Eating meat and being against animal cruelty is no paradox. At most it is a dilemma - "want to eat meat, don't want to hurt animals".
The fact that many (most) people continue to eat meat means that people resolve the dilemma - they not be aware of the issue, consider it less significant, consider eating meat more important, etc.
The distance from the details of animal husbandry probably helps a lot. If I had to personally kill and clean all my meat, I'd either stop eating it or I'd get a lot more comfortable with the process. Then again, I have relatives who raise farm animals and others who hunt - distance from the process is not required.
I agree with you that distance and disassociation are key. However, I would say the met eater's dilemma is to not want the animals tortured, not "hurt". It is also largely a time/cost tradeoff. You could raise your own chickens most places but most people don't want to take the time or expense.
I think there are other "paradoxes" that people are missing. For example, most people feel that Nestle is a pretty evil company[1] (especially in the developing world). However, some of the same people who hate meat eaters have no problem enjoying the Gerber, Blue Bottle Coffee, Perrier, San Pellegrino, Butterfinger, Nerds, Hot Pockets, Carnation, and Purina products they produce and sell. Who is to say which is the worst moral decision? We all hate that FB and Google are stealing our data and using it against us at the same time we enjoy 20%+ stock market returns in our 401K driven by these same companies. Life is very gray and there are no easy answers.
I'd kind of reject that creating meat hurts animals. Kill, sure - but hurting them is counterproductive. There's a large amount of work done to lower the stress of the animal, both because it's the moral thing to do and because it makes the meat taste better.
The ideal killing involves rendering the animal senseless instantaneously.
I switched to meal replacement shakes for this reason. Right now I am drinking bottle soylent but I enjoyed powdered joylent for a while.
Meat provides such easily prepareable calories, I can't say the same of vegan dishes that I know of, generally a lot more of a thing has to be eaten and multiple things. I enjoy spending 20-30 minutes total consuming food a day and not needing to spend time preparing food, cooking, and cleaning.
Plain and simple, people have the ability to ignore things that are unethical if they consider the benefits sufficiently important. If you are reading this, you are using a device that is the result of thousands of hours of actual chattel slave labor, conflict-producing minerals, assembled by workers in horrific conditions. And yet you use that iphone or thinkpad.
Any person living in the first world is the beneficiary of an immense amount of human suffering and cruelty, period. There is no way to avoid it short of living a hermetic life in the woods. So why don't you do that? Because society is convenient and nice to live in.
People eat meat because it's delicious. People buy factory-farmed meat because it's cheap and they can use the money they save on something else. People use smartphones and PCs because they're entertaining. It really doesn't seem like a deep question to me at all.
As for why people who live on farms, specifically, would be more likely to eat meat... I suppose people probably become desensitized to it, the same as someone who works in Foxconn would become desensitized to what we would perceive as human suffering.
I dunno, it doesn't really seem that complex an issue to me. Pete Singer is right, the ethical answer is to reduce our suffering footprint as much as we possibly can. But hedonism is so damned pleasurable, that people won't. If you can moderately reduce your suffering footprint in a sustainable fashion, like a diet, by something like veganism then go for it, but you also can't reduce it to zero.
It seems you hit a nerve with some users here. I have to say I agree with what you said, it's really simple. If anybody asked "do you wanna contribute to suffering"? If you answer no then basically you should either go ahead and do it or turn a blind eye.
The thing where we have different words for animals and their meats is an artifact of how England got invaded a lot in the middle ages and the invaders brought their languages with them. For example, "veal" is a Norman word, while "lamb" is Germanic.
You can certainly argue that we use them as a euphemism today, but that's not actually how they originated at all.
If I understand correctly, this is the meat paradox: "the psychological conflict between people’s dietary preference for meat and their moral response to animal suffering"
How does living on a farm remove this issue? Does something about living on a farm make you not feel conflict about wanting to eat meat and at the same time not wanting to kill sentient beings?
I've never lived on a farm but I've seen pig and chicken slaughter in real life. Done by hand. I felt the same before as I did after, I feel that if I have the resources to choose to consume no sentient animal body parts, I have a moral obligation to not eat sentient animal body parts. Still, the ease of energy from meat compared to other foods makes me desire it, along with taste. This paradox is something that bugs me often.
This is exactly it. When my grandmother had fried chicken growing up it was a result of "going to the back yard and shooting it (the chicken) between the eyes, plucking its feathers off, and frying it in fatback."
If today's fried chicken arrived on a plate the same way it did for my grandmother, I probably wouldn't have made the decision to eschew meat about 10 years ago.
But all farms are not even close to equal. Generally there are two categories of farms. There are small family-type farms where livestock live quite a good, cared-for life. Then there are enormous factory farms where an animals life is, in short, absolutely awful. The slight-of-hand moral reasoning I see all the time is that someone will use their mental picture of a small family farm to fill in for the reality that almost all of the meat/dairy/eggs they buy and eat came from a factory farm.
