The Price We Pay for Cheap Meat

I think the antibiotic example is quite telling. Let's press it a little further. As you correctly point out, killing in self-defense is considered legitimate by most (but certainly not all) people. If someone pulls out a gun and starts shooting at me, most people would agree that it is morally acceptable to pull out a gun and shoot my attacker. But the legitimacy of that self-defense is limited by the principle of proportionality. If instead I pull out an AK-47 and rake back and forth with indiscriminate automatic fire, killing not only my attacker but also 15 innocent bystanders, pretty much everyone would agree that I acted immorally. The death of my attacker would be in self-defense, but I'd still be on the hook for 15 murders.

That second example is more akin to taking antibiotics. If we accept that killing microbes is wrong, and accept your argument that using antibiotics is moral because it's legitimate self-defense, we have a problem. Antibiotics kill a lot more than just the invading bacteria. So does radiation and chemotherapy. In fact, they kill a lot of microbes who live in a symbiotic relationship with me and live in my body because they help me break down food or fight infections.

The point is, things are a lot more complicated than simply saying that all forms of killing are immoral. At some point we have to accept that there is an ordering of life forms, and killing some of them to save ourselves is acceptable. If we don't, using antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiation, or other similar forms of care crucial to modern medicine is immoral. Once we accept that not all killing is wrong, it becomes an issue of line-drawing.

There seems to be quite a number of people who embrace the reasoning that it's more ethical to eat animals if one kills them themselves. (I'm not sure if I'm not reading this into what you're writing, if this is not your position I apologise, but anyway this is for the purpose of discussing said position in general.) I disagree with this in general. The act of feeding oneself is necessary for survival, whereas killing animals is not.

First of all, the animal couldn't care less if someone treats its corpse with respect--it's already dead, so I don't see how the animal benefits from this. Second, I'd say that the negative effects on the killer's mind from the act of killing far outweigh any positive effects from mindfulness in handling food produced from the kill.

Killing desensitizes, you become accustomed to taking life from another sentient being. The meat industry is likewise taking care to use every edible part of the animal, they're not producing any waste as far as that goes. Further, I don't think eating everything in the plate is making any measurable difference in terms of total meat consumed (if that's the implicit idea behind this). It's like the “think about the starving children in Africa” routine, which never made sense: people in Africa aren't starving because kids in the West aren't eating their whole dinners, and what good does cleaning the plate (i.e. making the food gone) do to remedy the situation. :)

> It's a highly rewarding and enlightening process which I highly, highly recommend to anyone that eats meat.

The bottom line of what I'm trying to say is I just can't see anything enlightening, let alone rewarding, in a process which necessitates killing other sentient beings. Of course, there is absolutely no doubt that hunting is infinitely more ethical than what is being done by the meat industry. It's really incomparable, so if you have to eat meat do take care it's from a reasonable source like hunting or “organic” (I hate that word) farming. However, that likely doesn't scale at all at the current levels of population. In my mind the best thing to do would be to just stop killing animals for food.

Some time ago I came across this interesting Youtube video[0] but never got around to post it here, and this discussion reminded me of that[1]. Basically, this guy (a Theravada monk) summarizes almost perfectly what I'm trying to say. Because of the horrible things industrial meat production does, I can't quite agree with him that it's OK to buy meat in the supermarket (as long as you're not specifically desiring meat), but otherwise I think he is spot on.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zisXgVnv-cI

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884572

It's refreshing to come across such an open minded person in discussions on this topic (people generally feel extremely defensive when it comes to meat eating, on all sides of the argument, I'm not sure why this specific topic strikes people's nerves so much). It really is a surprisingly complicated topic, I have my doubts about some aspects too.

I was never much fond of killing animals for food, but what ultimately compelled me to go vegetarian was an article similar to this[0] I have read many years ago. I always “knew” this is what's happening in the animal derived food industry, but somehow reading that with all the depictions stuck some cord in the emotional and moral part of my mind and I decided to simply stop eating meat from that moment on. It was remarkably easy for me once I had that moment of “illumination” (for a lack of a better word), I've never had any desire to try meat since then (although I've tried one small piece of meat several years ago just to see what will happen--nothing, complete indifference). But, I haven't gone further, I haven't even tried being vegan. Although I understand the vegan argument, and agree with it in principle on an intellectual level, but that emotional part of the experience leading to moral commitment, that spark is missing (there's also the practicality angle, I live in a culture that's not really conductive to being vegetarian, let alone vegan, eating out can be a bit complicated sometimes).

So there, I just wanted to share my experience of learning (and I still am). I understand what you're saying when it comes to changing perspectives.

[0] In a magnificent anarchist magazine, The Match, self printed (non digital, on a Linotype machine IIRC) and published by Fred Woodworth[1], a great anarchist and an amazing individual in general. I had to take this opportunity to mention The Match (I consider it a form of community service to HN, a lot of people here might like to know of this) because it's severely disproportionally unknown in comparison to its quality (in large part because of some of Fred's uncompromising stances on publishing and printing).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Woodworth

While I support your position, hunting your meat or even eating only hunted meat is not a solution. If all meat would be hunted instead of factory farmed wild animals would quickly deplete. Or at least that's what my common sense tells me.

He provided argument, if we think that people should be treated humanely we should treat animals humanely because animals are people. You on the other hand are providing an appeal to nature fallacy.