That is true, but all of your examples requires that we justify it to ourselves with a cost-benefit analysis. Those things are so useful that nearly everyone uses them.
Meat abstention, therefore, likewise requires a justification.
I see no reason that I should be the one who needs to justify myself before Vegans. WHy don’t YOU try justifying yourself to me, huh?
Disclaimer: I’m an ovolactopescovegetarian, if you can even call me a vegetarian at all.
The basic moral argument I’ve seen for veganism is as follows:
This is a combination of Peter Singer’s preference-based utilitarian arguments and Tom Reagan’s rights-based arguments. Reagan would phrase point #1 differently, but I think they’d agree on the rest.
Again, I’m not vegan. But I think the above argument might offer something more substantial for the debate. Probably points #1 and # may be attacked most productively. 
Daniel
My wife is a vegetarian. Not for any philosophical or ethical reason, she just got out of the habit when she was in grad school and couldn’t afford meat. She has no problem whatever with anyone else eating meat, including me and our children.
But I have a bit of a problem with the ethical vegetarians who believe that, not only should they not eat meat, neither should anyone else. A person who asks those of us who do eat meat for an ethical justification for our doing so may fall into that category. If I am doing jelasafork a disservice here, I apologize in advance, and ask that my remarks be taken to apply to those who do in fact fall into that category.
The arguments put out by the “everyone should be a vegetarian” crowd are qualitatively no different than the strong anti-abortion crowd: “We believe that (having an abortion/eating meat) is immoral, for the following reasons, and that we don’t want you to do it.”
Either group is seeking to impose its own morality on the rest of us.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There were reaons for eating meat in the winter, before modern technology:
There weren’t enough plants to keep the people or animals alive. Killing an animal is preferable to slow starvation and/or freezing to death (yours or the animals).
The meat could be kept frozen in winter.
People had to keep a fire going in the winter, so cooking was easy.
Before central heating, people needed the added animal fat to help keep warm.
None of these reasons applies now.
Personally, I see no reason why either group need justify themselves. The eating of meat or not is a personal ethical decision. It is a matter for each human’s conscience, after individual contemplation. It is not something that requires endless discussion. I’ve never understood why it generates such.
Whether you see no problem with the eating of meat or not, make your decision, go to it and tend your own gardens before you start weeding other people’s.
pan
Disclaimer: I am vegetarian. I have made a deal with everyone I know: I won’t look at your food and say “Eew, I can’t believe you’re eating that”, and you pay me the same respect. You’d be surprised how many people have trouble with this. Anyhoo …
I understand that it’s impolite to push your beliefs on someone else. But I think by concentrating on the “ethical” vegetarians we’re missing an important point: what about people who don’t eat meat for environmental reasons? The farming of fish, for instance, has huge costs both for natural fish populations and for the ocean ecology. Your purchase (and subsequent consumption) of farmed salmon has a direct impact on the environment, that’s quite different from the impact on my ethical standpoint. This I liken more to the SUV debate - “Stop driving/eating that, it’s destroying my environment.” (Of course, that debate always turns into a train wreck so I am wary of beginning it here. Consider it … um … “food” for thought.)
The same could be said for a lot of kinds of meat: pig farms release a lot of nasties into the local environment, animal feed tends to use up a lot of resources that would be more efficiently used for human feed, etc. Of course this is not true for all pigs or all cows, but until we can know the conditions of every cow we ever eat we will have to accept that our diet probably contributes to this environmental harm in some way.
For what it’s worth, BlackKnight’s answer is also my own. I have an explicit ethical consideration for any being that’s capable of having an explicit ethical consideration for me. This happens not to include any nonhuman beings, so I have no problem with killing them and using their flesh for my own purposes. If you show me a cow with an opinion (any opinion) on the social contract, I won’t eat it. Neither, however, will I feel bad about eating anything else.
**
I am not aware of any rational consistent ethical system where this requires a justification.
What’s wrong with killing animals for food. It seems like a good thing to me, and, I assure you, my ethical system is both rational and consistent.
What about them? It is still rude to criticize other people’s choice of automobile, their taste in food, or their taste in clothing, whether you do it to demonstrate your superior ethics or your superior environmental conciousness.
You are free to advocate your position in an appropriate forum, or to advocate for the passage of legislation supporting your beliefs. But then don’t complain about the anti-abortion crowd doing the same thing.
^^^ Ah the old ‘it’s ok to eat them because we’re superior’ excuse!
So, if you owned a puppy or kitten you’d eat that to?
And by BlackKnight’s justification, it would be ok to eat very young children too.
Well, sure, they’re qualitatively the same, but they’re also qualitatively the same as arguments that “nobody should eat human infants.” Folks who argue against being an infantivore are also seeking to impose their morality on everyone, right?
Pointing out that some vegetarians want to legislate their dietary restrictions does not, by itself, invalidate what they’re trying to do. If they make the argument that animals deserve the same amount of protection against killing that infants deserve, you need to address that argument.