I have a hard time rationalising my meat eating, but then following through on that train of thought leads me to full on veganism, which is further than I want to go, so I don't.
Hot take, of course, but I think pro-choice ethical vegans and (very) pro-life meat eaters have a more interesting paradox.
What interesting thing about a honey bee or fish deserves protection that isn't true of a fairly young human fetus? And, likewise, what's true of a young fetus that does not apply to a pig or octopus on the pro-life side?
There are clearly religious answers to some of the paradox on all sides of things, but I'm sure not all of us find them convincing.
EDIT: There is probably a more acute detachment/skin-in-the-game distinction to be made in this case, if we can suspend our politics for a moment, which might be asking a lot these days, perhaps.
If a fish were living inside your body, you'd have the right to expel it, too. That has nothing to do with the treatment fish deserve or don't deserve, and everything to do with human bodily autonomy.
If sex had a chance to cause a honey bee to grow in one's body over 9 months and resulted in many years of a full commitment of one's life, mind, and resources, I don't think people who respect bees would be hypocritical in killing a bee. Conversely, babies have potential that animals do not, and humans have inherent value to us, both practically and psychologically, that animals do not, so I think it's not hypocritical for somebody who kills pigs to refrain from killing a baby.
No offense, seriously, but the analogy seems simplistic to the point where it needs some kind of complete rework to produce an interesting question.
I think the conflict would be greater for an anti-choice ethical vegan. You can't force a cow to produce milk, but you can force a woman to incubate a baby?
In my experience vegans and vegetarians generally don't think any killing of suffering beings is automatically wrong, we think killing them when alternatives exist is wrong...
For me, killing animals for meat isn't a problem. It's the way that they're treated before they're killed that bugs me about factory farms.
I shot a deer about 6 weeks back and butchered it myself, and I don't feel any moral conflicts over it. Over those last 6 weeks, though, I've actually eaten far less meat. I haven't bought meat from the supermarket at all, and I've eaten it at restaurants just a handful of times. Most days I eat vegetables, lentils, eggs, beans, etc., and once or twice a week I put on the chef hat and make a fancy venison dish. In comparison, factory farmed meat just isn't all that interesting or appetizing to me anymore.
On a side note, I recently tried the "Impossible Burger" and was duly impressed with how delicious it was for a plant-based patty. I could tell it wasn't exactly beef, but if you had told me it was from some other bovine relative, I would have believed you.
Let's say you eat 300g of beef a day, every day.
Let's say a full grown cow will give you 300kg of beef.
In order to fuel this habit of pretty intense meat consumption, you have to kill a cow once every three years.
I think for many people, this in itself doesn't strike them as that immoral, especially if the cow lives a pretty chill life.
The harder one is that if you want to do the same with chickens, you've got to pop one once every 3 or 4 days. Given the fact they often live horrible lives, this seems beyond what most people can morally justify.
People have two layers. Behavioural psychology tends to pretend that the deeper layer; the one that comes out when you're depressed and shatters all your illusions; doesn't exist. People know. They just block it out and invent reasons. Rationalisation is a powerful tool. We couldn't survive without it.
I am against animal cruelty, except I don't consider killing animals for meat to be cruelty, it's just an animal fulfilling their life purpose. That's how virtually all wild animals die, by becoming a meal for some predator, so killing them by humans is no different.
Then again, if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal, starving it, beating it up, then of course I would consider that cruelty and demanded punishment for that.
Declaring another living thing to have a life purpose that involves a harm to them and a benefit to you is probably not that defensible, at least not if you want to be objective about it.
You've said "if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal"; since a person can be vegetarian or vegan, isn't it a reasonable argument to say that any pain inflicted on food animals is unnecessary?
When is torture unnecessary? For example, factory farmed chickens have their beaks cut off (and there are nerves in there - they're not like nails or hair). This allows you to keep more in a small space, because even those the stress causes them to start pecking at each other, they can't damage each other too much. And if you can keep more in a small space, they are cheaper, and we can eat more eggs.
Thus, it benefits us in some way, but we would not suffer greatly if we had fewer/somewhat more expensive eggs. Is it then necessary?
We see all kinds of moral decision making paradoxes: when men act against homosexuality and then later come out as always having been gay, when religious leaders abuse people sexually...
I think morality is just fluid for most people, when we want to do something badly we will take on frameworks of atonement or utilitarianism ("I'll do this thing, but it's ok because of this separate thing cancelling it out") and it's often wrapped up in our own greater inner struggles, not some isolated psychological puzzle box that can be studied. Meat-eating is a worldwide culturally-reinforcing personal struggle of having compassion toward suffering of all things that can suffer. I think part of why pro-animal activists get so derided when they criticize people or behaviors, is because we know that they're trying to heal by force when people need to do it themselves.
