Why is it okay to eat meat but not to be cruel to animals?

Question

Why is eating meat allowed in a social setting ( Most people think it's not bad ) but not animal cruelty in a social setting ( Most people think it's bad )?

Like: Imagine what would happen if someone abused an animal in a crowd. Imagine if someone eats meat in a crowd of people.

Both are equally harassing or killing animals. However, it seems difficult to see the difference between direct and indirect. Eating meat made by killing animals by other people is also considered an act of participating in the livestock industry.

Answer 1

Imagine what would happen if someone abused an animal in a crowd. Imagine if someone eats meat in a crowd of people.

I think there are two major effects at play here:

A) Predictable behavior

Social acceptability is strongly affected by how predictable the actions are.

Compare with if someone smashes strawberries to the ground, versus if someone eats strawberries in a crowd. It's very likely people would distance themselves from the strawberry-abuser, just because they appear irrational and unpredictable.

Similarly to smokers, car drivers, and other common behaviors which can be detested for valid reasons, meat-eating does not cause confusion or fear in people. Everyone knows that the meat eater will eat their hamburger, they won't come to eat you or your pet chicken. But animal abuser shows their disobedience to common social rules, and therefore it is reasonable to assume they may be dangerous in other ways also.

The origins of social rules are very much a circular definition: common things are acceptable because they are common, and uncommon things are easily despised just because they are unique.

B) Empathy towards the animal suffering

Let me reframe the question so that there is no difference in predictability, visibility ("out of sight, out of mind") or utility:

Two people are fishing on the pier. One of them immediately snaps the neck of the fish, before putting them to a bucket. Another one puts the live fish in a bucket, letting them suffocate. When asked about the taste effect, they explain "These are for our ducks, they don't care".

Most people will feel for the fish and their unnecessary suffering. For the fisher, avoiding the time to kill the fish yields higher utility. The innate sense of empathy in humans demands that they should spend some time to reduce the suffering when possible.

Answer 2

So the question is why people draw a distinction between the act of consuming meat and the act of torturing an animal. There are several reasons.

Many people might agree that factory farming processes are cruel, but they are not aware of them or believe that there are other routes to reforming those practices beyond refusing to eat meat. For example, people might preferentially purchase humanely raised meat. Also, the act of eating meat does not, in and of itself, involve causing pain to a living creature. The part where the animal was killed, humanely or not, happened elsewhere and none of us had to watch it.

Intentions matter to people. Let's consider the following cases:

1. Bob is walking on Carl's property at night. It's dark, Bob steps off a walkway and breaks their leg.
2. Carl leaves a roller skate on the dark walkway. Bob steps on the skate and breaks their leg.
3. Bob sees Carl on the walkway, Bob attacks Carl, steps on the roller skate, and breaks their leg.
4. Bob sees Carl on the walkway and attacks them. Carl defends themself and breaks Bob's leg.
5. Carl is on Bob's walkway. Bob sees Carl, attacks them, Carl defends themself and breaks Bob's leg.
6. Carl is on Bob's walkway, they see Carl, Carl attacks them and breaks their leg.

In all of these cases Carl is responsible for Bob's broken leg, to some degree or another. But they're not equally morally culpable in every case. How the leg got broken and why is important to people when judging Carl's action.

Similarly, people might consider the same result of causing distress differently depending on the circumstances. Torturing an animal for fun is different from maintaining inhumane conditions for profit. It may not be better, per se, but it is different, and people view it differently.

Answer 3

Such questions are strongly cultural. That means both location and time dependent.

Consider, for example, the prevalence of such activities as bull fighting, rodeos, and circus shows involving animals. There are many other examples of practices related to animals that are accepted as routine in some locations but reviled in others.

Since these issues are cultural it is unlikely that a completely clear, logical, and rational thought process has produced these ideas. Why do we do this particular thing? Because it is traditional. Because we have done it for a long time. Because we have all the support structure to do it. (Farms, stores, training in food prep, and so on.) Because people are accustomed to doing it that way.

