Not too long ago the New York Times asked its readers to write essays in no more than 600 words explaining why it’s ethical to eat meat. They wanted to hear how meat-eaters defend themselves against the overwhelming perception that a plant-based diet is best for ourselves and the planet.
This was probably one of the hardest blogs I’ve ever had to write as brevity is not my strong suit. There were a thousand other things I wanted to say. For example, I didn’t even discuss the health benefits of eating meat!
But 600 words is 600 words, so I did the best I could within those guidelines.
Let me know what you think!
Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat
Very few in the modern world grow their own food anymore. We’ve allowed the food industry to oversee food production for us. For decades this seemed like a good bargain. I don’t know about you, but I know few people who would trade their modern comforts for the manual labor of farm work.
But what we’re waking up to in recent decades is that this bargain has a cost. There is a growing awareness of the horrors of the industrial model that prioritizes profit over health, that takes more from the earth than it gives back. At the pinnacle of these horrors are the abuses of animals in factory farms. Anyone with a pulse can see this model is destructive and unethical.
This kind of meat production lends weight to the argument that it is unethical to eat meat.
The other common argument is that the very nature of killing animals for food is wrong and that we can survive without animal products.
I’d like to address both arguments by asking a question.
If the world’s supply of fossil fuels were to run out tomorrow, what would you eat?
For starters, you wouldn’t eat anything in a supermarket.
Supermarkets are the realm of industrialized food and at the core of this system are the fossil fuels that power the machinery to allow us to farm on a large scale and transport food long distances. We know fossil fuels are not sustainable.
Without fossil fuels, you would therefore eat what your local environment provided. For the majority of people on this planet, that would include meat. Plant-based diets are not natural to climates and landscapes that don’t support varied plant life. Just ask the Eskimos.
Furthermore, many animals are efficient converters of scrubby vegetation to a usable form of protein for humans. This has served countless cultures in areas of the globe without tillable soil. Sometimes I think we forget this in soil-rich America.
And the other point is that when you look at the issue of growing food sustainably, animals are absolutely necessary. For example, manure is nature’s fertilizer and promotes soil integrity. Fossil-fuel based fertilizers promote soil erosion. They have given us vast fields of corn, soybeans and wheat, much of which goes into the processed, nutrient-deficient, lifeless food that fills our supermarket shelves.
Joel Salatin says, “There’s no system in nature that does not have an animal component as a recycling agent. Doesn’t exist. Fruits and vegetables do best if there is some animal component with them - chickens or a side shed with rabbits. Manure is magic.”
Historically, this is why we don’t see any traditional cultures that ever voluntarily chose veganism. Animals have evolved with humans. Cows, chickens, sheep and pigs would not survive long in the wild. We provide them life and they give life to us. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
“Meat is murder” is the battle cry of many vegetarians. But I see more murder in the plastic wrapped, genetically-modified, chemical-sprayed tofu burger than I do in my local grass-fed burger. How many animals had to die for that soybean field to be planted? I could say the same in just about every plant-based food in supermarkets which destroys the diversity in ecosystems to grow crops unsustainably.
Nature thrives on diversity and that includes animals. We need to honor the cycles of life and death in our food. That means choosing foods that promote sustainability.
Eating meat from farms that promote sustainability promotes life in all forms, including ours. This is not only ethical, it is necessary.
Photo credit: Cow by JelleS on Flickr
Hi, my name is Craig Fear. And yes, that 's my real last name. Welcome to Fearless Eating, my blog about traditional foods where I dismantle common food myths and help you eat, well... fearlessly!
I'm also a certified Nutritional Therapist as well as a GAPS certified practitioner. My practice, Pioneer Valley Nutritional Therapy, is located in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Thought provoking and well said. A compelling argument.
Great, great essay, Craig! Cogent and intelligent overview of some of the big issues. Well done!
Great job! It is a hard subject to cover in 600 words. Think you got the main points through. Defrosting my grass fed rib steak for dinner now!
