Can vegans or vegetarians counter this argument?

Question

Both are ethical. You have to eat to survive. For those that say eating meat is unethical, they need to think of the nutrient cycle. Dead animals enrich the soil leading to produce. Animals eat the produce. Animals get eaten by humans. Humans die and enrich the soil. Plants use our nutrients to grow and so on. There is nothing unethical going on. Just life.

Answer 1

Why would you argue with a vegan about eating? Eat what you want, let them eat what they want.

Answer 2

Allow me to break down your question, including additional information, and assess it with a little simple logic.

Q. Can vegans or vegetarians counter this argument?
A. No. countering is unneccessary.

Q. Both are ethical.
A. Anything can be explained in an ethical light.

Q. You have to eat to survive.
A. True, but is my survival the most important thing? Would you die willingly if it meant saving the existence of Planet Earth?

Q. For those that say eating meat is unethical, they need to think of the nutrient cycle.
A. The nutrient cycle is a part of natural process.

Q. Dead animals enrich the soil leading to produce.
A. Actually more often than not dead animals are eaten to the bone by scavengers, and what is left degrades slower than cedarwood.

Q. Animals eat the produce.
A. Herbivorous animals, like us, eat the vegetable matter that grows from well fertilized ground.

Q. Animals get eaten by humans.
A. Normal? No. Billions of people are vegetarian. Natural? No. It's the most unhealthy way to live. Just look at the waistline of the USA.

Q. Humans die and enrich the soil.
A. Humans are almost always either:
1) burnt into white ash and put in an urn.
2) Embalmed and placed in a sealed, impenetrable casket and buried 6 feet down just in case a court rules they need to be exhumed for autopsy.

Q. Plants use our nutrients to grow and so on.
A. Plant roots go around human remains, not through them. We're not nutritionally valuable.

Q. There is nothing unethical going on. Just life.
A. Who said being ethical was important? I just want to stay a happy, healthy, nonhypocritical, compassionate vegan and it is my right to choose as such. That's life!

Answer 3

From my perspective, its unethical to support factory farming. It's one thing to hunt and kill your own meat, yet it's quite another thing to confine a chicken to a square-foot cage, cut off it's beak and pump it full of hormones before killing it. Even setting aside ethics, I just find it ugly and distasteful.

Furthermore, there are obviously more people in the world now than ever before. It takes a heck of a lot more cattle-land to produce the same nutritional value as land used for vegetables and grains.

And the political structure of the world does not allow even distribution of resources. Compare: Yugoslavia & Croatia, Somalia & Ethiopia, and The Untited States & The European Union.

From my perspective, it is unethical to waste resources so that I can have the luxury of a hamburger or Arby's, when there are starving people in the world.

But hey...it's just a personal choice. I don't go around trying to convert meat eaters, and you should not try to convert vegans.

Just eat your burger. :) And I will eat my tofu.

Answer 4

I'm more of a carnivore than a vegetarian, but one could certainly argue, just from an efficiency standpoint, how expensive it is to raise produce to feed animals to create meat. Current industrial meat production is pretty disgusting. It's not really a very effective way to deal with the world. But yeah, apologies to the vegans aside, I do love a good steak.

Just for fun, whether you like meat or not, you can check out Polyface Farms of Virginia for some info on sustainable farming/ranching - http://www.polyfacefarms.com/.

Answer 5

The unethical part of the argument that you neglected to mention is the fact that animals are slaughtered in some pretty brutal ways. (And before someone says that's not true, I've heard plenty of horror stories from a friend who used to work in a slaughterhouse. It's the reason why he quit after six months.)

People need to eat to survive, but it doesn't have to involve meat. There are plenty of protein sources that are a lot easier on the environment and use far less resources than fattening animals on grain.

Meat-eating is a choice, not a necessity.

Answer 6

Yes, it becomes unethical when you play with a life of a little animal just for the sake of momentary pleasure..sitting with your girl-friend at a Restaurant and ordering some spicy chicken wings and chops or preparing a meat dish to satisfy your craving tast-buds. IT'S JUST BECAUSE ANIMALS ARE MUTE AND HELPLESS that you just GRAB one of them and make a meal out of it. Doing that for mere survival is a different thing altogether. Nobody can question you for that if you are living in a remote region devoid of any other forms of food substances.

There are a good many substitutes to meat if you know how to look for them and desire to savour it in a harmless way. It's definitely unethical to choose from a cup of baked beans to a chicken breast to serve your purpose. You tell me which is more natural!

Answer 7

If meat eating is ethical than you must agree that slavery is ethical. The modern meat industry and the institution of slavery are strikingly similar. Differences being mainly in the species of the oppressed.

Essentially what you are saying is that animals don't have the right to not suffer because they are animals. Morally this distinction is irrelevant. Animals have the capacity to suffer just as any human does. The right to be free from suffering to any extent possible should be extended to any being that is capable of suffering, any being that is sentient. Morally, excluding animals from this right makes no more sense than excluding blacks, women, children, homosexuals, or any other repressed group.

Answer 8

The food chain argument is getting rather old. For one, humans aren't carnivores or even obligate omnivores. Meat is not required by us any more than it's required by a cow.
Second, the way most of our meat is farmed and produced is anything but natural.
Third, as humans who are supposedly 'civilized animals' who can think and reason, it is silly to justify eating meat because the lions and tigers do it.

Answer 9

ok, let's see if i have some facts straight.....
-something like 50% of the USA is considered obese
-texas has 5 of the top ten FATTEST cities in the US
-DETROIT (aka Fat-Town) keeps running (or should I say slowly trudging) necks-and-necks (and double chins) with Houston every year for FATTEST CITY
-child obesity is on the rise (really, no joke meant there) rapidly
-the medical costs associated with obesity-related diseases is out-of-this-world
-burger king makes a BK stacker 'quad', which is 4 burgers, 4 slices of cheese and EIGHT slices of bacon
-and you want to hide behind your size 96 pants and 'poke fun' at vegans and vegetarians
-i like to see an olympics with a vegan relay team against a morbidly-obese meat-eating team

Answer 10

Do a little research into "factory farming." Those animals lead a far different life than, say, a robin that dies of natural causes and flops into a wheat field. What you describe may have been "the natural way of things" a thousand, or even a hundred years ago. Today, the way that animals are raised and processed for food is anything but natural.

Answer 11

Eating meat, unethical? We vegetarians and vegans could debate that with you meat eaters until the end of the world.

Factory farming, unethical? Certainly. "Nutrient cycle" and "just life" my ***.