What isn’t moral is the way we confine and literally torture millions of animals. Pigs in gestation crates where they can’t turn around and live on concrete, for years. Piglets getting castrated and teeth removed without anesthesia. Chicks tossed into grinders because they’re male and can’t lay eggs. Dairy cows repeatedly impregnated, calves taken at birth so we can take their milk, repeat until collapse then send her to McDonald’s. Said male calves put in crates to be veal. Chickens bred to grow so big so fast they can’t walk and have heart attacks. Chickens hung in shackles live by their legs then slid across a blade. Gas chambers for pigs is the latest method. Animals on transport trains or ships in boiling heat or freezing cold, for days or even weeks. I like to think the one cow my grandparents kept in their pastured, then slaughtered each year, was perhaps moral. But today’s factory farms and industrial animal system is decidedly not moral at all.
For pleasure that is so true. But in some populations around the globe it is survival not just pleasure, for example poor coastal fishing villages or Siberian aboriginal peoples.
Completely agree Sandra - I was a vegetarian in Kazakhstan, a nomadic culture in the middle of a desert (aside from the small fertile areas by the mountains.) I was only able to get a few foods than had been imported from Russia - which obviously a luxury in the 90s. So not eating meat was certainly a privilege..
I must admit, it's one of the reasons I love living right next to the Pampas - if you drive out for hours at end and only see happy grazing, you don't feel so bad enjoying the meat!
If we abstained from eating meat, the planet would be in much better shape. We would use much less water, generate far less pollution, and permit vast stretches of land to do something other than grow feed for animals.
If we abstained from eating meat, our health would probably improve (although there is some controversy about this claim).
Nature does not endorse veganism. In fact, it evolved carnivores. Of course, nature is amoral. Darwin famously observed how suffering is part of the natural order. Humans seem to be the only omnivorous species with individuals who abstain from eating meat. That makes humankind special. It doesn't argue for the correctness of veganism, but it's nice to know that my veganism is a rare and special power.
My personal feeling is that killing animals is at least unfortunate and perhaps rises to the level of immoral. But I know I need to eat some meat to be healthy. I was a vegetarian for a number of years. I eventually began to feel lightheaded and fatigued. Tests showed no abnormalities. My physician eventually counseled “there may not be enough chickpeas in the grocery” to ensure my 6’2” 225lb physically active body was getting enough protein and advised a “hamburger cure”. It worked. Problem solved. Anya, I imagine your smaller stature in your family imparts a similar lesson: Most of us need at least some animal proteins to be healthy. The Jainist in me might still place a bug in the house out in the yard unmolested, but I’d eat those too if I needed them to stay well.
Yes, I have always thought that and I suspect my carnivorous daughter will grow to be much taller than me! It is interesting that a lot of the gladiators were vegetarian...
Humans have no right to even make the decision as to whether killing animals is moral. Nor do they have the right to decide if animals are less important or "lower" than humans. Humans in this debate are obviously inherently biased. Think about it! Maybe a simple analogy is in order. In sports, team A vs. team B - would it be fair for team A to be the referee and make decisions about penalties and who wins? Obviously not. How is that any different than humans deciding humans are better than animals?! Humans deciding that reason is more important than other factors is absurd. Non-humans obviously have many greater abilities than humans, so a bird should be able to say being able to fly makes them superior, thus more important, and thus the slaughter of the lesser humans is not immoral. Obviously there are tons of examples, like non-humans being stronger or faster. Humans saying reason is greater is no different than a chetah saying speed is greater, etc.
Humans have no right to decide they are more important or greater. Period.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "critical". Certainly there are differences. But first, I don't even like calling them "animals" really. That makes the assumption that all non-humans are one type of being and humans are another type. We only do that because we are stuck in our human point of view. Non-humans is a better term.
In order to really view what's real, we need to transcend point of view. To see from the "point of view" of Reality, we need to transcend our limited human point of view.
Why do we group all beings that aren't human into one group and separate humans out into another group? There are differences between all species. A dog is different than a cat just like a human is different from a cat. Humans differentiate themselves from non-humans only because they are viewing the world from a limited perspective or point of view.
To view the world and the beings in it from a True perspective, we need to transcend our limited point of view. Without that transcendence of point of view, everything we say is limited and biased necessarily. Just like in the sports analogy I mentioned in my original post above. In that analogy, we could say the unbiased referee is the transcendence of point of view.
I hope I'm being clear. I'm not used to actually putting these kinds of philosophical ideas into words for others!
