What does Buddhism say?

Summary 

According to "Are there health benefits to going vegan?" (Brown, 2020), we do not need to eat meat for health reasons, since all but one nutrient humans need are easily found in vegan a diet, which has no meat, eggs, milk or other animal products. Protein, minerals and the carbohydrates we need are all available in a well-balanced diet of plants. The exception is vitamin B12, for which it is suggested that vegans take a supplement pill or eat foods to which B12 has been added artificially, especially when a baby is being fed a vegan diet. Brown says the evidence suggests that a vegan diet might be healthier than one with meat, with reduced risks of heart disease, although a slightly higher risk of a stroke. But fast food is usually unhealthy whether it's plant or meat based.

My first draft was 166 words, as checked by Google Docs' word count tool (on the Tools menu of Google Docs). That was too many words, so I revised. The second draft was 153 words – still over the 140 word limit. Version 3 was 146 words. Finally, version 4 was 139 words, just inside the maximum of 140 words allowed. 
As you will probably realize, writing a strong summary that reports the main ideas of a source in your own words is challenging, but that's what makes it such valuable writing practice for us. 

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Response 

My friend's son enjoys living
and dead meat as much as I do.

I normally read the news with my morning coffee, and that's what I was doing around 8:00 AM this morning. Having gotten up a little after 6:00, I had a small yoghurt with my large black coffee. I'm not vegan, and I prefer an Australian brand of Greek style yoghurt that is full fat; it's delicious, goes well with my morning coffee, and it's very convenient — I just have to take it out of the fridge and peel off the cover from the tub. Also with my morning coffee today, I had a quick online chat with the 12-year-old son of my friend who I'm meeting for lunch today. We're going for one of our regular pig-out meals at a nearby hotel, where the excellent Sunday brunch buffet includes oysters, prawns, foi gras, mussels, duck, lamb, beef and lots of other delicious meat to eat. 

I'm definitely not a vegan. I love meat, and eat at least a little every day. And I always have ever since my parents gave me a healthily varied diet when I was a child growing up on our farm in Australia, where we grew a lot of our own food, including chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, and plenty of vegetables and fruits. The BBC article I decided to summarize as another example blog post did not catch my eye because I want you become vegan. It was a bit like the article we read and discussed in Skillful yesterday, "How Permanent Is Your Personality?" That is, Brown's article in the BBC presents evidence which suggests that a common belief is wrong. I think many people believe that you need meat to be healthy, but the evidence seems strong that that belief is false: we can be perfectly healthy without ever eating meat, although if you don't eat eggs either, you might need to make sure you get enough vitamin B12, which is the only thing available only in meat or animal products. 

What really interested me as I read the article was a question related to Thai culture, specifically, the Buddhist aspect of traditional Thai culture. The first precept of Buddhism asks Buddhists not to kill, but of course, if you eat meat, you are killing, and if you do not need the meat for health reasons, that means you are killing only because you have a desire for tasty animal flesh. But is this what good Buddhists should be doing? Of course, many Buddhists, perhaps a majority around the world, do not eat meat precisely because it does mean killing animals, but it seems to me that Thai Buddhists reject this First Precept of Buddhism in favour of enjoying delicious meat every day, which means a lot of killing. And since this directly relates the ideas in the article to our own daily lives, I thought it made an interesting article to summarize and respond to, hence my question below. 

As we have previously practised, write your response in a comment. 

Although it's much longer, because the rules are much more relaxed for the response part of these blog posts that summarize and respond to an article on the BBC, this was much easier for me to write, even though it's 500 words, which is very comfortably over the 250 word minimum.  
 

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Question

Should Buddhists normally abstain from eating meat? 

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Reference

• Brown, J. (2020, January 23).  Are there health benefits to going vegan? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health-benefits-to-going-vegan