Is it okay to eat animals???

[Borodog]

It's a deal we have. We feed, care for and protect animals in exchange for getting to eat them before they turn old and senile and end up in the old livestock's home.

There wouldn't be one ten thousandth as many chickens, cows, or pigs alive if we didn't eat them. In fact, the solution to the problem of endangered species is to allow private ownership of them and start eating them. Siberian tiger? Mmmm, delicious, and environmentally friendly too!

[Siegmund]

People seem to put the barrier between "acceptable/not acceptable to kill and eat" in different places according to how much kinship they feel for their food. You find people willing to eat anything including each other; people willing to eat anything except humans; people willing to eat anything except monkeys, dogs, whatever; people willing to eat fish but not land animals; people willing to eat plants but not animals; and so on... but you don't find too many people who believe that eating monkeys is OK while eating chickens is wrong.

I think that's a reasonable spectrum of moral views.

What I think is wrong is the assertion that there is something special about the one point on that spectrum that thinks the cutoff must fall between plant and animal. If it's wrong to kill a clam, let's say... then how is it right to rip a poor defenseless plant up by its roots and boil it alive?

We have to eat SOMEthing. And EVERYthing we eat was alive at some point fairly recently before we put it into our mouths.

[theblackkeys]

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Can you provide a reason why it isn't morally acceptable? My claim is that most animals are not self-aware, and it's ok to eat them if they aren't. Plenty of animals eat meat, although they could survive on plants alone. Are the predators morally reprehensible as well?

~MagicMan

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well, breeding animals is very ineffective. it is a waste of resources. if everybody stopped eating meat we could probably help more starving people

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Animal foods contain all the essential amino acids required in our diet. Plants have incomplete proteins, so you have to be careful that you're eating the right combination so you get all the essential amino acids in your body in the right proportions.

[dinopoker]

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I will always be a member of People who Eat Tasty Animals, but in a PM discussion, the issue was brought up. Assuming that it's not for survival, and that one can be healthy eating other stuff, I cannot defend the fact that I eat meat (and will continue to do so!). Can anybody provide a good reason with it is morally acceptable to eat animals when it is not necessary to survival??? And overpopulation of animals doesn't count, since we breed a lot of them just to eat them.

I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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I think it is easiest to wash away the dilemma if you simply realize that the notion of morality is as silly as religon.


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This is the correct viewpoint. I don't feel the need to justify eating animals. They taste good and when I'm hungry I'll eat one, simple as that. If the roles were reversed, I'm sure no animal would hesitate to chow down on me.

I have no issues with eating plants either. For those who feel it is wrong to eat animals, is eating plants therefore okay? Why do animals have more claim to life than plants?

[keith123]

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I will always be a member of People who Eat Tasty Animals, but in a PM discussion, the issue was brought up. Assuming that it's not for survival, and that one can be healthy eating other stuff, I cannot defend the fact that I eat meat (and will continue to do so!). Can anybody provide a good reason with it is morally acceptable to eat animals when it is not necessary to survival??? And overpopulation of animals doesn't count, since we breed a lot of them just to eat them.

I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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I think it is easiest to wash away the dilemma if you simply realize that the notion of morality is as silly as religon.


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This is the correct viewpoint. I don't feel the need to justify eating animals. They taste good and when I'm hungry I'll eat one, simple as that. If the roles were reversed, I'm sure no animal would hesitate to chow down on me.

I have no issues with eating plants either. For those who feel it is wrong to eat animals, is eating plants therefore okay? Why do animals have more claim to life than plants?

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why do other humans?

[Jeff W]

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I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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Why is it wrong? For you to eat, something has to die, whether it is a plant or an animal or bacteria, etc. Why should I care more about a cow than a carrot?

Even if you were a strict vegan, you'd still contribute to the deaths of billions of insects. I forgot, insects aren't cuddly, so we don't give a [censored] about them.

[Jeff W]

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Why do animals have more claim to life than plants?

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why do other humans?

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It's genetics--valuing other human lives increases your chances of survival.

[Xhad]

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I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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I think I am in the same boat as you.

I would likely not eat meat if I had to kill the animals myself. Yet I love a good cheeseburger and can't see myself giving them up. I suck.

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This sentiment always feels odd to me precisely because I spent the period of my life from ages 8ish-16 on a farm. Some true stories:

-We owned cattle. On a few occasions a cow would die giving birth (or from injuries related to giving birth). In every case we, and by "we" I mean every member of my family participated including my younger sisters, bottle-fed the calf until it was old enough to butcher. They had names and we could simply walk up and pet them, and then we ate them and didn't care.

-We always had at least one family dog that lived indoors with us. They were members of the family, they slept in our beds more often than not, and my sisters would cry for days when they died. Once we saw a segment on a news show about how in China or somewhere dogs were being raised for fur coats, and how animal activists were crying that they could be using coyote fur or something instead of "betraying" these pets. We were all rolling our eyes and agreeing that if the dogs were raised explicitly for fur, activist groups should just kindly shut up. This despite the fact that dogs are pets, and coyotes are common pests that sometimes attack livestock and pets, and almost always made a lot of noise during the night.

-We also had outdoor cats. Outdoor cats that would never live more than 5ish years because of forest predators. We tried to prevent this; on several occasions my father would throw open a door and start shooting from inside the house while the rest of us watched TV. Yet, if one of the cats caught a mouse, we wouldn't try to stop it from eating it.

-Rattlesnakes decide to nest near children's playing area, so my father protects his children by killing the rattlesnakes. Children play near wasps nest, wasp stings children to protect its young, father kills the wasps.

My point in all of this is that anyone who is actually exposed to these animals is going to become desensitized pretty quickly to the idea of animals dying, simply because there's no way to care about it without being maddenly inconsistent or making living almost impossible. That doesn't mean that we approve of things like cruelty to animals, only that I won't argue with what you eat even if it's your own poodle.

(BTW, I don't buy the argument something is automatically moral because animals do it. Male cats will kill the kittens of a female they haven't mated with; that's genocide in my book)

[vhawk01]

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Please don't let religious propaganda trick you into thinking that morality somehow comes from religion, because it doesn't.

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If morality didn't come from God (note I don't say "religion"), then by what authority would it be imposed or enforced?

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Or even if it did!

[Skidoo]

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Please don't let religious propaganda trick you into thinking that morality somehow comes from religion, because it doesn't.

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If morality didn't come from God (note I don't say "religion"), then by what authority would it be imposed or enforced?

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Or even if it did!

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So, the truth comes out. Your post is apropos, as usual.