>>936237189
As far as "murder of an animal," I disagree with how that is presented. Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person. Animals are not people - they deserve respect, but they don't have the same capacities as humans. I will, therefore, propose a new sentence to argue against - 'the slaughter of an animal.'
Assuming we can agree about the change of sentence, I would argue that the slaughter of an animal by a human is not unethical if certain criteria are met. To understand these criteria, we have to understand what would make slaughter unethical.
To slaughter wantonly, unsustainable, crudely, or maliciously would be unethical because that would be causing unhappiness to the animal. This is worse than just killing, because we would be replacing happiness with unhappiness - not simply just taking happiness away. So, if we are to slaughter an animal, it needs to be done with respect and care.
We also need a reason to slaughter an animal to begin with. Even though they provide much more, lets just assume that we only slaughter for meat. We could do without meat, but the alternatives are less attractive. Meat is has great nutritional value and humans evolved having the capacity to eat meat because of this. Meat is also tasty, and thusly provides happiness when consumed.
If a human is to slaughter an animal in an ethical way (as argued above), then the happiness provided by the meat should be greater than the happiness of that animal's life (with regards to the animal). This is an impossible point to argue, but with hypotheticals, we can imagine instances where this would be true. I would, therefore, conclude that there are instances where the slaughter of an animal is ethical.
