Vegetarianism is a dietary preference. Veganism is a moral philosophy. They don’t have anything to do with each other.
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I generally agree with you, however your argument does add some subjectivity to the maybe and no sections. I’d add that while not every situation can accommodate a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, in 2026 the vast majority of people have the capability to change to a non-meat diet without any detriment to their health or lifestyle besides social ostracism of unaccepting peers depending on where they live.
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Morals are internal and are often informed by one’s culture, upbringing, and lived experience. There is a wide array of answers here and that’s not surprising.
For me I do consider vegetarianism to be a more moral option, I am not a vegetarian though. I think that Americans eat more meat than they need to and men in particular are targeted to over consume meat to the detriment of their health. With these things in mind I do try to eat less meat and go through phases when I am more successful.
After taking a college course about the meat industry, my partner decided not to purchase meat, but still does eat it.
No, if you are Vegan. Yes, if you eat animal products. The question is, do you care?
You are what you eat. Cows eat grass. Cows are machines that convert grass into more cows. Cows are essentially converted grass. Thus, if it’s ok to eat grass, it’s ok to eat cows. Checkmate.
A vegetarian diet isn’t much more ethical than an omnivore diet, anyway. Veganism has a much better argument.
Not sure I’m getting your point, but meat tastes better than lettuce.
People seem to focus on the ills of the dairy industry when talking about vegetarians, but the egg industry is particularly egregious.
Eggregious*
If ethical = animal welfare, perhaps.
But when factoring in e.g. water consumption and CO2e per unit of food consumed, I would argue the average vegetarian diet to be significantly more ethical compared with the average omnivorous diet.
Obviously the type of animals involved, the way they are treated and killed, and religious views add more complexity to this case.
edit: the essence of my point is that this isn’t a black and white matter.
For water consumption and CO2, avoid beef, milk and cheese. Chicken and eggs are no issue, they cause less harm in that regard than many plant products (like almonds).
I think that’s a flawed argument. Cow milk production requires that cows get pregnant once a year, and the calves can’t all become milk cows, too - thus, cow milk production cannot exist without cow meat production. And IIRC milk products still have a worse environmental impact than chicken meat.
TBH I’m not sure about the environmental impact of eggs vs meat. But animal welfare is generally the main reason why people keep to vegetarian or vegan diets, and chicken farming is not great in terms of animal welfare.
The bottom line is: 1 cow birth per year (or let’s call it cow deaths, because that’s what is most relevant here) yields around 10.000L of milk. Out of which around 1000kg of cheese can be produced, plus of course the meat of that calf.
Does that make it ethical? I don’t think so. But I would say around 1.5-2x less unethical compared to eating meat, which is significant.
I thought you were talking about environmental impact? Both cow milk and cow meat have a worse environmental footprint than chicken meat.
My point is: ethics should not be confused with a single dimension of ethics. Whether something I’d ethical, depends on your beliefs.
Simultaneously, if animal welfare is all we optimize for, vegetarianism is a step forward. And indeed, so is pollotarianism when optimizing for just environmental impact. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Whether something is moral or ethical doesn’t depend on the commercial benefit you can derive from it! What the actual fuck!!
Not OP, but I think the argument is more about nutritional benefit than commercial benefit.
Yes, thank you for clarifying this.
Not sure why anyone would assume monetary/commercial benefit here.
Do you think dairy farmers eat their 100lbs wheels of cheese? It’s the same thing.
In either case, you’re talking about harm reduction when it is so trivial to eliminate harm. It is in fact EASIER. But your attachment to the fruits of abuse won’t let you see it that way, and you’re looking for ways to make your abuse more emotionally palatable.
Treating a vulnerable individual as a means instead of as an end is fundamentally wrong. No amount of benefit to you short of saving your life can make it morally acceptable. In a famine we have to make hard choices and sometimes we have to sacrifice others. That’s not the situation right now. We grow more food each year than humanity could eat in two years without harvesting any vulnerable individuals.
I read a book called “change of heart” by a vegan animal activist, which was all about research into what actually worked in terms of convincing people to reduce animal suffering. For him, it would be ideal if we reduced animal suffering to zero. But even encouraging someone to eat less meat (e.g. Meatless Mondays) reduced animal suffering, and was a win in his book. I kind of agree with that.
The way I see it is similar. If everyone stopped eating animal products today like turning off a faucet, literal millennia of selective breeding guarantees there will be animal suffering. A better option is to reduce overall consumption while also working towards reversing the changes we’ve made to the animals to turn them into products. At this time, dairy cows overproduce milk making milking a requirement for the animals health and safety. Poultry is a whole other discussion that isn’t quite as environmentally problematic but way more ethically problematic that requires a whole extra level of discussion towards improvement
Depends on your morals.
No, quite the opposite. If people didn’t eat meat then people wouldn’t herd cattle, so most cows wouldn’t ever exist. What is worse, living and then dying, or not living at all? We’re doing the animals a favour by raising them, feeding them, caring for them. A favour which they repay by allowing us to eat them. Anything else would be morally wrong. Now excuse me, my steak is ready.
