Ugh.

I've still been away for a while, but this topic irks me so much for some reason that I have to jump into the fold again.

I eat meat. I enjoy meat a lot. I've been a hunter for a decade now as well, but very rarely get out. Guns and ammo are expensive, yo. nowaypablo mentioned getting a wild pig. I can tell you nothing is more exhilarating and terrifying than boar hunting. And really, Pablo, we should do that some time.

So that's one level of things to tackle. People want to make that mention of 'more ethical meat'. So let's lay out the levels of arguments on meat.

-The one I already mentioned, those that don't oppose meat eating when you're hunting for it, or at a stricter level, those are hunt meat to survive. These are the vegetarians that are able to take a step back from their First World privilege where they have the ability to not eat meat and recognize that other places in the world have no choice. Okay. Cool.

-The types of people that have no problems with meat being eaten by others, but don't personally want to. I don't see an issue with this. These are people that are usually conflicted in some way about taking a life or find animals adorable or have the ability to not eat meat without much issue. They recognize that they have their choices, and other people have theirs, and stepping into others' lives claiming 'ethics' is a breach of boundaries and common decency, despite whether they believe animals have freedom of choice or consciousness.

-The vegetarian, usually vegan as well, that opposes the entire entire of meat or animal products, that they are morally superior for not using these products in any way at all, and it is their god-given duty (and I mean God-given, as this more closely resembles Christian religious evangelism than anything else) to tell every last person on Earth about it. These are the people who don't take a step back from their position of privilege to understand there are other circumstances, and who will spout that even 'free range animals would prefer to be free than eaten :)' when, no, in reality, they'll still be eaten, just not by humans, and I don't think you understand that wolves don't have consideration for ethical killing, nor do they really care about the quality of life of creatures living in the wild vs. living in a range managed by humans. I think this is the most fantasy world that's most disconnecting humans and animals, despite their claims of "one in the same!" because they have some idea of an equation where "animals - humans = peaceful harmony where everything lives forever and is cute and happier."

-Lastly, the people who don't oppose meat, but oppose factory farms. I feel like factory farms are what lead most people to be vegetarians in the first place. I subscribe to this pretty well, for a lot of reasons. Nothing should have to have a miserable life, whether it has consciousness or not. A chicken doesn't care if its life purpose is to be eaten, but it does care if it never moves. Animals should have a high standard of living that meets or exceeds what it would in the wild (i.e. space, regular feeding, medication, safety). Beyond this, at a capitalist level, removing corporations and strong-arming small and family farms is absolutely fucking vital to every country. Allowing corporations to wholesale owning agriculture and food is one of the most dangerous things possible in the long term, and it isn't addressed enough.

Of course I have conflicted feelings on eating meat. There's always the chance of it turning out that every animal on Earth is exactly as conscious and aware of everything as humans are. But I don't see where that leads to making eating meat morally wrong. Everything dies at some point. Everything. Death is the absolute most important part of the life cycle. Why it shouldn't serve a purpose of sustenance of other creatures and enjoyment of others is beyond me. To discuss moral questions, one of the things that rustles my feathers most is Western human funeral procedures. We die, fill our bodies with toxic chemicals, seal them in boxes, and bury them, where they cannot become a part of the life cycle, and don't feed other creatures. How is that not wrong? We should provide animals freedom to die, or be eaten by other animals, but when you factor humans into the creatures that eat them, it becomes different because we're aware of what we're doing, or planning it agriculturally somehow it inverts it? And at the same time, we don't believe in the Earth completing its cycles naturally in our deaths, and well, fucking billions of other ways as well.

But sure. I can't actually come up with a reason why one should eat meat, in a wealthy, first world country with other options. Because there are other options, and you are taking a life from eating meat. If you find that makes you uncomfortable, that's your own right. There's nothing wrong with not eating meat. I simply don't find anything particularly wrong with eating it either. That's my stance, at least. I enjoy it. I don't find qualms with myself enjoying it. It's going to get eaten completely regardless, by other animals or 'eaten' by the soil when it dies. 'Life' is such weird, vague, ethereal concept to the human mind as it is, limiting it to the discussion of whether we should eat something is bewildering.

