Eating Meat is Ethical/Unethical

[drewtwo99]

gamerunknown,

If you have read my arguments carefully, you’ll see that I will openly admit to the idea that a vegetarian/vegan diet may reduce the suffering of animals by virtue of the fact that less animals will be killed for the sole purpose of feeding humans (not proven, but assumed). We do not disagree on that point and I want to make it CLEAR, because you fail to ever address me when I say that.

You still aren’t making it clear to me where we disagree. It seems in your responses you openly admit that humanity adopting a vegetarian/vegan diet would not make a significant difference in the total amount of animal suffering.

So why is it that if your goal is to limit total amount of suffering, veganism/vegetarianism is your bent? This is not attacking other arguments. This is not attacking vegetarianism. This is just a question.

Vegetarianism/veganism is an inherently poor way to limit the total suffering of animals. I hope we can agree on this much. It is an open question as to whether it would even limit the suffering of animals AT ALL, it may even increase it unless different types of farming methods were implemented (which I argue would be unsustainable and impractical).

My entire argument is just that switching to a vegetarian/vegan diet is a ridiculously inefficient and hypocritical way of limiting the suffering of animals, if that is your goal. Now, explain to me calmly and carefully WHY it is not. Convince me. I hope you know I am being as open minded as possible here with you.

If your argument is that vegetarian/vegan diet is generally healthier, less wasteful, etc, then I have to agree 100%.

Give me a strong, sound, well reasoned argument for why vegetarian/vegan diet is a good way to substantially limit the suffering of animals that an omnivore couldn’t achieve themselves.

[Stoid]

@drewtwo99

My entire argument is just that switching to a vegetarian/vegan diet is a ridiculously inefficient and hypocritical way of limiting the suffering of animals, if that is your goal. Now, explain to me calmly and carefully WHY it is not. Convince me. I hope you know I am being as open minded as possible here with you.

Give me a strong, sound, well reasoned argument for why vegetarian/vegan diet is a good way to substantially limit the suffering of animals that an omnivore couldn’t achieve themselves.

I recommend you don’t hold your breath waiting for that argument…

[tomndebb]

gamerunknown, I have no idea why you insist on removing the name of the poster you are quoting–particularly since it takes more work to remove the name and its associated link than it does to allow the name and link to remain–but would you please stop that practice? By breaking the link between the poster quoted and the actual text, you muddle your own posts by making it difficult to tell to whom you are responding as well as making it harder on other posters to click on the link to review the original post you are quoting.

[ /Moderating ]

[Stoid]

@gamerunknown

Except, as has been pointed out numerous times, meat is a rarity that only trickled down to the proles quite recently.

This is Great Debates, where the generally agreed upon rule is that “pointing out” is not the equivalent of “conclusively proving” or “showing how others have conclusively proven”. Who are “the proles”, what period of time are we talking about, etc. Sure, fancy meat is for fancy folks, but it’s incredibly cheap and easy to eat meat if you’re willing to eviscerate your entree personally and you aren’t picky about what “meat” you’ll eat. Just cuz “the proles” weren’t serving up grade A prime beef from the local butcher doesn’t mean they weren’t loading up on squirrel, or racoon, or deer, or trout or whatever they could find and kill themselves.

It’s wrong on its premise. Vegetarianism is a limit to the amount of suffering applied to animals as defined

Pardon?

whereas omnivorism implies no such limit (as a human carnivorous diet is not sustainable, it is the default).

Pardon?

There are other contiguous areas where suffering could be reduced, but other than in the fact that vegetarianism precludes veganism, it is a strawman to attack them.

Pardon?

Address vegetarianism qua vegetarianism, not any number of other issues

If you want to discuss vegetarianism, then do so! If you want to discuss whether it is ethical to eat meat, then do THAT, but asserting that vegetarianism is better for your health (debatable itself) and therefore eating meat is unethical is a false correlation and I think that’s kinda what you’ve been trying to do. But you keep randomly tossing in logical fallacies and leaving out critical parts of your sentences, destroying the clarity and meaning of your communication, so I’m not really sure.

