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Resolved: Eating Animals Is Indefensible
For the past few years, I've been spending a lot of time on college campuses, discussing the ethics of eating animals with college debate teams; I argue that vegetarianism is an ethical imperative for all members of the student body, and my adversaries (two members of the school's debate team) argue that it's not.
Last year, I visited Harvard, Yale, BYU,
the Universities of Texas, Georgia, and Florida -- and dozens of other
schools, coast to coast. This fall, I'm slated to visit Cornell,
Princeton, Boston College, the University of Minnesota, and half a dozen
additional schools.
The topic is a hot one on college campuses, and the teams that have
accepted have been rewarded by what they have consistently told us to be
their largest event audiences ever. You can watch many of the debates online, if you're so inclined, but here is the crux of my argument:
First, eating meat wastes and pollutes our land, water and air-- as I discuss more thoroughly here. Second, eating meat drives up the price of cereals, which leads to starvation and food riots -- as I discuss here. Finally, eating meat supports cruelty to animals so severe that it would warrant felony cruelty charges were dogs or cats so horribly abused -- and that's true even of so-called "humane" farms (video).
Cruelty to animals is where I focus in these debates, because it's the issue that is most obvious: We are a nation of animal lovers -- according to a Gallup Poll last May, fully 97 percent of us support laws to protect animals from abuse -- and yet the animals with whom we come into contact most frequently are the animals we pay other people to abuse and kill for us.
The arguments that seem to resonate with students most deeply are:
First, other animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone -- just like humans. They have the same five physiological senses (i.e., they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch) that we do. And they feel pain -- again, just like we do. At most colleges and universities, students are unanimously opposed to eating dogs or cats; the idea revolts them. Yet there is no ethical difference between eating a dog, cat, chicken, pig or fish. If anything, eating your dogs or cats would be morally preferable, since they would have led a good life until you killed them.
In fact, both pigs and chickens do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats. Chickens can navigate mazes, learn from television and have both a capacity for forethought and meta-cognition. Pigs dream, recognize their names, play video games far more effectively than even some primates, and lead social lives of a complexity previously observed exclusively among primates.
Dr. Richard Dawkins, the foremost living evolutionary biologist, calls other species our evolutionary "cousins" and denounces what he calls "speciesist arrogance" -- the idea that we are better than, and can do whatever we want to other species. Darwin taught us that other species are more like us than they're unlike us. Eating meat entails eating "someone," not "something." Eating meat entails eating bits from an animal's corpse. That's not hyperbole; it's reality. That's not sentimental; it's a fact. Don't want to eat corpses? Don't eat meat.
Second, if we're eating meat, we are paying people to abuse animals in myriad ways that would violate anti-cruelty laws if these were dogs or cats rather than chickens and pigs. Animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them; they never breathe fresh air, raise their young, develop normal relationships with other animals, explore their surroundings, or do anything else they would do in nature. Artificial breeding practices are used so that animals will grow far more quickly than they would naturally, and their organs and limbs simply can't keep up. For example, chickens' upper bodies grow seven times as quickly as they did just 30 years ago, so these factory-farmed animals who live for fewer than two months (they're still chirping like infants when they're sent to slaughter) suffer from lung collapse, heart failure, and crippling leg deformities.
Michael Specter, a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker , visited a chicken farm and wrote, "I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe... There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, didn't cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."
Similarly hideous conditions exist for all animals raised for food; rather than further detailing the horrid details, I will ask that you if you eat meat, you watch "Meet Your Meat," which is narrated by Alec Baldwin, and "Glass Walls," which is narrated by Sir Paul McCartney -- I generally show the opening two minutes of Meet Your Meat as a part of my 10 minute opening statement in college debates. Both videos offer a gruesome window into what we're supporting if we choose to eat chickens, pigs and other farmed animals. If we eat meat, we should at least ensure that we know what we're paying for.
