Depends on your morals.

A vegetarian diet isn't much more ethical than an omnivore diet, anyway. Veganism has a much better argument.

Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or diary, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).

If it's possible and you're capable to do it, then I think it's a moral choice.

If it's a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don't think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.

Depends on who you ask and the background of your question.

Yes

It is undeniable in current day the horrors industrial farming creates and inflicts on millions of sentient beings to sustain a business that was originally fomented in order to supply food for a post-war world where several countries were rendered with little or no usable land for farming.

The traditional model of farming, where animals were an integral part of a production chain that kept the land itself alive and reduced waste to a minimum was destroyed to give place to a highly destructive model where lowest cost, hight profit margins and speed of production is absolute.

In this process, thousands, if not millions, of landrace animals, along with heirloom seed varieties, went extinct and were lost. Petroleum products and by-products entered the daily life, from food, to clothing, to essentially anything imaginable. Not because those were better but because it was cheaper and protected interests.

Knowing this and still leaning heavily on an animal protein based diet with no concern for its toll on our collective ecosystem and the suffering it creates is nothing short of regrettable.

No

Meat is cheap. Artificially cheap but still. Processed foods cheaper; with meat in it, even more.

Many people throughout the world do not have access to the means to have a fully exclusive or at least heavily based vegetable diet, either because of the environment they live in or simply because they lack the means to afford it. Many people in developing countries still depend on cattle to provide food and raw materials, if not on hunting, trapping and fishing. Even more people, in rich, developed countries, don't have the money to afford a proper diet, even less a vegetable based one.

These people are as worthy of living as any other. It can not be taken against them wanting to survive.

Maybe

Some people aren't aware how much their personal decision can have a meaningful impact.

Others don't have the time or hability to extract from vegetables meals that can truly satisfy them and don't want to resort to ultraprocessed foods. Others are simply too deep into a cultural mindset that blocks them from experimenting.

It is just another type of barrier. There is a degree of lack of interest and effort in this stage but we can't (shouldn't) hold against people their personal circumstances, which adds poorly when it comes to changing minds, habits and cultures.

Take your pick.

Yeah, the most ethical diet is plant based.

Why do you ask it?

Is it morally wrong to ask a bait question on a public forum?

No.

It's a difficult question, so I hope some people who have interesting things to say about it will turn up here. All I can contribute is this link: Ancient Arguments For Vegetarianism

morals are anecdotes that define your personal integrity. morals are arguable at best and carry little to no merit outside of personal experience.

I believe you mean ethical.

ethically, no, it's not wrong. mostly because the animals we consume are bred and raised specifically to eat. however, the treatment of those animals in corporate factory farms is unethical, and so makes the consumption of the products from those establishments unethical.

Depends on your morals. For mine it is.

Being vegetarian or omnivorous isn't very different, morally, as producing milk still requires killing calves. I think the better comparison would be with veganism

I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.

Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.

Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.

Yeah I think so probably. The animal product industry seems pretty messed up. Very un-cool what we do to them. Inefficient too but that's another argument.

No, if you are Vegan. Yes, if you eat animal products. The question is, do you care?

if you are concerned with putting a stop to unnecessary suffering or climate destruction, vegetarianism accomplishes essentially nothing. veganism is a moral baseline, it is literally the least we can be doing.

Morals are subjective, I don't consider myself the arbiter of truth and I also reject theistic positive claims stating otherwise such as objective morals or free will. Personally I know I can survive without eating animals, so I'd rather not be indirectly involved in the killing of other animals where it is reasonably possible and I don't consider humans more important/superior to any other animals, generally.

I think you could get a lot of people to even admit to valuing very old trees over a lot of people too so even some plants are worth leaving alone, according to some of us. Like Red Wood giants in Cali, for example. All the land cleared of wildlife to grow food for billions of humans is disturbing stuff at least to me as well. The planet is actually kinda... small. I've come to realise. I fully reject humanity's unearned superiority complex.

I acknowledge it's hard/impossible to be absolute in the vegetarian ideal given all the ramifications of industrial overpopulation and just casually participating in the society I was born into. Best I can do on this suffering planet, that I never consented to being born to live temporarily upon pointlessly, is to minimize (elimination is unrealistic) the suffering my life inflicts on others.

In other words, I don't owe anyone jack shit, not even Mommy Dearest. Yet I still stand by this moral position. Although I'd argue this is just who I am and always was. The justications put into words and labels applied came later. You'll notice I didn't condemn meat eating in this comment and that's quite deliberate. You are not me. I just explain my position when asked and it's up to others to adopt it or not.

Yes

probably not.

What's the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.

No. The nature of life consumptions of living things. I do believe however that it is preferable to eat from the least sentient of creatures as possible. You can even go further and eat things which does not kill things at all like fruitarians. This would be following the ethic of least harm. Its almost impossible for anyone living in the modern world to not be destroying it with their consumption. Most vegans for example would be doing more harm to me than say someone native to the americas before colonialism that ate meat.

No, I have a developed system of morality, quite strong. And eating meat doesn't contradict it.

For anyone curious the model is based on avoidance of cruelty. Cruelty is what makes people bad. If you do something with cruel intentions it doesn't matter what you destroy, a human, other animal, a plant or even a geological formation. If you do it with cruelty on mind you are a bad person.

But if your intentions are others, then there's nothing bad. You eat meat not because you want to be cruel towards an animal, but because you want to eat. Then it's ok.

It's all about avoiding cruel intentions on humans. Those are my morals at least. I follow them and judge anothers based on them.

I think it depends on where you get your meat, eggs, and dairy.

A proper farm where the animals are kept safe, healthy, and happy for longer than they'd live in the wild, and in the case of meat killed quickly and painlessly? That could be considered morally okay.

Factory farms where they lead short, filthy miserable lives, constantly being bred to maximize milk production? Nah, that is not morally okay.

no, for 100,000 years we went vegetarians.

Depends on what you are basing your morals on.

If it is about producing less waste and consumption, it is moral in that humans consume less vegetation than a cow would and therefore less toiling of the earth.

But on a conscious level it is the same. Either meat or plant is just as conscious as the other.

at least eating meat: consumers are at least admitting to the suffering they are committing on another conscious being and have the humility to acknowledge as much while they also acknowledge they require to eat to continue to survive in human form. this is what it means that existance is the cause of suffering. regardless of what you consume.

The type of vegans who refuse to acknowledge plants as a conscious being for no other reason that a plant cannot run away or make noise to 'prove' their consciousness to them and then have the audacity to turn around and judge others. i believe that to be immoral and unethical as well as emotionaly manipulative and deeply disassociated to the encumberance of life.

Eating plant based: while it is healthier, it is better treatment to the earth itself by consuming less but i would not be fooled into thinking there is a moral high ground in consuming consciousness to be looking down on anyone else.

No, quite the opposite. If people didn’t eat meat then people wouldn’t herd cattle, so most cows wouldn’t ever exist. What is worse, living and then dying, or not living at all? We’re doing the animals a favour by raising them, feeding them, caring for them. A favour which they repay by allowing us to eat them. Anything else would be morally wrong. Now excuse me, my steak is ready.