Column: Eating meat is a matter of taste

Animal rights is a tricky subject for me.

I try to be a moderate on most issues, but the meat industry is where I suddenly become a tree-hugging radical.

Look, I get it. Folks grew up eating burgers, raised by parents who did the same, who are the ancestors of people who couldn’t live off of anything except seal blubber in the ice age.

I was raised in a vegetarian family and have been one since I was 13. Truth be told, that’s probably the reason I’m vegetarian now and can remain one without a whole lot of difficulty.

I consume milk, eggs and honey. If I were totally true to my own beliefs, I wouldn’t. But that’s an addiction of mine; it’s harder to avoid milk and eggs than it is meat, especially since most restaurants offer vegetarian options nowadays.

Discussing the meat industry never leads into a logical debate. It’s just not something that can be justified.

Moreover, in spite of the massive environmental and moral consequences of factory farming, people just don’t think about it.

In casual settings, people shirk the thought of it with the “I got to have my burger” response.

At least those people recognize, on some level, that eating meat (or at least factory farming) can’t be morally justified. It’s just not something they can bring themselves to think about that often.

Other times, if someone passionately disagrees, they’ll go with any number of counterarguments.

Every single one of those counterarguments in support of eating meat parallels those Southern politicians used to justify slavery: It’s the natural order of things, some vague science or pseudoscience relating to evolution, questions about the intelligence of the victims, the Bible, tradition, the activists are looney.

When justifying the nature of the meat industry, people say a lot of things, but the core reason is that they like to eat meat.

And despite factory farming’s massive contribution of greenhouse gases, utterly sadistic practices used against huge populations of animals on factory farms and ag-gag laws that silence whistleblowers who would expose them, they will have it.

If animals tasted like concrete, no matter how much existentially critical protein or vitamin B 12 they had, we wouldn’t have these discussions in the first place.

The plain and simple fact is this: The way this society treats animals is unjustifiable, yet few people actively question it. On a politically-conscious campus, the animal rights scene is virtually nonexistent.

I understand why. People raised from childhood to do things or eat certain foods have a hard time stopping and often don’t want to, especially in a society that supports it.

I don’t think anyone will go vegetarian just by reading this. Just think about the issue a bit more.