Food ethics: How do you choose what species are morally wrong to eat?

I was involved with filming at several Armour plants and various stockyards when I was seventeen, and yes, saw the process completely, when my dad did a film for Armour.

The pain with death I saw was fast, but it was pain.
Who are any of us kidding that it is not?


I'm not a vegetarian at this point, but I wouldn't begin to say what I saw was not acute if short time pain.

I guess the real question for me is, is it more pain than the animal would feel during a natural death, in which a hunter or predator attacked it?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I guess the real question for me is, is it more pain than the animal would feel during a natural death, in which a hunter or predator attacked it?

But in nature, most of the animals we are eating would never have died a natural death, because they wouldn't have been born in the first place.

Is that relevant, since they ARE here, and we have to decide whether to eat them or not?

dlowan wrote:

Is that relevant, since they ARE here, and we have to decide whether to eat them or not?

You're taking it as a given that they are here. But it is not a given. That's a decision too -- a decision of breeders, made with the expectation that we will eat them when the time comes. If this expectation was wrong -- because we had stopped eating meat, say -- fewer food animals would be born in the first place. Therefore we don't get to say: "Well, their life is painful, but so is life in nature." That's why it's relevant that we have the option of not bringing them into life in the first place.

In addition, I haven't seen anyone really address the point that eating meat is an entirely natural and Human thing to do.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

In addition, I haven't seen anyone really address the point that eating meat is an entirely natural and Human thing to do.

So was slavery, up to the time when our ancestors abolished it. Would you accept that as a moral argument for slavery?

One is a function of society, the other, biology; they are not comparable in terms of morality.

No, and I'm not claiming that he did. I'm only claiming that their utilitarian analysis is not the factor deciding why they in end up where they do because:

(1) Utilitarians and non-utilitarians end up in the same place if they implicitly assume the same facts.

(2) Two utilitarians will end up in different places if they implicitly assume different facts.

Rather, when these two conditions are met, the case is turning on the implied facts, not the ethical philosophy. Likewise for Kantians.

joefromchicago wrote:

Thomas wrote:

Okay -- but in this scenario, the case turns on the facts around the cannibalism, not on the person evaluating the facts being a utilitarian.

I don't understand your point. What I have posited is a rule utilitarian who judges a blanket rule against all cannibalism to be more utile than a rule that permits exceptions for eating willing victims. You may disagree with this particular utilitarian analysis, but it's certainly utilitarian.....

Isn't this a generally accepted legal principle? For example, if you're willing to sign a contract selling yourself into involuntary servitude, isn't the contract ab initio null and void, even if you have already collected the money?

Well, that's simply wrong. I have no idea why you'd say that. I imagine that a cannibal absolutist would not end up in the same place as a non-cannibal utilitarian even if they implicitly assume the same facts.

The biological function of our bodies wouldn't suffer the slightest inconvenience.

The differences between the scenarios is not relevant to the 'is' ≠ 'ought' point he was making and defining good on the basis of it being 'natural' is an example of the Naturalistic fallacy.

That we have always done so or that it is in our nature to do so is an inevitable contributing factor but doesn't necessarily mean that the activity is ethical.

It has not been my experience that Vegetarianism is consistent with top physical performance, not in the slightest.