There is also a possibility that there is no moral paradox. The article uses the idea that factory farms are animal torture as an axiom, it never argues for that case. Animals are killed quickly and painlessly for meat. I've seen animals killed for food, and have done it. Animal torture is abusing and giving animals pain purposefully, and often does not involve eating them. It is clearly different.
> Animals are killed quickly and painlessly for meat.
I've watched enough undercover video of factory farms to know that is at least not true 100% of the time. Killing is also not the only possible moment for suffering, for example with gestation crates, battery cages, merely moving livestock around with electric prods and pokers, etc... Treating animals humanely costs money, and in a capitalist system there is always pressure to reduce costs.
A recent documentary came out called Dominion which is about the most comprehensive criticism of factory farm conditions I have seen. It's almost entirely composed of undercover video. You can actually watch the whole thing online:
I sort of hate linking that, because it feels like diet-shilling, but the reason I do so is really pretty basic: I think there is a misconception and that there is video evidence that I think would correct that misconception. I could write everything out, but I think actually seeing the video is more effective. You don't have to commit to watching all of it, just watch a random 10-15 minutes.
But I'd say most of us don't want any living thing, including our dogs and cats, to be poorly treated. And humans fall under that umbrella as well. I wouldn't even treat your personal property poorly, and I don't need to attribute human qualities to your blender to do that.
...just like we anthropomorphise other humans. Sure, I believe animals are e.g. not capable of being terrorised by death threats, but I have just as much reason of believing many of them of being able to suffer pain just like humans can. Do you have reasons not to believe that?
kbutler|7 years ago
The fact that many (most) people continue to eat meat means that people resolve the dilemma - they not be aware of the issue, consider it less significant, consider eating meat more important, etc.
The distance from the details of animal husbandry probably helps a lot. If I had to personally kill and clean all my meat, I'd either stop eating it or I'd get a lot more comfortable with the process. Then again, I have relatives who raise farm animals and others who hunt - distance from the process is not required.
snarf21|7 years ago
I think there are other "paradoxes" that people are missing. For example, most people feel that Nestle is a pretty evil company[1] (especially in the developing world). However, some of the same people who hate meat eaters have no problem enjoying the Gerber, Blue Bottle Coffee, Perrier, San Pellegrino, Butterfinger, Nerds, Hot Pockets, Carnation, and Purina products they produce and sell. Who is to say which is the worst moral decision? We all hate that FB and Google are stealing our data and using it against us at the same time we enjoy 20%+ stock market returns in our 401K driven by these same companies. Life is very gray and there are no easy answers.
[1] https://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-...
trothamel|7 years ago
The ideal killing involves rendering the animal senseless instantaneously.
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono for a demonstration of a well-run plant.
ozzyman700|7 years ago
Meat provides such easily prepareable calories, I can't say the same of vegan dishes that I know of, generally a lot more of a thing has to be eaten and multiple things. I enjoy spending 20-30 minutes total consuming food a day and not needing to spend time preparing food, cooking, and cleaning.
paulmd|7 years ago
Any person living in the first world is the beneficiary of an immense amount of human suffering and cruelty, period. There is no way to avoid it short of living a hermetic life in the woods. So why don't you do that? Because society is convenient and nice to live in.
People eat meat because it's delicious. People buy factory-farmed meat because it's cheap and they can use the money they save on something else. People use smartphones and PCs because they're entertaining. It really doesn't seem like a deep question to me at all.
As for why people who live on farms, specifically, would be more likely to eat meat... I suppose people probably become desensitized to it, the same as someone who works in Foxconn would become desensitized to what we would perceive as human suffering.
I dunno, it doesn't really seem that complex an issue to me. Pete Singer is right, the ethical answer is to reduce our suffering footprint as much as we possibly can. But hedonism is so damned pleasurable, that people won't. If you can moderately reduce your suffering footprint in a sustainable fashion, like a diet, by something like veganism then go for it, but you also can't reduce it to zero.
mping|7 years ago
paulmd|7 years ago
You can certainly argue that we use them as a euphemism today, but that's not actually how they originated at all.
benj111|7 years ago
bad_user|7 years ago
People that lived on a farm, even for small periods of time when they were little, have no such issues.
ozzyman700|7 years ago
How does living on a farm remove this issue? Does something about living on a farm make you not feel conflict about wanting to eat meat and at the same time not wanting to kill sentient beings?
