Biologically speaking we are omnivores. But omnivore likely doesn’t mean what you think it does. Omnivore means “eater of everything (or anything)”. So they will eat whatever is necessary keep them alive. It does NOT mean that they MUST eat other animals to survive or stay healthy - it simply means they CAN eat animals to survive at times they can’t find anything else to eat. They are adaptable.
Since we in the west live in a society where you can choose any kind of food you want, eating meat is a choice, not a biological necessity like omnivores in nature who sometimes have nothing but animals to eat. We can meet 100% of our dietary requirements eating nothing but plants.
But let’s suppose that humans were obligate carnivores - meaning that, like cats, we would either die or become severely malnourished and weak if we did not consume meat. Now vegans and vegetarians cannot exist, or they would die.
The first problem we face is population vs land space. 8 billion humans would need to eat animals every single day, in the same way that developed countries do. Yet statistically if every single human ate the same amount of meat as the US and Europe, we would need 15 earths to sustain that diet as there wouldn’t be enough land space to breed all the animals and grow food for all those animals. As obligate carnivores we would actually never have been able to grow as a population past a few hundred million - which is correct with most large carnivores - there are very few of them in nature.
Despite being obligate carnivores we would still be humans. We have a conscience and we can also empathize with the suffering of other beings similar to us. We’re then faced with a true dilemma. We must raise these sentient beings and we must kill them in order to stay alive. What do we do?
Of course we would want them to be treated well during their lives and die a very quick and painless death. We wouldn’t want anyone to suffer when they are already dying to sustain us! Fortunately, we have machines which can destroy a brain quicker than it can respond with a pain signal so we can at least be certain of a painless death.
When you kill animals by shooting them in the brain, their hearts will stop almost immediately. That means that once you cut their heads off and hang them upside down to bleed, their hearts won’t pump blood out of every extremity of their bodies and blood would remain in the carcasses. But why would that be a problem for a carnivore? It isn’t. But in most countries it is illegal to sell meat with high levels of blood in it because it is considered a “health risk”. So when animals go to slaughter houses, they must have their throats sliced while their brains are functional enough to run their hearts and pump their blood out. Stunning methods are only 80% effective. That means that at least 20% of animals are fully conscious when they have a hook put through their feet and bleed to death.
But dying isn’t the only ethical issue in a conscientious obligate carnivore society. Perhaps even more important and difficult is to ensure they live in good conditions. We would still need raise them in farms in order to get both the convenience and reliability we humans strive for. Hunting wild animals would affect the balance of the natural food chain which we have long removed ourselves from.
So the farms would be very large in order to mimic their natural environment. They would be able to run for several minutes before meeting a fence, and they would have enough square footage to take that run without having to dodge many animals along the way. Just like they have in nature.
They would be able to take care of their young and have plenty of space to nest, shade to hide from the sun and warm places to keep away from the cold.
When they are old enough to be killed, every farm would have a built in slaughterhouse so they wouldn’t have to travel in order to die. And they would never see another animal dying, nor smell blood. They would live happily and then they would die so quickly they wouldn’t know it happened.
Currently, 99% of animals are raised in places that are not even big enough for them to move around or scratch their backs. They sleep on their excrements and eat by it. This means that they get ill very quickly, so they are injected with powerful antibiotics throughout their lives in order to stay alive.
Male mammals have their testicles cut off when they are young without pain killers because society prefers the taste of castrated males.
Female mammals are confined by metal bars while feeding their young and can’t even move to clean them or caress them.
Birds are kept in cages all their lives - or if they are called “free range” they can live in a large compartment so crowded they can’t move anyway.
The conditions are so cramped that they become irritable and start pecking each other. So they cut their beaks off when they are young.
When they are old enough to be killed they are shoved inside a truck, without water, light or air conditioning and travel for hundreds of miles to the nearest slaughterhouse. Up to 15% of them will not survive this trip.
In the slaughterhouse they can hear the cries of the other animals while they are slaughtered, they can smell the blood, their adrenaline levels become high, they are scared because they know they are in danger.
In a caring obligate carnivore society we would only eat farmed fish also raised in optimal conditions and killed by a mass electrical shock in the water. One minute they are alive the next they are dead.
Wild fish would never be fished in mass because we understand that 40% other animals are killed unnecessarily as by-catch, and because we would be destroying the balance of that fragile system we never evolved to be a part of.
Currently, there are 10x less fish in the ocean today than there were 100 years ago. And in 40 years time there will be none. The oceans will be populated by jelly-fish.
All the above is of course not considering that even if we were obligate carnivores, if we cared so much about animals, we could develop highly concentrated plant alternatives which include all the nutrients that a carnivore needs. This is already done with vegan cat foods which contain plant sources of taurine and high levels of plant protein - allowing an obligate carnivore to survive without causing suffering to anyone sentient.
In summary, there’s a clear logic why we should all be vegan. As compassionate beings, we are fortunate that we are not obligate carnivores.
The fact that we both don’t need to eat them and treat them with complete disregard for their feelings is nothing short of sadistic.
It’s so easy to not eat meat or animal products. I do it every day and here I am. I’m healthy, I thoroughly enjoy my food and I have a clear conscience that I am not causing deliberate suffering to anyone! You could be doing the same so why aren’t you?
I really hope we can one day all evolve the ability to be empathetic towards all others - and spare billions from suffering every year simply to satisfy our taste buds.
As always, I highly recommend you watch Earthlings, a documentary that shows what the meat industry doesn’t want you to see: www.watchearthlings.com