Personal anecdote on hunting: I have always found that hunting-- and most other hunters seem to think this way too, across the whole gamut of people who hunt-- is an activity that is completely a commune with nature and evokes an enormous respect for the world around you. I can't express what it's like to be tracking a deer for three days in the woods. You have every kind of life around you, and the majority of your time is spent is silence, and hopefully reverence. You try to understand the patterns of everything around you and the animal you're hunting. The kill isn't really the focal point at all, it's usually just a rote part of the cycle. You kill the animal to clean the animal, the use the parts of the animal for a world of necessary things, and you have the meat and energy provided by the animal to sustain yourself and others. It's a wonderful thing. And that hippy-dippy "one with nature" bullshit isn't possible without something like that. You can't separate yourself from animals and believe that you're respecting it when you simply close your eyes and cover your ears as to how the systems of nature work. It's belittling to believe you love the animals and respect them just because you don't eat them.

This reads more spiritual than I meant for it to be. Perhaps that's good, because most of the arguments against meat seem to read spiritually as well.

You've provided such a loaded question. The lines are not so clear, and that's where I will start.

The question assumes that eating food with a face somehow must be different from eating food without it. The assumption is that the animal kingdom is superior to the others, that raising animals only to eat them should invoke a moral horror that should not apply to things without a nervous system. The reasoning seems to be: if it can feel pain, you should feel pseudo-pain that you would eat it.

This comes off as disingenuous as soon as you view the contrapositive. "Oooh, look at me being morally superior because I'm eating non-sentient objects! They never felt pain, so it's perfectly fine for me to grow them only to eat them. I didn't even look them in the eyes when I yanked these potatoes from the ground. You'll have to excuse me, as I need to make a virgin pressing of some olives and take out my anger on them."

All agriculture is both necessary and a heavy investment of resources. It's true that raising livestock takes far more resources: you have to grow what they'll eat. However the animals provide far more resources to assist in raising the crops: they poop.

Oh man, do they poop. Methane is a problem for the atmosphere. In fact many of the older reasons to raise animals came from using them to work the fields. Now we use diesel. The fertilizer in manure has been replaced with chemical fertilizers -- and the addiction to agribusiness.

The more I talk about this, the less I'm coming to any conclusions. I cannot untie the assumptions in the original post without getting angry. I want to keep this separate from my own eating habits, but I just keep thinking "f*(k you for judging me, and everyone else that claims to be vegetarian but really just eats Oreos".

I'll restart from here: I've met too many vegetarians that wouldn't eat my vegetarian cooking. "Eww, eggplant?" "You eat mushrooms?" Yeah, I can make so many delicious things from these items.

The vege-slope (vegetarian but eats fish, vegetarian, vegan, breatharian) is just as annoying as the bacon-slope. My own mother thought I was insane for not liking bacon. I didn't even like it until I had it in Australia, where it's served with the rasher (the strip) still attached to the peen (aka Canadian bacon). It was thick, not crispy. It worked REALLY WELL with bitter greens. It was killer brekkie.

I like to cook. I grew up with the big Sunday meal at my Sicilian grandmother's -- the ravioli, the three-hour tomato sauce, the works. I learned how to make her sauce and from there I learned how to make the food chemistry swing.

The guilting of meat is a very Protestant, Puritan approach. It implies all food is a punishment. I like spices in my food. Scratch that -- many root vegetables require long cooking times to be digestible, so the solution is to spice them. This is the centerpiece of Indian cuisine.

Lentils... I heart lentils. My wife set up the crock pot with lentils and celery for dinner. Happy...

I have cut down my meat consumption over the years. I only allow myself red meat once a week, and I often skip a week. I try to eat only one meat meal per day because I don't need more.

However it gets back to the vege-eww problem I mentioned earlier. So many Americans eat like children: the same few bland foods every day. You have to sneak food on them. This is why the Slow Food Movement and even the pompous angles of the Foodie culture are important: we can't fix the bad diet problems if we do not make nutritious food more readily available and appealing.

