How is it that we may justify our need for meat.
Juicy, tender meat is something that most of us grow up eating. We have no say in this early on and so by growing up with it we all have no real qualms about eating meat. In fact we really don't think about the ethical implications of our meat eating ways.
Meat is a product made from farming animals and then slaughtering them at different stages of their lives for our enjoyment.
Farming animals is a practice that has been going on for centuries. Farming meat was the main reason we are at the top of the food chain - it allowed us to settle down and start building civilizations and societies. Farming in general is a good thing. Yet farming meat today is not the same as farming meat back when humans were primitive. Back then it was necessary for the evolution of man. Today the only reason it is done is to mass produce a product for our own enjoyment. Yet this product is rarely thought of as being alive.
Recently studies have been made into animal and insect personalities or more specifically if they have a personality or not. Studies found that even ants had individual personalities which suggests that each one is unique - much like a human being is unique.
Animals clearly feel physical pain seen easily when you pull hairs out of a horses tail or pull a dogs nose. Animals also feel emotional pain. A bird that has lost its young in an accident will screech all day because it feels that pain.
So by farming we are killing a creature that not only has all of the traits which allow them to feel pain but also we are killing an individual personality of that race each time.
And this is done for our enjoyment - not out of necessity.
So how can we justify our love of meat now that it is something we do because we enjoy it? Simple answer is that we cannot.
Most western cultures have a natural disdain for some meats. Dogs and cats would be sneered upon by men and women who eat steak every day. Yet why are these meats disdained.
Dog and cat are exactly like beef - red meats. They taste similar to beef. Yet most people i have met will not tuck in to a good meal of dog steak.
Eating humans is another thing that is disgusting and i am confident in saying most of us would not do this. Yet for the carnivores out there, how can you justify not eating human when you eat other meats? By just eating those who have died we can avoid killing them thus avoid any ethical dilemmas.
We refuse to eat human maybe because humans in our view are intelligent being worthy of some respect. Yet our young are not intelligent. In fact they are more akin to animals as they cannot fend for themselves nor can they communicate. Maybe we should farm them?
This shows that morality is not lost in meat eaters. We are hardened against the morality of eating regular meats such as chickens and cows because we grow up with eating them. We refuse to eat dog and cat because we recognize what an abhorrent practice eating meat is.
Eating meat involves the mass production of individual personalities which feel pain and the subsequent slaughtering of them at times in their life cycle which vary from when they are tender babies to rich and juicy adults.
So why do we not find these practices of farming also ethical hot-spots? Let us look at farming through a hypothetical situation. An alien race comes down from space and discovers not only are we humans much stupider than them - to the extent that we cannot communicate with them - but also discovers that a human steak is a juicy, tender morsel.
Reading this, most readers will immediately state that we are not animals. We are humans that differ from animals in so many ways. Yet to these aliens we are just like chicken or a cow. We cannot communicate to them, we can feel both physical and emotional pain. We are a juicy and tender meat variety.
The practice of eating meat is something that should be looked into by everyone who does it. Morality is a trait of sentient beings or races who can think beyond simple things. By eating meat we prove that we are just primitive animals and not a highly developed race. Eating meat is something that can only be justified by survival and since in today's world this isn't an issue for most of us, eating meat cannot be justified.
Paul is a university graduate involved with health sciences.
Visit his blog for more information at http://www.puaweightloss.blogspot.com/
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