Should you feel guilty for eating meat?

[Particulate]

I raise my own goats and chickens expressly to eat them. They are not pets.

 

[The Human Torch]

Delicious, delicious guilt... *drool*

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

I shouldn't, and I don't, and there's nothing you can say to make me feel otherwise. It provides vital nutrients and tastes good with a little seasoning, too.

Is being cruel to an animal before they become meat wrong? Yeah, it is. It's not its fault it was born to have a meeting with an axe; the least you could do is be nice to it until then. But that's not what you asked.

 

[Flutterbrave]

I actually wish I didn't eat meat. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some "Animal Liberation" nutjob or PETA member. I support vivisection and animal experimentation - done a bit of that myself in labs, although I usually used yeast cells.

But the fact remains that we don't need meat to survive. I am against animal cruelty in all its forms - I don't support recreational hunting (although I have no problem with hunters who hunt for food), I don't support bullfighting and I generally despise anyone who would hurt an animal for fun.

I don't need to eat pork to live a healthy life. Contrary to what the meat industry says, you don't need meat to live. We do need protein, but we don't need nearly as much as we eat and there are sources of protein other than meat. I'm a medical student, and I have more than one science degree - I've done my nutrition, I know how to read journal papers, I know how to do proper research and the evidence is clear: We don't need to eat meat. In fact, we should eat a hell of a lot less meat. A little bit of meat every now and then isn't harmful for us, but the amount of red meat we consume in the West is VERY unhealthy. If you are going to eat meat, the evidence is clear - less is better, and white meat or fish is preferable.

Given that we don't need to eat meat, can we justify killing animals? I can justify killing them for research purposes - human lives are more important than animal lives. We are the scientists. We are the mathematicians. We are the musicians and the engineers and the architects and the philosophers. Show me a dog that can write a symphony. Show me a crab that can comprehend trigonometry. Show me a bear that can understand the process of nuclear fusion that occurs in a star. You can't. No animal, other than humans, can do or comprehend these things. We create order and beauty and form ideals. Animals cannot do that, or at least, cannot do it to nearly the same complexity. This debate we're having right now about guilt - no animal other than humans is even remotely capable of it. A bear doesn't even know the concept of "rights", a frog doesn't understand ethics or "values". Only humans do. Thus, we're more important.

But that doesn't mean animals should have NO rights. Although they are far less intelligent than us, they still have some intelligence. Dogs can learn words. Birds can memorize feeding locations. Dolphins can play. They're less intelligent than humans but that doesn't mean they have no intelligence. So while I might be able to justify killing them in pursuit of knowledge and medical applications, can I justify turning them into food?

They can also feel pain. Stick a fork into almost any live animal, and it will react to that fork.

Killing an animal for meat is not the same thing as killing a human being. Eating meat shouldn't be a moral crime on par with murder. And I eat meat. I just finished a dish consisting primarily of fish. Do I feel guilty? Well.... a little bit? I do realize that the fish I ate was as dumb as a sack of bricks. Have you see a fish? They are mindbogglingly stupid. Their brains are tiny and primitive.... but if I didn't need to kill it... should I have? If I didn't need to eat it, should I have just let it live? I am gravitating towards vegetarianism... simply because from my medical studies I know that I don't HAVE to eat meat and I don't like seeing animals die.

This.

This, so hard.

 

[Ed Classified]

I have never really cared about the animals we use for meat, I like meat and I don't feel guilty about eating it. That being said I couldn't kill an animal myself to eat it, but when the meat is processed and everything it's so far removed from the actual animal that I don't even think about it.

 

[greatcheezer2021]

well we're made of meat and we're not eating one another. (not in that way)

so who do we blame for making all the other tasty animals entirely of meat? hell even fish have more meat on them than some land critters. should we protest that predator always eats prey?

should we also touch upon the fact bone marrow is not tasty but has nutrients a plenty?

and when you say meat, does that include the organs? they are meaty, just heartier hahaha.

 

[Soods]

I'd feel quilty if I ate meat. I feel bad when my family eats it. But in my opinion the guilt-level depends on multiple factors. (Source, species etc).
And if you can't think of any reasons to feel guilty:
1. Feeding the animals takes a lot of resources. (This atleast applies to cows & pigs).
2. Eating certain types of meat can be unhealthy.
3. It's very hard to extract meat from the victim without killing the victim in the process.

 

[Aprilgold]

Unless the animal is literally dying of extinction solely because were eating it then no. With the changes to the meat industry coming in waves upon waves of awesome such as actually giving the animals a nice meadow to wonder before hitting them once in a specific spot. The fact that growth hormones and tons of corn are going out of their meals and come in more balanced and nutritious meals.

