This study asked students and adults in the United States why they find it OK to eat meat. The largest category used to justify their choice was that that it is “necessary” followed by the other three categories.
Typical comments used to justify eating meat include these 4Ns:
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Natural “Humans are natural carnivores”
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Necessary “Meat provides essential nutrients”
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Normal “I was raised eating meat”
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Nice “It’s delicious”
Article and academic paper.
Unfortunately, “marginal effect” does not begin with an N, because that would probably be my preferred response alongside “nice”.
In terms of environmental degradation I see a strong argument for reducing meat consumption, but surely the marginal benefits of going to zero meat are small compared to reducing some other environmentally unsound behavior on the margin. Such as transatlantic flights or certain types of energy-intensive food or travel.
The zero meat move makes more sense from a behavioral perspective, where we recognize we are frail and impulsive creatures. Vegetarianism lets you draw a bright red line not to cross. Otherwise it’s easy for you to slip in the moment and eat that bacon. It’s possible that, in practice, vegetarianism is easier to stick to than reduced meat consumption, and so you could pre-commit yourself.
My alternative, unwitting solution was to marry someone who does not eat red meat and hence never cook it at home. A commitment device. Literally!
You can also get to zero meat if you object to raising animals for slaughter for moral reasons. This is a way of saying that the one’s marginal cost of going from zero to a little meat consumption is very high. But I don’t feel that way. I do favor more reasonable treatment of animals and try to buy such meat. I’d personally prefer an equilibrium where everyone chooses this, and/or it’s regulated, because I think that would make the choice cheaper and more easily available, and is probably the right thing to do.
Vegetarian readers: I await your comments or objections.
15 Responses
“What, pray tell, does a vegetarian eat with a 1987 Ridge Montebello?”
Not the fecal-tainted flesh of a once-sentient being who endured a life of unimaginable emotional and physical suffering so that you could enjoy 3 minutes of purely aesthetic pleasure. Probably a good porcini risotto.
The off-hand dismissal of the moral argument always perplexes me. It is evident to me that killing an animal is not *as* morally repugnant as killing a human being. However, from this is does not follow that there is no element of undesirability to killing an animal. In essence I object to the “moral red line” view that somehow killing anything of lessor intelligence to a human being is ethically inconsequential.
For example, if we could agree that a pig had, say, only 50% of the intellectual capacity and conscious awareness of a human being. Then, one could argue from a utilitarian perspective that killing a pig is only half as bad as killing a human. It then remains to weigh up whether 200 portions of porc meat produce about as much added value as saving a human life.
RT @cblatts: How do people defend eating meat? http://t.co/f2IkVrZdCJ
peter cholwa trying that in my culture is a sure way to get yourself divorced.
I guess my question is this: what, pray tell, does a vegetarian eat with a 1987 Ridge Montebello?
I’m a vegetarian, and here’s my take. One of the main reasons I don’t eat meat is that I couldn’t go through the act of killing the animals that I would eat. Not even chickens (which it seems almost every culture has decided deserve to be food). If I were eating meat only if others killed and cleaned it for me, I would probably feel like I was cheating, or avoiding responsibility; and it would nurture a cognitive dissonance in my mind that would gnaw on me every time I sat down to eat a meal. Not eating a meat relieves me of this cognitive cost.
This cognitive cost may seem like a small thing, but I think for long run happiness having a clean conscience (or feeling like you’re closer to it) can be very important.
This is not to say that you can’t eat meat with a clean conscience. However, in my experience, many meat eaters wouldn’t be able to go through the act of killing animals either; and when they do stop to reflect on this, it does bother them. This makes me suspect that if people had to slaughter their own meat, equilibrium rates of meat consumption would be much, much lower.
I highly favour your second commitment (literal) device – as a vegetarian married to a omnivore spouse. I also added to the incentives for my partner to cut down meat consumption: I simply refuse to touch, let alone wash up, any dish, pot, pan or utensil that has touched meat. This has helped reduced household consumption to something like once a week for the omnivores in the family.
