I personally think your diet should be based on nutrition, with morals and the environment following a close second.
0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_eating_meat#Meat...
I get why foie gras is problematic, but I don't see the problem in a leg of lamb.
In short, I think killing another living being that experiences suffering is wrong.
There needs to be at least a base agreement on some ethics before diving into an ethical debate, and if you don't see a problem with needlessly killing animals, then this exchange will be worthless.
Extend the reasoning of how we know it's wrong to raise and kill a human for our own consumption to animals, and we arrive at veganism. Please see my second citation in the parent comment for a better overview.
It fails Kant's categorical imperative. Animals aren't going to believe that eating meat is wrong - and if we tried to prevent animals from eating meat, we'd kill a lot of them - not to mention it'd just be ridiculous. There's simply no way to include animals in universal law and maintain reciprocity. It's an internally inconsistent ethical philosophy, and obviously so.
That's to say - people make fun of ethical vegans for the same reason they make fun of libertarians - clear gaps in the philosophy they refuse to acknowledge.
It's not that every individual has to agree not to kill you. It's that we have to agree that punishment is appropriate for killers. Getting specific - it's incoherent to say it's immoral for humans to kill rabbits but moral for foxes to kill rabbits. To have a consistent moral philosophy, you have to either punish the foxes and try to prevent them from killing the rabbits, or you have to admit that killing rabbits isn't _really_ a problem.
Consider an infant - an infant is basically an amoral agent - it doesn't understand killing. If a infant kills somebody with a gun, we don't say "oh well, he doesn't understand killing" - we say "why the heck did that baby have a gun? Where are his parents?" We expect moral agents to prevent amoral agents from causing harm. So why aren't you trying to prevent the foxes from killing the rabbits?
It's been many years since my collegiate philosophy course that focused on ethics in society - largely using Peter Singer's works as focal points of discussion - but could you try and reframe your idea? It doesn't seem like reciprocity has much bearing on this topic.
A counterpoint to your 'raising humans for consumption' point which is equally extreme but in the opposite direction. How do you know plants do not feel suffering? After all studies show plants can sense surroundings and communicate with other plants even of other species.
Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?
I absolutely disagree. Minimizing suffering is good. Less suffering is better than more suffering. The specifics of implementing it are obviously complicated, but if you don't agree that minimizing suffering is a good thing, at least in theory, then I don't know if we have any moral common ground.
> Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?
I assert that I have a right to attempt to continue my existence. Given that, and the above, I think it follows necessarily that it's better to cause less suffering in that pursuit, if possible (and it is).
Also, all of this is only entertaining the possibility that plants can suffer for the purpose of discussion. I think it's entirely obvious that they cannot experience suffering.
Further, if we want to abstract away from a mechanistic understanding and focus purely on a reduction of suffering, then veganism should be your goal. Most crop production is simply for animal feed. Eliminating animals from our diets would dramatically decrease the amount of plants we destroy.
Isn't this another form of the Meat Paradox, though? Plants have been shown to have moment to moment awareness of their surroundings, can communicate with each other and will turn away from unfavourable conditions. How can you definitively say that plants don't feel pain?
These humans live fairly happy lives and were bred (cloned) to be harvested for the organs. Would you oppose the real world implementation of this system? The people could even not find out what happens to them, they could be gassed during the transit.
It really stems down to whether you think it's okay to kill living beings. I don't care too much for life forms smaller than 1cm and that's one of my biases, but I don't think it's okay to kill living beings larger than 1cm.
You could say that we are humans and those are non-human animals, therefore it's okay. I'm not a fan of this line of thinking because that is how caste systems work in societies that exploit different groups of people. They're of a lower caste so it's okay to treat them like dirt. They're of a different skin color so it's okay to treat them bad. It's okay to kill them.
If we discovered aliens, what would have to be different about them to make it not okay to raise them to be killed for our tastebud enjoyment? The ability to do calculus? Plenty of people can't do calculus. The ability to speak? We're still trying to learn how certain whales communicate or how crows seem to have a memory for previous bad actors /abusers in studies. We don't eat handicapped people nor people with severe mental problems. If it's not okay to farm humans, what about our predecessors? We have a common ancestor with other life forms on earth, so where do we draw the line? Bipedalism?
However I don't think there's a clear line to be drawn. Why do most people object to eating dog or cat while they have no problem with pork? Pigs are about as intelligent as dogs (and can also learn to recognize individual humans).
Extrapolating that line of thought there is also no fundamental difference between eating plants and animals, but most people argue that it's morally wrong to kill animals for meat but ok to eat plants.
Cognitive dissonance, plain and simple. This was explained in the Wikipedia article I linked above.
I don't find this a super compelling reason not to eat meat because humans being a separate class than other animals is essentially a precondition to arguing that eating meat is immoral since plenty of other animals also eat meat. Applying a higher moral standard to humans compared to other animals is only reasonable if there is some sort of intrinsic intellectual capacity that we have but they lack. Once you open that door, there are still arguments to be made that eating meat is immoral, but the issue is much less clear cut, and I don't think it requires cognitive dissonance to come down on the other side.
Fortunately, that's gradually improving. And it's a good idea for people to eat less restaurant meals if they're really interested in nutrition. It's hard to claim that nutrition is one's #1 priority when one is eating 1,500 or more calories per meal and few vegetables or whole grains.
Veganism isn't automatically nutritious. It can be, just as meat diets can be -- but most meat eaters don't. Either can be nutritious with planning and education.
As you say, your diet should absolutely start with nutrition. But given that you could eat nutritiously either way, you should indeed let your ethics guide you -- which includes both animal welfare and the environment as a whole.
But in particular, it'll be very hard to claim that nutrition is top priority if you're frequently eating Big Macs and never eating vegetables or grains.