Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[Clueless Morgan]

So... what? Lions and cheetahs and wolves and sharks and eagles and every other carnivore ever only gets to eat suicidal prey animals?

That's not how life works. Animals get killed and eaten regardless of whether they want to be killed and eaten.

That argument is weak. Humans are different, because we are sufficiently developed to comprehend and care about the suffering of others. We are also so advanced that we can grow and even synthesize alternatives to meat if we choose to do so.

This is the argument that is being made:

If a vegetarian doesn't like eating meat, they should not eat meat.

if an animal doesn;t want to be killed then it shouldn't be killed

It may be that mine is a weak argument, but the argument la ban was making is not an argument that is confined to merely human-animal interactions and that's what I was trying to point out. Jacob's statement about vegetarians applies to every situation I can think of: If a vegetarian (human or herbivorous animal even) doesn't want to eat meat (or can't eat meat in the case of herbivorous animals), they shouldn't be forced to eat meat. If a carnivorous animal (be it a human, a lion or any other carnivore) wants to eat meat (or is nutritionally required to eat meat as obligate carnivores are, and it seems Rexbeccarox requires to maintain her health) than they shouldn't be forced not to eat meat.

La ban's argument doesn't apply to every situation because there are animals all over the world being killed by other animals right now that don't want to be killed and is, IMO, not a strong argument advocating for vegetarianism. Appealing to the cognitive ability of humans to understand suffering in other creatures doesn't overcome this flaw in la ban's argument for me and appealing to the ability of humans to synthesize their own meat alternatives doesn't address the issue of the needless suffering caused by animals on other animals.

What if I kill another person and say, "Well, judge, apparently it's in my nature to kill others. That's just the way the world is." Would this work? Of course not!

That's not addressing my argument, it's also not an analogous example. I'm not saying that it's in the nature of animals to kill other animals indiscriminately so we should let all murders and psychopaths off the hook for killing their victims. We're talking about killing animals as a means feeding ourselves so your example should have read more like "If I kill a cow/goat/chicken/another human and say "Well, judge, apparently it's in my nature to kill others for food. That's just the way the world is."" You're conflating the intentions behind the argument - killing another person just because it's your nature to kill is not the same as killing another person so that you can eat them.

People are expected to recognize the value of others, and to avoid inflicting suffering on them. The question is whether that same umbrella of comprehension and respect should apply to other entities we know are capable of suffering. I don't see any particular reason why not; what makes the value of human suffering important, but that of other animals unimportant?

The reality is this. We know that eating meat involves horrible living conditions and an unwanted death of an organism (unwanted by it, that is). We make a choice between saving that suffering and having that Big Mac, and choose the Big Mac. But there's nothing natural about it.

So if, like Raeven (back in post #100), everyone raised their own animals for slaughter, grass-fed them, let them roam free in their pastures and generally live a fantastic life except for the day they get slaughtered, would that meat be okay to eat? After all, they're not living a suffering life in horrible conditions, in fact they would be living a less-suffering life than a free-ranging wildebeest who gets killed and eaten by a lion. And if that meat is okay to eat, is it also okay to eat grass-fed, pasture-raised, humanely treated meat that was raised on a commercial farm? Or do you see this as a slippy slope argument where if you're okay eating meat you raise yourself than you're a mere slip of the foot away from careening down the slope to "fuck it, just eat the factory-farmed animals"?