[ramraj07]

Most don't agree with because for many it's part of their identity, it's what they grew up eating every day with their parents. To find their way of life being classified as unethical is jarring to say the least, so they put up a barrier to doing so.

I do not find fault in that attitude either, to be human is to have emotion, and to feel a sense of belonging. For someone who grew up on barbecue that's hard to reconcile.

However, a rigorous impartial analysis always categories eating meat as not ideal on both moral and ethical grounds. It probably has higher consensus among philosophers than climate change does with climate scientists. The irony is that I doubt all philosophers are vegetarian/vegan, so they themselves are probably the biggest hypocrites (or they have built up some system of ethics where being unethical on this is okay).

I come from a country where even if you're not vegetarian, your dose of meat is a few pieces of chicken once a week. It was very straightforward for me to choose vegetarianism and even then I struggled with it. I have nothing but respect for someone from rural Texas who chooses to be vegetarian though; that is just infinitely harder.

[imgabe]

> Most don't agree with because for many it's part of their identity, it's what they grew up eating every day with their parents. To find their way of life being classified as unethical is jarring to say the least, so they put up a barrier to doing so.

When you make up a reason for someone to believe something, sure it's easy to argue against it. Many people balk at finding eating meat unethical because it simply isn't. There is no consistent system of ethics that finds it unethical.

Deciding that some forms of life are "conscious" and should be protected and other forms of life are not is completely arbitrary. Living things consume other living things to survive. Surviving is not unethical, or if it is your system of ethics is self-defeating and will lead to your own extinction, which makes it useless.

[ramraj07]

Can you cite a single acceptable literary citation that says eating meat is not unethical? What's acceptable? Probably not a blog post, ideally a work by an academic philosopher. Something in between can be murky for sure.

[imgabe]

If you're going to go by whatever "academic philosophers"[1] say instead of thinking for yourself, I really don't know what to tell you.

[1] By and large, over-privileged people who've never done anything useful in their lives. It's easy to preach to people about what they should eat when you've always had plenty of food.

[ramraj07]

Oh I think for myself first. Also I'll show myself out given its clear what type of person I'm talking to.

[dilap]

Here's a question: Is it immoral for lions to eat zebras?

Here's another question: Imagine the entire Earth is actually a factory farm for aliens. Every time someone dies, their body is actually secretly used for alien food. Would you want Earth to cease to exist?

Or perhaps a closer analogy, imagine super-powerful aliens take over Earth and terraform Mars and Venus, which they use as human farms. Maybe 30 billion humans live on Earth, Mars, and Venus, leading full lives with everything provided to them that a human wants, but killed at 18 years of age.

Alien human-rights activists wish to stop the humans from breeding, and let the population fall to several thousand. They will devote the planets to instead growing Alien Corn.

Do you want this to happen?

[est31]

Have you seen how an industrial farm looks from the inside? I'm a meat eater and I love the taste and stuff, but you need to admit that many animals didn't have a great life at all. So beyond meat solves a real problem. Some folks want all meat production to be banned, I disagree. There are forms of farming which are better for animals, make their lives worth living. They are just more expensive regarding resources as well as money, so can't scale as well as industrial meat production. In the ideal world we've done away with industrial meat production but still keep a limited number of animals for meat production, real meat still being available but most people don't buy it for everyday consumption because it's expensive.

[dilap]

Totally agree; animals should be raised in humane conditions. Ideal would be something like

https://www.instagram.com/slowdownfarmstead/

or

https://stemplecreek.com

Driving down I5 seeing the Harris Ranch finishing lot is pretty awful. The ways chickens are housed here in Chinatown is also awful...

I think in my ideal world we have a balance between humans and animals so that such intensive techniques are not necessary.

[buzzy_hacker]

> Here's a question: Is it immoral for lions to eat zebras?

Lions must eat meat to survive. We can choose not to eat meat and still survive. That's a morally relevant distinction. If you are arguing that because meat-eating is natural then it must be moral, I would direct you to the appeal to nature fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

> Here's another question: Imagine the entire Earth is actually a factory farm for aliens. Every time someone dies, their body is actually secretly used for alien food. Would you want Earth to cease to exist?

No, but I fail to see how this runs counter to the moral claim that humans eating meat is bad. The correct analogy to your hypothetical would be to imagine that all animals live their full lives and are only consumed upon their death. It would not be morally wrong to eat them then.

> Or perhaps a closer analogy, imagine super-powerful aliens take over Earth and terraform Mars and Venus, which they use as human farms. Maybe 30 billion humans live on Earth, Mars, and Venus, leading full lives with everything provided to them that a human wants, but killed at 18 years of age. Alien human-rights activists wish to stop the humans from breeding, and let the population fall to several thousand. They will devote the planets to instead growing Alien Corn.

This analogy is not close at all. Animals do not lead full lives with everything provided to them that they could want. The vast majority of farmed animals live horrific lives that are not worth living and are killed very young. Chickens, for example, are artificially grown to reach a large size very quickly and then slaughtered shortly after.

The correct analogy to this hypothetical would be a so-called "humane" or "ethical" farm where the animals are free to live in a close-to-natural environment before being slaughtered. I would agree that that is much better than factory farms, and perhaps even morally acceptable if the animals' lives are worth living and they would not have existed otherwise. But, this is not how most farmed animals live. Not even close.

[jojobas]

Still, would it be morally preferable to genetically engineer lions to eat grass and replace normal lions with herbivore ones?

[dilap]

I agree; I don't think we should be raising animals inhumanely.

[gizmodo59]

I don’t think lions eating zebras is a good comparison.

We have evolved and flourished with agriculture and so we don’t have to consume meat unless the agricultural produce has gone way down.

I also think the general argument is how animals are treated with so many horrific videos out there which are just torture in my opinion and not a clean kill.

If someone is doing a clean kill without the animal suffering and making sure it’s living in good conditions, that’s a right step in many ways.

[jojobas]

We can't survive without Vitamin B in various forms, which is not found in plants at all (some fermented soy products do contain some, but it's incorrect to say we evolved to not eat meat).

[mrfusion]

Just from a diet standpoint. If I want to be somewhat low carb it’s a struggle to get full without meat.

[dvtrn]

When you say struggle: is this a struggle finding alternatives in your local food markets or struggle committing to making the dietary changes?

[mrfusion]

Maybe part ignorance, just not having ideas.

[dvtrn]

That’s fair. One of the hardest parts is being conscious and cognizant when shopping for food what we’re buying-ways to do this could include actively reading nutrition tables on food packaging and through this you start to get an idea of what certain foods do for you and you begin shopping with a purpose versus shopping to make the fridge look full.

Strategically Replacing meat with certain veggies and legumes for example can get you that protein and carb kick but also are a great source of fiber while being easier to digest. Depending on your personal diet choices you might find a bag of beans not only costs less but can get you the same amount of carbs and proteins per serving across multiple servings than a single serving cut of meat.

Some beans for your thoughts ;)

[asdff]

If I lean too heavily on beans I end up with devastating effects once I pass the meal due to all that fiber. Any supplement that can counter this?

[dvtrn]

I'm no true dietician, but curious: do you have issues normally with other fiber laden foods?

[maxerickson]

That's convenience, which probably isn't the thing that decides the ethics.