It is ethical to eat meat as secondary consumers
It is only natural for us to eat meat, as we are 'secondary consumers'.
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The Argument
We hold a specific position in the food chain. As secondary consumers, we eat other animals and maintain the balance needed in the food chain.
For more than 60,000 years humans have eaten animal products. Eating meat is a natural process that we as omnivores are supposed to carry out. Cooking meat actually proved to be a huge factor that lead to further human evolution - studies show that it caused a significant increase in our brain size.[1]
Counter arguments
Just because something is natural it does not mean it is ethical and that we should still do it. We cannot look to nature for moral advice as nature can be wrong and twisted in our human perception of what is moral.
Even if one were to accept that all that is natural is therefore ethical one can argue that;
It is not natural as we are primates. Of the 633 species of primates humans are the only ones who eat meat (chimpanzees too on occasion). Eating meat was an evolutionary fault rather than a natural process of evolution.
Furthermore, while other animals eat each other as they need to for survival, humans eat animals not out of necessity but merely because they want to. That is wrong
Proponents
Premises
[P1] Eating meat is natural for humans and consistent with our position on the food chain.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] It makes no sense to do something simply because it is 'natural'.