Once again, I find I am repeating myself.
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In this debate I do not plan to prove that eating meat is unnatural.
Shaun, I do not dispute the fact that we, as omnivorous animals, are meant to eat other animals. Of course we are. But we are
not meant to torture them. Only humans breed animals in concrete "farms" specifically for eating them. Other predators - tigers, wolves, etc. - eat when they're hungry. They kill a deer and it's over. They don't raise the deer in an environment where it is cut off from the basic necessities of life. It
is possible to eat meat in a humane way. Take certain Native American tribes as an example. When in need of food, they planned a hunt. They would then hunt an animal (i. e. a deer) and kill it and eat it. After consuming it's meat, they would use its skin for clothing or shoes and maybe even its antlers for something. The key is
respect. They respected the animal. We don't.
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I am sure there would not be many cows complaining about our rights, we wouldn’t even have any rights, there mouths would be too full of human meat. Cows would not consider it immoral one bit, so why should we?
The key difference is that cows do not
have the ability to tell moral from immoral. That's something we humans were granted, whether it be natural or supernatural (Shaun, I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from mentioning religion in this debate - what good will it do when so many people disagree about it? Let's stick to facts we can back up with evidence). Cows would be not be thinking, "Wow, am I doing what's right?"
For the sake of argument, let's agree that we really need to eat meat as a source of protein and other nutrients. Let's say that there's no other alternative, but that some of us still have moral qualms about it. What can we do? First, we can start to make sure that the animals we eat are raised in an environment that nurtures their health. Healthy animals will in turn make
us healthy.
The fact is that the animals we eat are not raised in a safe environment. The best example I can think of is the
latest video filmed at a KFC supplier (caution: this footage is rather graphic and not for everyone). Some, when viewing the video or reading about KFC, may say that chickens don't think or chickens don't feel.
Firstly, about chicken intelligence. Chickens are
not completely mindless. They are social. They communicate with each other. Some even bond with their young. I'm not saying that chickens have the equivalent of human intelligence, but that we shouldn't dismiss them as completely incapable of understanding
anything. Here's a good link (while it may seem biased, the actual quotes come from respectable sources) about
chicken intelligence.Secondly, chickens, as well as all birds, can feel pain. They may not understand why, but they can feel it. They can see that they are being attacked, and may try to escape. The KFC chickens have nowhere to go.
One may also use the argument that other predators, when attacking their prey, harm them and may kick them, throw them, etc. This is true. When
attacking for food. The men abusing the KFC chickens were not planning to eat them later that day. They were mindlessly torturing them.
Morality is what
separates us from other predators. So why are we abandoning it for the "thrill" of kicking a chicken? It's pointless and cruel.
"I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe….There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."
—Michael Specter, New Yorker, April 14, 2003.
In my next post, I will spend more time detailing what really goes on in the environments where our food is raised. Soon I will also explain why the chemicals fed to the animals are making
us unhealthy.