Can we assume that substituting the pound of sustenance one would attain from crop to free-range beef (making the further assumption that that’d even be plausible, since growing our own crops was already ruled completely impractical) would result in a reduction in pain?

Defined as what, experienced by whom?

Certainly not in the US, as there are no USDA regulations for free-range beef.

Pardon? What is it you think the USDA regulates?

[Trust]

@XT

Who are ‘most people’, in your estimation? Are you talking about ‘most people who live like I do’, or ‘most people in the US or other 1st world countries’, or are you talking about ‘most people on earth’? Because if the later, then where are you getting this idea from? ‘Most’ people on this plant live a more marginal, substance level existence, and a hell of a lot of them are have issues with malnutrition. I the real world I mean, not your fantasy world of farm sanctuaries where it’s easy and carefree to eat a wholly vegan diet, and everyone can do it, taking far less agricultural cultivation and resources to do it, etc etc. Sadly, your worldview IS a fantasy, and the reality far different. I have to question whether you’ve actually ever TRIED to go on a fully vegan diet, and what it entails to do so. I’d also have to question where you get the idea that for ‘most people’ it’s a CHOICE whether to eat meat or not eat meat.

“Most people” is the majority of the world. Just under one billion people in the world are suffering from malnutrition and we recently surpassed seven billion people in the world. As I said earlier, this does not apply in situations where people need to kill animals to survive. This is not anywhere near the majority of the world though. Meat eating is more of a luxury and the majority of meat consumption comes from the affluent.

What you seem to be ignoring is that the two situations are tied together. As our population continues to grow, we will not be able to keep up with the demand. Over the next forty years we will need to produce the same amount of food that we have produced over the last eight thousand years. A huge reason behind why we will not be able to keep up with the demand is because it takes seven pounds of crops to create one pound of meat. If you read my prior posts, you will see that I imagine that I am everyone else. I am doing this probably even more for humans than for the animals. I am doing this so that I can do my part to give everyone the ability to have a full, natural life.

If you look back at my prior posts, you will see that I never said I expected people to become vegan overnight. All I said is that I expect people to do their part to find alternatives. I never even said that we have to become vegan. That would obviously be the best case, but something I do not expect.

@XT

Sort of like the ‘minor pleasure’ of drinking a coke, instead of water…or a beer, instead of water…or anything that isn’t water. Sort of like the ‘minor pleasure’ of expending ANY resource that isn’t absolutely necessary, right? Sorry, but your little soap box antics in this thread scream ‘hypocrite’ to me.

So, it’s ok when YOU are starving, but if it’s not you starving then it’s not ok, since it’s all about a ‘minor pleasure’ otherwise. And, of course, it’s you who judges what is or isn’t a ‘minor pleasure’…right? Yeah, that works, especially someone who thinks that a vegan diet is something simple and easy that everyone in the world COULD do, no sweat and less resources, and that really ‘most people’ don’t need to eat meat anyway.

What does drinking a coke have to do with purposefully causing suffering to the innocent? You are going to have to tie those together better than that.

I never said it was okay if I am starving and not okay if others are starving. That does not make sense to me since I imagine myself as all other lives. If you read my earlier posts, you will see that I said that I am unethical. I do not claim that I am being ethical currently. I am trending toward being ethical, but I am in no way currently ethical. We need much better alternatives for all people to be ethical. There is no doubt about that. We also need to educate people about this issue. I wish someone had told me this stuff twenty years ago. I literally was completely ignorant on the issue and thought there was no issues at all. It is WAY to hidden in its current form.

