Surely you have also heard a saying like "Eating meat is my personal choice - you have to respect that". heard, right? That's so easy to say and leaves many vegans hopelessly silent. But is it really a personal choice when I consume animal foods like meat, cheese, cow's milk and eggs?
Here I would now like to question what a personal decision is in the first place - and whether the argument really makes sense. Let's go!
Is eating meat a personal choice?
A personal decision is a decision that concerns only ourselves. For example, when we choose in the morning whether to wear the red or the blue sweater. No other living being is affected by this decision.
But would we still call it a personal decision if someone decided to eat our beloved dog? That may sound a bit abstract - but it would upset pretty much every one of us. And that is precisely what testifies to a Double standard. Because those who like to be meat demonstrate that it is okay to kill and eat a pig. But if we do the same with a dog, it is wrong.
It is therefore incredibly important to be aware of one thing: when we eat body parts from animals, there is definitely always sacrifice involved. Whether they come from the organic farm or from the Factory farming originate. So it's no longer a decision that only affects us - and therefore it's not a personal decision either. Especially against the background that we no longer need to eat animals to survive. All the nutrients we humans need to live are found in higher-quality form in plants.₁
Moreover, animals have to be fed in order to grow meat. If we were to eat the fodder plants ourselves instead, not a single person would have to go hungry.₂ Since forage cultivation and pasture management are climate-protective Rainforests cut down must be, veganism also acts the global warming a problem that affects everyone in the world, including you and especially your children.
Eating animals requires sacrifice - and is therefore not a personal choice
So the decision to eat meat is not personal. But in the end, of course, everyone decides for himself whether he continues to consume animal products or not. Everyone should respect this decision. Because no one should impose something on someone else that they don't want.
But "Live and let live" is definitely an absurd justification for one's own meat consumption, since at the same time one decides that one's own taste experience is more important to one than the lives of other people and billions of animals. If you want people to respect your pro-meat decision, you should also consider, for example, that vegans respect the lives of around 74 billion farm animals killed every year.₃
Is eating meat a personal choice for you? What do you think about it? Just write me a comment with your opinion.
Stay sustainable,
PS.: In addition to the argument of personal choice, there is often the saying that Veganism only a trend is. In the linked article you can find out if there is any truth to it.
References:
₁ University of Oxford: Plant-based foods are good for both health and the environment (as of Oct. 29, 2020), available at https://t1p.de/ms6w. [15.07.2020].
₂ M. Berners-Lee, C. Kennelly, R. Watson; et al. (2018) Current global food production is sufficient to meet human nutritional needs in 2050 provided there is radical societal adaptation, available at https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.1525/elementa.310 [07.05.2020].
₃ Things Explained - In Brief: Meat - The World's Tastiest Evil, YouTube, Jan. 24, 2019, web, May 07, 2020 at 10:50 a.m., in: http://y2u.be/y6f3dwxexZM.
