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Zeusthecat

Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

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The concept of privilege is a thing that is discussed a lot on these forums. Being in a position of privilege myself, I do my best to try to recognize how I am privileged and how it informs my perception of the world. As I've been thinking about this I realized that there is a privilege almost all humans share: the capability to assert ourselves over animals and consume them. People of all genders and ethnicities, the rich, the poor, the educated, and the uneducated almost all consume meat.

 

Why is this? Why do we fight for gender equality and fight to end racism but we feel perfectly comfortable subjugating and consuming various species of animals? We certainly don't need to consume animals to survive and would in fact be healthier overall if we didn't (goodbye heart disease). We waste vast amounts of land and food raising animals and only get a fraction of food in return. Not to mention, the harm to the environment that is done by us continually trying to raise and harvest enough animals to keep up with the demand (pollution caused by cattle is an easy one to point to).

 

Either there is a good, logical explanation that I am failing to see or we have just decided that that is a change that is too much effort to make.

 

And to be clear, I am not trying to pass judgment here. While I did decide to go vegan a couple years ago (and then reverted back to just vegetarianism because too many people are fucking assholes towards people who choose to eat differently than them), my wife eats meat, we are raising our kids with meat in their diet, and almost every influential person in history has consumed meat. It is just a fact of life. I am just curious to see what people around these parts think about this. To me it is interesting to reflect on why we expect people in a position of privilege to recognize that privilege and stop "punching down" while we refuse to do the same when it comes to consuming meat.

 

And sorry for another topic like this. I guess I'm just in the mood for uncomfortable debates lately.

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Animals ain't people, it's as simple as that.

Now, you might discuss to what degree life dissimilar to human life deserves to be respected, but I don't think that the current means of discussing progressive issues such as gender equality, anti-racism, various privileges, etc. are ideal to conduct that discussion, since the underlying thought of most of these is that for instance, women are not in fact less inteligent than men, black people not naturally more prone to violence than white people and I doubt you'd get many people to agree with you that the same is true for chickens.

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I eat very little meat nowadays, such as when I've been invited for dinner at someone else's house or if I can't find any restaurants that have any vegetarian alternatives. This decrease has mostly come from me (and my family) taking offense to the way that the meat industry are raising most of their animals, rather than a opposition to the act of eating meat itself. I certainly recognize the other factors here as well (environmental, health etc) but the fact that they're treated so poorly is the big one for me.

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Animals ain't people, it's as simple as that.

 

I agree that that's pretty much the gist of it but are there not some parallels to other social issues that we face? I realize this isn't totally apt but I could see someone make a similar statement along the lines of "women aren't men" or something like that.

 

If you really think about it, how much more acceptable is it for us to have that viewpoint about animals than it is for one segment of humans to have a similar viewpoint towards another segment of humans.

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Meat is delicious. If it wasn't made to be eaten it wouldn't have been delicious.

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I think the majority of us eat meat because it is convenient due to the current food-supply infrastructure. I have a hard time believing that we will be eating meat on the moon or on Mars.

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Meat is delicious. If it wasn't made to be eaten it wouldn't have been delicious.

In my experience, all the pleasurable flavors come from the seasoning. I do enjoy the texture though.

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I think the majority of us eat meat because it is convenient due to the current food-supply infrastructure. I have a hard time believing that we will be eating meat on the moon or on Mars.

 

Absolutely. Which is why I think it's an interesting paradigm to consider and strengthens the comparison to other social issues. Isn't that a big reason why people refuse to challenge their own views on sexism, racism, etc.? Because it is convenient for them not to?

 

I'm not trying to go for some grand statement here, I just think this is a really useful thing to reflect on when trying to navigate all of the other social issues we face.

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Ho boy, here we go. *cracks my vegan knuckles*

I'm glad you covered the good reasons for being vegetarian

the moral - which is personal and totally debatable

the health - which is a little debatable but overall seems to be of benefit particularly as a change from common western diets

and the environmental - which is a not at all debatable waste of resources for types of food that are not particularly more beneficial than plant food.

