Meat has a place in Culture and Tradition

Question: Should you go vegan?
Position1 of 2›: Eating animal products is ethical
Argument‹5 of 5: Meat has a place in Culture and Tradition

Many traditional cuisines include meat as an integral element. Historically, meat has been an integral part of feasting in many cultures. Going vegan would remove mean from these cultural traditions, changing them forever. You can limit meat consumption but still keep a cultural and traditional space for it.

The argument

Food is not only nutrition, and the argument turns on what else it is. Meat is an integral part of many cultural and religious festivals, holidays and other rituals, and in those settings it is not incidental to the occasion but part of how the occasion is performed. Most religions — Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism among them — attach specific symbolic or spiritual value to particular foods, often meat-based ones, and most also maintain restrictions governing which meats may be eaten and how they are cooked or prepared. The presence of those rules is itself evidence of significance: traditions do not regulate what they regard as trivial. What follows is that not eating meat is more than a sacrifice of the palate. A person who abstains absents themselves from the shared meal at the centre of an observance, and that meal is often the point at which a community is actually constituted — the moment the family or congregation is gathered and the tradition is enacted rather than merely described. To decline it is to stand outside something, however the decision is explained, and the loss is to the practice as well as to the individual. The claim this supports is about cultural integrity. Traditions are transmitted through repetition, and the elements of a practice are not detachable from it in the way a menu is; remove the food and the observance is altered, and with enough such alterations it is no longer the same observance. A demand that everyone abandon meat is therefore a demand that a great many communities give up part of what makes them distinct. Proponents of this position conclude that this cannot be dismissed as mere preference. Eating meat carries meaning that matters to people for reasons of tradition and cultural integrity, and on that basis eating animal products is ethical.

Premises

[P1]Meat is integral to many cultural and religious festivals, holidays, and rituals. [P2] Most religions assign specific meat-based foods symbolic or spiritual value, so giving up meat sacrifices tradition and cultural integrity, not just taste. [C] Therefore, because meat has a place in culture and tradition, eating animal products is ethical.

Counter-arguments

Cultures and religions continually evolve over time. Now that we know about the negative repercussions of eating meat we should reform our traditions for the better.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] We do not have to leave these customs alone. They are capable of changing with the times.