[laurenbee]

Fish need to eat other fish to survive.

We don't need to eat other animals to survive.

It is very possible (and very easy, in some places) to survive and thrive without animal products at all. Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?

[imgabe]

Possible and easy perhaps for a relatively small percentage of the world's population. It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place.

Everything that lives suffers and dies eventually. Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human?

[laurenbee]

> Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human?

These aren't the only two options. We could also stop breeding animals into miserable existences in order to fatten them up and slaughter them for our consumption (which, in addition to causing suffering, causes great harm to the environment as well).

> It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place.

I don't disagree that this was the case. In the past, people had fewer choices (and sadly, many people today do not have the luxury of choosing which foods they eat -- if they can get enough food at all). I am lucky to have a ton of options available to me, and so I choose to not support suffering.

[tbrownaw]

We could also stop breeding animals into miserable existences in order to fatten them up and slaughter them for our consumption (which, in addition to causing suffering, causes great harm to the environment as well).

We could also sterilize the planet and end suffering entirely.

[JoeAltmaier]

Something to do with the morals of cynically raising them solely to be food for us - there's definitely a responsibility there, different from hunting or eating animals that happened to die.

[tbrownaw]

We don't need to eat other animals to survive.

Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?

Define suffering.

If you raise them in conditions not worse than they'd face in the wild, and kill them in a way that they die quickly (which is far better than they'd face in the wild), what's the problem?

[JoeAltmaier]

There still remains the problem - they were raised for the ethically iffy purpose of being our lunch. E.g. you could make the same argument about 'wild' humans, were we don't try to justify raising, killing and eating them. Of course its different, but how different? That's the issue.

[imgabe]

I don't see any ethical dilemma with feeding yourself. Everything you eat was alive at one time. If it's unethical to eat, why not just kill yourself now? How do you even justify being alive?

[JoeAltmaier]

Silly; you don't have to eat meat. Obviously the point.

[lemming]

and kill them in a way that they die quickly

Come back to us when any form of fishing, especially commercial fishing, is like this.

[baddox]

If we don't eat animals, we have to cultivate, grow, kill, and eat plants (omitting things like Soylent which are for from feasible on a large scale). I could propose an ethical system that considers eating a plant immoral just as easily as one that considers eating an animal immoral.