Cheap meat Cheap meat Cheap meat is a term used to describe relatively inexpensive meat (e.g. fatty cuts of lamb or mutton) or to indicate that the consumer price of meat does not include the overall costs of industrial meat production. The term cheap meat is then either related to subsidies, to hidden costs or to non-material costs ("moral cost") of meat production. Non-material costs can be related to issues such as animal welfare (e.g. treatment of animals, over-breeding). The term is used by critics of the meat industry. The meat industry is subsidized with billions of dollars by governments who support
Ethics of eating meat for convenience, or out of habit is not justifiable. Some ethicists have added that humans, unlike other animals, are morally conscious of their behavior and have a choice; this is why there are laws governing human behavior, and why it is subject to moral standards. Ethical vegetarian concerns have become more widespread in developed countries, particularly because of the spread of factory farming, more open and graphic documentation of what human meat-eating entails for the animal, and environmental consciousness. Some proponents of meat-eating argue that the current mass demand for meat has to be satisfied with a mass-production system, regardless