Humans are not carnivores, and lions don't have grocery stores.

If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.

Lions have no concept of morality either. We should care about unnecessary suffering because we can.

Avoiding unnecessary suffering is sometimes used as the basis for whole ethics systems. It's inherently good and doesn't need to be deduced from anything.

Well, who calls what's "unnecessary"?

Killing animals for their meat is not like torturing animals for no reason (which indeed would be unnecessary).

And how steep would the slope be? E.g. what about killing rodents and house pests?

>Humans are not carnivores

Yes, we're omnivores. Or it's complicated [1].

> and lions don't have grocery stores.

Sucks to be them.

But we have been eating meat for millennia, naturally, before we ever concerned ourselves about reading/writing and math, so there's that.

>If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.

That would have mattered only if the same conditions applied (e.g. extinction threat otherwise), which they don't. So it's looks more like a way to force the argument against eating meat based on a strong association with something obviously negative ("think of the children" style argument).

[1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Are_humans_omnivores_or_herb...

> That would have mattered only if the same conditions applied (e.g. extinction threat otherwise)

Exactly the point I'm making. Humans don't face extinction if we stop eating animal products, so comparing us to lions is not a valid argument for why we should eat meat.

Eating animals (some of which can`t reproduce naturaly anymore) raised in CAFOS, fed unnatural foods and pumped with hormones and antibiotics is all but natural evolutionary behavior and hurts both animals and humans.

I agree. I'm all for reducing our unnatural food-industry induced consumption, and unnatural feeding, and horrible holding conditions for animals.

Just not for throwing the whole eating animals thing altogether.

“Animals eating other animals is natural evolutionary behavior.”

Whether something is “natural” has no bearing on its goodness. And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.

“If carnivore animals has the same concerns and turned to tofu, they’d be dead.”

We’re not obligate carnivores so this is a non-sequitor.

“Let’s concentrate on the suffering of our fellow human beings...”

This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.

>Whether something is “natural” has no bearing on its goodness.

Well, goodness also is not a logical argument. Good according to what, some arbitrary morals? Other people find it perfectly good to eat burgers.

>And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.

Only in the contrived sense, that we are part of nature as a species.

But we have long made the distinction that our more advanced developments concerning invention, historical developments, innovation, etc, are part of "civilization", and it's the behaviors that we already had before we developed those that are our "natural" part.

And we did ate meat before we had writing, and mobile phones.

>This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.

Isn't not meant to be a logical deduction from something said earlier, it's meant to be about prioritization.

“We have long made the distinction.....”

Rape, murder, and infanticide are all natural human behaviors by this definition, and they’ve become less common as we’ve become more divorced from nature. Also natural: having about half of your children die what are now preventable deaths. Life in nature is complete shit.

And I was assuming here a basically utilitarian definition of the good, because of your concern with suffering. Of course it’s debatable.