So is it?

While composing my Q&A the question kept rising to the forefront of my thoughts. Are these conditions actualized? Is vegetarianism morally obligatory? So I thought I'd try to decide, and a blog post seemed an appropriate medium.

Our conditions were four:

1. NHAs are deserving of moral status.
2. NHA flesh is an unnecessary consumption.
3. Consuming NHA flesh always violates the moral status of NHA.
4. Vegetarianism does not violate the moral status of NHA.

I think that both conditions one and two are actualized. Meat is an unnecessary consumption and non-human animals are worthy of moral status. Also, condition four is met. For the most part, I would contend that vegetarianism does not violate the moral status of non-human animals, and if it did, it would be to a far lesser degree than eating meat.

This brings me to condition three. Consuming NHA flesh always violates the moral status of non-human animals. This seems intuitive, since to eat it it must first be dead. It would seem an intuitive sequitur then, that to eat an animal is to kill it. However, this is not always the case. Let us examine a few different cases.

1. Allowing the animal to die naturally.
If animals were raised humanely in farms and were not prematurely slaughtered, then I would contend that the moral status would not have been violated. Yes, of course this is dependent upon the abolition of factory farming.

2. The meat was already produced. This case is applicable in multiple ways. First, if a friend were to purchase meat, cook it, and then offer a bite of it to you. Under the condition that the friend will consume the meat either way, no further harm would be done by consuming that bite of food. Secondly, if I were to enter a restaurant and order a caesar wrap and they put chicken in it by accident, would I be morally wrong to consume the meat? The meat is already produced, the harm done. I will have to pay the restaurant either way, and they will not take back the meat to use later. It will be thrown out, so is wasting that food the right thing to do? No.

Consuming meat does not always violate the moral status of animals. However, I will admit that since a high percentage of meat is currently produced by factory farming, and that the cases is which eating meat does not violate the moral status of animals are rare, not eating meat may be largely obligatory, but not in an exclusively complete way.

Question: Are my cases accurate? Are they actual instances in which eating meat is morally acceptable?