Yes, kindke, you touch on an idea I had a while back. I see ethics as simply a system of moral values, and morality as an extension of the survival imperative. I must eat to survive, I must kill to eat, ethics is merely an extension of my survival imperative, therefore it is ethical to kill.

However, a condition could arise where killing would be worse for our survival. The imperative is still survival but the result is that killing is unethical because our survival is jeopardized. The holy cow in India is the result of such a condition. If the cow is more useful to plow the field and then to harvest the crops, and if killing the cow means we only have food for a short time, then killing the cow is now unethical. A few centuries and we end up with a holy cow as a high level representation of that low level choice. Yet now that we can plow the field with machines instead of cows, the original reason to avoid killing the cow, our survival, has ceased to be valid for that purpose. Our survival is now assured with machines, we can therefore kill the cows again for food. There is no holy chicken in India because chickens have never shown any usefulness besides providing food to humans.

Yet the holy cow is not currently used to plow the field anyway. It's a holy cow and basically this means it can't be used for anything ever. Not meat, not dairy, not work, nothing. Somehow I find it hard to believe that it started out this way. Some guy said the cow is now holy and should not be used for anything. It should also be treated with greater respect than other humans. That makes no sense. That's a kind of ethics that goes against our own survival. It's not ethics anymore.

I played a game called Planescape Torment. In it, there's a quest where the main character has to fetch things. One of the things he has to fetch is a pile of rags that was washed so often and starched so much that they were now completely unusable as rags. The lesson was that when we do something, it's important that we remember why we do it. If we simply repeat the same actions without knowing why, we end up with rags that can't be used as rags anymore. We lose our sense of purpose. In the case of ethics, the purpose is survival. If we lose that purpose of not killing the cow at some point, we end up with a holy cow which we can't do anything with anymore and has now become a liability to our survival. We can't eat its meat or its dairy, we can't even use it for work to plow our field anymore. Now it's just roaming the streets like a vagabond begging for scraps. What a waste I say. But I live in Canada. No holy cows here.

The point is that ethics is derived from the survival imperative. Ethics is not an abstract idea that came from the edge of the universe, from extraterrestrials, from outer space. It's a system of moral values based on real conditions that affect our survival. Therefore the only way eating meat could be unethical is if it jeopardized our survival.

Vegetarians come in many stripes, from those who eat fish and dairy products, to those who avoid eating anything with a "face," to those who avoid eating any animal products. Those who can stick with any version of vegetarian will claim that their health is better than what any other way of eating produced. And whether their health claims or meat-eaters health claims are valid can be determined only by clinical trials, not anecdotes — not even 5,000 anecdotes on each side. Are the clinical studies you allude to directly comparing meat eaters to vegetarians?

No, they don't. Not individually at least. But when all the experiments are put together, the conclusion is easy.

This wouldn't fly because the point is to stress the ethics of eating meat, not the lack of ethics in vegetarian/vegan lifestyles. I would think that a paragraph or two on the hypocrisy of those view points could work, but mostly, you have to focus on why meat eating is ethical. Comparative wouldn't work for me, if I was a judge.

However, that is a tall order, as the question of ethics isn't even a valid one in my mind.

I think ethics can't be argued in a vacuum. Trying to explain why eating meat is ethical without comparing it to other diets is impossible. Ethics is not simply the value of wrong by itself, it's the value of wrong compared to the value of right or the value of less wrong. A comparison is inevitable. Like I explained with the holy cow example, the choice isn't between eating or not eating, it's between having better food for a short time and probably starve soon after, or having worse food for a long time and guarantee survival. It's a bit like the argument over whether a diet is optimal or merely adequate. And I think in this case that's exactly what the question is. Is eating meat more or less adequate than not eating meat? The adequacy level will help determine its ethical value.

It's obvious to anybody that our current diet is far from optimal and probably not adequate either. Our diet contains both meat and plants. The challenge of proving the ethical value of eating meat is asked in the context of this reality. Is it adequate to avoid eating meat altogether? Only if this is true can eating meat be unethical. But it still doesn't make it so. Ethical value is not determined by adequacy alone.

All the arguments in favor of avoiding meat are based on a comparison anyway. And those that aren't based on a comparison, like the claim that a plant-based diet is good for you, are easily refuted with a simple comparison. If I was a judge and saw the lack of a comparison, I would point it out and subtract a few points for lack of perspective.

The reason the NY Slimes has a contest, that has nothing to do with science but everything to do with opinion, is the scientific facts support eating red meat.

Whenever ideas trump facts you know that science has been thrown out the window.

George Monbiot's public statement from 2010 is the best defense of eating meat I've found, and he was a vegan advocate for 8 years.

It seems that the judges are stacked against any "fair" hearing of why it's ethical to eat meat.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. ~A. Whitney Brown

I think it's all a moot point anyway, because with a set of judges like that, I can't imagine they're actually going to let through any essay that might actually be good enough to convince people to eat meat. They're stacking the odds in favour of the vegetarians to begin with. And who can really explain a topic as convoluted as this in 600 words, no matter how succinct they are about it?

This isn't a real attempt to let the meat eaters share their side, it's an attempt to show them up when they fail at it.

So call me cynical.

I tend to agree that the effort may not be fruitful for us anyway. But then preaching to the choir isn't much of a challenge either. I suggest that an essay should start by establishing that a comparison is necessary. Then it's just a matter of making the point that eating meat is as valuable as avoiding meat, if not better. I think we have enough material to make that point. Anybody up for the challenge?

