Should We Eat Meat?

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If you think eating a turkey is morally equivalent to eating your cousin, you shouldn't eat meat. But for the 99.9 percent of us who don't buy that line of malarkey, it's just fine to tuck into a ham sandwich or a cheeseburger.

Big-money vegan groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States are well known to oppose meat-eating for the reason that it offends their philosophical sensibilities. The idea behind their social movement is commonly referred to as species equality, animal rights, or animal liberation.

Species equality is a very radical philosophy. Put simply, it is the rejection of "speciesism," which animal rights advocates view as an immoral discrimination between humans and animals—including cows, pigs, chickens, and even bees and lab rats.

One of the problems with the whole species-equality position is that it fails to recognize the exceptional qualities of human beings. We're the only species that can reason, for instance. We could choose to bestow "rights" on a veal calf (the right to not be eaten, for instance), but there's no rationale for believing the animal could even comprehend the concept.

For those of us who disagree with the view that there's nothing special about humanity, eating meat is not immoral.

Here are just a few examples of prominent activists who see things through, shall we say, a different lens.

• PETA president Ingrid Newkirk: "There's no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all animals.
• Animal activist (and former PETA employee) Gary Yourofsky: "What we must do is start viewing every cow, pig, chicken, monkey, rabbit, mouse, and pigeon as our family members."
• Former Humane Society of the United States vice president Michael W. Fox: "The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration."