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If the suffering of animals matters, then eating meat is morally wrong. Animals are non-human persons who are aware of their own existence and who feel a wide r

If the suffering of animals matters, then eating meat is morally wrong. Animals are non-human persons who are aware of their own existence and who feel a wide range of emotions, just like we do. Killing animals may still be acceptable in western society, but it's wrong. It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as hanging, drawing and quartering to an audience of thousands in Europe was acceptable but wrong. To disregard the pain and suffering of animal persons without regard for their interests - just because they're not human, is a form of racism. Peter Singer[1] calls it 'speciesism'. We don't need technological advances in this society as much as we need advances in morality. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

ebbv 13y ago
The only animal suffering I'm worried about right now is the horse you're on.
gambiting 13y ago
So is there no middle ground then? Is it a simple case of you can't have one without another? I believe that you can eat meat, provided that animals live in a decent,stress-free environment. I know it's very hard to find meat that carries any sort of a guarantee on it,but at least here in EU "free range" and "organic" mean something that is legally enforceable, so every time I buy chicken/beef/pork that is organic I hope that these animals were kept in good conditions. I do feel sorry for the American readers,for whom the meat industry is just a massive black box with no way of finding out what is going on - and I genuinely believe that if I lived in America, I would have stopped eating meat too,for that very reason.
- contextual 13y ago
  By abstaining and choosing plant-based alternatives to meat, we stop factory farming, and we support the humane treatment and dignity of animals.
- kaoD 13y ago
  No, there's no middle ground. Killing is killing. Would it be moral to kill you if I'd let you live in a decent, stress-free environment before your death? Would it be moral to raise human children, give them a nice childhood and then kill them before they reach adulthood because they're super tasty then? I'm not saying I agree (or don't) with GP, just noting that you missed his point.
  - PetrolMan 13y ago
    Nothing is ever so black and white. I'd argue that there is a difference between killing an insect and killing a human. The difference, in my mind, is that we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain. Edit: In the US, a lot of how cruelty is valued is based on how alike the animal is to us. Mammals get more attention than birds, which get more attention than fish. There is a hierarchy and I think it's based on how closely the animal resembles us, a part of which is the capacity for pain and suffering.
    - kaoD 13y ago
      > we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain Who thinks that? Is it true or you'd just like to think it that way? It isn't even relevant. We're talking about meat here. Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain and self-awareness. Animals want to live and try avoid death. Even mosquitoes.
      - PetrolMan 13y ago
        We do know that insects are far, far less complicated creatures. The difference between a human brain at 100 trillion or so synapses and a fruit fly at a few million is huge. I'm simply arguing that the necessary level of complexity isn't there for a fruit fly. I'm also arguing that this is more of a continuum than a clear line. > Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain. This is what I don't see as a clear and obvious truth. You shouldn't get on my case for throwing something out there without any kind of validation and then do the same thing yourself.
- Loughla 13y ago
  Not all of America falls into the category of being completely ignorant to where their food comes from, or eat food that was raised in factory farms. Many Americans (in the fly-over states) have access to local butchers that can drive you to the actual field where the animal lived. We recently bought a side of beef for the family from one of these shops. There are eight within a day's driving distance to me (midwest Illinois). I know the first name of the young man that bottle fed and raised the hamburgers I eat. A majority of individuals in the communities near my home purchase their meat (beef and pork at least) this way. There are other options for people, they are just more expensive, or are perceived as being more expensive. Please don't lump the entire country into one box. Do you realize how many people there are in the US, or how very large this country is?
  - Zikes 13y ago
    Flyover states have such a low population density that this solution works, however the demand throughout the country is so staggeringly high that it's not at all a viable solution for everyone. That's why the larger meat industries exist, they're the only ones capable of handling the volume necessary. That means that even less of the country is ignorant about the source of their meat than you would think, but not everyone is in a position to be able to do something about it. Many of us don't have the options available to you, and if we did and we all chose the most ethically sourced options available, the prices would either be astronomically high or the previously ethical source companies would have to resort to less ethical measures to be able to keep up with demand.
timjahn 13y ago
Where does the food chain fit in? The idea of certain species and groups of animals being higher and lower on the food chain than others. Do we just ignore that? Genuinely curious.
- redidas 13y ago
  The animal as people logic doesn't hold up. With this reasoning what do we do about animals that hunt and kill other animals for food. Are they behaving immorally because they must kill to survive?
