The Objection That Consuming Animals Is Natural

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume IV, p. 39 of the PDF edition · English translation

One of the most common objections to veganism is the claim that eating meat is natural. It is also common for animal advocates to respond by denying that consuming animals is natural for humans. Below we will see that both the objection and this response suffer from the same problem: they assume that if a behavior is natural, it is justified. There are different things someone might mean when they claim that eating meat is natural. We will discuss each of them below.

5.1. The appeal to possibility

Sometimes what is meant is that it is possible for the human organism to consume meat. However, if the mere fact that a behavior is possible made it justifiable, any possible behavior would be justifiable. For example, it is also possible for the human organism to consume human flesh, but this does not seem to justify raising humans to kill and eat. Likewise, the mere fact that it is possible for the human organism to consume the flesh of other animals does not imply that there is any justification for doing so.

5.2. The appeal to instinct

At other times, what is meant by "eating meat is natural" is that there is an instinctive inclination to do so. A first problem with this is that many people have no such inclination. But even if everyone had it, we could still ask why having an instinctive inclination to do something would show that it is justifiable. Imagine, for example, that humans had an instinctive inclination to rape children. If we all had this instinctive tendency, perhaps most of us would see nothing wrong with such behavior. But the fact that, under such conditions, we would consider such behavior justifiable does not show that it really is justifiable. Indeed, the very fact that there was an instinctive inclination toward it might be what kept people from seeing how unjustifiable the act is. To justify an act is to show that there are good reasons in its favor. Showing that a behavior is what we would do if we did not reflect on it is obviously not offering a good reason in its favor.

5.3. The appeal to what animals do

Another very common claim is that consuming animals is justified because, in nature, animals eat one another. The idea behind this argument is that if animals in nature do a certain thing, then we are justified in doing the same.

The first problem with this is that there are animals who do not eat other animals. Since the argument aims to justify consuming animals, it is at the very least biased to choose to imitate precisely the animals who eat other animals, rather than those who do not, without giving any further reason for that choice.

The second problem is that there are animals in nature who steal, rape, kill, and eat members of their own species, including the young of rivals or even their own young. No one argues that it is right for humans to do the same just because other animals do it too. The appeal to what animals do comes up almost exclusively in attempts to justify consuming animals. Moreover, animals in nature do not have hospital systems, cell phones, computers, schools, libraries, clothes, cars, and so on either. It is at the very least arbitrary to want to imitate animals in nature only when they consume other animals, and not in everything else.

5.4. The appeal to the food chain

At other times, consuming animals is defended on the basis of the claim that humans are at the top of the food chain. It is often pointed out that, in nature, larger or more powerful animals kill and eat smaller or more vulnerable ones, and that this is what makes it right for humans to kill other animals for food.

However, nothing compels humans to consume other animals. So this is no different from saying that we are justified in doing something just because we have the power to do it (and we have already seen the problems with this view above, in section 5.1). For example, imagine that there were a species more powerful than humans, and that its members bred humans for food. Or imagine that a group of human cannibals kidnapped other humans to kill and eat them. These beings would be at the top of the food chain, but that does not seem to make their behavior just (especially if they had no need whatsoever to do it).

Sometimes what is meant when the food chain is mentioned is that, if animals are not consumed, there will be overpopulation in those species and, because of scarcity, the result will be even more suffering and death than if they were killed for consumption. There are at least two problems with this claim. The first is that there are in fact only so many animals of these species because humans breed them for consumption. So consuming these animals does not control their populations; quite the opposite. The second is that, even if killing and consuming the animals helped control their populations (for example, in the case of animals hunted or fished in the wild), this would still be insufficient to justify the act. For example, killing and eating humans would also help control the human population, but that does not seem sufficient to justify doing such a thing. Furthermore, if the goal is to control animal populations, there is the option of sterilizing them. There is no way to justify an act that causes harm if other options are available that would cause less harm, since that would amount to defending a harm that is wholly unnecessary for achieving the intended goal. In addition, there are studies showing that sterilization is more effective at controlling wild animal populations than killing them¹¹⁰. Therefore, a concern with population control could not justify consuming animals.

5.5. Conclusion

We have seen that there are several things someone might mean when they claim that "eating meat is natural." However, we have also seen that, in whatever sense the expression is being used, the fact that a behavior is natural gives us no reason at all to think that it is justifiable. This does not mean that there cannot be behaviors that are natural (in one of the senses above) and that are also justifiable. It means only that, if they are justifiable, this will be for some other reason, not because they are natural. In addition, we have also seen that eating animals is not one of those behaviors, whether or not it is natural.