I think it's much better to have a reasoned through moral viewpoint, and accept that you will try and often fail to live up to that standard. Don't judge others, but judge yourself. We live in a culture which eats meat, and so if you deem it morally wrong to eat meat, even partially going against the grain of wider society is a difficult but just act even if you fail to do so all the time. This is true for any social norm which you consider unjust.

Just throwing your hands up and saying that you may as well just eat any once-living creature on equal terms since it means you won't be a hypocrite seems worse than deducing what ought to be the right way to behave and then try to build a framework to, perhaps only in-part, act towards that end. You may conclude that all creatures are the same, and continue your actions, but it sounds like you just consider the risk of being a hypocrite being an overriding concern.

For me, I personally have tried to scale back my meat eating over time, since I believe it to be unclear how much animals suffer in farming conditions and how much they should have moral standing. I assume the degree to which these are true is somewhat proportional to how close these animals are in mental and physical form to humans.

So, I no longer eat any mammals and increasingly try to prefer fish over birds. I began by cutting off pork (which I now can no longer stomach) and then beef. The net effect of this lifestyle may mean I am a "hypocrite", since I still eat animals and even occasionally just yield to the temptation to eat a burger, but it likely results in less net suffering, and may in the long term result in transitioning completely off of meat.

In my case, I simply recognize that I do not have sufficient self-discipline to remain fully healthy on a vegetarian (let alone vegan) diet. And that I'd rather be a hypocrite than sick or dead.

And even acknowledging that, one can take measures to minimize one's impact. I consume a lot of eggs for protein and vitamins, and almost never prepare meat at home, though I'll eat it at other people's homes, restaurants, etc. I pay a little extra for pasture-raised eggs in the hope that those chickens have slightly less awful lives than the ones packed head to toe in barns. I eat dairy substitutes instead of actual dairy for many purposes (though not almond milk, which I dislike and is absolutely terrible for the environment).

As soon as lab-grown meat becomes a viable substitute (within, say, double the price), I'll gladly switch to that.

If you ask millions or billions of people to completely change their lives and eliminate something that they find pleasurable, all but a tiny percentage will either reject the idea outright or find they don't have the willpower to change. Willpower is hard; everyone has a finite amount of it in a given day; and we have to apply it constantly to a thousand other temptations of modern life.

If you ask people to cut back a bit on things and make some compromises, you're more likely to get cooperation. And 50% of the population cutting their meat consumption even by 20% gets you a lot further than 5% eliminating it from their diet entirely.

But in point #1 above, I think you drifted off course; the problem from my perspective isn't dead animals but rather killing animals needlessly. An animal which was dead eons before I was born is not my moral responsibility. It is my responsibility if an animal dies so that I can eat steak, if I could have just as easily had beans.

Thesis 1: I wish to consume meat/animal products

Thesis 2: I want to avoid animal suffering wherever possible

It would be completely consistent to only consume small-farm-raised animals which live a content free-range life, up until the moment it is quickly and humanely slaughtered.

My grandmother raised sheep and chickens. I don't know how the sheep met their end, but the chickens were slaughtered by a quick snip with very sharp scissors to some neck arteries; they were dead in seconds. The most suffering those chickens experienced was annoying grandchildren who loved to chase them.

If, hypothetically, all meat was sourced this way, the subjective experience of those animals is no worse, and most likely far better, than their wild life.

Use of isinglass requires killing new fish to extract their swim bladders. Meanwhile, nobody is killing animals to turn them into oil.

Besides, it'd only be hypocrisy if they're judging others. Simply saying "I'd like my beer free from fish bladders" isn't, even if you think the reason is ridiculous.

Not many animals are treated more cruelly than pigs raised for food consumption with the exception of chickens perhaps.

The problem is that culturally around the world, all kinds of animals end up on dinner plates that are unacceptable to other cultures.

There is no right or wrong. The only solution is compassion for other animals suffering, and then making a conscious choice.

