I think there is a way to create ‘ethical’ meat through giving animals good lives and having laws around the ages they can be killed, etc.
However I don’t think it’s possible due to the costs and land required to do this, so unfortunately, I don’t think there is any ethical way to produce meat these days. The most ethical is probably hunting to prevent overpopulation.
The amount of meat people want to eat necessitates factory farming and that is a great breeding ground for animal-borne disease.
Meat also concentrates heavy metals in the animal’s diet. The quantity of meat consumption is making us sick.
Even if humans reduced their meat consumption drastically it would be even more inefficient to produce meat ethically – either that, or the prices of meat would rise astronomically which is probably a good thing, making it more of a luxury item.
Oh man, I’ve tried venison several times growing up in the sticks. It’s gross. Most people I know made it into jerky or sausage or something to make it taste better.
I would. If I eat meat I am responsible for taking that animals life, whether or not it’s me that performs the killing blow. At least I know if I do it, it will be as quick and painless as I am able to make it. In the case of hunting, I would take some comfort in knowing it lived free and not in a cramped cage in a factory farm or something. If I was able to raise my own animals, I would give them the best and happiest life I was able to give them, and also end their life as painlessly as I could manage when it was time for that.
I wouldn’t at all enjoy the act of killing, but I feel like it shows at least a little respect for the life of the animal that I am willing to take the responsibility to do it myself, precisely because it is a hard thing to do. I would never have eaten meat if I wasn’t wiling to do the killing myself.
I recently switched to a Pescetarian diet, partly so I can stop supporting factory style farming. I know it’s an anthropocentric pov but Its easier for me to kill fish and other sea creatures than land critters, but I still try to be as humane as possible when doing it.
I will never eat anything in the Dolphin, Whale, or Octopus families, which is another anthropocentric thing, and I guess it made me a hypocrite because I did eat pork and they are intelligent too. I am trying to reduce the harm I do at least.
I feel the same, but I do think there’s a threshold somewhere.
Insects. I don’t want to eat those, but if I had to, my conscience wouldn’t be the problem.
Fish. It’s not my pet. I wouldn’t worry too much about eating it. Breeding fish. Maybe not so easy, but fish will eat each other any chance they get, so why shouldn’t I.
Chicken. They’re not good pets. Fucking dinosaur would eat me if it could. I don’t know if I could have a pet-like relationship to a chicken. Maybe other birds are different. I’d respect a crow or eagle enough not to hunt it.
Then there’s mammals. I agree that most of them are like dogs. I don’t want to breed or hunt pigs, cows, deer or cats. But how about rats and mice? They are a real nuisance and breed like crazy. It wouldn’t matter much to anyone if there’s a few more or less, and I surely wouldn’t pet them in the wild.
However, rabbits and hares. They’re just too cute. No eating.
So, there it is. Despite loving every living being, I could still eat some mammals, some birds and anything else in the animal kingdom without remorse.
I agree. While I feel like I couldn’t kill a mouse/rat with my hands and watch it die, but I think I could make myself set a trap that kills the animal instantly out of my sight.
I don’t think it would be the same thing at all. I wouldn’t go out of my way to create an emotional bond with a critter I raised to be food. In fact im pretty sure I would intentionally not do that.
Im not saying that it might not accidentally happen, I am a softie and an animal lover. If it did I probably wouldn’t be capable of eating it.
You seem to feel pretty strongly about this, don’t you think its at least a little hypocritical to be ok with killing and eating an animal, as long as you personally aren’t delivering the killing blow? You are every bit as responsible for the deaths of the animals you eat as the person at the slaughter house.
I have no issues with people refusing to kill an animal on ethical grounds (reducing the harm from factory farming was a big consideration for the change in my diet) but you aren’t doing that.
It just seems like a weird stance to judge me for doing something you are also doing, but by proxy. If you hire someone to kill someone else, you would still get charged with murder. The same logic applies here.
Emotional bond or no, I don’t have it me to walk up to a (random or raised) animal and slit its throat. Especially when it’s raised by me.
If it was a matter of life or death - that’s a different topic. Right now, there’s no reason to eat animal meat, except for “yummy”.
The meat industry has done a “marvelous” job of disconnecring “killing” with “consuming meat”. No, I don’t feel like I’m killing the animal, because I’m not doing it.
I’m eating meat because it’s “yummy”. But that wasn’t what I said in the original comment. I said if I had to choose (which I currently don’t have to do). And I said I couldn’t kill an animal with my own hands, just because it’s tasty, because I’m not a psycho.
Apparently, I don’t have a issue when a psycho does it and delivers me the meat, of an animal I have never seen before.
I wish it wasn’t this way, and I’m trying to reduce my meat consumption (and I have, by a lot). But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Same with climate change. You know that people are already dying because of it. I’m nor directly killing the people, but they are dying because of it. And me being “comfortable” adds to climate change (even if it’s a minute addition, just like eating a Big Mac is a minute part of the killed animal)
Apparently, I don’t have a issue when a psycho does it and delivers me the meat, of an animal I have never seen before.
Unfortunately many people working in the factories are not psychopaths. The job has a really high turnaround rate and a lot of the people working there get very high rates of depression , it’s also very unsafe work
I didn’t say you killed the animals, I said people who eat meat are responsible for the deaths of the animals they consume. That’s just a fact. If people didn’t purchase tasty meat to consume, other “Psychos” wouldn’t raise them for others to consume. I understand that it’s much easier to let someone else ‘do the dirty work’, believe me I know.
As for people who kill their own meat (or your meat) being ‘psychos’ I can tell you that it’s obviously not the case. Hunting culture grew from the time when it was necessary to hunt to provide for your family, and that is the spirit that it’s carried out in today. People don’t hunt because they think it’s great fun to murder innocent creatures. It’s about providing for your family, friends, and community. I just saw a post on Facebook from my ex-BIL and he was talking about a buck he just got while hunting. It was a post thanking ‘the lord’ for the provisions.
It’s just a way of life in rural America. We don’t do it to be cruel, we do it as a way to not have to rely solely on supermarkets to provide for ourselves. If we ever do have a ‘Y2K’ style situation (and let’s be honest- that isn’t a crazy idea) knowing how to catch, clean, and cook wild game would be a valuable and sought after skill. A lot of poor people in rural areas do depend on hunting and fishing to supplement their diets.
Most hunters are (directly or indirectly) conservationists as well. It’s in their best interest to maintain a healthy and flourishing population of animals (not just game animals- web of life and all that). Hunting is strictly regulated by the state to ensure that the animals don’t become overpopulated or over hunted.
Overpopulation would quickly become a huge problem (not just for humans, but for the environment and the animals themselves) if it’s not well regulated. In fact the South has a massive problem on their hands with wild boar atm. They are an invasive species so it’s not quite the same thing, deer for example will become overpopulated very quickly.
We have (to our detriment) eliminated most or in a lot of case all natural predators for larger game animals like deer, so in order to be good stewards of the environment we have to have another way of controlling their populations. I can’t really think of a better way to do it than have people in the community do ‘the work’ for free (in fact they pay for the privilege) and filling their bellies at the same time- while also reducing our dependence on factory farms.
The analogy to climate change doesn’t really work. It’s not really individuals who are the problem there, it’s the choices giant corporations and government makes in the name of profits that are the real issue. Most people if given a choice between a lifestyle that is sustainable and responsible would choose to do so, we are just given so little choice in that regard. Not eating meat is a choice that, especially nowadays, anyone could easily accomplish.
If a new meat product showed up in grocery stores called ‘Long Pork’ that was the tastiest meat ever, but people found out that it was human flesh- would you consider the people who continued to eat the meat to be complicit in the murder of said ‘livestock’? Especially if you knew for a fact that if everyone stopped eating it- the murders would stop?
Just because we CAN do something, doesn’t mean we should. We are supposed to be superior to animals (at least according to some humans). Why are we doing what the animals do if we’re superior? Animals also rape each other and commit infanticide. Why aren’t we doing that too?