@XT

Would they enjoy non-existence more than brief existence and then being consumed? Because, contrary to your fantasy world, if we, as a species, stop eating, say, chickens, then at a minimum there will be millions less chickens on the planet. All those potential chicken will never exist. Is that better for them? Worse? Would they care (my guess is that if they could think about it, then some life would be better than no life at all, but that’s just my human-centric view point so MMV). And that would go for all food animals we currently cultivate. We wouldn’t need so many (or really any) domestic cows, for instance, if we didn’t eat meat (it would also have a negative effect on leather goods, though I guess we could use more synthetic products at the cost of more resources put towards that, instead of using all of the cow as we current do). Do you like, say, jello? So sorry…no more of that for you. It’s made out of animal products after all, though I’m sure there is a vegan substitute (in fact, I know there is…but it would mean a major shift to attempt to move even this vertical product to a non-animal based one. And this is just ONE product type, with a lot of other products that would be impacted by such a shift), but I don’t think you really grasp the magnitude of such a shift on not just Americans and first world countries, but world wide. And that leave aside the whollier-than-thou attitude of being able to tell people what is or isn’t a ‘minor pleasure’…or why it being a ‘minor pleasure’ really matters at all, in the greater scheme of things, or why a sentient beings ‘minor pleasure’ is trumped by a non-sentient beings death, especially when you consider that without human use most of the members of those species would simply not exists…and some of the species themselves wouldn’t exist. Which, to my mind, is definitely more ‘unethical’…i.e. non-being is more ‘unethical’, as well as just being generally more sucky, than being, even if eventually that leads to becoming a hamburger or Chicken-Mc-Nuggets. YMMV, but I’d rather be alive and eventual food than never exist at all.

-XT

You say I am living in a fantasy world but you have not shown any reason why what I am saying is unrealistic. I am the most realistic person I know so you are going to have to do a better job of pointing out what is unrealistic. Currently there are billions of animals being killed in factory farms each year. As demand slows, that number would start going down. We would no longer artifically inseminate the animals. This trend continues until a point where there is roughly, maybe a few times the current number of farm animals we have in farm sanctuaries. People would view the animals as animals for what they are and not what they benefit us. I think the only reason you consider this fantasy is because you are not looking at the alternatives that are already in development.

Would I want to live through a factory farm as an animal? Not in a million years.

@begbert2

I don’t think that animals equate to humans and so they don’t get the benefits of most issues of morality or ethics. Animals aren’t concerned about the ethics of eating me, and I’m not concerned about the ethics of eating them.

Animals are not usually capable of making moral choices. We are.

We are starting to beat way too many dead horses… Probably not the best analogy but I’ll go with it

@drewtwo99

And then what? We’re still killing and causing pain to other animals by even existing. By driving our cars. Or eating our bread. In manufacturing plants. In building roads. Or any number of other things. Should we stop all that too? What amount of “limiting the suffering” is sufficient to you, and why?

Don’t you see that the level you are choosing to limit the suffering of other animals is what you find to be convenient, just like EVERYONE ELSE does? You COULD cause less suffering to other animals by doing a whole host of things (growing your own crops and carefully making sure that no animals are killed when you harvest your crops). You could refuse to drive or buy manufactured goods. Doing all of those things would limit the suffering of animals even more, so why stop at where you do?

Because it’s too inconvenient to live that kind of life, that’s why. And each person has a different threshold for what they find too inconvenient. Trying to say that you are any better than anyone else is like saying a murderer who only kills 100 people in cold blood is any less evil than someone who kills 1000 or 10,000. It’s ALL bad. We are all bad people who are causing suffering to animals. The difference of course is that we can all live reasonable lives without ever murdering someone, but we can’t all live reasonable lives without EVER causing suffering to other animals. Should we try to limit it? Absolutely. But let each person decide what that limit should be and stop thinking that you are doing better than anyone else at limiting the suffering.

So you are equating purposefully causing large amounts of suffering with inadvertantly causing some suffering?

Let me make sure I understand your argument:

-Everyone causes some sort of suffering to others
-Since it is impossible to not cause any suffering to others, there is no such thing as ethics

Here is what I think of when I picture this argument:

“Don’t give any of your money to charity unless you give *all *of your money to charity”

Really? Is this really the argument you are going with?

@erislover

I thought we had already agreed that intelligence is not a good basis for valuing life.
I’d eat dog if it were served.

At least you are partially logically consistent. If only you would admit that your current viewpoint that humans are worth the ocean and animals are worth a drop in the ocean is not logically consistent then we would get somewhere.

