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As a barrister, I seek justice for people and defend their rights. As a vegetarian, I like to think that I take a stand against injustice for those who happen not to have been born human and so are confined and killed for their flesh. World Week for the Abolition of Meat – from 23 to 29 January – is a week when we are asked to reflect on that suffering and try switching to vegetarian meals. Nothing could be more appropriate at a time of political, economic and environmental meltdown. Like it or not our values and priorities must be reappraised lest our planet becomes utterly enveloped by the market forces of greed and avarice under the guise of growth and progress. I stopped eating meat when I realised that meat production contributes to a society in which the value of a life is measured by profit margins alone and comfort is of no concern. Cows, chickens, pigs and other animals raised for food are victims of our indifference. Because they are not as familiar to us as the dogs and cats with whom we share our homes, their capacity to suffer is largely but irrationally ignored. Yet there is no longer any question about it: they are emotional beings like us. All experience joy and love and pain and fear, and all are highly social beings who form strong bonds with their friends and families and mourn when they lose a loved one. Yet raised on intensive agriculture's factory farms, pigs, chickens and other animals are denied almost everything that is natural and important to them. Most never see sunlight or breathe fresh air. Crowded together in their own waste – filthy conditions that cause extreme discomfort and stress – many of them are driven insane. When they are still very young, they are loaded onto lorries bound for the abattoir. They ride a conveyor belt to the person or machine with the knife and then are skinned and gutted. Pleading that we are entitled to snuff out a life in order to accommodate a fleeting taste is an argument that wouldn't stand a chance in court were the victim human. As any lawyer can attest, legality is, of course, no guarantee of morality. The law changes as public opinion or political motivations change, but ethics are not as arbitrary. Albert Schweitzer, who accomplished so much for both humans and animals in his lifetime, put it this way: "A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist …. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves one's sympathy … nor, beyond that, whether and to what degree it is capable of feeling". It is our decision whether to pay for vegetables, nuts, fruits, grains and legumes or to pay someone miles away to string cows, chickens and turkeys up by their legs and cut their throats and cut off pigs' teeth, tails and testicles without giving them as much as an Aspro. George Bernard Shaw warned that no matter how far distant the abattoir is, we are complicit if we eat animals' flesh. The choice seems obvious: vegetarian or barbarian? One day, it is likely that meat-eating will be relegated to the history books alongside other injustices. Until then, we can, as individuals, make the decision to go vegetarian, if for only a week.

Michael Mansfield : Abolishing meat is an ethical issue that requires everyone's attention - Commentators - Opinion - The Independent

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As a vegetarian, I like to think that I take a stand against injustice for those who happen not to have been born human and so are confined and killed for their flesh:

Paleolithic diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All experience joy and love and pain and fear, and all are highly social beings who form strong bonds with their friends and families and mourn when they lose a loved one. :

Anthropomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Behavioral modernity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When animals start burying their dead, we shall speak again. 'Intelligence' and social bonds are a continuum, sure but, here, he is over-egging the pudding.

"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist" :

Please demonstrate the existence of such compulsion. I do not believe it actually exists - outside of one's own specie. We may choose to extend our specie centrism to other 'living' entities (what about bacteria and plants? They're 'alive' too) but that's not to say it exists per se.

IMHO, you're on a far stronger footing when you argue that we need to switch/encourage switching to a more vegetarian diet due to resources constraints. And you can also pass legislation against intensive animal farming on the same basis that we do not let people torture their pets...

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As a vegetarian, I like to think that I take a stand against injustice for those who happen not to have been born human and so are confined and killed for their flesh: Paleolithic diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm sick of hearing this argument. So people in the stone age ate meat? They also ran around naked, crapped in the woods and died of an infected tooth aged 24 - should we do all of those things as well?

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All experience joy and love and pain and fear, and all are highly social beings who form strong bonds with their friends and families and mourn when they lose a loved one. : Anthropomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Behavioral modernity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plenty of animals do get depressed when their friends die, and it's an observable fact that they don't, if given the choice, want to spend their curtailed 6 month lifespans in filthy semi-darkness.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

I'm sick of hearing this argument. So people in the stone age ate meat? They also ran around naked, crapped in the woods and died of an infected tooth aged 24 - should we do all of those things as well?

No - We can pick and choose behaviours we preserve. But it explains the basis of people liking meat. And going against nature is usually a pretty difficult thing. It's not impossible but it's tough. I guess the guy would be happy paralleling racism - Preferring your own "race" (subgroup of humanity, really) is quite natural and had evolutionary advantages. However, with changing circumstances, we revalued that strategy and try to adopt a better one.

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Plenty of animals do get depressed when their friends die, and it's an observable fact that they don't, if given the choice, want to spend their curtailed 6 month lifespans in filthy semi-darkness.

As I said, social behaviours are a continuum and, on top, I don't think anyone said we shouldn't legislate intensive farming - except that the farming lobby is a lot louder and more powerful than mere citizens.

But I've seen TV investigations into the meat industry and I think this is a good way to put people squarely in front of the issues. You just have to drum them up/agitate about it a bit more than once a year kind of thing.

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No - We can pick and choose behaviours we preserve. But it explains the basis of people liking meat. And going against nature is usually a pretty difficult thing. It's not impossible but it's tough. I guess the guy would be happy paralleling racism - Preferring your own "race" (subgroup of humanity, really) is quite natural and had evolutionary advantages. However, with changing circumstances, we revalued that strategy and try to adopt a better one.

