Watch: The best arguments for (and against) eating meat

An impassioned debate from Intelligence Squared U.S.

Is it wrong to eat meat? Anyone who feels strongly one way or the other should check out the latest episode of NPR’s Oxford-style debate series, Intelligence Squared U.S.

Arguing in favor of the motion, ‘Don’t eat anything with a face, are Dr. Neal Barnard of George Washington University and the ‘Meat causes cancer’ camp, and Gene Baur of Farm Sanctuary, a farm animal rescue organization. Arguing against this is Chris Masterjohn, a nutritional sciences researcher whose own experiment with a vegan diet, he claimed, left him physically and mentally ill, along with Joel Salatin, a progressive farmer who’s been featured in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the documentary Food, Inc.

Instead of dwelling on the evils of factory farms, the participants agree that our current system of meat production is far from ideal, then precede to debate the more nuanced moral, environmental, and health consequences of a world fed on animals, while attempting to imagine what such a world would look like were we all to abandon the practice. Along the way, both sides make strong points about, among many other things: meat’s similarities to tobacco; mankind’s proper role in nature; and the privileges of modern society that allow us to debate the issue in the first place.