[Answered] Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad

Skyraptor7@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 211 points –

I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

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I don't believe this is a straw man argument, I never claim that they believe these conclusions. Quite the opposite, I am showing how their argument, not their conclusion, is not good. As I understand their argument, it is basically this:

(i) If something does not want to be killed, it is morally wrong to kill it. (ii) Animals do not want to be killed. Thus, it is morally wrong to kill animals.

I do not agree with (i), which I try to explain by reductio ad absurdum, arguing that if (i) is true it leads to obviously incorrect conclusions, thus (i) must be false.

The straw man argument comes from your point about combining plants and animals as food, and stating that they were both living. If you compare a cow to parsley, it is silly to say that we shouldn't eat parsley for the sake of it being a living organism. With cows in the same argument, they get dismissed since they're in the same group as plants.

Plants are the straw man in this case because it's easy to dismiss the argument that we shouldn't eat plants, for some reason. Animals are conscious creatures that experience suffering. Plants don't experience the same pain.

A straw man argument is when the other person believes A and you act like they in fact believe B, so you argue against B.

I am not claiming they believe it immoral to kill plants. Quite the opposite, I don't think anyone believes this in general. Therefore, it is not a straw man.

Not quite. From https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Strawman-Fallacy:

  • Person 1 makes claim Y.
  • Person 2 restates person 1’s claim (in a distorted way).
  • Person 2 attacks the distorted version of the claim.
  • Therefore, claim Y is false.

With this in mind:

  • Someone spoke about the ethics of food.
  • You claimed that plants are food like meat (both living), and it is unethical to eat them: "[...] all life has a right to not be killed or abused. Yet human life is impossible without killing and consuming other living organisms, be it plants, animals og fungi. Thus it is unethical to continue living."
  • It's silly to say that it's unethical to eat plants.
  • Therefore, the claim about food ethics is silly.

You are misunderstanding my argument. I am not arguing against their conclusion, "it is morally wrong to kill animals", I am arguing against the validity of their argument, "If something does not want to be killed, it is morally wrong to kill it". Therefore, I am not restating their claim, I am saying that their argument leads to this absurd conclusion, thus it must be wrong. I have already explained this in a previous comment. You appear to be ignoring what I am writing.