The main moral problem with meat consumption, to me, is not the killing - everything dies, you're right. It's rather how awfully the animals are treated both throughout their leaves, and also (in most cases) the slaughter process. It's really a horror show, and far worse than their natural lives would be. Not a life anyone would willingly be born into.

Almost all meat comes from such inhumane factory farms with terrible conditions. For the animals treated the worst (chickens) there seems to be almost no moment of their life without suffering. They're even bred with genes that guarantee pain (due to extremely fast growth and egg laying cycles), because that makes it cheaper.

If we had higher standards, this moral argument would be less concerning. But the standards needed to treat animals at least passably well would make meat far more expensive, which is not politically palatable. Better meat alternatives are the best path forward here.

You have a valid point; killing an animal in order to eat it is not immoral, assuming you don't let anything go to waste. Factory farming, on the other hand, has nothing to do with how nature works. It's all about who raises the animals and how.

It' the same thing with the environmental aspect. If the animals graze all their lives then it might even have a positive effect on CO2 uptake in the long run, and it definitely is required for some biomes to survive. But, again, factory farming isn't exactly natural.

And yes, that applies to vegan food production as well.

> waste

i think this and the sport part of it is the worst of all. there is this popular show on youtube that everyone loves. celebrities eating hot wings. just a small bite and they throw it to trash. no one bats an eye, it is part of the culture.

Your not wrong or anything but I think the general counter argument here is that because something is deemed to have always happened or to happen in nature does not automatically make it right. There’s a term for the argument “appeal to nature” which sort of fits here, you can use this to justify all kinds of things.

Eating living things isn't the problem. Breeding animals to imprison them their entire life is a problem.