Meat is necessary
for proper nutrition. [top]
This is simply not true. Research
on the health effects of vegetarianism is generally quite positive.
Nutritionists and other health experts generally advocate that vegetarians
should be careful to get a balanced diet... but they say that about everyone.
If nutrition is important to you, consider that the majority of the evidence
suggests that the less meat you eat, the better.
The only nutritional advantage of meat is that it packs a lot of nutrition
(along with a lot of harmful substances) into an easy-to-consume package...
in other words, it can be convenient. But mere convenience is a very poor
justification for causing our annual slaughter of billions of animals.
The Journal of the
American Dietetic Association states that, "...appropriately planned
vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate, and provide
health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." The
article then goes on to describe a variety of ways in which vegetarianism
is a healthier lifestyle, citing lower mortality from and incidence of
a variety of diseases and conditions.
Additionally, the Center
for Science in the Public Interest quotes Marion
Nestle, chair of the Nutrition
& Food Studies department at New York University as saying:
"There's no question that largely vegetarian diets are as healthy as you
can get. The evidence is so strong and overwhelming and produced over such
a long period of time that it's no longer debatable."
A great number of other health organizations and government agencies
also support the view that vegetarian diets are either sufficient or beneficial.
Most criticisms from such organizations apply mostly to people who have
bad eating habits. For more information, follow
this link.
I guess eating meat's
just a habit... I never really thought about it. Besides, everybody does
it. [Top]
I think this is the real reason why most people eat meat. In the past,
meat was a luxury item in most cultures and a necessity in a few others
(Eskimos really needed to eat meat to survive). It was generally eaten
sparingly, and it greatly helped supplement diets that may not have been
well-balanced due to the limited amount of plant foods available in any
one region.
That was the past. In the past there may have been some reasonable justifications
for eating meat. In most modern societies, it is perfectly possible to
live a healthy, normal life without causing the deaths of animals. We still
cling to the past out of habit.
A brief examination of the morality, environmental impact, and healthiness
of eating meat easily produces the reasonable conclusion that one should
probably avoid meat as much as possible. Most people so far have simply
been too lazy, self-centered, or unthinking to consider the consequences
of their actions concerning diet. "Meat is readily available in stores,
so it must be OK, right?" Clearly, that is not very careful reasoning.
Just because cigarettes are readily available in stores does not mean they
have no harmful health effects, does it?
Other practices which we now consider immoral were once considered common
and acceptable... everyone did it. Slavery was perfectly acceptable in
large parts of the world before this century. Murdering a person outside
of your clan or tribe was fine behavior for people in many hunter-gatherer
societies (and is still accepted behavior in modern street gangs). Rape
was normal behavior for primitive humans, and retains various degrees of
acceptance today. Suppressing some or all rights of women or racial minorities
was perfectly legal in the United States until very recently, and is common
in other nations. Because these behaviors were or are generally accepted,
does that make them right?
Just because a lot of people do something, is it right? (Incidentally,
for thousands of years many Buddhists have believed that eating animals
is wrong.) Regardless of what the nameless hordes do, shouldn't you consider
the consequences of your actions? Don't the thousands of animals you're
going to kill deserve at least a cursory bit of thinking on your part?
Eating meat is natural.
[Top]
Assuming this is true, so what? Living in caves and dying of old age
at 30 is natural. Murder, rape, and random violence are very natural behavior,
not just to humans, but to most animals. Just because humans have often
killed animals for meat in the past is no justification for continuing
the barbaric practice.
Yes, humans have canine teeth which are good for rending flesh, and
there is also evidence that our intestines are well-adapted to processing
meat. But, look at a gorilla picture sometime: they have huge canine teeth
and do not eat any animals except some bugs. Additionally, as noted
above, a vegetarian diet is generally acknowledged to be as healthy
or more healthy than a meat-based diet.
Historically, the majority of human cultures developed diets of mostly
plant materials, with meat as a nutritional supplement (not as the main
part of most every meal). In modern cultures that have healthy trade with
other regions, humans have access to a vast variety of plant foods and
do not require meat for good nutrition.
