That Matthew Adelstein quote is absurd. Of course there is a moral difference between killing an animal because we like the smell of the dead animal, and killing it because eating animals is what we do to stay alive. Now, are there other things we can eat to stay alive? Yes, but humans are naturally omnivorous so eating animals is at least as natural as eating plants or nuts. Animals kill other animals in even more cruel ways (often by eating them alive) than humans do.
Of course that doesn't mean we should mistreat animals before they are slaughtered.
If factory farming is really the worst crime in world history, then every single person, except for a handful of vegans, is (many times?), literally and metaphorically, worse than hitler, ted bundy, idi amin, nero etc. and when philosophical exercise leads you to such a conclusion, it's much more likely that are you operating beyond the limit of usefulness of your theoretical framework (e.g. utilitarianism), than that you are grasping big truths.
It might very well be possible for science to develop a path to killing animals that is experienced as pleasant or at least unpainful. Would that alone eliminate the moral issue in our eating animal flesh? If suffering is The criterion of moral/immoral then the answer is yes.
Adelstein is a good example of the cognitive failure to process conditionals. If the demand for pig smell was as great as the demand for pig meat, there would indeed be no outrage. There would be near universal enjoyment.
It doesn’t appear that you’ve investigated this topic too deeply.
The ONLY humane deaths animals experience are at the hands of humans. And somewhat counter-intuitively, plant agriculture kills incomparably more animals than animal agriculture does.
I’m on the same page; not vegan, don’t plan to, and have no interest in trying to making a moral argument why I’m doing the right thing. I agree with the vegan argument... but eh, I dunno. Don’t feel like.
If you do really want to eat less meat though... I live mostly off smoothies... Kale, apples, carrots, celery, beats, etc... mixed with Athletic Greens, Huel, and vegan mass gainer. It’s easy, I like it, and I think I’m pretty covered nutritionally and calorically. Last time I got bloodwork, they said I was exceptional health. Give it a try!
If you're somewhat well off it's pretty easy to avoid factory farming these days. I buy a quarter of a cow at a time from the 4-H program. It's fantastic meat from animals that have lived VERY good lives.
For now, making people abandon meat is impossible. But working to abolish factory farming is possible and essential. No factory farming doesn't mean no meat, just means it's more expensive. The article doesn't mention the position "I'm willing to allow massive cruelty to get a 50% discount on meat" because it's such an absurd position. Yet that's what most of the developed world does.
Whoa animal kill and eat one another? Dang. News to me.
If we were to ethically raise animals, we would be back to a situation where only the elite would be able to afford meat. Everyone else would be on potatoes and rice. It's cruel, but feeds hundreds of millions.
Ultimately, I choose to feed humanity over the wellbeing of livestock.
I read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation when I was 19, turned vegetarian at 20, and stayed that way until I was 27.
I gave up for a few reasons but mainly fatigue - I was the only vegetarian around and just got constant questions/queries about my reasons. At 19 I assumed the world would join me in giving up meat but that didn't happen, and it still shows no signs of happening. I also find vegans and animal rights people tedious and they hold all sorts of socialist views I don't agree with. I also quite like the taste of meat. That's normal for a human.
I still think factory farming is barbaric but I simply don't care enough to adapt my lifestyle so much to avoid meat. I occasionally buy free range chicken and try to eat less pork. If there was a synthetic alternative that tasted 70% as good I would genuinely buy it but I just still think there will be huge problems getting this kind of thing to market at scale. No one cares enough about animal rights, and I don't think they ever will.
Cows on my ranch only have one bad day. Feedlots are an abomination, cheap meat is as unhealthy as all other processed food, for individual and environment. Answer is localism, not lab-grown meat in the near term. Long-term, probably still localism + folks who want to eat lab-grown meat. The animals that are humanely and sustainably raised are as happy and healthy and ethically defenisble as the humans who eat them.
Why not just eat meat from producers that pasture their animals and treat them well? This would fulfill your taste and body composition requirements and all you have to do is pay a premium for your meat. Seems absurd you you can pay an extra 8 bucks a pound for your steak to avoid participating in the greatest crime in human history but would rather get the discount and be sad. There are choices between veganism and factory farmed meat, and more and more producers offering this every year.
