Ethics of eating meat

Conversations regarding the ethics of eating meat are focused on whether or not it is moral to eat non-human animals. Ultimately, this is a debate that has been ongoing for millennia, and it remains one of the most prominent topics in food ethics. Individuals who promote meat consumption do so for a number of reasons, such as health, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, and scientific arguments that support the practice and generally argue that making a meat-free diet a social goal for all would be wrong because it fails to consider the individual nutritional needs of humans at various stages of life, fails to account for biological differences between the sexes, ignores the reality of human evolution, ignores various cultural considerations, or because it would limit the adaptability of the human species. Some scientific studies have pushed back against this, calling into question the impact of meat consumption on shaping the evolution of the human species. People who do not promote meat consumption but eat meat anyway often do so because they feel that eliminating it from their diet would be difficult and fruitless as the animals are already dead, though this argument overlooks the principle that demand for a product affects its supply. People who abstain from eating meat are generally known as "vegetarians". They avoid meat for various reasons such as taste preferences, religion, animal welfare, the environmental impact of meat production (environmental vegetarianism), health considerations, and antimicrobial resistance. Vegans also abstain from other animal products, such as dairy products and eggs, for similar reasons. "Ethical omnivores" are individuals who object to the practices underlying the production of meat, as opposed to the act of consuming meat itself. In this respect, many people who abstain from certain kinds of meat eating and animal products do not take issue with meat consumption in general, provided that the meat and animal products are produced in a specific manner.