
What the 'meat paradox' reveals about moral decision making - astrocat
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190206-what-the-meat-paradox-reveals-about-moral-decision-making
======
kbutler
Eating meat and being against animal cruelty is no paradox. At most it is a
dilemma - "want to eat meat, don't want to hurt animals".

The fact that many (most) people continue to eat meat means that people
resolve the dilemma - they not be aware of the issue, consider it less
significant, consider eating meat more important, etc.

The distance from the details of animal husbandry probably helps a lot. If I
had to personally kill and clean all my meat, I'd either stop eating it or I'd
get a lot more comfortable with the process. Then again, I have relatives who
raise farm animals and others who hunt - distance from the process is not
required.

~~~
trothamel
I'd kind of reject that creating meat hurts animals. Kill, sure - but hurting
them is counterproductive. There's a large amount of work done to lower the
stress of the animal, both because it's the moral thing to do and because it
makes the meat taste better.

The ideal killing involves rendering the animal senseless instantaneously.

Check out
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono)
for a demonstration of a well-run plant.

~~~
bootlooped
The counterpoint to that video would be the following:

[https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch](https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch)

Watch any consecutive 10 minutes of that, and let me know if that seems like
it doesn't hurt animals. The evidence that industrial scale animal farming is
harmful to animals is overwhelming. There should really be no debate about
that fact at this point.

There is an incentive to raise them quick, raise them huge, and move them
along the whole process as quickly as possible. Those things are generally not
conducive with providing a humane life for them.

I agree the ideal killing is instantaneous, but the killing moment is not the
only source of pain, and the ideal killing may not be very common. Sometimes
we can't even kill humans quickly and painlessly, for example with the several
botched lethal injections that took place a few years ago.

~~~
noarchy
"Video unavailable" when I try to view it.

~~~
bootlooped
Works for me in the US, could it be a region thing?

~~~
noarchy
Possibly, I'm trying to access it from Canada.

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paulmd
Plain and simple, people have the ability to ignore things that are unethical
if they consider the benefits sufficiently important. If you are reading this,
you are using a device that is the result of thousands of hours of actual
chattel slave labor, conflict-producing minerals, assembled by workers in
horrific conditions. And yet you use that iphone or thinkpad.

Any person living in the first world is the beneficiary of an immense amount
of human suffering and cruelty, period. There is no way to avoid it short of
living a hermetic life in the woods. So why don't you do that? Because society
is convenient and nice to live in.

People eat meat because it's delicious. People buy factory-farmed meat because
it's cheap and they can use the money they save on something else. People use
smartphones and PCs because they're entertaining. It really doesn't seem like
a deep question to me at all.

As for why people who live on farms, specifically, would be more likely to eat
meat... I suppose people probably become desensitized to it, the same as
someone who works in Foxconn would become desensitized to what we would
perceive as human suffering.

I dunno, it doesn't really seem that complex an issue to me. Pete Singer is
right, the ethical answer is to reduce our suffering footprint as much as we
possibly can. But hedonism is so damned pleasurable, that people won't. If you
can moderately reduce your suffering footprint in a sustainable fashion, like
a diet, by something like veganism then go for it, but you also can't reduce
it to zero.

~~~
mping
It seems you hit a nerve with some users here. I have to say I agree with what
you said, it's really simple. If anybody asked "do you wanna contribute to
suffering"? If you answer no then basically you should either go ahead and do
it or turn a blind eye.

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paulmd
The thing where we have different words for animals and their meats is an
artifact of how England got invaded a lot in the middle ages and the invaders
brought their languages with them. For example, "veal" is a Norman word, while
"lamb" is Germanic.

You can certainly argue that we use them as a euphemism today, but that's not
actually how they originated at all.

~~~
benj111
Agreed.... But lamb isn't really a euphemism, it's a baby sheep.

~~~
QuercusMax
I assume they meant calf instead of lamb. (Calf is also a germanic word.)

~~~
benj111
Ah yes, as I recall the (Germanic) Saxons grew the cows but couldn't afford to
eat them, so called them cows, the Normans were the ruling elite so only saw
it on their plate, thus beef.

[https://curiosity.com/topics/the-norman-conquest-is-why-
stea...](https://curiosity.com/topics/the-norman-conquest-is-why-steak-is-
beef-and-not-cow-curiosity/)

------
bad_user
The “meat paradox” only happens because people living in cities are
disconnected from how their food is grown.

People that lived on a farm, even for small periods of time when they were
little, have no such issues.

~~~
ozzyman700
If I understand correctly, this is the meat paradox: "the psychological
conflict between people’s dietary preference for meat and their moral response
to animal suffering"

How does living on a farm remove this issue? Does something about living on a
farm make you not feel conflict about wanting to eat meat and at the same time
not wanting to kill sentient beings?

