Eating Meat Is Ethical

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As humanity becomes more civilized, many of us perceive that eating livestock is morally incorrect, but aren’t we are designed to be an omnivore? Our teeth and digestive system serve the purpose of breaking down animal and plant foods and to bring these important nutrients to every part of the body. Despite the fact that, in 2011, U.S. meat and poultry production reached more than 92.3 billion pounds, the ethic of killing and eating animals as well as the concern of the environmental burden caused by the production of meats is debatable. However, animal based diet is necessary for the human body to function properly and we can choose the meat produced from environmentally sustainable farms to avoid the moral ambiguity.
Anatomy and Physiology Factor
Some group of people who live on a plant-based diet argues that the human digestive system does not digest animal meat well. Mills (2009) suggests that the human digestive system is created for plant-based food, “The human gastrointestinal tract features anatomical consistent with an herbivorous diet” (p.1)
However, human anatomy and physiology force us to consume both animals and plants, imagine yourself living like a cow; chewing on grass and hay all day, do you think your stomach will process the grass well? Of course not! Our digestive system is completely different from a cow, according to Orr (2004), “rather than a single room stomach of human, cow has 4 connected stomachs that store the massive amount of grass that first eaten, then re-swallow grass back to the cow’s mouth to be chewed more finely” (p. 1). There are also a countless number of microscopic microorganisms, helps to break the grass further down to the molecular level of the cow body to absorb.
In addition, the herbi...

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...trieved May 8, 2014, from http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative-anatomy-of-eating.html
Orr, A. I. (2014, February 4). How Cows Eat Grass. . Retrieved May 7, 2014, from http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/AnimalHealthLiteracy/ucm255500.htm Smil, V. (2013, July 19). Should Humans Eat Meat? (Excerpt). . Retrieved May 8,
2014, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-humans-eat-meat- excerpt/ The Concept of the Ecosystem. (2008, October 31). . Retrieved May 8, 2014, from http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/ecosy stem/ecosystem.html
University of Colorado Denver. (2012, October 4). Anthropologist finds evidence of hominin meat eating 1.5 million years ago: Eating meat may have 'made us human'.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 10, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121004093508.htm

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