It is just as natural for humans to not eat meat. Our closest cousins,
chimpanzees, hunt and eat animals, but only as a tiny minority of their
mostly herbivorous diet. Since they do not have grocery stores, they may
not be able to get complete nutrition from the plants in their area. Also,
they may like the taste of flesh. But then again, they also may not be
considering the moral consequences of their actions. The real question
here is, do you have higher morals than a chimp?
Meat tastes
good. [Top]
Perhaps human flesh tastes good; is that any reason to kill people?
Additionally, many vegetarian foods taste wonderful (a huge variety of
Mediterranean, Indian, Asian, and Latin American foods are vegetarian or
vegan).
The argument that you should eat meat because it tastes good is equivalent
to saying: "I want to participate in killing billions and billions of creatures
so that I can occasionally experience the transient pleasure of something
tasty. I want to kill and kill and kill for a small amount of pleasure."
Does that little bit of pleasure outweigh the lives of the trillions
of animals that are going to be slaughtered in your lifetime?
A vegetarian diet is inconvenient;
a meat-based diet is convenient. [Top]
Not killing anyone who annoys you is inconvenient too. Restraint from
killing for your own convenience or pleasure is simply part of being a
responsible human being. A minor inconvenience is no justification for
mass-killing.
In fact, once you make the minor mental effort to try to be a vegetarian,
the lifestyle is really not that inconvenient. It requires thinking a little
before ordering from a menu or grocery shopping and it may require you
to learn some new cooking habits, but once you've adapted to those conditions,
they become habits, not inconveniences.
The only persisting inconvenience is that in some public eating arrangements
(some restaurants, parties, etc.), meat appears to be the only option.
However, the more people that become vegetarians, the less this becomes
an issue. Already, most restaurants are prepared to serve good food to
vegetarians, and the ones that aren't are losing customers (I, for one,
will not go to PoFolks until they significantly change their menu).
Regardless, consider if you showed up at a restaurant or a party and
the host said, "Sorry I can only feed you some potato chips and lettuce,
but if you'd like, you can kill the cat and eat some meat." What would
you do? How is killing that cat any different than killing a pig, which
is much more intelligent and more genetically similar to a human being?
Maybe being a vegetarian is somewhat more inconvenient to some people.
So what? Can you really justify a few thousand murders for a minor convenience?
Life's not fair.
It's survival of the fittest, and the strong kill the weak. [Top]
There is little difference between this opinion and the idea that it
is justifiable to kill, hurt, or otherwise violate any person you want
as long as you can get away with it.
The "life's not fair" argument is the logic of such wonderful people
as Fascists, military dictators, murderers, rapists, school-yard bullies,
and self-centered people in general. If the philosophy of vegetarianism
goes against the philosophy of this sort of people, then that is just another
tremendous benefit of vegetarianism.
Indeed, it is reasonable to assume that people who are willing to consider
the moral consequences of killing animals are more likely to restrain from
violence against other human beings if at all possible. Vegetarianism inherently
encourages peaceful thought and thus peaceful action. Conversely, it is
not unreasonable to assume that thoughtlessly killing creatures by the
thousands for nothing more than pleasure and convenience might lend to
generally more violent thoughts and behaviors.
Where do you
draw the line? All ethics are arbitrary. [Top]
That's easy: draw the line as low as you think you can, and reevaluate
it from time to time.
I would agree that all ethical statements have some arbitrary component,
but that does not mean we should abandon all ethics. The key is to be as
reasonable as possible. The most ethical behavior probably would be to
eat absolutely nothing so as to cause no impact on your environment. This
is clearly impractical. The least ethical behavior would be to kill and
eat anything you want, including humans. Almost all people would consider
this wrong.
Everything in-between those two extremes is gray area. The best way
to settle on a spot in that gray area is to carefully consider the issue
and choose a diet which for you balances the ill of harming or killing
creatures against the necessities of your life. Occasionally, you should
evaluate your decision to see if you should modify it one way or the other.
The most important aspect is that you give it some thought: consider the
consequences of your actions.
