Much has been written about the horrors inflicted upon animals on factory farms. I won’t go into that here. If you want to learn about intensive animal farming practices, you can watch the documentary Dominion for free on Youtube or, better yet, read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer has also been instrumental in the development of my views on animal ethics as well as morality in general. I even had the good fortune of conversing with him via email, which helped further refine my perspective.

What follows is an overview of the thoughts that led me to adopt a vegetarian diet:

• Eating meat means supporting a system that is cruel to animals.
• In Pakistan, where small-scale animal farming is more common than factory farming, farmed animals other than chickens might have lives worth living (i.e. the positive in their lives outweighs the negative), though I cannot say that with any certainty.
• While small-scale operations are common in Pakistan, large-scale factory farming systems are emerging.
• Under large-scale factory farming systems animals generally live miserable lives. There is no reason to believe that the case would be any different in Pakistan, especially considering that the Animal Protection Index has rated the country a poor performer (E) and has given it the worst performance rating (G) for farmed animal protection legislation.
• Thus, it would be reasonable to give up eating meat to decelerate or, possibly, prevent the transition to large-scale operations, which is certain to produce intense suffering if the prevailing attitudes and practices towards farmed animals remain unchanged.
• If a significant amount of people adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet before intensive livestock farming becomes widespread, and farmed animal production drops as a result, some positive animal lives might be prevented from coming into existence. However, this reduction in animal production would also possibly prevent the much larger number of negative lives that would have come into existence on future factory farms.
• Even if animal lives on small farms are net positive, they are unlikely to be particularly fulfilling. Adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet can be a strong form of protest against speciesism – unjustified treatment based on species membership. This attitude can be widely observed, and manifests itself in acts such as painful and unnecessarily-prolonged ritual slaughter as well as other ways in which the animals are kept and handled on farms, both large and small.
• Another consideration is greenhouse gas emissions. Ruminant animals such as cows and sheep are major contributors.
• Unsanitary and crammed conditions on animal farms lead to the spread of zoonotic diseases, while the large amount of antibiotics that are fed to the animals causes antibiotic resistance. An article in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases concludes, “Intensive livestock farming in Pakistan is consuming alarmingly high amount of antimicrobials critical for human healthcare.”
• Given these factors and the fact that the consumption of animal products is, strictly speaking, unnecessary, it is ethically imperative to adopt a vegetarian or, even better, vegan diet.