The ethics of eating meat

Life is something good. Life is something that we shall take care of.
I see the raising of cattle and other animals as a symbiosis between two species. We give them life, a so good life we can offer.
We give them food shelter medication care.
The animals give us their meat.

(These animals get something they wouldn’t be able to get in the wild, they get the chance to live, And that is every species ultimate goal. To survive and spread your own genetics.)

This is a very good for both the animals and the humans.
IF the animals isn’t suffering. that is. What ive seen with my one eye (meaning not on tv and alike, with your own eyes !) is that animals mostly is living a good life, sure there are moments when the animals dont “like” things. For example if you should medicate a animal. Medication is not always something that tasts good and the way to get the medication in the animal is not always without temporary pain. But this is for the animals own good and we got the same in ower lives. Doesnt we need medication ? Doesnt we get hurt ?

Of course the slaughter of an animals should be quick and without any pain.I really belive that the moment of death for animals are unexpected and they dont need to suffer.

This is somewhat of my ethics about eating meat and why i think its right to eat meat.

I will give you a quote from here:

If we didn’t raise animals for food, then they would never have had the chance to be born and experience life at all.

Considering how the vast majority of farm animals are currently raised in modern industrialized agriculture, these animals would have been far better off never having been born. The best moment in these animals lives is when they finally die, because only then does their suffering finally end.

However, if the animals are raised and slaughtered humanely, some would say that it is better for the animals to have experienced life for a brief time before slaughter, rather than never have been born at all. My response to this is the following.

Once an individual is born, we have the same obligation to act ethically toward them as we do towards everyone else. This is not changed by the fact that the individual would have never been born in the first place without our intervention. This is the reason that child abuse is immoral. Even though the child would have never existed without his parents, this does not give his parents the right to physically abuse him.

If we hypothetically lived in a cannibalistic society which bred and raised a race of humans for food, then we would be correct in condemning this practice, even though without it, these humans would have never existed in the first place.


I also have seen animals with my own eyes. Have you seen a pig farm and how pigs are treated?

Who should be the judge of an animals is better off not beeing born at all ?
Sure some crappy countries treat the animals like shit. I do not agree with that. I hate people that makes animals suffer. But here where I am the animals is having a good life.
Lifelong suffering bullshit. What is making the animals suffer so much. There is law´s that protects the animals. If the law´s are followed no animal should be in what people mean suffering

Brief time is strange. The oldest a milking cow could get is about 17 years compared to humans 130 years. Sure brief in ower point of view but in the animals point of view ?

We can not compare animals to child abuse. What is in the animals own intrest ? Isnt that to survive long enough to spread your gens for the survial and development of the species and the family ? Is that something that is possible if we dont eat meat ?

To compare animals and humans are sick. I will not comment such crap.

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Yes ive seen how pigs are treated. I think it was very good. What made your experience of that so bad?

Same as with people: you don’t born people just to create as many people as possible. If it depends on you - you judge if they will be happy with you. At least it’s ethical way of doing it.

Actually now majority of countries are treating animals this way.

Such laws are only in very few countries.

Would you propose killing older people?

Why not?

Is your interest to survive long enough and spread your genes and then you to be killed and eaten?

I don’t think it is sick. It’s a good argument, would you condemn raising humans for food (or for example for slavery) ?

Actually it’s not my experience, its pig every day experience. In the villages pigs live in the boxes 1.5-2 meters, sometimes 2 to 3 pigs live in the same place, male pigs are castrated without anaesthetization, I wouldn’t call it good treatment.

Well, animals brain as well as the human brain reward an individual for having sex (thats why sex feels so great) giving birth and having kids. So the body wants us to creat as many kids as posible.
So your anser is that its the parents that decides whats best for them. And that would be equal to ethicright. I dont think thats right, think about this then. Pigs normaly gets 5 to 13 offsprings but sometimes it gets even more, then something happends to the male pig (dont know the right word on english so… whatever). The male pig gets aggressiv and often kills some of the weakest babypigs. This is explained to be an old way of defending his family from predators. Fewer pigs to take energy from the mother and less kids to wait for if a predator would come. This is not morally right so i bounce the question right back. Who should be the judge to say wich life in what place is accepted and not accepted? Vegan who kidnapps animals from farms dont accept that the animals might live in very good conditions on the farm. Still they are let out in the nature to die, painfully.

That´s a shame of course. Countries should have an acceptable law about animals so that they are threated well.

Of course I cannot anserw to every country in the world. I know the conditions in Sweden and a few other countries. I will just say that sweden is very good. Some they the best i dont know about that though.
I know that there are countries that dont treats animals right but that is no argument for promote worldwide vegetarism

No I would not, That has nothing do do with this subject. Please respond to what i wrote.

Because there is great difference between animals and children (human). And the act is not the same.

Of course I condemn slavery. But its not the same at all. Slavery has nothing to do with animals. Why cant we talk about animals instead of slavery cannibalism child abuse. It´s about eat meating we are discussing right not anything else.

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Young pigs might be allowed in such small boxes but not grown pigs. That 3sqm is not alot of space for a human. But pigs are smaller. We must reconsider that. What age was these pigs ? In sweden no male pigs over two or three weeks were allowed to be castrated without anaesthetzation. There is some reason why younger pigs was allowed to be castrated without anaetsthertizion i dont remember it right now. But i think it was something that adrenalin was painkilling enough and real anaetsthertizion would only cause more problems (infection more pain with a needle)
Although it is a fast a much more painless move than most people think.
One castration is done in less than 15 seconds for a experinced person.
You should see one castration and also talk with the people doing it.
What else did you see or expericend at the farm you visited ?
Was the air good ? What the care and educated people ? and so on.