Seeing what some vegetarians and vegans eat instead of meat makes me laugh. One half is exotic stuff flown in from the other side of the world at a vast expense of the environment, the other half is Ultra High Processed Food laced with chemicals most people cannot even pronounce…
What vegetarians eat instead of meat for a protein is not usually ultra processed food, though it can sometimes be. From my personal experience it usually consists of regular cooked beans. Sometimes sometimes they get fermented and processed into things like tempeh, or tofu. I suggest this is because that ultra processed stuff is expensive, beans are dirt cheap, and tofu is cheap(and delicious). The vegan athletes I know supplement their diet with vegan protein powder, but nearly all people who are serious about being athleats use protein powder.
There’s other protein sources too, if you make overnight oats with soy milk and hemp seeds (or flax seeds or nut butters) you can easily get 20+ grams of protein.
Most of the vegans I know will also eat eggs from responsibly farmed chickens, which is pretty easy to check where I live.
I think it’s totally natural for humans to eat meat. But also definitely more moral to abstain from eating it.
Meat consumption itself might be natural, but nothing about modern animal agriculture is.
We divorced from nature quite a while ago, and in some very significant ways.
I think there is a way to create ‘ethical’ meat through giving animals good lives and having laws around the ages they can be killed, etc.
However I don’t think it’s possible due to the costs and land required to do this, so unfortunately, I don’t think there is any ethical way to produce meat these days. The most ethical is probably hunting to prevent overpopulation.
Hot take, people who hunt and garden are far more ethical eaters than vegans who are bound to industrial food systems.
The amount of meat people want to eat necessitates factory farming and that is a great breeding ground for animal-borne disease. Meat also concentrates heavy metals in the animal’s diet. The quantity of meat consumption is making us sick.
Even if humans reduced their meat consumption drastically it would be even more inefficient to produce meat ethically – either that, or the prices of meat would rise astronomically which is probably a good thing, making it more of a luxury item.
The process of eating meat? Sure.
The way people in the modern world obtain meat? Nothing natural about that.
If I was made to hunt my game, or kill the animal I raised, I’d never eat meat.
Oh man, I’ve tried venison several times growing up in the sticks. It’s gross. Most people I know made it into jerky or sausage or something to make it taste better.
Because you live in a very comfortable world with so many options, you don’t even know what to choose sometimes.
I would. If I eat meat I am responsible for taking that animals life, whether or not it’s me that performs the killing blow. At least I know if I do it, it will be as quick and painless as I am able to make it. In the case of hunting, I would take some comfort in knowing it lived free and not in a cramped cage in a factory farm or something. If I was able to raise my own animals, I would give them the best and happiest life I was able to give them, and also end their life as painlessly as I could manage when it was time for that.
I wouldn’t at all enjoy the act of killing, but I feel like it shows at least a little respect for the life of the animal that I am willing to take the responsibility to do it myself, precisely because it is a hard thing to do. I would never have eaten meat if I wasn’t wiling to do the killing myself.
I recently switched to a Pescetarian diet, partly so I can stop supporting factory style farming. I know it’s an anthropocentric pov but Its easier for me to kill fish and other sea creatures than land critters, but I still try to be as humane as possible when doing it.
I will never eat anything in the Dolphin, Whale, or Octopus families, which is another anthropocentric thing, and I guess it made me a hypocrite because I did eat pork and they are intelligent too. I am trying to reduce the harm I do at least.
Killing a cow I raised would be the same as killing a dog I raised.
Just because it’s “yummy” and “I feel like it”?
Seems pretty insane to me, but people be people’ing.
I feel the same, but I do think there’s a threshold somewhere.
Insects. I don’t want to eat those, but if I had to, my conscience wouldn’t be the problem.
Fish. It’s not my pet. I wouldn’t worry too much about eating it. Breeding fish. Maybe not so easy, but fish will eat each other any chance they get, so why shouldn’t I.