If you would not personally slice a chicken's beak off, or castrate a pig without pain relief or slice open an animal's throat, why pay someone else to do it for you? Where is the basic integrity in entering into this mercenary relationship? Is the person who hires someone to do something less culpable than the one who carries out the action? Of course not. Eating meat involves paying people to do things for us that most of us would not do ourselves. Where's the basic integrity -- the consistency -- in such a relationship?
Or, put in a more affirmative way: Vegetarianism allows me to live my values -- to "pray ceaselessly," as St. Paul puts it: Every time I sit down to eat, I cast my lot: for mercy, against misery; for the oppressed, against the oppressor; and for compassion, against cruelty. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but how much suffering can be addressed with literally no time or effort on our part? We can just stop supporting it, by making different choices.
So what's the trade-off: Why do people eat meat? And are the reasons we eat meat -- the benefits -- worth the costs?
Well, we get a few moments of pleasure -- most of us like the taste. We have more options at the grocery store and at restaurants. We can eat over at a friend's house without having to bring a dish. We never have to explain our dietary choices...
Is that really it? That it's convenient? That it's easier?
Although I don't discuss this on university campuses, where everyone knows plenty of healthy vegans and thus knows they don't need meat to survive, I should take a moment to point out that meat is absolutely not good for us. The American Dietetic Association -- the largest body of nutrition professionals on the planet -- conducted a meta-analysis of all the studies that have ever been done on diet and disease, and found that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and obesity than meat-eaters (they believe that the studies indicate causality, not just correlation). Their position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets concludes that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all people and during all stages of life, including infancy and pregnancy.
So add it all up: Eating meat wastes and pollutes our natural resources -- requiring many times the water, land and energy of eating plants (a moral imperative on its own). Eating meat requires about 1 billion metric tons of grain, corn, and soy -- fed to the animals, who burn most of that energy off, which drives up the price of food for people who are starving (another moral imperative, on its own). And eating meat involves paying other people to do a wide variety of things to animals in ways that most of us would never do ourselves.
Put another way: If we believe that people should try to protect the environment, OR we believe that we should try not to cause people to starve OR we oppose cruelty to animals, the only ethical diet is a vegetarian one.
Find recipes, shopping tips, and a lot more information at www.GoVeg.com.
- Posted in
246 Comments so far
Show AllI'm substantially vegetarian myself (but not vegan - life wouldn't be worth living without cheeses and eggs - I also like fish and sushi too much to give it entirely up). I do it mostly for economy, the environment, and maintaining a cleaner kitchen.
But, all this anti-meat pruism, preached with evangelical fervor is one of those stereyoytypes of the green-left that doesn't help us. I've even seen US vegans get in arguments with Hindu-Jain Indians becasue their consumption of dairy products makes their thousands-year-old vegetarian traditions "insufficiently pure".
Left Wing puritanism crops up in many places but the diet nazis are among the worst.
He didn't mention heavy metals like lead and mercury in meat, but I will. Nor did he mention growth hormones, or mad cow disease, swine/bird flu, GM corn/soy proteins, antibiotics, and salmonella.
Meat = poison.
Sorry poitou but my take on it is Meat=good food.
OYE
If you think that, you're just not paying attention. Quite apart from the issue of whether some ideal meat from a deer you kill in a virgin forest is good, all the meat in the supermarket is bad.
"Meat=poison"?
You really are a hoot! Thanks for the laughs.
I don't know tirebiter, I think you may have ingested too much mercury.
You said it correctly, you 'don't know tirebiter.' And you never will. Only the shadow knows.
You're one of these guys who always has to have the last word, right?
Thanks for your activism Bruce. And I loved your contribution to Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. Keep up the good work.
Resolved. Listening to the arguments of the proselytizing vegetarians is enough to make one want to argue in favour of cannibalism.
Picking on one another gets us NOWHERE.