  - vijayr 13y ago
    There is a difference between animals killing animals for food, and humans killing animals for food. Animals kill other animals, only when they are hungry. They also don't raise animals in a confined, cruel environment, pump them with drugs, don't beat them, treat them like crap etc. Humans do all of these. Animals also don't waste - every inch of meat is eaten, while we liberally waste.
    - jules 13y ago
      > Animals kill other animals, only when they are hungry. False. I've seen cats killing birds and then not eating them many times. > They also don't raise animals in a confined, cruel environment, pump them with drugs, don't beat them, treat them like crap etc. Strawman. He didn't say that we should treat animals like crap. It is possible to treat animals well, except for the killing part, and that's what this discussion is about. > Animals also don't waste - every inch of meat is eaten, while we liberally waste. Also false. Lions kill animals and then only eat a small part of it. Sure, later other animals & bacteria eat the rest, but the same applies for humans.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    Animals are only moral actors when we're the ones causing them harm. When they're causing other animals harm, they're not moral actors, just animals doing what they do.
  - 13y ago
huherto 13y ago
I am aware that we are causing pain to animals. But eating meat gives me so much happiness that I am not willing to live without it.
- api 13y ago
  Totally tangential point: I sometimes draw an analogy between veganism and the extreme anti-force / volitionalist stance of radical libertarians. In both cases is may be radically moral, but the problem with the libertarian case is similar to what you just said. Government force is just so easy. Is there some systemic social ill that manifests in an emergent fashion from the market? Pass a law and force it to change. Wealth redistribution by force improves the lives of the vast majority of people too. There may be force-free alternatives to these mechanisms, but it's clear that if they exist they are more difficult. Thus most people are willing to sacrifice some of their (and their neighbors) freedom and autonomy for free health care, free retirement, easy fixes to emergent problems and tragedies of the commons, etc. I can't say I'm different. I would prefer to have a "softened" market in which some wealth is redistributed by force to me and my middle class contemporaries (as well as to those less fortunate than me) even if it is less moral according to a radical moral theory.
  - spikels 13y ago
    I'm glad to finally see someone who supports wealth redistribution clear that it requires force (as well as being in their own self-interest). While I can respect this widely held position I am personally uncomfortable with this aspect. I wish we could achieve the goals of redistribution (btw-these goals need to be clarified) without force (i.e. voluntary charity). This actually seems possible to me because of the strong interest in charity by so many especially the very wealthy and the incredible inefficiency in the delivery of aid to the poor.
    - api 13y ago
      Yep. I also wish I could get vegan meat, but it isn't available on the market yet. :)
- 13y ago
api 13y ago
Technological advances can enable advances in morality, or at least ease them. Soon we will be able to grow meat and milk at least without the animal. I for one would immediately switch to vegan meat and dairy.
watty 13y ago
No, killing an animal for food is not as morally wrong as slavery or murdering a person. Are you joking? Animals all over the planet kill each other for food. It's part of life. Farm animals are not people and never will be. It's silly to think they deserve the rights of people or to be on the same moral high grounds as people.
- jmngomes 13y ago
  "Animals all over the planet kill each other for food. It's part of life." Agreed. But the least you can (and should) do is spare them the suffering and kill them instantly. Animals deserve, at the very least, the right to not be put through unnecessary suffering. They're not people, that's correct. Humans are the highly evolved species of the planet. In fact, we're so evolved that we've come to realize that taking pleasure in others' pain (animals included), just like the lack of ability to feel remorse or empathy, are potential indicators of serious mental illness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad). It's precisely because we're more advanced that we should show some humanity (I think this is a common sense definition) and not harm sentient beings without a clear need to do so. Or we can just treat anything and everything like expendable resources. Sounds a tad inhuman to me.
- contextual 13y ago
  Recent research is showing animals are much more intelligent then previously assumed. Parrots reason like three year old children[1], mice feel empathy and grimace in agony[2,3], elephants grieve[4] and birds hold funerals for their dead[5]. When we harm or show an incorrect appreciation for other sentient beings, it shows not only disrespect and lack of understanding and compassion, but it diminishes human dignity. [1] http://m.livescience.com/22178-parrots-reason-three-year-olds.html http://m.livescience.com/22178-parrots-reason-three-year-old... [2] http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel-empathy-with-peers/ http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel... [3] http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/squint-if-it-hurts http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/squint-if-it-h... [4] http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-american-explores-grief-in-animals http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-a... [5] http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-for-their-dead-120905.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-...