To add on to that, most modern livestock live absolutely miserable lives.
I was going to add a separate comment, but in the interests of brevity, I think I’ll just put it here:
I find that in order to answer questions like OP’s, it’s helpful to remember who we are and how we lived for the ~2.5Myrs total of humanity’s (i.e. genus Homo) existence. So in terms of our diet, we’ve been opportunistic omnivores (heavy on plants) for the vast majority of that time, much like our fellow apes. It’s a completely sustainable way of living, and our bodies are perfectly engineered for that.
At the other end of the spectrum would be a pure carnivore diet, which science studies consistently find to cause increased cardiovascular disease and cancer rates. On top of all the enormous waste, expenditure, and utter cruelty towards livestock.
Point is-- if you consider all that, I think you can find some pretty decisive answers about the “morality” of one’s diet.
At the other end of the spectrum would be a pure carnivore diet, which science studies consistently find to cause increased cardiovascular disease and cancer rates.
You will find there have been no studies on the pure-carnivore (zero carb) diet wrt cvd or oncogenic effects.
There have been observational epidemiology on high carb omnivores (75% plant) which people like to extrapolate around and make causal statements such as ‘caused increased… rates’ which the data cannot support.
pure-carnivore (zero carb) diet
Right, I got a little carried away with the ‘pure’ angle, but I do recall seeing many abstracts / summaries of studies for quite a few years that found that diets heavy on meat indeed seem to correlate to increased cancer & CVD incidents.
Shouldn’t be too surprising based on studies of the GI systems of numerous herbivores vs. numerous Carnivorans, either. Extra-long GI vs. very short one depending on diet. Ours certainly seems to be a middle-ground, omnivore-type GI. AFAIK only rarely do we find from archeology & anthropology evidence that humans ate very-high meat diets, such as Innuit peoples for example.
Right, I got a little carried away with the ‘pure’ angle,
Fair enough the moment takes us all sometimes.
but I do recall seeing many abstracts / summaries of studies for quite a few years that found that diets heavy on meat indeed seem to correlate to increased cancer & CVD incidents.
Not quite - these are FFQs applied to the general populations so protein is really around 15%. There is considerable debate in the literature if these findings are clinically meaningful.
Fair enough the moment takes us all sometimes.
Not just the moment, but the motivation to get the core of a point across to a casual audience with a brevity of verbiage.
Not quite - these are FFQs applied to the general populations so protein is really around 15%. There is considerable debate in the literature if these findings are clinically meaningful.
What is your relevant background in such matters, if I may ask?
What is your relevant background in such matters, if I may ask?
I’ve been reading the debate with great interest.
What are yours?
Fun fact: the plantation owners in the southern states of the USA used this argument to defend slavery.
How does one eat a slave? What are the best methods of preparation? Any recipies to share?
Don’t be a jerk.
Jerk chicken is pretty good, but why wouldn’t I use that on my slave?
So it must be right?
comparing slaves to animals is what slavers do.
Good point. Why should we treat animals like slaves then?
no one said we should
Other way around. Not comparing slaves to animals, comparing animals to slaves.
the comparison operator is commutative. it’s the same thing.
What is worse, living and then dying, or not living at all?
Laughs in antinatalist
More commonly, I think people would base this on quality of life. An animal being born to spend its entire life in a tiny, disgusting cage in generally deplorable conditions doesn’t make the cut by any reasonable standard.
Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or diary, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).
Eating meat, or diary
I hate it when people eat my diary. That is morally wrong.
So you believe plants or fungi don’t suffer when you eat them?
This is an argument in favor of plant-based diets, since it results in fewer plants being eaten
There is indeed a very small scientific community that has some (very preliminary) research done on a “nervous system” in plants. The wood-wide-web is part of those hypothesis. It is very intriguing. But reading the interviews with these scientists and their publications didn’t leave me with the impression that plants feel emotions, or that they think, are cognitive or learn from pain. Di you have scientific data to proof otherwise?
Of course not. But nobody has evidence that cows think or have emotions beyond physical sensations either.
Have you ever actually seen a cow in person townie?
How can anyone be so data blind? These things are studied by actual biologists.
Don’t engage with them. It’s a troll account.
Hush, so am I.
It’s a difficult question, so I hope some people who have interesting things to say about it will turn up here. All I can contribute is this link: Ancient Arguments For Vegetarianism
“eels that come when called”?
If it’s possible and you’re capable to do it, then I think it’s a moral choice.
If it’s a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don’t think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.
Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.
Where did this question originate
Why
Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
It hasn’t
Give us you opinion
Don’t have one yet
Or you could simply off your opinion based on the information as presented.
This seems like an attempt at trying to sidetrack the topic rather than providing an answer. Which is odd given that commenting here is opt in. It’s not like someone directly approached you and asked the question.
No.
What’s the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.
When driving a car, would you swerve into a haybale to avoid hitting a human? Would you swerve into a human to avoid running over a pile of soybeans?
Yes
I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.