You make excellent points. I hope lots of people read this and spend time thinking about it. I know a lot of great farmers who have traded their modern comfort for the hard, manual labor of farm work. I buy at least 85-100% of my food from them.
You touched on many good points. I agree that we could not live without the animals we eat. God did provide them for our source of food. Great essay.
Too good to read. I believe god has made all of us so that we can be mutually benefitted. I liked the style and the flow of your writing.
Thanks everyone, for the nice comments. Sorry it took me awhile to get them posted. I was out of town for a bit so I’m just catching up on things!
You make a number of good points, but the fact remains that most Americans (and an increasing number of people in other parts of the world) eat vastly more meat than they need, mostly produced on factory farms that feed their animals with corn (which is inefficient compared to just growing things that humans eat on the same land, besides the problems with conventional monoculture). What you’ve described is an ideal, but until the rest of the world learns to follow it, I’m going to be a vegetarian just to try to counterbalance the inefficiency of modern meat production.
Just a thought….wouldn’t it be more impacting if rather than giving up meat due to the “modern meat production” you mentioned, that you instead switch your meat/dairy purchases over to a local, organic farm who is doing things the right way? I think that re-directing our money to those types of farms would send a bigger statement to those factory farms than simply not eating meat would. Anyone else?
Well said Melissa. Many vegetarians/vegans that i have spoken to say that they have switched to vegetarianism/veganism because they are against the way animals are treated in our industrial food system. I so agree that it would be far more productive to support a local, humane farmer instead of eliminating meat altogether. Their hearts may be in the right place but their health will suffer.
I totally agree Melissa. The more we buy from local and organic farmers the supply of the good stuff will grow and people will be rewarded for doing farming the best way!
Excellent job! For this, you deserve a steak
I will take you up on that one, Kaye.
Um, so… your essay seems to address why it’s ethical to eat meat in a system that is entirely unlike the meat industry in America right now. It’s fine as a hypothetical completely removed from most people’s everyday lives, but what do you think about the ethics of buying meat at the supermarket or a restaurant? Is that ethical, or are you just avoiding reality for the sake of a tidy argument?
Jonathan, the system to which I’m speaking is not a hypothetical. More and more people are tuning up to it and choosing to remove their money from industrialized food. The more people that awaken to this, the more change will come about.
I’m one of those farmers that raises their own animals to provide meat for the family. I have found that it is far easier to raise and fill the freezer with meat than any vegetable. After a few weeks being brought up in a brooder the chickens run free and eat the grass all summer. When they get big we butcher a few at a time. The last ones are huge, 10 lbs or more. Cattle are bigger, take much longer to raise, more land too. However you end up with 6-8 hundred lbs of meat, enough for a very long time. I still raise as many vegetables as I can but the veggies are much more labor intense. So when I consider my labor and how many more calories per acre I get from meat It makes makes the most sense for me to prioritize raising meat and supplement with veggies and fruit. I think if anyone really had to grow all their own food they would quickly find this to be a universal truth.
Wonderful perspective. I’m going to post this on my Facebook page. Thanks for sharing, Marcy.
Interesting perspective. However, how do you feed your cow? I assume that you buy grain for your cattle… but if you really had to grow your own food then the cow would eat most of your grain that you say takes so much work to produce.
You would have to grow a ton of wheat for that cow… far more than your family eats.
I guess the last option is if the cow only ate wild grasses, but my understanding is that the cows need the grain to gain all that weight.
How absurd. Cows eat grass. That’s what they’re designed to do. Their digestive systems do poorly on grains. There are many cows both in the US and abroad (Swiss cows!!) that eat only grass.
It’s called 100% grass-fed beef. We’ve been eating it exclusively for over 5 years. Rotational grazing practices are much kinder to the soil, water supply, and local wildlife than tilling the land to grow all the grains necessary to keep a vegetarian well-fed. If you are against factory-farmed animals (as I am) becoming a vegetarian isn’t the answer as it is VERY disruptive to wildlife to grow massive amounts of grains, tubers, fruits, and vegetables. Just take a drive through states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota, etc.
