Is meat “murder?”
As a skeptical atheist and a vegan, my approach to veganism has been somewhat different than most. Instead of immediately accepting claims, such as “meat is murder,” I have exercised skepticism to such extent, I have frequently distanced myself from and even disavowed the use of popular memes, which I believe, while making a point, often distort the evidence.
Such was the case a few years ago when I finally decided to meditate on the phrase, “meat is murder.” To assess this bold claim, I set myself to pondering the definition of “murder” first and foremost. Concerned with ethics as I am, I decided to dwell on the morally relevant components of this characteristically immoral act. After some deliberation, I settled on the following definition—the unjustified killing of another. This definition seems to capture the essential immorality presupposed by “murder,” as opposed to simply “killing,” which entails only exterminating the mental and/or physical life of another being.
With the core injustice of murder identified, I narrowed the working definition of murder by considering the case of an insentient being, such as a plant. While it is certainly possible to unjustifiably kill a plant, most people would be loath to designate such plant-killing an act as murder. Since it seems, on the other hand, entirely reasonable to refer to the unjustified killing of a human person as murder, another morally relevant component of murder must involve an individual with a psychophysical identity of some sort, that is, a sentient subject-of-a-life that persists over time.
The core question becomes whether an animal can qualify as such an individual, or, as most ethicists prefer, a “person.” Certainly, at least some animals achieve the distinction of “personhood,” with the average gorilla being “more” a person than someone who was nearly trampled to death stuck in a vegetative coma, roughly 85% of their brain liquified from such extreme trauma. The average, “sophisticated,” higher mammal, such as chimps and dolphins, qualify as persons beyond any reasonable doubt. (Indeed, as I argue elsewhere, if “X” has genuine interest in continued existence, then “X” has a prima facie right to life—that is, we owe all sentient beings the most fundamental rights of personhood, including the right to simply exist, independently of whatever purposes human animals might impose upon such creatures.)
Availing myself of the vast wealth of information on the internet, I quickly googled the definition of murder, only to find the following entry from Merriam Webster—“the crime of unlawfully murdering a person especially with malice aforethought.” What is modern animal agriculture but a mass, mechanized killing machine? What fate do the billions of victims therein trapped have but a premeditated birth, life, and death? What if you were born with an expiration date just a few months after you came into existence only to ever know pain, suffering, and crippling abuse, treated in ways that would be considered unlawful if perpetrated against cats, dogs, and other so-called “companion animals?”
Meat is murder. While we should be careful how we wield our language to maximize our chances of convincing others to join us in opposing injustices so profound, our language can hardly accommodate their excesses, we should also be intrepid enough to call murder murder, rape rape, and torture torture; morality permits nothing less.
