Apologists for eating meat often cite in support of their views the argument that a person, from a biological point of view, is an animal, eating other animals acts only in a natural way and in accordance with the laws of nature. So, in the wild, many animals are forced to eat their neighbor – the survival of some species requires the death of others. Those who think like this forget one simple truth: carnivorous predators can only survive by eating other animals, because the structure of their digestive system leaves them no other choice. A person can, and at the same time very successfully, do without eating the flesh of other creatures. Hardly anyone will argue with the fact that today man is a kind of “predator”, the most cruel and bloodthirsty that has ever existed on earth.
No one can compare with his atrocities towards animals, which he destroys not only for food, but also for entertainment or profit. Who else among the predators is guilty of so many ruthless murders and the mass extermination of their own brethren that continues to this day, with which can one compare the atrocities of man in relation to the representatives of the human race? At the same time, man is undoubtedly distinguished from other animals by the strength of his mind, the eternal desire for self-improvement, a sense of justice and compassion.
We take such pride in our ability to make ethical decisions and take moral responsibility for our own actions. Trying to protect the weak and defenseless from the violence and aggression of the strong and ruthless, we adopt laws stating that anyone who deliberately takes the life of a person (except in cases of self-defense and protecting the interests of the state) must suffer severe punishment, often associated with deprivation of life. In our human society, we reject, or want to believe we reject, the vicious principle “The strong one is always right.” But when it comes not to a person, but to our smaller brothers, especially those on whose meat or skin we have our eyes or on whose organisms we want to perform a deadly experiment, we exploit and torture them with a clear conscience, justifying our atrocities with a cynical statement: “Because the intellect of these creatures is inferior to ours, and the concept of good and evil is alien to them – they are powerless.
If in deciding the issue of life and death, whether human or any other, we are guided only by considerations of the level of intellectual development of the individual, then, like the Nazis, we can boldly put an end to both the feeble-minded old people and the mentally retarded people at the same time. After all, you must admit that many animals are much more intelligent, capable of adequate reactions and full communication with representatives of their world, rather than a mentally handicapped individual suffering from complete idiocy. The ability of such a person to always adhere to the norms of generally accepted morality and morality is also questionable. You can also, by analogy, try to imagine the following scenario: some extraterrestrial civilization, which is at a higher than human level of development, invaded our planet. Would it be morally justified if they would kill and devour us on the sole ground that our intellect was inferior to theirs and they liked our meat?
Be that as it may, the ethically impeccable criterion here should not be the rationality of a living being, not its ability or inability to make ethically correct decisions and make moral judgments, but its ability to experience pain, suffer physically and emotionally. Without a doubt, animals are able to fully experience suffering – they are not objects of the material world. Animals are able to experience the bitterness of loneliness, be sad, experience fear. When something happens to their offspring, their mental anguish is difficult to describe, and in the event of danger threatening them, they cling to their lives no less than a person. Talk about the possibility of painless and humane killing of animals is just empty talk. There will always be a place for the horror that they experience at the slaughterhouse and during transportation, not to mention the fact that branding, castration, cutting off horns and other terrible things done by man in the process of raising livestock will not go anywhere.
Let us finally ask ourselves, in all frankness, are we ready, being healthy and in the prime of life, to accept a violent death meekly on the grounds that this will be done quickly and painlessly? Do we even have the right to take the lives of living beings when it is not required by the highest goals of society and this is not done out of considerations of compassion and humanity? How dare we proclaim our innate love for justice when, at the whim of our stomachs, every day we condemn hundreds of thousands of defenseless animals to a terrible death in cold blood, without feeling the slightest remorse, without even allowing the thought that someone should be for it. punished. Think how heavy is the burden of that negative karma that humanity continues to accumulate with its cruel deeds, what an unenviable legacy full of violence and chilling horror we leave for the future!