I think "indefensible" is too strong a word here. Yes, it seems reasonable that from an environmental standpoint, and a health perspective, a vegetarian diet is superior, and an ethical argument can certainly be made, as well, but how is it indefensible for a person to consume meat in their diet? Along with many other species we are natural omnivores. That's not evil or stupid or irresponsible, it's just a simple biological and evolutionary fact. It's not the only relevant fact in discussing or debating this issue, but certainly it is an important one that shouldn't be completely ignored. I'm not suggesting that in civilization we yield in our behavior to all of our natural inclinations. By definition that would be uncivilized, but to go the other direction and imply that our natural inclinations are inherently immoral borders on the notion of original sin, which I think most free thinking secular folk would find offensive and rightly so.
I agree. We are human animals and to deny that aspect of ourselves is madness.
We should eat just enough of the right foods to make and keep us healthy and no more.
"I agree. We are human animals and to deny that aspect of ourselves is madness. "
Why madness?
" We should eat just enough of the right foods to make and keep us healthy and no more."
Are you not arguing for denial here?
to rfloh: Why madness? I meant to deny the animal aspect of ourselves, not deny ourselves meat. I am talking about repression and the dysfunction that can lead to.
I feel that one of the assumptions in the article is that we should deny rather than accept our human animal nature. That maybe we are more than animals, as if being "merely" an animal is a bad thing.
And to eat just enough is not denial, it to eat to healthy satisfaction.
( so says the girl who is 10 kilos overweight )
Morticia,
"so says the girl who is 10 kilos overweight" I hope your lover loves those 10 kilos as much as the rest of you!! And I hope you don't beat yourself up (mentally) over this minor detail.
OYE
as much as i love his tummy..........lol
Damn. I myself am not overweight at all. And here you are using my name.
Agreed.
We people are constituted to be omnivores because we have the freedom & consciousnes to choose which way to go, in our eating habits, and also to change those habits. Once we choose, we are NOT free from the consequences of those choices, EVEN AFTER we change to a different choice. This is a modern, secular explanation of karma & original sin. What's left to explain is whether, or not, there are other than purely physical consequences to our choices in eating habits, and whether or not those consequences follow us, after this life is over, and on to the next life, either here or hereafter. People nowadays find the scientist's answers readily acceptible, but not the mystic's answers. This may just be a matter of prejudicial preference for one, over the other, assuming we have before us, a true scientist, and a true mystic.
Excellent article, Mr. Friedrich. Thank you for expanding these thoughts far better than I could have.
I am a full vegetarian, though not totally vegan (tried it for a couple months). No meat of any kind, but I do eat eggs in baking, as well as butter and the occasional inclusion of cheese (like on pizza).
You can easily replace eggs in baking with flax seeds. 1 tablespoon flax seeds plus 3 tablespoons water replaces one egg. Finely grind 1 tablespoon whole flax seeds in a coffee grinder, or use 2 1/2 tablespoons ground flax seeds ( though I don’t recommend buying ground flax seeds, because they go rancid quickly). Mix it with 3 tablespoons of water using a fork, and let it thicken for a couple minutes. That’s it. You’ll get a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids that way, too.
Thank you, Bea. Yes. I have tried that. I have also used one tablespoon of corn starch mixed with two tablespoons of water in place of one egg. That works, too.
That being said, I have found the inclusion of egg protein and some dairy to be beneficial to me. I bike to work most days of the week, I lift weights regularly, I do yoga 3-4 days a week, and I hike a lot. Being totally vegan just wasn't possible, and egg protein was an important part of all this. I was simply burning off way too much and not taking in enough, and my body was losing too much.
I do wish I could be completely vegan, but it just was not working. I do say, however, that is is NOT necessary to eat any meat to maintain a lifestyle like this . . . and certainly not for most Americans, who hardly exercise at all.
Farmers of cereals and other plant foods are the greatest killers of insect and animal life on earth. The modern farmer of crops is the major enemy of the animal and this has always been true. Try being a grasshopper or a buffalo or an elephant in any crop growing region. Farmers of crops are extraordinarily vicious. Otherwise gentle ladies pluck and crush the snails and use fences to control space and the movement essential to the life on earth of animals, and their men use the gun and poison more then any other group. Farmers are responsible for the disappearance of game wherever they live just as they are responsible for the genocidal policies that eradicate the people who live with the animals.