It is interesting that all those cultures that you quote (not individuals, like Pythagoras, but cultures), have not achieved much, or no longer exist.
We are part animal, part rational being. The rational being can come up with many ideas, but the animal part needs an omnivore diet. Not vegan, not vegetarian, but omnivore. Which doesn't mean, of course, eating meat daily, but does mean eating meat from time to time.
I did a trial vegan period, which told me two rather opposite things: first, I was eating too much meat, and second, eating meat is critical. I still remember, 10 years on, the first meat I ate after about one year of being vegan (and taking vitamins and substitutes). I knew at that moment, that not eating meat is not sane.
Now, that's a completely separate discussion from industrial meat farms and animal welfare, which is a painful discussion indeed. Free-range and grass-fed all around, for me (technically, in Switzerland, e.g. Naturaplan label.)
I agree about the distinction between industrial meat farms and animal welfare - and also as someone who has had no/low meat diet versus high protein (and how much healthier I feel!) I think that is also an important observation. As for cultures that have not achieved much, however, I might venture that the billion folks in India, the most populous country in the world, might say otherwise.
Anya, this lead question "Is Eating Meat Moral?" evokes the bigger question of the multitudes of moral authority available to the individual. What is your moral authority? What is mine? I suspect we would not agree completely. That being said, and surveying some other answers, I'll contribute to the side of wisdom of voting "yes." Our incisor teeth seem to indicate a purpose of eating meat. This is not an isolated fact unrelated to our creation, but rather a fact that is cohesive with eating meat. Connecting these dots, or at least acknowledging them, should be part of the answer.
Is there an essential difference between eating animals and eating plants? Why would it be be immoral behavior to kill for food some living beings and moral behaviour to kill other living beings?
For the Pythagoreans, the soul could transmigrate to other animated beings... so they drew the line at plants. But, yes, it's a good question as we come to learn more about the communication and abilities of plants...
I grew up on a farm. We grew sheep for wool, we ate mutton. at about 12 or 13 it came to me as the oldest boy to do the butchering. It was something I found very difficult, yet it was who I was and I spent a long time contemplating it. On a grazing farm in Australia with its floods and droughts there are many times you are trying your best to keep all the animals alive and yet they die at the hands of the seasons.
The way I came to terms with my duty was " I can never tell when some greater consciousness will decide when my time ends". Thus I would give thanks for this animals life and quickly dispatch it.
Later when I left home and went to the city for a while I found i could not eat meat as I was not connected to it origins.
So interesting! Thank you for sharing. I think it would be a very different experience being so connected to meat. It is something so many of us urbanites lack...
In reading the article, which is very interesting, a quote came to mind from Miroslav Krleža: "In the human mind there is nothing save fiction. Morality is just one fiction." So should we eat meat? If one would be able to kill the animal, gut and skin it, and cook it, then let it be so. It is then less of a fiction than the fiction we all live but when it becomes morality it is a capital Fiction. Much of the ancient world as well as much of the historical world has had to eat meat in that there were elements that made it hard to survive on vegetables: desert, tundra, etc. Also, bodies with northern European genes have a DNA that requires meat as well as dairy for the body type.
So I say if one eats a steak in Argentina, do so but in the US be aware as our meat here is so tainted, but back to morality, the real moral injustice is whaat we do to the food we consume. My wife does not eat meat in that she is a cancer survivor and was told by top medical people not to eat red meat, and do remember that every education eventually becomes a miseducation. So it this morality or doing what needs to be? I do not quite agree with Pythagoras in the article that if we ate less meat we would not go so much to war. Living in Northern California, I have met many vicious vegetarians.
I wish I had saved the exact reference, but I didn't. A few years back I read about a cannibal chief who laughed at missionaries who tried to dissuade him from eating humans. He said they were too fussy, too picky.
What isn’t moral is the way we confine and literally torture millions of animals. Pigs in gestation crates where they can’t turn around and live on concrete, for years. Piglets getting castrated and teeth removed without anesthesia. Chicks tossed into grinders because they’re male and can’t lay eggs. Dairy cows repeatedly impregnated, calves taken at birth so we can take their milk, repeat until collapse then send her to McDonald’s. Said male calves put in crates to be veal. Chickens bred to grow so big so fast they can’t walk and have heart attacks. Chickens hung in shackles live by their legs then slid across a blade. Gas chambers for pigs is the latest method. Animals on transport trains or ships in boiling heat or freezing cold, for days or even weeks. I like to think the one cow my grandparents kept in their pastured, then slaughtered each year, was perhaps moral. But today’s factory farms and industrial animal system is decidedly not moral at all.