 

Either there is a good, logical explanation that I am failing to see or we have just decided that that is a change that is too much effort to make

The latter is certainly one of the big ones. I think inertia more than anything else makes people reluctant.

 

Convenience is impacted by being veg*n, which is a way that can interrupt a specific attempt to strictly shift your diet. If you go into it feeling like you need to make a strict change but then when you go out to eat and all they offer is meat, it might shake your resolve to continue at all.

 

I think also a very strong point is that other animals can't advocate for their own fair treatment. Humans could advocate for them, but when a human tells you the story of Gertrude the cow, it does just come off as quite laughable. When you hear the heartbreaking story of a black woman and her struggle you can feel closer to her as a human that you could of the poor cow that is essentially in slavery.

 

People do make the argument that animals are just not as intelligent. That totally depends on your definition of intelligence, and it's worth noting that often intelligence was used as a justification for the subjugation of indigenous people by European empires. Intelligence is also ill defined for humans, let alone other animals. Also would you realistically say that humans who are less intelligent are undeserving of life? What if they were brain dead?

 

I doubt you'd get many people to agree with you that the same is true for chickens.

 

I personally don't see that as a good reason to give up though, and also people don't need to see non human animals as equals to us to want to lessen unnecessary suffering of them.

 

Human meat is delicious. If it wasn't made to be eaten it wouldn't have been delicious.

 

 

EDIT: This last note is unrelated to the quote above, which I just quoted and edited a little.
Final annoying pedant note: Humans are animals. If you want to be totally correct you'd have to refer to all other animals as nonhuman animals. But now that I've said that most people can just be aware of the distinction and continue to use the technically incorrect term but recognise the difference

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I eat meat because I don't like the taste of most vegetables.

 

Actually I don't like the taste of most meats, either, if I'm really pressed. But I can tolerate most meats, whereas when I don't like a non-meat, it's because it's a gross ass-taste like an ass all up in my mouth, making me taste it, and I hate it.

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Final annoying pedant note: Humans are animals. If you want to be totally correct you'd have to refer to all other animals as nonhuman animals. But now that I've said that most people can just be aware of the distinction and continue to use the technically incorrect term but recognise the difference

 

I never said "human meat". I also did not say humans were not animals (never have, on the contrary).

Personally, I've never had human. There are still quite a few animals I haven't eaten.

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Like most arguments I think it's a mistake to separate the notion from the context in which it resides. The nature of factory farming, where even most of the "good stuff" is actually pretty objectionable. What the cost would be if it weren't for scaled production. What the cost would be if it weren't subsidized by the government, particularly the near-zero cost of feeding animals corn.

 

The notion of delicious is interesting too, because by all counts almost none of it tastes as good as it did 50 years ago (before growth hormones, forced corn feeding, antibiotics). Even as a MILITANT VEGAN I can tell you the average tomato tastes nothing like it did when I was a kid. 

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I never said "human meat". I also did not say humans were not animals (never have, on the contrary).

Personally, I've never had human. There are still quite a few animals I haven't eaten.

 

Sorry, quoting you was unrelated to that last note. I wrote the note then added the quote of yours. (I think I was literally noticing and editing my post as you posted that)

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I eat meat, but I do think it's wrong to eat meat, and consider it a moral failing on my part.

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Please take everything I say in this thread with a grain of salt, as it's probably not a complete thought given the complexity of the question. 

 

Just as a frame of reference, I come from a farming family, I've raised animals for slaughter, participated in their slaughter, castrated calves/pigs and grew up hunting and fishing (not for survival, it was a family entertainment, but I do know people whose families did hunt because they needed to in order to survive).  There are things I did in my youth that I don't think I could do anymore, it would be too cruel or gross for me now.  Are there ethical problems with animal food production?  Absolutely.  And perhaps at some far off date in the future, we will reach a point where we've decided that killing animals for our pleasure (whether hunting or gastrointestinal) is a thing we as a society don't want to do.  I suspect that there are a lot of meat eaters who would not be able to stomach seeing in person what meat production is like.  We have the most massive disconnect in human history between food production and food consumption. 

