On eating corpses

We, as a society, eat corpses and have normalized this practice.

I understand that what I’m about to say can be an instant turnoff (bear with me), but by “corpses”, I mean dead non-human animals. Let me expand.

It is common to, when hungry, open the fridge and get some leftover smoked brisket to eat. This is a simple, almost automatic action. Yet it holds immense potential for reflection.

Most of us (I hope) would agree that unnecessarily kicking a dog is wrong. Then why is killing and eating a cow considered “ok”, when in most cases, this killing is not a matter of survival, but of habit?

Is there a substantial difference between those two that would justify killing one but not kicking the other? I personally don’t think so. In both cases, we are dealing with sentient beings — individuals capable of feeling pain, fear, and distress.

One might argue that the difference lies in the fact that dogs are pets and cows are not, or that cows exist for the purpose of being eaten. But this line of reasoning runs into some problems. Raccoons, for example, are not domesticated animals, yet kicking one for no reason would also be condemned. Even the image of someone kicking a cow would cause discomfort in most people.

So why is the unnecessary killing and eating of a cow — an individual who does not want to be killed or eaten — reasonable, while the unnecessary abuse of that same individual is not?

If we take our own moral intuitions seriously, it becomes difficult to see how one act can be justified while the other is condemned.