I can offer up a stronger one than that (though remember I did decide to stop eating meat).

The strongest argument is that (some) animals don't have a sense of their own self/mortality or make future plans beyond not experiencing suffering or fear.

If you could kill an animal in that set without it suffering that would be okay, particularly if you took good care of it up to that point.

I have two main issues with this in practice.

The first is that I've become a lot less comfortable about which animals 'don't have a sense of their own mortality or make future plans'. Humans have been pretty arrogant about this line and the behavior of lots of animals (birds, dolphins, octopus etc.) suggest some pretty complex behavior and communication.

The second is a logistical issue, I basically don't think it's possible to do it in such a way that doesn't cause suffering or fear (and we certainly don't currently anyway even if it was possible).

This also introduces the issue that human infants aren't really self-aware or making future plans, but it still seems wrong to kill them even if you do it in such a way that they don't suffer. So I think it's at best, still not totally consistent without carving out some exceptions for human babies or 'future potential' which feels like cheating. And it's also not really practical anyway.

To your point, it'd still ultimately be 'because people like eating meat', but at least if the above argument held and meat was produced that way - I wouldn't think of it as necessarily unethical. That said, ultimately I think the argument is wrong even if it is the strongest wrong argument.

> I have yet to see a justification for eating meat better than "I like it, and I can". Weak as that is, it is by far the strongest argument out there.

Culture? Cuisine?

I think a lot of people that have food as a strong central part of their culture may even identify with it. It may simply not be immoral in any sense of the word.

But aside from that, "art" for lack of a better way of putting it? Cuisine? Chefs make beautiful art and sometimes it's with meat.

Aren't culture and cuisine arguments exactly "I like it, and I can" ?

Morality changes in time and space, and is a product of culture. Consider what other behaviours have been or still are a strong central part of cultures that we would find distasteful or abhorrent - cannibalism, for example, was still practiced by a tribe in PNG as recently as 2012, for cultural reasons.

(Which could expand into a broad discussion on moral relativism, I suppose; suffice to say for now that eating meat is, from my perspective, a matter for each to form their own personal moral position on rather than one in which a collective position should be reached or enforced.)

Chefs make beautiful art, sometimes with meat. Painters make beautiful art, sometimes with lead-based paint. We moved on from lead-based paint, and we still have beautiful art.

My point is that pigs would eat me if they could, so there is no mercy to reciprocate by refusing to eat them myself. By contrast, not every human would rape or murder me, in fact very few humans would do, depending on circumstance; so there is good reason not to do those things myself. More to the point, there is no good reason to do those things.

This is not to justify anything; it is to point out that there is no reason not to eat other animals and there are very good reasons to eat them; we are animals, some animals eat other animals and we are that kind of animal- and so there is nothing to justify in the first place.

>> I have yet to see a justification for eating meat better than "I like it, and I can".

And I, in turn, have seen no justification for not eating meat better than "you shouldn't eat meat". Which is, of course, no justification at all.

I think your comments are earnest and I wonder if in person I’d be able to maybe change your mind.

My argument would be that we shouldn’t determine mercy based on what something else would do to us, but on what we can do in pursuit of a worthy goal. Basically what the “right” thing is independent of how we’d be treated in a similar circumstance.

In this case the goal would be reducing suffering of other living things.

If we had to eat meat to live then I’d understand the tradeoff, but we don’t so it seems wrong.

> “ And I, in turn, have seen no justification for not eating meat better than "you shouldn't eat meat".”

The justification I’m trying to make is that reducing suffering of living things is a worthwhile goal and something we can do by not eating meat.

> “ it is to point out that there is no reason not to eat other animals and there are very good reasons to eat them”

I’d argue this isn’t true for the reasons above.

Thanks, but I don't think you'd change my mind in person, sorry :)

I think I understand your point and I wouldn't eat meat if I thought it's immoral, or wrong in any way. But I'm not convinced it is.

Reducing suffering is of course a worthy goal, but like I say in other comments there must be a balance. Some suffering is, for me, justified, if the purpose is to kill an animal to eat it, because that is necessary.

You say we don't need to eat meat. I'm not sure what you mean. We certainly need nutrients that are found only in animal products and animal meat is a rich source of nutrients anyway. Personally, I don't think I would be able to live a healthy life without eating meat and animal products. For the record, I eat meat maybe a couple of times a week and I don't think that I need to eat a big juicy steak to feel I've had a proper meal. I'm Greek so I was brought up in a culture where most staple dishes are naturally vegetarian or vegan ("naturally" as in we just call them "food"), though supplemented with ample dairy products and lots and lots of fish. I do think that many people in the developed world eat way too much meat and I definitely think this is causing all sorts of problems, including no end to the unnecessary suffering of animals, because of course animal wellfare is much harder to ensure in industrialised farming, than in smaller scale farming.

I'm 100% with you in reducing suffering. I just don't agree that this means eating no meat at all, ever. I think it means reducing the amount of meat some people eat, abolishing industrial farming and educating people better about animal wellfare also. But I think, to cease eating meat at all is taking things way too far.