Eating meat will be illegal in 50 years

Daily Debate #552: "Eating meat will be illegal in 50 years". You are arguing FOR the motion. Your opponent: Peter Singer.

Disagree

You're arguing meat stays legal forever? That's naive. Fifty years ago we said women couldn't vote. Laws transform when the case becomes undeniable. What's your actual evidence that meat consumption survives that long unchanged?

Your women's suffrage analogy proves my point. Women voting became legal because society wanted MORE freedom, not less. Meat won't be banned because banning it requires unprecedented government control over personal diet. Fifty years of incremental regulations? Sure. Outright illegality? That's fantasy.

Wrong turn. Suffrage expanded freedom for an oppressed group. Banning meat does the opposite—it restricts consumption to stop harm to animals and the planet. We already accept massive dietary controls: no human flesh, no endangered species, no raw milk in most places. The only fantasy is thinking profit trumps ethics when the evidence gets loud enough.

You're conflating bans on specific harms with total prohibition. We ban human flesh because it's murder, not because we control what people eat. Endangered species bans protect animals from extinction, not from consumption itself. Raw milk? That's a safety regulation, not dietary control. None of these prove society will ban an entire food category that billions depend on. You need a massive shift in human nature, not just louder ethics. That's not happening in fifty years.

You're begging the question. Society already *has* shifted—lab meat is scaling, vegan adoption is accelerating, and every moral breakthrough felt impossible until it happened. Slavery was "necessary" for economies. Smoking was "personal choice." Your "human nature doesn't change" is exactly what every losing side argues right before they lose. The real question: if cultured meat becomes cheaper and better, why would governments protect a dying industry over public health and climate? They won't.