature that does so. Yes, we have higher intellect and moral reasoning, but that application isn’t in maintaining our livelihood but rather in minimizing the suffering. Lives lower on the foodchain MUST be killed, harmed, and consumed or we must also judge any lifeform that isn’t 100% photosynthetic as imoral. But as we see, even of those creatures that consume other lifeforms, all of them kill and consume them in a reasonably efficient manner. That we have the knowledge and technology to end those lives even more efficient and less painfully, that is how we can apply morality to our needs. > > So, I feel no shame in consuming plants, or meat for that matter. I only hold that we should do so in a way that causes the least harm we reasonably can, with consideration for their ability to suffer. For instance, a cow or a pig must die to be eaten, but we can slaughter them quite humanely, and so we should. Fish are less developed and less able to sense pain, and in many cases it is more difficult to slaughter them as humanely, so our moral imperative is lessened. And though plants have some methods to sense damage, to call it pain on the level of a fish or a cow or a pig isn’t a fair representation and, depending on the part of the plant, it can be anything from relatively harmless to pick an apple to thoroughly destructive to harvest a potato. We do not have the same moral obligation toward protecting an apple tree from harm as we do with a slaughtered pig. I can’t believe you are saying its amoral to eat meat and murder living organisms. You can make an animal as comfortable as you like before killing it but you are still killing it and it’s immoral not amoral. In this day and age, we do not need to kill animals and eat them to survive. we are intelligent enough to be doing good in the world and help animals rather than kill for selfish reasons. We all have the option to eat meat, plants, or both. An intelligent person would choose an option that does not involve death to any parties. We can’t even eat vegetables and grains without millions of small animals dying in the process of harvesting crops, grounded up in machines. Pesticides and other things kill many more. You can’t eat anything now with out causing death to many. In the dairy industry cows have to get knocked up once in awhile in order to produce milk. But male calves will never grow up to produce milk, thanks to the whole being male thing. The solution is murder veal. Chickens are slaughtered and kept way worse than any other animals and it’s wrong. Factory farmed chicken is a disease-ridden, filthy meat. If you saw a chicken factory you would see featherless, broken legged birds crammed into floor-wall cages the size of hamster balls, with a conveyor belt that leads them into a killing floor where they are dropped into cones and have their necks slit. Birds are soaked in the blood of their neighbors before they are slaughtered. Carry on eating meat and think of the pain and suffering you have brought on your victims/food. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929/60 "2012-10-26T16:58:55Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > You can’t eat without killing anything. Well, wings _could_ be amputated from anesthetized chickens. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-dilemma-how-can-we-eat-without-killing-anything-for-food/638929.md?page=4)