@erislover

It is if we just don’t really care about animals, as a society, except inasmuch as they serve us. Which is precisely how I think society should be organized. And which it roughly is.
A bunch of links laid down is not a chain. Furniture and housing are extremely valuable. Time is extremely valuable. Animals are valuable. The issue you wish us to consider is that animals should be valued as ends in themselves, to some extent—not means to an end (pleasure, appearance, taste).
The only reason you see rationalization is because you assume things other people don’t assume. I don’t rationalize having a pet. I just have pets. I don’t rationalize eating meat. I think it is just fine to eat meat for the same reason I think it is fine for wolves to eat deer or baby bison or god knows what.

Most people today would not agree that animals in general are simply to be used however we want. If this were the case, there would be no laws against animal cruelty. Most people recognize that it is wrong to inflict suffering to our pets. Most people deep down know the same thing about farm animals, we just want to ignore it because it points out our moral inconsistencies.

It is interesting to me that your argument relies on both downplaying the importance of animals yet at the same time relies on comparing your moral intelligence to the same level of animals.

@Stoid

It is, I think, nearly impossible to discuss this from a purely ethical viewpoint because it presupposes agreement about the role of meat in the diet. No such agreement exists; in other words, eating meat is not merely a “minor pleasure” or a taste preference. But it’s also not strictly necessary for survival, at least, survival in the core evolutionary terms of needing to live at least long enough to reproduce. But in terms of health, happiness and longevity, I would argue that meat is vital for an enormous number of people. (Definitely for me, it forms 80% of my diet! And adopting that diet has transformed my health and happiness in myriad ways.)

So if you accept that this question is itself a debate, then to discuss the ethical issues you have to at least agree that it isn’t a mere matter of satisfying one’s taste buds. If you can’t debate with at least that core agreement, then you have to back up to the diet debate itself. Without a clearer explanation of why you think this, I will have to disagree completely. Killing to eat is not unethical - it is the design of life itself! How can it possibly be inherently unethical to participate in the most fundamental process crucial to living, without which virtually all life would cease to exist at all?

I can understand how important eating meat is to you because it was incredibly important to me. Just not enough to break the golden rule and cause the amount of suffering that is inherent in the system.

I am not saying that killing to eat is unethical in all situations. I am saying it is unethical when we have alternatives. You are making arguments by nature but don’t bother to think about the thousands of terrible aspects of nature. When a tornado blows through and kills humans, do you claim this is a fundamental process simply because it exists? How could you ever look at someone being killed and think to yourself, “Wow. That is just a part of life”. I desire better for myself and others.

@Stoid

Of course chickens want to scratch and pigs want to wallow, and I am passionately for making sure they can and do- that is a question of suffering and creating suffering is wrong. It is unethical to treat food animals as “things” with no ability to suffer from being overcrowded, tightly caged, robbed of normal movement and experience. It’s especially horrible for pigs, which are very intelligent animals- its hideously cruel what most pig farms do

No arguments here. If it were possible to separate out the suffering, it would have been done years ago. These companies do not like the PR nightmares that result from these conditions. Unfortunately the sad fact is that if you want to make more money, you cram more animals in as small a spot as possible and ignore their natural behaviors.

@Stoid

But you are making the mistake I pointed out earlier: you are equating an animal’s ability to suffer and be afraid with having a genuine desire to “stay alive” or an active fear of their lives ending, vs. pain.

What makes you think animals have not evolved to stay alive? Humans think further into the future while animals think more in the present, sure. But the point is that they still do not voluntarily lay down their lives so we can eat them. If they did, we would not be having a discussion because this would not break the golden rule if they did this on their own accord.

@Stoid

All living things, even plants, are programmed to do things which lead to survival, because that is how evolution works: the living thing that lives the longest does the most reporoducing, so whatever survival strategies they possess get passed along. As you move up the brain chain, you go from simple nerve reactions to stimuli that have no consciousness connected at all to more and “awareness” leading to a fear reaction. The bellows of cows, the screams of pigs, the sight and smell of struggles and blood in one’s fellows send signals to the brain that something bad is happening and to be afraid, (which is why the industry is working on ways to remove as much of that as possible). Animals that failed to perceive personal threat and react with fear to the suffering of their fellows didn’t live long enough to reproduce.

