As a civilized society we can do away with the meat industry. It is barbaric to kill another living being to sustain ourselves. In a civilized society there is division of labor which provides a means to enjoy all the fruits that this world has to offer. We do not need to end the genetic line of another being to sustain us.
As an individual, I agree that a person who fishes can eat their catch at the end of the day. As well as a hunter can eat the meat that he has killed for the day to sustain himself. What I disagree with is the industrial killing of animals to feed us as a society.
These animals are kept in cages and pens their entire life fed to fatten them and then ending their lives to provide a few meals. It is disheartening to see whole chicken meat tossed in the garbage because it was not cooked properly or that it had become rotten. Many of these are the same chicken kept alive in barely moveable cages. For any particular chicken, it’s entire life is kept in a cage and then it is killed and sometimes the meat is thrown away. To treat a life in this manner seems inhumane. Just because the meat comes neatly packaged in bloodless saran wrapped styrofoam trays children learn from a young age that this is how food comes.
The entire veal industry was started to manage the calves born to dairy cows. These cows are bred so they will produce more milk. Counterintuitively, the byproducts are the calves. These calves will drink the produced milk and the profits. In order to manage them, these male calves are kept in stalls where they cannot move sideways until their life is ended in a few months for the tender meat.
The counter argument is that we are killing the plants by eating their fruits and vegetables. Contrarily it is the opposite, eating fruits and vegetables is sustainable. These plants’ and trees’ genetic line is not ended to sustain us. The trees can provide the fruits to be eaten and still produce more fruit. In fact that is how the trees propagate. These fruits that carry the seeds are the payment to the birds and animals to spread the seeds further through their excrement.
Now another argument is that if we eat the vegetables such as a carrot or potato then we end it’s genetic line. That is not true. We can eat the entire carrot and plant the eye of the carrot back in the soil to generate a new carrot with the same genetic line. This is also true with potatoes. A small portion of the potato planted back will yield a whole new potato.
In conclusion, this is the theory of the Live and Let Live mentality. Another life does not need to end to sustain us as a civilized society. There is a division of labor and enough resources in society to provide us with a healthy life collectively without meat as a food source.
Finally, I concur that the newly developed lab grown meat fed by nutrient rich media can render this theory moot.