1/3 of the world's grain is used to feed cattle for beef consumption. Clearly this is wrong. It is wrong that people are starving but we use grain that could feed them in order that we can eat our unhealthy diets. 'The rich are dying from affluence while the poor are dying from starvation' Certainly state of affairs this is morally wrong. However i do not believe the act of eating meat is inherently wrong. What is wrong is our economic and political systems which favour us having too much meat, over others having none. That is immoral. Simply eating meat is not, in my eyes. Also i'm lead to believe that our consumption of meat, and therefore high protein intake, was a key reason why we developed further than most other organisms. But i'm not a scientist, i don't know whether this is irrefutable, or just something to be debated.
I feel that the problem with meat comes not from the consumption of it, but the over consumption of it (as I believe someone stated earlier in the thread). Daily, a person is supposed to have one to two servings of meat/high protein foods. A serving being the size of a deck of cards... now, how many people well exceed that amount in North America? I'd have to say most. As a result of the beyond excessive demand for meat, the whole system by which it is produced has become extremely mechanized and excessive. Firstly, the point originally made was the amount of feed needed for the animals; it could easily be better used to feed other people, certainly. There's also the matter of pollution (due to factory farms), and the MASSIVE amount of water consumed. Not only do animals drink water, of course... but what grows the crops? More water. The thousands upon thousands of farm animals then it turn pollute the already pressured water systems. So, people and the environment are both negatively affected. Secondly, for the animals involved, being raised in an intensive farming facility (ie a factory farm) is by no means natural, and thereby not humane, no matter how you swing it. It's dirty, its crowded, the air quality is terrible (which is bad for people living nearby, too). Slaughterhouses have also become so large scale that they're just downright nasty, too. You can only kill so many animals in so much time without it become sloppy. But, that all being said... the problem all loops back to what can only be refereed to as peoples' gluttony. Western culture is a culture of excessive, without a doubt. Our demand for meat is beyond anything necessary; I cannot cite any study to back me up when I say this... but surely, if people only consumed as much meat as they needed, the problems associated with meat production would be FAR less severe.
-I don't think eating meat is immoral. I also don't really see how it's immortal to not want to stop a behaviour that is only theoretically hurting others who live thousands of miles away from you and have no direct affect on your life. It's kind of hard to expect a drastic response (such as life altering decisions) from a situation like that. -I also don't really believe that if more people weren't eating it that people would be shipping more food to impoverished countries. If anything, if one nation stopped eating meat as a whole then they'd probably send their grain to a country who needs it for creating meat to be eaten. -I also don't believe it's the western world, or any one group's job to save all the others. I think that if they want to help out then that is great, but you cannot expect others to pour tons of resources into other areas; governments need to protect and serve their own people first, and then aid other areas after.
There can be only one. Well you probably have a point there... people are starving in the world not because we don't produce enough food for everyone, but because geopolitical situations prevent certain people from getting access to food. Well that's a great position if you want to completely ignore how the world works and how certain nations (i.e., the rich Western/Northern white settler ones) exploit other nations. Governments "taking care of their own" is probably how the US and other nations used to justify slavery... I mean, why should white people care what happens to people from Africa who are basically savages, right? I mean sure, countries like Canada and the US should be helping out the poor and the sick and the uneducated in their own countries--but the fact of the matter is that if those countries stopped allowing a tiny portion of their citizens to keep accumulating ever more obscene amounts of wealth, there would be more than enough resources for the G8 or even the G20 countries to address their own internal issues AND go a long way to improving the quality of life of everyone else on the face of the planet. I'm betting a lot of people here don't think about the fact that the only reason we have access to all the incredible array of things we do, like computers and the Internet, clean running water, hot water, as much food as we need, good education, health care (well, if you're in Canada or happen to be pretty well-off in the States), etc. is solely because we won the "where were you born" lottery. We didn't do anything to deserve all the advantages we have--we just lucked out and got born in a wealthy part of the world. Conversely, the much much larger percentage of people in the world who live in relative and often absolute poverty (compared to us) didn't do anything to deserve getting shafted in the "where were you born" lottery. They just didn't luck out like we did. So any sense of entitlement to the riches we are showered with (compared to most of the rest of the world--I'm not saying everyone here is by any means "rich") is highly inappropriate. There's a list someone did up of how much it would cost to provide some fundamental necessities worldwide vs. how much money various developed countries spend on relatively frivolous things like cigarettes, wine, cosmetics, lottery tickets, etc. I wish I had it to share because it really puts it in perspective just how solvable some of the pressing "world problems" are... and how "we have to take care of ourselves first" arguments are stupid in light of the ridiculous amounts of money the rich nations spend on completely unnecessary luxuries. And while it's certainly not just the "Western world's" responsibility to "save" the rest of humanity, given the amount of pain, suffering, and havoc the rich nations have wreaked (and continue to wreak) on the poorer, less powerful ones, I certainly think we have a lot more responsibility for trying to help out than the global South does. We're all in, ultimately, the same boat, and if we don't live together, we're gonna die alone (to paraphrase a great TV show). As for eating meat, I think it's kinda funny (and by "funny" I mean "sad") how it seems so wrapped up in many people's notions of identity and what it means to be "human." Just because something is thought of as "natural" (like, oh, heterosexuality) doesn't mean we should continue to do it or promote it, etc. You would think, in the increasingly neoliberal climate obsessed with McDonaldization stuff like efficiency, just the sheer inefficiency of meat as a mass food source would have us shifting away from it. But like with most things, it's never just about the simple things--it's always about money and more often than not power. I don't know if I'd call it "immoral" to eat meat in a generic sense but to produce meat the way we do, in an industrial way--well, it's pretty amazingly horrifying, and completely cruel, and since we have access to alternatives (i.e. we don't need to eat meat, or certainly not industrially-produced meat)... well that starts hitting immoral territory, if you ask me.
