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?

"look after"? 😂You only "look after" them until the time comes to slaughter them, at which point, I doubt they are feeling very looked after.

I ate no meat whatsoever for 22 years. I turned from that diet because of the harm that a high-carbohydrate diet (fats come from animal products) did to my health.

I consider that I've done my bit for the planet. And you know what you can do with your inflammatory thread title.

Before we ban meat eating we need to move to a 1 child policy and allow euthanasia.

The problem is there are far too many people. How the heck do you plan to feed everyone on vegetarian diet OP?

Your environment would be fucked by the amount of agricultural land we’d need.

In 100 years the population has quadrupled to 8 billion, that’s the bigger problem.

Far far far too many people .

You’d have to take my steak from my cold, dead, hands quite frankly.

Whilst we’ve still got whole continents of people eating 3 meals a day with plastic plates and cutlery there are far far far bigger fish to fry in the name of saving the environment.

Farmers will do something else, naturally.

Surely carriage drivers were put out of business when the car became mass produced.

They won't know, or care, that their species will become extinct. What a bizarre argument. I'd rather be extinct than farmed and slaughtered.

Your last paragraph can basically be summed up as humans are becoming more and more disassociated from the life we are meant to be living. We should not be living in cities, plugged into screens consuming endless piles of garbage seeds. This is so far removed from our natural state.

I think the think you’re missing is that most people do not think it is wrong to eat animals. We just don’t agree with you, you don’t have some sort of absolute moral authority .

Farm animals do not have higher cognitive functions. They do not have human feelings, some people just choose to anthropomorphise them. I am perfectly happy to kill and eat animals, I have no ethical problem with it at all. It is healthier to eat some animal protein, many studies have shown that protein quality is more important than straight quantity. And environmentally speaking there are many things that are far worse. So as far as I’m concerned absolutely no justification for any form of ban.

Most cultures where vegetarianism is practised widely are 'lacto-vegetarian' - i.e. they include dairy products (milk, butter, cheese, cream). This is a good way of making up enough fats and proteins that you are missing without meat.

But ethically it makes no sense to me, as I think it'd far less cruel to kill an animal outright than to systematically impregnate a mammal, then separate it from its young and steal its milk. If we are saying that animals have feelings and thus should have rights, that's cruel and unusual torture to my mind. I say this as someone who eats both meat and dairy, but found myself questioning the ethics of the latter while glamping on a (very small, family run, apparently 'ethical') dairy farm and seeing the baby calves suckling on each other for comfort in the absence of their mothers, and seeing a mother cow literally bellowing at us as she was led to the milking barn as we were standing next to the calves' pen - it was so obviously protective and what a mother would do, I identified with it and haven't felt quite right about dairy since.

I don't understand vegetarians from an ethical POV - how can you be not on board with killing an animal (troubles then over) but fine with mothers and babies being systematically separated virtually at birth and made to go through this over and over again for our benefit? Vegans at least make sense ethically, except on the matter of eggs - an unfertilised egg is basically a waste product for a chicken, so what harm in eating it?

I also think that there is dissonance with being an animal lover and thinking eating animals is immoral - are only humans obliged to morality? And if so why? Is it because we are actually different to other animals in terms of our intellect and feelings - which somewhat undermines the whole argument that animals are the same as us and therefore shouldn't be killed and eaten? Nature includes carnivores and food chains - yes our development of farming has put us outside of that, but surely there is a way we could continue to participate in those cycles, if we accept them as legitimate in other animals?

Just because some people are fine on a plant based diet, doesn’t mean everyone is. I’d be very unwell if I couldn’t eat meat products. I tried it.

I’ll stop eating meat when people stop flying abroad for holidays.

Hmmm. I'm pescatarian and actually like cooking from scratch but you can't get enough protein from cereal. Nobody in my household likes legumes (actually I like those but my kids don't), tofu or seitan (yuck). We would struggle without eggs, cheese and fish (I feel worse about the environmental impact of dairy tbh because I really don't like the taste of any of the 'milk' substitutes). I've done veganuary a couple of times and found it extremely challenging, especially if you don't like the 'meat alternatives' - and looking at the ingredients massively put me off all of those.

We are not herbivores, our ancestors ate meat. Meat is the most nutritious food on the planet. You are welcome to eat what you like but don't force that on others.
The legal system becomes unethical if things like eating meat are made illegal.

I'd bump that to two kids, because I do think it's nice to have a sibling, but yeah, the rest I agree with.

I’d happily support a rationing system that reduced everyone’s consumption of meat equally… because the issue isn’t rich vs poor, the issue is overconsumption of cheap meat. There are environmental health considerations, the declining health of our population driven by mass produced food generally and the unnecessary suffering of livestock.

Don’t conflate the issues!

But what about guide dogs? Not all puppies in a litter can be successfully trained to be a guide dog, so they just become someone’s pet. But if people were banned from having pets, they would have to be PTS. And if there are no vets trained to do this, who would do that job?

And obviously, the trained guide dogs would need to be fed, so how would that work?

Should we also ban all cars, holidays abroad, everything that has been made by people who don't receive a proper wage (including the phone you're using), all new clothes etc etc

There is so much that is damaging the environment but when people want things banned they only want stuff banned that won't inconvenience them or make their life worse,

I think we should all do our best. I'm great at reusing stuff. So much of what we use is second hand. I'm also great at reducing food waste, about 80% of what we eat is from too good to go. I could easily say 'all new clothes apart from underwear should be banned' and it wouldn't inconvenience me too much at all. Doesn't mean it's right for all.

Define "higher cognitive function"? Where's the bar?

Don't you think a cow would prefer to live?

Exactly this. I’m not equal to a chicken.

Do you realise you sound like a psychopath? Substitute pig for cat or dog and then read back your post. Vile.

I think if we ban meat for environmental reasons then we should also consider stopping the transportation of food for any great distance too.

All vegans and vegetarians should eat locally sourced food. Let's give all humans a radius of say 500 miles?

This will cut out the environmental considerations of all the fuel for cargo and all the energy to refrigerate.

No it would be overrun with dead animals though during the transition period. It will be like lockdown when the rich were still getting botox and fillers , underground restaurants will be serving meat to the rich - and because there are no farm animals it will be peoples pets so Tiddles and chips.

Sterilse everyone from birth. Problem solved. 😄

Well I guess they'd stop breeding them and those that are alive currently would not be killed for meat.

What else do you think should be "illegal", OP?

Assuming you are genuine.