(Note that AR folks use infants and the severely brain-damaged as counterexamples to avoid social contract theory arguments)
Daniel
Yes, precisely. That is what I said. Please understand that casting your reply in inflammatory or argumentative language (viz., the substitution of “excuse” for “explanation”) does not, itself, constitute an argument, much less a refutation.
If I owned a puppy or a kitten as a pet, I would not consume it, for reasons of my own psychological well-being (what with my own emotional attachment to the animal). I have absolutely no problem with anyone eating dogs or cats if they wish to, though I myself have not ever done so.
I’m going to speak for myself here, and BlackKnight can agree with me, or not, on his own initiative.
It happens that the explanation that I gave above, for my own ethical take on consuming meat, is incomplete. There is a missing principle, which fact you have found and siezed on, but you have not acknowledged the fact of its incompleteness. I would not eat a very young child, because I presume, through long experience with very young children, that they will likely grow into adults with the moral sensibility that I have discussed. It would be wrong, therefore, to see them as food simply because their moral code has not yet developed, if it might in fact do so. For this purpose, even a child with Down’s syndrome would not qualify as food, since they can learn to respect the boundaries of others’ existence.
On the other hand, I would eat even the infant young of those animals that I would freely consume. This is because, through long experience with the young of such animals, I know that not one has ever exhibited a code of social morality, at any stage of its life. It is always possible, of course, that I am consuming the one super-genius veal cow that would lead its entire species to enlightenment, but in fact the past history of such species shows that this can be safely ignored as a moral consideration, unless one has specific knowledge that this is the case for a specific individual. In any other case (to date, this is all of them, for the last 10,000 years or so), one can safely ignore such considerations, with a clean conscience.
Why? How is someone else’s diet affecting you, and why do you require a “justification” for it? (Reminder: I didn’t start the OP. I am not asking for any “justifications” from anyone.)
The OP (if anyone) is asking for a justification. Not me. All I want to refute is the idea that vegetarianism is unnatural, as if that’s a bad thing. My question is, so what if it is “unnatural”? A jillion things are unnatural, and we still do them anyway.
Why should I? I’m not saying that eating meat is unnatural. kanicbird (and apparently you) are the ones claiming that not eating meat is “unnatural” and that vegetarianism requires a “justification”.
I agree with what you wrote, which was written much better than I probably could have managed.
It’s also worth noting that there exist people with medical conditions that mean that they cannot be healthy on a vegetarian diet, let alone a vegan one. (Not just allergies, but allergies are included within this.) I know someone whose diet consists largely of meat and rice because of medical issues. He tends to get all using-very-small-words at people who suggest that he add wheat and soy and dairy (and whatever other things he can’t eat that I disremember) to his diet.
(I will add a note that, while this comment is taken within a framework in which the OP’s presumption that justification needs to be made is given, I do not happen to share that presumption; I don’t subscribe to that religion.)
Sure “our diet contributes to this environmental harm in some way”- but that includes even Vegans. Farming of veggies can be as harmful to the environment as ranching- note the “great dust bowl”, “pesticide run off” and many other problems with growing food crops.
The dudes “who don’t eat meat for ethical (or religious) reasons” are sitting pretty good as far as being provenwrong goes, although we can point out hypocrisies & inconsistancies in their viewpoint (as the Vegitarians can do to us- the Omnivores). But they can’t be shown to be wrong, as can the PETAites and their bogus claim that animal raising for food is worse for the environment than farming is. Sure, salmon ranching hurts the environment- so does salmon fishing. So does Kelp gathering. If you define human use as outside the “environment” (which is bogus- humans are as much a part of the “evironment” as a butterfly is) then ALLhuman usage is “damaging to the environment”.
“Animal feed” does NOT “use up a lot of resources that would be more efficiently used for human feed”. Have you tried grazing much? Cattle graze- on grass. True, they are fattened up on corn- but they also use a lot of by-products that would otherwise go to waste. And the corn is a special high yeild corn you wouldn’t like, that is grown in sub-par land. Thus, it doesn’t take cron out of the mouths of humans.
Pig farms do “release a lot of nasties into the environment”. So does agriculture. Pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, etc.
then again- grain & such is bulky to move around & distribute. There is enough food in the world- it is mainly that we can’t distribute it. Note shots of relief food sitting on docks. Meat is highly concentrated nutrition, and thus easier to move.
Vegitarianism is unatural ? Bah. Perfectly natural. Well, unless you define any diet other than the one we were adapted for as “unnatural”- in which case we all eat an “unatural” diet- with the possible exception of some Australian Bushmen. We get far too much meat, fats & sweets in a modern omnivore diet- not to mention vitamins. “Scurvy” is natural- “vitamin C” is not. 
Trust me Dudes- you wouldn’t like a “natural” diet- unless the sort of things they fed the dudes on Survivor last week are what you want to eat- every damn day. Yep- grubs, bugs, lizards, nuts, roots… and once in a great while a great huge feast of half-charred & half raw meat. Yum.
Oh- and you are old at 30, and die around 40- and are lucky if you have one good tooth when you do. Fun.
