Should you feel guilty for eating meat?

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Anyway to cut the long story short, I'm very confused if eating meat/seafood is justified and that we shouldn't feel guilty for killing living things for our consumption. What do you guys think?

Your open and honest opinions on this subject are welcomed.

I like a lot of vegetarian food, but I think meat is proper and good food.

To really know and appreciate proper meat, I think hunting (or at the very least fishing) is part of the deal. Not everyone can or wants to own livestock, but fishing and hunting trips are feasible, and be it just for taking part in to know what it's all about.

Also, I prefer vegetables that are as ecologically sound and pure as can be, you wouldn't believe how much chemicals go into those hothouse veggies or how much kerosene goes into those bananas, mango or avocados hailing from around the world. We can't all hunt to feed families, and we can't all grow our own produce, but I think trying to keep an eye on reality is much, much better and healthier than going ideological apeshit. Yeah, I despise vegans. Can't help it.

 

[theSteamSupported]

Unlike real carnivores, we can't eat raw meat.
Unlike real herbivores, we can't eat cellulose.
Think about it, compared to other animals, we humans have a very poor digestive system, including teeth.

Also, the nutrients that created the modern brain of homo sapiens, came from shrimps and other sea insects, which could be eaten raw.

Just some fun facts to throw into this argument.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Ugly, eh?

I guess it's different for people who don't spend time around animals.

My family live in the country. They used to keep a couple of milking cows (well, they still do, I just don't live there any more). I wouldn't regard them as ugly animals.

One of them liked to chew on people's arms. Not hard enough to hurt. No idea why, she just did.

She was a cantankerous old beast. If she ran out of feed before we were done milking her, she'd promptly kick the bucket over.

This one time we killed, slaughter and ate her calf. A few days later the cow found the spot where where we'd bled the carcass. I guess she recognised the smell or something. There's a particular kind of short, relatively high-pitched "moo" that mother cows do to call their calfs back to them. That cow stood in that one spot and did that one particular moo continuously and almost without pause for several days and nights straight. When we tried to move her she got aggressive She only moved when she was nearly fainting from thirst.

Ugly.

...

Enjoy your steak.

I will, thanks. My family is farmer stock, and my dad killed hogs and cows and chickens when he was a kid, without a second thought. The boys went and shot game or slaughtered an animal when the family wanted meat. Didn't care at all. They hand-raised animals just to kill them. I've shot and butchered a squirrel. I didn't care. I ate it that night. It died quickly and cleanly, one shot to the heart, dropped straight out of the tree onto the ground. That's the circle of life.

Agriculture, in its basic form, is what humans have been doing for *thousands of years.* Nothing wrong with it. I don't know why people seem to think humans are so horrible just because we were smart enough to not give animals a fair fight.

We are apex predators. It's no different than other animals. Wolves got by on pack behavior. Tigers have huge size and strength. Most predators have big teeth and claws. Well, we have packs, but our claws and teeth are spears and bows, or more modernly, bullets. Just because we were smart enough to realize that if you put a big blockade around an animal, it can't escape, so you can eat it when you like, we're evil? Or just because we realized that hurling a piece of lead through something's head will kill it, rather than risking our lives grappling a beast, we're bad somehow? We're too smart to get gored by horns when we could stand fifty feet away and still get our meat.

Really, all of this just seems to say that it's only okay if you fight fair. And humans have survived history by not fighting fair.

Battery farming is pretty sketchy, because I don't advocate the extreme cases where animals are tortured. Most animals kill for food, and in doing so, kill the prey as quickly as they can. But simply the idea of raising animals for meat, is not wrong at all.

 

[gazumped]

Well, buying meat (unless it's game meat, which is expensive) can provide money to farms that neglect their animals, which is something to feel bad about even if you don't feel bad about the whole food chain thing.

But also, buying fruits, vegetables and grains can provide money to those who are cutting down rainforests for farmland, poisoning the ecosystem with pesticides and killing off the world's population of bees with monoculture farming.

Anything with rapeseed oil in it: encouraging the extinction of orangutans.

Buying a Coke or clothes from Primark, amongst many other companies; giving money to people with bad human rights records, or who use child labour.

Basically, the only way we can live life without feeling guilty is if we all go live in the woods and grow our own food and make hemp clothing. And while I think that would be awesome, I don't think anything's going to convince very many people to go that way.

However, if you have some land like a fair sized garden, you can grow crops and maybe keep a few chickens, treat 'em good, then there's a section of your life you don't have to feel guilty about.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Should lions? Or dogs? Or bears, or other meat eating animals?

 

[Furioso]

Why should we? Humans are omnivores, note the canine teeth. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go eat a burger

 

[PH3NOmenon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM#t=50s

Coleslaw is a fascist regime.


You shouldn't feel bad for eating meat. Now, I would advocate that once in a while you stop and think exactly how "expensive" meat is to produce. And once in a while, try to replace a meal that you would have had meat in with something that was more eco friendly to produce. If you can grow your own stuff, try to.

That's good for everyone involved.

 

[RipRoaringWaterfowl]

What? Wrong to eat meat? That's insane!

Plants were alive once, too, so OBVIOUSLY if eating something that was once alive is wrong, you can't eat no carrots, or lettuce. And dirt is partially once living organisms that decomposed, so eating THAT would be wrong. Can't exactly eat most rocks, either.