Chicken. They’re not good pets. Fucking dinosaur would eat me if it could. I don’t know if I could have a pet-like relationship to a chicken. Maybe other birds are different. I’d respect a crow or eagle enough not to hunt it.
Then there’s mammals. I agree that most of them are like dogs. I don’t want to breed or hunt pigs, cows, deer or cats. But how about rats and mice? They are a real nuisance and breed like crazy. It wouldn’t matter much to anyone if there’s a few more or less, and I surely wouldn’t pet them in the wild. However, rabbits and hares. They’re just too cute. No eating.
So, there it is. Despite loving every living being, I could still eat some mammals, some birds and anything else in the animal kingdom without remorse.
I agree. While I feel like I couldn’t kill a mouse/rat with my hands and watch it die, but I think I could make myself set a trap that kills the animal instantly out of my sight.
Very interesting point you’ve made!
I don’t think it would be the same thing at all. I wouldn’t go out of my way to create an emotional bond with a critter I raised to be food. In fact im pretty sure I would intentionally not do that.
Im not saying that it might not accidentally happen, I am a softie and an animal lover. If it did I probably wouldn’t be capable of eating it.
You seem to feel pretty strongly about this, don’t you think its at least a little hypocritical to be ok with killing and eating an animal, as long as you personally aren’t delivering the killing blow? You are every bit as responsible for the deaths of the animals you eat as the person at the slaughter house.
I have no issues with people refusing to kill an animal on ethical grounds (reducing the harm from factory farming was a big consideration for the change in my diet) but you aren’t doing that.
It just seems like a weird stance to judge me for doing something you are also doing, but by proxy. If you hire someone to kill someone else, you would still get charged with murder. The same logic applies here.
Emotional bond or no, I don’t have it me to walk up to a (random or raised) animal and slit its throat. Especially when it’s raised by me.
If it was a matter of life or death - that’s a different topic. Right now, there’s no reason to eat animal meat, except for “yummy”.
The meat industry has done a “marvelous” job of disconnecring “killing” with “consuming meat”. No, I don’t feel like I’m killing the animal, because I’m not doing it.
I’m eating meat because it’s “yummy”. But that wasn’t what I said in the original comment. I said if I had to choose (which I currently don’t have to do). And I said I couldn’t kill an animal with my own hands, just because it’s tasty, because I’m not a psycho.
Apparently, I don’t have a issue when a psycho does it and delivers me the meat, of an animal I have never seen before.
I wish it wasn’t this way, and I’m trying to reduce my meat consumption (and I have, by a lot). But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Same with climate change. You know that people are already dying because of it. I’m nor directly killing the people, but they are dying because of it. And me being “comfortable” adds to climate change (even if it’s a minute addition, just like eating a Big Mac is a minute part of the killed animal)
Unfortunately many people working in the factories are not psychopaths. The job has a really high turnaround rate and a lot of the people working there get very high rates of depression , it’s also very unsafe work
I didn’t say you killed the animals, I said people who eat meat are responsible for the deaths of the animals they consume. That’s just a fact. If people didn’t purchase tasty meat to consume, other “Psychos” wouldn’t raise them for others to consume. I understand that it’s much easier to let someone else ‘do the dirty work’, believe me I know.
As for people who kill their own meat (or your meat) being ‘psychos’ I can tell you that it’s obviously not the case. Hunting culture grew from the time when it was necessary to hunt to provide for your family, and that is the spirit that it’s carried out in today. People don’t hunt because they think it’s great fun to murder innocent creatures. It’s about providing for your family, friends, and community. I just saw a post on Facebook from my ex-BIL and he was talking about a buck he just got while hunting. It was a post thanking ‘the lord’ for the provisions.
It’s just a way of life in rural America. We don’t do it to be cruel, we do it as a way to not have to rely solely on supermarkets to provide for ourselves. If we ever do have a ‘Y2K’ style situation (and let’s be honest- that isn’t a crazy idea) knowing how to catch, clean, and cook wild game would be a valuable and sought after skill. A lot of poor people in rural areas do depend on hunting and fishing to supplement their diets.