Also in places like Ireland and New Zealand practically all beef and dairy cattle are entirely grass-fed. Thus the butter from those countries has a rich yellow color and a very high vitamin content. Kerry Gold & Anchor butter are two brands widely available in the US. There are US brands that carry pasture butter as well.
BD, cows are fed grains in order to gain weight QUICKLY. It also makes them very sick, hence all the antibiotics and hormones in the mainstream supply. Traditionally, and currently on “grass-fed” ranches, cows eat grasses and some weeds, which are what they thrive on. They grow slower, but much healthier, without grains.
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Hi. First, try to understand my english and pardon my mistakes I am not mother tongue.
What you write is partially true, animals are good in converting the raw biomass in meat that we can eat. However if you look at the past society the amount of meat that people ate was really few. More, the number of animals were a much smaller fraction of the animals that we have today. The people were not vegan, but almost, the meat in the diet was a rare event. But the main problem of your reasoning for me is the following, you take an extreme. You take a system were people does not have the chance to decide. Esquimo/farmer without fuel/ancient society are intrinsically justified, they had no choice, they have to survive. So the main question, in my opinion, remain. Is, today, with the current conditions, justified to eat meat?
Hi Fabrizio,
Thanks for your input. Again, with only 600 words, there’s only so much I could expand upon! But yes, I still think, with today’s conditions, it’s even more vital that people eat meat that comes from pastured/wild/grass-fed sources. It is a part of our collective journey back to growing food in a way that can can sustain us. Animals are a necessary part of this. The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is an excellent resource for delving into this further.
As for your statement that the “amount of meat people ate was really few,” this is a frequently stated modern day myth. I would also encourage you to look into the research of Dr. Weston Price. He studied traditional cultures around the world in the 1930s and did not find this. In fact, he found the opposite.
Craig
Dear Craig,
Thank you for your reply. I want just to justify the statement that I did about the meat. I can only show you the date for my country (Italy), however I would assume that it could be applied also for other countries in Europe. For the US, I really don’t know.
The data for such statement can be found here( http://bressanini-lescienze.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2009/10/23/cosa-non-mangiavano-gli-italiani-una-volta/) , it contain two illuminating graphs. Unfortunately the source is in italian, but with a small effort and google translate I think that the main message can be understand from the graphs. If you look at the graphs in 1865 people were consuming 95 kilos of fruit and vegetables “pro capite” (first graph “Frutta e ortaggi”) when today they reach 375 kg (approx 4 times). For the meat (graph “Carni e pesce”) we have 10 kilos in 1865 “pro capite” and 140 kg today, an increase of 14 times! These data came from the ISTAT, the italian national institute of statistic. As I said, I would be a bit strange if in the other countries of Europe the conditions were really different from it.
Best
Fabrizio
Well said Mr. Fear. I like that you started the essay by pointing out the dependency of supermarkets on fossil fuels, a factor easily taken for granted by many Americans, including myself at times. It’s refreshing for me to read another ‘opinion’ on why eating meat is not a bad thing, as many of my friends have become vegeatarians. It can be difficult to discuss the legitimacy of that claim in a time where eating meat has become less politically correct by many people who consider themselves to be health conscious. Thank you.
Why, you’re welcome! Thanks for commenting.
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YES!!! Loved this Craig!
thanks Heather!
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Love the article! We have a ranch where we raise Registered Black Angus, mostly for the seedstock. They are raised on the rocky, inhospitable mountains in SC Arizona. They are pastured at times, for lack of feed in the mountains, but eat very little in the way of added supplements. We think we have the best beef around. We are careful of our animals and they are treated humanely. This cycle of their life, which we were given by a loving Father in Heaven, was given for our use and benefit. It is typically known that vegetarians are not some of the healthiest people around….meat/protein is a necessary part of the functions of our body. Again….loved the article!