It is quite a challenge to persuade a person to change cultural norms. Things that are accepted due to culture will be so deep in a person's psychology as to produce strong emotional responses when questioned, even quite gently. Most especially when a person is still in that culture. The reasons they started doing this are cultural. And those reasons are still all around them.

Answer 4

It's simply the psychology of "What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." Most people think of themselves as good. A good person will not harm any creature directly. But buying meat, or especially eating cooked meat, removes the killing from your eyes. So it becomes palatable, even if it's not entirely logical.

Answer 5

The alternative would be to give animals more rights than humans, which doesn't seem to make any sense.

When a lion eats a human, we consider that a tragedy. We do everything we can to keep lions from eating humans. But we don't accept that it's our place to eliminate lions entirely. We see value in preserving natural behavior.

But we don't stop lions from eating deer. We don't really see that as morally tragic for the deer because it is natural for the lion.

So while we don't allow nature to harm people when we can stop it, we generally don't see a moral problem with natural behavior harming animals. Part of this is due to our moral opposition to trying to remake the natural world to accord with human morals except where that's necessary to protect human life and safety.

So I can eat a burger for the same reason a lion can eat a deer. It's natural behavior that poses no significant risk to human life or safety. Why should I have less right or authority than a lion does if I'm not hurting people?

While we do oppose cruelty to animals, we usually don't put this opposition above our general approval of natural behavior that doesn't hurt people. We don't really look for ways to make lions kill deer more painlessly. We don't generally try to prevent non-human animals from harming each other.

As a general rule, we do not have moral objections to behavior that we perceive as natural, whether engaged in by humans or animals, except when it puts humans at risk. We generally do not believe it to be the role of humans to engineer nature and to impose our views and values for the natural world beyond that necessary to protect ourselves.

Answer 6

It's simply that I like a good steak, and I have no interest whatsoever in causing pain to an animal. The animal being killed painlessly so I can eat the meat is fine to me. The same animal being killed in a painful way so I can eat the meat would be absolutely not fine. The animal being kicked or poked or whatever because someone enjoys inflicting pain on animal would be totally unacceptable.

I think OP fell into a trap where they judge things to be equal that are not equal. And not feeding any meat to a meat-eating animal like a dog or cat is animal cruelty.

PS. I prefer jpa's answer. If someone eats meat I don't expect them to eat my children if I don't watch out. If someone tortures animals, I wouldn't trust them with anything.

Answer 7

It's about cognitive dissonance and how our brain tries to repair this. We want to see ourselves as good, so we ignore the fact that we cause suffering. We will justify it with tons of reasons, like "it's the natural thing", or "it's for nutrition", although none of those really matter. We can clearly live easily without meat with just some minor attention to our nutrition, and whatever is "natural" is irrelevant on a scale of 8 billion people using up the planet with our advanced technology.

You can easily see this by how outraged people are when a dog is hurt while they are still having meat for dinner. We even have a 'dehumanizing' name for animals that are made for eating, livestock, so we don't have to think about it as much. It makes them into a product instead of a being with feelings.

Answer 8

In the wild, a majority of animals meet their end when another animal stalks, chases, and violently kills them, usually by suffocation. Isn't this the same problem? To reject meat consumption is to reject a fundamental fact of biology. Things consume other things. We can talk about how, but rejecting why is a failure in comprehension. I don't mean to put forward a tautology, but humans eat meat because humans eat meat.

Answer 9

In western culture killing and torturing are generally not viewed as the same thing. For example, even countries that practice death penalty, generally do not allow those sentenced to death to be tortured, and favor painless methods of putting them to death - see Cruel and unusual punishment.

Similarly, although people kill and are killed in a war, there are Law of war that limit who, when, and how can be killed: one cannot kill prisoners of war or otherwise defenseless combatants (e.g., paratroopers while landing), and one is prohibited from using certain munitions that can incur particularly painful death or wounds, like napalm or cluster bombs. The laws of war also typically limit anything that may harm civilians and anyone who is not a part of the conflict, even if these could potentially have the effect on the outcome of the conflict (see strategic bombing and scorched earth.)

