Most noteworthy for me is the fact that more Americans think that porn (52%) and homosexuality (39%) are wrong than spanking children (23%) and being ultra wealthy (18%).
🤡 country
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/19/what-do-americans-consider-immoral/
That is a separate issue from just eating meat in general. We are completely capable of having ethical production of meat and other animal products.
The problem isn’t the consumption of meat but the needless waste encouraged by the capitalist system that necessitates the unethical overproduction of it.
I used to agree with you, but then I went to r/vegancirclejerk and heard the classic joke “We just barbecued up the family dog for Christmas dinner. He was well loved, he had a happy and healthy life. So it’s ethical to eat him.”
Now I think the only ethical way to enjoy meat is with consent. Like in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe.
The restaurant at the end of the universe has genetically engineered animals that want to be eaten. I don’t know if that is consent but it’s definitely unethical. Imagine genetically engineering woman to want to sleep with you. Creepy af.
The Dish of the Day is engineered not only to want to be eaten, but also to be intelligent enough to express informed, non-coerced consent. It can speak, it can understand the concept of mortality, it knows exactly how it will be cooked and which parts of its body will be used for which items on the menu. It has a complete understanding of the situation and is very happy to be eaten. If you don’t want to eat it, it will be disappointed. Nothing bad will happen to it if it does not agree to be eaten, it wants to be eaten of its own free will.
It’s an ideal ethical situation. The Dish of the Day hasn’t been coerced, abused, tricked, or taken advantage of. The only room for ethical objection is in the breeding process, but I’m inclined to trust that the breeding was more or less ethical, given the great ethics of the parts we actually see. That’s inductive reasoning, but it’s the best reasoning we have on that process.
Okay? And? I had rabbits and pigs as pets. We ate them when their time came. What’s different about it being a dog? Dogs are no more special than any other animal just because we have an arbitrary emotional attachment to them.
As long as the animal was given a good life and, when time came for slaughter, they were killed in an ethical manner then there is no moral or ethical issue.
Humans are omnivores. We eat other animals. It is no more unethical than if any animal eats another animal.
You’re right, dogs are no more special than other animals. Hearing that simile made My heart realise it’s wrong. For My head to realise it’s wrong, I had to accept that killing is usually very painful, and most humans, if given the power to kill for profit, will optimise the ethics out of the process.
I make exception for traditional Indigenous Australian hunting practices. Indigenous Australians have a social system to ensure the killing of animals is done ethically and humanely. You see, if you want to hunt an animal, you need to get permission from the person whose totem is that animal. That person considers that animal their siblings, their family. Their duty is to hold sacred knowledge about that animal and to monitor the populations. And they can’t eat their totem, because that’s cannibalism. That person has the authority to say when you can hunt their totem, and how many you can kill. They can’t profit from the killing because they can’t eat their totem. So the system has checks and balances to prevent corruption. I’m okay with meat eating within that system because it controls against the consequences.
But the white capitalist system has no controls, it just causes suffering. So I’m not okay with traditional European methods of husbandry and slaughter. I might reconsider after capitalism is overthrown.
So you agree then with my original point that the ethical question lies with the production of animal products and not with the consumption of animal products? Glad that’s settled then.
Yeah, I judge people for eating meat because it’s symbolic of support for factory farming. It’s the same as how I judge people for reading Mein Kampf (outside of an academic context), even if they pirated it.
That is an incredibly shortsighted view to blame the consumer instead of the producer. It’s incredibly lacking in class consciousness. It is in no way “symbolic support” of factory farming. People need to eat and are constrained by the society they live in. Do not blame the victims of society for needing to participate within it in order to survive. Focus your blame onto those actually doing the harm.
Reading Mein Kampf doesn’t mean you support what is said by it. It is actually beneficial to have read it so you can better understand the argument of your opposition to dismantle it when arguing against them. Again, your take on this is shortsighted and arbitrarily judgmental.
Edit: people downvoting have no understanding of the concept “no ethical consumption under capitalism”.
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” is not an excuse to engage in avoidable, harmful consumption.
Wasn’t that pretty much the exact logic used by a bunch of slaveowners? “I oppose the institution of slavery, but it’s a systemic problem. Sure, I could free my own slaves, but that wouldn’t really fix anything.” Surely there’s a line to be drawn somewhere.
Also, “blaming the consumer rather than the producer” seems like a very backwards way of applying class consciousness. The consumer generates the demand. If a farmer, the worker who produces the meat, quits his job, the demand will still exist and will likely be filled by someone else. But if the consumer quits demanding it, then it’ll cause production to be reduced.
