PETA's argument was that people should not eat meat because by buying and eating meat, people are increasing the demand of meat. He said that by consuming meat, we are supporting the meat industry and indirectly supporting animal cruelty. He showed us the inhumane side of the meat industry and how wrong it was for us to support them. His main argument was the Shirley Temple(?) argument (I can't quite remember the name of the argument). The basic idea is that we shouldn't be eating what we can't kill. He said with the advance of the meat industry, people do not have any interaction with the food we eat, but that is wrong. He said that we couldn't possibly eat as much meat if we had to gather our own food. He basically said that people wouldn't eat meat because we would not want to kill and do the dirty deed.
I thought the debate team presented an interesting side of the argument. They knew that they couldn't win the argument that there isn't animal cruelty present in the meat industry because clearly there is. So they decided to concede that point. However, they argued that there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the IDEA of eating meat. The only fault of eating meat is the process of getting meat, which is the meat industry. They argued that if we were to buy meat from the more humane farms that are not like meat producing factories, eating meat should be justified. They showed an example of a farm where the farmer treats his animals with dignity, and where the animals get to live like animals.
There are still humane farms like this in US
I waited and waited for the PETA representative to answer the question, "Is there anything inherently wrong with eating meat?" He never did. His argument was that we were supporting animal cruelty in meat industry by eating meat, and never said why we weren't suppose to eat meat. What I got out of this debate was practically nothing new. It is unfortunate that I am indirectly supporting animal cruelty by consuming meat, but I still do not see anything wrong with it. Here is MY argument.
Historically, we have always consumed meat. As the debate team mentioned, meat has always been a luxury item. Only the rich had access to them. This doesn't mean that the rich killed and prepared meat for themselves. No, just like any other industry, professionals killed and prepared meat and sold it to the rich. It wasn't WRONG for them to eat meat, so why now? It only became immoral to eat meat when the food industry became industrialized. We began to mass produce all sorts of things: meat was one of them. Price of meat fell drastically, and EVERYONE had access to it, which increased the demand. To profit from this increase in demand, the meat industry increased the supply. Human greed turned a perfectly normal practice of eating meat into something cruel and heinous. Yet, I still do not see anything inherently wrong with the idea of eating meat. We are at the top of the food chain, and other animals eat animals. Just because we are more sophisticated than the other animals doesn't mean that we need to give up our eating rights. Yes, the meat industry as it is now is cruel and immoral, and I hope it revolutionizes and becomes more humane. But there really isn't much we can do unless we ALL give up meat, which is NOT going to happen.
Eating meat is what we do. It's just easier and cheaper now. That's all.
