View Single Post
  #1 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to rec.food.cooking
ImStillMags ImStillMags is offline
Banned
 
Posts: 5,466
Default Is Eating Meat Ethical?

By now, you’ve probably heard about the essay contest the NY Times is
running. The prompt is “Tell us why it’s ethical to eat meat. I'm
posting a reply that fits my thoughts exactly. I didn't write it,
Mark Sisson did. He's correct.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is eating meat ethical?

I find it odd that in their prompt for the essay, the NY Times forbids
entrants from mentioning conscientious carnivory, local versus
organic, grass-fed versus factory-raised, or sustainable versus
unsustainable. In other words, they expect us to simply explain “why
it’s ethical to eat meat” without allowing for any of the
considerations or external factors that might affect the “ethics” of
meat-eating.

How do I proceed, absent the ability to actually discuss the nuances?
It’s a tough question, but I’ll try.

“Ethical” implies that we have a choice. Both dietary choices –
omnivory and herbivory – cause animals to die. We have to eat
something, and whichever choice we make, animals will die. There’s no
getting around that. If we’re going to ask whether or not meat-eating
is ethical because it causes animals to die, we also have to ask
whether or not other common consumptive practices that also cause
animals to die are ethical:

Is living in an apartment or a house built on the former homes of a
dozen different species, several ant colonies, and the site of an
indigenous people’s encampment from a hundred years ago ethical?

Is wearing clothing made from conventionally grown cotton that
required the use of chemical fertilizers whose runoff pollutes rivers,
lakes, and oceans, thus hurting marine life ethical?

Is eating pseudo-burgers made of soybeans that hail from monocrop
farms whose owners razed the land on which they grow, killing families
of groundhogs and field mice and trillions upon trillions of essential
microbes that compose the topsoil ethical?

Animals all die as a result of these practices. Anyone who makes it
past their first year has blood on their hands. At least the meat-
eater must face the unavoidable fact that he consumes dead animals
directly. At least he deals with death head-on, shrink-wrapped though
it may be. For once the plastic and styrofoam are removed, there it
is, staring him in the face: a bloody piece of dead animal flesh that
he is then going to put into his mouth, chew, swallow, and digest.

Does that make him unethical? Only if anyone who eats anything whose
production resulted in the death of animals is also unethical. One
could even argue that since the meat-eater at least acknowledges the
fact that an animal died for his meal, he’s the more honorable of the
two.

And indeed everyone has blood on their hands as a direct or indirect
result of their choices, consumption habits, and dietary practices.
Everyone steps on someone else’s toes or hooves or talons or cute
little paws or flippers or probosci or roots for “selfish” reasons –
even vegans. If meat-eaters are unethical by virtue of their meat-
eating, so too is the vegetarian whose grain-based meals came from
farmers whose tractors crush small mammals and whose cropland disrupts
entire ecosystems. I don’t think either person’s actions are
unethical, but I fail to see how someone could think the former was
unethical without also taking issue with the latter. If you’re going
to indict eating meat because it kills animals, you also have to
indict other dietary practices that also kill animals, like grain –
even if those deaths are “unavoidable” or “accidental.” Sure, the
farmer may not gleefully set out to murder field mice with his tractor
(although the rodenticide used in grain elevators might raise a few
eyebrows), but does it matter if the end result – a bunch of dead
animals – is the same?

I eagerly await next week’s “Is Vegetarianism Ethical?” essay contest..
If you’re going to indict eating meat because it kills animals, you
must also indict the other dietary practices that kill animals.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-ea...#axzz1r0b69Ac7