Right, quite simply, i'm considering going veggie or certainly moving to a position where i only have meat on special occasions. I need your help. What are the ethics of the matter, what are the economics of the matter?
The grain used to feed up one cow (which makes, for the sake of argument, 100 meals) could instead be used to feed people (for the sake of argument, 1000 meals)and we could beat world hunger, is one argument frequently used. But what would happen to the animals if we all turned veggie, they'd still need feeding, right? What of all the people whose livelihoods depend on farmed meat?
On the one hand, i don't mind eating animals, i've done it for years and animals are absolutely delicious all over! On the other hand, i do regard them as spiritual beings and my treatment of them ought to reflect that.
I've always justified it in the past by these two things:
1. If it were down to me, i could kill, skin and cook an animal myself. It's not that i need someone else to buy me out of doing the dirty work, it's just that that's the way society has arranged itself. But i'm maybe a bit less convinced of that these days.
2. I would never make a distinction between animals i would eat and animals i wouldn't. What i mean is, some folk say "Oh, you can't eat rabbit, they're such lovely pets" therefore making a distinction between types of animals that were and weren't appropriate to eat. I always thought 'Hypocrite. If you'll eat a lamb, the cuteness factor can't mean a thing'. Worse still is where people make a fuss about acknowledging where the meat has come from. I'd eat horse, dog, sheep, pigeon - anything.
What i now think is that if animals are all on the same plain, perhaps that plain isn't one of edibility, but rather one of inedibility.
My backup justification has always been, well, Jesus at least advocated the catching and cooking of fish, and he'd have eaten a fair few passover lambs in his time too. The counter? I now recognise how vastly different his economic context was to mine.
The thing is, when one starts talking about 'justification' one has already acknowledged a position of defense, or that something's wrong.
Help me out, what are your takes on these arguments, and what are the important arguments i'm missing?
By the way, top tip: don't put 'meat' into a google image search, certainly not at work anyway.