This is to say that there is the difference in the degree of suffering incurred on the animals when simply killing them for meat or deliberately torturing them. This obviously seems like a ridiculous difference to someone who is vegan, just like the overwhelming support for a Just war might be shocking to a pacifist (see, e.g., Pacifist position on Ukraine), but seem completely justified to most people.

Answer 10

It's not just about animal cruelty. We can easily remove this difference between the two things you're looking at to get down to the difference that actually matters.

Ask yourself what would happen if someone were to sell burgers made with fresh beef in a public place. Now ask yourself what would happen if that beef was so fresh the seller slaughtered and butchered his cows in that same public place. All of the sudden, the beef would be a little too fresh.

The only remaining difference is that before the beef was super fresh, the majority of the people involved did not see the cows getting slaughtered and butchered. There was an option to ignore this very ugly aspect of the situation. Most people choose this option and would be very offended if this option was removed.

Answer 11

See this previous discussion on land use and human health issues: Is 'veganism' a settled issue in Philosophy and Ethics?

The two World Wars, and the loss of wild places to urbanisation and industrialisation, have been linked to a decrease in blood sports and an increase in valuing animal life. This kind of social change is very interesting in terms of examining the underpinnings of our moral reasoning. See The Great Cat Massacre for a striking example of social change not only of animal lives, but human lives.

Peter Singer gives a compelling account of moral progress, in his book The Expanding Circle, which relates increasing concern for animal welfare to the same drivers that saw slavery and serfdom ended.

I make the case here that this kind of moral progress has practical advantages for societies adopting them, by supporting greater intersubjective insights and cooperation: Studies exploring the rationale of gender equality

In the Buddhist tradition, the harm was considered to be in killing the animals. As Mahayana thought moved towards monastic living from living by alms, collective responsibility had to be accepted for the impacts of the monastic food supply. But consider that the source of the moral issues of killing animals can be seen differently. For instance, consider Tibet where it was historically pretty much impossible to survive without yak meat for winter. Or what about livestock that have net positive lives, with quick painless deaths? You have to consider how you assign personhood, and attribute moral concern, especially where there are conflicts (eg poorer people relying on fish or hunting to survive). We can enter into mutually supportive relationships, like Hindus with cows, or beekeepers with bee colonies.

Answer 12

In general, eating is good, and in general, cruelty is bad; both are not the same thing; both are not mutually exclusive: we can eat meat without being cruel to animals.

In case of conflict of interests (I want to eat in order to survive, but I need to be cruel, which I don't want to), surviving has the priority; that's not a human trait, it's a natural behavior: many raptors eat the guts of their pray while they are alive and walking, and possibly experiencing what can be considered extreme suffering.

Answer 13

The concept of slaughtering and consuming animals and treating them humanely is not necessarily mutually exclusive.

For example, the Humane Slaughter Act.

According to the law, animals should be stunned into unconsciousness prior to their slaughter to ensure a death with less suffering than in killing methods used earlier. The most common methods are electrocution and CO2 stunning for swine and captive bolt stunning for cattle, sheep, and goats. Of these methods of electrocution, electronarcosis has been widely acclaimed as the safest, most humane and most reliable as well as the surest way to stun the animal and render them insensitive to pain.

Disregarding the humane nature of slaughtering animals for consumption in general, it's fair to say that there is a moral standard for how to treat animals whether they are meant for companionship or for slaughter, and in both cases the moral standard is to minimize the suffering felt by those animals.

Answer 14

All of Nature is red in tooth and claw. We must eat to survive. I don't differentiate eating meat from killing an animal. If I eat pork, I have participated in that pig's life and death. So either I grow my own meat (yes, for years I did that) or I pay more to buy ethically raised and killed animals.

I gave my animals the best life I could, a good life where they were free to roam but protected from harm, fed good food that I myself would eat, and killed them as quickly and as painlessly as possible. And I accepted the fact that I had just killed an animal in order to eat meat.

If I had more integrity and will power, I would be a vegetarian. I did try it for a couple of years at least, not for health reasons but because of the responsibility I bore to the animal whose body part I was consuming.