There is both an extrinsic and intrinsic immorality concerning meat and meat eating. On an extrinsic level, obviously there's poverty, as was mentioned previously. But intrinsically, the actual act of killing and eating another sentient being is immoral, as you are removing its right to live for no other reason than your preference for meat. There has been nonsense spouted about meat being 'essential' to our diets, which is simply untrue. Many millions of people around the world live within a vegetarian lifestyle and suffer no consequences. If anything, their health is improved through a more considered and balanced diet. Furthermore, the amount of pain caused is unimaginable. There is no legitimate reason for inflicting it.
Well I suppose I'd be in favour of it if the choice were people eating meat the way it's currently produced vs. the "means of production" described here. But as is pointed out in the article, people don't *need* to eat meat... so why go through the process of producing it at all when we could all eat veggies?
Okay... Is it immoral for a tiger to kill a gazelle, Or are you going to make them eat rabbit food to? It is not immoral. And I kinda take "filthy capitalist West" as an insult. This world would be a whole hell of a lot different if America was not capitalist. If it is wrong to make other countries make feed for our animals, they should do something about it, not just get bossed around by the powerful countries like little bitches. Yes we shouldn't make other countries make food for our contry, but that's kinda what happens when a super power of a country influences the entire world. Why does everyone point their fingers at Americans, we aren't the only super power, china is almost more powerful than America! It is not immoral to consume meat!
I'm a vegetarian, and I don't even think it is immoral. I just think it is right, at our cultures stage of development, to have to kill animals, but it's not immoral.
Tigers don’t have morals, they have instincts. Humans do have moral systems and on top of that are able to transform nature and produce our own food, something the rest of species haven’t been able to so far. I don't think anyone who said that meant to insult someone in particular (considering most of us here are from the West) but to criticize the political and economic policies from certain Western governments. They’ve tried, but the USA, and the multinational corporations together with the local elites have either killed the presidents, invaded those countries or brought down said governments to install repressive military dictatorships. Indeed, China is rising as the other world power, and its policies don’t differ much from American ones. But America has been in power for longer and therefore has played a more dominant role in the 20th century world economy that ensured its growth in detriment of others.
From my point of view, I find eating meat to be perfectly moral and fine. Some of the means of producing the meat we eat, especially in the U.S., are an entirely different conversation, but I have no problems at all with eating meat. I will likely eat meat for lunch in a couple of hours. If my family goes hunting and has extra they offer to me, I will take it and enjoy eating it. I have no issues with this. What I find to be positively immoral is the OP pulling out a soapbox to force his politics on everyone else. I'll willingly engage in a conversation and express my views if appropriate for the conversation, but I don't use this space to start threads bashing conservative viewpoints or religious viewpoints or even bash veganism. Even starting this thread on the premise of posing the question would have been fine with me, but to just start a thread saying that everyone that eats meat is a bad person is, frankly, fucking bullshit.
"Animals do it, so I can too!" Animals rape and kill. Does that make it okay for you to rape and kill? Their rational capacity isn't on the same level as ours, so it seems a bit strange that you'd want to take your ethical code from such beings. Essentially, your logic mandates that since animals rape each other, I, as a human, am morally allowed to do likewise. That's clearly wrong.
