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Why it’s ethical to eat meat (and why it’s not)

After some severe food poisoning last winter (I made a poor choice, okay? let’s not relive it), I’ve been going through a food mid-life crisis. I gave up eating meat so long ago that I found myself out of touch with the original reason why I did: it was an ethical decision. But why is eating an animal wrong, and do I still think so?

With all of the finger-pointing style politics these days, I thought I’d take a broader-minded approach and consider the other side of the argument. Discussions around morality quickly trigger emotions because they question our values and our way of life. Regardless of which side you are on, it is always worth considering the opposite one. How else can you fully understand the current scope of an issue and come to the best conclusion possible? I mean, do we really need more ways to categorize ourselves, box ourselves in, and contribute to greater division? I don’t think so.

The biological reality is that death begets life on this planet and that all life (including us!) is really just solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form.

-Jay Bost, Give Thanks to Meat, NY Times

Most of us are not okay with eating dogs. So why are we okay with eating pigs? Hmmm…

Let’s take a look at 5 common reasons why people suggest it is ethical to eat animals:

  • “We are supposed to eat animals. Our brains wouldn’t be what they are without them. And look at the shape of our teeth.” There is scientific evidence that eating meat allowed our ancestors to grow dramatically larger brains over a few million years. Meat and cooked foods (check out the book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human) provided the necessary caloric boost for the growing brain. The shape of our teeth though may not indicate that we were specifically designed to eat meat (see Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5 Million Year Obsession with Meat). A gorilla, for example, only eats plants, but has bigger, sharper canines than we do. The human digestive track, however, has evolved for an omnivorous diet, and the killing of animals and eating of meat have been significant aspects of human evolution.
  •  “Animals are not the same as humans. We’re higher up on the food chain so we have a right to eat them.” This is an interesting one. In 2013, a group of French scientists, through some statistical analysis of species’ trophic levels, determined that we rank somewhere around anchovies or pigs, which is right in the middle of the food chain. Why? We’re globally mostly omnivores, eating a mix of meat and plants. Animals that eat only meat, and have few or no predators, like a tiger, rank at the top. So, one may need to dig deeper into the reasoning behind what exactly makes animals different from humans.
  •  “If a tiger can eat another animal, why can’t I?” The argument seems to be that eating animals is natural, and that we are part of the food chain (even if we are in the middle). It is part of the cycle of life, and nature is sometimes cruel by human standards. And it’s true. Some animals eat other animals because they are biologically carnivores (they can’t digest plants); while, others are biologically herbivores or omnivores. Would a tiger think twice about eating you if it somehow felt threatened? I don’t think a tiger is contemplating morality at this point in time. Should we hold carnivores or other omnivores that do not have the same type of brain to the same moral standards? I don’t really think so. While this argument seems to have some merit, it misses the fact that many of the animals we are talking about here are farm raised non-predatory types that often times are subjected to poor living standards. 
  • “If we don’t eat farm animals, the world will be overpopulated by them.” This argument is bound together by ethics and ecology. We humans are responsible for the mass breeding of farm animals so there are some flaws in this thought. In certain situations, however, there is an ecological impact to consider. In an essay for the NY Times on the morality of meat eating, an agroecologist (and former vegetarian and vegan), Jay Bost, points out: “I was convinced that if what you are trying to achieve with an ‘ethical’ diet is the least destructive impact on life as a whole on this planet, then in some circumstances, like living among dry, scrubby grasslands in Arizona, eating meat, is, in fact, the most ethical thing you can do other than subsist on wild game, tepary beans and pinyon nuts. A well-managed, free-ranged cow is able to turn the sunlight captured by plants into condensed calories and protein with the aid of the microorganisms in its gut. Sun > diverse plants > cow > human.”
  • “How can you eat plants then? They feel pain too.” Uh, seriously?! Plants don’t have nociceptors, which are receptors for pain. There is evidence that they have a reaction to, say, leaves being cut off of them. But this is more of a biological awareness rather than a “please stop you’re hurting me” response. Animals can, however, feel pain and suffer. Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher whose book Animal Liberation (published originally in1975) bases his ethical reason to not eat animals on the utilitarian idea that the “greatest good” is the only measure of ethical or good behavior. He argues that all sentient beings capable of experiencing suffering or pain are worthy of equality. He states that animal rights should be based on their capacity to feel rather than their intelligence, and to treat them unequally is as bad as treating humans unequally based on some discriminatory factor like skin color.
What if this couple could not sell fish? They rely on it for income in a poverty-stricken country where they have limited options.

What, if anything, can justify taking an animal’s life if we are not talking in-terms of basic survival? Some say that it is a first-world luxury to be even contemplating this topic. In some sense it is, but wealthier nations are the ones that consume and demand the most meat. They are also huge contributors to the environmental issues we’re facing. Peter Singer provides one of the most practical and sound arguments for not eating animals, and I’ve struggled to find individuals (ideas?) that make a successful ethical argument against him.

But ethical considerations are not one size fits all. As I’ve opened up my view through greater exposure to other cultures and more nuanced ways of thinking about food, I’ve realized that some ethical vegetarians and vegans are just as narrow-minded as some meals-are-not-real-without-meat types. There is no question in my mind that factory farming practices are cruel. Even if we choose to eat meat, we should learn about these practices and demand to know more about the sources we purchase from.

Your thoughts: Could there be ways that we could eat meat (and plants for that matter) more ethically? What problem are we trying to solve, in what context are we framing it, and what kind of tiered solutions can we come up with? Even if we are biologically capable of eating both meat and plants, does it make ethical sense to do so in the way we are doing it? And on the plant-based side, are there other considerations that we are missing? Grab your green smoothie or chicken wing and comment on the Mindful Rebels Instagram or Facebook.