Honestly, were starting to get to the point where were taking more care for the animals we care then what natures has in store for them. Some specific vegetarians I met [I was one for a month before learning about open-ranging. I know I know lacking dedication and shit] believed that we should let all the animals that we are going to eat should be let into the wild. Thats right, you see that bovine there with her little calf happily and safely wander the meadows? Well lets throw them both into the wild where they can be eaten alive by carnivores such as wolves. They were so much happier literally being eaten alive then living a fun and safe life in the field before a quick execution.

I'm just going to respond to the title...

Er... We're omnivores, meaning we're destined to eat meat. And some other stuff.

We shouldn't feel guilty, the set of teeth we have are meant for plants and meat.

Edit: Okay, I read the OP and the only thing that I'm interested in was the second last paragraph.

We shouldn't eat meat because it involves killing living things? What if I ate an apple? I'm essentially murdering unborn apple trees.

That being said, the only meat I like eating is sea foods. Yes, believe it or not I hate bacon. Come at me(?)

No bro, I will not come at you, instead I shall hug you so hard because we are fish food buddies.

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

I'm just going to respond to the title...

Er... We're omnivores, meaning we're destined to eat meat. And some other stuff.

We shouldn't feel guilty, the set of teeth we have are meant for plants and meat.

Edit: Okay, I read the OP and the only thing that I'm interested in was the second last paragraph.

We shouldn't eat meat because it involves killing living things? What if I ate an apple? I'm essentially murdering unborn apple trees.

That being said, the only meat I like eating is sea foods. Yes, believe it or not I hate bacon. Come at me(?)

Thanks for saving me typing out my point.

 

[gyroscopeboy]

Show me a crab that can comprehend trigonometry.

How about a crab that sings punk rock?

OT. I love meat, and i would happily kill creatures to get it in my mouth.

 

[acosn]

I forget who it was, but someone had a very good response to this a couple pages ago. He brought up the Naturalist Fallacy which has to do with the assumption that just because something's natural means that it's right.

That may apply to things like murder and theft.

We're talking about eating meat.

Humans require the vitamin B12. The only good source of it is from meat. Any supplement you take of it is guaranteed to come back to an animal byproduct.

The bigger issue I carry against vegans and vegetarians is the sheer difficulty with which to live that lifestyle in the United States. Your makeup is made from animal products. Your food is obviously. A lot more of your clothes come from animal products and byproducts than most people realize. Hell, you can't technically use paper currency because cow fat is an ingredient in the stuff they use to give it that crisp feeling.

Well, that and the obviously toxic effect mass-meat production has on the environment. The methane cows produce has a measurable and significant impact on the atmosphere, to say nothing of what they do to water quality.

And the flip side raises very real questions about what we do with these animals now that they're so entirely domesticated that they can't physically live without us to begin with.

The US eats too much meat- this much is indisputable. Your average human needs about an amount of meat equal to a deck of standard playing cards to actually get their daily allotment of protein. To say we should feel guilty about eating meat- or not even eat it at all is ludicrous. And yes, while animals do have brains, its fairly easy to say that there's no real function to them. While brains are still relative biological black boxes we can say that the difference of brain mass between a wild turkey and a farm raised turkey has measurable consequences.

 

[Soods]

1. Feeding the animals takes a lot of resources. (This atleast applies to cows & pigs).

More than it would take to give everybody a stable, healthy, complete diet without meat?

A lot more, in fact.

3. It's very hard to extract meat from the victim without killing the victim in the process.

And some plants can't be harvested without killing the victim either.

Killing non-animals isn't such a big deal, since they can't even think.

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

If animals dont want to be eaten, they must only say so.

 

[Vivi22]

The US eats too much meat- this much is indisputable. Your average human needs about an amount of meat equal to a deck of standard playing cards to actually get their daily allotment of protein.

No, actually, it's not indisputable. Nor is stating the bare minimum amount of meat required to not be deficient in protein or other nutrients and saying we don't NEED more than that completely true. We don't need a whole lot to avoid dying really soon. But if we're not getting much energy from meat, then we're likely getting it from carbs, particularly breads and grains. At which point, congratulations! You've now got a population that is obese and deficient in muscle mass.

Point is, to have a diet which will result in ideal health, we need more meat than many supposed experts (particularly the USDA) say we do.

