That's basically the same thing as what they said though.

And let's be honest, if a tiger was capable of farming livestock, it probably would.

I already have stated a thousand times that this is not an appeal to nature, the claim is not universalist it is strictly related to the killing of animals in the context of subsistence. All animals have a right to live and as part of the right to live there is a right to kill in order to live and substist. Furthermore part of the scaffolding that I do not want to get into because then I have to write even more is that death itself absent pain is of no moral significance because the subject cannot be present for their own death and therefore cannot suffer it. Suffering is the only universally significant moral concept because all beings share in it and actively avoid it. Therefore we have a moral responsibility to not inflict suffering, but suffering ==death.

Yes it is ethical to kill a dog to eat it. I mean I wouldn’t do it but it is ethical. Just because I emotionally have a response to it doesn’t change the logic of the matter. I never justified violence against animals fyi, I’m absolutely against that because it inflicts suffering. So in this case you would need to kill the dog without it suffering.

But yeah the line of thinking in order to convince others requires a lot more elaboration than Im willing at this point to give here.

Maybe I’ll put it to paper and tag everyone here, it would at least make for some interesting discussion.

The easiest path is not necessarily the best or right path. Though I do agree that in the context of modern industrial meat production the more ethical thing to do is not consume meat. But that is not the same thing as saying that eating meat is wrong, or immoral. The immoral thing is the way the animals suffer before being killed.

Who says that the lion isn’t just needlessly cruel? You can only assume that it lacks the ability to make moral decisions, but then again humans kill children all the time for incomprehensible reasons. How are these lions and humans different except your perception that one has moral agency and the other doesn’t based on absolutely no empirical evidence except your belief in your own superiority.

Again this entire thing hinges on the notion that animals lack rationality, but the evidence increasingly dies not support that. But that’s neither here nor there, the nature of a lion is different to the nature of a human. And even then, we still do what you have described all the time. It may be wrong but we do it, and we will still do it a thousand years from now if we are still around. Now the argument is not because “it is part of your nature, you’re allowed to do it”, the argument is that all animals have a right to kill other animals in order to defend or feed themselves.

The other part of the argument is that unless you think for example another omnivore like a chimp (which fyi we have absolutely no reason to believe are any less rational than us ) is immoral if they decide to eat meat having plant based foods available then you shouldn’t think that about human beings.

If you want to improve animal welfare, you need to start believing that all animals, including human animals are equal. While society continues to believe humans are superior in any way to animals we will not be able to create a world in which all species are equally respected.