Ethics of Eating Meat: Overview
The ethics of eating meat is a complex and multifaceted topic that invites debate about moral considerations regarding animal life, environmental impact, and human health. Proponents of meat consumption often argue that eating meat can be ethical if the method of production minimizes harm to both animals and the environment, with some emphasizing the biological history of humans as omnivores. Conversely, many ethical arguments against meat consumption underscore the suffering of sentient beings, the ethical inconsistency of valuing certain animals over others, and the significant environmental costs associated with meat production.
Alternative views include practices such as consuming meat from animals that have died naturally or sourcing from farms that prioritize animal welfare. Additionally, advancements in lab-grown meats and plant-based substitutes have emerged as potential reconciliations for those who wish to enjoy meat without the associated ethical implications. While vegetarian and vegan diets have gained visibility and support over the years, research indicates that a large portion of the population still identifies as meat-eaters, often due to personal, cultural, or economic reasons. The ongoing discourse around the ethics of eating meat reflects broader societal values and challenges, making it a pertinent topic for individuals exploring their dietary choices in relation to ethics and sustainability.
Ethics of Eating Meat: Overview
Introduction
On March 20, 2012, the New York Times issued an essay challenge to its readers. “Calling All Carnivores,” read the headline. “Tell Us Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat.” The resulting essays grappled with a question that has long been a topic of heated debate: in a world where it is possible for humans to sustain themselves without eating meat, is it ethical to continue to do so? The winning essay, by agroecologist Jay Bost, laid out a simple standard: any diet, including one that involves eating meat, is ethical if it has the “least destructive impact on life as a whole on this planet.” In other words, eating meat is ethical if raising that meat caused less harm to the planet than, say, irrigating a plot of dry land to produce soy, robbing the environment of water and using fossil fuels.
Another common argument in favor of eating meat points to the biological evolution of humans as meat-eaters. A 2012 study led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid, found that the consumption of meat was necessary for human brain evolution, as it is the best, most efficient source of calories, fats, and vitamins needed for brain development. He added, “There is no [traditional] society that live as vegans,” since it is very difficult to get the optimal combination of vitamins and calories from an exclusively plant-based diet available in subsistence agriculture.
Most ethical arguments about eating meat oppose it, however, and it is far easier, at least at first glance, to believe that vegetarians and vegans have the moral high ground. After all, people in most Western societies are aghast at the idea of eating animals they value as pets, such as cats and dogs; however, why those mammalian lives are more valuable than those of, for example, cows and pigs is unclear. Furthermore, many animals traditionally raised for meat are sentient beings capable of pain and fear and some level of complex thought, making the lives of those crammed into cages on factory farms ethically unacceptable to many. Add to that the environmental cost of meat production, and it begins to appear indefensible.
For some meat eaters, the answer to this conundrum lies in paying attention to the quality of life and the avoidance of suffering in the animals they eat. They are selective about where they get their meat and the kinds of conditions in which the animals are raised, ensuring that suffering is minimized and the animals live in a manner that aligns with their natural tendencies before being killed. This argument, of course, requires a belief that animal life is less important than human life from an ethical point of view.
If the taking of a life, even without suffering, is the ethical barrier, there are those who argue that the only ethical way to eat meat is to have no intentional role in the death of the animal it comes from. As of 2019, more than half of states allow the salvaging of roadkill for food under certain circumstances. Others favor the development of meat created in a laboratory or support the consumption of meat from animals who died of natural causes or old age. The growing interest in lab-created meats and meat substitutes may be the best reconciliation between the desire to eat meat and the desire to avoid the harms it creates.
Understanding the Discussion
Animal Liberation: A 1975 book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, considered a foundational text in the modern animal rights movement.
Beyond Meat: A US company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products, particularly hamburger.
Impossible Foods: A US company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products, particularly hamburger.
Vegan: A person who abstains from eating any food that come from animals, including eggs and diary and possibly extending to items like honey and gelatin. Vegans may also avoid using nonfood animal products, such as leather or wool.
Vegetarian: A person who generally abstains from eating meat but may eat eggs and dairy products.
