Tasty questions

It doesn't look like a human in pain

What I read

As I enjoyed my morning coffee, I browsed the BBC News as usual. There wasn't much that interested me since the front page was full of the same recent stories such as the US presidents filthy mouth, and even the Tech section, which I always look at, didn't have anything very exciting. But then I found the article "What's the kindest way to kill a lobster?" in the Science section. This interested me because I do enjoy lobster, and I also worry about some of the moral implications of our eating habits. 

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What it says

The article says that scientists have come to believe that their efforts to avoid bad experiences suggest that lobsters feel pain at least to some extent, even though they don't behave the same way that mammals and other animals do so that we know that cats, chickens, cows and pigs certainly feel pain when they are hit, starved, cut or otherwise tortured. The article also presents suggested ways to make lobsters unconscious before throwing them alive into a pot of boiling water. 

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My response 

Is racism a bad thing? I mean, is it OK to treat someone badly because, for example, they have black skin? How about sexism? Is it OK to say that women can't be engineers, can't drive cars and can't study English because they are ... women? I hope we agree that the answers to all of these questions is no. But then, why would it be OK to cause suffering to animals just to give humans a tasty mouthful of food? If we have to give a morally strong, relevant reason reason for treating women differently to men, for example, that women are more likely to be trusted by rape victims than men, so should be employed over men as police officers dealing with rape victims. I tried to think of a good example where skin colour, that marker of race, might be a justified reason for discriminating, but I couldn't think of one. Perhaps you can help me in a comment?

My point is that human beings seem to be prejudiced in favour of our own species in the same way that man were traditionally prejudiced against women and that white people, or whatever group had power in society, were traditionally prejudiced against people of other colours. Why, after all, would it be morally acceptable to kill and eat pigs but not people? The answer here cannot be "because humans are humans and pigs are pigs." That would like saying it's OK to treat women like silly toys owned by men because "women are women," which is no reason at all.

So, should I be enjoying lobster? And steak? And ham? And lamb?

I think the answer is that it's OK to eat meat because it's not the killing that is wrong, but the causing of pain. But I'm still worried. Since a new born baby is about as intelligent as a baby pig, and they are about equal in feeling pain, is there a good reason to treat them differently? Is there some reason I haven't thought of that justifies treating human animals differently to other animals when it comes to killing and causing pain?