haberman 13y ago
If eating meat is just as wrong as slavery, surely it must also be wrong to fail to intervene in nature when animals eat each other. And the very existence of purely carnivorous species is immoral.
chollida1 13y ago
> Killing animals may still be acceptable in western society, but it's wrong. It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as hanging, drawing and quartering to an audience of thousands in Europe was acceptable but wrong. Wow, wait until you watch an animal kingdom video. Your mind is about to be blown but the amount of animal on animal violence you'll see. I mean blue whales will eat litterally 10 of thousands of shrimp in one meal. Lions will attack and pick on the weakest of the gazelles. nature must have really gotten it wrong. Look, you just can't come out and state that eating meat is wrong without providing some sort of rational around it. Just claiming its morally wrong doesn't really make an impressive argument at all. The biggest problem you make is to lump together the poor treatment of animals and the eating of meat. Many farms treat animals in ways that are considered by the vast majority of people to be fair and proper. Many people who eat meat have educated themselves and consider you to be wrong about the ethics of eating meat. TD/DR, you just can't take your own beliefs, state them as fact and then state that they are the correct moral thing to do and any one who dares disagree with your narrow beliefs is just wrong.
- asciimo 13y ago
  For some animals, killing is necessary for survival. For humans, it is optional. Arguably recreational.
- swombat 13y ago
  Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Unlike most animals (as far as we know) we are in the unique position of being moral creatures. We created this morality idea, which was not present in nature before us. Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not). That some countries still apply the barbarous death penalty doesn't make it less immoral. We don't know exactly the level of sentience of the animals we kill and eat, but they are at the very least self-conscious to some extent. Pigs, squids, dolphins, dogs, cats, etc, are all clearly human-like in some ways. Killing such animals is not that far off from killing sentient beings. I think it's a fair statement to say that killing animals is wrong. That being said... The issue is complex. There is a lot of historical baggage that we have to deal with here. And it could be argued that many of those species only exist because we eat them (or at least that most of their numbers exist only because we eat them). Endless such arguments can be contrived. None of them make it right, but they explain why this is not a simple "X is wrong, let's stop doing X" situation. I say all this above as a meat eater, btw. I eat (a lot of) meat. That I do so while knowing that it's morally wrong is, I guess, just one of those "contradictions" that we humans get to live with.
coldtea 13y ago
>It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as? Are you kidding me? For one, animals kill and eat other animals ALL THE TIME. It's what they do. >To disregard the pain and suffering of animal persons without regard for their interests - just because they're not human, is a form of racism. Peter Singer[1] calls it 'speciesism'. That's just a word made up for that disregard. The invention of an ad-hoc word for it doesn't automatically make the disregard imoral or bad, much less "as bad as slavery".
- elif 13y ago
  You are reading too much into the "just as" The author is trying to communicate equivalency in the seemingly paradoxical categorization of being both "acceptable" and "wrong" through providing examples of things which also fit this hard-to-grasp classification.
theonemind 13y ago
Slavery was not expedient. It's hard to subjugate masses of people. Morality has only ever held sway to the extent it's convenient. Why is the US not a British colony? The Atlantic Ocean. The colonials got feisty, and it became more trouble than it was worth to keep them under heel. I'm surprised this is not more readily apparent to people. Justice is a fiction. The Republican form of government has helped create stable governments, and acknowledges the inherent FORCE the govererned people can bring to bear against those in power if the government doesn't operate at least somewhat in their interest. Again, morality as popularly conceived has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the propensity of kings to end up with their heads chopped off. It always boils down to the sword. If animals could organize and rip out faces off for eating them, society would suddenly have a great moral revelation that eating animals is wrong.
lukifer 13y ago
To take it to the extreme, we can't know for sure that carrots don't experience suffering due to our raising them for food. We have canines for a reason; meat is part of our evolutionary heritage. I respect the moral decision not to eat animals, and the fact that we do not raise livestock more humanely is unforgivable; but eschewing all animal proteins is extremely detrimental to one's health (the poster child being Steve Jobs in his last ten years of life). Given that consciousness is a spectrum and not purely binary, I think the proper middle ground is to eat primarily fish (whose nervous systems are probably closer to carrots than to cows) and by-products such as eggs and cheese (from animals who are well-cared-for). If one does choose to eat red meat, it should at least come from pasture farms where the animal has a real life before it is slaughtered.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  We have canines for a reason; meat is part of our evolutionary heritage. I'm sure that's why horses have canines, as well, but they don't eat much meat! Of course I agree with the overall point; in fact I shot a delicious young deer a few weeks ago. I sometimes wonder whether the meat-is-murder trolls aren't really just cannibals hoping to mainstream their own predilections.