Of course, there are larger systemic solutions that we ought to look at, but that’s not either or, any more than it would be either or to criticize a slaveowner for not freeing their slaves while at the same time calling for systemic change.
That’s a disingenuous comparison that doesn’t take into account class based analysis of the two situations. Consumers, who are of the working class, do not have direct control in how their meat was produced. They can only indirectly make choices based on what is available and accessible to their circumstances. They don’t own the farm and ethically sourced meat is usually prohibitively expensive to many consumers. The slave owner is an OWNER, with direct control over the labor practices, who directly makes the choice to employ slavery or not. The slave owner is the one who controls the production so the responsibility lies with them.
Don’t buy into the myth of supply-demand. If you quit buying the meat, the capitalists will still sell to those who support the harmful treatment and just have the difference subsidized like they currently do. Supply-demand logic puts the responsibility on the consumer; it is propaganda by capitalist owners to shirk off their responsibilities for producing ethically and sustainably. Just because a demand exists doesn’t necessitate that others labor to fill that demand. Only because we exist in capitalism that incentivizes the pursuit of profit above all else does it justify that kind of logic because a demand unfulfilled is one that hasn’t been exploited for profit. If workers owned the farms, and decided to only produce ethically and sustainably, then people who demand more than what is available can go shove it or start hunting for themselves.
I’m vegan. I can’t eliminate My unethical consumption, but I can reduce it. I can make better choices. They might not be good choices, but they’re better than just participating in the system.
I’m also making an effort to use Indigenous bush medicine in consultation with the local Indigenous clans. I’ve consulted with the totem holder about the plant I use for My allergies. That way, I’m not engaging with capitalism at all to treat My allergies. I’m using the traditional communist economy. Medicine literally grows out of the ground for free all over the place, and all I need to use it is knowledge and respect. Knowledge and respect are free!
And how you personally choose to reduce it is your prerogative. Regardless, you cannot eliminate it entirely so you should not be arbitrarily judged for the ways you do or do not limit yourself.
As well, it is great that you have the opportunities to choose alternatives but you also need to realize not everyone has those opportunities or the disposition to utilize them so they also should not be judged for that. Knowledge is free but the education to know how to appropriately and effectively use that knowledge without inadvertently harming yourself is usually not free barring extenuating circumstances, such as yourself having a local indigenous clan willing to teach you. Medicine grows out the ground but so do poisons and many medicines are also poisonous if prepared improperly.
If people have the opportunity and ability to utilize alternative, ethical sources then, by all means, they should do so but I’m not going to sit and arbitrarily make judgement about someone outright if they don’t. I don’t know them, their capabilities or circumstances.
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While you are right, it is still not possible to produce meat ethically in the quantities we need it.
We absolutely can. Ethical and sustainable practices are possible. Once workers control production, those who do the labor can choose to stop laboring if we start to become unsustainable.
People can’t consume what isn’t produced. People will make due with what is available thanks to our innate bias towards convenience. Those who desire it as to produce it themselves will already be doing so and they will only produce so much. Without the need for profit driving them, they will have no incentive to employ unethical nor unsustainable methods and do needless labor just to fulfill people’s gluttony. In a leftist society, they will produce it as they are most comfortable in doing so (from each of their ability) and the product will be equitably distributed through different systems of collective ownership as dictated by that community (to each of their need)
If they run out of meat, too bad. Laborers will tell people to wait till we can get more in an ethical and sustainable way or get to hunting it yourself, because they collectively control the land and resources from which it is produced and won’t be quick to agree to let a few individuals force them to be wasteful with those resources or labor on their behalf against their principles without good reason. The rare few who do decide to go hunt it would be statistically negligible.
If every store ran out of pork due to a mass shortage, most people wouldn’t start going try to hunt boar to eat pork. They would just get something else and deal that there is a shortage.
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What’s the confusion? We can produce ethically and sustainably. This is a fact.
People cannot consume what isn’t produced. This is also a separate fact.
Put them together with an understanding of logic, as explained, and you’ll see that if we control the production then we control the rate of consumption.
So you are saying we cant produce ethically with the rate of current consumption?
No. You’re flipping the logic to suggest that consumption controls the rate of production. You didn’t understand what I said at all or didn’t read it.
I’m saying that with the current system which dictates the incentives behind production is causing us to over produce through unethical and unsustainable methods and people are simply consuming what is available, because people need to eat and they can only eat what has been produced. That is a physical, material limit of life. If society was restructured to where the workers owned the means of production and the profit incentive was done away with then the rate of consumption would logically have to be lower as a result, because people physically cannot consume what isn’t produced.