Answer 15

As a bit of a frame challenge, let me ask you a different question: why is it OK to eat plants? I expect most people would say that "plants don't have feelings" or something along those lines. But in fact, research shows that plants do have some sort of nervous system that transmits information. Another example is fermentation. Why is it OK to eat microbes? If you are a vegetarian or vegan, you have surely consumed some insects, some of them were alive. Is that OK?

All of these are living things but only some of them are deemed problematic to consume. Almost paradoxically, the idea that some creatures should not be eaten is inherently based in the notion that humans are special. Nothing in the natural world is concerned with what other living things consume. Only humans have this notion and we are the ones who come up with these notions about what is acceptable for other humans to eat.

The upshot here is that this comes down to beliefs about which living creatures are superior to others. There's nothing wrong with that per se until you start assuming that your feelings are something that is inherently true. Many people are against animal cruelty while believing it is acceptable to eat meat e.g. the Buddha. While someone might think, for example, it's cruel to hunt and eat deer, I would argue that allowing them to become overpopulated and starve en masse is worse. Or, does the deer shot cleanly through the heart suffer more than the deer who is slowly strangled by a wolf? I've watched enough Nature shows to know. I'm not a hunter but I don't think it's unethical or wrong when done within certain bounds.

Everyone is free to believe that some living things that are regularly killed and consumed by humans should not be. You are also free to try to convince others of your beliefs. But the assumption that it follows from intolerance of cruelty to animals is not logically coherent.

Answer 16

There is the "population control" argument, which applies to non-farmed animals. Humans have become the primary predators of some species of prey animals (generally through wiping out the competition). It could be argued that humans have an environmental responsibility to regularly cull these species in order to prevent environmental degradation. From here, we could just kill these animals and waste the meat, but since we can derive significant nutrition from eating these animals, it makes the most sense from a conservation of resources perspective to eat their meat.

Answer 17

Because killing animals for their meat is not necessarily crueler than what the animals suffer in the wild. And if done correctly, it might be much less cruel.

Yes, there exist farming practices which make animals suffer, however

• you can choose not to buy meat from there, and select a producer who is not using such practices, or raise/hunt animals yourself
• laws and regulations are moving in the direction of reducing the suffering of animals in industrial farming, and improving their living conditions.
• even if we compare it to factory farming, animals in the wild don't live an idyllic life

How do wild animals live? They are not immortal, and more importantly, they are not immune to suffering. Except a few rare cases (like elephants), animals in the wild never die of old age. They all starve to death or are killed and eaten by other animals.

Smaller animals would increase their numbers by tenfold or hundredfold each year, and in a couple years there would be billions from just one pair. Even large animals would double their population every year. This obviously doesn't happen. This means that only a very small percentage of animals born in a year will survive to the end of it, the vast majority starves or is eaten. Both end results make the animal suffer. The natural balance is not animals living happily in harmony, it is a population exploding in numbers when the conditions are right, exhausting their food supply, most of them dying off, then their food supply recovering and exploding in numbers, and the cycle begins anew.

So, if we take care to not induce unneeded suffering in our domesticated animals, they live a life where they are always well fed, taken care of, and when they get killed, in one moment they are perfectly fine, and in the next moment, bam!, it's over, painlessly. Compare that to being chased by a predator, being bit into, and then being torn apart while still alive.

We can, if we are willing, eat meat, in a way that the animal we consume suffered less than what it would undergo in the wild.

Answer 18

I can give a pretty nice answer to this. The point is that we shouldn't take pleasure in killing animals for itself but at the same time we need meat to survive.

Eating meat is really a necessity. There actually certain proteins and substance there in meat which our body can't get otherwise so eating meat is a necessity (eg: some amino acids, Vitamin B12).

From a cultural perspective, there are many examples of cultures throughout the world advising against slow killing of eaten animals. See eg Kutha meat.

Answer 19

You need to eat. You don't need to be cruel.

The simple truth is that, conceptually, these are two entirely distinct activities. They fall into different mental categories.

Eating is a necessary activity, and what exactly you eat is a detail. Eating meat is generally accepted because a) we are biologically omnivorous and b) it's very common.