I've never lived on a farm but I've seen pig and chicken slaughter in real
life. Done by hand. I felt the same before as I did after, I feel that if I
have the resources to choose to consume no sentient animal body parts, I have
a moral obligation to not eat sentient animal body parts. Still, the ease of
energy from meat compared to other foods makes me desire it, along with taste.
This paradox is something that bugs me often.

~~~
drcube
Farm living shows it isn't a paradox.

1) Animals on family farms are actually treated pretty well. "Torture" is
absolutely not the word for it, though it probably does apply to varieties of
factory farming, in effect if not intent.

2) More animals die, in absolute numbers, from plowing fields and harvesting
crops than are slaughtered for their meat, mostly because we choose large
animals for their meat while small animals like to live in grain fields. The
only way to conclude that vegetarianism is more ethical is to discount the
lives of smaller, wild animals in comparison to their larger, meat-producing
cousins, or else define having habitats and homes destroyed, starving to
death, or being snagged on a thresher as more humane treatment than being
stunned and having their throat slit after being fed and cared for until
adulthood.

In general, living closer to nature shows that death and suffering is
unavoidable. Certainly we should strive to minimize suffering, but
interruption of a huge source of food for most of the human population is a
bad way to go about it.

~~~
mping
There is an ethical angle you missed: no animal wants to die, with or without
torture. I am vegetarian mostly because I chose not to contribute to the death
of any animal, if I have alternatives. Yes, death is unavoidable but it
doesn't mean it should be encouraged.

And your point 2 is discounting the animals that died to produce the food that
cows and such eat. Besides, personally not all animals are equal to me. When I
drive I squash insects, and if I would hit a dog I would feel worse.

~~~
bad_user
> " _no animal wants to die_ "

This is a man made concept. Morality in general is man made.

In nature there is a very clear symbiosis between predator and pray. A
herbivore population can get out of control if not hunted by predators, and
then destroy the environment. Of course, humans are not in any symbiosis, we
just consume and produce waste in the process.

So if you want to talk about how we destroy the environment via CAFO
operations, then that's a valid worry, but the morality of killing animals for
food (something we've been doing since the dawn of men) is just religion.

------
humanrebar
Hot take, of course, but I think pro-choice ethical vegans and (very) pro-life
meat eaters have a more interesting paradox.

What interesting thing about a honey bee or fish deserves protection that
isn't true of a fairly young human fetus? And, likewise, what's true of a
young fetus that does not apply to a pig or octopus on the pro-life side?

There are clearly religious answers to some of the paradox on all sides of
things, but I'm sure not all of us find them convincing.

EDIT: There is probably a more acute detachment/skin-in-the-game distinction
to be made in this case, if we can suspend our politics for a moment, which
might be asking a lot these days, perhaps.

~~~
drcube
If a fish were living inside your body, you'd have the right to expel it, too.
That has nothing to do with the treatment fish deserve or don't deserve, and
everything to do with human bodily autonomy.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Expel a fish? Sure. Expel a fish even if it kills the fish? Still, sure.

Expel a human _even if it kills the human_? That's a tougher sell. And that's
always been the problem. Yell as much as you want about "a woman's right to
her own body", but there's something there besides her body, something that is
1) still genetically human, 2) genetically different from the mother, and 3)
will die if expelled by the methods used. It's not _just_ the woman's body.

I think of it in terms of the Declaration of Independence: "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness". Well here, "life" is at war with "liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" in a way where, whichever one wins, the other has to
lose.

~~~
drcube
If a homeless person was living in your home, even if you invited him there in
the first place, you still have every right to kick him out of your home if
you decide you don't want him there anymore. Even if it's winter, and he'll
die of starvation or freeze out on the streets without your hospitality. It
may be a cruel and heartless thing to do, but it's perfectly legal, and should
remain so. I believe we should have at least as much autonomy over our own
bodies as over our real estate.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
All right, what if the only way you can get the homeless person to leave is to
murder him and then remove the body? Do your real estate rights give you the
right to do that? Because, bluntly, that's the way abortion (almost always)
works - you kill the fetus and _then_ remove it, or at least kill it in the
process of removing it.

------
PeanutNore
For me, killing animals for meat isn't a problem. It's the way that they're
treated before they're killed that bugs me about factory farms.

I shot a deer about 6 weeks back and butchered it myself, and I don't feel any
moral conflicts over it. Over those last 6 weeks, though, I've actually eaten
far less meat. I haven't bought meat from the supermarket at all, and I've
eaten it at restaurants just a handful of times. Most days I eat vegetables,
lentils, eggs, beans, etc., and once or twice a week I put on the chef hat and
make a fancy venison dish. In comparison, factory farmed meat just isn't all
that interesting or appetizing to me anymore.

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umvi
On a side note, I recently tried the "Impossible Burger" and was duly
impressed with how delicious it was for a plant-based patty. I could tell it
wasn't exactly beef, but if you had told me it was from some other bovine
relative, I would have believed you.

~~~
bootlooped
That and the Beyond Burger are both pretty good. It would be nice if they
weren't at least double the cost of beef though.

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Tomminn
On the flipside.

