Can You Be an Environmentalist and Eat Meat?

While reading Virgil Butler’s engaging testimony, a thought that came into my mind is that eating animals’ parts should be illegal in the United States and other countries worldwide. Human beings have moral codes that guide their wellbeing. Unlike the animals, they are free and make decisions on matters concerning their life. In a real sense, the scene Virgil describes at Tyson CAFO is no less than inhumane acts such as terror shooting in a church, the 9/11 scene, and other mass killings such as Nazi experiments that have been condemned by people worldwide. It describes the intense pain the innocent animals have to witness before undergoing. The pain human beings feel when they experience a tragedy is equal to what animals experience during such an egregious act. If animals and human beings feel such pain, then people should have some sense of morality before engaging in such an action. From Gruen's viewpoint, stopping this act means stopping the culture of eating animals. According to Gruen, when people buy meat, they perpetuate the culture of massive animals’ killings. 

The most unfortunate part of the story, according to Gruen, is that only a few people are cold-blooded enough to look the animals into the eyes and slit open their throats. My interpretation of Gruen's claim, in this case, is that people would feel a sense of either pain or a sense of immortality when they are to kill animals. Comparing to killing a human being, only a few people would have the courage to slit open a cadaver, let alone a living human being. In this case, the same sense of pain, or immorality people feel or perceive as they are about to kill a human being is comparable to the same sense that pushed Virgil out of this Tyson CAFO. It implies that the moral sense in the two instances. Fischer (2019) argues that, i n this case, if killing a human being is immoral, then people should accord killing animals should the same moral weight. 

Reference 

Fischer, B. (2019). Nonideal ethics and arguments against eating animals.  Environmental Values ,  28 (4), 429-448 .