[drcube]

Farm living shows it isn't a paradox.

1) Animals on family farms are actually treated pretty well. "Torture" is absolutely not the word for it, though it probably does apply to varieties of factory farming, in effect if not intent.

2) More animals die, in absolute numbers, from plowing fields and harvesting crops than are slaughtered for their meat, mostly because we choose large animals for their meat while small animals like to live in grain fields. The only way to conclude that vegetarianism is more ethical is to discount the lives of smaller, wild animals in comparison to their larger, meat-producing cousins, or else define having habitats and homes destroyed, starving to death, or being snagged on a thresher as more humane treatment than being stunned and having their throat slit after being fed and cared for until adulthood.

In general, living closer to nature shows that death and suffering is unavoidable. Certainly we should strive to minimize suffering, but interruption of a huge source of food for most of the human population is a bad way to go about it.

[mping]

There is an ethical angle you missed: no animal wants to die, with or without torture. I am vegetarian mostly because I chose not to contribute to the death of any animal, if I have alternatives. Yes, death is unavoidable but it doesn't mean it should be encouraged.

And your point 2 is discounting the animals that died to produce the food that cows and such eat. Besides, personally not all animals are equal to me. When I drive I squash insects, and if I would hit a dog I would feel worse.

[bad_user]

> "no animal wants to die"

This is a man made concept. Morality in general is man made.

In nature there is a very clear symbiosis between predator and pray. A herbivore population can get out of control if not hunted by predators, and then destroy the environment. Of course, humans are not in any symbiosis, we just consume and produce waste in the process.

So if you want to talk about how we destroy the environment via CAFO operations, then that's a valid worry, but the morality of killing animals for food (something we've been doing since the dawn of men) is just religion.

[ozzyman700]

This is the best reasoning I have seen as to why it is not morally wrong to eat meat. Point 2 specifically. I had not stopped to consider the impact of preparing farming land.

Thank you for your time to write that out.

I still personally feel that in my position in life, it would be unethical for me to consume meat. Seemingly the amount of animals killed by a plant farm would decrease as time goes on yet a slaughterhouse would continue at least linearly in its pace of killing animals. I do admit that in some way I believe that it is " more ethical is to discount the lives of smaller, wild animals in comparison to their larger, meat-producing cousins" and I know that this is an undefendable position.

[hamax]

Most crops are used to feed the animals that are later slaughtered. A tiny amount is directly consumed by humans. So you're not actually reducing the number of animals killed by eating them.