The Ethics of Eating Meat

As a member of modern day society, I feel that it is my moral obligation to eat meat. Meat isn’t just one of many sources that provides vitamins and nutrients. It isn’t just the remnants of an animal carcass. It is not just a by product of animal cruelty. Meat is a representation of a large network of industries that provides economic security to families and ensures health of both animals and humans.

Before I start trudging through my argument, let’s look at a world where no human is a carnivore. Without meat eating, the world would be devoid of a slew of restaurants, processing plants, packaging plants, and other job sources for the nation’s men and women. Deer would run rampant, because there would be no justifiable reason for hunting. Areas with deer overpopulation have a raised amount of car accidents, higher rates of dangerous illnesses like lyme disease, and have a population of dear that are weak and malnourished due to a high demand of nutritious food for them. There would be a large amount of deforestation (which is the removal of trees from land) to create fertile soil for crops. This would in turn run animals out of their present homes, take away their shelter, and reduce their natural mechanisms of survival. These animals will either adapt to their new environments or die. The cute farm animals whose lives we wish to save, will too most likely die, for they are protected by farmers and bred for the purposes of providing meat, eggs, milk, etc. Without this protection, they stand low on the totem pole of animals in the wild. Maybe you think this sounds wonderful, but I personally find this probable outcome of a world devoid of meat to be awful. If you are a vegetarian or vegan and don’t think this sounds like a beautiful place, maybe you should reconsider your stance on the ethics of eating meat and starting grilling a steak before you continue reading.

Now, I want to point out a common flaw in the quibble that most individuals have with meat eaters: People eat meat at the expense of killing an entity that is already living. Fruit, vegetables, and other plants are all living things as well. We take the lives of those things everyday to provide our bodies with sustenance. The easy counter argument to this is that plants don’t feel pain and animals do, but how do we know? There are no studies showing whether or not plants feel pain, so until we know for a fact it is ridiculous to make an assumption.

Many of you are probably laughing now, but let me delve further into this past idea. We are against killing animals for food because they feel pain and they are helpless. Killing animals, however, provides economic security through a creation of jobs, provides people with food necessary to survive, and in some cases reduces health issues from overpopulation (as with deer and duck). Isn’t this very similar to war? We send fleets of men and women to kill in order to provide a sort of security to our land just like we kill animals to provide security. The people who die at the hands of American soldiers feel pain just like animals do. The individuals who end up being killed are rendered helpless as well. They aren’t as well equipped as us, for they have inferior technology and weapons. More disturbing, they are actually people. Even worse, many times casualty numbers are forged by the deaths of innocent children, men and women just because they live in a certain location.

We as Americans have virtually no sympathy for the lives slaughtered intentionally during warfare, and those are our brothers and sisters inherently bonded to us by our common humanness in this global community. We justify killing other humans with a utilitarian outlook--saying that we are doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of Americans. We have to kill them to provide for ourselves and others. Killing animals for food is the same exact thing but with more justification. It is only right and necessary to eat meat.