Why you shouldn't eat meat if you hate factory farming

I grew up on a farm. We had (my parents still have) dairy goats, chickens for meat, and rabbits for meat (we also killed the male goats and some of the females which we couldn't keep for dairy). The animals weren't for the business (the only thing we sold was low bush blueberries), they were just for my family, and by raising them we didn't need to buy meat or dairy elsewhere.

I took care of the animals. I got to see how they lived and how they died, see them when they were in states of joy and of suffering. I also had a hand in killing them, especially the chickens.

I am very grateful that I was able to experience the reality of this firsthand. It gave me a good sense of what it means to eat meat.

I think that most people in my wealthy western society don't share the same experiences I do. Their primary experiences with domesticated animals are either with house pets, through digital media, or as an occasional visitor to farms for sightseeing purposes. A small percentage of real animal enthusiasts might work at an animal shelter or as a veterinarian, still mostly interacting with pets.

That leaves most people's moral intuitions extremely uncalibrated when it comes to eating meat. They know animals are adorable, nice to pet. They have emotional connections with their pets and feel that their pets dying would be a horrible tragedy. They know that cows and pigs and chickens aren't so different from their pets, just less practical to live with indoors.

And they know that most meat comes from factory farms where animals live in horrible conditions and are suffering intensely for most of the time of their existence.

Most people, then, try to forget about the facts of where their meat comes from, or suppress whatever feelings they have about it, so that they can bear to go on doing what everyone else does and eating meat which tastes good. Some other people, less willing to selectively ignore parts of reality, decide they don't want to eat meat anymore, and in fact they are willing to put some resources into trying to help some of the poor suffering animals.

Most people reach whatever behavior they wind up with regarding meat without firsthand knowledge of what it feels like to raise and kill an animal for food.

I don't think there's a way, at least not in this comment, to explain why I feel the way I do. But I do think that my feeling is shared by the vast majority of humans throughout history, and insofar as that is true, I am describing as real of a moral truth as any another.

Raising animals for meat can be good for those animals. They can have joyful lives. Killing them is sad. It's something worth crying about sometimes. But it's okay. Eventually, their time to live comes to an end, and their bodies provide the sustenance for others to go on living.

There's no reason why someone who does not want to kill animals for food is wrong, if they do not feel the way I do. But what I am trying to drive home with this comment is that many people can feel morally good about eating meat without hiding from the reality of it one bit, and that I believe I am more directly familiar with the reality of eating meat than most people who choose to become vegan.

Now I'm going to apply the moral belief that killing animals for meat can be okay to thinking about the top level post (points are out of order).

Question: If you hate factory farming, should you stop eating meat?

Factory farming: OP thinks humanity will have to stop eating animal products to meaningfully halt factory farming. This is a major crux. I don't believe this is true, although I do agree we will have to reduce the quantity of consumption. Short argument for why OP is wrong is that there are lots of really great agricultural practices that could scale but have never caught on at scale due to financial incentives.

Health: OP says even if being vegan make you less healthy than you would otherwise be, you can be vegan and be healthy enough. You can really get into the weeds here, but since I believe killing animals for meat is good as long as they live good lives, there's no reason not to eat meat to improve your health if you can source it well.

Value drift: I think about this the opposite way. I think 84% of vegans quitting is evidence that being vegan is hard. Improving access to meat from good sources might be a much more effective way to reduce animal suffering than trying to convince more people to first become vegan and then stay vegan.

Price opportunity cost: If you want to forgo the most expensive parts of your diet in order to be able to donate more money in high leverage ways, by all means do so. Just note that you can apply this logic to all parts of your life, and that by buying ethically sourced meat you are creating demand for the thing you hope to increase access to.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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Why you shouldn't eat meat if you hate factory farming

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Question: If you hate factory farming, should you stop eating meat?

#1: Ideas are contagious

#2: We’re probably all going to need to go vegan to end factory farming

#3: Price opportunity cost

#4: Friction

#5: Health effects are overblown

#6: Value drift

Conclusion