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Answering the question “Is it ethical to eat meat?” involves considering ALL relevant ethical issues surrounding food production and consumption.
Craig only talked about the way we raise animals, human food security in different parts of the world, and the environmental impacts of raising animals as ethical factors to weigh up in this debate. He mentioned that he would have liked to discuss the ethics relating to human health as well. Although these are all valid and important considerations, there are indeed other crucial considerations that have been left out.
What about the sentience of animals and their right to avoid suffering?
I, for one, cannot point to even one morally relevant characteristic that differentiates human and non-human animals, and therefore, I can not find a single moral reason as to why the interests of a human individual should outweigh the interests of a non-human individual. To allow this discrimination is immoral, it is unethical.
Therefore, every moral arguement about human wellbeing in terms of food production must in give equal consideration to the wellbeing of the animals involved.
Simplified, I read part of the argument presented as follows:
Eating factory-farmed meat is unethical. However, eating meat from animals sustainably and humanely raised on local farms is an >ethical imperative< because the way that we currently produce non-meat food can be incredibly inefficient, environmentally destructive, unsustainable, etc.
This is a total cop out.
If meat food can be produced in such sustainable and ethical ways as you suggest, then non-meat food can be too.
I do appreciate the validity of one of your points, in that herbivores have evolved with incredibly specialised digestive systems that allow them to make use of the food energy stored in the environment in ways that humans cannot. As you say, these animals can then be killed and eaten for food, thus allowing humans to tap in to the energy food chain. Indeed, this is how humans have come to be able to colonise other-wise inhospitable parts of the world.
However, when engaging in discussion about ethics, one cannot use the reasoning that something is 'more ethical' than something else to justify that choice if indeed there is another (known and feasible) EVEN MORE ethical option.
The even more ethical option here lies in the fact that the ways and systems in which we grow non-meat food have a great deal of room for improvement. Vegetable, fruit, seed, nut and grain growing needs undergo a process of decentralisation (ideally, everyone should follow the “I eat, therefore I grow” principle) and centered on sustainable practices which conserve biological diversity, water, soil nutrients and organics, etc. What could be more beneficial to the local food movement than producing food yourself, recycling your own wastes in the process?
On this note, I seriously question the assumptions and claims you make regarding the contribution small-scale, organic and decentralised animal agriculture makes to sustainability as well. Soil is an important factor of sustainability and vital for food production, but it's formation and health does not rely on animal manure. Legumes fix nitrogen to the soil. Sustainable crop rotation practices replenish soil nutrients and organic matter. Plus, even an ideal society would produce a great deal of valuable organic matter that could be used as soil improver in place of animal manure, such as human manure (der!), dead/removed vegetation, food scraps, dead animals/people, etc, especially if combined with practices such as composting and worm farming. There is a great deal of good science describing the immense environmental destruction that goes hand in hand with raising herds of hard-hooved animals that so very inefficiently convert water, vegetation and nutrients into flesh.
On this note, you seem to be highly concerned with geographical sensitivity when it comes to plant based agriculture, but you don’t seem to acknowledge the environmental impacts of animal agriculture in unsuitable ecosystems. Soil compaction, soil erosion, water pollution, species extinction… And we are just scratching the surface!
But, I digress. Back to the main point I was trying to make. There are ethical ways of producing non-meat food, and there are ethical ways of raising animals. However, the difference comes with consumption. In itself, consuming non-sentient plant-based food is ethical. You require sustenance to survive and you are not causing the plant suffering. The same cannot be said for animals however, which are necessarily harmed in order to gain their meat, or who’s liberties must be breached to gain their products.
I look forward to your response.
Jaid, sorry it took me so long to respond but to be honest your response kinda exhausts me. It seems as though you’re looking for an argument more than a discussion. Please keep in mind that my post was a 600 WORD ESSAY. It would require a small book to address all your points.
