The Carnivore's Dilemma

In a recent documentary the term speciesism was used to illustrate mankind oppression on animals and it concluded by stating that not moderating our attitude towards our fellow earthlings should lead to a disaster. They described five ways of inducing sufferance to animals, but by far the most controversy subject was killing animals for food, that’s why they suggested that is very important that we reconsider our eating habits.

I am not arguing that harming animals is not wrong, but I am also not very sure if it is a bad thing to eat meat, after all it is in our nature. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to try eating just as much we need. I have never been to Asia, so I wouldn’t know it, but I’ve been told by almost every Asian person I met that us, Europeans, eat much more meat than they do; actually, much more food, generally speaking.

So, we are intelligent creatures and we gradually became more tolerant and less ignorant and violent. In the past we did abominable things to our fellow humans, things that today we like to think of as being hateful to do even on animals. Evolution is natural, but I don’t know if the natural way of evolving is by stopping killing or even harming animals just because they suffer. Humans too, suffer because of other humans (or sometimes because of animals). We still go to war for doubtful reasons.

I think harming animals is an issue of each of ours beliefs. We cannot all stop eating animals at once just because we should be more tolerant towards them. It is in the earthling’s nature to eat other creatures. Animals eat other animals; if we care that much about them shouldn’t we convince them not to, anymore?