Moreover if we eat animals we must value them and nurture them accordingly. This would naturally benefit the animal and ensure its future. That we don't is a product of the profit motive and greed and selfishness. So instead of giving thanks to the animal we eat, we both stupidly and cunningly give thanks to God as we consume the animal.
It is much the same with timber. It is an entirely beneficial and superior engineering material and an aesthetic treasure that is destroyed, not by the use of it that intrinsically values and even venerates it, but by the greed of those who harvest it and the crass stupidity of the market.
We have much to do. The greatest pest on earth is the stupid human being and missionary vegetarians are not only as stupid as any of the rest, but they are also almost certainly more conceited.
Po faced idiots.
PS: Although I love eating meat, I could easily do without it, but I could not do without vegetables. I=we in this case?
Those of you who do eat meat that have posted here, do you make sure it comes from a place where at least the animals are not abused?
Or do you just close your eyes when you order that chicken sandwich and hope that the animal wasn't abused and treated horribly it's whole, short life.
If someone wants to eat meat that is their choice of course and I don't hold it against them. If you are too lazy or don't care about what kind of lives the animals you eat live then I guess you also don't believe in reincarnation, or karma or even simple compassion.
Its weird now to watch people eat that stuff. Like, kinda a cave-manish thing. Gnawing and sucking on bones and pulling the small strands of meat & veins out from between their teeth. Like guns and violence, humans don't want to give it up their meat. I wonder if meat and the lust/craving for it is tied to violence? After all, Americans eat the most of it and by far are the most violent of our species on the planet. Someone should do a study. And you'd think for all the concern about justice and compassion at CD, you'd find very few meat-eaters here.
Meat eating (beef) is very prevalent in countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, too. Also Spain, Denmark (pork), NZ.
Some numbers, though a bit out of date:
http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1370_per_capita_consumption_of_meat_and.html
http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/agriculture-food/variable-193.html
Eating meat is of course not regulated to the U.S.. But the amount, and the wholesale pain delivered by the meat industry to animals here, not to mention the environmental cost, is unparalleled. We eat the most per person and are responsible for the most death and destruction – at home and abroad... environmental, incarceration, war and so on. (And of course our plan is to make sure the world does the same, thanks to GWB and Obama)
I contend - albeit I have no proof whatsoever- that meat eating contributes to human tendencies of violence, whether its a psyche or biological thing, or both. Its just about tearing that flesh off a bone with your teeth and then gnawing & licking it that gets one in the mood for (it). Primeval behavior.
Funny, the idea of taking meat away from meat eating progressives provokes sorta the same reaction as taking guns away from rednecks, no?
Whether its inflicted by a gun or bombs, or a knife & fork, Americans left and right love their violence and offer a litany of excuses to indulge in it.
moonpie,
"We eat the most per person. . . "
Not anywhere close. The following chart is from the US Census Bureau yr 2000.
"and are responsible for the most death and destruction – at home and abroad... environmental, incarceration, war and so on."
Kinda blows you conclusion to smithereens. Sorry to burst your bubble whilst I'm sitting here having a ham and cheese sandwich getting ready to go floating and fishing to get some more meat to eat (trout and or any other fish that's big enough to eat).
Sorry that the chart is not coming out as it is on the preview section but the first four numbers are for the years 1995-98 (I doubt that the ranking has changed much in the mean time) and the last number is the ranking 1-17.