Let's say you eat 300g of beef a day, every day. Let's say a full grown cow
will give you 300kg of beef. In order to fuel this habit of pretty intense
meat consumption, you have to kill a cow once every three years.

I think for many people, this in itself doesn't strike them as that immoral,
especially if the cow lives a pretty chill life.

The harder one is that if you want to do the same with chickens, you've got to
pop one once every 3 or 4 _days_. Given the fact they often live horrible
lives, this seems beyond what most people can morally justify.

------
ThJ
People have two layers. Behavioural psychology tends to pretend that the
deeper layer; the one that comes out when you're depressed and shatters all
your illusions; doesn't exist. People know. They just block it out and invent
reasons. Rationalisation is a powerful tool. We couldn't survive without it.

------
mamon
I am against animal cruelty, except I don't consider killing animals for meat
to be cruelty, it's just an animal fulfilling their life purpose. That's how
virtually all wild animals die, by becoming a meal for some predator, so
killing them by humans is no different.

Then again, if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal,
starving it, beating it up, then of course I would consider that cruelty and
demanded punishment for that.

~~~
bootlooped
Declaring another living thing to have a life purpose that involves a harm to
them and a benefit to you is probably not that defensible, at least not if you
want to be objective about it.

You've said "if someone would do some unnecessary torture on said animal";
since a person can be vegetarian or vegan, isn't it a reasonable argument to
say that any pain inflicted on food animals is unnecessary?

------
detcader
We see all kinds of moral decision making paradoxes: when men act against
homosexuality and then later come out as always having been gay, when
religious leaders abuse people sexually...

I think morality is just fluid for most people, when we want to do something
badly we will take on frameworks of atonement or utilitarianism ("I'll do this
thing, but it's ok because of this separate thing cancelling it out") and it's
often wrapped up in our own greater inner struggles, not some isolated
psychological puzzle box that can be studied. Meat-eating is a worldwide
culturally-reinforcing personal struggle of having compassion toward suffering
of all things that can suffer. I think part of why pro-animal activists get so
derided when they criticize people or behaviors, is because we know that
they're trying to heal by force when people need to do it themselves.

~~~
krapp
>when men act against homosexuality and then later come out as always having
been gay, when religious leaders abuse people sexually...

Those aren't moral paradoxes, those are just people being hypocrites.

The paradox, as such, is trying to reconcile the genocidal God of the Old
Testament with the New Testament, and both with modern morality.

~~~
detcader
The BBC writer uses the phrase "forms of behaviour that conflict with deeply
held moral principles" to assumably define moral decision making paradox. One
could also add "being hypocrites" to make a sort of definition triangle
containing all of these examples. Where's the differences?

~~~
krapp
The difference to me is whether the moral principles _are_ deeply held, or
merely pretense.

------
ecshafer
There is also a possibility that there is no moral paradox. The article uses
the idea that factory farms are animal torture as an axiom, it never argues
for that case. Animals are killed quickly and painlessly for meat. I've seen
animals killed for food, and have done it. Animal torture is abusing and
giving animals pain purposefully, and often does not involve eating them. It
is clearly different.

~~~
bootlooped
> Animals are killed quickly and painlessly for meat.

I've watched enough undercover video of factory farms to know that is at least
not true 100% of the time. Killing is also not the only possible moment for
suffering, for example with gestation crates, battery cages, merely moving
livestock around with electric prods and pokers, etc... Treating animals
humanely costs money, and in a capitalist system there is always pressure to
reduce costs.

A recent documentary came out called Dominion which is about the most
comprehensive criticism of factory farm conditions I have seen. It's almost
entirely composed of undercover video. You can actually watch the whole thing
online:

[https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch](https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch)

I sort of hate linking that, because it feels like diet-shilling, but the
reason I do so is really pretty basic: I think there is a misconception and
that there is video evidence that I think would correct that misconception. I
could write everything out, but I think actually seeing the video is more
effective. You don't have to commit to watching all of it, just watch a random
10-15 minutes.

------
diminoten
The only reason we care about animal treatment is because we anthropomorphize
them. Money corrects this inaccuracy.

~~~
hombre_fatal
That says a lot about you.

But I'd say most of us don't want any living thing, including our dogs and
cats, to be poorly treated. And humans fall under that umbrella as well. I
wouldn't even treat your personal property poorly, and I don't need to
attribute human qualities to your blender to do that.

~~~
diminoten
It says nothing at all about me because it's how everyone who eats meat
operates...

Harm for harm's same isn't what we're talking about. I may not beat my blender
for fun but I'm never going to consider it's feelings because it has none.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Well, you didn't actually pitch a way in which people who eat meat operate.
With a provocative one-liner like that, it's an exercise left to the reader.
I'd challenge you to belabor it into a paragraph if you think you have a
point, else it's too easy to dismiss any response as "you misunderstood me."

For example, what are you referring to with the word "inaccuracy" in your
statement? And how do meat-eaters operate?

~~~
diminoten
Anthropomorphizing something is to attribute to it emotions it does not have.
Obviously that's an error, and meat eaters correctly operate without this
false belief.

