by Prin Dumas

Created on: January 20, 2012

Eating meat is not wrong.  There are people who make the decision to not eat any animals for ethical and moral reasons but, realistically, eating meat is a long-standing component of the human diet.  That doesn't make it right, just because it is an old habit.  Eating animals is not wrong, simply due to the natural food chain.  It is a balance within nature itself, and there is no reason to feel bad about eating food-beasts like cows, chicken, pork, lamb, and fish, among others. 

The line of morality when eating comes from the choices people make about which animals to actually eat.  For example, if an animal becomes a delicacy due to its near extinction, it seems wrong to pursue eating it or even selling it at a restaurant at a profit for that matter.  As humans, we have evolved to think beyond our own pleasures, or at least, we all understand that this is a noble moral goal.  To eat an animal from a dying species is wrong.  To eat a chicken?  This is not wrong.  To be a vegetarian is not right or wrong either.  These are food choices.

In the movie The Lion King, the father lion tells the cub that a king respects all animals in the animal kingdom.  The cub seems surprised as he points out that their species eat the antelope, and then the father clarifies that the lions become the grass when they die and the antelopes eat the grass...creating the "circle of life."  One has to appreciate Disney's beautiful pro-carnivore stance!  Within reason, eating an animal is part of life.

It may seem difficult to determine what is or is not wrong when eating meat.  For one person, eating a beautiful or large fish may seem horrible while eating deer meat is acceptable due to their dense populations.  Well, dietary preferences are just that - preferences.  If a person decides to avoid red meat in an effort to decrease eating certain animals, this may be a great way to compromise with one's moral objections to eating meat.  Another person may decide to only eat chicken and fish for health reasons and feel good that they are leaving the rest of the animals alone.  Everyone is allowed to their opinion about eating or not eating meat, but it is certainly no one's place to enforce whether or not it is wrong to eat meat for another human being.  Morality determines right or wrong, and although a gray area, dietary choices are rarely riddled with moral dilemmas.

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