You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer:
> ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1]
There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes.
If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.
One could argue that meat eating is necessary for taking part on some people’s culture, which is true, but also shifting. And spreading the idea of vegetarianism is helpful in making that shift happen.
I'm curious what you mean by "impose their views" with respect to meat-eating. Has a vegan ever tried to stop you from eating meat for example through physical force, threatening your livelihood, making meat illegal in their state, etc?
Don't get me wrong, I also dislike when strangers impose their moral, ethical, racial, political, or religious views on me.
But of all the groups that concern me, vegans are low on my list as their weapons mostly seem to be uncomfortably strong arguments on the internet and the occasional preachy Netflix documentary.
This is all proving my point that a vocal minority is poisoning the issue in order to impose their views by accusing others of fallacy, wrongthink, and even according to the person you're replying to (and that's a new one) by bringing rape into it...
Why should explain why something is NOT bad ? It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad, and the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.
There is a good argument to be made that in the West we should eat less meat, but that doesn't mean removing it completely: it is harder to make a balanced vegan diet, so for most people that would mean a less healthy outcome that just eating a moderate amount of meat.
You're making something of a jump there - not eating meat equates to a vegetarian diet, not a vegan diet. One can argue about the merits of a vegan diet over a vegetarian one, but a vegetarian, non-vegan diet is already a big step up over a meat-heavy one, and a vegetarian diet including eggs and dairy doesn't really have any challenges in being balanced/healthy compared to a moderate-meat diet.
Because they're the one who made the claim without evidence or argument.
> It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad
Yes, that's what I did.
> the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.
That wasn't my argument.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...
I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
Obviously we are all people. The question is do we keep chasing an ever increasing population or do we accept that it cannot keep growing and should in fact probably decrease?
Most developed countries have birth rates below replacement rate so this is already happening. We need to accept it and adapt.
WE should consider that in the equation of "overpopulation", the other variable, "resource consumption", is far easier and more ethical to reduce.
The issue, of course, is that option 1 hurts others that aren't us, while option 2 will require changes from US, like not eating meat, reducing personal cars, reducing consumption and infinite growth in general.
We aren't.
Every bit of evidence is that Human population is on the path to stabilizing. Developing countries plateau, and all that "India and china are going to outreproduce us!" rhetoric was stupidity; people extrapolating an S curve as if it were an infinite exponential curve.
All you have to do is give women an education and legal access to birth control and it turns out most humans do not want 50 kids. Women happily manage population control, with no moral problems.
I have yet to see a government declare that they will let population decrease and initiate programs to adapt. Perhaps Japan comes close but we'll see.
To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway.
PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).