If it weren't for Trader Joe's, it'd be a lot harder to eat properly. Frozen food that is worthy of your body, $4 lunch.

Enough guilt and negative reinforcement about meat, I say. Create a positive movement -- that diverse food high in fiber is cheaper, easier to spice, and feels good.

Caught a wild pig in Armenia once by chasing into a trap with my friends, Apocalypto style. Skinned, gutted, cooked and ate it that night. It was one of the greatest and most proud times of my life. I love my meat!

I've been making an effort to eat less meat lately. It all started when I met many vegetarians during my couchsurfing experience this summer in Europe. Their arguments about killing animals being unethical and all that didn't really convinced me but what convinced me was the fact that they cooked some delicious meals without meat. It made me realize that by focusing so much on meat, I'm actually missing out on some great food. I just figured I didn't like beans when I was a kid and never bothered to try again. Little did I know that the problem was that my mom's cooking involves practically no spices.

I'm also concerned about the ecological aspect of it all. The amount of meat I ate was certainly not too good for the planet and cutting my meat consumption will make me feel better personally. Cause they say every little thing counts... and I'm naive enough to believe it.

Also, meat is pretty expensive...

So i've got plenty of reasons to become vegetarian (not really planning to but cutting down on meat is the goal) but none of those reasons involve cute cows.

organicAnt can you tell me the story of when and how you became conscious of your eating habits, how you came to question them and what it was that brought you to vegetarianism (veganism?)

I'm vegetarian, my girlfriend is vegetarian, I have a friend who thinks it's gross to make out with a meat-eater because then they're liable to get little chunks of meat in their mouth.

I still think that if you judge others' morality for eating it, you're pretty much guaranteed to come across as a pretentious prick. Most vegetarians / vegans don't keep that way for life and let's be real, even if you only ever ate farmed plants, you'd still be benefiting from the mistreated farm labors who work in scorching conditions for just enough to get by.

For nearly a year now I've eaten hardly any meat. I've had it probably less than 10 times over the past year, and only whenever I feel like it's worth it.

There are a variety of reasons why I cut back significantly, some which have already been stated, but I'll say 'em again.

It's environmentally friendly: About 51% of all greenhouse gases come from meat. From the gas required to farm all of the food for animals to eat, to the methane created by said animals (methane traps 20 times more radiation than CO2), to the transportation of said animals and their meat. So much of this waste would be eliminated if we just ate what the animals ate i.e. plants.

I believe animals are sentient. Have you ever sincerely looked at a non-human animal and attempted to speak with it telepatchically? It's kinda eerie actually. I went to a cattle round-up the other day and saw bulls have their testicles removed. The bellows from them were proof enough for me of being able to feel pain and emotion.

Not that all meat is bad, but do you really want to eat chickens raised in this environment:

They're not sitting because their tired. They're pumped with so many growth hormones their legs can't support their weight. And since bio-magnification is a thing, that stuff seeps into you when you eat them. My youngest sister had to switch to organic milk because she began to develop when she was 4. Switching made all the difference.

But the realization that not all meat is raise in such conditions is where I"ll make exceptions. For example, my roommate last year brought home some venison his brother killed with a bow and arrow. The deer led a full life and wasn't grown for the sole purpose of being killed. It ate a natural diet. So I ate some. Another exception I'll make is if it's damn good. There's a BBQ place in Kansas City I eat at every time I go home. I feel terrible after I eat it because I've not had meat in so long that I'm no longer numb to how bad meat makes the body feel. But I do come from the school of thought of everything in moderation is a good thing. So once a year I might have some BBQ from Kansas City Joe's (formerly Oklahoma Joe's).

I don't think humans were made to be vegetarian, nor do I believe we're meant to eat as much meat as the typical American does. But with the state of affairs concerning current meat production, I'm more than content to eat my veggies. Never felt better.

