A case for cannibalism in society

[Angrboda]

While uncommon, there have been quite a few sustainable societies that engaged in cannibalism, so I'm not sure the prion disease concern bears merit. From what I understand, most of these societies' cannibalism involved the ritual eating of enemies, not those belonging to the in-group. I suspect that cannibalism in an industrialized, first world country would be a grossly inefficient food source compared to modern food industries, and thus even if it became acceptable, would likely be expensive and therefore only ritually practiced. Given that, it's probably simpler just to ban it altogether.

There are both direct and indirect moral harms to be considered from the stand point of ethics. Would it be illegal for a rich person to give someone's family $50,000 on the condition that a family member kill themselves to be eaten? Even if it were illegal, would it still happen? Would it happen, not for cannibalistic reasons, but to serve as a back door method of obtaining organs for transplant? When you make a fundamental change to a society, the ramifications are not always obvious.

However, what I would be most concerned about are the secondary moral effects, what I term "moral overspill." While there's not likely any immediate harm from a teenager torturing and murdering a stray cat, there likely would be serious ramification for our species if we became indifferent and insensate to such acts. The life and pain of a stray cat may be inconsequential, but the results of accepting such cruelty as normal behavior would likely be undesirable. I'm not sure what the second order moral effects of accepting cannibalism as normal would be, nor that they would be harmful, but given its uneconomical nature, there's no real compelling reason for us to find out.



(For some reason I always think of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease as Yakov Smirnoff Disease.)