Several points in our favor. Anthropological, historical, cultural, biological, economic, scientific, ecological. The first is several pieces of evidence regarding our ancestral diet such as tool marks on broken animal bones presumed to be intended to get the bone marrow out. The last is the New Agriculturist article on land restoration using livestock. Points against are mostly modern arguments unrelated to any of the points above. The biological argument for example can be that humans have two organs dedicated to the digestion of fat, the liver that produces bile and the gallbladder that stores and injects it into the stomach. The scientific argument can be like I explained with low carb studies.

I'd love to see you take this one on, Martin.

Hehe. I'll give pointers. Use them as you see fit. For instance, the question of ethics is new. We've been eating meat for eons and never asked whether the animals we ate should be given more rights than they already have. We've never wondered if it was ethical, if it was right to eat them. It's always been solely a matter of our survival. It's always been the choice between us or them. Between us and them, the choice is obvious to me. Since ethics is merely a high-level extension of our survival, then eating meat has always been ethical, has always been right. So the real challenge is not merely to ask if eating meat is ethical, but if eating meat continues to be ethical, continues to be right. I merely establish the a priori of eating meat and ethics.

I could argue that eating meat today is actually more ethical due to the more efficient ways we have to kill our food. And support that argument with the fact that other predators still use the same old methods, apparently cruel to us, to kill theirs. Is it ethical for other predators to eat meat? Like it's always been for us, it's merely a matter of survival for them. Ethics have never entered the equation. And unless they evolve as we do, it's never going to either. This raises the question about the roots of ethics. Are we asking that question merely because we are evolved enough to do so, because we can?

As with the holy cow example, ethics and survival are not in opposition. Ethics is an extension of survival. If eating meat allows us to survive, then it is ethical to do so. The argument against eating meat today is only made possible by technology and agriculture. Yet I can't help but notice that even with all this technology and agriculture, we're not getting any healthier. I believe that the reason we're getting sicker and fatter is precisely because of agriculture. However, there are many ways to grow crops and raise livestock. And we don't have to eat those crops, we can feed them to animals and eat that instead. So basically, agriculture is a double-edged sword. It allows us to choose which food to eat, but it also makes us sick and fat if we choose the wrong ones.

This raises the question whether avoiding meat actually jeopardizes our survival. How ethical is that?

The argument that eating meat is unethical is made possible by the flawed premise that we can maintain as good a health as if we ate meat. This flawed premise is obvious to anybody who looks. Ancel Keys' semi-starvation experiment, Stefansson's all-meat trial, various low carb studies, the standard American diet, Weston Price's observations, etc. All of it taken together tells us when we eat less meat and more plants, our health declines. Without this flawed premise, it's very hard to convince people to stop eating meat just because animals suffer. So one aspect of answering the challenge is to establish this flawed premise with hard facts.

In one of the comments, somebody suggested that eating meat is not a right, but a choice. I beg to differ. The lion has little choice in his diet. He eats meat or dies of starvation. There's no choice because his diet is dictated by his physiology and his physiology is the result of millions of years of natural selection. So it is with humans. All that's left is to show humans must eat meat or die of starvation. I'm pretty sure we can use Ancel Keys' semi-starvation experiment and the Biosphere experiments for this. While many vegans can claim to still be alive in spite of avoiding meat entirely, I tend to look at those claims with suspicion considering that I've never known a single true vegan born from a true vegan. Everybody on this planet ate some meat at some point. And ex-vegans seem to pop up every now and again, admitting they ate meat or that their health wasn't that great until they started eating meat again.

The point is it's neither a right nor a choice, it's an obligation. Unless we want to suffer the consequences.

In another comment, somebody says "Being humans, and having the ability to reason, we are subject to a higher standard of morality." I disagree. We are not subject to, we subject ourselves. We make a choice. Because we can. It is this ability to make a choice that allows us to ask the question. Without this ability, the question does not cross our mind.

Another point. We ask about ethics because we can. The question implies suffering on animals. We apply the question to animals that can't ask it. I see incongruity here. Shouldn't we apply the question only to those who can understand it? The alternative is that we impose the question instead of allowing others to choose. Imposing one's will raises another question of ethics. Can we impose our ethics on other species? Who decides, us? It's not a question of ethics anymore, but a question of right.

Do we have the right to impose our ethics on other species? In fact, I think that's the biggest ethical dilemma ever.

I remember a short clip of a lion killing and eating a wildebeast. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't want to be the wildebeast, but I wouldn't mind being the lion. Vegans however don't want to be either. In other words, they reject the nature of nature. I see it this way because there's only two kinds of animals: Those who eat other animals, those who get eaten. If we don't want to be the carnivore, then we have no choice but to be the prey. We can't escape that reality. Yet that's what vegans want to do. Somehow I doubt a vegan would agree to get eaten by a hungry lion. That's the only choice in nature on this planet. You either are born and will get eaten, or you are born and will eat other animals. There's not a single animal that can escape both.

However, agriculture appears to give us that third choice. Don't get eaten, don't eat meat. We still can't escape our nature that is the product of millions of years of natural selection.

Hm, I'm reading Edwin Locke. Seems the subject has already been debated to death.

http://www.westonaprice.org/health-...-of-eating-meat

http://www.westonaprice.org/farm-a-...gical-wasteland

Just a couple essays already out there that I don't believe were mentioned in this thread.