This vegetarian reader will bite. Not because I’m vegetarian, but because I’ve had dogs my whole life and would never want them to go through what chickens and other animals go through on essentially all farms. That’s the crux of the issue: there’s a scientific consensus rivaling that on climate change (see the Cambridge Consensus on Consciousness) that other animals have feelings, and rather complex ones at that. This is why Richard Dawkins and others like him say that we should be vegetarian. It’s simply untenable, as a Darwinian, to say that it’s wrong to kill or hurt humans but that there’s some bright red line where just because an animal is not of our species, it’s okay.
But let’s get to the notion of favoring reasonable treatment. As a scholar of violence and conflict, you must know how profoundly objectification and desensitization shapes our minds. When you accept that it is okay to kill animals for food, it shapes the way you see them. Do you really think you can view an animal as something to be eaten and as a sentient being with moral worth? Others have made this point far better than I can: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/07/how-conscientious-carnivores-ignore-meats-true-origins/241828/
Moreover, the evidence bears this out. What would you say qualifies as “reasonable treatment of animals”? I would wager that your definition of “reasonable” describes no more than a negligible portion of the market. It’s standard practice at all farms, humane or not, for hens to be debeaked without painkillers (hens use their beaks the way humans use our hands), for baby animals to be separated from their mothers, for animals to be killed as babies, and for slaughter to be frequently botched. This is what investigators at a Certified Humane, cage-free Whole Foods farm found (not very graphic, FWIW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU4PJCuslD0
But there’s a reason that virtually none of this “humane” farming is actually the humane, pasture-raised images we have in our heads. It’s because feeding over 300 million people with animals living decently is simply not feasible. See, for example, this piece on the sustainability of ethical meat: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustainable-meat.html.
Your original post shows signs of the wavering and cognitive dissonance that smart, compassionate people so frequently show when it comes to this issue. It’s not easy to take a stand against such a socially entrenched practice, but it’s the right thing to do.
Thanks for posting, Chris. I shifted to a sort of pseudo-vegetarianism a couple of years ago (primarily for moral reasons), only eating meat raised Portlandia-style. Though my reasons are different, the results are probably not too different from your “commitment device” strategy. I find this approach conveniently addresses all four Ns:
–It’s certainly more “natural” or “traditional” to eat animals raised humanely rather than in factories
–I still eat enough meat to provide substantial protein
–I don’t have to give up a lifestyle of meat-eating; only to treat my consumption with a little more care
–Call it a placebo effect, but I do think humanely raised meat tastes better (often much, much better) than cheap supermarket meat
I fully agree (and that’s all I have to contribute).
There is a large behavioral barrier to vegetarianism. It’s probably easier in the long term to cut meat consumption by encouraging a lot of people to eat less meat than it is to accomplish the same reduction by getting people to give up meat completely.
Also,
More goats, less cows.
Interesting study, the 4 Ns are what has to be tackled if people are going to be convinced that a meal can be eaten without meat.
Farm animals can make agriculture much more Sustainable but their numbers in the USA would have to be enormously reduced, along therefore with consumption. I believe (with no math to back it up), that we are talking about 2-3 times a week. I eat meat 1-2 times a month yet I call myself a vegetarian because:
-Everyone does not need to lead the same low-impact lifestyle. Its easy for me to effectively eliminate meat but e.g. I take more air travel vacations than average.
-Very little meat production in the USA is Sustainable and driving 10 miles to an artisanal butcher to buy it certainly is not (which would be necessary for me).
-Promoting vegetarianism as a normal approach to eating, not an extreme, hippy-dippy lifestyle (particularly, I like to serve/bring really good vegetarian food to people)
-If I don’t tell people/conferences/etc. that I am a vegetarian they think it is fine to serve me a slab of meat for a meal
Thanks for posting.
RT @cblatts: How do people defend eating meat? http://t.co/f2IkVrZdCJ
RT @cblatts: How do people defend eating meat? http://t.co/f2IkVrZdCJ
RT @cblatts: How do people defend eating meat? http://t.co/f2IkVrZdCJ