If it's OK for a lion to eat a cow, why isn't it OK for me?

A friend recently came up to me agitated after someone told her that her vegan beliefs didn’t make sense because if it's OK for a mountain lion to eat a pig or a cow, why shouldn't it be OK for humans to eat them, too? She wanted to know how I’d respond.

The problem is that the person challenging her is comparing apples (lions) and oranges (normal adult humans).

Let’s tweak the situation a bit. Suppose a two-year-old human has stumbled upon Daddy’s handgun and is waving it around and shoots Mommy in the head, killing her. Did the infant do something morally wrong? No, of course not. The infant has no understanding of morality, rights, guns or death. Therefore she can’t be held responsible in a moral sense for its actions. Normal adult humans, however, do know what death is. If a neighbor were whipping a dog and burning the animal with cigarettes, we’d know this was wrong. 

Similarly, we know it’s wrong to keep pigs in gestation crates on concrete floors where they can’t turn around and live their lives in boredom and pain. We know it's wrong when the male calves are sent to veal crates after being born to dairy cows who must be repeatably and forcibly impregnated to keep producing milk.

One way we’re able to tell ourselves it’s wrong when we see the neighbor hurting his dog but not when the factory farmer hurts a pig or cow is to lie to ourselves and pretend that pigs and cows and chickens don’t live in awful conditions but are “happy” and romping in fields before they’re slaughtered or maybe even that "Daisy" gets to retire to a pasture after her milk production decreases.

Another way is just not to think about it, to look at shrink-wrapped slices of pink and not think that they were created from suffering, or to hide the fact that a thinking, feeling animal was the source by disguising these pieces of corpses with names such as “beef” or “hamburger” or “nuggets” or “ham.” Or some people tell themselves nonhuman animals are dumb so it doesn't matter that they're hurt and killed.

A similar “gotcha” challenge involves an unlikely hypothetical situation: “Suppose you’re on a lifeboat and there are four people and a pig and no food. Are you saying you would starve rather than eat the pig? If you wouldn’t let yourself die, then you’re a hypocrite for judging my meat eating.”

First, let’s deal with the lifeboat. If one of us absolutely must die, then the pig should go. Life will be more meaningful and potentially productive for a normal adult human, so human life trumps pig life in this extreme situation. (Admittedly, this scenario is based on human prejudices. A pig might consider a pig's life more meaningful.)

Does this make vegans hypocrites? Of course not. Again, let’s tweak the situation and say that the lifeboat contains five beings, only this time it’s four scientists who are on the verge of making major breakthroughs in cancer prevention, cancer cures, renewable energy and food production, along with a fifth human, who is an average bloke who spends his time on TV and beer. The boat can’t hold all five people without sinking; one of them must be thrown overboard to certain drowning or else they’ll all die. Who should it be? Clearly the TV-watching beer drinker. So does that mean you should extrapolate this situation to the regular world to justify killing people based on who’s dumber? Would you be a hypocrite for judging someone who kills dumb people because of how you answered this lifeboat question?

Just because Nature doesn’t care about moral concepts, that doesn’t mean moral concepts have no value and we should be able to do anything we want to other beings with no regard for their feelings. All thinking, feeling beings have the right to not to be considered mere things. And because we’re lucky enough to actually have the brain power to understand the harm we cause others -- and to find alternatives to causing this suffering -- then we have an obligation not to cause suffering when possible.