Cruelty is a non-essential activity that needs its motivation explained, and there are very, very few positive motivations. It also creates nothing that is useful or necessary - thus there is no justification and all that's left is the evil of the act.

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A connection between meat consumption and cruelty is being made by those who are against meat consumption. It is not necessarily true though the industrialized meat industry certainly does make animals suffer more than necessary.

That does not change the fact that conceptually we don't feel the same about these two things, and it will take a lot more effort and time if one were to desire that in the future, we should.

Answer 20

Both are equally harassing or killing animals. However, it seems difficult to see the difference between direct and indirect. Eating meat made by killing animals by other people is also considered an act of participating in the livestock industry.

No it's not.

In one case you're doing active (killing) or even senseless/unnecessary harm (harassing) to a living being that is able to perceive and suffer from that harm. And in the other case you're doing things with their corpse.

Both from the perspective of the perpetrator and the victim these are not equal. Let's just set aside the animals for a second and think of the same situation for human beings. Then you'd compare desecration of corpses and cannibalism of deceased people to killing and murdering people. While neither is great, the latter is likely going to get you the longer sentence. Unless you actively helped to produce those corpses in which case you're again talking about the latter case primarily.

So regardless of the diminished legal status that we often have for animals, the two actions itself are not considered to be equal.

Also no it is specifically NOT CONSIDERED to be the same as killing the animals or even as an participating in the livestock industry and you might argue that this is part of the problem.

It's actually fairly easy to argue that that the actual "crime" of harming and killing the animal has happened before your involvement in the process even started and that your presence or absence in that process has no positive or negative influence on the fate of that particular animal because it was dead already before you bought the meat from the grocery store.

You might even argue that without you buying it, the meat would rot and the animal would have suffered for nothing.

Now that is only half of the story and you might just as well argue truthfully that buying the product acts as proof to the "producers" (those that do the killing) that there is an acceptance of and a market for their good and thus encourages them to restock the supply. So while you're not responsible for what's on display right now the fact that it sells and keeps them in business is what contributes to a partial responsibility for future killings of animals. So by eating meat you're specifically not CONSIDERED to act as a part of the livestock industry, but you ARE, regardless of that, a factor in it. As long as there is money to be made in that business, there'll be suppliers.

So it's actually fairly easy to push the responsibility to the producers, while not punishing them for their actions thereby keeping the conscious clean while everything stays the same. It's the production that produces the harm not the consumption (that causes, not the harm, but the production) so if you can manage to neatly separate the two it's not "your problem".

Another thing is that you can argue that killing living creatures up to humans is considered legal as long as it necessary to survive (self-defense for example) and that eating is necessary to survive. Now you can also argue against that saying that there are nowadays ways to get around doing that by killing other animal species. But then again people also start wars and get involved in ultimately pointless murder of our own species. So it's not that we are just hypocrites when it comes to animals we're also hypocrites when it comes to humans as well.

So TL;DR killing and torturing animals reveals something about the character of the person doing that, in that they don't empathize with the suffering of another living being. While using the products of such an action is able to pretend they're just making the best of that situation. It's not fully covered by logical arguments but just enough to distance oneself from the process while still taking part in it.

Answer 21

Eating animal meat to sustain human life is preferable and is therefore not cruel.

The life of a person is worth more than the life of an animal. Therefore it would be greater cruelty to starve a person, than to kill an animal for meat to preserve the life of a person. Preserving a person's life is not cruel even if it means eating animal meat.

Killing animals needlessly is cruel.

10 But, the blood of all flesh which I have given you for meat, shall be shed upon the ground, which taketh life thereof, and the blood ye shall not eat.

11 And surely, blood shall not be shed, only for meat, to save your lives; and the blood of every beast will I require at your hands.

12 And whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for man shall not shed the blood of man.

13 For a commandment I give, that every man’s brother shall preserve the life of man, for in mine own image have I made man.

JST, Genesis 9:10–15. Compare Genesis 9:4–9

Eating excessive meat is needless and therefore cruel.

flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

All grain is ordained for the use of man and of beasts, to be the staff of life, not only for man but for the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and all wild animals that run or creep on the earth;

And these [animals] hath God made for the use of man only in times of famine and excess of hunger.

