[dok]

Originally Posted by Gulp

If animals could talk, and you asked them, 'Hey would you rather not die?' They would say yes.

That they can't talk, and that they lack the cognitive capacity to understand that they are destined for the slaughter, is precisely my point.

Just to further inflame the subject - do you see any parallel/contrast between your view on animals and your view on the morality of late-term abortions?

Originally Posted by Gulp

A) Something tasty and easy to catch that died in pain,

The conditions in most slaughterhouses are pretty wretched, but there's no reason that the death of a cow need be more painful than any other death any living animal suffers.

Death is inevitable for all living things; life is not. If the cows could answer the question, "would you rather exist and be slaughtered, or not exist at all?", are you sure they would pick non-existence? I'm not.

Originally Posted by Gulp

causes you healthy issues,

Meat in moderation does not cause health issues. Heck, some traditional cultures (Mongol, Inuit, Masai, many others I'm sure) have had an almost purely carnivorous diet for centuries with little or no resultant health issues. It's the particular variant of industrially-made meat eaten in excess, in the modern diet, that causes health issues.

Originally Posted by Gulp

contributes to the destruction of your environment,

Again, a function of our peculiar ways of raising cattle. See my previous post about carbon taxes, waste taxes, etc. I would also suggest assessing much higher property taxes (i.e. fines) based on runoff contamination, which would encourage more natural ranching practices as well as no-till agriculture. Again, just provide the economic incentives to nudge people toward behaving in a more sustainable way.

Originally Posted by Gulp

and causes starving people on the other side of the world to starve a little bit more until they're no longer able to wage war for natural resources.

There's more than enough capacity to feed everyone in the world without reducing meat consumption. Therefore, starvation is a problem of resource allocation and transport, as opposed to simply a question of land use. As such, this could just as easily be used as an argument against airline travel, or ski resorts, or professional football, or ANYTHING that consumes a lot of resources and is not strictly necessary. Sure, using meat production consumes lots of resources, but so does many other things that people do just because they like to do them.

Originally Posted by Gulp

You know what the animals would say? They'd choose A. Because it's easier. Even if it killed them and their children, they'd choose A as long as they didn't see the bullet coming.

And if the choice is between their existence and their non-existence, who is to say they would be wrong to make that choice?

To take it even further - animals in the wild suffer what we would consider horrible deaths all the time. Does that make their lives not worth living?

Originally Posted by Gulp

There are ways to be a better meat eater. But as we all know, that's not how 99% of meat eaters behave. They want it as cheap as possible, even if it said, 'This is poison' on the wrapper. Even if it said, 'This contributes to global warming on the scale of automobiles.' Even if the wrapper said, 'For only 25 cents more you can get a healthy version of this burger,' people would still choose the cheaper burger.

So internalize the costs. Repeal the farm bill. Put in all the taxes/fines/usage fees I've discussed. Make the responsible, safe, healthy burger cost the same as the lousy industrial one - which, of course, will make the lousy one stop existing.

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If your argument is that I (if I want to act in a moral way) should do something now, in stead of waiting for the world to change, then my answer is that I do, by attempting to choose sustainably raised, healthy meat whenever it is available.

If your argument is that these policy changes will never happen, then my response is that a wide-scale outlaw of meat consumption isn't happening either.