Eating animal meat purely for pleasure is unethical.

From where do rights flow? How are we to determine who has rights? Clearly a claim to rights should have something to do with whether or not an entity can hold preferences and suffer. It would simply be absurd to say that kicking a rock is a violation of its rights because the rock cannot desire anything. A rock is not capable of holding any desires about the world nor can a rock suffer, one would presume. Chickens, cows, and pigs on the other hand can all feel a great deal of pain and also hold rudimentary preferences; i.e. they would really prefer not to be eaten. Of course animal suffering exists on a continuum. Clams, if they can suffer at all, suffer a lot less than pigs or other farm animals. At the dawn of the agricultural revolution, for probably the first time in history, man was able to regularly grow his own food without having to hunt it down. This lead to many different things, among which, was a decreased need for the reliance on meat as a form of sustenance. Ten thousand years later the age has long past when we can make a strong utility claim for the necessity of meat in our diet. In our modernized world gathering food need not be more difficult than a telephone call or a short trip to the supermarket. We are perfectly capable of sustaining ourselves without eating meat. I accomplish this feat on a daily basis even though I may occasionally falter. The claim that humans need meat to survive is demonstrably false and any thinking person should not take it seriously. Our own desire to eat meat contributes daily to the death and misery of millions upon millions of animals. These animals have mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters very much like your own family. Many of these animals are forced to live out the entirety of their lives in the artificial conditions of huge factory farms with no access to air, sunshine, or freedom of movement. And our insatiable appetite for flesh leads us to be culpably acquiescent in these atrocities. This could simply be remedied by our refusal to eat meat. Our needless encroachment on the happiness of animals is not only unnecessary; it is deeply unethical because it leads to the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of conscious creatures. I am not arguing that there is anything prima facie wrong with the consumption of meat. For example, I would not be opposed to people eating road kill, insofar as this behavior didn't encourage other people to run over extra animals. Nor would I be opposed to eating meat grown in a laboratory, which did not require the death of a conscious creature. I would also not be opposed to consuming meat if a person was starving. Now when I say starving I really do mean starving- literally on the verge of starvation. Someone that misses lunch or breakfast and finds himself to be quite hungry would not be a viable candidate for starvation under this view. The ad hoc argument that man was created in the image of God and was given dominion over the animals is simply a cop out and irrelevant to this debate. Man was not created in the image of God; the Gods were created in the image of men. And even if I was wrong and a "God" did exist there is no reason to think that this God approved of Christianity or our wanton cruelty to animals. As humans we were not given special rights by a deity to reign over animals; we merely evolved alongside them over millions of years. A related argument contends that God has endowed humans with an immortal soul that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Other problems arise if one wishes to take this route. Firstly, and most obviously, it is an unprovable and untestable hypothesis. Secondly, it does seem to raise rather difficult issues given that we share 98% of our DNA with our closely related, presumably soulless, primate brethren. At what point in human evolution did we acquire this immaterial soul? Was it when we acquired the ability to walk bipedally? Was it in between the transition from Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus? No doubt theologians have been ruminating over these conundrums for decades. Some will try to argue, from a cynical standpoint, that their consumption of meat leads to no perceivable increase in the suffering of animals. The major flaw in this defense is that it disregards the connection between the meat we eat today and the future killing of animals. Granted, the chicken and pork in the supermarket freezer would still be there even if I were to never have existed. However this contention completely glosses over the way markets operate in a free society. The fact that someone chooses to buy chicken instead of tofu will determine how many pounds of chicken and tofu that store orders the following week and thus contributes, in a small way, to the future suffering of animals. This is what the laws of supply and demand are all about. We can't merely ignore the divisibility of responsibility of our own actions individually or as a society. If I were to cheat on my taxes it would make such an imperceptible difference to the total revenue of the IRS that we might be tempted to dismiss such an action as inconsequential. However, if everyone cheated on their income tax this could have disastrous effects on the economy and everything that flowed from that system. We must recognize the consequences of our actions and take responsibility for them. Others will contend that humans deserve special rights over animals merely because we are members of the species homo sapiens. This argument, at least to me, seems sorely lacking in substance. Membership in a species is no more relevant to questions about ethics than skin color or gender. Undoubtedly this claim will raise one or two eyebrows so allow me to unpack it for you. Imagine we were visited by extraterrestrials that possessed more or less the same characteristics as human beings. Would we be justified in treating them as second-class citizens purely because they weren't members of our own species? I think not. Unless we wish to raise the specter of speciesism then membership in a species is not relevant to whether or not animals should have rights. Having said that I don't want people to think that I believe animals and humans should be given equal rights. We can weigh our ethical responsibilities to animals by appealing to their qualities e.g. (their capacity to suffer), which at the end of the day would put human persons at the top of our ethical purview. We would do well to reflect on what Jesus of Nazareth said regarding how we should treat our neighbors. "So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the Law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12 RSV) There is grandeur in this view of life. Put yourself momentarily behind a veil of ignorance and imagine that you are a cow or pig. How would you wish to be treated? Would you wish to be eaten? Would you wish to be conscripted to a life of manual labor only to be consumed at a later date? Would you wish to be ruled over? Wouldn't you wish to be free? All the best, Freeman Sources http://www.utilitarian.net... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.scientificamerican.com... Writings on an Ethical Life- Peter Singer (My source of inspiration for the debate) Definitions Speciesism- Human intolerance or discrimination on the basis of species, especially as manifested by cruelty to or exploitation of animals. Pleasurable - enjoyable: affording satisfaction or pleasure; "the company was enjoyable"; "found her praise gratifying"