We Are Supposed to Eat Animals !

[Lune]

Originally Posted by maskedmelon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Why is the life of a lettuce any less than that of a snail, or a duck, or a cow, or a man? Each is nothing more than a collection of cells, why are larger more diverse collections anymore valuable than smaller more specialized ones?

Life requires death. Even plants, the most innocent of living things would cease without the time worn carcasses of their predators to sustain them. We can delude ourselves into believing we have attained some degree of righteousness for choosing to devour the most vulnerable of life in lieu of the lives of their aggressors, those that more closely resemble our selves, but in the end all we have done is deny the intermediaries a purposeful existence.

That said, many steps can certainly taken to make harvesting of animals a more humane.

You can't exactly torture a lettuce... or even a snail really. But when you get into higher orders of mammals, you get creatures that have an internal life and are capable of experiencing both mental and physical anguish. I shouldn't have to explain to you why you wouldn't want to cause something pain. You could probably rationalize it, but I think that's part what separates good people from bad people, is an inherent internal aversion to causing pain in others.

And no, you're completely wrong, photoautotrophs are perfectly capable of existing without the decay of animal life. There would be a radical reshuffling of the biosphere and likely less inorganic carbon available to plants, but our primary producers (plants) don't need us to survive.