OYE
Per Capita Consumption of Meat and Poultry, by Country
[Preliminary. In kilograms per capita. Beef, veal, and pork quantities are as of September and in carcass-weight equivalents; poultry quantities are as of July and are on ready-to-cook basis]
1999
Country 1995 1996 1997 1998
Quantity Rank
PORK
Denmark 74.1 69.2 69.2 71.1 73.7 1
Czech Republic 64.6 67.6 64.5 66.2 67.7 2
Spain 54.0 56.3 57.8 60.7 64.0 3
Germany 54.8 54.7 53.2 55.9 58.8 4
Austria 56.3 57.6 55.0 57.2 57.7 5
Hong Kong 54.4 49.9 52.7 54.9 54.3 6
Belgium-Lux 54.4 55.1 43.0 47.0 52.6 7
Netherlands 44.2 44.3 42.9 43.9 43.7 8
Taiwan 40.2 41.7 39.6 44.3 42.5 9
Hungary 39.3 38.5 40.6 36.6 42.1 10
Ireland 37.9 38.4 40.2 40.1 40.5 11
Poland 38.6 41.2 34.2 38.3 39.6 12
Sweden 35.8 35.0 35.8 37.5 38.5 13
France 35.8 34.8 35.3 38.1 38.4 14
Italy 33.6 35.3 34.8 35.9 36.3 15
Canada 31.9 29.9 29.4 31.2 32.0 16
United States 30.6 28.7 28.5 30.7 31.7 17
The numbers you have posted are just for PORK consumption. Not total meat consumption. For total consumption, the US is near the top, though not at the top.
No, those are total meat consumption.
"Like guns and violence, humans don't want to give up their meat...
"Whether it is inflicted by a gun or bombs, or a knife and fork, Americans left and right lvoe their violence and offer a litany of excuses to indulge in it."
YES! Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual leader of the animal rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights (1983) says it was through reading Gandhi during the Vietnam War that he realized the *fork* can be a weapon of violence.
The following points and facts are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by the mother-daughter writing team of Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:
One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.
Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.
Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.
"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."
---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York
Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.
The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.
The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.
Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.
Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.
The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.
The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.
33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.
"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."
---Jeremy Rifkin, pro-life AND pro-animal author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
Les Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.
Hey ! There's nothing wrong with the right to bear arms or the right to eat what you want. Gun control and forbidding meat are anti-civil rights and anti-freedom !
I think if people are really serious about this subject and not just rationalizing their prejudices they should at least try the vegetarian diet for minimum of 3 months. You must step into your own lab (body) and do your own experiment. Psychologists, anthropologist, human potential movement experts tell us the # one factor in resisting change is HABIT! So the addict (lets say smoker in this case) says he smokes because it relaxes him, or he keeps his weight down, or maybe he likes the taste. Anything but admit he is hopelessly addicted to smoking.
Those that say man is an omnivore are just looking for justifications to their addicted dietary habits. Physical anthropologists can look at countless extinct animals and just with the bones and dental structure tell you whether the animal was grazer, carnivore, fruit or leave eater, etc. Man has 99% physiological matchup to the great apes: that is dentation, saliva (alkaline) stomach acid/alkaline balance, length of colon and large intestine, etc. Now just because man has some incipient eye-teeth some will say he is a omnivore.
If your serious in your truth seeking you will read Will Huttles book "The world Peace Diet..." He has spent a good part of his life in the investigation of this topic and has compelling "proofs" to support his position.
Aloha
As I said, look through my links.
The US is near the top in meat consumption, but is by no means an exception.
For better or for worse being omnivores is one of the things that allowed us to evolve brains large enough to be able contemplate the concept of voluntary vegetarianism, so we shouldn't look down on it too much, its part of the reason we are who we are. That being said I am a coward when it comes to eating meat. I have no problem growing plants to eat in a garden, but I could not grow animals for the purpose of eating. I only eat meat because somebody else does the dirty work of killing and processing the animal. If I had to do it myself Id be a vegetarian too.
Sort of the same with war, isn't it? If we had to go ourselves, we'd stop that particular insanity in a heartbeat.
Isn't one of the benefits of evolution the ability and determination to stop what no longer makes sense?
"Sort of the same with war, isn't it? If we had to go ourselves, we'd stop that particular insanity in a heartbeat."
I would make a slight correction to that statement and change it to:
"Sort of the same with war, isn't it? If our leaders had to go themselves, they'd stop that particular insanity in a heartbeat."
As far as your second statement goes, no disagreement from me on that one.