Bybo, there is a BIG difference between me and you for example. I mean we are not the same. If I will hurt you, I will not feel any physical pain. So what stops me from hurting you? I may need your clothes for example, because it’s cold and such… Just think about this when you say that people and animals are too different to deserve the same attitude and respect.

Regarding what’s good for animals.
Who are we to know what’s good for animals? We barely know what’s good for us… sometime we can say what is good for our own children because we made a lot of mistakes in our life and we don’t want them to repeat the same mistakes… and even then we are usually wrong. Because every life is unique… every generation has it’s unique rules.

Bybo, one small question.
You are talking so much about good conditions and such.
Would you personally go to a prison with very good conditions? And why?

You mentioned pigs killing their offsprings…
I don’t think it’s a 100% rule.
It happens in human families as well and it doesn’t mean that we have to send all people to prisons and castrate them after a certain age. :slight_smile:

That’s what I was talking about - self deception. :slight_smile:
What can allow one man enslave the other?
I think these are the same things that allow human enslave other animals.

Anyone know what slave owners were saying to defend their honor? I’m almost sure they were saying things like: Slaves can’t live without us, they will destroy the city. Slaves have no culture. They will kill each other. They are wild. We give them shelter… etc.

My english is at development, so sorry.
Perhaps Im influenced by my religious belief, but here it goes, to show we can have some respect for bible... (some frases are bible excerpts? I dont remember the quote)(I`ll put them later)

Deciding to eat meat or no will have an effect in other life issues. Since man creation, some things have changed. For example: when some person kills another, we get him into prison, altough the solution justice gives is death. We cannot criticize that death (because of justice, or that the person assasinated was , for example, a son to us), but we also cannot abogue for live always (some would think countries dont have the right to apply that justice, that we all are sinners, and all lives belong to God). I write this to show things have changed in some ways that we definitely cant control. The bible says that in Jermiah 10:23.
Bible appears to show that mankind was, at the beggining, vegetarian. This changed after the flood. So nobody can say Cain killed Abel although he was vegetarian (they both were). This only an example, not a law. It shows that it is not what we eat, but what we are: imperfect.
Bible also says there will be a Paradise. If this new Paradise is like the other, we and the animals will be vegetarian again. So we can imagine this paradise having no animals in cages.
If we are, or expect to become, vegans, we have to question ourselves ¿Do I have a bird in a cage? I saw in TV a man that was kidnapped (Colombia) that had before 60 cages whit birds. When he was released, he released them too, because he said freedom was the best thing we could have. ¿do we let criminals escape because freedom is so “valuable”?¿Can you see that this decision affect other issues?
But if we dont put some limits between we and the animals, wouldnt it result in more kills by animals, more diseases, and so on? That is a thing we cannot change, because we are imperfect.
If we are vegans that CRITICIZE people who eat meat ¿do we have at the walls photographs of our sons, showing that we are proud of them because they are in the military? If we are vegans, we dont go to war to kill other people because he attacks my country (an obligation we didnt asked, but we say we have because we were born at that country). Did UEA have the right to kill 200000 japanese in Hiroshima? ¿Did Japanese have the right to kill chinese people in their own land? ¿Do i have the right to kick someone because he eats meat and has some animals?
With all my heart i hate wars, hurting people, and that is why my complete life is oriented towards having no guns and, if i could, i would destroy them all. I cant. So it is a philosophy, noy only a health or animal love matter. And people who eats meet, eat it because animals have a quick death? Thats a good excuse, because God said we must be merciful with animals altough we are diferent to them. But ¿how you define quick?. So, although things have changed, everything points to a Paradise, directed by God, with peace between all beings.
There are a lot of examples that animals can live with humans (elsa the lioness, who made her owner feel she was “in the limits of paradise”), like in paradise.
God gave us vegetation as food. Maybe thats why, if next is true, we are more healthy eating vegetables and fruit. It is a example of making a machine to work with the best possible material. It seems vegetables are more healthy (have not read magazines lately). But God gave us permission, and sometimes the order, to eat meat. If we are vegans in a war, a land devastated by war, and we are hungry, wouldnt we eat some rat, the first thing we see? God knew some really bad things would happen to us (like famine and eartquakes), so he gave permission to eat meat. This profecies are in Matthew 24.
The fact is that God permits a lot of things that are not the best, but we cannot change (example: living in cities is not the best, because we have to use unefficient bathrooms, paper and TVs that destroy rivers, forests and animal life) (PD: God sees cities, the human most influenced environment, with bad eyes. He gave the order to fill the earth in Gènesis 1:28)
So the best is: have no animal in cages, be no in military, don criticize death sentences, dont participate in raging protests, dont criticize each other, dont expect to change peoples mind so easily, and, if you are extreme, dont live in cities. ¿Are you prepared to make all this changes? ¿So, dont do anything? If it will have an inmediate effect in the complete earth without hurting anyone, then do it. ¿Can you?
That`s the solution God gives in the bible. He can make it for the whole earth with animals included. Read Revelation 21:3,4

I am still thinking vegetables are better, like in paradise, and I have thought of becoming vegan… but sometimes I think eagles hunting and eating are so beautiful, that they show Gods creation in all its expression... (at last) [b]I do [/b]eat meat, but [b]I do [/b]hope, not to have to let her, but that God will take the best option, that he will satisfy [b]all[/b] creations desire… If i have to let some things because of god decision, like enjoying meat`s juice, i will let them

Some crappy countries treat their citizens like shit. Do you think a human being who’s treated like shit cares too much about not treating animals like shit?

Actually in those countries domestic animals are treated better then in countries where intensive farming is developed.

Believe me hunting eagles and animal factories are two different sights. In nature animals that really want to live usually escape.
In the farms this is never happening, all the animals born in farms are doomed.