  - tspiteri 13y ago
    Horses had canines for fighting, not for eating.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      Really? Any cite for that? Kipling doesn't count! I've seen lots of horse fights, among individuals with and without wolf-teeth. In few of those were the bites even deep enough along the mandible to engage the canines, and in no case did the bite come from the side to emphasize the canine.
      - tspiteri 13y ago
        I found it here: http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/horse-care/horse-care-tips/canine-teeth-in-horses/ http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/horse-care/horse-care-tips/ca... The relevant part follows: Originally “fighting teeth”, they have no occlusal contact, i.e. the opposing upper and lower canines do not meet, so they are of no benefit in the eating process.
nine_k 13y ago
To soothe you I could say that it's advances in technology that will lead us to eating meat without killing animals. Currently lab-grown meat is ridiculously expensive, but so was everything new, before it got to industrial scale. When factory-grown meat takes over the shelves of meat departments, cow and chicken population of the world will dwindle significantly. Only milk cows and egg-laying hens will remain, along with a small population grown specifically for slaughter, for those perverts that prefer natural, pasture-grown certified organic meat. Finally humans' beloved pets, cats and dogs, will stop being animal racists and stop feeding on the suffering of other, less fortunate animals. The only remaining area of unethical killing will be the pesky wild nature, where merciless foxes eat rabbits, and brutal trouts eat lesser fish, which eats small defenseless crustaceans, which.., etc. But I'm sure that progressive humankind will find a way to sort this out eventually, too. Irony aside, have you heard about the "first noble truth" of Buddhism? Very short and rather enlightening; google it.
- contextual 13y ago
  Shame on you for trying to distort the precepts of Buddha. Stop embarrassing yourself!
  - nzp 13y ago
    But he's not distorting, what he said is actually very much in line with at least Theravada Buddhist view on morality. Here, I've posted this[0] a few hours ago because of this discussion and a comment I made above. Straight from the horse's mouth, approximately. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884572
    - contextual 13y ago
      Theravada isn't what Buddha taught. It's an 'innovation' of what Buddha taught. It's a different school of thought and has a different monastic code. Why don't you read a real book instead of learning from YouTube celebrities? Learn the truth.
lucideer 13y ago
Three questions for you: 1. are carnivorous animals immoral? 2. where do you draw the line in your definition of racism/'speciesism' - homo sapiens -vs- non-homo-sapiens, mammals -vs- non-mammals, mammals/birds/fish/etc. -vs- metazoa/insects/amoeboids/plants/etc./etc./etc.? 3. if suffering of animals as a result of the meat industry is morally wrong, what are your thoughts on suffering of animals caused by non-meat food industries? If grain/crop agriculture killed more animals than the livestock industry what would you do? Stop eating?
secstate 13y ago
Oh man ... flame war alert. The reality of course, is more nuanced. Rarely do absolutist statements like "Killing animals is wrong," bare fruit in the pragmatic reality of everyday experience. For one thing, freeing all livestock and allowing them to live as nature intended, would be releasing them into a much more savage existence. An analog to freeing slaves does not exist because people have the capacity to improve their station, while animals in the wild fall back to basic survival. My wife and I run a backyard hog farm, raising animals on pasture with ready access to clean water and plenty of highly nutritious food. In return for the kindness we show them, at a pre-determined point in their life, we kill them and eat their meat. I will not do that for my children, because the (mostly) tacit contract I have with them and their own capacity allows them pay back my kindness and generosity with their nuanced human emotion and industrial capacity. Most animals do not have such an industrial capacity. Though where they do (horses, mules, etc...) there actually does exist a very different contract (i.e. we don't eat them). The problem with your black and white view of morality is that it fails to account for the reality that if I keep 15 hogs, eventually they will die, because all life dies. If they live into old age and become emaciated and weak, their bodies are useless to me. Aside from perhaps companionship, they have not had a net positive impact on my life. Why then should I care for them? As members of the Animal Liberation Front have discovered, releasing animals back into the wild is rarely a kindness to them. If you ever look closely at a wild rabbit, you find them swarming with parasites and usually living with chronic low-grade infection of some sort or another. Compare that with rabbits raised humanely and holistically in a small-scale rabbit farm and the differences are stark, indeed. None of this applies, of course, to an industrial farm where animals are treated, as a phase of the end product instead of animal. But that's a whole different argument from "killing animals is wrong." I have no problem arguing that industrial farming is, at it's best, amoral, and more importantly completely unsustainable. But nature has a way of handling unsustainable behavior. EDIT: Dairy animals would be another classification of animals that we do not kill for their meat. Of course, they do die, as one of our dairy goats did a few days ago. But then we dig a hole, say some kind words and let the decomposition feed the apple trees in our orchard.

ebbv 13y ago

The only animal suffering I'm worried about right now is the horse you're on.

gambiting 13y ago

So is there no middle ground then? Is it a simple case of you can't have one without another? I believe that you can eat meat, provided that animals live in a decent,stress-free environment. I know it's very hard to find meat that carries any sort of a guarantee on it,but at least here in EU "free range" and "organic" mean something that is legally enforceable, so every time I buy chicken/beef/pork that is organic I hope that these animals were kept in good conditions. I do feel sorry for the American readers,for whom the meat industry is just a massive black box with no way of finding out what is going on - and I genuinely believe that if I lived in America, I would have stopped eating meat too,for that very reason.

contextual 13y ago
By abstaining and choosing plant-based alternatives to meat, we stop factory farming, and we support the humane treatment and dignity of animals.
kaoD 13y ago
No, there's no middle ground. Killing is killing. Would it be moral to kill you if I'd let you live in a decent, stress-free environment before your death? Would it be moral to raise human children, give them a nice childhood and then kill them before they reach adulthood because they're super tasty then? I'm not saying I agree (or don't) with GP, just noting that you missed his point.
- PetrolMan 13y ago
  Nothing is ever so black and white. I'd argue that there is a difference between killing an insect and killing a human. The difference, in my mind, is that we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain. Edit: In the US, a lot of how cruelty is valued is based on how alike the animal is to us. Mammals get more attention than birds, which get more attention than fish. There is a hierarchy and I think it's based on how closely the animal resembles us, a part of which is the capacity for pain and suffering.
  - kaoD 13y ago
    > we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain Who thinks that? Is it true or you'd just like to think it that way? It isn't even relevant. We're talking about meat here. Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain and self-awareness. Animals want to live and try avoid death. Even mosquitoes.
    - PetrolMan 13y ago
      We do know that insects are far, far less complicated creatures. The difference between a human brain at 100 trillion or so synapses and a fruit fly at a few million is huge. I'm simply arguing that the necessary level of complexity isn't there for a fruit fly. I'm also arguing that this is more of a continuum than a clear line. > Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain. This is what I don't see as a clear and obvious truth. You shouldn't get on my case for throwing something out there without any kind of validation and then do the same thing yourself.
Loughla 13y ago
Not all of America falls into the category of being completely ignorant to where their food comes from, or eat food that was raised in factory farms. Many Americans (in the fly-over states) have access to local butchers that can drive you to the actual field where the animal lived. We recently bought a side of beef for the family from one of these shops. There are eight within a day's driving distance to me (midwest Illinois). I know the first name of the young man that bottle fed and raised the hamburgers I eat. A majority of individuals in the communities near my home purchase their meat (beef and pork at least) this way. There are other options for people, they are just more expensive, or are perceived as being more expensive. Please don't lump the entire country into one box. Do you realize how many people there are in the US, or how very large this country is?
- Zikes 13y ago
  Flyover states have such a low population density that this solution works, however the demand throughout the country is so staggeringly high that it's not at all a viable solution for everyone. That's why the larger meat industries exist, they're the only ones capable of handling the volume necessary. That means that even less of the country is ignorant about the source of their meat than you would think, but not everyone is in a position to be able to do something about it. Many of us don't have the options available to you, and if we did and we all chose the most ethically sourced options available, the prices would either be astronomically high or the previously ethical source companies would have to resort to less ethical measures to be able to keep up with demand.

timjahn 13y ago

Where does the food chain fit in? The idea of certain species and groups of animals being higher and lower on the food chain than others. Do we just ignore that? Genuinely curious.