In addition to everything else noted, those conditions make for unhealthy food.
Even if none of this were the case and animals were still treated well, it’s still immoral to end a life just to experience pleasure for yourself.
For pleasure that is so true. But in some populations around the globe it is survival not just pleasure, for example poor coastal fishing villages or Siberian aboriginal peoples.
Completely agree Sandra - I was a vegetarian in Kazakhstan, a nomadic culture in the middle of a desert (aside from the small fertile areas by the mountains.) I was only able to get a few foods than had been imported from Russia - which obviously a luxury in the 90s. So not eating meat was certainly a privilege..
The cases you cite are exceptional and increasingly so as transportation technology improves. Thank you for agreeing on the for pleasure point.
I must admit, it's one of the reasons I love living right next to the Pampas - if you drive out for hours at end and only see happy grazing, you don't feel so bad enjoying the meat!
If we abstained from eating meat, the planet would be in much better shape. We would use much less water, generate far less pollution, and permit vast stretches of land to do something other than grow feed for animals.
If we abstained from eating meat, our health would probably improve (although there is some controversy about this claim).
Nature does not endorse veganism. In fact, it evolved carnivores. Of course, nature is amoral. Darwin famously observed how suffering is part of the natural order. Humans seem to be the only omnivorous species with individuals who abstain from eating meat. That makes humankind special. It doesn't argue for the correctness of veganism, but it's nice to know that my veganism is a rare and special power.
You’ve probably seen this documentary but…
https://youtu.be/_Ls2KEyb19E?si=QVTeAeYddNQ18uVO
I suppose each individual must decide for himself on the morality of killing animals for food.
As for me, I'll take my steak medium rare.
That is not how morality works.😉
My personal feeling is that killing animals is at least unfortunate and perhaps rises to the level of immoral. But I know I need to eat some meat to be healthy. I was a vegetarian for a number of years. I eventually began to feel lightheaded and fatigued. Tests showed no abnormalities. My physician eventually counseled “there may not be enough chickpeas in the grocery” to ensure my 6’2” 225lb physically active body was getting enough protein and advised a “hamburger cure”. It worked. Problem solved. Anya, I imagine your smaller stature in your family imparts a similar lesson: Most of us need at least some animal proteins to be healthy. The Jainist in me might still place a bug in the house out in the yard unmolested, but I’d eat those too if I needed them to stay well.
Yes, I have always thought that and I suspect my carnivorous daughter will grow to be much taller than me! It is interesting that a lot of the gladiators were vegetarian...
Humans have no right to even make the decision as to whether killing animals is moral. Nor do they have the right to decide if animals are less important or "lower" than humans. Humans in this debate are obviously inherently biased. Think about it! Maybe a simple analogy is in order. In sports, team A vs. team B - would it be fair for team A to be the referee and make decisions about penalties and who wins? Obviously not. How is that any different than humans deciding humans are better than animals?! Humans deciding that reason is more important than other factors is absurd. Non-humans obviously have many greater abilities than humans, so a bird should be able to say being able to fly makes them superior, thus more important, and thus the slaughter of the lesser humans is not immoral. Obviously there are tons of examples, like non-humans being stronger or faster. Humans saying reason is greater is no different than a chetah saying speed is greater, etc.
Humans have no right to decide they are more important or greater. Period.
Do you think there are any critical differences between humans and animals?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "critical". Certainly there are differences. But first, I don't even like calling them "animals" really. That makes the assumption that all non-humans are one type of being and humans are another type. We only do that because we are stuck in our human point of view. Non-humans is a better term.
In order to really view what's real, we need to transcend point of view. To see from the "point of view" of Reality, we need to transcend our limited human point of view.
Why do we group all beings that aren't human into one group and separate humans out into another group? There are differences between all species. A dog is different than a cat just like a human is different from a cat. Humans differentiate themselves from non-humans only because they are viewing the world from a limited perspective or point of view.
To view the world and the beings in it from a True perspective, we need to transcend our limited point of view. Without that transcendence of point of view, everything we say is limited and biased necessarily. Just like in the sports analogy I mentioned in my original post above. In that analogy, we could say the unbiased referee is the transcendence of point of view.
I hope I'm being clear. I'm not used to actually putting these kinds of philosophical ideas into words for others!
Vegetarian is an old American Indian word for bad hunter - - -
Why does it matter - do you have no sense of humor??