God has given animals to man in part for the purpose of sustaining our lives during times of winter and famine. It is not pleasing to God for man to waste animal flesh or to kill animals needlessly. He will hold each of us accountable for every animal's life that we destroy, and has expressly forbidden the killing of animals except for meat to save our lives. (Yes, God even sees and knows when any person is torturing or otherwise abusing any person or animal. He made them all. There is no escaping accountability for this.) He has made these decrees for all people on Earth to follow and has forewarned us that there will be consequences in the day of Judgment for every animal life that we destroy without a need.

Consistent with the requirement to use animal meat with thanksgiving, wasting the meat of an already killed animal shows disrespect to the animal and renders the sacrifice of its life needless, making the act of killing it or disposing of it cruelty.

Eating animal meat to preserve human life is justified, while eating animal meat while there is no need is not justified. Both of these observations are in complete harmony with and are consequent from the initial reference stating that the value of human life is greater than that of animal life, but that both have very significant value.

Answer 22

It's a lessor of two evils. Everything in life requires power. If I don't have power, then I have to get it from an animal (or human).

Should I have power (compared to another human or animal or plant)? Yes, if I can improve the universe for it. No, if I cannot. That's how simple that is.

Ultimately, (as long as YHVH-GAIA exists) I will die eating meat (or making the wrong decision with another human), if I don't give back equally, because the animal was innocent and there are larger forces which keep track of these things. That's the equation for that moral quandary.

Answer 23

I would argue it this way:

• Animals will die nevertheless, it's inevitable.

• Animals may die cruelly in natural circumstances, think e.g. a lion eating prey. It's not pretty.

• Humans have techniques to minimize suffering.

Implies:

• It's possible to view consuming animal meat as ethical as long as the growing of and the death of the animal involves the least amount of suffering. Again, it's also possible that cutting the head of the animal or something contains less suffering than dying because of a disease or something.

This still leaves the problem of deciding when someone thinks it's the right time to kill an animal (without its consent).

Answer 24

To a certain degree, we must accept that life on this earth is a continuous cycle of birth and death.

It seems an unavoidable part of our existence that something must die for us humans to continue to live.

Do we need to eat meat, no? We can sustain ourselves from plant matter. Do we need to hunt the Kudu and the Eland with a bow-and-arrow in some pathetic attempt to prove our manhood? Also, no.

Americans currently have a massive problem with Asian carp in the Ohio river.

It is a tasty white fish that eats plankton. Not that plankton is the standard. Americans eat all types of sea cockroaches.

Americans will not eat this bountiful white fish that is on the verge of causing an ecological disaster, but southerners will eat catfish. With some rhetorical gymnastics, carp are considered thrash fish while catfish are not.

I myself find the hunting of antelope an exercise of tremendous vulgarity. The Eland and the Kudu are majestic figures of the African landscape. What types of people shoot these animals with high-powered rifles, I ask you?

For what do these animals have to die like this? So some yuppies can have steak and biltong in their fridge.

I have never wanted a steak so badly that I would spend weeks of my life chasing after it.

Why do Americans import salmon from Alaska while the Ohio River contains an endless supply of white fish? I cannot understand it.

So, in closing, though we cannot escape the cycle of death and birth, We, as humans, can decide that the way we nourish our bodies is the least cruel and causes the least suffering.

Maybe the best we can do is choose the lesser of two evils.

Answer 25

Because there is a reason that justifies us eating meat (humans have been carnivores for thousands of years and we are hungry if we don't eat) while for torture the reason is not so obvious. On the other hand, when you have been doing something forever you tend to see it as "normal" or "acceptable" without thinking about whether it really is. The latter applies both to current carnivores who do not consider whether or not it is wrong to eat meat in the face of alternatives such as veganism, and to some cultures, such as Spanish one, which see bullfighting as something "acceptable". (Someone could argue that not all Spaniards see bullfights as normal, but the fact is that the law allows bullfighting in almost all Spanish territory)