I've never lived on a farm but I've seen pig and chicken slaughter in real life. Done by hand. I felt the same before as I did after, I feel that if I have the resources to choose to consume no sentient animal body parts, I have a moral obligation to not eat sentient animal body parts. Still, the ease of energy from meat compared to other foods makes me desire it, along with taste. This paradox is something that bugs me often.
strict9|7 years ago
If today's fried chicken arrived on a plate the same way it did for my grandmother, I probably wouldn't have made the decision to eschew meat about 10 years ago.
solidsnack9000|7 years ago
The article at no point considers the possibility that moral conflict is an unavoidable part of life, even if there are things we can do to reduce it.
nick_|7 years ago
benj111|7 years ago
I have a hard time rationalising my meat eating, but then following through on that train of thought leads me to full on veganism, which is further than I want to go, so I don't.
And I grew up in the country.
humanrebar|7 years ago
What interesting thing about a honey bee or fish deserves protection that isn't true of a fairly young human fetus? And, likewise, what's true of a young fetus that does not apply to a pig or octopus on the pro-life side?
There are clearly religious answers to some of the paradox on all sides of things, but I'm sure not all of us find them convincing.
EDIT: There is probably a more acute detachment/skin-in-the-game distinction to be made in this case, if we can suspend our politics for a moment, which might be asking a lot these days, perhaps.
drcube|7 years ago
happytoexplain|7 years ago
No offense, seriously, but the analogy seems simplistic to the point where it needs some kind of complete rework to produce an interesting question.
daveFNbuck|7 years ago
FlowNote|7 years ago
All plants derive from dirt, an animal product of worms.
Does this means vegans ought to starve?
_bfhp|7 years ago
PeanutNore|7 years ago
I shot a deer about 6 weeks back and butchered it myself, and I don't feel any moral conflicts over it. Over those last 6 weeks, though, I've actually eaten far less meat. I haven't bought meat from the supermarket at all, and I've eaten it at restaurants just a handful of times. Most days I eat vegetables, lentils, eggs, beans, etc., and once or twice a week I put on the chef hat and make a fancy venison dish. In comparison, factory farmed meat just isn't all that interesting or appetizing to me anymore.
umvi|7 years ago
bootlooped|7 years ago
Tomminn|7 years ago
Let's say you eat 300g of beef a day, every day. Let's say a full grown cow will give you 300kg of beef. In order to fuel this habit of pretty intense meat consumption, you have to kill a cow once every three years.
I think for many people, this in itself doesn't strike them as that immoral, especially if the cow lives a pretty chill life.
The harder one is that if you want to do the same with chickens, you've got to pop one once every 3 or 4 days. Given the fact they often live horrible lives, this seems beyond what most people can morally justify.
ThJ|7 years ago
mamon|7 years ago
Then again, if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal, starving it, beating it up, then of course I would consider that cruelty and demanded punishment for that.
bootlooped|7 years ago
You've said "if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal"; since a person can be vegetarian or vegan, isn't it a reasonable argument to say that any pain inflicted on food animals is unnecessary?
Vinnl|7 years ago
Thus, it benefits us in some way, but we would not suffer greatly if we had fewer/somewhat more expensive eggs. Is it then necessary?
_bfhp|7 years ago
I think morality is just fluid for most people, when we want to do something badly we will take on frameworks of atonement or utilitarianism ("I'll do this thing, but it's ok because of this separate thing cancelling it out") and it's often wrapped up in our own greater inner struggles, not some isolated psychological puzzle box that can be studied. Meat-eating is a worldwide culturally-reinforcing personal struggle of having compassion toward suffering of all things that can suffer. I think part of why pro-animal activists get so derided when they criticize people or behaviors, is because we know that they're trying to heal by force when people need to do it themselves.
krapp|7 years ago
Those aren't moral paradoxes, those are just people being hypocrites.
The paradox, as such, is trying to reconcile the genocidal God of the Old Testament with the New Testament, and both with modern morality.
ecshafer|7 years ago
bootlooped|7 years ago
I've watched enough undercover video of factory farms to know that is at least not true 100% of the time. Killing is also not the only possible moment for suffering, for example with gestation crates, battery cages, merely moving livestock around with electric prods and pokers, etc... Treating animals humanely costs money, and in a capitalist system there is always pressure to reduce costs.
A recent documentary came out called Dominion which is about the most comprehensive criticism of factory farm conditions I have seen. It's almost entirely composed of undercover video. You can actually watch the whole thing online:
https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
I sort of hate linking that, because it feels like diet-shilling, but the reason I do so is really pretty basic: I think there is a misconception and that there is video evidence that I think would correct that misconception. I could write everything out, but I think actually seeing the video is more effective. You don't have to commit to watching all of it, just watch a random 10-15 minutes.
osacrum|7 years ago
[deleted]
diminoten|7 years ago
hombre_fatal|7 years ago
But I'd say most of us don't want any living thing, including our dogs and cats, to be poorly treated. And humans fall under that umbrella as well. I wouldn't even treat your personal property poorly, and I don't need to attribute human qualities to your blender to do that.
Vinnl|7 years ago