Response: Unlikely Ideals

In response to Andrew Nelson's post "Can animals live a better life if they are destined for the slaughter?" (March 6, 2012):

I agree with most of this post, but I think it neglects two critical points.  Firstly, no matter how pleasant a life and humane a death farmers might choose to give to cattle, the fact remains that they are cutting the cattle's lives short.  That is in and of itself unethical.  In order for the practice to be fully ethical, they would have to wait until the cattle dies natural deaths (as of old age) before preparing and consuming their meat - an unlikely objective, as it risks producing diseased meat, and because many people would not be willing to purchase or consume the tough, aged meat of cattle who died natural deaths.  Secondly, regardless of whether the prior ideal could exist as an industry, it does not exist now.  As such, consuming beef (and other types of meat, with the possible exception of venison due to the current horrific overpopulation of deer) is and will almost certainly remain unethical.

There is one way in which eating beef could continue as a practice without endorsing immorality - by creating cloned meat.  Cloned meat does not require the death of cattle, and while it is currently prohibitively expensive (and banned in many places) in the future it could well become a viable alternative to vegetarianism, so long as people show sufficient interest in continuing to research it.