An ethical question

I had an interesting discussion with a collague today, he was telling me about a vegetarian couple he knows, and that their 5-year-old is also being raised vegetarian.

Then he went on to say that people (even this kid) should be able to decide what they eat. Apparently the parents deny this kid meat also during visits to granma's etc. My collague's main argument was that kids should't be denied this kind of thing, but let them decide themselves.

 

It didn't occur to me at the time, but on the way home, that isn't this a very typical  example of seeing a thing in your personal moral light? Like, I would drop off my chair if I heard him say that 5-year-olds should be able to decide, say, whether or not to eat a frog, or hit another child, or cut the neighbour's cat's tail off. These are all things most people see as morally wrong, and therefore it's seen morally good to teach the child not to do these things. Apparently for my collague eating meat is not morally wrong, and therefore the kid should decide: he sees eating meat as an act that can be compared to choosing what to wear for kindergarten, rather than something comparing to picking a fly's wings off and leaving it to suffer.

 

I await the day when we'll finally be there, that meat is once and for all compared with torturing and killing with your own hands, rather than something 'normal' !

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