 

With that out of the way, and with no insult meant, I find the sometimes moral high horse that vegetarians and vegans get on about the ethics and morals of food production to be kind of surreal.  Unless you're raising large portions of your food, you are probably a wiling participant in a worldwide industry that depends on child labor, virtual slave labor, dangerous and disabling work, pollution on a massive scale, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of local economies, corporate staged takeovers of foreign governments and more human rights violations than I can name.  We are all part of that food economy, and being vegan or vegetarian puts someone maybe a single point ahead of meat eaters on an ethical scale of a hundred, where we're in one disgusting pile with each other at the bottom of that scale.  

 

To me, focusing on the ethics of animal consumption is just a way of not addressing all the horrors that go on in food production and distribution all over the world to sustain the appetites of the well off.  We've got to solve some other, baseline issues before tackling the question of meat. 

 

To answer the thread title, it's basically wrong to eat anything.  But we've all got to live. 

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I'm horrified by the possibility that I will one day have no option but to work in a slaughterhouse. I don't think I could slaughter a pig. I faint at the sight of blood and I believe that my cats have different personalities and that they like me for more reasons than that I feed them.

I get upset when I step on a bug, but I burn the shit out of some coal and eat plants lathered in pesticides.

Edit: If I had just waited a minute before posting, I would have seen that Bjorn said it better.

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With that out of the way, and with no insult meant, I find the sometimes moral high horse that vegetarians and vegans get on about the ethics and morals of food production to be kind of surreal.  Unless you're raising large portions of your food, you are probably a wiling participant in a worldwide industry that depends on child labor, virtual slave labor, dangerous and disabling work, pollution on a massive scale, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of local economies, corporate staged takeovers of foreign governments and more human rights violations than I can name.  We are all part of that food economy, and being vegan or vegetarian puts someone maybe a single point ahead of meat eaters on an ethical scale of a hundred, where we're in one disgusting pile with each other at the bottom of that scale.  

 

 

i don't disagree with the horrors of global capitalism, and how veganism can intersect with that. I think it's sort of notable with the rise of Quinoa, which I personally try to limit, because it's become an export at the expense of native diets. But I also don't think it's wrong to try to oppose elements within the chain, like stopping McDonalds deforestation (which they have pledged to stop actually), without having a total solution. All improvements come in fits and starts. 

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Please take everything I say in this thread with a grain of salt, as it's probably not a complete thought given the complexity of the question. 

 

Just as a frame of reference, I come from a farming family, I've raised animals for slaughter, participated in their slaughter, castrated calves/pigs and grew up hunting and fishing (not for survival, it was a family entertainment, but I do know people whose families did hunt because they needed to in order to survive).  There are things I did in my youth that I don't think I could do anymore, it would be too cruel or gross for me now.  Are there ethical problems with animal food production?  Absolutely.  And perhaps at some far off date in the future, we will reach a point where we've decided that killing animals for our pleasure (whether hunting or gastrointestinal) is a thing we as a society don't want to do.  I suspect that there are a lot of meat eaters who would not be able to stomach seeing in person what meat production is like.  We have the most massive disconnect in human history between food production and food consumption. 

 

With that out of the way, and with no insult meant, I find the sometimes moral high horse that vegetarians and vegans get on about the ethics and morals of food production to be kind of surreal.  Unless you're raising large portions of your food, you are probably a wiling participant in a worldwide industry that depends on child labor, virtual slave labor, dangerous and disabling work, pollution on a massive scale, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of local economies, corporate staged takeovers of foreign governments and more human rights violations than I can name.  We are all part of that food economy, and being vegan or vegetarian puts someone maybe a single point ahead of meat eaters on an ethical scale of a hundred, where we're in one disgusting pile with each other at the bottom of that scale.  

 

To me, focusing on the ethics of animal consumption is just a way of not addressing all the horrors that go on in food production and distribution all over the world to sustain the appetites of the well off.  We've got to solve some other, baseline issues before tackling the question of meat. 

 

To answer the thread title, it's basically wrong to eat anything.  But we've all got to live. 

 

Could you think of anything else that consumers can do purely on their end that is simple as avoiding meat though?  Nobody likes moral highground braggers for sure, but I can't think of a single reason to NOT try to at least reduce the consumption of meat, especially if one lives in USA.