So I'd like to bring up another point here, and that is one of sustenance living. Being in Alaska, above the arctic circle at that, there was very little choice except to eat meat. This includes caribou, walrus , seal, and occasionally whale. In fact Akutaq (colloquially known as "Eskimo Ice Cream") has fats in it also.

Although I try not to judge people, I have come to think of (some but certainly not all!) vegetarian idealists people I know as misunderstanding the difference between being ignorant (I don't understand WHY you are a vegetarian), and not thinking the same way as someone else (I don't understand WHY you want to be ignorant!).

I know why people are vegetarian, and I would go so far as to say that I understand it. But I have a very different threshold for what I will and will not eat.

Being able to eat in a vegetarian/vegan/and freegan lifestyle you have to live in a bit of a privileged environment in order to do that. Yes vegtables and fruit and other goods are cheap where you live, but in other places they may only come twice a year, and then you empty your wallet just for that sweet sweet taste of cucumber which has been in the back of an airplane for 4 days (best $6 I ever spend btw).

I feel zero guilt about eating meat. I feel zero pride about eating meat, I would feel pride if I killed it myself though. The natural order is irreverent. As is the question of if eating meat is natural.

I subscribe to a incredibly subjective view of morality. It isn't defined outside of society/indaviduals. Secondly, each person or group you ask will have different moral systems based on their situation.

I personally see "classic morality" or "the thing that society would want me to do" as the thing/action that I can take which benefits those around me the most are the most moral actions.

How does eating meat harm society? Aside environment, I see nowhere that it does. And if I were concerned about the environment, there are many steps I'd take far sooner than stopping eating meat.

So, if it doesn't harm anyone, why should I feel guilt about eating it?

I don't give two fucks about inherent value of life. Life, inherently, is nothing more than collections of cells. The only thing that gives life value is the fact that we are life, as life, we like seeing life live. But, more importantly, we are humans, and are in direct competition (even if we have won a thousand times over) with every other life form on the planet.

I want to see life spread to other planets, but not because life is valuable, but because I value life. I kill animals not because I see them as without value, but because the only time they are valuable to me is in the form of meat (or as a pet).

Why I eat wild meat

I feel guilty. I'm not completely vegetarian, but I don't eat much meat, and when I do, I feel bad.

I grew up on a farm. And for a long time, I believed what I called the "circle of life." Animals were made to be eaten, we eat them, it's all a big happy circle.

Some years ago, my beliefs changed to what I call "all life is precious." I think animals have value. Not as much as humans, but some value, and I'm morally obligated not to harm or kill them if I can help it. Which I can, in my socioeconomic environment.

I don't really have a good logical defense for it. It's more of a feeling. But meh.

I think the masses are largely ethical egoists. I think we'll get to the point where we can grow equally good meat in a lab, cheaper. And within thirty years, the majority people in the first-world will believe eating meat is unethical, once it's convenient for them. I don't think it will be a bad thing; though it will worsen the diversity problem.

This sounds like a #grubski tag.

Over the summer i spent some time at my bandmate's farm in Wisconsin. He started raising chickens there and we slaughtered one together, de-feathered it, put it on the grill for a while and then went to town. Rather than feeling guilty about killing it, i felt great that i got to see it alive in an environment where someone who really cares was tending to it and making sure its life was a happy one. Sure, we could have not killed it...We could have released it into the wild but i think its chances of survival would be about the same out there as it would be in my bandmate's coop (which would be zero percent).

eating meat is awesome. I eat so much meat that i'm beginning to think maybe it'd be smart to cut back. But if i do, it's because my health is suffering, not for any moral reason. I don't understand why some people are so blindly critical of it. One girl went as far as calling my bandmate a "modern day slave owner" for raising chickens!

Edit: I fixed some formatting because this was linked from somewhere else. Also I'd like to apologize for my cringey tone in this.

I've been vegan my entire life, by vegan I mean no dairy or meat. sometimes I've accidentally had dairy but I've never once had meat.

