RE: Meat eating ethical?
June 26, 2014 at 9:54 pm
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2014 at 9:57 pm by bennyboy.)
I can think of one very good reason to eat meat (and I'm speaking as a vegan, here): it may minimize the total death count, and minimize the total suffering caused by your dietary needs. If you don't have total control over your food production, then you can assume that all your grains and fruits are going to involve mass harvesting machines which kill voles and birds, mass use of pesticides which can very painfully kill frogs, snakes and birds-- and all this is not even counting the philosophical question of whether the insects themselves suffer or deserve protection.
It's true that most meat is probably a double-whammy, since it involves the direct killing of an animal as well as the indirect deaths of all the snakes, birds, etc. that went into producing grain to fatten the cattle. However, what about grazing cattle? It seems to me that cattle are much more careful about the way they deal with vegetation than 100-yard-wide threshing machines would be. Given adequate natural-grazing land, I'd bet that a pure-cow diet would represent a massive reduction in overall loss of life.
I think the only way to minimize our effect on animals is to go anti-nature: big biodomes, chemical fertilizers, giant vats of GM algae, etc. But for now, the real harm to animals isn't so much the food we eat-- it's the mass-industry means of production. A vegetarian who isn't also a large-scale gardener is probably indirectly responsible for almost as many deaths as a rabid meat-eater.
It's true that most meat is probably a double-whammy, since it involves the direct killing of an animal as well as the indirect deaths of all the snakes, birds, etc. that went into producing grain to fatten the cattle. However, what about grazing cattle? It seems to me that cattle are much more careful about the way they deal with vegetation than 100-yard-wide threshing machines would be. Given adequate natural-grazing land, I'd bet that a pure-cow diet would represent a massive reduction in overall loss of life.
I think the only way to minimize our effect on animals is to go anti-nature: big biodomes, chemical fertilizers, giant vats of GM algae, etc. But for now, the real harm to animals isn't so much the food we eat-- it's the mass-industry means of production. A vegetarian who isn't also a large-scale gardener is probably indirectly responsible for almost as many deaths as a rabid meat-eater.