Richard, you should consider eating less meat rather than becoming vegan. It's not a religion (unless you're in PETA); cutting your meat intake 90% is 9x more impactful than eliminating that last bit of meat.
"Surely there’s no morally relevant difference between a pleasant smell and a pleasant taste."
Uh, yeah there is. We need food to live and to be healthy. The smells or sounds or images of a slaughtered animal gain us nothing valuable in our lives. But we all need food. That's the difference. This is so obvious I can't believe I had to type it out, and yet Richard just accepts the argument without any skepticism.
I'm happy to eat lab-grown meat or substitute meat products if they're within reasonable distance of the real thing on price and taste. I've ordered many an Impossible Burger at restaurants. Got no particular need to have real animals raised and killed. But it's important to acknowledge that there is a totally valid reason - food! - to eat animals, and that people who do so take no sort of twisted pleasure from the killing.
Moreover, suppose we replace all actual animal-killing for food with lab-grown meat. Now, amid all the benefits to the environment from less grazing and such, we also have millions upon millions fewer chickens and cows and goats and sheep and pigs being born. We don't need 'em! Let those hogs breed in the wild and face the predation of their natural predators (see 'em killed the way nature intended, I say!). We're not going to run farms that let cows graze under armed protection all day just out of the goodness of our hearts, either. But, one might reasonably ask, when it comes to the humans making the decision, what is the moral difference between animals "born, raised and killed for food" versus "never born at all"? Leaving aside the odd psychopath who enjoys making living things suffer, I can't quite see much of a moral difference there that mandates some sort of massive ethical reckoning.
The reason to invest in (and consume) lab-grown meat has a strong argument in its favor entirely besides the ethical angle: environmental damage, equity for societies that lack arable farmland, efficiency and reliability of our food supply, etc. We don't have to reach ethical questions to decide that it's a good idea. But I take exception to the idea that there's some fundamental ethical problem with finding our own food to live healthy lives and provide for our children.
That Matthew Adelstein quote is absurd. Of course there is a moral difference between killing an animal because we like the smell of the dead animal, and killing it because eating animals is what we do to stay alive. Now, are there other things we can eat to stay alive? Yes, but humans are naturally omnivorous so eating animals is at least as natural as eating plants or nuts. Animals kill other animals in even more cruel ways (often by eating them alive) than humans do.
Of course that doesn't mean we should mistreat animals before they are slaughtered.
If factory farming is really the worst crime in world history, then every single person, except for a handful of vegans, is (many times?), literally and metaphorically, worse than hitler, ted bundy, idi amin, nero etc. and when philosophical exercise leads you to such a conclusion, it's much more likely that are you operating beyond the limit of usefulness of your theoretical framework (e.g. utilitarianism), than that you are grasping big truths.
It might very well be possible for science to develop a path to killing animals that is experienced as pleasant or at least unpainful. Would that alone eliminate the moral issue in our eating animal flesh? If suffering is The criterion of moral/immoral then the answer is yes.
Adelstein is a good example of the cognitive failure to process conditionals. If the demand for pig smell was as great as the demand for pig meat, there would indeed be no outrage. There would be near universal enjoyment.
It doesn’t appear that you’ve investigated this topic too deeply.
The ONLY humane deaths animals experience are at the hands of humans. And somewhat counter-intuitively, plant agriculture kills incomparably more animals than animal agriculture does.
LOL, some of your commenters are braindead Richard. Good article, though.
I’m on the same page; not vegan, don’t plan to, and have no interest in trying to making a moral argument why I’m doing the right thing. I agree with the vegan argument... but eh, I dunno. Don’t feel like.
If you do really want to eat less meat though... I live mostly off smoothies... Kale, apples, carrots, celery, beats, etc... mixed with Athletic Greens, Huel, and vegan mass gainer. It’s easy, I like it, and I think I’m pretty covered nutritionally and calorically. Last time I got bloodwork, they said I was exceptional health. Give it a try!
If you're somewhat well off it's pretty easy to avoid factory farming these days. I buy a quarter of a cow at a time from the 4-H program. It's fantastic meat from animals that have lived VERY good lives.