I will simply say that throughout your lengthy response there seems to be a stigma that death is bad and that thus killing animals is therefore bad and “unethical.” This is the common argument among vegetarians but especially vegans. But what if death wasn’t such a bad thing? What if in fact it was necessary for Life? That is the essence of my point. Animals and plants (yes, plants too) can and should be raised sustainably. Doing so together insures the health of both. Death is necessary in order for both to survive and thrive. We have that model in example after example in different cultures and environments all over the world. Perhaps that is not quite the answer you’re looking for but I will just leave it at that.
Wonderful point Craig! “…what if death wasn’t such a bad thing? What if in fact it was necessary for Life? … Death is necessary in order for both to survive and thrive.”
So glad to have stumbled on to this great read (via Food Renegade)- Already a fan of yours on FB! Keep up the inspirational work!
Jaid - How is it more ethical to eat a plant? It is a living thing as well.
Two points: 1. How do you know plants don’t “suffer” when they are cut or ripped out of the ground and eaten/cooked? There is evidence they do feel, thus suffer.
2. All domesticated animals - bovine, swine, poultry, equine, dogs, cats, rabbits, gerbils, etc. - must serve a purpose in the circle of life or there is absolutely no reason for their existence. Obviously domesticated pets are here to stay. However, if your argument is we shouldn’t eat meat because it is unethical and the animals are harmed, there is absolutely no reason for any of those animals to exist. So, all domesticated animals who exist for food consumption become unnecessary and need to be gone from this earth. What is your plan for all the domesticated animals that now, because the entire world is vegan, have no purpose to exist? Extinction comes to mind.
So are animals wrong for eating other animals? Is it okay for a coyote to eat a rabbit, but not for a person to? You want one morally-relevant characteristic? We worry about how the animals we eat are raised, among other things. No other living thing has such contemplation for its meal.
Hi, Craig!
I’ve been reading some posts, and I must say I really like your blog and your writing style. It has something magnetic.
Even though I agree with what you state here, and with the ethical eating of meat and its benefits I strongly recommend you not to trust The Vegetarian Myth so much. It’s a flawed and biased book, written by someone with a lot of issues trying desperately to find a new sense for her life (I read it and I loved it, in case you wonder). It’s just not really scientific.
Anyway, I’m really glad to see that you’re spreading the word of traditional foods in such a magnetic way.
Well thanks Georgina. I appreciate the compliment. But I’m just curious, I didn’t even mention the Vegetarian Myth in the post. Where did I give you this impression? I mentioned it briefly in the comments and yes, it is a great book (albeit with odd and uncomfortable tangents) but I never emphasized it quite the way you’re suggesting. Anyway, it is a good resource for those wanting a more well rounded perspective to why animals are necessary to sustainable agriculture.
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Craig, this article makes me very happy. Thank you for the thoughtful, well-written 600 words you were limited to. I will re-post this, though every time I post something non-vegetarian it begins an exhausting discussion (aka vegan ranting) that is beginning to drive me crazy. So perhaps I’ll wait until I can REALLY discuss it through a blog post.
I look forward to reading more - now that I’ve found you. Cheers!!
You seem to be using notions of what is natural and in line with evolution to explain this position (who can argue with nature and evolution?) but the arguments rest on some inaccuracies.
“There’s no system in nature that does not have an animal component as a recycling agent” - except that agriculture, the system the author is talking about here, arose through human manipulation of existing natural resources. I is inaccurate to refer to agriculture in the same way as other ecosystems.
“Animals have evolved with humans. Cows, chickens, sheep and pigs would not survive long in the wild. We provide them life and they give life to us. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.” - because humans bred them specifically from their original species so they would no longer survive in the wild and would rely on us, that’s domestication, not something that just evolved randomly. We’re providing them a mutually beneficial life in the same way a pimp might provide one for a desperate child prostitute…
To the concern over ground animals killed for the soybean field? I would guess a lot less compared to the grass-fed cattle ranch of the same acreage when you include the cattle as well as the predators like wolves that these ranches attract, which ranchers are often permitted to kill as well.