Is Eating Meat Immoral?

On 6/10/2021, Hunter Avallone made the following announcement through Twitter:

After consideration I have decided to embrace a vegan lifestyle. I’m still sorting some aspects out, but overall, I can no longer contribute to the suffering of animals at the hands of the meat industry. Veganism is ethically consistent with my views, plus its healthier!

Hunter is far from alone, roughly 3% of the United States population is vegetarian with an additional 0.4% being full on vegan. And morality, specifically the treatment of animals by the American meat industry, is one of the main reasons why. Former Beatles member and noted vegetarian Paul McCartney did once say:

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

In 2009, McCartney even sought to prove this by narrating a video called “Glass Walls” for People for the Ethical Treatment. But his comment only makes sense if you assume that meat eaters have literally no idea where their meat comes from. Hate to break it to Paul, but we already know it’s dead animals, and we have long since come to terms with that.

Of course, the public has gotten a good long look at slaughterhouses through various internet videos and documentaries. Although the footage can be horrifying, it’s easy to notice that it has not converted nearly as many people as Paul likely thought. As I write this, “Glass Walls” sits at just under two million views, and the vegetarian revolution still has not come.

I should also note the implication that it’s impossible to both believe that specific conditions in slaughterhouses are wrong and that eating meat by itself is moral. Paul should learn a thing or two about the President who signed the Humane Slaughter Act into law, Dwight Eisenhower, and how he once listed veal, beef, stake, and trout as his favorite meals. The Federal Animal Welfare Act was also signed into law in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson, who called Chicken Fried Steak with mashed potatoes and gravy his favorite meal.

Of course, when animal rights group meetings have glass walls, people turn against them. Both the Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Rights Militia have engage in violent tactics — the first group engages in robbery and vandalism while the second engages in direct murder and terrorism, with the Animal Rights Militia being a spin-off group of the Animal Liberation Front who took issue with their policy against killing human beings — and both organizations have been defended by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group McCartney frequently partners with.

Of course, going after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is like shooting fish in a barrel at this point. They are the most infamous charity in all of existence, and everyone from Penn and Teller to Rush Limbaugh to MovieBob to Pokemon (I’m not making that up, Team Plasma from Pokemon: Black And White is a satire of them) have pointed out that they hypocrites, non-sense spewers, and just not very good people. It does not matter who you are, where you fall on the political compass, or even what your thoughts are on animal rights (many animal rights activists hate them, with animal rights activist and No Kill advocate Nathan Winograd calling them “The Butcher of Norfolk”) the one thing that unites humanity is a complete and total hatred for them.

However, it should be noted that many vegetarians, vegans, and even just people who want animals to be treated ethically do still donate to them. In 2020 alone they reported earning $66,277,867 in revenue. And, if the news-feed on their website is any indication, they do seem to having an impact on the world around them. Just recently, they got an anti-slaughter bill passed in New York, got TRESemmé to end animal testing, and got the nation of Israel to ban fur products.

For that matter, credit where it’s due, they do seem willing to listen to criticism and improve when possible. For example, one of their most controversial opinions for many years was their objection to use of animals, even as pets or companions. As of right now, their website contains a page where you can adopt an animal from them directly and another where they make it clear that they‘re just against shelters which abuse and euthanize their animals.

With that said, it’s also important to note that the world they would create would still cause great harm. For example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals still considers the use of animal testing for medicine as well as the use of animal organs and DNA in medicine to be unethical. This is a massive issue because many vaccines contain animal DNA, and said animal DNA does a variety of things which make the vaccine safer. The Polio Vaccine was made from Monkey Kidneys — in fact, it was exposure to those Monkey Kidneys that first brought AIDS to the United States.

As I write this, the Polio Vaccine alone has saved millions upon millions of lives. The Smallpox vaccine, which also uses animal products, has led to the eradication of the illness. (And before COVID-19, the World Health Organization had came really close to doing the same thing with Polio.) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have gone so far as to say they would be against any potential cure for Cancer or AIDS if it would only be possible through the experimentation of animals.

But now it’s time for the million dollar question: Is it moral to eat animals? Well, you can guess what the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals think the answer is. Their most infamous expression of their view comes from their 2003 campaign Holocaust On Your Plate. The campaign put ads all across the United States and Europe which compared the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses to the Holocaust done by Nazi Germany. One ad read the following:

During the seven years between 1938 and 1945, 12 million people perished in the Holocaust. The same number of animals is killed every 4 hours for food in the U.S. alone.

There is one issue with this rhetoric, and that’s the idea that if we didn’t eat animals, nobody would. The fact is, 63% of species alive right now are carnivores with another 3% being omnivores. If the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had there way and all the animals were freed, they would not be living in peace and harmony with each other — they would be eating and killing each other.

In nature, cows are prey for dogs, coyotes, bobcats. PETA also used this tactic against chicken farming, but in nature chickens are prey for Foxes, coyotes, raccoons, dogs, mink, owls, and some hawks. The fact is, if we did not kill animals for food, some other animals would. Have you guys ever noticed how none of these animal rights groups protest an owl eating a worm? If humans ate worms, they would be all up in arms, but another animal doing it is considered to be immoral. If a human tested on a worm in order to cure an illness that kills millions of humans each and every year, that would be seen as immoral. These animal rights groups want us to believe that animals are on the same level as humans, hence why killing them is on the same level as the most infamous genocide in human history, and yet they constantly hold humans to a much lower standard than they do animals. This is doublethink if I’ve ever seen it, the ability to believe both that animals are the same as humans and that they’re different enough to where they do not need to follow our rules at the same time.