History
There is evidence that some members of ancient societies may have eschewed meat for ethical reasons, and for centuries, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain adherents have adopted meatless diets as a matter of faith. However, the philosophical underpinnings of the contemporary Western debate over the ethics of eating meat can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, best known for his mathematical theorem, but also considered an early founder of vegetarianism. Pythagoras believed that all living beings had souls and therefore should not be killed and eaten; he also believed a meatless diet contributed to longevity. For centuries, a meatless diet was called a “Pythagorean diet,” a term that gave way to “vegetarian” in the mid-nineteenth century, when the first vegetarian society was formed in Ramsgate, England, in 1847. Some Western groups in the early nineteenth century, particularly religious and communal sects, eschewed meat, including members of the Bible Christian Church, which had moved from England to Philadelphia in 1817. Their leader, William Metcalfe, wrote the influential pamphlet On Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals and joined with reformer Sylvester Graham and physician William Alcott to establish the American Vegetarian Society in New York in 1850.
Vegetarianism was associated with many radical reform movements in the nineteenth-century America and attracted the interest, if not the strict adherence, of many notable abolitionists and feminists, including Susan B. Anthony, Horace Greeley, and Lucy Stone. Although there was an ethical element to most early vegetarian movements in the West, the focus of most vegetarian advocacy was on the physical and spiritual health of humans, rather than specifically the welfare of animals or the environment. Nonetheless, vegetarians were considered extremists and radicals well into the twentieth century. It was not until the counterculture movements of the 1960s that vegetarianism gained a mainstream following, or at least became a lifestyle that people were aware of in the United States. In the 1970s, Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappé became a runaway best-seller, promoting vegetarianism as a sound environmental choice.
The first and still one of the most influential works calling attention to animal suffering at the hands of humans was the best-selling Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, published in 1975 by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Its basic premise was that humans should prevent suffering whenever they can in any individual being of any species. Although at the time Singer did not explicitly link suffering to meat consumption, for many it was a wake-up call to pay attention to the suffering of other species.
John Robbins’s 1987 book Diet for a New America was another landmark in the history of the ethics of eating meat. For many, it was the first time that they had heard of the actual conditions prevalent in industrialized agriculture and that it was possible to thrive without eating meat, which was, in fact, unhealthy and killing the planet. This book is responsible for the spread of the term “vegan” (first coined in 1944) to describe those that eschew all animal products, including dairy and eggs, and in some cases, items like leather and wool. The book plainly and powerfully articulated the trifecta of arguments against eating meat: it causes suffering to animals, harms the environment, and is not necessary for human health.
Ethics of Eating Meat Today
In 2002 Burger King became the first major fast food chain to offer vegetable burgers on its menu nationwide in the United States, expanding the options available to vegetarian consumers. The soy-based patties were supplied by Morningstar Farms, a major supplier of meat substitutes such as veggie burgers and veggie sausages. In the twenty-first century, food scientists have striven to create plant-based meat substitutes that resemble actual meat ever more closely. The newest comers in the 2010s were the companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, each of which boasted new methods of having created even “meatier” veggie burgers. In April 2019, Burger King piloted the vegan Impossible Whopper, with a patty made by Impossible Foods. As of 2019, other restaurant chains offering either Beyond Burgers or Impossible Burgers included Cheesecake Factory, Red Robin, TGI Fridays, and White Castle. This suggested that vegetarians, or those curious about plant-based food options, were a growing target market for food companies.
However, the percentage of people in the United States who identify as vegan or vegetarian remains small. A 2018 Gallup poll showed that the proportion of Americans identifying as vegetarian had remained essentially flat over the preceding two decades, at around 5 percent in 2018, versus 6 percent in 1999; 3 percent of respondents identified as vegan in 2018 versus 2 percent in 2012. A 2017 article in Popular Science magazine ran under the headline, “Stop Pretending That All Americans Could Ever Go Vegan,” pointing out that 84 percent of Americans who attempt a vegan or vegetarian diet eventually go back to eating meat—more than half after less than a year—despite all the information available about the ills of meat production and consumption. Many turn to partial measures, accepting that eating meat is ethically wrong but limiting rather than eliminating it. Others argue that choices can be made that make eating meat ethical by reducing suffering and lowering the impact on the environment.
About the Author
Bethany Groff Dorau is a freelance writer, museum manager, and local historian based in West Newbury, Massachusetts. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in history and sociology and a master of arts degree in history, both from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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