Just this week there's been a round of articles on the scientific consensus that fish feel pain. Read https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain..., for example, and see if the final third of the article leaves you comfortable about eating fish. I've always thought the "catch and release" practice (and the accompanying justification that fish don't feel pain, so that it's harmless sportsmanlike fun) to be bewilderingly shallow thinking - but despite that fish is a much more significant part of my diet than avian or mammal meat. I'm also deeply hypocritical about mammal meat eating; every time I go to an Indian restaurant (but never otherwise) for example, I'll order lamb, just because it's tastier than saag or tofu. As another example, I don't eat pork, with the notable exception of cured meats, which are also too damned tasty. I probably could go wholesale vegan, especially with some of the better fake-meat protein sources, and yet perhaps I don't want to enough, and/or I enjoy eating meat a few times a month too much to do so. That's hardly a well justified moral position to take, and yet I suspect it's not uncommon.
[Also, the dividing line between animals and plants - while of course clearly defined - may be softer than we've assumed. (https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-in...). In 25 years will we talking about eating lab grown food only instead of farmed plants?]
I suspect our moral systems are still reeling from 1000+ years of Christianity completely dominating our societal thinking - even if your parents weren't religious, or theirs, their inherited "firmware" (societal norms picked up in early years of learning) probably has a lot of irrationally derived foundations. Our attempts at scientific derived moral systems haven't had particularly great results so far, but perhaps we'll get there in time.
Just this week there's been a round of articles on the scientific consensus that fish feel pain. Read https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain..., for example, and see if the final third of the article leaves you comfortable about eating fish. I've always thought the "catch and release" practice (and the accompanying justification that fish don't feel pain, so that it's harmless sportsmanlike fun) to be bewilderingly shallow thinking - but despite that fish is a much more significant part of my diet than avian or mammal meat. I'm also deeply hypocritical about mammal meat eating; every time I go to an Indian restaurant (but never otherwise) for example, I'll order lamb, just because it's tastier than saag or tofu. As another example, I don't eat pork, with the notable exception of cured meats, which are also too damned tasty. I probably could go wholesale vegan, especially with some of the better fake-meat protein sources, and yet perhaps I don't want to enough, and/or I enjoy eating meat a few times a month too much to do so. That's hardly a well justified moral position to take, and yet I suspect it's not uncommon.
[Also, the dividing line between animals and plants - while of course clearly defined - may be softer than we've assumed. (https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-in...). In 25 years will we talking about eating lab grown food only instead of farmed plants?]
I suspect our moral systems are still reeling from 1000+ years of Christianity completely dominating our societal thinking - even if your parents weren't religious, or theirs, their inherited "firmware" (societal norms picked up in early years of learning) probably has a lot of irrationally derived foundations. Our attempts at scientific derived moral systems haven't had particularly great results so far, but perhaps we'll get there in time.