redidas 13y ago
The animal as people logic doesn't hold up. With this reasoning what do we do about animals that hunt and kill other animals for food. Are they behaving immorally because they must kill to survive?
- vijayr 13y ago
  There is a difference between animals killing animals for food, and humans killing animals for food. Animals kill other animals, only when they are hungry. They also don't raise animals in a confined, cruel environment, pump them with drugs, don't beat them, treat them like crap etc. Humans do all of these. Animals also don't waste - every inch of meat is eaten, while we liberally waste.
  - jules 13y ago
    > Animals kill other animals, only when they are hungry. False. I've seen cats killing birds and then not eating them many times. > They also don't raise animals in a confined, cruel environment, pump them with drugs, don't beat them, treat them like crap etc. Strawman. He didn't say that we should treat animals like crap. It is possible to treat animals well, except for the killing part, and that's what this discussion is about. > Animals also don't waste - every inch of meat is eaten, while we liberally waste. Also false. Lions kill animals and then only eat a small part of it. Sure, later other animals & bacteria eat the rest, but the same applies for humans.
- dublinben 13y ago
  Animals are only moral actors when we're the ones causing them harm. When they're causing other animals harm, they're not moral actors, just animals doing what they do.
- 13y ago

huherto 13y ago

I am aware that we are causing pain to animals. But eating meat gives me so much happiness that I am not willing to live without it.

api 13y ago
Totally tangential point: I sometimes draw an analogy between veganism and the extreme anti-force / volitionalist stance of radical libertarians. In both cases is may be radically moral, but the problem with the libertarian case is similar to what you just said. Government force is just so easy. Is there some systemic social ill that manifests in an emergent fashion from the market? Pass a law and force it to change. Wealth redistribution by force improves the lives of the vast majority of people too. There may be force-free alternatives to these mechanisms, but it's clear that if they exist they are more difficult. Thus most people are willing to sacrifice some of their (and their neighbors) freedom and autonomy for free health care, free retirement, easy fixes to emergent problems and tragedies of the commons, etc. I can't say I'm different. I would prefer to have a "softened" market in which some wealth is redistributed by force to me and my middle class contemporaries (as well as to those less fortunate than me) even if it is less moral according to a radical moral theory.
- spikels 13y ago
  I'm glad to finally see someone who supports wealth redistribution clear that it requires force (as well as being in their own self-interest). While I can respect this widely held position I am personally uncomfortable with this aspect. I wish we could achieve the goals of redistribution (btw-these goals need to be clarified) without force (i.e. voluntary charity). This actually seems possible to me because of the strong interest in charity by so many especially the very wealthy and the incredible inefficiency in the delivery of aid to the poor.
  - api 13y ago
    Yep. I also wish I could get vegan meat, but it isn't available on the market yet. :)
13y ago

api 13y ago

Technological advances can enable advances in morality, or at least ease them. Soon we will be able to grow meat and milk at least without the animal. I for one would immediately switch to vegan meat and dairy.

watty 13y ago

No, killing an animal for food is not as morally wrong as slavery or murdering a person. Are you joking? Animals all over the planet kill each other for food. It's part of life. Farm animals are not people and never will be. It's silly to think they deserve the rights of people or to be on the same moral high grounds as people.

jmngomes 13y ago
"Animals all over the planet kill each other for food. It's part of life." Agreed. But the least you can (and should) do is spare them the suffering and kill them instantly. Animals deserve, at the very least, the right to not be put through unnecessary suffering. They're not people, that's correct. Humans are the highly evolved species of the planet. In fact, we're so evolved that we've come to realize that taking pleasure in others' pain (animals included), just like the lack of ability to feel remorse or empathy, are potential indicators of serious mental illness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad). It's precisely because we're more advanced that we should show some humanity (I think this is a common sense definition) and not harm sentient beings without a clear need to do so. Or we can just treat anything and everything like expendable resources. Sounds a tad inhuman to me.
contextual 13y ago
Recent research is showing animals are much more intelligent then previously assumed. Parrots reason like three year old children[1], mice feel empathy and grimace in agony[2,3], elephants grieve[4] and birds hold funerals for their dead[5]. When we harm or show an incorrect appreciation for other sentient beings, it shows not only disrespect and lack of understanding and compassion, but it diminishes human dignity. [1] http://m.livescience.com/22178-parrots-reason-three-year-olds.html http://m.livescience.com/22178-parrots-reason-three-year-old... [2] http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel-empathy-with-peers/ http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel... [3] http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/squint-if-it-hurts http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/squint-if-it-h... [4] http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-american-explores-grief-in-animals http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-a... [5] http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-for-their-dead-120905.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-...

haberman 13y ago

If eating meat is just as wrong as slavery, surely it must also be wrong to fail to intervene in nature when animals eat each other. And the very existence of purely carnivorous species is immoral.