 

[royohz]

Given that we don't need to eat meat, can we justify killing animals? I can justify killing them for research purposes - human lives are more important than animal lives. We are the scientists. We are the mathematicians. We are the musicians and the engineers and the architects and the philosophers. Show me a dog that can write a symphony. Show me a crab that can comprehend trigonometry. Show me a bear that can understand the process of nuclear fusion that occurs in a star. You can't. No animal, other than humans, can do or comprehend these things. We create order and beauty and form ideals. Animals cannot do that, or at least, cannot do it to nearly the same complexity. This debate we're having right now about guilt - no animal other than humans is even remotely capable of it. A bear doesn't even know the concept of "rights", a frog doesn't understand ethics or "values". Only humans do. Thus, we're more important.

I agree with you except on this chain of points. I don't think human lives are more important, per se. It is precisely because we are smarter than them that we need to question the morality of killing innocent animals. Self-defense? No problem, that's fine. But us western, "civilized" people must stop the immense greed. Like you said, a little meat isn't all bad, but around 80% (just a guess) of people in the western world don't realize just how bad their meat eating habits are. It's lazy thinking to continue not to question our meat consumption level.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I feel guilty at least.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I forget who it was, but someone had a very good response to this a couple pages ago. He brought up the Naturalist Fallacy which has to do with the assumption that just because something's natural means that it's right.

That may apply to things like murder and theft.

We're talking about eating meat.

Humans require the vitamin B12. The only good source of it is from meat. Any supplement you take of it is guaranteed to come back to an animal byproduct.

The bigger issue I carry against vegans and vegetarians is the sheer difficulty with which to live that lifestyle in the United States. Your makeup is made from animal products. Your food is obviously. A lot more of your clothes come from animal products and byproducts than most people realize. Hell, you can't technically use paper currency because cow fat is an ingredient in the stuff they use to give it that crisp feeling.

Well, that and the obviously toxic effect mass-meat production has on the environment. The methane cows produce has a measurable and significant impact on the atmosphere, to say nothing of what they do to water quality.

And the flip side raises very real questions about what we do with these animals now that they're so entirely domesticated that they can't physically live without us to begin with.

The US eats too much meat- this much is indisputable. Your average human needs about an amount of meat equal to a deck of standard playing cards to actually get their daily allotment of protein. To say we should feel guilty about eating meat- or not even eat it at all is ludicrous. And yes, while animals do have brains, its fairly easy to say that there's no real function to them. While brains are still relative biological black boxes we can say that the difference of brain mass between a wild turkey and a farm raised turkey has measurable consequences.

Why would a logical fallacy not apply to a particular topic? It applies to any argument that states just because we're designed to do something means we should.

The argument you make about B12 is a completely different argument. Assuming you're not vegan, it's more than possible to get enough B12 from eggs and milk.

I agree with majority of the rest of your post up till the animal brains part. No real function? I would very much disagree with that. Animals experience pain, develop bonds (especially with their offspring), and have in many cases been shown capable of critical thinking. Making a blanket statement that animal brains are incomparable to ours is absurd. There's many animals that are incredibly intelligent. Have you seen the studies they've done on crows? Crows are pretty damn intelligent and are capable of a surprise degree of problem solving.

Of course there's a large amount of variation among animals, but just because they're not human doesn't make their brains have "no real function". You can say that your requisite intelligence of caring about something is different than someone else's, but since there's not an indisputable line to distinguish where this should be you can't blame people for caring more about less intelligent animals. Saying outright that no one should feel guilty is absurd, depending on how much importance you put on animal's lives I don't see any reason why it's wrong to feel guilty.

 

[Soods]

snip

For the first point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production

For the third point:
You are greatly underestimating animals' minds: some of them are almost smart as us (an example) [http://www.cracked.com/article_18930_6-amazingly-intelligent-animals-that-will-creep-you-out.html]. And even the dumber ones feel pain and sorrow.

 

[Soods]

snip

For the first point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production

Now show me the opposing statistics.

For the third point:
You are greatly underestimating animals' minds: some of them are almost smart as us (an example) [http://www.cracked.com/article_18930_6-amazingly-intelligent-animals-that-will-creep-you-out.html]. And even the dumber ones feel pain and sorrow.

You're overestimating animals' minds and learned behavior.

Opposing statistics as in "beneficial" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production#Beneficial_environmental_effects] for the environment? I think the free removal of weeds, handy fertilizer and biogas (renewable energy) don't outweigh the huge consumption of water, overgrazing, greenhouse gas emissions and water contamination. Also: plants are lower on the foodchain than animals. The lower we can get in the foodchain, the higher population we can sustain.

And human minds really don't differ in any big way from other animals' minds, do they?

 

[zarix2311]

I'm an animal, animals eat animals. My life has no more value than any of the other animals that I eat or those that eat each other. That philosophy works the other way around as well. So, to me, I have no reason to feel guilty for eating meat.