Should We Eat Meat?

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The production of meat and other animal products involves staggering levels of suffering and death. Those of us who participate in this activity have an obligation to justify that suffering and death (unless we think that morality and critical thinking do not matter at all, in which case we wouldn’t be reading the Opposing Views website in the first place!).

The problem is that we can’t justify eating animal products. Let’s look at some of the most commons attempts to do so.

Animals are ‘inferior’

Many of us think that it is acceptable to eat animals and animal products because animals are our moral ‘inferiors.’

But why do we think this?

The usual explanation is that nonhuman animals are different from human animals in that the former lack certain characteristics that only the latter have. These characteristics include rationality, abstract thought, the ability to use symbolic communication, etc. In other words, we think of animals as ‘inferiors’ because there are supposedly qualitative distinctions between the minds of animals and those of humans.

This explanation does not work.

The notion that there are qualitative distinctions between humans and other animals ostensibly conflicts with the theory of evolution, which, at least according to Darwin , maintains that any such difference is a matter of degree and not of kind. And on an almost daily basis, an article shows up, sometimes in a popular magazine or newspaper and sometimes in a respected scientific journal, about how animal minds are really like human minds. We can, however, concede for purposes of argument that given that humans are, at least as far as we know, the only animals who use symbolic communication and whose conceptual structures are inextricably linked to language, it is most probably the case that there are significant differences between the minds of humans and the minds of nonhumans.

So what?

Why are these characteristics—rationality, abstract thought, the ability to use language, etc.—determinative of moral value for the purpose of justifying the use of animals as food?

There are some things that most humans can do and that animals cannot do. But there are things that most animals can do that no humans can do. I may be able to sit in front of this computer and type this entry and a bird cannot but a bird can fly without being in an airplane; a dog can smell and hear things that neither I nor any other human can.

Why is it that our ability to use a computer makes us ‘better’ in a moral sense?

The answer, of course, is that we say so. Surely, our self-interested proclamation of superiority is not sufficient to establish any such superiority.

There are some mentally disabled humans who are unable to think rationally or to use abstract concepts or language. These disabilities may be relevant for some purposes. We may not, for instance, want to give a severely mentally disabled person a driver’s license. But is it acceptable for us to use her as a forced organ donor or to kill her as part of an experiment that will produce benefits for the rest of us? Surely not. The differences between a mentally disabled person and a ‘normal’ person may be relevant for some purposes but those differences do not justify our concluding that the disabled person is ‘inferior’ because she lacks certain characteristics.

So even if there are qualitative differences between humans and other animals and even if these differences matter for some purposes, they cannot suffice to justify our treating animals as our resources and eating them.

Eating animals is ‘natural’

Many people try to justify eating animal products by claiming that it is ‘natural’ to do so, that we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, etc.

Again, this doesn’t work. ‘Natural’ is nothing more than a label that serves as a conclusion and not as any sort of argument. There is no practice that we now recognize as immoral that was not sought to be defended as ‘natural.’ For example, slavery was defended on the ground that the ownership of Africans by white Europeans was ‘natural.’

Similarly, the fact that we’ve been doing something for thousands of years is no guarantee of the morality of anything. We have been making war for thousands of years; we have been engaging in sexism and racism for thousands of years.

Animals would not exist if we did not eat them

Another argument runs like this: we bring animals into existence to eat them and they would not exist but for our practices of domestication and animal production, so it is acceptable to use animals.

Again, this is an invalid argument. If it were not so, then it would be morally acceptable to kill children or to exploit them for immoral purposes. After all, our children would not be here in the first place if we did not bring them into existence.

A related argument is that if we recognize that animals have the right not to be treated as human resources, we would have to let all animals run wild in the street. That is not the case. If we recognized the moral status of nonhuman animals, we would stop bringing billions of animals into existence in the first place.

There are other arguments offered; all are invalid. If they come up in the course of our discussion, I will be happy to address them. The bottom line is that for a species that prides itself on being rational, when it comes to animals, we do not think rationally at all.

I refer the interested reader to a video, Theory of Animal Rights, as well as some FAQs on animal rights.