As for where to draw the line, there are a few natural lines that make
sense and are relatively un-arbitrary. Choose one of these lines and see
how it works for you:
-
Don't eat humans. That shouldn't be too hard to do, as it's illegal
anyway. Most everyone follows this standard without giving it any thought.
-
Don't eat primates. Well, most Westerners don't do this, but some
people eat monkeys and even Chimpanzees. I'm hoping you don't.
-
Don't eat any mammals, as they are very closely-related to humans.
Also, mammals experience a broad range of feeling and many are quite intelligent.
Despite the derogatory connotations associated with their name, pigs are
some of the most intelligent animals on this planet.
-
Don't eat any vertebrates because they experience high-order pain
and other nervous responses in basically the same way that humans do. Some
of them are quite intelligent, too.
-
Don't eat any animals (Vegetarian, a.k.a. Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian).
This is one of the least arbitrary standards, as there's a fairly clear
line between animals and non-animals. All animals are sensate, react to
pain, and are arguably a higher form of life than plants, fungi, etc..
Even some invertebrate animals, such as octopuses, can be extremely intelligent.
-
Don't eat any animals or animal products (Vegan). This is also very
un-arbitrary. Products such as milk and eggs come from enslaving animals
in sometimes horrendous conditions. It makes sense that if you're trying
not to kill animals, you also should try to avoid inflicting other forms
of violence on them.
-
Don't eat things which result in animal death when they are harvested.
Mass-harvesting of grains, for example, causes the deaths of many creatures,
including a variety of mammals, which are caught in the farm equipment.
Meeting this standard is extremely difficult in modern societies as it
basically requires that you eat only food you grow yourself or that come
from a source you know to be safe. Over time, this may become more feasible.
Consider however, that eating only meat certainly wouldn't help prevent
animal deaths from grain harvesting. Meat animals eat huge quantities of
harvested grain, and they also displace enormous numbers of animals from
their natural habitats.
-
Don't eat anything that is killed to become food (Fruitarian) -
It may be possible to live without eating any dead things, including plants.
Eating things such as nuts, fruits, and many vegetables does not directly
cause any deaths. Personally, I see this as a somewhat unreasonable standard
both because it sounds nutritionally near-impossible and because just taking
a shower causes the deaths of countless microorganisms. I don't think it's
reasonable to expect to be a human being and not cause some other things
to die... I only look to minimize it. However, if you think you can live
a Fruitarian life, more power to you.
-
Don't eat the products of any living thing. I'm pretty sure this
is impossible (at least in today's society), because it doesn't leave much
to eat besides salt. However, it may be possible in the future that we
could grow our food in enclosed environments (thus avoiding killing animals
during harvesting), and that that food could be replicated through advanced
cloning techniques, thus meeting at least the Fruitarian standard of not
causing deaths. Right now, I'm not going to worry about it... but it is
something to think about for the future.
In all of the above definitions, understand that not eating something also
refers to not using it. Non-cannibals generally don't use human skin for
ornamentation, and vegetarians generally avoid leather.
God put animals here
for our use. [Top]
Various people will use various religions to make this claim, but it
doesn't really make sense. Supposing that God said in scripture that animals
can be used for human purposes, does that mean that they must be
used? Does any god demand that people kill animals? I know that some gods
require animal sacrifice, but most religions have abandoned that practice.
(Also, if you're looking at the Bible, consider that God says that animals
are for human use, but plants are for human food. Try reading Genesis
1:29)
In other words, God does demand animal sacrifice, but you don't do that.
On the other hand, God does not require that you kill animals for
your use... how can you use God's word to justify your killing?
If you accept any notion of spirituality, doesn't it make sense that
all life has at least some intrinsic meaning? If you can live a
healthy, normal life without killing God's creatures, why should you?
Besides, meat is a very environmentally-destructive food. If God doesn't
outright require you to eat meat, shouldn't you avoid it at least to help
the Earth be a less deadly place for your children?
Finally, if you believe in the right to life, you have
no excuse for killing animals.
Meat gives me energy.
[Top]
I've heard people make that claim as much as I've heard vegetarians
claim that they had more energy once they stopped eating meat. I've also
heard people claim that they tried to stop eating meat and found that they
always felt lethargic.
The reason for all of these claims is most likely a matter of proper
or improper nutrition. If you become a vegetarian and find you have more
energy, it's probably because you are giving more attention to your diet,
eating better, and thus feeling better. If you stop eating meat and feel
lethargic, it is probably because you are not eating right.
A vegetarian diet is not simply a meat-based diet minus the meat. You
can't live off salads and french fries. It does take a little thought to
be a vegetarian. If you change your diet and it makes you feel worse, just
take a look at your nutritional intake and reevaluate.
If you find that eating meat gives you energy, that's most likely because
meat is an excellent source of B vitamins, which make many people feel
energetic. You can get all of these vitamins from a vegetarian diet, but
it may take a little effort. Mostly it is determined by your metabolism.
If you feel that meat gives you energy, then you probably have an imbalanced
diet and are often starved for B vitamins. In that case, reevaluating your
diet is in order anyway.
Now, weigh your unthinking statement about energy against the lives
of a few thousand animals.
The meat's already
there. The animal's already dead. I can't make a difference. [Top]
When a human dies, we do not slaughter and eat them simply because "the
meat is already there." Why treat animals differently?
If you eat meat, you contribute to the demand for meat and thus spur
more killings at the slaughterhouse. Although your consumption of a particular
piece of meat does not directly cause the death of the animal that it came
from, it does directly contribute to the demand to kill another animal.
Meat industries
kill billions of animals each year. If you eat meat, you participate
in and condone this process, and thus share some of the responsibility
for every one of those billions of deaths. The only way to fully remove
yourself from the responsibility of killing meat-creatures is to not eat
them.
And your ceasing to eat meat does make a significant difference in many
ways. First, it decreases the demand. Although in a huge economy your decision
might not directly save any animal's life, it does make a significant contribution
to the decrease in demand. If you consider how
many steer, pigs, chickens, etc. you will eat in your lifetime, consider
that becoming a vegetarian removes the demand for that many animals' deaths.
Consider if all vegetarians were to suddenly become meat-eaters: that would
certainly cause the meat industries to kill more animals. A recent poll
concludes that there are 4.8
million vegetarians just in the United States. If they all ate the
average amount of pork, manufacturers would have to kill
another 1.25 million pigs each year. So your opting out of the meat trade
does help save animals' lives.
Additionally, your being a vegetarian increases the demand for non-meat
foods at the restaurants you frequent. The more times you order vegetarian
dishes from a restaurant, the more likely it is that the management will
expand their vegetarian offerings. This helps both because it makes it
easier for other people to be vegetarians, and because it may cause some
people who would normally eat meat to sometimes eat a vegetarian dish instead
(even meat eaters are known to eat spaghetti with garlic sauce or egg foo
young). Oh, and you can also simply ask restaurant management to add more
vegetarian dishes to their menu. Many of them listen.
Also, being a vegetarian sets an example to the people around you. Personally,
I try never to preach to my friends and colleagues about being vegetarian.
I don't even mention it until people ask why I'm not having the steak,
or whatever. The simple, quiet fact that I am a vegetarian (and obviously
healthy anAlso, being a vegetarian sets an example to the people around
you. Personally, I try never to preach to my friends and colleagues about
being vegetarian. I don't even mention it until people ask why I'm not
having the steak, or whatever. The simple, quiet fact that I am a vegetarian
(and obviously healthy and fit) makes the people around me consider that
vegetarianism is possible and that it is worth considering.
If they were already considering vegetarianism; seeing that I've lived
well without meat gives them the additional impetus toward making the choice.
If they have not really considered it, then my absolute refusal to eat
meat may make them start to consider the consequences of their actions.
And thus, by being a vegetarian, in this way you can significantly help
reduce the demand for meat by helping propagate the idea to others.
In sum, saying "I can't make a difference" is equivalent to saying,
"I am worthless." Think about it.
What about all those poor
little plants you eat? Don't they count? [top]
First, you eat plants too; you have no moral ground on which to stand
and criticize vegetarians' eating of plants.