For now, making people abandon meat is impossible. But working to abolish factory farming is possible and essential. No factory farming doesn't mean no meat, just means it's more expensive. The article doesn't mention the position "I'm willing to allow massive cruelty to get a 50% discount on meat" because it's such an absurd position. Yet that's what most of the developed world does.
Whoa animal kill and eat one another? Dang. News to me.
If we were to ethically raise animals, we would be back to a situation where only the elite would be able to afford meat. Everyone else would be on potatoes and rice. It's cruel, but feeds hundreds of millions.
Ultimately, I choose to feed humanity over the wellbeing of livestock.
I read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation when I was 19, turned vegetarian at 20, and stayed that way until I was 27.
I gave up for a few reasons but mainly fatigue - I was the only vegetarian around and just got constant questions/queries about my reasons. At 19 I assumed the world would join me in giving up meat but that didn't happen, and it still shows no signs of happening. I also find vegans and animal rights people tedious and they hold all sorts of socialist views I don't agree with. I also quite like the taste of meat. That's normal for a human.
I still think factory farming is barbaric but I simply don't care enough to adapt my lifestyle so much to avoid meat. I occasionally buy free range chicken and try to eat less pork. If there was a synthetic alternative that tasted 70% as good I would genuinely buy it but I just still think there will be huge problems getting this kind of thing to market at scale. No one cares enough about animal rights, and I don't think they ever will.
Cows on my ranch only have one bad day. Feedlots are an abomination, cheap meat is as unhealthy as all other processed food, for individual and environment. Answer is localism, not lab-grown meat in the near term. Long-term, probably still localism + folks who want to eat lab-grown meat. The animals that are humanely and sustainably raised are as happy and healthy and ethically defenisble as the humans who eat them.
Why not just eat meat from producers that pasture their animals and treat them well? This would fulfill your taste and body composition requirements and all you have to do is pay a premium for your meat. Seems absurd you you can pay an extra 8 bucks a pound for your steak to avoid participating in the greatest crime in human history but would rather get the discount and be sad. There are choices between veganism and factory farmed meat, and more and more producers offering this every year.
This is very good.
Richard, you should consider eating less meat rather than becoming vegan. It's not a religion (unless you're in PETA); cutting your meat intake 90% is 9x more impactful than eliminating that last bit of meat.
"Surely there’s no morally relevant difference between a pleasant smell and a pleasant taste."
Uh, yeah there is. We need food to live and to be healthy. The smells or sounds or images of a slaughtered animal gain us nothing valuable in our lives. But we all need food. That's the difference. This is so obvious I can't believe I had to type it out, and yet Richard just accepts the argument without any skepticism.
I'm happy to eat lab-grown meat or substitute meat products if they're within reasonable distance of the real thing on price and taste. I've ordered many an Impossible Burger at restaurants. Got no particular need to have real animals raised and killed. But it's important to acknowledge that there is a totally valid reason - food! - to eat animals, and that people who do so take no sort of twisted pleasure from the killing.
Moreover, suppose we replace all actual animal-killing for food with lab-grown meat. Now, amid all the benefits to the environment from less grazing and such, we also have millions upon millions fewer chickens and cows and goats and sheep and pigs being born. We don't need 'em! Let those hogs breed in the wild and face the predation of their natural predators (see 'em killed the way nature intended, I say!). We're not going to run farms that let cows graze under armed protection all day just out of the goodness of our hearts, either. But, one might reasonably ask, when it comes to the humans making the decision, what is the moral difference between animals "born, raised and killed for food" versus "never born at all"? Leaving aside the odd psychopath who enjoys making living things suffer, I can't quite see much of a moral difference there that mandates some sort of massive ethical reckoning.
The reason to invest in (and consume) lab-grown meat has a strong argument in its favor entirely besides the ethical angle: environmental damage, equity for societies that lack arable farmland, efficiency and reliability of our food supply, etc. We don't have to reach ethical questions to decide that it's a good idea. But I take exception to the idea that there's some fundamental ethical problem with finding our own food to live healthy lives and provide for our children.