Why do you eat meat ?

An even smaller minority gives a shit about your dietary habits, as backwards as they are.

@PutinTheBinsOut: Considering all the comments people with my diet get, I'd say a lot of them at least give a shit about that

Wouldn't get half as many comments if you dropped the subtle smug superiority and ate a fucking steak.

@PutinTheBinsOut: It's not superiority, it's called caring. Maybe if you realized that your actions had consequences, you would do it too

Oh so because I'm partial to bacon I'm a sociopath now? Nice try. I care about the things that matter, not whether or not a chicken ends up as McNuggets.

@PutinTheBinsOut: Or ignorant. Take your pick. Choosing to eat meat leads to factory farming, increased deforestation and habitat loss, intensive agricultural practices resulting in lower and lower yields, unsustainable irrigation systems, chemical fertilizers seeping into water systems, exorbitant greenhouse gas emissions, and the higher risk of creating superbugs that put us all at risk.

This isn't just about the animal. This is about all of us. Your actions have consequences. Bacon doesn't just come from nowhere

@StandardIndividual: Oh, look at you. So edgy. Can't be bothered to defend your own actions, but have no problem trying to be dismissive of someone else's. Sarcasm is the last refuge of a weak mind, after all.

But I get it. I used to feel the same way as a meat-eater. It's so easy to feel self-righteous when you pay someone else to commit your cruelty for you. You can still think of yourself as a decent human being because the blood isn't on your hands. In the end, all you're doing is admitting just how unaware of your actions you are. I hope you either learn to care enough to make your actions align with your values, or you gain enough awareness to realize the full weight of your choices

@StandardIndividual: They are sentient lifeforms as well. You can find videos of them fighting to stay alive as they're being beaten and slaughtered online if you don't believe me.

@StandardIndividual: Cows have best friends and become visibly stressed when they're away from them. They also are quite affectionate with their young. They're capable of love and compassion.

Pigs are very social creatures that many people keep as pets. They're so friendly that they seek out and befriend many animals, even humans. There are several instances of them saving the lives of their owners, which means they're capable of empathy.

Both species feel fear. Both species feel pain. They feel the same type of emotions we do. Comparing them to bacteria doesn't do any of that justice

@StandardIndividual: The strong will always justify the acts of violence they commit upon the weak. In your case, you call it evolutionary rights. Terrorists call it jihad. Nationalists have called it ethnic cleansing. In the end, the cruel do whatever they need to to belittle the importance of the lives of their victims.

But that's clearly not an issue for you. Maybe you have yet to consider that it's not just animals being hurt. The agricultural and farming practices that are required for the animals you eat are destroying the planet. It's expediting global warming, threatening the lives of indigenous tribes, ruining crop yields with soil erosion and depletion, producing incredible amounts of waste, destroying biodiversity, creating the risk of superbugs, and leaking chemical fertilizers into water supplies which threaten sea life and fisheries.

We're putting our own food supply and lives at risk by continuing to feed animals for consumption

@StandardIndividual: When that happens, it may be too late to stop. Relying on human ingenuity as a last ditch rescue effort is foolish. They say not to put all your eggs in one basket for a reason.

But I'm not talking about an animal, I'm talking about hundreds of billions of animals every year. We lock them in cages, we mutilate them, we repeatedly impregnate them until their offspring are old enough to be put through the same, we hang them by a hook and slit their throats until they bleed out, we throw male chicks through a grinder alive, we beat them when they are too weak or sick or scared to walk to their own slaughter. What we do is nothing short of systemic torture. Denying them their suffering because they can't understand rights and revolution is sickening. It's not the killing that bothers me any near as much as the living hell they go through before that.

They don't sit around in fields munching on grass either. >99.9% of all animals used for consumption are raised in factory farms. They live in dimly lit, overcrowded, waste-filled sheds and cages. Animals need to be mutilated so they don't hurt each other when they go crazy because of it.

Thinking that mass murder is vastly different just shows how little you know about the research done on animal intelligence