This is a complex topic with a great deal of existing literature and debate. As these are moral questions, the serious efforts to evaluate and judge the matter appeal to some moral basis which is then applied to the topic at hand. Those that I am aware of either appeal to a religious basis for morality--which is automatically dismissed by most secular theorists because religion is likewise dismissed--or instead some established ethical theory along the lines of utilitarianism, duty ethic, or virtue ethic. These latter are all efforts to create a secular basis for ethics and morality without appeals to authority (religious or otherwise) or other philosophical logical fallacies.
That which I wish to interject into the ongoing debates, and to then partially explore through this titled topic, is that it is wrong to dismiss spirituality along with religion. That is, spirituality, and spirit, is distinct from the religious systems that have arisen and then laid claim to authority over interpreting and guiding that spirituality. Most people, and apparently many other living beings, experience a world that is as much spirit as it is material. This is historical fact. That modern secularization efforts, particularly those of a materialist or positivist bent, seek to reinterpret living existence as non-spiritual and even to reduce or destroy the spiritual awareness of the population through chemicals or education or other means, does not change the basic duality of human experience. I use the term 'spirit' here as a somewhat neutral designator for the non-material half of that experience, but one might just as easily choose geist or some other term that indicates the non-material aspects of living existence. I speculate that this awareness of that which is beyond the material--which may be a conglomeration of 'other' rather than some unified duality--has something to do with the trans-dimensional nature of a living being, which seems to come about when 'something else', call it spirit, is united with or injected into an evolved complex organism. Occurring at some point between conception and birth, probably, but the origins are beyond the scope of this posting.
Back to the topic of raising animals for food, I wish to propose a cursory reinterpretation of the situation while taking into account the spiritual existence of a living being as being rather important, both to the living being in question and to a moral interpretation of the situation.
The idea is that living things are spirit inhabiting material bodies, that it is the combination of spirit and matter that makes a living being, and that living existence itself, by itself, is in fact a good, or good experience, for the spirit portion of a living being. Assumed is that the spirit portion is not destroyed by the death of the living being, as spirit is not the sort of thing that is easily destroyed, but I will not speculate much here regarding any sort of 'afterlife' or regarding what happens to spirit after the living body dies.
I propose that it is a moral good for a living being to live, even as a food animal, and that some experience of life is better than no experience of life. The animal would not live if there was no person (in this current settled and civilized anthropocene age) willing to breed and house and feed it. Killing it after a time, say two or three years for a beef cow, is admittedly a harm done (usually), as one would be ending that living existence, but that harm does not abrogate the good done by permitting it to have living existence in the first place. The harm of killing can, moreover, be reduced by ensuring that death happens as quickly and painlessly as possible. That final harm may also be balanced out, or even exceeded, by efforts made to provide a pleasant and even fulfilling span of life for the animal in question.
This is a very rough proposal, which attempts to identify goods and harms and balance them against each other. One may note that this is NOT a utilitarian proposal, though it does partake of some of the same antecedents. Pain, for example, is interpreted as a general harm, or at least excessive pain as being a harm. The focus of interpretation here is on the existence of the enduring spirit of a living being, with it being proposed as a general good for that spirit to be embodied and to experience life (though not necessarily pleasure as a good in life). So, the body which is harvested for food purposes, while it was part of the living being and thus the spirit while alive, becomes upon the death of the body, and presumably the leaving of the spirit, something the disposal of which cannot cause enduring harm to the spirit. There may be some gray area here, and possibly the same spirit that inhabited the body, or some part of it, continues to exist in some way within the flesh of the body and is then imbibed along with that flesh if eaten. This is uncertain. What does seem to be certain is that the death of the body is an end, or at the very least a severe diminishment, of pain. Pain being a state that is experienced by living embodied spirit.
One may note that these arguments are intended for food animals, of which beef cattle are among the most emotionally and intellectually developed organisms, and are in NO way meant to apply to human beings or other entities of similar potential for emotional or intellectual development. Going back to the spirit as basis, the complexity and breadth of living spirit that is evidenced by human beings far exceeds that which is evidenced by cattle. This is not just an additive spectrum--there are enormous differences in kind, not just in scope. One can honestly propose a meaningful and pleasant life, in cattle terms, for beef cows, which do not appear to have much experience or imagination beyond the present moment, even though that life will end after a couple of years and the carcass be butchered for meat. One cannot honestly make a similar proposal for a human being, in human terms.
So, for these food animals, the death of the body is not considered to be the greatest possible harm, of possibly even a hugely significant harm, because the spirit itself continues to exist, as not being the sort of thing that is destroyed by the death of the body. One may choose to extend this line of reasoning to death as regards human beings, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post. I will simply note that it seems apparent that there are far worse harms than death--which is at least the surcease of pain.
One may also note that the experience of food animals in industrialized factory farming is generally not pleasant at all. It may be interpreted as low grade torture (at best, low grade) throughout the living existence of the animals. This is problematic, morally speaking, as the net good which this post suggests is possible for food animals then becomes a net harm, simply because of the repetitive pain that is experienced by these food animals throughout the span of their embodied living existence. If it is the case that some aspect of spirit endures in the meat after the death of the animal ... well, the reader can speculate on what may be occurring, on a mass scale every day around the planet. Regardless, it seems clear that, morally speaking, some changes should be made to account for the spiritual existence of the living beings that provide the food supply for humanity.
[Joseph Jones, 17 March 2024]