Ethics of Meat

Did you know that every year nine billion animals are relentlessly slaughtered for their meat in the United States (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)? Sadly, it doesn’t end there; the USDA’s statistics don’t account for the animals that are discarded, imported from outside the United States, or the many sea creatures that are also killed every year. If these other animals were factored in, the total figure is estimated to be around eighty billion animals killed annually in the name of human consumption (Animal Liberation Front). This massive commercial enterprise of butchering unwilling animals when there are other nutritionally adequate food sources available is unethical because it is inhumane, devastating to the environment, and unnecessary for human survival.

Most people are not aware of the dark side of meat production; consumers only handle the finished product and they never get blood on their hands—out of sight, out of mind. But the unfortunate truth is: all of those attractive cuts of meat that are perfectly packaged and presented under the fluorescent lights of grocery stores have a dark story behind them. The meat came from tormented animals that were only allowed to live a fraction of their natural life span before being forced into trucks and shipped off to their final destinations. The Terrestrial Animal Health Standards Commission 2010 report suggests most domestic animals have a highly sensitive sense of smell, and the smell of slaughterhouses can result in fear and negative responses (2). This claim is plausible, because when it’s time for the animals to unload from the truck, they will usually huddle together and resist disembarking. They will then be kicked and prodded by workers to be forced into compliance—only ad...

... middle of paper ...

...ty of people are perfectly capable of thriving without meat. In fact a meat-less diet can lead to better health. The claim that meat is a normal part of life doesn’t hold much validity when you take the fact that it’s a preference into consideration. One then may respond to this by saying that animals solely exist to become our food. As philosopher Peter Singer has noted, “The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is pre-requisite for having interests at all” (Ethical Vegetarianism 171). Since animals possess these capacities it follows that they also have interests. It is apparent that the interest of any animal is not to be harmed. Therefore one can’t say that an animal’s purpose in life is to be killed as that goes against its interest. This is a fallacy that is commonly used to justify the eating of meat and attempts to make the practice seem unselfish.