I see the morality of what we kill as a sliding scale. Most everyone
agrees that killing other humans is wrong. Almost no one thinks that killing
malignant bacteria is wrong. So there's a line in-between the two somewhere.
Anywhere you draw the line, it will be arbitrary to some degree. What
I've done is to make what I hope is the least arbitrary ranking
of living things, and try to keep my killing as low on that list as possible.
The least arbitrary place to draw a line on almost any hierarchical ranking
of life forms is between plants and animals. But I'm also open to the idea
of making a gray-area near that line. Mussels are extremely simplistic,
plant-like creatures, and it's hard to argue that they belong on the same
plane as humans.
On the other hand, pigs feel pain in pretty-much exactly the same way
we do. They also experience complex emotions and can exhibit a high level
of intelligence. Killing a pig seems to me very similar to killing a human
being. Killing a spinach plant just doesn't seem to rank on the same level.
I certainly can't empathize as much with the nearly-inanimate spinach plant
as I can with the pig that is screaming and trying to get away as people
are trying to kill it.
Is empathy a good basis for determining morality? I don't see why not...
it's a lot less arbitrary than reading some book written by a bunch of
primitive desert nomads a few thousand years ago.
Is the scale I reference above with humans on top and plants on bottom
correct? No, I don't think anything is absolutely right or wrong, but that
scale is as UN-arbitrary as a human can get, to date. I don't see anyone
offering any alternative except: "Kill anything which is weaker than you
for any reason whatsoever (and maybe don't kill humans because you might
go to jail)." I think the vegetarian mentality is blatantly more moral.
Animals are raised
to be killed for meat, so it’s OK. [top]
This is hardly a good reason to kill animals, but I hear it all the
time.
How does the location in which a creature is raised have any impact
on whether or not killing it is good or bad? By this sort of reasoning,
it would be perfectly acceptable to eat humans if we raised them for food.
What is the difference between a pig raised on a farm and a pig raised
as a pet? What is the difference between a human hypothetically raised
on a farm and a human raised in society?
I’m having trouble writing a lot in response to this argument, because
it just doesn’t make sense. People used to be raised to be slaves... was
that OK?
Why shouldn't I eat meat?
[top]
Why should you? There is no compelling reason to eat meat, while morality,
health, and the environment are all reasons not to kill animals for your
pleasure and convenience.
Additionally, vegetarianism is a non-action. It takes
no real effort to not eat meat. Being a vegetarian is one of the most dramatic
ethical improvements you can make in your life compared to the amount of
effort it takes. All you have to do is eat a healthy diet, and you are
suddenly leading a more healthy, moral, eco-friendly life.
If you disagree, feel free to send
me an e-mail containing a cogent reason why you should blithely kill
animals.
For More Information...
If you are considering becoming a vegetarian and want to know more about
what's involved, check out Going
Vegetarian by the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom and/or Vegetarian's
Guide to Nutrition on HomeArts (a commercial, non-vegetarian site).
PETA (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals) has produced the informative article Vegetarianism:
Eating for Life, which describes health, ethical, ecological, and humanitarian
reasons for being a vegetarian.
The Vegetarian Society of Colorado
has produced a report which
summarizes data from the book Diet for a New America, and provides
detailed statistics of the health, environmental, and ethical reasons for
vegetarianism.
For another rational explanation of reasons to be a vegetarian (and
related vegetarian resources), try Brett Garrett's "Why
Vegetarian?" page.
For a good, web-based commercial source of cruelty-free products, check
out Pangea. (No, I wasn't paid
to say that... they're just cool.)
To understand just how many animals you are killing if you are eating
meat, go to my page on Animals
Killed for Meat.
I got a letter from a meat-packing company trying to convince me to
discontinue my site! Click
here to read it.
A host of links to specific topics about vegetarianism can be found
at both The Vegetarian Pages and
VegSource.
A plethora of other pages can be found on Yahoo's
Vegetarian index or in any search engine, of course.
Copyright
© 1998-2001 by Ed Pastore.
All rights reserved. Excerpts from this document may be quoted with proper
reference to the URL http://users.erols.com/epastore/veg/
,
the author, and the modification date listed below.
modified
September 28, 2001