If a person is really compassionate, they will not eat any animals. Until then, articles like this highlight the hypocrisy but that alone is not enough to enable change within human society on a whole.

BTW, it is established that we do not need to eat meat to survive. People choose to eat meat because they like the taste, not for any other reason.

I don't think that eating meat is immoral, animals eat each other every day, and I think that most people are okay with this.

But I can recognize that the conditions in factory farms are not okay, the misery that the animals experience is not ethical, and I think if you show any carnivore a video of the inside of a factory farm they will agree. Working to improve the lives of farm animals will encounter very little resistance from even the most vocal carnivore.

I also don't deny that meat production releases methane, and that is not good for the planet. Most carnivores will not have a problem with trying to use technology and new techniques to lower the carbon footprint of farming. For example feeding cows seaweed instead of traditional feed is supposed to cause a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

But as soon as you start actively trying to take away my ability to eat meat or my ability to feed my family with meat, then that is where I take offense. i.e. you can show me the facts and let me come to my own conclusion. You can raise awareness, you can put in place regulations for humane treatment of animals, you can implement new technologies to reduce emissions. But if you try to forcibly change my diet, or even _imply_ that someone should forcibly change my diet, that is where I take offense.

I value living things because I'm a chronic Myers Briggs "Feeler" - I put myself in the other things' shoes way too much for my own good, including things like octopuses and pigs. It's much harder for insects because their neural circuitry is so much simpler, but I still try and avoid killing them needlessly.

I think the main problem here is that when some people have an experience they find illuminating, their reaction is to look down on other people who do not share the newly acquired viewpoint.

I want to add that framing my ideas about animal suffering in an elastic way makes it easier for me to make incremental changes. An animal is either alive or dead. Maybe eating vegetarian once a week will save a life down the line.

I urge everyone to resist the all-or-nothing approach, especially on such an important aspect of our ethical choices. No one's perfect, not even the vegan straight edge kids on Instagram who sneak a chicken nugget when no one's looking.

The conversation is about whether there is a Moral Paradox involved in eating animals while believing you are a moral person. Not about deforestation or extinction, etc. If you ask me, by the way, the problem is just flat out too many people not what they choose to eat.

Every living thing eats something. Plants? Other animals? Decayed dead animals and plants? (dirt) Something. I don't subscribe to a moral theory that makes ones own existence immoral, nor a moral theory that makes every other animal's existence immoral. So eating other previously living things is itself not fundamentally immoral.

If you want to say how we do so matters, then I don't completely disagree. There certainly exist people and groups of people who behave immorally in all sorts of ways and that includes being cruel or wasteful with all different kinds of natural resources, including animals. So these people are behaving immorally and badly. But I do believe, on my own observations, that the overwhelming majority of meat farming in the developed nations is not cruel. It sometimes isn't pretty, but it isn't cruel or immoral - it's a job and a crop. No more immoral than growing wheat just to cut it down.

When I buy 1/2 of a pig that my neighbor butchers, that I watched grow up running around in the pen next door, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact I have a lot more respect for that then people who know nothing about agriculture or animals pretending that, on the basis of some moral theory, they know better how the rest of us should behave and believe.

Being a vegan owner who has a carnivore dog is still better than being a carnivore owner with a carnivore dog. It’s better to be inconsistently ethical than it is to be consistently unethical.

I think we can get into logic traps here on HN that ignore the realities (and benefits!) of the messiness of human behavior.

Regarding the opening line of your last paragraph, are you in disagreement with the idea that eating meat is immoral, or are you just saying it is offensive for someone to tell you what you're doing is immoral full stop (whatever the topic)?

I ask because at the start you say you arent offended by the facts about factory farming and climate impacts - so it sounds like you realise the immoralness? But your key issue is with someone judging you for that immoral action, and for suggesting you should change? Or have I misinterpreted?

Sure you can eat the beans and grains instead. You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people.

I don't have a problem with the idea of reducing environmental footprint or moving consumption patterns to more efficient products. Great ideas. What I have a problem with is making choices for or passing moral judgement on other people.

