Should you feel guilty for eating meat?

[Dogstile]

I try not to eat anything too cute though.
I won't eat rabbit (Ok, I did have rabbit pie as a kid but I didn't know what it was so that doesn't count) and I won't eat deer.
But thats just cause I'm a wussy bleeding heart type of girl.

If cute things are off the table (aargh, the pun, it burns), what kind of meat do you eat?

Or have you just never seen a calf, lamb or hatchling?

Lambs, calves and hatchlings are cute.
Sheep, cows and chickens are fugly.
I don't mind so much if they grow up to be ugly.

Ugly, eh?

I guess it's different for people who don't spend time around animals.

My family live in the country. They used to keep a couple of milking cows (well, they still do, I just don't live there any more). I wouldn't regard them as ugly animals.

One of them liked to chew on people's arms. Not hard enough to hurt. No idea why, she just did.

She was a cantankerous old beast. If she ran out of feed before we were done milking her, she'd promptly kick the bucket over.

This one time we killed, slaughter and ate her calf. A few days later the cow found the spot where where we'd bled the carcass. I guess she recognised the smell or something. There's a particular kind of short, relatively high-pitched "moo" that mother cows do to call their calfs back to them. That cow stood in that one spot and did that one particular moo continuously and almost without pause for several days and nights straight. When we tried to move her she got aggressive She only moved when she was nearly fainting from thirst.

Ugly.

...

Enjoy your steak.

Honestly, the second you mentioned slaughter I got really, really hungry. I suppose its sad but pah, guys gotta eat and I like feeling strong. Meat helps me do that.

 

[guitarsniper]

eat meat. don't eat too much. make sure the meat you eat is sustainably and respectfully grown. That's all there is to it.

 

[JWAN]

Not at all, I hunt deer, turkey, pheasant, the occasional wild pig. I also fish at least once a month. Sure I feel bad at that time, but I know exactly where my food comes from. Plus I donate as much as I can to food pantrys for the needy.

 

[Fanta Grape]

Ah, in this thread I see a lot of Appeals to Nature. Classic logical fallacy. I'm a vegan and I'll explain why I am one.

I'm a vegan because I'm lazy. Eating meat can be tasty, healthy (in moderation) and can prevent deficiencies (such as B12) or calcium so I'm not against eating meat, per se. It's more about the animal cruelty that MAY be going on. In certain circumstances and for certain companies, animals are poorly treated due to poor Government moderation. Such as cows being kept in small areas and gnawing on metal bars or chickens being kept in cages and suffering atrophy of the legs.

I understand that these are some very specific cases and I don't even particularly like animals that much, but nothing with a complex nervous system that can feel pain should be exposed to that sort of environment. Now the proper thing to do would be to check sources of food (are these eggs properly moderated, is this steak from a good farm, etc) but it's wholly impractical and the titles like "free ranged" are often very misleading.

As well as this, it's often not very economical for animals to be treated well in an open environment, but that doesn't justify the the actions.

No, you shouldn't feel guilty for eating meat if you know it's from a source that's treated them well. Death is an inherent property of life and there isn't anything particularly bad about it, we just associate it with negative emotions due to our evolutionary social nature. On the other hand, if you're eating a big mac, it might be worth thinking twice about where it came from.

 

[Ryotknife]

Yes I do, and I've dabbled in vegetarianism before. I was really bad at it because I hate vegetarian food and love the taste of meat. So that leaves me conflicted. One day, I probably make a more serious effort.

Further more, I haven't seen a compelling argument out there that makes me feel less guilty. I hear people talking about how we are omnivores, or that we are "supposed" to eat meat. Look, having canines doesn't mean we have to eat meat, or even that we should. A meatless diet is easy to sustain, more economical, and on a larger scale, kinder to the livestock which no longer exists to be slaughtered.

Meat eating in this day and age is a preference for first worlders - a preference we base purely on taste and libido. If you find that deliciousness outweighs the catastrophic waste and suffering that meat production requires, then by all means, there is no need to feel the slightest bit guilty.

