Ethics of Eating Meat - Ethics of Killing For Food

Ethics of Killing For Food

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Princeton University and University of Melbourne professor and pioneer of the animal liberation movement, Peter Singer, believes that if alternative means of survival exist, one ought to choose the option that does not cause unnecessary harm to animals. Most ethical vegetarians argue that the same reasons exist against killing animals to eat as against killing humans to eat. Singer, in his book Animal Liberation listed possible qualities of sentience in non-human creatures that gave such creatures the scope to be considered under utilitarian ethics, and this has been widely referenced by animal rights campaigners and vegetarians. Ethical vegetarians also believe that killing an animal, like killing a human, can only be justified in extreme circumstances and that consuming a living creature for its enjoyable taste, convenience, or nutritional value is not sufficient cause. Another common view is that humans are morally conscious of their behavior in a way other animals are not, and therefore subject to higher standards.

This same argument is used by others to counter the treatment of animals as moral equals with humans. Equality in a moral community requires the capability of all participants to make moral decisions. Animals are incapable of making ethical choices; for example, a tiger would not refrain from eating a human because it was wrong, it would decide whether to attack based on what it felt would allow it to survive.

Thus, some opponents of ethical vegetarianism describe the comparison of eating livestock with killing people to be fallacious. Humans are capable of culture, innovation and the sublimation of instinct in order to act in an ethical manner. Animals are not, and so are by definition unequal to humans on a moral level. This does not excuse cruelty, but it does mean animals are not morally equivalent to humans and do not possess the rights a human has. For example, killing a mouse is not the moral equivalent of committing homicide.

Benjamin Franklin describes his conversion to vegetarianism in chapter one of his autobiography, but then he describes why he (periodically) ceased vegetarianism in his later life:

...in my first voyage from Boston...our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food... But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, 'If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you.' So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

A 2011 study demonstrates that when people are confronted with the harm that their meat-eating brings to food animals, they view those animals as possessing fewer mental capacities compared to when they are not reminded. This is especially evident when people expect to eat meat in the near future. Such denial makes it less troublesome for people to eat animals. The research argues that meat eaters go to great lengths to overcome these inconsistencies between their beliefs and behaviour.