I have many reasons, which I encourage anyone who feels they should to press on. I won't get offended and you might change my view :)

One reason is resources, the [feed conversion ratio](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio) for most meats we eat is fairly poor, and we'd have a lot more to eat at possibly lower price if that weren't used to feed animals lower on the food chain.

Morally, I don't think there's anything wrong with killing sentient animals(including humans) so long as it doesn't cause suffering before or after death, by after I mean to other life which may be affected.

But that's not the way things are done, Morals very rarely win over profits especially in a competing market and as such a lot of live stock are forced to live in really shitty conditions.

I wasted all my creativeness trying to get Open GL to work, so I won't add much more but please don't hesitate to try and change my view! :)

Also when I was skipping through some of the many responses to this, it seemed like some of you feel judged and I'd like to say I completely respect people who disagree with my opinion, and that I don't consider meat eaters murderers, just someone with a different opinion.

It seems to me that the core argument here isn't about EATING animals. It's about RAISING and KILLING animals for consumption.

Am I correct?

It seems we've started on the wrong footing. There's so much personal attack and barely any meat eating discussion. I accept that my views aren't popular and I understand the consequences of that. People feel I'm attacking their way of living and they feel the need to attack me, the messenger, back. I will not reply to ad hominem attacks, they're a waste of time. I'm not interested in insulting anyone, it's not productive. If you feel insulted please re-read what I wrote and ask yourself if I was really insulting you or if the point I made stirred some anger inside of you. Am I being really self-righteous or are you out of arguments and a personal attack is all your hurt ego can muster? On a side note, bear in mind that English isn't my first language and I think I lack the tactile way of communicating in writing, hence the aid of smiley faces.

Our experiences and environment make who we are and we should all meet each other where we're at with respect and an open-mind. My views may be wrong, but even if so I feel it's healthy to challenge social conventions on a regular basis, to ensure that we do the things we do because we truly believe in them and not because of peer pressure. We'd be appalled at some of the things that were socially acceptable even just a century ago so it'd be naive to think that there's no improvement to be made to our current main-stream ethical values.

For those that argue that plants might suffer just as much as animals. If you feel empathy for plants as much as you care about animals, then that's one further reason to eat just plants since the amount of plants that it takes to feed an animal is an order of magnitude higher than if you eat the plants directly. If you don't feel empathy towards any of them, then ask yourself why and then try for a moment to put yourself in the skin of the animal you eat.

I'm asking very simple questions. Do we need to eat meat? If so why? Is there any scientific reason to eat meat or are the reasons purely based on tradition, what our parents fed us because their parents fed them because of their parents fed them and so on. Is it perhaps due to self-indulgence?

Let's take a moment of reflection, to put ourselves on the hooves of those we have chosen to prey upon. How does it feel to feel pain? If we were a non-human animal would we prefer life or death? If we'd prefer life why do we have the double standard for those who's flesh we eat? Has anyone heard of specieism? Why do we treat certain animals with love and affection while it's accepted that others exist for exploitation?

To end my point here's a 10min speech by someone way more eloquent than me. It's an excerpt of the debate Animals Should be Off the Menu.

organicAnt can't reply to your comment - make a fucking argument

I mean, I'm not proud of the fact that I eat meat, as it's like drinking water or breathing air to me.

I'm proud of some of the meat I've EATEN, though.

Three of those fuckers in 45 minutes. Come at me, ya'll.

I should go do my presentation now.

I don't really ever feel guilty. However, sometimes when I'm eating a chicken leg with my hands, tearing the flesh with my teeth and getting all greasy and messy, I can understand why others may have an aversion to it.

I choose to eat meat sparingly. I get most of my protein from other places. I have no guilt eating it. I have no pride eating it. I eat some meat because it tastes good (I'm looking at you bacon). I believe everyone who would like to eat meat should, at one time in their life, need to kill and butcher something that they eat. That makes a powerful connection to what you eat.

I think eating conscious creatures is wrong, but I still do it because it's the only easy way to get the macronutrient balance I want. Right now I've cut down to mainly chicken and fish, but I would like to be a vegetarian in the future.