You haven't seemed to explain why one should feel bad for eating meat, only that we don't have to eat meat. If your argument is that livestock exists to be slaughtered and represents us destroying life to live, I'd wager that, as plants are living things, vegetarians do the same thing. You take life to continue yours. Certainly, if the animal or plant was treated poorly before being harvested, you should feel bad. I'd wager that if the plant was sprayed with pesticides, you should probably feel bad about supporting the company that allowed that to happen. Of course, humans are getting smarter and soon it wont be necessary to raise animals to be slaughtered. See: In Vitro Meat.

Vegetables are living things, yes, but they are not in the same league (or kingdom) as animals. They don't feel pain, and they don't have the mental capacity to evaluate their situation, feel fear, anger or depression. Plants don't suffer when they are farmed, so they aren't a problem for vegetarians.

But then you probably already knew all that. Don't waste my fucking time, playing dumb.

so you admit then that all living things to do have an equal value from one persons perspective? Then it is equally viable that people have the same sort of detachment to animals as you do to plants.

There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian as long as your motivations are either religious or health related. Becoming a vegetarian for moral reasons is just being a hypocrite.

 

[Radelaide]

God no. I think vegetarians should feel guilty about trying to push their bullshit down my throat.

 

[Navvan]

A meatless diet is easy to sustain, more economical, and on a larger scale, kinder to the livestock which no longer exists to be slaughtered.

That is debatable on several fronts.

- A meatless diet is easy to sustain only if you know what to eat and where to get it, and have the time to do so. Unless it includes eggs which makes things much simpler

- It is only more economical (for the consumer) if you are very deliberately trying to be economical. It is easy to spend more for your food on a vegetarian diet if you are looking for convenience. However if you meant the cost to produce the food is inherently more expensive for meat then ignore this part.

- There are over a billion cows on this planet. There would be far less if they were not domesticated for the purpose of the products they produce including meat. The same can be said for other livestock. Whether or not we eat the meat at the end of their life has little to do with how they are treated up to that point. Thus if you are against eating meat for the sole reason of their treatment you should also be against any animal products. Thus to be a vegetarian for this reason logically leads to becoming a vegan.

Even then you have to ask yourself whether the life they live is so abhorrent to them that they'd rather not have ever lived at all or produce offspring. Ultimately they most likely do not have the capability to comprehend that, so those who do must make the decision for them. I have see no such distress in domesticated cattle to warrant such a population collapse, but some poultry farms can be a bit extreme.

 

[Deathmageddon]

Take my spuds, take my corn
Take me where I cannot farm
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the steak from me

Take me out to the grill
Tell 'em I will have my fill
Burn the leaks and boil the peas
You can't take the steak from me

There's no place I can be
Since I found that bovine meat
But you can't take the steak from me

I like meat, don't feel bad. Eat more.

Congratulations: you have just won the internet!

But seriously, we have canines for a reason. To consume the souls of lesser creatures in order to strengthen our own. The delicious taste of flesh is a nice bonus, though.

 

[maninahat]

snip

snip

Vegetables are living things, yes, but they are not in the same league (or kingdom) as animals. They don't feel pain, and they don't have the mental capacity to evaluate their situation, feel fear, anger or depression. Plants don't suffer when they are farmed, so they aren't a problem for vegetarians.

But then you probably already knew all that. Don't waste my fucking time, playing dumb.

so you admit then that all living things to do have an equal value from one persons perspective? Then it is equally viable that people have the same sort of detachment to animals as you do to plants.

There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian as long as your motivations are either religious or health related. Becoming a vegetarian for moral reasons is just being a hypocrite.

As I already said, plants are not in the same league as animals. Some people may regard plants as being of "equal value" to animals, but I don't for the reasons I have given. I don't have a problem telling those people that they are wrong in their assessment, for the reasons I have previously given.

I'm less interested in the sanctity of life, and more into trying to reduce needless pain and suffering. And also, the ruthless exploitation of animals.