(OK, I will admit some of the more extreme forms of Vegan-ism are, well…extreme , but…)
Well, I’m not smiling bandit, but here goes:
The decision to stop eating meat requires a justification. In fact, any decision requries a justification. When you (the general you, no yourself in particular) stopped eating meat, you must ahd had a reason, right? You don’t have to tell me what it is. You don’t have to justify yourself to me, or to anyone else. You can go on living your life as you see fit, and do things for whatever reason you want. But don’t you need a reason, an impetus, some stimulus to stop eating meat?
And in a debate, that’s what we discuss. the reasoning behind the positions you hold. At least, that’s how I debate things (with myslef and others): What’s your position? Now, why do you hold that position?
In ordinary life, you can do whatever you want. But you’ve got to have some reason for doing the things you do, even if that reason is just ‘I felt like it’. This isn’t to say you have to explain yourslef to the world, though.
Unless you join a debate about the topic at hand. Then your reasons will be questioned.
If those are satisfactory, why would you keep looking?
yosemitebabe I see your point Re: natural, sometimes I consider plastics natural because man in natural and has naturally evolved to manufacture them. So perhaps natural is too impersise a word.
Also except for my involvment in kittens (I just lost 2 btw - I work w/ an animal shelter), I would see nothing wrong eating them, nor puppies, nor rodents nor insects - though I choose not to. Also it might be better to let the kittens grow into cats and puppies into dogs since the grow fast and a cat is about 10 times the weight of a kitten, assuming the same for dogs - but that’s besides the point.
I would say we have to look into our past and assumed evolutionary past to see what our diet was and is to perdict where it’s going. This is a better statement then ‘natural’
From ape like primate to modern man I think a trend is to eat more meat. There is only a decline in meat when we went from a hunter-gatherer society to a agricultural society. If this means a evolutionary shift back to herbavore I don’t know.
It may be possilbe but not fun. On Dr Atkins radio show he stated vegitarians could follow it with some difficultity but there is not enough choices with vegan. All of his vegan patients who tried failed becasue there was not enough selection - they had to choose between lowcarb and veganism. Some gave up low carb, some shifted to vegitarian, some dropped veganism altogether (no %'ags mentioned as to how many went each route IIRC).
This sounds like the recommended lowcarb salad.
In general green vegitables are encouraged on low-carb while starchy vegi’s and grains (including corn which is a grain BTW) are not allowed. Fruit is also not allowed. I would assume that the exclusion of these 2 catagories would make a vegans diet very lacking.
I did think that bread, pasta and flour plays an importaint part of a vegan’s diet, you seem to indicate I’m wrong.
Suffering is not pain but the ‘dwelling on pain’, We know that higher animals (cows, pigs) can feel pain but do we actually know that they suffer? I would think it takes a certain level of conscieness for sufferign that animals might not have.
Also would it make a difference if the animal was somehow instantly put to death w/o pain (or suffering)?
In the utilitarian arugmant it would be needed to place the human and cow(or pig) in some sort of heirarachy, if you consider them equal then you would come to a different conclusion then if you place man above cows.
The compairison I see is with veganism you are putting a animal life against a human life - which they boil down to life against life, while pro-life people are putting human life against (what they very dearly believe is) human life. Also you get into the matter that one is needed for life to continue (gaining nutrition) and the other is (and some are going to hate me for this, but I call em as I see me) a matter of convienence.
I think there is a bigger moral issue when it comes to the treatment of humans and their offspring then animals. but It’s an interesting analogy, if for nothign else just to put militent veganism in perspective.
Yes but this is after man migrated to places that actually had winter.
Don’t even listen to Yosemitebabe. She’s already admitted to wearing shoes and flying in airplanes. What further evidence you need of the unnatural depravity of vegetarians, I can’t imagine. (just joking. The rest of this is directed at Militant vegans only)
But, as another answer to the OP, the answer is NO. I CANNOT GET ALL THE NUTRITION I NEED FROM A VEGETARIAN DIET!
I am 200 pounds of manly muscular meat. I lift weights and run marathons. I run 30-50 miles a week. I eat stupendous quantities of gfood to fuel this magnificent machine that is my body through the joyful whirlwind that is my life. I use my body as much as I possibly can.
I don’t count but I imagine that I consume between 5-10,000 calories a day.
My activity level is unusual for most Americans, but it is not necessarily this way in the rest of the world. Just because you do not need to consume animal flesh to maintain yourself doesn’t mean that the rest of the world doesn’t.
The rest of the world isn’t made up of lank wispy people who sit on their asses all day philosophizing about the rights of food. The rest of the world is made up of hard working people who engage in physical activity to support themselves… and you.
The question isn’t what should I eat for quite a bit of the world, the question is can I get enough food in any quantity to support myself. If you’ve ever physically worked your ass off while you were hungry you’d understand the relationship between fuel and activity.
To most people on the planet this is a phenomenom that they are intimately familiar with on a day to basis.
Just because you are privileged enough that you have a choice, and that you have not experienced the relationship I describe, don’t presume that your lack of experience in this matter gives you the right to dictate moral terms to the rest of us.
I live a very physical life and I’m a big guy. I would not be able to do what I do on a vegetarian diet.