Meat-Eaters Are The Number One Cause Of Worldwide Species Extinction, New Study Warns

We are as much a part of the circle of life as any other creature

Of course we are. But I'm certain you'd agree that a fallacious appeal to nature and a vague reverence for its brutality is not in any way an acceptable excuse for deliberate and unnecessary violence or exploitation of any kind.

If I have chickens, eat their eggs, and then eat them when they are old and getting ready to die, is this wrong? Or if I go fishing every now and then and eat a trout. If I have a dairy cow, making myself some cheese and milk.

These would absolutely be much, much better than a factory farm. But as you're probably aware, well over 99% of animal products (in the USA, at least) are produced in factory farms.

In any case, the way I see it, factory farm or no factory farm, there's no ethical justification for treating an animal, be she human or nonhuman, as property and using her body for personal pleasure. It doesn't matter if you try to make her comfortable while you use her. The bodies of other animals aren't for us to control. This is pretty succinct representation of my perspective. My suspicion, based on what you've written, is that this point in particular is the most fundamental difference in our respective points of view.

Incidentally, is any of that what you actually do? Or is that situation you described yourself in with animals just imaginary? (I don't mean this as an accusation. It's hard to convey that feeling with just text, so I hope you'll just take my word for it.)

And since you brought up dairy cows, I'm guessing that you're aware that cows have to be (repeatedly) impregnated to continually produce milk. Let's say for the sake of the conversation that the cow is indeed very happy that you're taking her calves' milk. What are you doing with the bull that impregnated the cow? What are you doing with the calves, who should be drinking the milk? It was produced for them, after all. Cows don't just produce milk by magic.

How is it that a cat killing and eating a bird is ok, but a person killing an animal wrong?

Is this an honest question? Well, first of all, cats are carnivores. This means that their physiology requires that they eat meat. Humans, on the other hand, are not carnivores. We are omnivores. This means that we are physiologically capable of digesting both plants and meat. Simply put, cats need to eat animals to survive. Humans do not.

Second of all, cats do not appear to be capable of making ethical decisions. Humans are quite capable of making ethical decisions. You didn't actually mean to imply that we humans ought to be taking our ethical cues from cats, did you?

Put another way (and paraphrasing for rhetorical effect, since I think it's pretty funny to exaggerate it like this), claiming that "cats do X, so there's nothing wrong with ME doing X too!" is pretty silly. Phrased this way, I imagine that you'd agree.

But it's also wrong that people are having 2+ children, driving so far to work, buying tons of useless shit, smoking, drinking excessively, doing drugs that support an illegal drug trade and the exploitation of people involved, and on and on...

Sorry, but none of those things have any relevance whatsoever to the subject at hand...

Eating a bit of meat every 30th meal is the least of the things I should be concerned with.

...and this is a textbook example of the fallacy of relative privation.

I'm awfully sorry to be so wordy! You just crammed in a lot of things that I wanted to address, that's all. Respectfully, I think the ethical justifications you've given here are very weak. As I see it, they all boil down to errors in reasoning and rhetorical misdirections in the end. But I imagine and hope that your view is lot of more nuanced than the few sentences that you've written here, and I'd certainly be very happy to continue this discussion if you care to keep going.

I hope I didn't come across as rude or condescending. If I did, it was my poor writing, and I'd be anxious for a chance to explain myself better. I'm just trying to engage with your arguments, and if anything I wrote came across as a personal attack, it's because I'm expressing myself poorly. And I really appreciate your willingness to explain your point of view, and your civility. I hope you'll believe that I'm doing my best to be the same!

/r/Anticonsumption Thread Parent Link - thinkprogress.org