We agree here.

@Stoid

But if you think for a second that a cow heading down the alsughter chute and seeing other cows die is thinking to itself: “My life will be over and I will cease to exist and I don’t want that and therefore I’m afraid!”, you are anthropomorphizing them.

The cow is thinking, “Holy shit, what you just did to that animal is going to happen to me. And I know that pain and those screams when I hear them”. There is a reason that animals will freak out when they see others like them suffering.

@Stoid

There are scientists working on using oxygen deprivation as an affordable, peaceful, highly ethical means of slaughter. Death from oxygen deprivation is actually very pleasant: one becomes euphoric first, then unconcious, then dead. No pain, and even human beings who know what’s happening are so chemically altered that they do not experience concern or fear. If they succeed, and a bunch of cows can see a bunch of other cows dying like that, simply passing out and dying without any fear or pain of any kind that they then communicate to their fellows with behavior or sound or smell, the observing cows would not then experience fear of following in their footsteps because of fear of dying. Even if they saw the bodies of the dead cows being dragged away and in some dim sense understood that their fellows were no more, that would never translate into fear for the ones who saw. Because their fear of death isn’t a fear of death itself, it’s a fear of suffering.

I see where we are differing now. I am not referring to the * fear* of death, but rather to the fact that they do not want to die. However, the argument that we should simply kill them more humanely is not a very good one. They still have to be artificially inseminated against their will to reproduce. They still have to be raised as quickly as possible by the industry to make money off of them. They still lose all of the chances to live natural lives. In short, the killing is one aspect of many that create the overall level of suffering we see today. If this was an “either or” situation then of course we would want to kill them less painfully. However, this is not an “either or” situation. There are far better alternatives than to continue the system of exploitation. I just don’t see how anyone who is honestly examining themselves could read this article and try to argue that we should continue this form of exploitation. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past/ten-reasons-not-to-abolish-slavery/ Literally every reason given so far for why we should continue on with our current system is listed in this top ten list.

[Trust]

@drewtwo99

Vegetarianism/veganism is an inherently poor way to limit the total suffering of animals. I hope we can agree on this much. It is an open question as to whether it would even limit the suffering of animals AT ALL, it may even increase it unless different types of farming methods were implemented (which I argue would be unsustainable and impractical).

Apparently we are looking at completely different statistics.

Most statistics put it at about seven pounds of crops need to be created to end up with one pound of meat. Let’s say on average, we indirectly kill approximately five times the amount of animals to harvest the food for animals (Even if we used the currently unrealistic Steven Davies argument, we would kill more than three times the animals according to this analysis that takes into account the amount of food produced http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html). We also have to kill the billions of animals in the first place to eat their meat. In the US, about ten billion land animals are killed for meat. How in the world are you adding up ten billion plus five times the number of animals killed in harvest and claiming that vegetarianism does not help AT ALL.

[Trust]

@XT

And the fact that you and the OP don’t seem to know this stuff really puts the question into my own mind about your own stances on this, because basically if you ARE a vegan and you DON’T know this stuff then you should probably make sure you get to a hospital…fairly soon. Either that, or you should perhaps get off the high horse, because you are looking increasingly silly up there.

-XT

Did I say somewhere that this would happen overnight? I already fully admitted that I am unethical and that I would be the first to be stoned if we lived in an eye for an eye world. I’m not really sure how telling the truth translates to being on a high horse. So far one person has stuck out to me that said that they were being unethical by eating meat and they didn’t care though. At least this was being honest compared to just reiterating the same old rationalizations for why we should continue to exploit others.

@Stoid

Yep. Whereas human beings can live on a diet of meat and nothing else pretty easily. Whole cultures have done it for centuries. Even good 'ol vitamin C is taken care of, though I don’t recall the details.

We definitely evolved to eat meat, and there’s a increasing evidence that we evolved the way we did BY eating meat.

First point is that whether something is easy or hard has very little to do with whether something is ethical.