It's survival. It's perfectly fine. Chow down.

Besides, your not taking my beef, chicken, mussels, lobsters, shrimp, and bacon from me. EVER.

 

[hooksashands]

I worked in a beef slaughterhouse for 2 years. There's no pain on the cow's part, unless you miss its brain with the pneumatic rod. This has only happened to me 6 times that I can remember. Cows tend to struggle in the kill chute, so it can be difficult to deliver the bolt to the right spot sometimes. You do your best though.

 

[BlazeRaider]

While I don't feel bad for eating meat per se, the sorry state of factory farming and the rather cruel methods we use to raise and harvest animals are ones I feel are causing unnecessary suffering, now that, I feel guilty over. I mean we're gonna eat them, the least we can do is end them quickly and humanely and not be dicks about it, I think humanity is advanced enough to expect at least that much from ourselves.

 

[hermes]

No. We are build that way.
I don't feel guiltier of eating meat than I do of taking a dump...

 

[Andrew Bascom]

Well then consider this, it has been proven that plants feel pain.

Unless I've missed something pretty big in biology, I doubt that's true. Evidence?

First a disclaimer, I was told this in my landscaping course or Ag Tech, and without spending a couple hours on Google I don't think I can get very solid info either way, so my apologies if my info is incorrect.

Now here's what a brief look onto Google showed me, two websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal) and http://www.didyouwonder.com/do-plants-feel-pain/ both are probably not grand sources. other quick skimming leads me to believe that I'm probably wrong, however the fact that plants still are living things can't be denied. We still have to eat one life to continue our own.

 

[algalon]

Chicken fetuses taste delicious with lamb chops btw. I live out in the middle of nowhere, in a section of forest that has bobcats, bears, and most of all, wild pigs. If you know nothing about wild pigs, know this - they eat anything! If we own an animal that can't defend itself or climb a tree, in all likelihood, it will be a meal for something else. Do I feel guilty about eating bacon or pork chops? Heck no. I consider that my little vengeance against these pests that keep eating any small livestock I try to keep. Wild pig is delicious too, very lean since the animals are constantly moving.

Mass slaughter houses might not be the kind of thing you want to watch work but in our society, they have become necessary to feed the massive amounts of massive people that refuse to exercise or wear a condom. In an earlier time, say 200 years ago, I'd say we can't keep so many cattle on one farm, that they should be moved around more, but as our planet gets more and more crowded, that becomes close to impossible unless treadmills have been invented for livestock specifically to keep the meat lean and more healthy for human consumption.

In closing, I am a meat eater. I eat meat. If it's wrong I don't want to be right.

 

[The Last Nomad]

(anything that has a life)

This is the most used argument for being vegetarian and its total bullshit.
By saying you won't eat anything that was alive you are a hypocrite unless you eat only processed lab grown goop. Plants are just as alive as animals. They are just a different form of life. They just happen to be generally immobile. But scientists have proven that plants can communicate as well as other things thought only to occur in animals.

So if you don't feel bad about eating plants, there is no reason to feel bad about eating animals.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Is it wrong for an owl to eat a mouse? Is it wrong for a lion to eat a gazelle? Nope. That's just what they do. They're built to eat meat.

Likewise, we're built to eat meat, though not exclusively. Us eating meat is no more morally wrong than an animal eating meat, in my opinion. It's way worse to kill an animal and then waste it.

 

[Cpu46]

No. There is no reason, moral or otherwise, that you should feel bad about eating meat. Humans are meant to eat meat, our bodies are attuned to the nutrients of meat.

Spoiler: in other words

 

[In Search of Username]

Well then consider this, it has been proven that plants feel pain.

Unless I've missed something pretty big in biology, I doubt that's true. Evidence?

First a disclaimer, I was told this in my landscaping course or Ag Tech, and without spending a couple hours on Google I don't think I can get very solid info either way, so my apologies if my info is incorrect.

Now here's what a brief look onto Google showed me, two websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal) and http://www.didyouwonder.com/do-plants-feel-pain/ both are probably not grand sources. other quick skimming leads me to believe that I'm probably wrong, however the fact that plants still are living things can't be denied. We still have to eat one life to continue our own.

Yeah that's what I found when I looked. Seems like it's more like plants react to pain but don't necessarily have the consciousness to have any real way of 'experiencing' it. If plants really did feel pain then being a vegetarian would really be pointless.

But yeah, I know they're alive; that's not the part that bothers vegetarians (at least in my experience), it's the pain inflicted that causes the feeling of guilt, not the actual death or the eating of the previously alive substance.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Nope!

In fact, it's pretty much the only excuse I accept for killing animals.

 

[Ryujisama]

Some vegetarians make the argument that they prefer veggies over meat because they don't want to take a life, but they forget that plants are living things too, they just don't yelp when you pluck them from the ground. To truly live a life without taking a life, you'd die pretty soon due to malnutrition. My reasoning is this: if your religion says you shouldn't eat meat, and you are a pious person, don't eat meat. If you don't want to eat meat due to health reasons, don't eat meat. If you don't want to eat meat because you feel sorry for the thing that was killed so that you could eat it, then don't eat meat or vegetables. Plants are living things, too.

 

[Gitty101]

But... animals taste really good. Vegetables and other alternatives simply do not measure up.