Hell yes! If I paid them well (and had the extra money to blow) I would have no qualms about hiring someone to fan me with a big palm leaf. Nothing unethical about that at all. There is a world of difference between actually doing something and pretending to do something.

I think the problem comes in the idea of “pretending.” When I’m eating a slice of fake ham, I’m not thinking, “I’m eating a pig!” or even “I’m eating a pretend pig!” Instead, I’m thinking, “I’m eating something that tastes like ham.” I’m separating the taste completely from the ethics of it — I’m not validating the “rightness” of eating meat by eating something that tastes similar any more than eating fennel seeds validates the “rightness” of licorace because they taste alike.

(There — my own off-center comparison. ;) )

Patrick, actually, I specifically said that I doubted that anyone who might even pretend at being a slaver would be a visitor to this site. So what I said was that you would not even pretend to be a slaver. But nice try at finding insult where there was none intended. Where, in fact, I deliberately went after not offending.

…and now i’m going away

Ryan,actually it was a perfectly on-center comparison. Reread it. I am asking about the dissonance between two ethical positions:
eating animals is bad
pretending to eat animals is good.

The question was how do you reconcile those two. Nobody has come close to addressing the question.
However, having been slagged here twice in one day. I’ll take the hint and go away.

So much for discussion.

Let your love light shine, indeed.

Faux meats aren’t a stand-in for real meat, they are food options with similarities and differences to so-called “real meat.”

Your argument about slaverly could also be used against labor of any kind. Isn’t paying a wage arguably akin to pretending someone is a slave for a prescribed period and payment?

What is unethical about meat is that it involves the subjugation and murder of sentient life. The production and consumption of imitiation meats does neither. You could argue it does so indirectly, but with indirect logic one can likely construe almost anything indirectly affects something else.

I think the important moral issues involve real animals. If someone wants to eat highly refined products then that’s a different topic involving a vastly different ethical dilemma.

Here’s my argument that I didn’t use in my initial post because it seemed *inflammatory*:
If you don’t own slaves because it is ethically wrong, would you hire people to pretend they are slaves? (I’ll assume you said no, mostly because if you said yes, I doubt you’re a reader here.) Then why eat soy that pretends to be meat? It’s the pretending to be that which you find unethical that fascinates me. Eat soy-stuff if you like, but I still don’t get the pretending it’s meat. Really.

I think faux meat is mostly for new vegetarians who still crave that hamburger of hot dog experience. It’s okay with me, I did it too.

After a bit of reflection, I’d explain my views this way: actually, like you, I have no great desire to eat tofurkey.

In fact, the only time I eat tofurkey is at Thanksgiving. And when I thought about it, I realized that really the only reason I have it then is that my mom makes it for myself and my sister.

Point being, there are social factors at work. Younger relatives have become vegetarians too. Is it possible that it was easier for them to do so because they saw other members of their family fitting in fine at holidays? I think it’s possible. And so, insofar as “faux turkey,” etc, serve as a kind of stepping stone for people, it’s not immoral at all, quite the opposite. No turkeys were harmed in the making of this Tofurkey :)

That said, having thought about it, I realized that I don’t actually like the faux meat stuff on my own, with the possible exception of those sausage thingies (not terribly healthy anyway), and maybe veggie burgers. Is that some sort of suppressed desire to eat a steakburger? Probably; after all, I ate that stuff for 20 years (but haven’t for 10… *cough* 11.)

But it’s not my fault that I was raised eating that way, it’s my culture’s. And it’s hard enough trying to navigate my own path as a vegetarian that I don’t feel like I should have to beat myself up for eating fried soy stuff that emulates dishes I group up unknowingly liking as a kid.

As for the marketing thing, I don’t really see how vegetarian demand for faux meat products is going to support the meat industry, or indeed, influence it at all. The vast majority of people who eat meat pay no heed to vegetarians one way or the other. Whether marketing in and of itself is a bad thing is IMHO another topic.

The test tube topic is just an off the wall thing. I’m kind of a futurism nut so I like to read about out-there stuff like animal uplift and so on. It’s not something that I want to eat, myself, either. I just think it’s an interesting philosophical issue, I guess.

Golly, sorry for rambling on again! :)

After giving the responses I’ve seen here and on my site (and a couple in mail) some thought, I am still confused. Maybe I haven’t gotten the question right, but I am still wondering this: If you don’t eat meat for ethical reasons, why do you eat stuff that *pretends* to be meat?

If I was a vegan because I believed eating meat is evil, I’d buy soy-baed meat analogs, but I’d buy the ones that aren’t pretending to be meat. You know, eat the ones that are proudly “soy-based protein in handy 4 ounce ready to cook servings” but not the “TofURKEY”… It’s marketing, why endorse the marketing that ignores the ethical choice I made and pretends that my ethics don’t matter as long as they can serve me a ’soy cutlet’…

But test-tube ‘meat’…no thanks!

But then, I’m vegetarian for ethical more than health reasons. As a matter of fact, I’m not particularly healthy.

There’s another, IMHO more divisive issue for vegetarians looming on the horizon, though: farmed meat.

Namely, suppose that down the road the boffins figure out how to grow meat in a lab from a couple of stem cells? Suppose they get good at it? Suppose it gets to the point where even carnivores agree that it’s better than slaughtered meat?

Suppose that the single animal whose stem cell is used to found the farming line isn’t even killed, but rather, the cells are somehow extracted painlessly.

Is one still a vegetarian if one eats that?

Heh, fortunately, I think the gross-out reflex will make this mostly a moot point (”Wait, you guys _grew_ that hamburger?”)

:)