Last year, I saw a documentary on farm workers in Spain, growing tomatoes. If you eat Spanish tomatoes that cost 0,75€ per kg, that is as unethical as eating factory farmed meat, because you make somebody suffer for your food, in this case human beings. It is the same with cheap clothing and many other things. If you want to save money on food or such things too much, somebody WILL pay the price for you, with his or her living conditions. That's just not worth it.

I disagree with the premise on farming: while I would agree that our current system of farming is imperfect and like any other industry needs change and improvement, (I am very concerned about farm workers) I don't think we have enough information about "factory farming" to call it "indefensible."

I wrote an Op-Ed and several emails to the NYT (too long to post here) about this contest: I had concerns that the contest was biased, and the end results show that my concerns were well-founded. I find it hard to believe that out of "thousands of entries," the six finalists - and even the winner - present the best reasons for making meat a part of one's diet, as all are more or less against the consumption of meat.

Dogmatizing food and food production has made the waters very, very muddy and confusing. While there's room for improvement in our diet and food production systems, I fear promoting restrictive, dogmatic eating may be driving people to poorer choices rather than guiding them to better ones. I am troubled that, offered the opportunity to open the discussion to new ideas and explore new facts, the New York Times instead became a bully pulpit for an ideological position.

Advocates need to leave room for the many, many options in the food world

Michele Hays @QuipsTravails

So I should buy expensive things I can't afford and deprive the people making the cheap stuff of ALL income?

It isn't that simple, which should be the point. We should trust adults to make the best choices they can, ask for advice when they want it, and otherwise keep our noses and judgements to ourselves.

@ny2midmo - I agree completely. We have to make the best choices for our families - it's not up to anyone else to make those decisions or tell us how to provide.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

By this logic, it is "right" to reduce the human population (through one child laws? forced sterilization? murder?) in order to "preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community" that is planet earth and is threatened by human overpopulation.

I'm not convinced or even moved by this argument, which implies that it's possible to have integrity, stability and beauty AND kill some sentient members of the community so that others may eat them. Unless one doesn't believe that animals are full members of the community, of course. Perhaps an animal only counts as 3/5 of a human?

Even to grow plants you have to kill animals.

Hunting season are set for a reason, to cull the overpopulation of a species. They are either killed and put to good use or they starve to death because they are fenced out or deterred from entering your garden patch. Yes it can be argued that we eliminated their predators, but what's done is done. Which is more ethical? Killing an animal and using all of it's parts or letting it suffer and starve?

In a closed system, choosing between killing an animal versus harvesting a plant seems like a simple ethical choice... but the world is more complicated than that.

Animals count as 0/5 of a human. They are not human. They are animals.

well said, dizamn. well said.

We said Jesteresse. And yes, we can all TRY to change the market with our buying power. Otherwise, somewhere, the 1% are sitting there saying "Let them eat Cool Whip."

Ugh. This whole essay contest is the most annoying, pretentious thing I have seen in a long time. These people just want to ease their guilty conscience about eating meat by making fluffy arguments about it. At the end of the day, a person is either okay with the idea of eating an animal or they aren't. You could offer me a plate of beef that had been killed in the most human, loving, 'painless' way and I still wouldn't eat it. Why? Because I don't like the idea of eating animals, and that's MY personal decision.

They're animals. So are we.

Well said, Graciela. Well said. ;) In the context of the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, the feelings and lives of non-human animals certainly do "count," as far as I'm concerned.

"Perhaps an animal only counts as 3/5 of a human?"

WOW. The fact that you would compare eating meat to one of the most atrocious eras in our history is really beyond the pale.

I strongly agree with Michele Hays. The contest didn't offer any finalists that actually defended the morality of eating meat - it only featured those who made the best excuses for mitigating its perceived immorality.

None of them said that eating meat is not wrong, or that killing animals to eat them is not wrong. Some of us believe that. Eating other organisms is what organisms do. You can make a strong argument that factory farming is wrong, and that some methods of slaughter are wrong, but the act of eating meat itself? It's part of the natural behavior of humans, like sex or childbirth. If you don't want to participate, that's fine, but don't make it out to be a criminal act.

@LOLADANGER, actually, the animals are 0/5 human. On account of them being not humans and all.

Just stupid. I dont understand why anyone has to "defend the ethics" of eating meat. Whats unethical about it to begin with? Its completely natural.

