New research suggests that this may be because young people seem to go through a process of increasingly adapting to social norms as they enter adulthood.
Highly sensitive and connected to nature, children have a special relationship with animals, which sometimes seems to dissipate as they become adults.
Who hasn’t heard a story of a meat-eating adult tell the story of a childhood where they categorically eschewed meat consumption?
Far from being a rare or isolated occurrence, this phenomenon where children refuse to eat animal products and then grow into adults who do so was the subject of a study published this week in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK interviewed 479 people between the ages of nine and 59, who they classed into three different groups.
The objective was to survey them about their relationship with a pet animal such as a dog and an animal more traditionally associated with farming, such as a pig.
According to the study, a shift appears to occur during adolescence. The nine to 11-year-olds surveyed were less likely to eat meat than their elders, especially those between 29 and 59 years old.
This is due to the complicated development of speciesism (believing that there is a hierarchical superiority between humans and animal species, in favour of the former).
While the mistreatment of domestic animals appears to be unacceptable in the eyes of the majority of the population, the fate reserved for farm animals or hunting game, for example, is better tolerated in people’s minds.
The researchers outlined that their study aimed to look into the unknown period when such “animal categorisation emerges and how speciesism is socially constructed throughout the developmental lifespan.”
A child, for instance, is less likely to make this distinction, placing all animals in the same place in their heart, the study suggests.
“Children are less likely to categorise farm animals as food than pets, think farm animals ought to be treated better, and deem eating meat and animal products to be less morally acceptable,” the research authors note.
“These findings imply that there are key age-related differences in our moral view of an animal’s worth that point to socially constructed development over the lifespan,” the authors conclude.