Is Meat Immoral?

Welcome to the second installment of The Question at Carleton College. Our Question for this term is "Is Meat Immoral"? and we've asked our EthIC's associates to kick-off the discussion with their reflections on this question, which invites reflection on animal suffering, the nature of predation, food policy and health-related issues.

We encourage you to join the discussion with comments or questions of your own. There are various events happening this term, and early next term, related to The Question, and food ethics more generally. Be sure to check out the EthIC calendar and consider "liking" us on Facebook.

Max Bearak ('12)
About a year ago I was watching a documentary on primates narrated by Sir David Attenborough. He described how most primates were naturally vegetarian, but some scavenged meat if the opportunity arose, or if other food was particularly scarce. The film then switched to a clip of a gang of chimpanzees who he described as not needing to eat meat, but engaging in a hunt as a bonding ritual and as a show of power. In the context of evolution, I see this type of behaviour as a key juncture, if not the key juncture in the development of what we vaguely refer to as "human nature."

What I mean by that is that we take because we can. The question "Is meat immoral?" stretches beyond your choice of food – it touches on consumerism, materialism and excess in general. Do we need meat to survive? Clearly not, as millions of vegetarians and vegans can attest to. Do most Americans need half of the things in their houses to survive? No, again, and the slippery slope I'm sliding down here ends with each one of us living the utmost minimalistic life in which we only consume what we need. Barring minor examples, isn't that what the rest of the animal kingdom does, though? To me, meat isn't immoral to the Inuit family that, without meat, has little or nothing to subsist on. But I know that I eat copious amounts of bacon for instance, even though I know that the pigs I'm eating were processed in a manner that deeply offends my moral conscience. That's immoral -- so in other words I do immoral things and continue living my life without hesitation. 

Perhaps meat is just one of many – thousands probably – immoral indulgences that I partake in almost every day. But we're embedded inextricably in a society that is moving toward a moral consensus that assures us that consumerism and materialism and excess are human rights and the trademark of development. In my heart of hearts, all of that is immoral in some way. We're all hoarding, and sometimes it makes us happy, and many of us believe that happiness is what this life is all about. Three cheers to our utilitarian methods at reaching satisfaction! If it’s a bit unethical, or immoral, well who cares, we're manufacturing happiness, right? But when someone goes off and lives that minimalistic life and is just as happy if not happier – others will probably see that person as either poor, depressed, or even crazy. Prove me wrong, or keep strolling with me down the path of willful immorality. 

Hannah Kyle
I do not believe that meat is generally immoral.  To ask this question is a luxury; by that I mean that it is a luxury to be able to choose what food we eat.  Where I grew up, there are many people who cannot afford to eat what I would consider “moral meat,” meat that has been killed or prepared humanely.  We have enough food that we are able to choose what we eat, and not only what we eat, but to consider other factors like food production in the food we choose.  Because it is a privilege to be able to ask a question like this, I do not think it is immoral to eat meat; we live in a reality where many people are only able to survive by eating meat.

Henry Neuwirth
Almost all of the meat that I eat is immoral. Whether I'm at the supermarket, on a Sayles sofa, or at my kitchen table, I almost never conceptualize the animals I'm eating. Unquestionably, my inability to face reality enables a terrible process.  The animals I eat are usually factory farmed and raised under terrible conditions. The farms that raise them probably pay their workers almost nothing and create enormous pollution. Much of the meat I consume probably also travels long distances to get to me -- I'm sure the meat I eat in a given week is responsible for many tons of greenhouse gas emissions. I haven't taken any considerable steps towards understanding America's meat industry, but I do know that with every bite of chicken I have people and animals suffer.