I'm with @ecandle96. Comparing eating meat to the enslavement of human beings, some of whom were my ancestors, is appalling. It's stuff like that that makes many people of color thing vegetarianism/veganism is a "white person" thing. And I'm actually someone who's trying to transition my way into veganism, so I'd actually be on your side!

In my opinion the best thing we can do to have the most impact is encourage more people to consume less meat and animal products over all. When we non-animal-consumers sit around a navel-gaze and get too uptight about things like honey and the bone char used to process sugar it can be hard to be taken seriously, and when we go around making flip, racially insensitive remarks like "3/5 of a person" we are down right off-putting.

I completely disagree with this former vegetarian (ahem, SELLOUT'S) view. Killing animals is not ethical. The cruel way the vast majority of meat is raised makes it more than unethical, it makes it unconscionable.

There is a lot of really good discussion going on here! The bottom line for me is that I am not comfortable eating animals, and there is no rational that anyone could provide me that would make me feel okay about it. I think that every life, human or non-human is equal. Eating meat may have been (all still be for some areas in the world), necessary because there was no other food around, but killing something that breathes and walks doesn't come naturally to me. We aren't neanderthals living in caves anymore, we don't have to eat animals to survive anymore, we have the ability and resources to make decisions that consider more than our own survival. Not to mention that it's far healthier to eat a plants-based diet.

@aaron, with regard to prey populations you say that hunting is OK because it can be argued that we eliminated their predators, and "what's done is done". I can't help but point out that it isn't what's done is done. If predators are allowed to return, they gladly will as wolves have done in the western states recently. At that point, if the ecosystem is left to re-balance itself, it will and there will no longer be an overpopulation of prey. It isn't true to say what's done is done, or that a deer will starve to death if you fence it away from your garden roses.

Sure, go ahead, try to petition for the mass reintroduction of wolves in farmlands and near populous areas... I'm sure your petition will make it real far.

And yes it is true that if hunting seasons did not exist, than deer would become over-populated and over-population leads to starvation, let alone other hazards.

I know very few farmers who are vegetarians.

This is exhausting, and I agree with "KIDDING"'s comment wholeheartedly. This contest left a bad taste in my mouth to begin with. I don't have to justify why I eat meat, nor should vegetarians need to justify why they don't. There's a reason why you hear so much more about why a group abstains from eating meat than you do from the group who DOES eat meat: it is because we are carnivores by nature, so vegetarians are the ones going against the grain.

I'd have much preferred the energy put into this meat-eater-guilt exercise be spent on brainstorming solutions for making the mass-production of meat more humane and organic across the board. This is a food chain, animals are going to get eaten, period, but I'd love it if this pretentious BS was actually working towards achieving something real and concrete.

"...actually, the animals are 0/5 human. On account of them being not humans and all."

LOL. Looks like you missed the context of what I suggested: that perhaps animals only COUNT as a fraction of a member of the "biotic community" (to the arguer that producing meat foods "is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.") not that animals ARE partially human. :)

I don't consider that the enslavement, torture or killing of non-human animals is equivalent to doing so to humans, but I also don't consider that it tends to preserve the integrity, stability or beauty of our biotic community when we do it to ANY of the creatures we share the planet with. That's why I remain unconvinced and unmoved by the essay, as long as the vast majority of meat foods are produced by factory farming.

i wouldn't suggest introducing wolves into a place where they didn't originally live, but wolves don't live in farmlands or near urban areas. they live in the woods. with deer.

If people believe that we are all animals (non-human and human) and thus it is inhumane and wrong to eat an animal, then what about the wolf that eats the rabbit? Animals eat other animals. Is that not just as bad as me eating a steak? Would you scold the wolf, and expect him to change his diet and only eat vegetables? Good luck with that.

What if the wolf eats your little sister? Would you expect him to change his diet and eat something else? It's only natural, after all, for animals to eat other animals.

That's my point. I expect that a wolf would eat my sister. That is why predators were taken out of this are, causing us to have to hunt in order to stop animal overpopulating.

Some nations are not lucky enough to be able to farm, let alone grow their own food. I don't care why people do or don't eat meat, but calling those that do barbaric is silly when you look at the big picture.

Who called anyone barbaric?

But the argument that "animals eat animals" as an ethical justification for humans to eat meat -- because it's "natural" -- sounds as goofy to me as saying that eating our babies is an ethical choice because spiders do it.