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I also have grown more attuned to the fact that humans are just another animal, but in practice this has put me more at ease with eating meat as we are omnivorous predators in the food chain.

I am much more aligned, however, with sustainable harvesting (hunting) than industrial farming these days. There is nothing natural about the modern slaughterhouse.



I'm not ready for the leap to meatlessness, but my halfway house is to use meat as a flavoring, a sort of spice, rather than as a centerpiece.


For what it's worth, I was once a serious meat-eater and couldn't imagine life without it. In a way it was part of my identity. I was the one people wanted to cook meats for holidays, I liked curing meats and making sausages for charcuteries, always smoking things, making elaborate broths and other animal-based preparations, fishing, hunting. Now I couldn't care much less. Something I was certain was true turned out to be patently false, and being on the other side now it's hard to imagine having the same belief again.

I'm not trying to overtly convince or coerce you here. I wish I'd more seriously considered the possibility of changing sooner, though. I suppose I maintained my status quo a little lazily for quite a long time despite caring about the possibility of change.

Having said that, the change you've already made makes an enormous difference in the scheme of things. Christ, I remember having meals where I would eat almost exclusively meat. Like an entire chicken after lifting weights or running particularly far. Totally excessive and bizarre in retrospect. Anyone eating moderately as you described has already shifted towards something resembling sustainability; it isn't really a problem in the scheme of things.


> sustainable harvesting (hunting)

I think I almost could be if the biomass of harvestable prey hadn't reduced so dramatically while the number of potential hunters has increased proportionately, if not more. Spearfishing is actually what lead me to give up the pursuit of sustainable hunting. No matter how ethically and fairly I try to harvest, I will only be contributing to the toll which is already countless orders of magnitude beyond something sustainable. In a sense, I was viewing my contribution to the problem too much as my own contribution rather than as part of a whole which is already far too excessive.

It's a tragedy of the commons. Wild land is too disrupted, oceans polluted and over-fished, and yet farming is too disgusting to contemplate supporting either. The best contribution I can make is to relieve pressure on the system and encourage others to consider doing the same (if they appear interested in listening, that is).

Even so, I'm grateful there are people out there who are willing to consider hunting as an alternative to farming. There are opportunities to hunt over-populated species which are harming ecosystems, for example, which at least has something of a positive impact on the places where the hunting occurs. Wild pigs and deer are common examples in North America. I can't bring myself to do it though, as I'm an invasive species not much unlike the pigs or deer.

> this has put me more at ease with eating meat as we are omnivorous predators in the food chain

I contemplate this at times too. It's not irrational at all. We are omnivores and we are part of the food chain, and there's nothing special about us in that regard.

However, since we're so dramatically over-populated compared to the species we eat (outside of farming, at least), it seems wise not to eat animals so often given that we don't need to and our impact on the food chain is significantly outsized compared to other species. It could be argued that we have something like a practical, moral, and ethical impetus to preserve the food chain such that we can now and in the future continue to sustain the food web we have such immense impacts on. Not only for the lives of the animals we eat and share the world with, but for the future humans of the earth as well.


This comment is very compelling. Thank-you for opening my mind a bit.




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