So the meat I eat is immoral. Therefore, meat can be immoral. But the EthIC prompt really asks if all meat is immoral. Most of us think that if you are going to kill an animal it is good to eat it. The deer hunter that kills, and then uses, a deer is better than the deer hunter who kills for a thrill and then leaves the deer to die. And so, in a way, we are really asking if it is ever okay to kill an animal. Pretty much everyone has killed an animal at one point or another. Most of us eat meat. Even if we don't most of us will occasionally kill a mosquito. And even if we don't do that, we probably use a non-recyclable straw that ends up choking a fish somewhere. And even if we don't do that we've definitely been in a car or a plane that has indirectly contributed to the death of a polar bear, or another animal that has died from climate change. It is impossible to be a member of contemporary American society without killing animals. For those people that do care about animal's lives, some animal murders are more okay than others. It is usually considered better to kill an animal accidently than purposefully. A person on an airplane kills more ethically than the boy with the magnifying glass on the anthill. It is also usually considered better to take a small life than a big one. Killing an mosquito is not as bad as killing a lion. Our dependence on killing animals does not prove that eating meat is okay; just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean it's right. However, it does suggest that vilifying meat eating is beside the point. The true problem is not that we kill animals, but that we don't respect them. Instead of being scared to conceptualize the animals I eat, I should know where they came from (perhaps kill them myself) and think of them with love.

Leave a comment (less than 300 words please) to join the conversation (Carleton login required).^ Engaging in ethical reflection is its own reward. But we're sweetening the pot: we'll give a $20 gift certificate to the Carleton bookstore to one lucky commenter (based on a random drawing). So join in!

Links of Interest

Statistics on the number of animals slaughtered in the United States in 2000

Interview with philosopher Jeff McMahan on eating animals

Rethinking the Meat Guzzler 

May, 2011

The first installment of The Question has drawn to a close. Thank you to everyone who participated over the past few months. Our inaugural question, "How rich is too rich?" sparked an energetic discussion on this website, and it continued into a book club discussion of Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save (audio of that discussion is available  here). EthIC and the Philosophy Department sponsored a debate inspired by this discussion on the proposition "There is no so such thing as too rich." The debate was well-attended and very spirited -- look for clips from the video on this website in the near future!  If you would like a copy of the video of the full debate, please contact Daniel Groll.

As promised, one lucky participant in the on-line discussion was chosen at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to the Carleton Bookstore. The winner of the drawing for the gift certificate is Peter Berg!

We'll be back with a new question, and a new series of events related to it, next fall. In the meantime, we'll continue to update the EthIC Facebook Page with links to interesting ethical issues in the news, EthIC events and anything else that EthIC-related. So join us on Facebook!

January 2011

Last year, we replaced our TV. We didn’t get anything fancy – a smallish, flat screen TV. We didn’t need another TV. We already had one. But it was boxy and simply didn’t work in our living room. A reasonable purchase, right? Or does the fact that we had money to spend on a new TV mean that we have too much at our disposal? That we should have given that money to people that really needed it?

There are astonishing income disparities in the United States and between the United States and the world as a whole. According to Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, in 2007 the top decile of American earners made 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that's "higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the 'roaring' 1920s."* Most of us within the Carleton community probably do not think of ourselves as rich. When we think of rich people, we think of the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, LeBron James or Oprah Winfrey. And there’s no doubt that these people really are very rich. We are not like Gates, James or Winfrey. We are, however, people who upgrade their TVs to better suit their living rooms, or to be able to watch the NFL in HD.

Now take a moment to consider your income in relation to the rest of the world (or, if you don’t have an income yet, what you see yourself earning in 10 years). Suppose your gross annual income is $40 000 in your first job after college. According to this site, you will be amongst the richest 1% of people in the world and earn more than 36 times the median world income. Even if you gave 10% of your income to charity or other causes you deem worthy, you would still have earnings in the top 1.3% of the world, earning 33 times more than the median world income.

In light of these figures, doesn’t it make sense to say that we are indeed rich? And does it also suggest that we may have too much money if giving away 10% of our income barely affects our standing in the world? Do we have an obligation to give away some of our wealth? By some standards, we are not rich. But by others, we are very rich. And so we want to know:

How rich is too rich?

Leave a comment to join the conversation (Carleton login required).^ Engaging in ethical reflection is its own reward. But we're sweetening the pot: we'll give a $20 gift certificate to the Carleton bookstore to one lucky commenter (based on a random drawing). So join in!

*As reported in the Huffington Post (where you can also find Saez's original paper).

Other Links of Interest

"What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?" New York Times, 2006

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four

Listen to the EthIC reading group discussion on Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save

post by Daniel Groll