Eating animal meat purely for pleasure is unethical.

Let me state that i did enjoy this debate, and although i dont exactly have a personal opinion on this matter. "I'm not a spokesperson for PETA nor am I here to defend any of the views that they may hold." Its hard to know where your views begin and where they end. Its partially because we didnt have enough time/space to write down everything we wanted. So if you are against PETA, then i apologize for bringing it up. However, thus far, it is hard to understand exactly what you are trying to advocate. You have made the argument before as to how it would feel if we as humans were to experience the same undergoings as animals, which is basically the argument that PETA makes. "sanctions that would put meat farmers out of business" But you clearly are in favor of meat farmers going out of business. Although you havent touched on your entire argument as to how exactly we should avoid eating meat and to what extent, but clearly you: a). Dont care if the farmers go out of busness, and hope they do, and b). think it unethical for people to make a living off of meat. And usually, since people advocate stopping others from doing unethical things, its not a far stretch to assume that even if you are not arguing that governments should impose sanctions, you would atleast not object if such a sanction was put in place. "Chickens have a much more developed nervous system than clams do" My original counter argument was as follows: "no method of detecting exactly how MUCH pain one animal can feel over another" And, your two sources cite nothing towards the degree of pain of one over the other. BTW, youre the one who made the argument, not me: "Clams, if they can suffer at all, suffer a lot less than pigs or other farm animals." Therefore, the burden of proof is on you. Not me. Im not the one who made the assertion. You are. Please dont try to shift the burden of proof. "flies, or clams can suffer their own destruction in any way" Ive already provided evidence that Flies can infact feel pain. Your bald assertion is still an assertion as you havent provided any evidence to the contrary. "I have serious doubts that they have emotional lives in the way that cows and pigs do" Again, no source. How emotional are cows and pigs? What emotions can they feel? Do they have Empathy? You are the one making the assertion. You are the one who should provide the source. "For this reason I'm still waiting for more evidence to come in." We have no evidence at all, and this is my point. Im not the one claiming that Flies have more feeling than Pigs. You are making the claim that pigs feel more than flies. That is a bald assertion, with no evidence to back it up. "if we did draw did draw lines they would be just that, arbitrary." Heres another arbitrary rule: We are allowed to eat anything other than humans. Wow, youre right, that is easy! The truth is, things like the age of consent, the age of maturity and the age of voting, may SEEM arbitrary, but they are not. We didnt make a roulette with an age range of 1 to 80, and throw a dart to see where it landed. Infact, we carefully reviewed the physiology, psychology, and current culture. "Reason can guide us to the conclusion that swatting flies is morally inconsequential whereas killing pigs is not." Id ask what reason that would be, as you have done nothing but avoid answering the question thus far. However, as it is the last round, it is too late to ask this. "The fact that people can make money in an industry is not a logical reason that the industry should be preserved or that the industry is operating ethically." Yet nothing that youve said thus far, nor the majority of the citizens of EVERY SINGLE country that abolishes Sex Slavery, Drugs and all other unethical business practices, nor the Justice or Judicial system that bans such unethical businesses, even slightly consider that the meat business is unethical. Your argument is completely useless, as someone who believes that Clothes is an unethical industry, could also compare clothes to Sex slaves, which is not the case. "huge corporations and conglomerates run many of the factory farms" No. Huge corporations buy from many of the factory farms. There is a difference. "they're sitting on 20 million dollars in the bank." Wow, the farmers sure are rich! The corporate heads have millions. The indiviual farmers, which lose their jobs regardless, do not. I did not even mention the corporate heads. Why are you bringing up this argument? "You speak about meat farmers as though they've been entitled by God to make money." You speak about meat farmers as though they have alternative sources of income. "it's not anyone's responsibility to bail me out." It is if someone is advocating everyone to boycott your product. "feel happiness and plan for the future in ways that no chimpanzee possibly could." Yet, here, you say: "The ability to experience happiness and the ability to suffer can be useful criterion for determining what animals have rights." You are contradicting yourself, sir. If the ability to experience hapiness is a criterion, but animals cannot feel any happiness except for animals, clearly all animals(Cept for humans) have the same rights. You have lost, sir. "temporary inconvenience of a meat farmer" This is the point, though. Look at todays economy. Are all the people who are going out of busness, only "Temporarily" inconvenienced? Of course not. They have lost a stable job, which means pension, health care benefits, etc. These arent temporary, and most of them are not likely to receive new jobs. As seen here(1), the number of people who lose jobs longer is a lot higher. Any person who has lost their job at a good company knows that they are inconvenienced for life. Losing a job which constitutes your entire life, including your entire work experience, is not a simple "Temporary inconvenience", and i find it rude and frankly insulting to those who lost their jobs in this economy. "If someone eats meat out of necessity for their life then at that point they wouldn't be consuming it purely for pleasure, which is the basis of my entire argument" And the fact that we can substitute meat for vegetables, as is the case for, uh, almost EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL ON THE PLANET, doesnt make it any less moral for those animals to KEEP consuming meat. "At the very minimum they shouldn't suffer under the wanton cruelty of greedy profiteering humans who use them as a means for pleasure." At the very minimum of WHAT criterion? Since you refused to answer what possible criterion we could use to instigate what rights go to what animals, your argument completely lacks any credibility. "you are demonstrating a coherent use of logic" Thanks for the examples. Oh wait, you have none. Another blatantly bald assertion with no evidence to back it up? "Membership in a species is not relevant to matters of ethics." Yet, you claim: "I fully acknowledge that animals and humans should have different rights." So clearly, membership in a species is relevant to matters of ethics, or in a larger sense, rights. Again, thanks for the contradiction. "It is morally wrong to knowingly cause animals to suffer for no good reason" Clearly there are already good reasons in place, as you yourself have admitted. Furthermore, it is a good time to bring this up, as our debate is ending. The original topic is flawed. There is no such thing as consuming meat purely for pleasure, as meat is converted to protein or nutrients regardless of whether the organism requires, or has an alternative means of eating. Therefore, the consumption of meat provides nutrients, and is not purely for pleasure. "HUMANS don't need meat to survive therefore eating animals for pleasure is not a sufficient reason to curtail their happiness." I couldve addressed this, if you had answered my previous argument. 1. http://www.bls.g...