I eat meat, but my choice makes me uncomfortable

There are many arguments against eating meat that don't move me. The possible downsides for my physical health don't concern me much, as I don't put much effort into my health. The increased carbon footprint involved in animal products is real, but it coexists with many other lifestyle choices that would have greater carbon impact.

So then it comes to the animals themselves. What's the baseline for a good animal life? I suggest that the relevant baseline for animal suffering is not humans, but wild animals. Animals in the wild routinely starve to death and suffer parasites and injuries. Just because we are responsible for farm animals coming into the world, that does not mean we have to choose our modern goal of minimal human suffering as the relevant comparison.

"Don't kill the poor animals" doesn't move me. All animals die, and the dying is often unpleasant. Animals do not fear death as people do (eternity of nothingness, etc.).

"They're meant to live free" doesn't move me. "Life of Pi" was a work of fiction, but I thought one point was correct in reality as well. Pi's family owned a zoo. His belief was that animals in a zoo that have enough to eat and are safe from harm are happy. (Sufficient living space is probably also required.) They wouldn't choose to be wild, doing the hard work of getting meals and avoiding becoming someone else's meal. The desire for them to live free and wild comes from us, not them.

So I would have no problem with eating meat from animals who lived reasonably happy lives. But almost all of our meat comes from factory farms, and arguably all of the animals in factory farms live a life of misery, even measured against the yardstick of wild animals. Confinement that distresses the animal is worrisome and seems to apply to many types of factory animal. There are allegations that chickens are bred to grow fast at the expense of their structural integrity, and so their short lives are spent in pain.

With the concern being the misery of animal lives, being a vegetarian who eats dairy and eggs doesn't get you off the hook. Dairy and egg production also involve animals in stressful, miserable circumstances.

So why am I not a vegan? Why do I not even seek out rare and expensive meat from happy animals? First, I cannot look you straight in the eye and give an answer that makes me feel confident. It is an uneasy choice for me. But below are some rationalizations and reasons.

I read a book several years ago which concerned food and human culture, but sadly I cannot remember the author or title. It started with the observation that all human societies have a "meat hunger", likely due to the concentrated calories and protein in animal-derived food. The author asserted that only half a percent of world population is vegan by choice, though many more are due to poverty. But numbers don't determine right and wrong. I could of course join that half a percent.

So, what would veganism accomplish? If I don't eat animal products, then I am not supporting the meat industry. With lower sales volume, meat producers will produce less meat. Fairly often a chicken that would have been raised in miserable conditions will not be born, and far less often a cow, steer or pig.

The fact that the scale of the industry is so large makes it easier to avoid thinking about consequences. If I was getting my meat from a local butcher, the relationship would be clearer -- if I don't buy this chicken, then a chicken that would be killed tomorrow in the back of the shop will not be. And the butcher will order one less chicken.

A reason for my refusing veganism that I am more comfortable with is that factory farming is integral to our entire society. The best way to fight against something integral to a society is political activism. A person could organize to end factory farming and not eat a vegan diet, and of course not all vegans are activists. If a ballot initiative improving the lot of animals in factory farms showed up, I'd vote for it (and I think there was one in Massachusetts in recent years).

But as a political issue, it is going nowhere. Nothing much has changed in recent decades in terms of the suffering of animals or people's attitude towards it. It seems that a large majority of my fellow humans know that animals suffer so they can eat meat, but they are not inspired to support even mandatory incremental improvements in animal living conditions that would raise the price of meat slightly.

I live in a society where meat and dairy are everywhere. They taste awfully good. They do have concentrated calories and protein. I could set myself apart from my fellows and become vegan, and ignore the tempting aromas and sight of tasty meat and cheese all around me But I don't.

Why does the average person not care about the suffering of animals in factory farming?

I wonder if the problem lies in expanding circles of "we". Our hunter-gatherer ancestors thought it was just fine to kill all the people in a neighboring band if they could get away with it. In the ancient world (say including 2000 BCE to 500 CE), slaughtering the entire population of a conquered city was routine. Surely they knew that the others were humans just like them and suffered just as much, but the golden rule didn't affect behavior. Up through World War II nations routinely cast the enemy as subhuman and troubled themselves little about slaughtering enemy civilians. Since then we have seen fair numbers of people considering themselves as citizens of the world as their first allegiance. Europeans stopped fighting and made a union. It sort of looks like rich countries don't wage all-out war on each other any more (though I am far from confident that this will continue indefinitely). The right-wing positions that horrify us liberals so much have to do not with killing disfavored minorities but with limiting immigration, which shows how far we've come since 1945.

But still, at least through 1945, lots of people knew that enemy civilians suffered just like they would suffer, but made it a low priority to avoid enemy civilian casualties. The US and Britain might have committed fewer "hands-on" atrocities in World War II than Japan or Germany, but the strategic bombing campaigns slaughtered a great many innocent civilians, and we knew it.

So now we are perhaps in sight of the point where we might follow the golden rule as it applies to all other humans, even those from very different societies and races -- at least the innocent ones.

But not animals. We know animals suffer, but somehow they're not part of "we". And of course even though they suffer, animals are dramatically different from humans, who are all exactly like us in the ways that count. Pet animals are part of "we" because we invite them into our lives with affection, and humans will put great effort into their health care.

Maybe in a hundred years our descendants will look back at us meat-eaters with the same disbelief we might have for a society of the ancient world that captured a city and slaughtered every last man, woman and child. I'm not taking the lead in bringing about that society, but I'm not proud of it.

I like most kinds of meat and dairy. Perhaps some animal foods involve less animal suffering. For instance, if veal calves are confined but ordinary beef cattle are not, that would be a reason to eat beef instead of veal. Perhaps with some research I could find reasons to choose among, say, chicken, pork, beef or dairy.

As someone who often just doesn't want to think about meals, I have become a fan of Soylent -- a mildly sweet liquid meal in a plastic bottle that goes down easy. Three bucks for a healthy meal. And Soylent is vegan. Maybe I'll start having more of it.