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Not sure if this is better for SQS but - What is the steelman argument against vegetarianism/veganism? I am especially interested in claims that aren't health-based, as I know quite a few very intelligent and well-sourced vegans who have thoroughly convinced me that most health based claims are false.
I'm not a vegetarian myself but I'm reasonably convinced that I should be one, it's more of a moral failing on my part that I eat meat, not a logical stance.
I would say there's three general arguments for vegetarianism/veganism:
Health benefits, which you've already dismissed. Though I might add that there are also health consequences from vegetarianism. I know a couple of vegetarians who had go back to eating meat or take iron supplements because of a lack of iron in their blood for example
Environmental benefits, that meat and animal products take an inordinate amount of water, land, energy, produce too much waste, methane. It's been a long while since I've looked into this, but most of the claims made by the vegetarians/environmentalist are grossly exaggerated, though they have some truth to them. The main problem with this argument is that it's not actually a compelling argument to eliminate meat entirely from your diet, at best it's an argument just to limit your meat or consider how your meat is sourced, it's more an argument against certain farming practices. Some animals, grazing or otherwise, can actually be beneficial to the local environment e.g. chickens can eat pests. This argument doesn't refute the act of eating meat itself. What if you raise chickens yourself in your backyard and then eat them? Kangaroo meat here in Australia is pretty much exclusively sourced from kangaroos hunted as pests. Also you could just not care about the minor environmental impact your individual meat consumption has in the same way most people don't care about the environmental damage cause by mining for the rare earths in their phone.
Most controversially and perhaps the strongest argument in favour of vegetarianism, the morality of eating animals, appealing to their sentience. The major problem with this argument is pretty much the same problem that plagues every discussion of morality. Where do were derive morality from, and how do we determine what is moral? The moral argument put forward by vegetarians basically is some variation of 'eating meat causes animals to suffer, causing suffering (to sapient creatures like animals) is immoral, therefore eating meat is immoral". But I can basically just disagree with their moral axioms, and there's really not much to argue against. I can say that it's perfectly fine, or not necessarily immoral to cause suffering to an animal, and that humans as sapient, rational beings with greater moral worth should not be compared to animals. Maybe I can offer a olive branch and say that the more intelligent, or more potentially sapient an animal is, the more moral worth it has, and the less moral it is to eat it. But this raises another issue in where does one draw the line? Is eating insects okay? What level of sentience is necessary before eating the animal becomes immoral? You might be perfectly happy with saying that cows are dumb beasts who aren't sentient or sapient enough for it to be immoral to eat them, and there's nothing that can really be said against it if that's your axiom. I think moral supremacy of man over animal and nature is just a reasonable moral axiom to have as any other.
Vegans specifically have very little moral ground to stand on in my opinion because it's perfectly possible to ethically source animal products with no suffering (e.g. eggs from chickens in your backyard). At best, it's just an argument to more ethically source those products as per point 2.
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