Eating animals is an option, not a requirement, and it comes with serious ethical implications.
Exploiting
and killing animals for food is inherently violent and inconsistent
with our natural empathic tendencies, so we have developed social and
psychological mechanisms to maintain our meat-eating habit. We have
become largely disconnected from the painful reality of exploitation and
slaughter, keeping it out of sight and out of mind. In the rare
instances when we are forced to confront our subjection of billions of
animals each year to unnecessary suffering, we fall back on the human
brain’s great capacity for rationalization. We have come up with good
reasons to do bad things for thousands of years. The techniques we use
to excuse the eating of meat are the same we have used to justify other
violent institutions and prejudices throughout human history.
Humans are social animals, and we learn behaviors, including how and
whom we eat, from those around us. In carnistic societies, members
unwittingly support businesses that engage in systemic cruelties and
conspire to look the other way. But humans are also hardwired to feel
empathy. The concept of carnism is a useful tool to understand and
deconstruct a dominant institution that stifles our innate compassionate
impulses.
From the blog post
Why Carnism Matters by Gene Baur
