Critique Of Michael Huemer For The View On Eating Meat

In what follows I am going to explain and criticize Michael Huemer for the view on eating meat. I dispute that Huemer’s agreement depends on an impossible assumption that eating mean is only provides minor benefits. Huemer argues eating meat in general is morally wrong with his following argument:

1. It’s wrong to knowingly inflict a great deal of pain and suffering on others, just for the sake of getting relatively minor benefits for yourself.
2. The meat industry inflicts a great deal of pain and suffering on animals for the sake of comparatively minor benefits.
3. Conclusion: The mean industry is doing something morally wrong.

Michael Huemer explains his agreement between two philosophy students that are in conversation. M who is for eating meat and V who believes that eating meat is morally wrong. Huemer uses arguments that he has heard meat-eaters say. In essence Huemer is V to defend his view. Huemer says it is morally wrong in the circumstances people are in now not hypothetical ones. For example, choosing to eat meat to survive in an isolated island is a hypothetical circumstance. For the first premise he adds because people are aware that when they eat meat that the animals that were killed for them to eat aren’t treated in the best condition in the meat industry. For the second premise, Michael Huemor has V and M discussed about pain and suffering. That pain is good if it provides good benefits if it helps people but being tortured is not good pain. That suffering is a negative experience like being confined in a small space with no room to move for an extended period of time, but M says a negative experience is only bad if it does not provide a lesson at the end. V now states that the meat industry is doing something wrong because they are willing, knowing to inflict pain on animals for minor benefits for oneself. M tries to argue its okay because humans are more intelligent, but V defends his view by saying that its okay to torture someone retarded and now leaves M to try to defend why would it be okay to torture someone or something just because they are stupid.

V tries to show M that intelligence is not a good point to try to defend. An example, V shows is what if there were two humans who are both sick and that there is only one pill left that can save their lives, but they can’t split it. That one human is smarter than the other and since that human is smarter it means they are in greater pain. V asks M should they let the less intelligent one suffer in pain just because their pain cannot be the same as the one who is smarter. Huemor is trying to prove that intelligence is not a good enough answer to let animals suffer in pain. Now, V tells M that 56 billion animals are killed when there are only 7 billion people on earth. That the number of animals that are killed which suffered in pain were only to benefit the small pleasure of people’s self-interest which Huemor considers small benefits. Michael Huemor concludes, that since the meat industry is fully aware of the pain and suffering they inflict on animals for small minor benefits then the meat industry is doing something morally wrong. I will be objecting to Michael Huemor’s second premise about the animal’s pain and suffering is only providing minor benefits. I say that they are proving major benefits. The meat industry itself is feeding the country and makes it more accessible for people to purchase meat because it used to an “expensive commodity”.

Also, meat is an important part of our diet which sustains people bodies. Meat provides amino acids which is needed for the body. These amino acids turn into proteins, and “are used to make new blood cells and manufacture antibodies”. Meat could be replaced with vitamin supplements, but it can “never replace the entire T-bone”. Supplement are more expensive than meat and not everyone can afford it like they could afford meat. Lower economic stance families would suffer greatly in diet. Another benefit is that it creates an economy with a lot of jobs that correlates someway to the meat industry. The meat industry supports the economy by over $1trillion.

In key studies found that the meat industry employs nearly 1. 9 million people in companies that produce, process, distribute and sell meat, but employ another 3. 6 million jobs in supplier and ancillary industries. The people who are employed also receive over $70 million in wages and benefits from their jobs. That, is a crucial element that the meat industry itself produces without it the economy would drop along with companies that would go bankrupt. Many companies would have to fire a lot of people. Those same people who have families to take care of would suffer economically along with the rest of the country.

Michael Huemer would respond with saying that those benefits are not directly tied to the meat industry and that those benefits when considering pain and suffering then they are minor benefits. I would respond to Huemer that benefits even if minor that they still create a big impact, and by creating a big impact they are important contributing benefits. For example, when a murder investigation is ongoing the officers follow ever small, minor detail they find because at the end those detail could help find the actual murder. Those details benefited and created the big impact on closing the case without those detail they probably never would have caught the person or given that person enough time to escape somewhere else. That when considering pain and suffering those benefits could be considered small, but when put into effect and cause they are major key into how a cycle can keep going like the economy. People whose jobs in some way correlate to the meat industry are also important benefits because people need to work in order to have money to pay off bills, groceries, medicine, school supplies etc. , Those benefits are not minor when they are put into the bigger picture.