To believe that eating meat should be illegal?

[BySpoonyBlueScroller]

The environmental damage and animal cruelty outweighs the cultural or personal benefits. AIBU to think it’s time to outlaw meat production?

How will people live in places that are sub zero in temperature where vegetables do not grow ?

Jesus sheep are constantly trying to get themselves killed and that’s with a lot of looking after

This is so true. I am surrounded by fields of sheep and convinced that they all have suicidal tendencies. I check the fields for dead sheep every time I go past and I'm not even the farmer.

One of the few carnivore animals we eat….but, there’s the real concern of mercury poisoning if you eat too much

Is eating carnivore animals is generally just not great, They sit higher in the food chain so the risk of heavy metals and parasites is higher

Ruminants basically process the plants for us…into protein.

Well you certainly aren't going to get an argument from me here - I can't STAND dogs, and wish that dogs as pets wasn't a thing. Cats bother me less because they can't, as a rule, kill my children if they take it into their heads to do so; but I'd be perfectly happy not to see another one again.

And actually this just reinforces my point - in other cultures (also made up of humans who apparently 'know' what is objectively virtuous) eating dogs and cats is a thing. Mainly in the kind of cultures where people have historically not had the option to indulge in the kind of morality that required them to turn away from a viable source of nutrition: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-39577557#:~:text=While%20not%20widespread%2C%20the%20charity,region%20of%20Nagaland%20in%20India.

The practice is dying out nowadays as western culture permeates and pet-keeping becomes more of a thing. But that doesn't mean the people at the dog market all knew i their objectively moral human hearts that it was wrong but did it anyway. Dogs were meat to them, same as cows are to us. The attenuation of western morality that has declared cats and dogs as immoral to eat is entirely arbitrary. It could just as well have been that people keep beloved pet pigs and tucked into roast cat and apple sauce at the weekend. And a 19th century Hindu might have considered eating a cow barbaric, but encouraged his widowed mother to jump o her husband's funeral pyre as a moral good.

Other nations eat cats and dogs. It's a cultural thing.

Our country (assuming most here are UK) have had us believe cats are more worthy than cows, and that dogs are more worthy than pigs. Time to take the blinkers off.

Interesting, thank you. I still don't think that makes it ok, but interesting from an evolutionary perspective.

I understand this perspective but some people have such severe problems with allergies etc that eating meat is the only option. Try having a histamine intolerance and eating stuff like legumes and nuts set it off! Not to mention most fish and many vegetables. Sometimes it really is the only option. I wish it wasn't the case.

Also, some countries would struggle to grow and access vegetarian forms of protein.

Can we afford not to worry about this? I think climate change is the biggest threat facing us over the next few decades and going vegan would reduce our overall carbon emissions considerably. For example, even locally-produced beef has a far higher carbon footprint than bananas imported from another continent.

ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

There are very very few places or humans that eat carnivore animals. It will have been out of necessity and remained a cultural thing

I know you’d like to believe that the reason we don’t eat dogs is because of some strange moral thing, but it’s not, it’s practical and for survival,

No, what an utterly absurd idea.

Not just culturally (though I agree that's an enormous consideration), but also from an economic, employment, trade, land management point of view.

It would cause absolute chaos to ban it.

They won't live. But that's ok, apparently 🤷‍♀️

Great post. In agreement.

I also wish dogs as pets weren't a thing. Same for cats, but you are spot on about the risk of attack from dogs. We have two pitbulls, an alsation and a doberman within close proximity of our house. I am on constant alert because of them.

Similarly, if you fail to put down a sick and suffering dog, some will tell you you are immoral; if you suggest euthanasia for your your sick and suffering granny who is no longer in a position to express their wishes on the subject, there are those who would call you a murderer. And the other way round!

It is all arbitrary. There is no objective morality, unless it is something very vague about causing suffering being wrong, and that can be interpreted in any number of ways.

Watching the show

YANBU. I became vegetarian as soon as I found out that it was my friends, the animals, that my parents served for supper. I was around 5 and thought it was horrible to kill and eat animals and I still do. For those less sensitive I think that rational thinking ought to motivate people who care about the world we live in and the world we're leaving to our children :

The ecological footprint of the meat industry:
Heavy use of groundwater for feeding animals and deforestation.
Climate change; global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based food.

We have a dog that guards our hens from predators. You ok with that or should we let nature take its course and have the hens slaughtered by foxes and eagles?

That's the circle of life. I'd rather the foxes got to eat as nature intended, than you got to cage some chickens and take their eggs.

Well we could help ourselves by not inventing and using en masse NEW ways to fuck the planet, even before we start thinking about changing what we're doing now. AI is going to cripple the environment, and it is currently completely unregulated.

I don't think beef and bananas is a particularly useful comparison from a nutritional perspective. Choose a protein-rich crop that may go some way towards making up the nutritional deficit of giving up meat for a valid comparison.

You are certifiably mad 🤪

My hens aren’t caged, hence needing some protection

What would you do with the eggs that they lay everyday voluntarily?

I don’t even know why I’m replying to you now

I very much doubt that farm animals require significant levels of human input to remain healthy especially dairy cattle you just cant open the door and say “there you are girls out you go and shift for yourselves and have a great life” they would die within 48 hours. Who’s paying for their veterinary care if they become unwell, or at the very least humanly destroying them, We tried to get a severely injured deer humanly euthanised before it for hit by a car NO ONE wanted to help.
What would you do with the land that is unsuitable to grow crops on, grazing animals not only shape our landscape but have a significant and positive on the environment in many cases.

So why aren't their young drinking the milk? Sorry, not a farmer. Dairy cows definitely have their young taken from them - is it different with goats?

You even think foxes just eat what they need 😅

Mink. Another predator we have to deal with. Your lot have got a big part to play in why they are even wild in the uk!!!

I'd like to think that if people had the choice in the future of either

1. Eating delicious, healthy, nutritionally balanced food that is produced optimally re environmental and ethical impact, and doesn't involve killing animals

or 2. Eating dead bodies

Most people would choose no.1. It's probably quite far away in the future but no doubt in my mind the general direction of things.

You can milk alongside them feeding their young. It’s a farmer’s choice, not all dairy cows have their young taken away, most, but not all, you can do both

It is possible to be ethical, But like I said above, excessive regulation mean very low margins and it forces farmers to have to put efficiency first