The one on the left will be ground up with about a thousand siblings so you can eat his mother's eggs.

Is it immoral to cut a dog’s throat because we like the sound of the blood gurgling onto the soil? To stomp on a box of kittens because the squishing under our feet is lovely and refined? To sever a lizard’s tail and legs, leaving her to bleed to death, because the trail of blood she leaves behind makes interesting patterns?

Most of us would say yes, these acts are immoral.  Would they be any better if the aggressor was paid to do it? If a young man is paid ten dollars every time he crushes a kitten to death, is the act then acceptable? How about ten thousand dollars? Of course not.

We agree that receiving pleasure from the sound, sight or feel of bloodshed is immoral (if not downright creepy), as is profit.

What if the pleasure is taste?

If the pleasures on our ears, under our feet, or upon our eyes are unacceptable reasons to inflict harm, why do we make exceptions for the pleasures of the tongue? It is just another organ.

Eye, nose and skin pleasure may be seen as entertainment.  If we agree that killing for mere entertainment is bad, then certainly crushing kittens to death is bad.  Stabbing a cow to death for entertainment, then, is also bad because a cow is no different a moral specimen than a kitten is.

The difficult part of talking to meat and dairy consumers is helping them understand that eating flesh and non-human milk are unnecessary.  Because these food items are not necessary, they are entertainment.  Buying steak at a grocery store which also sells beans and fresh vegetables is no more defensible than stomping on a box of kittens.

We must reject killing not just kittens, but also cows, chickens and all living beings, in pursuit of the specific sensations given to our tongues and noses.

There is no magic morality purifier device built into our taste buds. Criminals are not released on the condition that they greatly enjoyed the crime. And, despite what the bacon advertisements tell us, pigs are not happy to die today because a plate will hold their body parts tonight.

Our enjoyment is as irrelevant as profit. The price paid per kitten squished has no effect on the immorality of the act. Be it ten dollars or ten thousand dollars, funding murder is funding murder. In the same way, a tickle or a taste does not change the exploitation.

Let us be consistent with our beliefs. Being so is much easier than trying to explain to our children why assaulting kittens is bad, but assaulting pigs is okay, provided we eventually eat them, too.

Summary: Do not blame being an asshole on this organ.

See Also

• Why Veganism Must be the Baseline at the Abolitionist Approach
• “Cage free” eggs at HumaneMyth