For any sentient creature which practices cruelty against others, it practices cruelty against itself. Whilst meat in our diet gives nutritional advantages (especially if the meats are high-grade, with strict quality controls from the farm to the end of a dinner fork), due to humans essentially having an omnivorous digestive tract, the slaughtering of an animal for meat consumption is not a morally optimal outcome.
The moral conundrum is somewhat of a social double bind: do we sacrifice optimal nutritional health by turning to vegetarian option(s) and abstaining from meat consumption, or sacrifice ethical dictates which harm our animal companions (and thus ourselves, in an indirect but insidious and apathetic way)?
The choice is the individual's, and not the scope of this petition. But a resolution to the above moral double-bind, is helping our law-makers to pass legislation, setting up public laboratories and providing adequate funding for scientific research and development for this very and thoroughly worthy cause. Thus we find common ground, regardless of individuals' dietary choices in the interim period of time between now and when synthetic meats and tissues are just as or if not more nutritionally healthy than meat(s) from slaughtered animals.
Thus, we are faced with a moral conundrum that must be overcome through investing in our collective social capacity to grow quality meat tissues for human consumption, thus bypassing a need to sacrifice animals for food consumption.
For compelling arguments as to the different kinds of intelligences of different animals, and why they may be superior in intelligence to human beings at this present point in time (as of the time of this update, until the time that we are able to synthesise synthetic meat tissue that surpasses the nutritional quality of meat from slaughtered animals), please feel free to consult Dr Saniotis' videos:
Why Animals Matter?
Why animals are smarter than humans?
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Absolute Meat
