What's the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.
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is it morally wrong to breathe? i mean, you're using another being's oxygen.
the question isn't whether it's right or wrong, but about where you draw the line. that you can only decide for yourself.
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No, if you are Vegan. Yes, if you eat animal products. The question is, do you care?
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Morals are internal and are often informed by one’s culture, upbringing, and lived experience. There is a wide array of answers here and that’s not surprising.
For me I do consider vegetarianism to be a more moral option, I am not a vegetarian though. I think that Americans eat more meat than they need to and men in particular are targeted to over consume meat to the detriment of their health. With these things in mind I do try to eat less meat and go through phases when I am more successful.
After taking a college course about the meat industry, my partner decided not to purchase meat, but still does eat it.
No. The nature of life consumptions of living things. I do believe however that it is preferable to eat from the least sentient of creatures as possible. You can even go further and eat things which does not kill things at all like fruitarians. This would be following the ethic of least harm. Its almost impossible for anyone living in the modern world to not be destroying it with their consumption. Most vegans for example would be doing more harm to me than say someone native to the americas before colonialism that ate meat.
Fruitarian diet is quite dangerous.
It's already hard eating all necessary nutrients on a vegan diet. Possible, but harder than with omnivore diet.
But restricting to just fruits... I don't know if it's even possible to get all your body needs just from fruits.
Something interesting and anecdotal. We get a lot of Indian immigrants in my area, and they're primarily vegetarian. But as soon as they move here, they become anaemic, because the lentils etc grown in our soil doesn't have enough nutrients for survival. They have to start taking supplements. I'm not sure why that is, but it makes me wonder if people would be more willing to be vegetarian here if it was actually viable nutritionally.
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I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.
Yes
No, I have a developed system of morality, quite strong. And eating meat doesn't contradict it.
For anyone curious the model is based on avoidance of cruelty. Cruelty is what makes people bad. If you do something with cruel intentions it doesn't matter what you destroy, a human, other animal, a plant or even a geological formation. If you do it with cruelty on mind you are a bad person.
But if your intentions are others, then there's nothing bad. You eat meat not because you want to be cruel towards an animal, but because you want to eat. Then it's ok.
It's all about avoiding cruel intentions on humans. Those are my morals at least. I follow them and judge anothers based on them.
What is your definition of cruelty?
From Wikipedia: "Cruelty is the intentional infliction of suffering or the inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available."
Because eating meat requires cruelty per this definition IMO.
That definition is quite good, I would add that for cruelty to be cruelty the objective of your actions needs to be the cruelty.
Eating meat doesn't fall into that definition, fron my point of view.
You being alive causes a lot of suffering in the world, just because you are alive, you cannot live without doing harm to other living beings.
You draw you line on "I'm not cruel because I go out of my way not to eat meat". There are infinite lines you could draw before and after or in parallel. Someone could say "Ido not walk because I may step on some bug and that would make me cruel, and anyone who walks and thus step on bugs is cruel".
A clear remedy to avoid causing harm to absolutely any other living being is stopping being alive one self. I don't see much people following that route, and considering any living being as cruel would mean that that interpretation of what's cruelty is irrational and faulty. The intention for the suffering to exist is inherent in the cruelty. People need to enjoy that suffering in order to be cruel.
I do not enjoy damage to animals, it's just something inevitable when I eat them. Suffering is not my objective, not the objective of anyone who eats meat, I would assume. So no, they are not being cruel.
From my point of view, if the objective of your actions is not to cause suffering, even if your actions cause suffering, then you are not being cruel. Intention matters here.
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I think it depends on where you get your meat, eggs, and dairy.
A proper farm where the animals are kept safe, healthy, and happy for longer than they'd live in the wild, and in the case of meat killed quickly and painlessly? That could be considered morally okay.
Factory farms where they lead short, filthy miserable lives, constantly being bred to maximize milk production? Nah, that is not morally okay.
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