Who is more ethical?

Not an ethical issue in my opinion.

Why not, may I ask? You are saying that A and B are of equal ethical or non ethical ststaus?

Reply to orcestra

"Equal non ethical status" in my view.

I don't see meat-eating as an ethical issue.

Ok. The traditional arguments for meat eating being an ethical issues-\
- involuntary harm
- the use of more resources such as food and land for meat compared to vegetables.

Reply to orcestra

You are assuming eating meat is immoral, I do not see how that is the case. You even assume thats its somehow immoral for a pet animal to eat meat. I just cannot agree with that.

No. The pet cannot in itself be immoral. B ut the owner can be for his or her choice of pet.

Quoting orcestra

Ok. The traditional arguments for meat eating being an ethical issues-\
- involuntary harm
- the use of more resources such as food and land for meat compared to vegetables.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I just don't agree with treating non-human animals as more or less akin to humans ethically, and I don't at all agree with "It's ethically right to minimize resource usage, especially at the expense of all other desires."

To minimise resource usage could free more food for starving people to eat. For instance feeding cows for meat uses more food and resources than growing corn. Not to mention environmental factors. Yes I know that this is simplistic; there are crops like cotton that are wasteful in terms of resources.

Quoting orcestra

To minimise resource usage could free more food for starving people to eat.

I don't believe that getting more food to people who have trouble acquiring broadly nutritional food has anything to do with problems with resource usage. We could waste 10x the resources we currently waste and easily provide broadly nutritional food to everyone (who wants it).

Reply to Terrapin Station

But just because we can waste resources doesn't mandate that we should.

Quoting orcestra

A eats meat every day. He owns a pet that just eats grass.
B is a vegetarian. He owns a pet that eats meat every day.

B might own a cat. Are you suggesting cat ownership is unethical because cats are unethical because they are carnivorous and any association with a meat eater is unethical?

Would the world be a better place if no animal were a predator and we were all plants?

No. Not at all. I am describing relativities of ethical degree. Actually I think that both A and B are unethical. But my argument that A is less unethical is because A has more ethical options to minimise harm such as choosing his or her human meat diet.

Quoting orcestra

Let's take two pet owners.
A eats meat every day. He owns a pet that just eats grass.
B is a vegetarian. He owns a pet that eats meat every day.

Who is more ethical? Who is less cruel? I would go for A because at least A can choose what kind of meat it is to be as cruelty free as possible. Whereas B has a lot less control over what meat the pet has whether that is wild food or pet food.

Moral responsibility correlates with control. If one has control over something than one is responsible, morally or otherwise. If control is absent then no responsibility can be imputed. The owner has no say in the diet of its pet and so is not morally responsible for its eating habits but s/he is responsible for his own actions and that includes what s/he eats.

Just to make it clear, imagine A has a friend who's good and B has a friend who is bad. Can either A or B be responsible for the character of his/her friends?

Reply to orcestra Do some research into the counter positions. It’s much more nuanced than you appear to believe.

Reply to orcestra

you are right. Many of these other guys are just skipping around the question.

I was trying to open up some ideas. For instance which of A or B is more mututally inconsistent? For instance should someone who is a vegetarian own an animal that is a meat eater? I could have made the OP more complex by including farm animals. Then someone could own a cow. A cow doesnt eat meat. But usually it leads to meat. Unless it's just a dairy cow or, rarely. a pet;

Quoting orcestra

I was trying to open up some ideas. For instance which of A or B is more mututally inconsistent? For instance should someone who is a vegetarian own an animal that is a meat eater? I could have made the OP more complex by including farm animals. Then someone could own a cow. A cow doesnt eat meat. But usually it leads to meat. Unless it's just a dairy cow or, rarely. a pet;

A is non-vegetarian but has a herbivore pet.
B is vegetarian but has a carnivore pet.

Being non-vegetarian doesn't need reasons. We're omnivorous and meat is a natural diet.

Being vegetarian needs to be justified given the above. So, B, in contrast to A who's just following instincts, must have a justification for his eschewing meat. Given so, B having a carnivorous pet is inconsistent because he could've chosen a herbivorous pet but didn't and feeding meat, which might probably involve live mice or fish, is unethical by his/her own reasoning.