chollida1 13y ago

> Killing animals may still be acceptable in western society, but it's wrong. It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as hanging, drawing and quartering to an audience of thousands in Europe was acceptable but wrong. Wow, wait until you watch an animal kingdom video. Your mind is about to be blown but the amount of animal on animal violence you'll see. I mean blue whales will eat litterally 10 of thousands of shrimp in one meal. Lions will attack and pick on the weakest of the gazelles. nature must have really gotten it wrong. Look, you just can't come out and state that eating meat is wrong without providing some sort of rational around it. Just claiming its morally wrong doesn't really make an impressive argument at all. The biggest problem you make is to lump together the poor treatment of animals and the eating of meat. Many farms treat animals in ways that are considered by the vast majority of people to be fair and proper. Many people who eat meat have educated themselves and consider you to be wrong about the ethics of eating meat. TD/DR, you just can't take your own beliefs, state them as fact and then state that they are the correct moral thing to do and any one who dares disagree with your narrow beliefs is just wrong.

asciimo 13y ago
For some animals, killing is necessary for survival. For humans, it is optional. Arguably recreational.
swombat 13y ago
Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Unlike most animals (as far as we know) we are in the unique position of being moral creatures. We created this morality idea, which was not present in nature before us. Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not). That some countries still apply the barbarous death penalty doesn't make it less immoral. We don't know exactly the level of sentience of the animals we kill and eat, but they are at the very least self-conscious to some extent. Pigs, squids, dolphins, dogs, cats, etc, are all clearly human-like in some ways. Killing such animals is not that far off from killing sentient beings. I think it's a fair statement to say that killing animals is wrong. That being said... The issue is complex. There is a lot of historical baggage that we have to deal with here. And it could be argued that many of those species only exist because we eat them (or at least that most of their numbers exist only because we eat them). Endless such arguments can be contrived. None of them make it right, but they explain why this is not a simple "X is wrong, let's stop doing X" situation. I say all this above as a meat eater, btw. I eat (a lot of) meat. That I do so while knowing that it's morally wrong is, I guess, just one of those "contradictions" that we humans get to live with.

coldtea 13y ago

>It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as? Are you kidding me? For one, animals kill and eat other animals ALL THE TIME. It's what they do. >To disregard the pain and suffering of animal persons without regard for their interests - just because they're not human, is a form of racism. Peter Singer[1] calls it 'speciesism'. That's just a word made up for that disregard. The invention of an ad-hoc word for it doesn't automatically make the disregard imoral or bad, much less "as bad as slavery".

elif 13y ago
You are reading too much into the "just as" The author is trying to communicate equivalency in the seemingly paradoxical categorization of being both "acceptable" and "wrong" through providing examples of things which also fit this hard-to-grasp classification.

theonemind 13y ago

Slavery was not expedient. It's hard to subjugate masses of people. Morality has only ever held sway to the extent it's convenient. Why is the US not a British colony? The Atlantic Ocean. The colonials got feisty, and it became more trouble than it was worth to keep them under heel. I'm surprised this is not more readily apparent to people. Justice is a fiction. The Republican form of government has helped create stable governments, and acknowledges the inherent FORCE the govererned people can bring to bear against those in power if the government doesn't operate at least somewhat in their interest. Again, morality as popularly conceived has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the propensity of kings to end up with their heads chopped off. It always boils down to the sword. If animals could organize and rip out faces off for eating them, society would suddenly have a great moral revelation that eating animals is wrong.

lukifer 13y ago

To take it to the extreme, we can't know for sure that carrots don't experience suffering due to our raising them for food. We have canines for a reason; meat is part of our evolutionary heritage. I respect the moral decision not to eat animals, and the fact that we do not raise livestock more humanely is unforgivable; but eschewing all animal proteins is extremely detrimental to one's health (the poster child being Steve Jobs in his last ten years of life). Given that consciousness is a spectrum and not purely binary, I think the proper middle ground is to eat primarily fish (whose nervous systems are probably closer to carrots than to cows) and by-products such as eggs and cheese (from animals who are well-cared-for). If one does choose to eat red meat, it should at least come from pasture farms where the animal has a real life before it is slaughtered.

jessaustin 13y ago
We have canines for a reason; meat is part of our evolutionary heritage. I'm sure that's why horses have canines, as well, but they don't eat much meat! Of course I agree with the overall point; in fact I shot a delicious young deer a few weeks ago. I sometimes wonder whether the meat-is-murder trolls aren't really just cannibals hoping to mainstream their own predilections.
- tspiteri 13y ago
  Horses had canines for fighting, not for eating.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Really? Any cite for that? Kipling doesn't count! I've seen lots of horse fights, among individuals with and without wolf-teeth. In few of those were the bites even deep enough along the mandible to engage the canines, and in no case did the bite come from the side to emphasize the canine.
    - tspiteri 13y ago
      I found it here: http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/horse-care/horse-care-tips/canine-teeth-in-horses/ http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/horse-care/horse-care-tips/ca... The relevant part follows: Originally “fighting teeth”, they have no occlusal contact, i.e. the opposing upper and lower canines do not meet, so they are of no benefit in the eating process.