 

i don't disagree with the horrors of global capitalism, and how veganism can intersect with that. I think it's sort of notable with the rise of Quinoa, which I personally try to limit, because it's become an export at the expense of native diets. But I also don't think it's wrong to try to oppose elements within the chain, like stopping McDonalds deforestation (which they have pledged to stop actually), without having a total solution. All improvements come in fits and starts. 

 

Pretty much this.  Bigger problem doesn't mean we have to stop trying to fix smaller ones, even if they are bandaid fixes, unless the effort spent on those bandaid fixes are removing resources away from the main effort.  But I haven't seen that argument ever made successfully against reducing meat consumption because how simple it is to carry out.

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With that out of the way, and with no insult meant, I find the sometimes moral high horse that vegetarians and vegans get on about the ethics and morals of food production to be kind of surreal.  Unless you're raising large portions of your food, you are probably a wiling participant in a worldwide industry that depends on child labor, virtual slave labor, dangerous and disabling work, pollution on a massive scale, the exhaustion of resources, the destruction of local economies, corporate staged takeovers of foreign governments and more human rights violations than I can name.  We are all part of that food economy, and being vegan or vegetarian puts someone maybe a single point ahead of meat eaters on an ethical scale of a hundred, where we're in one disgusting pile with each other at the bottom of that scale.  

 

To me, focusing on the ethics of animal consumption is just a way of not addressing all the horrors that go on in food production and distribution all over the world to sustain the appetites of the well off.  We've got to solve some other, baseline issues before tackling the question of meat. 

 

To answer the thread title, it's basically wrong to eat anything.  But we've all got to live. 

 

Those are absolutely also important issues to consider. I see what you are saying about the moral high horse position that a lot of vegetarians and vegans take but I don't think that is relevant to the purpose of this thread. The fact that all of those issues with food production exists does nothing to diminish the argument that perhaps eating meat is wrong.

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I don't have any moral objection to eating meat, but the engineer in me hates the waste of resources that raising animals requires and I generally object to the conditions animals have to be in to keep the whole process cost effective. I've cut back on my meat consumption pretty significantly over the past few years but I admit I'd have a hard time eliminating it entirely.

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Those are absolutely also important issues to consider. I see what you are saying about the moral high horse position that a lot of vegetarians and vegans take but I don't think that is relevant to the purpose of this thread. The fact that all of those issues with food production exists does nothing to diminish the argument that perhaps eating meat is wrong.

My point was that meat, to me, is only a tiny bit more wrong than almost every thing else we eat. Hence my note at the top of that first post, I knew I was going to end up not communicating my point terribly well.

I also didn't communicate that I have a lot of sympathy for the ethical concerns about meat. For me, those ethical and moral food concerns end up being about fruit, particularly imported fruit, and the damage that industry causes to people and communities in Central and South America.

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Overall I agree with the gist of what you're saying Bjorn. I've definitely seen my fair share of vegan superiority (sometimes it seems like it springs up in response to feeling oppressed, which we are all familiar with but that doesn't excuse it)

 

But I think one point that can be refuted about eating meat is that for every kilo of meat you eat, you also add the strain of producing all the food the animal had to eat to produce that one kilo of meat, instead of perhaps just eating plant food and cutting out the meaty middleman.

 

I certainly agree that any small victory or improvement is worthwhile. My vegan philosophy is about reducing my impact and hopefully by proxy encouraging others to do the same, though I never really bring it up unless they ask. I think if someone is a vegan but doesn't want to give any more thought to the ills of the world then that's a failing on their part because there's always more that anyone can do. And if someone does lean on the moral crutch of being vegan or vegetarian as their sole moral crusade then it's a very limited way they're trying to save the world.

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One thing that I'd like to see addressed is this fantasy that we can exist in our society without causing harm. I'm not saying that lessening the harm we cause isn't valuable, but sometimes it seems like all of us (especially animal-rights folk and environmentalists) should consider the side of the equation where our mere survival is detrimental to the environment. I often feel that there is a lack of acceptance that we will inevitably cause some amount of harm. This is probably mostly true of myself.

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