To clarify the above: Some people feel that domesticated cows already have it great; that they eat healthily, are well looked after, and when it comes to die, they are killed quickly and without pain. Though that may be the kindest way to farm an animal, it is hard for me to see how being bred to die could ever be considered a good life, even if they are blissfully ignorant of their doom.

 

[PrinceFortinbras]

I don't think you or anyone can be an accurate judge of what can feel pain and what can't. Plants may not look like they react to damage, like what animals can since we have vocal chords and mouths to project noises, but if you cut off a tree's limbs, it take a really long time for them to grow back, and sometimes, they don't come back at all, the same with certain animals like octopi or like humans. If you set a living plant on ire, you are essentially causing it pain by taking away its ability to live. If you cut down a living plant, you are causing that plant to starve for sunlight, sure it may have stores saved up in its roots but that only lasts for so long. Just because it can't cry out that it's hurt doesn't mean it doesn't feel

Sorry if that sounded all hippie-ish but I'm still going to eat meat and plants because I was born to do so and I find them almost equally appetizing. Saying you won't eat one because it has a face and can feel does not make it alright to think that the other side can't feel just because it lacks animalistic qualities.

It is true that we can be completely sure. What we can do is make educated guesses based on the knowledge we have. At the present time we know that our concept of pain requires a nervous system, and we know that our concept of interest or preferences requires a brain. It may well be revealed to us that plants do indeed suffer in a way that we can understand (some people post links to studies showing that they do, but to my knowledge this is not scientific consensus), but I if so I would argue that they are not as valuable as humans or animals because our brains make it possible for us to have preferences on a level far more advanced than that of a plant. We have to remember that suffering is not the same as reacting to harm. Suffering requires a mental life, and as far as we know a mental life requires a brain. Brains are exclusive to the animal kingdom.

And whoever said a while back that "the concept of natural" being an invalid argument - humans, like a lot of animals have evolved to need both meat and plants in our diet to receive the proper nutrients to survive. Not everything we do is a natural occurrence, or at least not by my definition. Natural, to me, means what your species is supposed to do to live - eat, sleep, crap, and reproduce, and survive both the elements and the environment. Because of our intelligence we are more than capable of putting off some of these necessities because of how we've progressed technology and practices to deal with these, treating them as though they barely existed. Someone going off and killing 12 people at a theater is not natural, that's insane. Killing an animal to eat its flesh because you are starving, that is natural.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naturalistic_Fallacy

The problem is that a statement of fact, such as "humans are meant to be eating meat from a biological perspective" does not correlate with a value statement, such as "it is right to eat meat". It is simply a (formal) logical mistake. There are lots of things humans are "meant" to do from a biological perspective that we don?t do because we accept it as wrong. And conversely, there is al lot of things that it is not "natural" for us to do, but we still do them because we see them as right. Would you also argue that industrial society is wrong because it doesn't fit our natural, nomadic way of life? You say that it is natural for us to sleep. But surly the natural way to sleep is in a tree or on the ground? Why do you use a bed? Because we have moved on from our natural prerequisite conditions. We are just that intelligent.

I previous poster pointed out rather cleverly that this argument confuses what is natural/right with what is necessary. I agree that it is necessary for us to sleep, crap eat and survive. How we do this however is up for moral scrutiny.

If you could somehow change humans to such a degree that our bodies did not need the nutrients that meat provided then all power to you, but as long as my body needs proteins and calcium, I'll continue to consume animal products. Humans were not built to be herbivorous because our bodies are completely inefficient at extracting the nutrients, we can only do so from particular plants, not like say a cow can. That and our teeth would rapidly wear down from only eating plant matter due to the abundance of brittle molecules in the plants structure. And we were not meant to be completely carnivorous for the same reasons - meat is tender, so our teeth do not wear down as fast but rather, they grow soft, so we offset this by eating plants which build up our gums.

