Meh... you can't expect the BBC to do anything more. The government wouldn't stand for a series which harmed the meat industry in any way, the BBC would be lobbied to death by all sorts of industry money - just won't ever happen.

Then there's the self-censorship of the BBC of presenting a balanced arguement so it would never get passed the planning stage anyway.

A better show would be a proper series about abatoirs and showing the killing - would turn a lot more people vegetarian I think - yet again though, even though it would be the reality, it wouldn't be allowed to be shown, too horrific, the meat industry wouldn't like it as they'd fear real life would be bad PR etc etc.

It's a crazy crazy world where the truth is thought to be too damning.

I wasn't going to record it but the other half persuaded me. Having Mosely presenting seemed to be a plus although he is less useful than earlier programmes.

Thinking about the meat industry. It is huge and obviously wants to protect itself come what may. The tobacco industry comes to mind.
Against that there are a few people and low budget organisations trying to put the vegetarian case
So no competition. Meat Industry wins.

More and better education would be good.
If I ate meat and watched that programme I would cut down my consumption and knock out the processed stuff.
The food industry can make just as much money with veggie food as with meat and the punters can live longer

Dave , it isn't illegal to eat meat . Thus , it is a moral question . Alas , trying to defeat a moral argument by relying upon an amoral lion is not so good .

Some things that are illegal are still quite moral too. The two aren't necessarily related.

Well why? This is a thread about eating meat. THAT is an absurdly specific line to take - it's not a "Should danielquinn Eat Meat" thread.. is it?



So now you're absurdly cutting the discussion down to lamb? UK meat also includes factory farmed meat and farms that have poor conditions and animal treatment and abattoirs which violate all sorts of laws. If you were saying you only eat certified organic, UK produced meat that would be different. But you're not. You're saying UK sourced factory-farmed turkey is ok too and you're quite happy with the treatment of turkeys in a UK factory farm... because you've seen some lambs roaming about in fields. Quite absurd !


Which moral question? The moral question posed is whether one should eat meat or not. Morally, given full realisation of what that entails and means, I say no.

If the question is about the whether the result of everyone stopping eating meat meaning that people wouldn't see cows or sheep in fields on their way to work then I'd first ask "Do you seriously equate that to a moral question?" and then say that yes it is acceptable.

I mean, it's a bit like having asked whether the slave trade should have been stopped because "won't it be a shame not to see all the black faces picking cotton in our fields? And who will I take my frustrations out on violently if I can't beat a slave?!"

??


You were saying that you'd rather be a lamb with a lifespan of 1 year in a field than not exist - by definition you are putting yourself (a human) into their position and attributing it with a human thought process. How can a lamb know what it's like not to exist for a start to make that choice and if you then do attribute it with some all-knowing thought process as you have, wouldn't it see the plight and future pain of its kin as a whole and decide it would rather end future centuries of suffering by not existing?

Even so, quite an absurd way to represent the argument don't you think?



I really don't think that was me, given the evidence above..



Meh... try telling someone like Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz that, Dachau survivor who wrote extensively on the comparison after his own experiences in the holocaust, specifically Dachau. Then we have writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer who, whilst personally avoiding experiences of holocaust by moving to the US before Poland was invaded, wrote of other Jewish experiences during the holocaust and concluded that:

" "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."

It's not a daft nor bollocks comparison other than if you only see human beings of any worth at all (which is an extreme position in my view, one worthy of say ISIS ideology in my view too, yet oddly not as uncommon as one may think)

WTF ?? How about beating a dog to within a very inch of it's life? That must be morally ok if it's not even murder to take it to it's death?

Now THIS is absurd!

OK, perhaps you're taking this to the pedantic point of murder being a human action only against a human as defined in law rather than common usage of language? But that would be an absurd point to be making for the sake of argument so...



We know a LOT more than would lead to that conclusion, surely?



Now that is the craziest thing I've read .. not even absurd, just crazy.

I agree - I think so many people would give up meat if they had a true grasp of what eating meat is and does. By true, I mean an emotional grasp really.

So many people would cry at the death of a little lamb in their arms dying of something natural, and yet happy to eat lamb no matter how it died or lived it's short life.

The disconnect is kind of amazing when you think about it too much. Not too dissimilar to the disconnect between say a thousand people being reported to have murdered brutally somewhere far away compared to one person in the UK having led a nice life and then dying of say cancer in a documentary. The latter connects with human emotions and the former is just a bunch of numbers forgotten about in a second.

The disconnect comes from allowing people to be ignorant of the food chain and food industry, arguably ignorance encouraged to protect those very industries. Education is what's needed.

Back in the day, you could probably understand it but with the internet and the ease in which documentaries are made it's hard to understand why there is not more out there simply exploring the gory reality of it all.

Let me get one thing straight right here and now, I do not feel morally bereft in the slightest when I eat meat. I choose to eat meat as you yourself choose to eat vegetables. In the end, whether eating flora or fauna, it all has to die either before or during the act of consumption. This rule applies to every living thing on the planet so if you have a problem with it, take it up with your preferred deity or biosphere design committee if you are an atheist.

Fair enough; I never have thought that there was a direct relationship between laws and morality. However, both laws and morality vary between countries and over time, so something that was seen as immoral by the majority and which was actually illegal about 50 years ago (homosexual intercourse between consenting adults) is now both legal and not regarded as immoral by the majority in the UK, but will result in the death penalty in other countries.  About the only things that have always been regarded as immoral and which have universally been against the law are murder and theft.  

There are few arguments in moral philosophy about this, but it is certainly true that legality/illegality is not the same as morality/immorality.

There is a famous legal case about some sailors cast adrift in a lifeboat who ate one of their crew in order to survive. This was the custom of the sea but when they got back to Blighty the survivors were convicted of murder.

It can also be argued that helping a loved one to commit suicide to relieve extreme suffering could be moral but illegal in the UK.