Question What's wrong with eating animals? Animals eat animals, so it's natural.

Accepted:
June 19, 2021

Comments

The first point is that "Is

The first point is that "Is it natural?" and "Is it wrong?" aren't the same question. We could spend a lot of time on what it means to call something "natural," but you seem to have something like this in mind: if there are species that do it routinely, then it's natural. If that made things acceptable, then the fact that in some species, the female kills the male after sex would mean that it would be okay for a woman to kill a man after having sex with him. Don't know about you, but I'd say that seems like a pretty good counterexample to the "It's natural, therefore it's okay" idea.

As for why eating animals might be wrong, I dare say you've heard many of the reasons that some people find persuasive. Some have to do with the consequences for the animals. Others are of a quite different sort. For example: our meat-eating habits are a significant contributor to global warming. Raising animals for food accounts for just under 15% of greenhouse gases. See

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climate-change-foo...

for example. Eating meat is also hard on the environment in other ways. Here's a link to a piece in The Guardian that covers some of the details:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/07/true-cost-of-eating-meat-en...

It's "natural" for humans to eat meat in the sense that we're an omnivorous species. But we have a choice, and lots of people lead healthy, happy lives without eating meat. Whether the considerations about treatment of animals, climate change and other effects on the environment are reason enough to give up eating meat is something you can decide for yourself. But there are serious reasons on the anti-meat-eating side, and the fact that some animals are carnivorous doesn't get us anywhere in answering the question.

Question What's wrong with eating animals? Animals eat animals, so it's natural. Accepted:June 19, 2021

Question What's wrong with eating animals? Animals eat animals, so it's natural.

Accepted:
June 19, 2021