Eating is clearly a very personal thing, but it's silly to pretend that morality suddenly ceases applying.
If we're going to try to come up with a system, mine is simply (borrowed[1]): I like beef and broccoli, mind your business. I readily admit this doesn't cover every corner case, but I don't think there can be a satisfactory system that does. Many things have to be determined by context and taste, and usually aren't even worth thinking about if you're not in a position of power and responsibility over the lives of others.
[1] http://genius.com/Immortal-technique-beef-and-broccoli-lyric...
What if a person whose fantasy was to kill and cook another person met a person who fantasy was to be killed and cooked? Then this happened. What penalty should ensue for the (well-fed) survivor?
And lest you think this is some weird hypothetical, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes may enlighten you otherwise.
Person A kills person B and B wants to be dead/killed.
...what about human meat grown in a lab...?
Firstly, the wealthy (and then the middle classes) will have meat prepared that is genetically identical to themselves, and will serve it to dinner guests.
Secondly, one will be able to buy celebrity meat at the supermarket. The future equivalent of a Tom Cruise burger, or a Scarlett Johansson steak.
If someone said "I'm comfortable with the legal consequences of cannibalism and murder along with the possibility that the person may actually kill me before I get to them" and they actually are held to those postulations, including say, life-imprisonment AND they still want to do it all just so they can eat human for supper, then sure, go for it!
If you say "Well nobody would be ok with industrial slaughterhouses or a number of other things" I say, "yes, that's kinda the point here."
So if we're willing to say a specific action is worth jailing someone for the rest of their life, why shouldn't we say "This action is not okay and we're going to do our best to prevent it"?
Basically, free will (and the physical manifestation of it: liberty) is argued to be more important than the lack of evil. And you can't have realistic free will and liberty without accepting that bad things will happen.
>* Make their own decisions on what to eat.
is totally unacceptable when you're "making a decision" to enslave, torture, murder, and consume a sentient, feeling creature.
What some people are asking is if we should extend this to some other species, typically other apes (which share 90% of our genes etc...) and now animals with high intelligence (elephant, dolphin, octopus).
Note that my conditions make people on the hook for everything - the treatment of the workers that prepared the food, the environmental impact of delivering it, the treatment of the animals constituting the food, the health effects of choosing what to eat ... all of that.
I think that if someone was forced to have a pet pig for a while they'd probably stop eating pork or if they were forced to be a single mother living on minimum wage they'd probably fight on behalf of fast food workers.
My supposition is that people shouldn't voluntarily shroud themselves in ignorance for culinary delight but instead, should take full responsibility for all of their actions, at the dinner table and in all aspects of life.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case in my own experience. It certainly does for some people, but that course is by no means universal. And when the well-being of other thinking, feeling individuals is at stake, I'd rather not rely on this kind of approach.
In my family we often used to eat chicken and while eating them the only thing on mind was how it tasted and how it was cooked etc. Then my parents started rearing some chickens in their backyard. That changed everything. There were about 7 or 8 of them. As the chicks grew up, they could identify each of them and know about individual treats. They would call some of them by names and slowly their nature was becoming more evident. They still eat eggs but they eat chicken meat rarely at some social event. They cannot even think about killing one of the chickens that they have. Its just emotionally too painful for just food!
This really works i think. But you have to rear them in small numbers to get connected to animals and then observe the changes in your thinking. You may still have them for food but it would be a conscious decision which you would not take lightly, like considering it as some food lying around.
I actually have neighbors who treat their chickens like pets for several years then give them to someone to slaughter. They don't eat them but they're fine with other people eating them and they're fine with eating other chickens.
The thing I'm not ok with is people who pretend like they are the modern incarnation of St. Francis of Assisi while eating animals for every meal and having a bunch of leather goods.
Such people aren't saintly patrons of the animals and they should come to terms with it. It's really just about honesty.
Would you sing the same tune if you were the one that they wanted to eat?
Would you be ok with changing legislation so that it is ok to kill humans as long as it is to eat them.
This is what people are discussing here, should we legislate against killilling animals with "high intelligence" and those who share more genes with us than with any other animal, as long as it is for food?
The positions I outlined are my justification for my personal goals of radical sustainability and veganism.
I understand when people aren't like me so long as they are OK with the full duty cycle of their personal decisions
* Make their own decisions on what to eat.
* Understand the externalities, exogenous, and endogenous process and consequences of their decisions.
* Take full personal, civic, and environmental responsibility for those decisions.
Essentially, as long as people are forthright, honest, and accountable about what they eat, where it comes from, and the ecological footprints their choices implicate, then have at it, eat whatever.