[andersentobias]

> My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years.

I have heard this repeated from so many vegans / animal activists at this point, including my own sister. Where did you get it from? Who is the original author? I am seriously asking.

An argument involving only my individual health (I am into fitness stuff) plus effect on the environment - repeated enough times - would sway me.

To be completely honest: I do not appreciate being told that I am an immoral human being for X (X = eating meat).

Been told that too many times already during my lifetime. It is a cultural constant. That formula is just too tiresome to hear yet again at this point.

[haswell]

> I do not appreciate being told that I am an immoral human being for X (X = eating meat).

While I don’t think it’s useful to oversimplify this into a binary moral issue, I also think it’s necessary to be reminded about the realities of the choices we make.

Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

> Been told that too many times already during my lifetime. It is a cultural constant. That formula is just too tiresome to hear yet again at this point.

I mean this with all respect, but this really sounds like “well, the world hasn’t stopped abusing animals yet, so I really don’t have a choice but to participate, and it’s really tiresome when people point that out”.

Change starts from within. I’d argue that the reason these argument feel tiresome is because the current solutions are not easy ones. They require each of us to alter our habits and demand broader change.

This is legitimately hard. But neither is there some magic bullet that will solve this.

I fully appreciate that we’re all stuck in a system that we can’t do much individually to change. But the one thing we can change is ourselves, and this is an option that is always available.

I wouldn’t be so quick to call someone who eats meat immoral, and as a meat eater I’d be a hypocrite for doing so. I’ve also gone to lengths to acquire meat that is as ethical/humane as possible, and over time I’ve reduced consumption significantly.

There are historically plenty of culturally acceptable practices that are also deeply immoral upon further reflection. If you’re finding the arguments tiresome, that may be a good signal to listen more closely.

[concordDance]

> Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

Is this a genuine question?

We're social animals and calling someone immoral is going to be perceived as a social attack by non-neurodivergent people.

> I mean this with all respect, but this really sounds like “well, the world hasn’t stopped abusing animals yet, so I really don’t have a choice but to participate, and it’s really tiresome when people point that out”.

If you think this is just about animals you're missing most of the picture. In the modern day people are told they are immoral for many many reasons: driving cars, not turning off lights when they leave the room, not going to that BLM protest, not signing the anti-abortion petition, not going to church, using shampoo, not donating to ukraine/save the children/deworm the world, etc etc

It's an extremely common tactic used by every activist on every topic.

[dguest]

I agree. We should be able to acknowledge that we do harmful things without turning it into judgement on our overall character. It's not hypocrisy to admit that you do bad things sometimes.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

"You're immoral for X" is very often used by someone who wants to take a very grey issue and make it black and white, with their side obviously being the "right" one (and, just in case it's not clear, they label the other side as immoral). It's often a cheap rhetorical trick of someone who wants to win the argument by default, rather than having to go through the hard work of actually persuading people (which means having to deal with all the grey parts of the question). "I'm morally right, you're morally wrong, you should feel ashamed of your position, and therefore you should shut up" is almost never a good-faith argument.

That doesn't make them "inconvenient truths". That makes them rhetorical ammunition for someone who is interested in winning, not in truth or good-faith discussion.

Note well: This does not apply to all instances of the phrase "inconvenient truth". But it seems to me that it is used that way more often than it's used in good faith.

[stcroixx]

If one accepts they are an omnivore, and there is ample evidence to support this, then they do not feel it is immoral to kill animals for food. That would make one’s very existence immoral. You may disagree, but that doesn’t mean you’re right or that your point of view is the truth, convenient or otherwise and few people appreciate moral judgments from others.

[CaptainNegative]

I don't get it. In most circumstances, if one doesn't want to be called immoral for performing an objectively cruel act, the standard course of action would be to stop doing it.

Why would one who inflicts or remunerates mistreatment, slavery, and death upon animals expect to be shielded from criticism on the count of it potentially hurting their feelings?

[flatline]

There’s a huge difference between killing animals and eating their meat. Likewise there’s a world of difference between industrial scale livestock and smaller, organic, free-range farming - on many levels. Yes, animal slaughter is require for meat production, and by eating meat we contribute to said slaughter. But there’s a ton of nuance in between, and people know this.

It’s a really disingenuous argument to pretend these are exactly the same thing from an ethical standpoint. In Buddhist ethics, for example, intention is key: monks cannot kill an animal but they may eat meat if offered. People who cry about the moral or ethical basis of some decision often make uninformed arguments believing an issue is black and white. Ethics is gray all the way down.

[callalex]

Until technology advances thee is only one way to make meat: by killing a living creature. You do not get to just remove that step from the conversation because you don’t like it. There is no “huge difference” when the action is a required part of producing meat.

[amanaplanacanal]

But… if the animal is treated well during its lifetime, and slaughtered humanely (as painlessly as possible), almost everybody isn’t going to have a problem with it. You are then getting into religious beliefs which most are not going to agree with.