Most hunters are (directly or indirectly) conservationists as well. It’s in their best interest to maintain a healthy and flourishing population of animals (not just game animals- web of life and all that). Hunting is strictly regulated by the state to ensure that the animals don’t become overpopulated or over hunted.
Overpopulation would quickly become a huge problem (not just for humans, but for the environment and the animals themselves) if it’s not well regulated. In fact the South has a massive problem on their hands with wild boar atm. They are an invasive species so it’s not quite the same thing, deer for example will become overpopulated very quickly.
We have (to our detriment) eliminated most or in a lot of case all natural predators for larger game animals like deer, so in order to be good stewards of the environment we have to have another way of controlling their populations. I can’t really think of a better way to do it than have people in the community do ‘the work’ for free (in fact they pay for the privilege) and filling their bellies at the same time- while also reducing our dependence on factory farms.
The analogy to climate change doesn’t really work. It’s not really individuals who are the problem there, it’s the choices giant corporations and government makes in the name of profits that are the real issue. Most people if given a choice between a lifestyle that is sustainable and responsible would choose to do so, we are just given so little choice in that regard. Not eating meat is a choice that, especially nowadays, anyone could easily accomplish.
If a new meat product showed up in grocery stores called ‘Long Pork’ that was the tastiest meat ever, but people found out that it was human flesh- would you consider the people who continued to eat the meat to be complicit in the murder of said ‘livestock’? Especially if you knew for a fact that if everyone stopped eating it- the murders would stop?
natural has two different meanings.
one is the opposite of artificial.
the other is the opposite of supernatural.
everything humans do, tautologically, is artificial.
so unless you mean you think the modem meat industry employs ghosts or magic spells, it is very much “natural”
Nice, we got an “acktchually” over here.
If you want to be a part of the discussion, read and use the context.
there is no context that could change the truth of what I said
Yes, you’ve got the biggest, best truths. A lotta people tell you that your truths are the greatest of all times.
seems like you don’t want to accept the truth
Don’t care wht “seems” to you.
If the situation were reversed, chickens would eat us without a second thought.
Sometimes I feed the chickens worms or bugs I find in the garden, they go nuts! It’s a little scary.
Good people of Cyrodiil. Welcome to the arena…
I’ve seen a rooster eat a chick before, it was horrifying.
Because the chicken is incapable of acting morally. Humans should hold themselves to a higher standard.
Hah, like humans will ever do that
Congrats, you have the morality of a chicken?
Sorry best we can do is horrors beyond your comprehension. As is human tradition.
Just because we CAN do something, doesn’t mean we should. We are supposed to be superior to animals (at least according to some humans). Why are we doing what the animals do if we’re superior? Animals also rape each other and commit infanticide. Why aren’t we doing that too?
Because we’re only animals!
It’s also totally natural for humans to put those that we consider inferior into horrible death camps after all.
That is hardly the natural way of getting meat
I know, but that’s the only way regular people get meat nowadays.
Seeing what some vegetarians and vegans eat instead of meat makes me laugh. One half is exotic stuff flown in from the other side of the world at a vast expense of the environment, the other half is Ultra High Processed Food laced with chemicals most people cannot even pronounce…
What vegetarians eat instead of meat for a protein is not usually ultra processed food, though it can sometimes be. From my personal experience it usually consists of regular cooked beans. Sometimes sometimes they get fermented and processed into things like tempeh, or tofu. I suggest this is because that ultra processed stuff is expensive, beans are dirt cheap, and tofu is cheap(and delicious). The vegan athletes I know supplement their diet with vegan protein powder, but nearly all people who are serious about being athleats use protein powder.
There’s other protein sources too, if you make overnight oats with soy milk and hemp seeds (or flax seeds or nut butters) you can easily get 20+ grams of protein.
Most of the vegans I know will also eat eggs from responsibly farmed chickens, which is pretty easy to check where I live.
If you aren’t raising cows in your backyard, I have bad news for you…