Millions of people survive and live healthy lives by eating vegan diets. We now know what humans need to be healthy and by applying this, a vegetarian lifestyle can be nutritionally complete. You can get all the nutrients you need through plants or animal products other than meat, such as eggs. Saying humans can't live like that is an outdated statement.

 

[mooncalf]

The earth will consume you and feel no guilt, so naturally you should consume and feel no guilt. If you wish to not consume this or that because you think it will improve you in some way, by all means try it out.

 

[notyouraveragejoe]

Take my spuds, take my corn
Take me where I cannot farm
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the steak from me

Take me out to the grill
Tell 'em I will have my fill
Burn the leaks and boil the peas
You can't take the steak from me

There's no place I can be
Since I found that bovine meat
But you can't take the steak from me

I like meat, don't feel bad. Eat more.

Tee Hee that is awesome. And I've never felt bad since it is so good that I get distracted. In fact with horse meat I get intense pleasure eating it because I hate horses. They are evil so I shall feast on them. Its the same way I deal with mean teachers.

 

[loc978]

No, you shouldn't feel guilty. Don't let anyone tell you that you should either.

If one would eat pigs, lamb and cows meat whilst refusing to consume dog or cats meat one is hypocritical and should take a look into ones values.

The guy's got a point. Can't say how many people I've met who would be perfectly willing to kill and eat someone's pet pig [http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID19726/images/ggeorge_clooney_pet_pig_inspires_paris_hilton_to_buy_one.jpg], but be grossed out by farm-raised dog in South Korea. If the animal is raised specifically for meat, or is wild and properly selected for hunting, what do you care what species that animal is? Are the Spanish wrong to eat horse meat simply because some horses are prized sport animals? Are we in the US wrong to eat beef because some Hindu belief states that cattle contain the honored spirits of our ancestors?

 

[Reynaerdinjo]

Even then you have to ask yourself whether the life they live is so abhorrent to them that they'd rather not have ever lived at all or produce offspring. Ultimately they most likely do not have the capability to comprehend that, so those who do must make the decision for them. I have see no such distress in domesticated cattle to warrant such a population collapse, but some poultry farms can be a bit extreme.

It's not just poultry farms. Factory farms have thousands upon thousands of animals who are so bored that they literally go insane. Consider this excerpt from the PETA website about pigs:

intensive confinement (of mother pigs) causes debilitating stress and intense boredom. Missing their piglets, and with nothing to do but stare at the bars in front of them, mother pigs often go insane, neurotically chewing on their cage bars or obsessively pressing on their water bottles. After three or four years, when their bodies are exhausted and their minds are pushed to or even past the brink of insanity, they are shipped off to slaughter.

Meanwhile, the male piglets have their testicles cut out of their scrotums, their tails cut off, many of their teeth clipped in half, and their ears mutilated, all without any pain relief. They are placed into pens crowded with many other piglets, where they are kept until they are large enough for slaughter. The animals are given almost no room to move because, as one pork-industry journal put it, "[O]vercrowding pigs pays."

Or how about the slaughter of cows:

Cattle are transported hundreds of miles in all weather extremes, typically without food or water, to the slaughterhouse. Many cows die on the way to slaughter, but those who survive are shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hung up by one leg, and taken onto the killing floor where their throats are cut and they are skinned and gutted. Some cows remain fully conscious throughout the entire process. In an interview with The Washington Post, one slaughterhouse worker said, "They die piece by piece."

There are thousands of horrible examples to find all over the internet of the absolute abhorrent treatment of animals by factory farms.

 

[maninahat]

A meatless diet is easy to sustain, more economical, and on a larger scale, kinder to the livestock which no longer exists to be slaughtered.

That is debatable on several fronts.

- A meatless diet is easy to sustain only if you know what to eat and where to get it, and have the time to do so. Unless it includes eggs which makes things much simpler

It's not difficult to spend five minutes researching on the net, and five minutes in the grocery section of a supermarket.

