Humans are part of the food chain, and eating meat is natural. So how can eating meat be wrong?
Eating meat is natural in the sense that other animals do it too. In fact, our closest relatives, chimpanzees, sometimes eat meat. But animals do many other things that could also be called “natural.” For example, male chimpanzees sometimes rape females in their group. Chimpanzees sometimes engage in organised violence against other groups competing for territory. In a moment of anger, a male chimpanzee may pick up a nearby infant chimpanzee and smash its skull with a rock. Chimpanzees also sometimes eat meat and commit acts of cannibalism, despite having plenty of other food available.
So eating meat is certainly natural. But that does not make it ethically acceptable. If we considered eating meat ethically acceptable simply because other animals do it, then rape, cannibalism and infanticide—which also occur in the animal kingdom—would have to be acceptable too.
The truth is that other animals share some of humanity’s darkest behaviours, as well as some of the things we are proud of.
Continue with these questions:
- Why is it wrong to eat meat?
- What do you think of the phrase “survival of the fittest”?
- Should we try to stop other animals from killing and eating one another?
- Why should we treat animals better than they treat one another?
- What evidence is there that other animals can make moral decisions?
- How common is cannibalism in the animal kingdom?