Your lifestyle results in the death of life and animals, and you do not do everything physically possible to minimize that, therefore you simply do not have that moral high ground. If killing animals is "wrong", then we are all wrong. "Oh but I try to minimize" is not an defense because you are minimizing according to what is convenient or valuable to you. You'll accept some killing of animals because you fly to Europe once a year or have a smartphone or heat your house and that's okay, but somebody who chooses to eat more meat than you would prefer?

It's one thing to point out hypocrisy about the suffering that the meat industry causes as a way to encourage people to think about whether it's necessary for them to eat meat. It's another thing to point out the hypocrisy around the meat industry as a way to say "so therefore you also shouldn't care about animal testing." That's going backwards, not forwards.

You are all allowed to care about lab animals even if you eat meat, I give you my... I don't know, my "vegan blessing" or whatever. Also, you don't need the vegan movement's permission to care about animals anyway, but whatever.

The point is, try to be kind to animals when you can be. And if you want to be more consistent, be more consistently kind, not more consistently cruel.

But my dog doesn't like a vegan diet, probably not healthy for him either.

I think the argument I've heard from some of my meat eating friends is "why should we be vegetarians? animals kill other animals, we are also animals. Most animals don't usually kill their own kind. We do the same. At the end nature is quite violent. The most adaptable survive. Humans are the most powerful species because we've killed other potentially powerful species in the race of evolution. Killing to win is in our nature"

> it's a much better solution than paying some company to call you a good person.

If you can afford to and understand the terrible conditions of battery chicken, but wish to still eat meat, then one choice is morally better. It's unrealistic to think otherwise. Signaling intention with your purchase decisions is real. Not eating meat is of course the better solution, but is again an unrealistic expectation to have for many people.

You seem unable to tolerate incremental improvement. Why is that?

But unfortunately, meat protein has some of the highest biological value, outside of egg whites/whey/dairy proteins.

When you factor in how cheap low-grade meat is, it winds up being incredibly economical to just eat a bunch of $2/lb chicken and whatnot. Especially if you're trying to eat upwards of 200-250g of protein a day, it gets expensive fast.

So I have sort of accepted this hypocritical double-standard, where I recognize that what I am doing is not entirely ethical but at the same time it's too practical for me to give up. Plus, I love meat.

Lab-grown meat at somewhere near the price of regular meat has been a dream for me because then I get to have my cake and eat it too. Don't have to give up meat, or try to substitute non-meat proteins for it, and no actual sentient being has to suffer and die in order for me to continue doing so.

Huge win-win, can't come soon enough.

I would eat the plant-based stuff if someone could prove comparable biological value and the price was the same or only marginally higher, too.

I really don't care, as long as it tastes (doesn't even have to look) like meat, and the bodily effects are identical.

I am open to being taught, I just expect something better than silliness like "I can care for animals and also eat them for pleasure" when it comes to what I find convincing. Please, by all means, teach me something. I am genuinely open to it. If you read through the many conversations I've had on this topic in the past, you'll also find thorough explanations as to precisely why I find these carnist arguments so tired and ineffective. Just because I am once again, for the umpteenth time, saying that people who claim to care for animal welfare while actively harming animals are hypocrites doesn't mean I'm close-minded, it just means that this delusion is ubiquitous.

> many of your critiques tend toward simplistic snark

This is probably more true than I would like to admit, but in my defense I am arguing for what I know to be the ending of the subjugation of trillions of sentient creatures, so forgive me for being _extremely_ upset when I need to convince people of what is an obvious truth: one cannot claim to value animal welfare while participating in the unnecessary abuse of those animals.

> even when other vegetarians and vegans are telling you that you're hurting the cause

Being a vegan or vegetarian does not make someone more likely to know what is good for the cause. Knowing what makes an effective social movement is a completely different area of knowledge, so the fact that other folks who eat fewer or no animals disagree with my strategy doesn't say much.