Most humans can live deeply fulfilling and joyful lives without causing as much suffering as they do now. They don't need to feel guilty about what they are doing now so much as strive to cause less suffering.
Maybe you must eat factory farmed meat, fine, it's not for me to say. But that's not most people. Most people can do with reducing their meat intake, and it isn't hard. It's not like you are in the wilderness hunting or anything. You just go to the grocery store and buy veggies and beans and stuff.
Furthermore, for some people, eating meat from a factory farm is orders of magnitude more difficult than eating a strict plant based diet. Maybe that's easy for you - not for me.
Finally, while nature may indeed be cruel, we do not need to be.
Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them. Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
The idea that killing animals is more cruel than not is to ignore ecology.
Factory farms and industrial meat is certainly another story. But I wanted to point out that cruelty is not so black and white. It’s similar to the cat people that feed strays — makes them feel good, but it makes the problem worse which is more cruel than simply not feeding the strays.
> Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them.
I strongly disagree with this. If there were no humans participating, and deer ended up overpopulated, and then starved, would there be any issue? Of course not, this is just how nature balances itself.
That "killing an animal directly via hunting" is more cruel than "letting the populate self-correct via natural processes" is not a matter of common sense - it's not something we all agree on. There is an implication that we know better than the universe and I'm not convinced that is the case.
> Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
I assume you are referring to feral pigs, which are not wild in the sense that a native creature is. They are domesticated pigs which have ended up in foreign environments. Whether hunting them is appropriate or not, I'm not sure.
Nowadays, though, we have gotten ourselves in a pickle, by eliminating the natural predators in many environments in which deer thrive naturally, or have adapted to. Via our own lack of foresight, consideration for the planet as a whole, or even some degree of self-serving malice, we have created a really tricky problem.
I do agree we ought to work on this issue. Hunting is probably the best, most practical solution we have, but only because I believe we should try to fix what we have broken, not because it is somehow less cruel. A less practical but far less cruel solution may be a sterilization program for the invasive populations.
Maybe you must eat factory farmed meat, fine, it's not for me to say. But that's not most people. Most people can do with reducing their meat intake, and it isn't hard. It's not like you are in the wilderness hunting or anything. You just go to the grocery store and buy veggies and beans and stuff.
Furthermore, for some people, eating meat from a factory farm is orders of magnitude more difficult than eating a strict plant based diet. Maybe that's easy for you - not for me.
Finally, while nature may indeed be cruel, we do not need to be.