I think the question is how much you view being vegetarian as a burden/a good deed that you are doing vs just a feature of your everyday life. For me, I don’t even think about it, so I don’t believe that I have the “good deed offset” issue you mentioned. But others may be different!
A second question is how much weight you give to a deontological moral system being correct—e.g. you probably wouldn’t eat factory farmed humans regardless of how that might affect your other actions because that seems immoral.
A third question is what would the replacement activity for being vegetarian be? Would you realistically replace that with something as comparably high impact (e.g. - eating a serving of chicken requires ~4 hours of ~torturing the chicken to get you the food—do you think whatever you would replace that with would be worth torturing a chicken for four hours? If you aren’t spending the extra time donating more to effective animal charities that seems like a high bar to clear.)
Lastly, you can avoid much of the negative impact of meat eating if you eat from places here you are highly confident in the good treatment of animals (difficult to do but possible) or just eat beef and bivalves (much easier). So if you do change I’d recommend being thoughtful about it like you would with all other decisions!
Thanks, a lot of great things to reflect on for me.
“how much you view being vegetarian as a burden/a good deed that you are doing vs just a feature of your everyday life”
I think that if someone asked me what I think of factory farming, I’d reply I think it’s terrible. Then if they asked if I do anything about it I’d instantly say “yeah I don’t eat meat”. So I definitely see it as a good deed. Even though it’s not something I think about everyday.
“you probably wouldn’t eat factory farmed humans regardless of how that might affect your other actions because that seems immoral”
Good point. I’ll have to think about this one a bit!
“eat from places here you are highly confident in the good treatment of animals”
Hmm yeah maybe. But I think my main point is that doing that, or cutting out meat completely, has such a small effect on animal wellfare that it’s not worth spending time/energy on. Eating that type of meat probably costs more, so just buying the cheap meat and giving the savings to effective charities would do much more good. Just like buying regular coffee instead of fair trade coffee does.
I think the question is how much you view being vegetarian as a burden/a good deed that you are doing vs just a feature of your everyday life. For me, I don’t even think about it, so I don’t believe that I have the “good deed offset” issue you mentioned. But others may be different!
A second question is how much weight you give to a deontological moral system being correct—e.g. you probably wouldn’t eat factory farmed humans regardless of how that might affect your other actions because that seems immoral.
A third question is what would the replacement activity for being vegetarian be? Would you realistically replace that with something as comparably high impact (e.g. - eating a serving of chicken requires ~4 hours of ~torturing the chicken to get you the food—do you think whatever you would replace that with would be worth torturing a chicken for four hours? If you aren’t spending the extra time donating more to effective animal charities that seems like a high bar to clear.)
Lastly, you can avoid much of the negative impact of meat eating if you eat from places here you are highly confident in the good treatment of animals (difficult to do but possible) or just eat beef and bivalves (much easier). So if you do change I’d recommend being thoughtful about it like you would with all other decisions!
Thanks, a lot of great things to reflect on for me.
“how much you view being vegetarian as a burden/a good deed that you are doing vs just a feature of your everyday life”
I think that if someone asked me what I think of factory farming, I’d reply I think it’s terrible. Then if they asked if I do anything about it I’d instantly say “yeah I don’t eat meat”. So I definitely see it as a good deed. Even though it’s not something I think about everyday.
“you probably wouldn’t eat factory farmed humans regardless of how that might affect your other actions because that seems immoral”
Good point. I’ll have to think about this one a bit!
“eat from places here you are highly confident in the good treatment of animals”
Hmm yeah maybe. But I think my main point is that doing that, or cutting out meat completely, has such a small effect on animal wellfare that it’s not worth spending time/energy on. Eating that type of meat probably costs more, so just buying the cheap meat and giving the savings to effective charities would do much more good. Just like buying regular coffee instead of fair trade coffee does.