Admittedly a lot of current practices are pretty horrible.

[haswell]

I agree that killing is inseparable from consumption.

But there is absolutely a huge degree of difference in how the killing occurs, and how the animal is treated during its life leading up to it.

These differences materialize as an array of options when deciding what to purchase, and are factors that can be weighed by an individual.

The difference is there and quite meaningful once you examine the spectrum of realities involved in modern meat production.

One might still believe that no form of animal killing is ever acceptable regardless of circumstances, but that places the argument in a different category.

[CaptainNegative]

The topic here is about animals who are fed excessive quantities of antibiotics while healthy, fattening them up to the point that their skeletons frequently fracture because they can't bear the weight. These are not well-treated "happy hens". They are chickens crammed by the tens of thousands into barns with about as much square footage as it has birds. Sometimes less. The unroofed "free range" they get access to may amortize out to a couple square inches per bird, in a portion of the facility they'll never reach due to bird traffic.

It is of no solace to any of the 40 billion individual chickens presently in factory farms that some others may be raised in a coup in a backyard of someone's hypothetical uncle's house. And the hypothetical existence of said uncle has no relevance to the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.

[haswell]

To be clear, I find the conditions you're describing to be abhorrent and an unacceptable norm, and I've argued elsewhere in this thread to that end.

But real free-range farms actually exist, and are not someone's "hypothetical uncle's house". The products of these farms are available in stores, and purchasing them does not contribute to the abuse of animals in factory farms.

To claim otherwise cannot be justified by an examination of facts/reality, and is to claim that I didn't eat dinner last Thursday. This is not to say that sourcing food this way is easy, and it's certainly not cheap.

> the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.

The point with all of this is that there is a nuanced conversation to be had. Oversimplified binary reductions do not represent reality nor are they a useful point from which to have a conversation about how to improve the status quo. Issuing blanket statements like the one quoted above can only create a wedge between your position and those who you'd arguably like to reach with it. I happen to agree with you re: the horrors of unhappy hens, but you're also directly contradicting my lived experience.

[OJFord]

GP's point is that eating isn't killing, you can eat meat without (personally) killing any animals, and that can be (and for very many is) emotionally different for people.

[haswell]

And the general counterpoint to this is that the emotional distance gained by not doing the killing has zero relevance to the moral acceptability of mass abuse in factory farms.

Furthermore, that emotional distance leads to even more grotesque behavior because people are so far removed from the process that they can remain completely unaware.

Over time, more people have become aware of child labor and otherwise horrible working conditions in the production of clothing and shoes. Not being directly exposed to those conditions does not in any way excuse those conditions or make them acceptable.

[bluefirebrand]

> objectively cruel act

You mean "subjectively"

Which is the whole crux of the issue isn't it?

You think it's "objectively cruel"

Many people don't think it is.

[wirrbel]

Also, slaughtering as a process never was an issue for people. My grandma slaughtered chicken in her back yard.

[PuppyTailWags]

I think it's important, as people who eat meat, to fully acknowledge the deep and societal harms that meat causes. It is well-studied that slaughterhouses are uniquely bad for a community and uniquely bad for the people who work there. Meat as a food can sometimes be bad for people, but meat as an industry is definitely bad for people. Knowing this can allow us to make more responsible choices even if we still end up eating meat, such as selecting for small, ethical farmers that also limit the trauma of themselves/those who do the slaughtering of their stock.

[pasquinelli]

if you read the comment you're replying to carefully, you'll see they never said you or anyone else was immoral for eating meat, yet that's your takeaway.

[ericmcer]

I think it is a valid point. We can only indulge in such a guilt free way because we don't see how the sausage is made.

My friend will eat burgers and chicken nuggets all day, but a chicken drumstick with it's tendons and cartilage he is unable to eat, it is a necessary disconnect for him.

My tolerance is way higher but if part of ordering dinner was choosing a living animal for them to kill and prepare I would definitely just get tofu.

[PeterisP]

IDK, I don't see any food-guilt issues from any of the countryside people I know who see "how the sausage is made" because they have done it, and have slaughtered some of the animals they have grown themselves.

And IMHO the discussions about "kill your own dinner" are quite impractical because that simply doesn't work in most conditions from the perspective of hygiene and food safety, and slaughtering is a job that does require quite some skill to do it properly, having it done by amateurs can easily be needless cruelty if you do it wrong. Like, I can butcher a chicken or a rabbit, but I would not be qualified to handle a pig or a cow properly.

[giantg2]

"We can only indulge in such a guilt free way because we don't see how the sausage is made."

That might be for some people. There are many that would have no guilt. As you point out, some people know what is in a chicken nugget (chicken) but eat it anyways. This path might slightly reduce the number of omnivores, but I doubt it would have a serious impact overall. Like any reduction in consumption from them would just lead to a lower price and increased demand either domestically or internationally.