Daisy asked:

We're wondering if you can help us on our debate whether 'Eating meat is right'. We are For meat
and are wondering if you have any philosophical arguments that eating meat is right and eating meat
is not cruel.

============

Well,eatingmeat isn't really cruel. It is the method of killing which would be held to be cruel. It can
also be held to be cruel to keep poultry and animals in bad conditions and to fatten them up for
eating. When animals are not farmed they can become extinct, as in the case of fish. This can be
seen as an act of cruelty towards creatures who naturally feed on fish.

You might look at Roger Scruton's book Animal Rights and Wrongs.In this book, Scruton says (and I
must quote this as it is so funny):

""I find myself driven by my love of animals to favour eating them. Most of the animals which graze in
our fields are there because we eat them. Sheep and beef cattle are, in the conditions which prevail
in English pastures, well-fed, comfortable and protected, cared for when disease afflicts them, and,
after a quiet life among their natural companions, despatched in ways which human beings, if they
are rational, must surely envy. There is nothing immoral in this. On the contrary, it is one of the most
vivid triumphs of comfort over suffering in the entire animal world. It seems to me, therefore, that it is
not just permissible, but positively right, to eat these animals whose comforts depend up on our doing
so.""

This picture of English pastures and comfort doesn't complete the story. Do animals enjoy being
unnaturally herded into a lorry and carted off to the abattoir where we call their manner of death
"slaughter"? If Scruton loves animals that much you would think he could allow that we could keep
them for aesthetic reasons as a means of enhancing the countryside.

You should look at Richard Sorabji's paper "Thou Shalt Not Kill — Not Even Animals" at
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/topright/thoushalt.htm. After summarising different points of view, Sorabji
concludes that there are many moral considerations but no determinate answer.

I would argue that if animals are truly kept in conditions suitable for their natures and killed in a truly
humane way then there is no cruelty. Whether this is "right" when, we have alternatives to meat, will
depend on how necessary meat is to our health. If you are going to win your debate you will need to
armed with research on whether vegetarians are more sickly, have shorter life-spans and fail to
reproduce as much as meat-eaters. This must be set against an argument that it is our moral duty to
flourish and survive.

Rachel Browne

There is nothing wrong philosophically with eating meat. The only criterion is whether your digestion
can cope with it. So it ends up being a matter of personal alimentary hygiene. As for cannibalism,
there is of course an ethical argument against it. But in saying this, I have to be straight with you and
repeat my first sentence. People have been known to practise cannibalism. I don't know how they
justified it, but certainly not philosophically.

There is another side to this issue. Life eating life is the rule of life. Every living creature on earth
earns its keep by eating some other creature. Vegetarians often eat fish and assert that this is
somehow (ethically) different from eating beef. I don't get it. For that matter, if you happen to ever
have the misfortune of being stranded in a wild place where lions or polar bears roam, you'll be part of
the food chain, so beware. In short, the chemistry of life is infinitely recycled. Without this sort of
activity you and I would not be alive. You must surely be aware that our guts are compost heaps,
playing host to billions of bacteria. It is easy to forget, especially when you delve into philosophy, that
humans are animals to start with. Eating is a creature function. And eating meat is just recycling
biological matter. So except for the ethical dimension noted above, eating meat is a personal choice.

Jürgen Lawrenz

62