Should We Eat Animals

Q: Should we eat animals? Why or why not?

Yes or no. Yes and no – why?

Yes – animals have provided a source of food for humans and have been since the beginning of time. Ancestors ate animals, why should or shouldn’t we?

No – animals have feelings, can suffer and feel pain. (Halal meat, human way of killing, but then the act of killing is not humane itself?) Many ancestral groups hunting strategy caused mass killing of populations with many unnecessary deaths of animals which was unethical to begin with and also led to mass extinction in some species.

According to Singer, people eat meat because their desire to do so “overpowers their reasoning capacities and empathy for other sentient beings.” He added that “it’s a common phenomenon.”

From an early age, humans “focus their love for animals on only some animals, the ones we do not eat.” – that is called carnism – Dr. Melanie Joy

Dr. Melanie Joy – “carnism is the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals.”

1. Speciesism – unjustified discrimination against other animals on the basis of their species

‘Speciesism‘ is the idea that being human is a good enough reason for human animals to have greater moral rights than non-human animals. a prejudice or bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.

· Rejecting speciesism also means taking an objective look at our personal choices and changing the ones that harm or cause suffering to animals

· Why do humans being have greater rights over animals?

Singer believes that the consequence of an action determined whether or not it’s moral. Grounded in this discipline, Singer has argued, among other things, that: Failing to donate excess wealth to those in need is morally equivalent to walking past a fallen child in a pond and allowing them to drown

2. Moral relevance of sentience – the capability to feel pain and pleasure, the mark of having interests.

Peter Singer (1990, 1979 [1993]), suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Any being that has an interest in not suffering deserves to have that interest taken into account. And a non-human who acts to avoid pain can be thought to have just such an interest.

When you pity a suffering animal, it is because you are perceiving a reason. An animal’s cries express pain, and they mean that there is a reason, a reason to change its conditions. And you can no more hear the cries of an animal as mere noise than you can the words of a person.

· Does that define animals as sentence beings?

· Would those interests of animals be considered equal to us?

3. Principle of equality – the interests of all individuals are if equal value, no matter who they are.

principle of equality requires that we give equal consideration to the interests of all sentient creatures. Many of our current practices are speciesist – they give greater weight to the interests – to the pain and pleasure – of members of our own species.

Animal rights teach us that certain things are wrong as a matter of principle, that there are some things that it is morally wrong to do to animals. Human beings must not do those things, no matter what the cost to humanity of not doing them. Human beings must not do those things, even if they do them in a humane way.

Animals don’t need rights to be protected.

Human beings accept that certain things are morally wrong and should not be done – regardless of whether the victim has any rights or not. Causing pain and suffering is morally wrong, whether the victim is a human animal or a non-human animal.

· Peter felt that others on this topic were merely defending human’s right of doing what they please to animals can not actually arguing to fact of which outweighs more. The pain of the animals or the pleasure of humans consumption?

· Does the interests of eating meat outweigh the animals interest for avoiding pain?

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

The evidence of a link between cruelty to animals and violence toward humans is compelling. In fact, people who abuse animals are five times more likely to commit violent crime. Animal abuse, like many other forms of abuse, is about power and control over a helpless victim.

· If you don’t think killing a living animal is morally wrong, why is a human any different?

· What will or won’t stop you from hurting humans if we can’t sympathise with animals?

Singer told LIVEKINDLY, “If it is done in an appropriate way, the fact that the animals’ many people eat are kept in cruel ways can be discussed very early, say at three or four.”

Singer — an Australian moral philosopher and professor of bioethics — believes students should start learning about the reality of the meat industry from an early age. He suggested that even kindergarteners could start learning about the ethics surrounding killing animals for food.

“Because carnism is invisible, people rarely realize that eating animals is a choice, rather than a given. In meat-eating cultures around the world, people typically don’t think about why they eat certain animals but not others, or why they eat any animals at all,”

“But when eating animals is not a necessity, which is the case for many people in the world today, then it is a choice — and choices always stem from beliefs.”

Through knowledge, there is power. The more information children — and indeed adults — have about our food system and how it works, the more capable they are of challenging it. They can begin to make changes in their personal lives that positively impact the planet and our fellow living beings.

“Carnistic defenses are both powerful and fragile. They have a powerful impact on us when we are unaware of them, but they lose much of their power when they are made visible. So when we recognize carnistic defenses, we are able to make food choices that reflect what we authentically think and feel, rather than what we have been taught to think and feel.”

Pls keep all references and website sources.