- It is only more economical (for the consumer) if you are very deliberately trying to be economical. It is easy to spend more for your food on a vegetarian diet if you are looking for convenience. However if you meant the cost to produce the food is inherently more expensive for meat then ignore this part.

Meat is invariably more expensive than vegetable produce. It is entirely due to the cost of producing meat that this is the case. The only thing that tends to be more expensive are the convenience, processed vegetarian foods, like veggy burgers and all that. A frugal person could easily have a sustainable, cheap diet without that crap.

- There are over a billion cows on this planet. There would be far less if they were not domesticated for the purpose of the products they produce including meat. The same can be said for other livestock. Whether or not we eat the meat at the end of their life has little to do with how they are treated up to that point. Thus if you are against eating meat for the sole reason of their treatment you should also be against any animal products. Thus to be a vegetarian for this reason logically leads to becoming a vegan.

Yeah, I can see the sense in that. If you are against livestock or "animal exploitation" in general, veganism is the way to go.

Even then you have to ask yourself whether the life they live is so abhorrent to them that they'd rather not have ever lived at all or produce offspring. Ultimately they most likely do not have the capability to comprehend that, so those who do must make the decision for them. I have see no such distress in domesticated cattle to warrant such a population collapse, but some poultry farms can be a bit extreme.

I addressed this argument in another post. Some people feel that cows have it fairly good, considering they are well fed, kept, and killed quickly, without much pain. They are totally ignorant of their lot in life, so they can live blissfully unaware of what we have in store for them.

If people were put in an identical situation, we would immediately see how unethical the system would be. But a cow isn't a person, so many people are fine with putting them in that situation. I, however, can't bring myself to see it that way. My consience tells me that an animal's ignorance and stupidity is not enough to make the situation any less exploitative or demeaning.

 

[Keneth]

Would one of those gigantic Bengal Tigers you have back home feel the slightest bit guilty about eating you? Didn't think so. Enjoy your hamburger.

 

[Bertylicious]

I'm guessing what we're really talking about is the confinement, brutalisation and eventual slaughter of a living being. I'm also guessing that for the context of this argument that we're not counting plants as living beings.

Really it comes down to your view on what morality is; i.e. whether morality is objective or subjective. If one's view is objective as defined by divine law then nuance is irrelevant as the law either permits it or does not. If one's view is subjective then it comes down to your view on cute widdle wanimals or the negative impact a life of bloody horror has on abatoir workers.

My view is that there is no such thing as morality; merely consequences. Sympathy, compassion, affection are real things and doing horrible shit will ultimately maim a person's ability to feel. Farming and even slaughtering animals is actually not so terrible an activity, to be honest, so I don't regard the aiding and abetting of such activity by the eating of meat to be so bad.

Less than ideal though. Ideally we would have Meat Cubes of synthetic meat.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Honestly I wouldn't kill them but I'm not going to stop eating bacon over morals. I am going to do plenty of worse things in my life then eat meat.

 

[Reynaerdinjo]

I'm guessing what we're really talking about is the confinement, brutalisation and eventual slaughter of a living being. I'm also guessing that for the context of this argument that we're not counting plants as living beings.

Really it comes down to your view on what morality is; i.e. whether morality is objective or subjective. If one's view is objective as defined by divine law then nuance is irrelevant as the law either permits it or does not. If one's view is subjective then it comes down to your view on cute widdle wanimals or the negative impact a life of bloody horror has on abatoir workers.

My view is that there is no such thing as morality; merely consequences. Sympathy, compassion, affection are real things and doing horrible shit will ultimately maim a person's ability to feel. Farming and even slaughtering animals is actually not so terrible an activity, to be honest, so I don't regard the aiding and abetting of such activity by the eating of meat to be so bad.

Less than ideal though. Ideally we would have Meat Cubes of synthetic meat.

Actually, there is an altogether different approach to morality that can be both scientific and objective. You should definitely read "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris if you're interested. Read more about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape

You say that slaughtering animals 'is not so terrible an activity', yet you provide no reasons for your claim. So this leaves me to ask: why?