The Ethics of Meat

I’ve flirted with vegetarianism in my past. At the time I stopped eating meat it was an issue of economy more so than ethics. It was just cheaper to buy beans and tofu than chicken and beef.

I have since re-embraced my inner meat-lover, even though I am barely better off now than I was in my starving post-post-secondary years. But the more I read about how animals are farmed, the less likely I am to eat certain kinds of meat.

An editorial in Sunday’s Winnipeg Free Press opined that those who call for the ethical treatment of livestock are really just acting as a front for those who wish to end all livestock production. But this seems like a ridiculous argument in light of the fact that most humans continue to eat meat, and will continue wanting to no matter what strategies fringe animal rights groups bring to bear on public opinion.

It is possible for meat eating consumers to embrace the concept of free-range eggs and open hog barns without siding with the maniacs at PETA. It is in fact a highly logical and ethical stance to take. No one should begrudge farmers their living, but at the same time everyone should concern themselves with farming practices that seem cruel and poorly conceived.

I am not a wealthy person, but I won’t blink an eye when I spend an additional eighty cents to buy eggs that are “free run.” I have this idea that an animal who is raised in a suffocating and stressful environment is in someway unhealthy, and to eat the flesh or offspring of such an animal is unhealthy too. I have no way to prove my concerns scientifically, but intuitively it makes sense to me. I’m not sure to what degree an animal is aware of it’s being, but I am certain that no living thing, especially one destined to end up in my gullet, benefits from a life in a steel cage without any chance to roam and forage.

Like all sectors of our economy the agriculture business has become obsessed with the ideas of cheaper, faster and more. But while the widget factory may benefit from a streamlined production cycle, cutting corners in food production is illogical. Developing genetically similar pigs to better suit mechanized slaughter houses and then stuffing them with antibiotics because they have no natural resistance to disease seems like a really bad idea. Likewise farmed salmon aside from being less tasty than the wild version also threaten local populations with sea lice and competition for habitat when they escape their pens. That seems like too steep a price to pay for a slightly cheaper salmon steak.

Farming advocates can dream up all the conspiracy theories they want as to who is questioning their production methods and why, but the truth is that these methods do require scrutiny. In the end it is consumers who will decide what processes are ethical enough to support, and which need to be amended or abandoned altogether. However in order to make these decisions we must know how our food is being produced, and the real price we are paying for cheaper meat products.