The various debate points are interesting (chickens are intelligent in some way?!), but if the goal is to promote vegetarianism, the conflating of, for instance, the ill-treatment of food animals with some mandate to foreswear all eating of meat is not helpful. Rational thought immediately suggests that some edible animals are 'not' mistreated, and therefore, the argument should be, "Stop mistreating animals", not "Stop eating meat".
We humans are different from the other animals in exactly this way - we can (potentially) think rationally. It doesn't help the world much if a chicken can run a maze, but it does make a difference when college students (and us readers) are challenged to use that rational potential, so thank you for that, at least.
"Rational thought immediately suggests that some edible animals are 'not' mistreated, and therefore, the argument should be, "Stop mistreating animals", not "Stop eating meat"."
Certes.
The problem? The mistreatment of animals is necessary for current levels of meat consumption. If animals were raised humanely, allowed to forage and play freely, allowed a comfortable life, for a reasonably long amount of time, the cost of meat would go up (substantially).
dus7,
Good argument first paragraph.
It has dawned on me over the last couple of days that one of the reasons that many people have trouble stating cogent points is that they (myself included) have a tendency to attempt to simplify the complex. And that most people argue from secondary and tertiary levels never getting down to the primary level of what the problem/argument is about.
OYE
All the arguments against waste and pollution apply equally to non-meat agrobusiness.
Ditto all the arguments about driving up the price of food and "causing riots."
It is one thing to criticize the deleterious effects of industrial food production, but there is no necessary link between that and eating meat per se.
Also, there's a logical hiccup in the argument elaborated on the basis that "other animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone -- just like humans."
Thousands of living species consume other living species, dead or alive. If humans are the same as animals, then human carnivorous behavior is consistent with such animal behavior.
I prefer vegetarianism, but only the health-related arguments seem very convincing.
However, exposing the vile practices of the food production industry is essential, and that is justification enough for these debates.
"I prefer vegetarianism, but only the health-related arguments seem very convincing. "
Yes, by all means, let animals live short nasty brutish lives, living in their own shit, to satiate the appetites of humans.
"exposing the vile practices of the food production industry is essential"
Did you miss that part of the comment rfloh. Best to read and understand the entire comment before flaming on.
"Yes, by all means, let animals live short nasty brutish lives, living in their own shit, to satiate the appetites of humans."
Yeah, why should they be any different than the rest of us?
I think any creator should be called to account for this. The universe is apparently a big place with room for everything. Couldn't the all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing do any better than to create a system based on death of everything? Nearly every living creature survives by consuming other living creatures. To pretend it doesn't exist because it offends one's tender sensibilities, is to deny the reality of our existence.
Sure He can create something better than this. We're the "outhouse" in His creation. Don't like it? Move to someplace better. How that is done is the mystery to be solved.
LOL. You so funny.
'His creation'? My but you've swallowed all the kool-aid haven't you?
If this is the best a creator can do, any creator, it's either deranged (as the gnostics suggest) or evil and cruel. Either way it doesn't deserve worship except by those who share its characterists: the deranged, the evil, and the cruel.
"How that is done is the mystery to be solved."
Perhaps a mystery to you...
It's a reform school for misbehavers, sent here to overdose on their misbehavior, to get over it. He never tires of giving us what we want. We tire of receiving it. It's not a mystery to you? Please tell us then. And no, it's not the best the Creator can do. It is perfect FOR YOU, at this time. You'll know when your appetite is satiated, & you're ready for something different.
My goodness, but you HAVE swallowed the kool-aid, haven't you. And apparently the pitcher as well.
How do you know a 'creator' can create something better than this?
It's amazing how many people I come across who claim to know what god is and what it wants - a privilege reserved for its favorites I warrant. I always thought that by definition god is unknowable, for to know god is to become as god; but you'd know better than I being one of his confidants. As a poor mortal, I know nothing about, nor have conversations with, any god or gods, like you apparently do. I'm impressed. Let me know when you get to heaven.