Obviously this question is only for people who eat beef regularly.
But I just was wondering, what IQ/ability would make you swear off beef? If they could speak like an 8 y.o, would that be enough to cut off beef? If they got an IQ of 80, would that do it?
That’s called a kill. That’s like saying if I hunt on someone’s behalf, even though I struck down the venison, I’m not the murderer, just the contractor is. Which brings us back here.
If someone is driving down a wildlife-heavy road thinking “ah well, if I hit anything, the vultures will clean it up”, and a day later, a vulture finds a dead squirrel in the road that was hit, is the vulture to blame for the squirrel’s death by virtue of being a beneficiary of the squirrel’s death? Because that’s analogous to the situation.
That’s not analogous to the situation of the vulture going to the store and buying squirrel meat.
The problem isn’t benefiting from the squirrels death, the problem is doing something that increases the probability that the squirrel gets killed. If the vulture finds and eats a dead squirrel at the side of the road, that has no effect on the how likely that squirrel (or future squirrels) are to die.
On the other hand, if the edit: vulture goes to the store and exchanges value for some squirrel meat, the vulture is giving others an incentive to kill squirrels to acquire their meat.
If you were the squirrel, would you rather live in an environment where no one benefits from killing you or one where there’s a massive bounty on squirrel meat?
And you’re saying it’s absolutely impossible to exchange meat in such a way as to not increase the incentive of meat being killed to be consumed in the future? I’m careful when it comes to that stuff, if my case-by-case circumstances knowingly put me in such a situation as is implied, I pull out, whether it be corporative or local (which should be treated differently anyways). My answer to the last question depends on if they’re a strict dichotomy or not; my point would be that it isn’t.
What do you mean by “exchange meat”? I assume you mean exchange value (i.e. money) for meat?
No, it’s not impossible to do this without increasing the chance that an animal gets killed to provide the meat. For example, if someone promised they’re only selling roadkill and will never kill the animals or do anything to increase the chances the animals get killed then you could buy meat from that person without increasing the probability that animals get killed. Obviously it would have to be reasonable to trust that person to keep their word.
That’s a very unlikely exception though. If you go to the grocery store and buy some meat, there is no basis or evidence to believe they’re only collecting roadkill. When you buy meat from a grocery store, it’s virtually certain that this is increasing the chances of animals being killed (very often after being subjected to extreme suffering). And you will have a share in the responsibility for those effects, because there’s a causal link between your choice to buy the product and the things that are done to make it available.