[ACC Entry] Is Eating Meat a Net Harm?

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/

[This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by David G and Froolow. Please also note my correction to yesterday’s entry.]

Introduction

Many people around the world have strong convictions about eating animals. These are often based on vague intuitions which results in unproductive swapping of opinions between vegetarians and meat eaters. The goal of this collaboration is to investigate all relevant considerations from a shared frame of reference.

To help ground this discussion we have produced a decision aid making explicit everything discussed below. You can download it here and we encourage you to play around with it.

The central question is whether factory farmed animal lives are worth living; the realistic alternative to meat eating is not a better life but for those animals to not exist in the first place.

We begin by investigating which animals are conscious. Then, we compare the happiness literature to the conditions under which animals are factory farmed to figure out if from their perspective non-existence is preferable. And finally, we survey the more easily measurable impacts of meat eating on environment, finance, and health.