Yeah, I've made the racism comparison before (and premature ejaculation ). I'm not saying there's an easy solution. Hell, I treat myself to a steak once in a while and I think it's a pretty bad thing to do.

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As I said, social behaviours are a continuum and, on top, I don't think anyone said we shouldn't legislate intensive farming - except that the farming lobby is a lot louder and more powerful than mere citizens. But I've seen TV investigations into the meat industry and I think this is a good way to put people squarely in front of the issues. You just have to drum them up/agitate about it a bit more than once a year kind of thing.

I don't want to force anyone into doing anything. The free-range/organic section is right there in the supermarket. Sure, it costs more, so you'll have to eat less. It's up to each individual to decide whether a less tarnished conscience is worth a £1.50 surcharge.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Yeah, I've made the racism comparison before (and premature ejaculation ).

Yes, I remember that one... But, as Stephen Pinker, of evo psy/cognitive sciences fame, points out - saying something is natural/an evolutionary adaptation does not make it automatically morally right.

Indeed, you can point out that a lot of our morality is based on the idea that humans shouldn't behave "like animals".

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I don't want to force anyone into doing anything. The free-range/organic section is right there in the supermarket. Sure, it costs more, so you'll have to eat less. It's up to each individual to decide whether a less tarnished conscience is worth a £1.50 surcharge.

You don't have to force. You can "nudge". You could easily cut the subsidies to big farming and, with a bit more difficulty, try to redistribute them to free-range/organic farms so that the surcharge gets a lot smaller.

It doesn't change the fact that there might be a physical limit to how much switching we might do to responsible farming but it'd be a start...

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Yes, I remember that one... But, as Stephen Pinker, of evo psy/cognitive sciences fame, points out - saying something is natural/an evolutionary adaptation does not make it automatically morally right. Indeed, you can point out that a lot of our morality is based on the idea that humans shouldn't behave "like animals".

Well yes, that's my point.

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You don't have to force. You can "nudge". You could easily cut the subsidies to big farming and, with a bit more difficulty, try to redistribute them to free-range/organic farms so that the surcharge gets a lot smaller. It doesn't change the fact that there might be a physical limit to how much switching we might do to responsible farming but it'd be a start...

Personally I'd rather distribute my subsidies based on national interest, rather than nannyish moral precepts.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Well yes, that's my point.

And my counter-point is that, be that as it may, it pays to know what your nature is and why you're trying to depart from it.

I can make a cogent argument for why I'd rather not ejaculate precociously. I can make a cogent argument as to why racism is now a liability rather than an asset. I can make an argument against meat eating but I would like people like the OP to recognise, at least, that meat-eating is natural and thus enjoyable.

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Personally I'd rather distribute my subsidies based on national interest, rather than nannyish moral precepts.

But it might be in your national interest to have people fed correctly [actuarial calculations needed to evaluate correctly the savings due to good health and the costs of lengthen lifespans] and it is certainly in your national interest to have your food chains sustainable.

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If we made ourselves vegetarians, should we then seek to genetically modify all other carnivores so they became vegetarian?

Facetius, perhaps, one does not of course imply the other, but I'm very skeptical of any attempts to forcibly change "human nature" in the biological sense. Again the point is that we evolved this way; quite possibly, we could never have developed intelligence without the drive of hunting to propel it. That argument can be challenged, I admit, but either way you slice it, this is what we are. Humans not eating meat is just as weird as dogs and cats not eating meat.

I have no grudge against people who do it, and there are some people out there who seem to delight in taking exception to anyone who is vegetarian and mocking them - being PC, etc. I don't hold with that, but I think it's very unlikely that meat eating can or will be done away with; or if it can, only by a good manufactured substitute. Where meat is rare and expensive, it just becomes one of the privileges of the ruling class. Eating well is one of the reasons we want to be rich, and it pretty much revolves around eating meat.

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And my counter-point is that, be that as it may, it pays to know what your nature is and why you're trying to depart from it. I can make a cogent argument for why I'd rather not ejaculate precociously. I can make a cogent argument as to why racism is now a liability rather than an asset. I can make an argument against meat eating but I would like people like the OP to recognise, at least, that meat-eating is natural and thus enjoyable.

Well yeah, but haemorrhoïds are natural too. Death is natural. Sure, it's something that people enjoy doing, but the appeal to nature is just a load of old cobblers.

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But it might be in your national interest to have people fed correctly [actuarial calculations needed to evaluate correctly the savings due to good health and the costs of lengthen lifespans] and it is certainly in your national interest to have your food chains sustainable.

So do it for those reasons.

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Facetius, perhaps, one does not of course imply the other, but I'm very skeptical of any attempts to forcibly change "human nature" in the biological sense. Again the point is that we evolved this way; quite possibly, we could never have developed intelligence without the drive of hunting to propel it. That argument can be challenged, I admit, but either way you slice it, this is what we are. Humans not eating meat is just as weird as dogs and cats not eating meat.

Well we managed to ban drugs, rape, paedophilia, smoking at your desk and many another goody. Not entirely successfully, but we clearly thought it was worth doing. It really just depends on whatever the prevailing social attitudes at the time happen to be. In 100 years time we might be horrified by the idea of eating meat.

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