It is interesting that all those cultures that you quote (not individuals, like Pythagoras, but cultures), have not achieved much, or no longer exist.
We are part animal, part rational being. The rational being can come up with many ideas, but the animal part needs an omnivore diet. Not vegan, not vegetarian, but omnivore. Which doesn't mean, of course, eating meat daily, but does mean eating meat from time to time.
I did a trial vegan period, which told me two rather opposite things: first, I was eating too much meat, and second, eating meat is critical. I still remember, 10 years on, the first meat I ate after about one year of being vegan (and taking vitamins and substitutes). I knew at that moment, that not eating meat is not sane.
Now, that's a completely separate discussion from industrial meat farms and animal welfare, which is a painful discussion indeed. Free-range and grass-fed all around, for me (technically, in Switzerland, e.g. Naturaplan label.)
I agree about the distinction between industrial meat farms and animal welfare - and also as someone who has had no/low meat diet versus high protein (and how much healthier I feel!) I think that is also an important observation. As for cultures that have not achieved much, however, I might venture that the billion folks in India, the most populous country in the world, might say otherwise.
Not all of India is vegetarian, and also India is achieving much less per capita than other countries.
So while it is a good case study, it’s not, I think, the counter example.
Anya, this lead question "Is Eating Meat Moral?" evokes the bigger question of the multitudes of moral authority available to the individual. What is your moral authority? What is mine? I suspect we would not agree completely. That being said, and surveying some other answers, I'll contribute to the side of wisdom of voting "yes." Our incisor teeth seem to indicate a purpose of eating meat. This is not an isolated fact unrelated to our creation, but rather a fact that is cohesive with eating meat. Connecting these dots, or at least acknowledging them, should be part of the answer.
Is there an essential difference between eating animals and eating plants? Why would it be be immoral behavior to kill for food some living beings and moral behaviour to kill other living beings?
For the Pythagoreans, the soul could transmigrate to other animated beings... so they drew the line at plants. But, yes, it's a good question as we come to learn more about the communication and abilities of plants...
We should eat meat if we are willing to raise animals for food properly.
Good caveat.
I don’t see how killing an animal just for taste pleasure is moral. It seems fairly simple to me. As usual, we should all listen to Pythagoras.
Pythagoras also said a lot of things we might not need to listen to... especially if we like to eat beans or put on our right shoe first.
I grew up on a farm. We grew sheep for wool, we ate mutton. at about 12 or 13 it came to me as the oldest boy to do the butchering. It was something I found very difficult, yet it was who I was and I spent a long time contemplating it. On a grazing farm in Australia with its floods and droughts there are many times you are trying your best to keep all the animals alive and yet they die at the hands of the seasons.
The way I came to terms with my duty was " I can never tell when some greater consciousness will decide when my time ends". Thus I would give thanks for this animals life and quickly dispatch it.
Later when I left home and went to the city for a while I found i could not eat meat as I was not connected to it origins.
So interesting! Thank you for sharing. I think it would be a very different experience being so connected to meat. It is something so many of us urbanites lack...
The line about Is Eating Meat Moral? Carnivores vs is the useful hinge. That is where the argument gets practical.
Should we eat meat? Is it moral?
In reading the article, which is very interesting, a quote came to mind from Miroslav Krleža: "In the human mind there is nothing save fiction. Morality is just one fiction." So should we eat meat? If one would be able to kill the animal, gut and skin it, and cook it, then let it be so. It is then less of a fiction than the fiction we all live but when it becomes morality it is a capital Fiction. Much of the ancient world as well as much of the historical world has had to eat meat in that there were elements that made it hard to survive on vegetables: desert, tundra, etc. Also, bodies with northern European genes have a DNA that requires meat as well as dairy for the body type.
So I say if one eats a steak in Argentina, do so but in the US be aware as our meat here is so tainted, but back to morality, the real moral injustice is whaat we do to the food we consume. My wife does not eat meat in that she is a cancer survivor and was told by top medical people not to eat red meat, and do remember that every education eventually becomes a miseducation. So it this morality or doing what needs to be? I do not quite agree with Pythagoras in the article that if we ate less meat we would not go so much to war. Living in Northern California, I have met many vicious vegetarians.
The line about Is Eating Meat Moral? Carnivores vs is the useful hinge. That is where the argument gets practical.
I wish I had saved the exact reference, but I didn't. A few years back I read about a cannibal chief who laughed at missionaries who tried to dissuade him from eating humans. He said they were too fussy, too picky.