One topic that is rarely brought up when discussing environmental ethics is that of meat. There are many different ethical dilemmas surrounding meat ranging from killing animals for food to the ethics of how you raise animals for food. A study suggests that we tax meat in order to encourage people to buy and eat less meat. This raises a few concerns over the fact that the government would be telling people what to eat in a way. Is it more ethical to tell people what they have to eat or to help the save the planet? Can we even compare the two results at all?
The next ethical problem is about growing meat in test tubes. At first glance, test tube meat would not only solve the ethical problems of killing animals but it would also help the environment by eliminating one of the leading greenhouse gas producers. Test tube meat, is in a since vegan meat because no animals were hurt in the making of it. Yet is the ethical problem only as ethereal as killing animals or is it the fact that we are just finding an alternative to an already destructive mindset. We raise animals for the sole purpose of food and this would be the same thing but on a faster and easier process. Can you consider test tube grown meat alive at all? Or is it just processed food? Can it solve the future global food crisis or is it creating even more problems by allowing for an increase in population?
And don't forget that raising animals for food creates a lot of, ahem, "waste product." Besides being a human health hazard, it can contaminate water and food sources. Extra "fertilizer" in bodies of water has been shown to produce algal blooms that deplete the water of oxygen and make the water unihabitable for aquatic animals. And, of course, the methane produced by cows and other meat animals is a major contributor to the green house problem.
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