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A number of school districts and a pair of fast food chains are refusing to buy beef from a slaughterhouse where a video revealed that workers tortured sick and injured cows. On the surface, it seems praiseworthy enough; places where animals experience unnecessary pain should be shut down, and institutional boycotts can be especially effective ways to achieve this end.

My trouble with this particular move, however, begins with the fact that none of the pain experienced by animals when they’re slaughtered is precisely necessary. The pain an animal feels on being killed is necessary for the creation of meat, but meat is not necessary for human life or health. The very concept of humane slaughter obscures this. The officials who made this decision and those who eat flesh at locations affected by it can pretend that they are not responsible for or benefiting from unnecessary pain.

Those who choose to eat meat should do so with a full awareness of what that choice creates in this world.

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