[chrisandchris]

I'm all about reducing the environmental impact of us humans and I agree that not everything about our agriculture is ok.

Philosophical take: Every day animals kill other animals to survive. We can't change that. Why should humans be forbidden to kill & eat animals?

[000ooo000]

>Philosophical take: Every day animals kill other animals to survive. We can't change that. Why should humans be forbidden to kill & eat animals?

Adopting the moral code of animals, as justification for killing them, while simultaneously leaning on our supremely advanced intelligence to separate us from them so that we don't feel bad about it. Ironic.

[chrisandchris]

That's a thought I didn't have and now I'm getting downvoted for having an opinion.

[000ooo000]

It's unfortunate. Hard to have open conversations about this stuff because of how it reflects on one's moral identity. Vegans say "don't kill animals", nonvegans hear "you're a bad person". Nonvegans say "animals kill animals, why can't we?" and vegans hear "you are stupid". Probably not all that different to a lot of discourse really.

[AnotherHuman]

I guess I don't take my moral code from animals, else I'd be saying it's OK for people to do horrendous things like rape, murder, torture, eating each others' children etc.

We have higher-order thinking as well as choice - can use those to choose not to cause terrible suffering to sentient beings where we don't have to.

[chrisandchris]

I don't either.

[rzimmerman]

A counter philosophical take:

As a human, I can live a perfectly happy, healthy life without eating animals. Statistically it’s healthier, cheaper, and has no downside other than taste (meat tastes good, no argument here).

So ethically, how is eating meat any different than torturing and killing animals for pleasure?

[eadmund]

> I can live a perfectly happy, healthy life without eating animals.

That’s completely false: a life without bacon is less happy than a life with bacon, and thus imperfectly happy.

> So ethically, how is eating meat any different than torturing and killing animals for pleasure?

The former involves deriving pleasure from eating flesh; the latter involves deriving pleasure from inflicting pain.

[000ooo000]

>The former involves deriving pleasure from eating flesh; the latter involves deriving pleasure from inflicting pain.

Not all that different to an animal, though.

[pallas_athena]

When we will be able to grow meat in a lab, indistinguishable from real meat, with the same nutritional values, etc..., I will stop eating real animals.

Exactly 0% of my enjoyment of eating meat comes from inflicting pain to animals.

[000ooo000]

>Exactly 0% of my enjoyment of eating meat comes from inflicting pain to animals.

Exactly 0% of why you eat animals changes the pain inflicted on animals.

[myshpa]

Tradition, habit, convenience, taste. No other reasons exist.

[eadmund]

You omitted health. Meat is a package of pre-processed vitamins, minerals and energy sources.

Other than health, taste, tradition, habit and convenience, what has meat ever done for us?