December 8, 2025
Whenever I tell people that I’ve gone vegetarian, they tend to look down at me and say something along the lines of “oh, healthy.” While there is nothing necessarily healthy about vegetarianism; a bag of chips and ice cream are delicious and meat-free. More importantly, the focus on health obscures the actual moral imperative of such a diet.
It is true that any given human has much greater moral value than an animal. Nevertheless, if we believe that an animal can experience suffering (and we likely do, evidenced by sympathies toward domestic animal abuse), we then have an obligation to reduce that suffering. I am loath to believe that the enjoyment and nutrition gained by consuming meat is greater than the following horrors.
The immoral act in eating meat is not the killing of the animal; while bad, this is a culmination of acts, and a negative sense of killing presupposes a continuous sentient experience by animals. This is a strong premise which is difficult to maintain. Rather, it is the series of acts in modern animal farming - the cramming of animals into tight spaces, separating them from their young, and the inhospitable conditions, which turn the act of eating meat into a negative one. Successfully killing a deer with an efficient method in the wild is likely fine; it is industrialization that makes a difference.
If we were to live in a world without factory farming and one introduced it, this would be seen as an atrocity, even though we are accustomed to such levels of violence. We say nothing of fishing (esp. wild-caught). Around these traps lie different experiences of reality. Thus, a vegetarian diet is likely to make a large ethical difference we can make in our lives.
One concept which has been bouncing around in the back of my head is that of the sacred. I do not believe that most people respond well to arguments (especially relating to deeply-held behaviors). Rather, change in preference cascades.
The consumption of meat is clearly important to many. Rather than denying it, another action could be to elevate the importance of its consumption to the sacred. One could establish a series of rituals relating to this (special occasions, preparation, etc.). After all, the fact that it is important ought to be celebrated. And, by consuming it in a non-sacred way, one defiles the meat (this is a taboo). Fear of violating the norm causes less consumption overall. By setting meat apart, societally it can be transformed.
Of course, there are other societal levers we can pull. Our soy and corn subsidies are actually for animal feed, subsidizing production. By ending these handouts to farmers, we could increase the price of meat. However, this would prove politically unpopular (though it remains to be seen if the average American can think multiple steps through a policy). Tying meat with health may help as well, though this has been tried, and as stated earlier, obscures the point.
Nevertheless, the cessation of factory farming is a moral good that an individual can participate in. May we all work in ways to better the world.