nine_k 13y ago

To soothe you I could say that it's advances in technology that will lead us to eating meat without killing animals. Currently lab-grown meat is ridiculously expensive, but so was everything new, before it got to industrial scale. When factory-grown meat takes over the shelves of meat departments, cow and chicken population of the world will dwindle significantly. Only milk cows and egg-laying hens will remain, along with a small population grown specifically for slaughter, for those perverts that prefer natural, pasture-grown certified organic meat. Finally humans' beloved pets, cats and dogs, will stop being animal racists and stop feeding on the suffering of other, less fortunate animals. The only remaining area of unethical killing will be the pesky wild nature, where merciless foxes eat rabbits, and brutal trouts eat lesser fish, which eats small defenseless crustaceans, which.., etc. But I'm sure that progressive humankind will find a way to sort this out eventually, too. Irony aside, have you heard about the "first noble truth" of Buddhism? Very short and rather enlightening; google it.

contextual 13y ago
Shame on you for trying to distort the precepts of Buddha. Stop embarrassing yourself!
- nzp 13y ago
  But he's not distorting, what he said is actually very much in line with at least Theravada Buddhist view on morality. Here, I've posted this[0] a few hours ago because of this discussion and a comment I made above. Straight from the horse's mouth, approximately. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884572
  - contextual 13y ago
    Theravada isn't what Buddha taught. It's an 'innovation' of what Buddha taught. It's a different school of thought and has a different monastic code. Why don't you read a real book instead of learning from YouTube celebrities? Learn the truth.

lucideer 13y ago

Three questions for you: 1. are carnivorous animals immoral? 2. where do you draw the line in your definition of racism/'speciesism' - homo sapiens -vs- non-homo-sapiens, mammals -vs- non-mammals, mammals/birds/fish/etc. -vs- metazoa/insects/amoeboids/plants/etc./etc./etc.? 3. if suffering of animals as a result of the meat industry is morally wrong, what are your thoughts on suffering of animals caused by non-meat food industries? If grain/crop agriculture killed more animals than the livestock industry what would you do? Stop eating?

secstate 13y ago

Oh man ... flame war alert. The reality of course, is more nuanced. Rarely do absolutist statements like "Killing animals is wrong," bare fruit in the pragmatic reality of everyday experience. For one thing, freeing all livestock and allowing them to live as nature intended, would be releasing them into a much more savage existence. An analog to freeing slaves does not exist because people have the capacity to improve their station, while animals in the wild fall back to basic survival. My wife and I run a backyard hog farm, raising animals on pasture with ready access to clean water and plenty of highly nutritious food. In return for the kindness we show them, at a pre-determined point in their life, we kill them and eat their meat. I will not do that for my children, because the (mostly) tacit contract I have with them and their own capacity allows them pay back my kindness and generosity with their nuanced human emotion and industrial capacity. Most animals do not have such an industrial capacity. Though where they do (horses, mules, etc...) there actually does exist a very different contract (i.e. we don't eat them). The problem with your black and white view of morality is that it fails to account for the reality that if I keep 15 hogs, eventually they will die, because all life dies. If they live into old age and become emaciated and weak, their bodies are useless to me. Aside from perhaps companionship, they have not had a net positive impact on my life. Why then should I care for them? As members of the Animal Liberation Front have discovered, releasing animals back into the wild is rarely a kindness to them. If you ever look closely at a wild rabbit, you find them swarming with parasites and usually living with chronic low-grade infection of some sort or another. Compare that with rabbits raised humanely and holistically in a small-scale rabbit farm and the differences are stark, indeed. None of this applies, of course, to an industrial farm where animals are treated, as a phase of the end product instead of animal. But that's a whole different argument from "killing animals is wrong." I have no problem arguing that industrial farming is, at it's best, amoral, and more importantly completely unsustainable. But nature has a way of handling unsustainable behavior. EDIT: Dairy animals would be another classification of animals that we do not kill for their meat. Of course, they do die, as one of our dairy goats did a few days ago. But then we dig a hole, say some kind words and let the decomposition feed the apple trees in our orchard.