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1. IS IT MORALLY
RIGHT TO KILL
ANIMALS FOR FOOD?
L E S S O N 4

2. LESSON TOPICS: • Introduction to Caroline
• Intentions
• Responsibility
• Closed loop of life
• Intelligence of animals
• Perceptions
• Does being Vegan get you
off the hook?

3. INTENTION
Some say the decision
about killing animals for
meat is about ‘intent’;
that the deaths that occur
as a by-product of a
conventional arable
system shouldn’t be
considered because it
isn’t their intention to kill
these animals.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

4. OUR RESPONSIBILITY
I would argue that if you know that conventional
farming systems kill thousands of wild animals to
produce your tofu burger then you have the
same moral responsibility to make a better
choice as that of a meat eater who’s choosing a
pasture reared steak over a factory farmed one.
And frankly, it is our responsibility to know.

5. CLOSED LOOP OF
LIFE
Diana Rodgers tells a story in this
article of her Husband explaining to
her 10-year-old daughter who was
upset after seeing a dead sheep; ‘He
told Phoebe how the sheep lived a
good life, had fed the coyote, and he
how he buried the rest of the sheep’s
body in the compost and it’s going
into the soil to feed the vegetables.’ I
think this is a great example of the
closed loop of life; there’s no such
thing as a true vegetarian, your
plants need dead animals to grow. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

6. INTELLIGENCE OF
ANIMALS
The level of consciousness and
intelligence expressed by animals is
on a sliding scale depending on
many factors such as species and
instinctive behaviour, but plants are
on this scale too.
It may surprise you to know that
some plants are capable of excreting
poison when they ‘sense’ their leaves
being munched. The excreted
substances can be picked up by
other species so they can pro-
actively up their defences. Some
plants actively trap live insect prey,
and new research tells us that plants
can be anesthetised, some even have
the ability to learn!

7. PLANTS RESPONDING TO
LEAVES BEING CHEWED
You can watch the video
on the left or on YouTube
here:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ZOo98Mm8vqI

8. INTELLIGENCE OF
ANIMALS
In an interesting study, the Mimosa is a plant –
which looks something like a fern – collapses its
leaves temporarily when it’s disturbed. The study
set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa
plant, without hurting it. When the plant was
dropped – as expected – its leaves collapsed. The
contraption then continued to drop the plants
every five to six seconds and after a few drops, the
plant no longer responded. It learned quickly that
being dropped wasn’t a threat. A control procedure
also tested if the plant had simply got tired, but it
still responded to an unexpected stimulus.

9. DEGREES OF PERCEPTION
Some trees demonstrate ‘social’ behaviour and
transfer nutrients from older more established trees to
new one trying to get a start in life, through
mycorrhizal fungi networks underground. This has
been named the ‘wood wide web.’ (Jennifer Frazer)
Science can offer us glimpses, but really, we don’t fully
understand how much pain the buffalo who’s being
‘chewed’ by those lions is actually ‘feeling’ any more
than we understand how much ‘stress’ is being felt by
a plant whose limbs are hacked off. It’s all about
degrees of perception and we tend to assume that
those with human-like mechanisms for delivering and
understanding bodily messages feel pain, and those
less familiar to us don’t. We certainly can’t say animals
understand death and feel pain and plants don’t, and
anyway what animals count? Do only fluffy ones with
human-like face expressions feel stress and pain?

10. ANIMALS AREN’T
HUMANS
We’re all part of this cycle of birth, death, and decay
and that’s ok. Let’s square up to the horror of
seeing the baby gazelle being eaten by the wolf in
the wildlife program. Try better to accept and
understand that old or weak animals in the wild
that aren’t picked off by predators will starve to
death slowly because they can’t feed themselves.
And stop kidding ourselves that there’s any way we
can ensure all animals throughout the world die
‘humanely’ – animals aren’t human. What do we
know about managing death anyway, some of my
beloved relatives whom I have witnessed passing,
sure as hell didn’t die a ‘humane’ death!

11. BEING VEGAN DOESN’T MEAN
YOU’RE OFF THE HOOK…
It’s we who project our ideals of a morphine
cushioned demise onto an animal that doesn’t think
about death until the end’s near, and then simply
accepts it once the fight for survival is up.
We should stop kidding ourselves that there is a
clean line over which those choosing to eat meat
are responsible for hurting animals and behind
which vegans are morally ‘off the hook’; no such
line exists.

12. LET’S UNITE AND NOT ARGUE…
I respect anyone who takes action in the name of a cause – even if, in my opinion, their
methodology is off the mark. My greatest hope is that we can stop the energy wasting
arguments and distracting tactics and unite in achieving the 90% of the aims both
ethical omnivores and vegetarians share; to see domesticated animals treated
respectfully and to feed the world without destroying the planet.

13. SUSTAINABILITY
I’m not desperately defending a bad habit because
I’m too weak to give it up. I honestly believe from
my years of research into human nutrition, my
background in farming and my training as a
conservationist that eating meat has to be part of a
sustainable food system and a healthy diet. With
this in mind, I’ve taken on the role of trying to get
meat eaters to swap factory farmed meat for
ethically and sustainably reared meat. It may seem
like a stretch of the imagination to some, but I see
this work as a campaign for better human and
animal welfare and a way of saving the planet.

14. WE ARE ALL
RESPONSIBLE…
Be it buying holistically managed steak or
choosing local organically reared
vegetables instead of conventional soy
bean burgers, we all vote with our actions
and our money.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

15. Congratulations on completing our ‘Is it
morally right to eat meat?’ course.
We’d love to hear what you thought of our
course, please leave us a review here.
Did you enjoy this course?
We recommend you try The Wildervore
Approach course next!
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