The New York Times is holding a silly contest for meat-eaters to have their say. Here is my entry.
Was this really a burning problem that needed solving, the lack of justifications to eat meat? What do you suppose has caused America's love affair with meat in the first place? A rapacious and deceptive industry that has brainwashed people into thinking that life cannot be lived without meat.
It saddens me that given all the pressing problems of our day, many of which caused by excessive meat eating (global warming, contaminated air and water, chronic disease, worker injury, and yes, animal suffering, just to name a few) the Times is promoting such a self-indulgent contest.
I am sure the meat industry is jumping for joy.
Moreover, we don't need even more ways to polarize people over personal dietary choices. Let's stop the infighting and focus on the core of the problem: corporate control of the food supply. How about a contest on how to fix that?
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If you believe meat is truly causal in all of those situations (and I'm not saying it's not) WHY on earth wouldn't you want the carnivorous to answer up?? I've more fully de-bunked the scientific problems with your claims here at my blog - Mythic Meats:
http://mythicmeats.blogspot.de/2012/03/welcome-to-meat-tribes.html
"Again, you have to realize that the ONLY reason non-vegetarians raise the issue of animals killed in crop production is because those on the "veg" side of the debate continually insist that their diet is automatically less cruel than any conceivable diet that includes meat, when, in the words of Ira Gershwin, "it ain't necessarily so". It's the attitude of moral superiority, and the assumption that anyone who eats meat just doesn't care about animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and human health, that's so patronizing. Many of us care a great deal. Saying that there is no "moral
justification" for someone's diet, as plantbasedpunk did, without knowing the details of what the person eats, is just uncalled for. If he hadn't included that little pearl of smugness, along with that silliness about animals having a "right to life", when clearly practically ALL diets involve killing animals, I wouldn't even have replied to him. I don't point out the issue of animals killed in crop production to make veg*ns feel bad about what they eat, but to help them realize that they don't occupy the moral high ground they think they do. No, the majority of folks out there don't really
seem to care much about where their meat comes from, but they don't seem to care much about where their fruits, grains, and vegetables come from either, so singling out humane meat as a
"niche market" is an oddly arbitrary emphasis."
That seems like a fairly unanswerable question, if you're going to disallow all the possible considerations a person could mention. It's like saying, "I don't want to hear about whether your tomato was picked by a well-paid farm worker working in good conditions or by an illegal immigrant living in conditions that virtually amount to slavery - I just want you to tell me why it's ethical to eat tomatoes". Or, "I'm not interested in whether your clothes were made here in the USA or by some 12-year-old child in a third world sweatshop - just tell us why it's ethical to wear clothes".
It reduces the entire issue to the question of whether it is ethical to kill an animal in order to eat it, and since the vast majority of the world's population (especially in poorer countries - talk about your first-world issues!) agree that it is ethical, it seems very strange to assume that the idea needs defending. The question would have made sense if they had asked about humane vs. inhumane rearing and slaughter, for example, but as it stands it's asking for little more than personal opinion about an issue over which there is very little real-world disagreement.
nothing but net
Our Hen House is doing a counter-contest (?) about why it's unethical to eat meat. http://www.ourhenhouse.org/2012/03/calling-all-herbivores-tell-us-why-its-unethical-to-eat-meat-a-contest/
There are valid reasons to refrain from supporting certain kinds of meat production. But the idea that eating meat is PER SE unethical rests on a "rights" argument the actual implementation of which would necessitate living completely off the grid and foraging for your own food.
I would say that in order to be ethically consistent, those who say that animals have a "right to life" MUST compare the abattoir to the field and the butcher to the tiller. There are ways to kill livestock that I would argue are far more humane than what happens to field animals when they have a run-in with a plow or combine.
Now, I don't think that it's unethical to eat grains and vegetables, any more than I think it's unethical to eat meat - but that's because I don't believe that animals have a "right to life". I do believe that we have an obligation to treat them humanely, though. We'll just have to agree to disagree over the issue of humane slaughter.
No, the majority of folks out there don't really seem to care much about where their meat comes from, but they don't seem to care much about where their fruits, grains, and vegetables come from either, so singling out humane meat as a "niche market" is an oddly arbitrary emphasis.