The second point is that from a high level, those who eat animal protein are more likely to live shorter lives. Just because I can point to studies that “prove” cigaretts lower heart disease in Asians, it does not make it true. Some people can eat vegetables their whole lives and die at an early age of heart disease. Some people can eat steaks every day of their lives and live to be 100. And vice versa. The point is that we need to look at all evidence and you will see that, as a whole, those who do not consume animal protein are healthier than those who do.

@Dr.Colossus

i pointed this out as well but it was glossed over.
amount of living organism per individual count, more critters die by farming than slaughterhouses. because it’s indirect, most vegans/vegs discount them. however, there’s still the matter of calculated culling, as in coyote, deer, mice and rabbits, ect. some are large animals, and in some cases enough are killed that it disrupts the local food chain (owls have less food, bears/pumas have less deer, and so on and so forth). also, cultivating land takes more away from wild things and disrupts soil content and nutrition. aaaand then there’s the worms. the poor, ignored worms.

who’s going to look out for the woooorms?!?

as i said before, looks like for people to eat SOMETHING’s gotta die. picking when it’s ethical and when it’s not seems *extremely *arbitrary.

I have responded to this argument many times in this thread so I am not sure how it was glossed over. You are going to have to come up with a source for “more critters die by farming than slaughterhouses” since we know this is blatantly false. In many cases it takes seven times the amount of crops to end up with meat so meat indirectly kills more animals.

@DSeid

Trust, it seems to me that you are attempting to use ethical reciprocity (“the golden rule”) in a very odd and inconsistent manner.

You want to apply “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or the “advanced” (actually more ancient, given Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism all had those formulations*) version, “Do not do unto others that which is hateful unto you” to non-humans while acknowledging that what is hateful to you may be exactly what makes a pig happy. No, you do not want to really apply the Golden Rule because you quickly recognize the Golden Rule actually makes for a lousy guide between species. You merely want a narrow application.

The “advanced” golden rule you mention is not really at all what my advanced golden rule is saying. The advanced part deals with imagining yourself as the other life since it would be absurd to claim that we all want to be treated the same. We all have different likes, dislikes, etc. As I pointed out, a chicken likes to dust bathe. If I were literally applying the elementary golden rule, I would never allow the chicken to dust bathe. But I am not applying this elementary golden rule. I am applying the more advanced golden rule that we imagine ourselves as them and study what they enjoy and what they do not enjoy. This advanced golden rule takes that into account. The very thing you are saying I am not taking into account.

@DSeid

What you are actually arguing has little to do with ethical reciprocity: you instead are arguing that being able to feel pain in some form, any form, is enough to say that an entity is deserving of not being killed for food … unless there is a a need for survival … or perhaps another good reason. (Can I kill a snake that was going to bite me even if it wasn’t poisonous enough to kill me, just enough to cause me a lot of pain and some hallucinations?) And even that nociception (ability to perceive pain) threshold is not going to be consistently applied as an intelligent sentient creature unable to feel pain (imagine a human with some neurologic disorder of pain reception) would surely be not one to be butchered for food, even less so than would a human who is anencephalic.

No, what I am arguing is that animals feel intense degrees of pain. You are trying to act like there is an ocean of difference between the pain we feel and the pain animals feel. If you were talking insects then I might agree with you. But when I see an animal screaming as loud as it can, you have to be blind to ignore that suffering.

@DSeid

The idea of ethical reciprocity is to have some empathy, to realize that other humans are not so different than you even if their culture seems different. Other species however are different, and we make grave errors when we attempt to put our minds in their place. The concept of empathy for other creatures is still a good one. I would agree that if we are to eat animals we should attempt to cause as little suffering as possible in the process. But OTOH how much decease in suffering is worth how much? (In money or in health risk if one, for the sake of discussion assumed such existed, or in lack of pleasure, or all of the above?) Zero tolerance? Is causing any suffering enough to say any meat eating is unethical? Clearly there is a limit to the cost. (If I need meat to survive you’d allow me to kill an animal, even if I had to cause it some pain in the process.) Where do you draw the line and what ethical principles do you use to draw those lines?

I reject any argument that claims that you have to be X amount similar to me before I take your life into account; If you don’t meet that arbitrary threshold, then so sorry but I don’t have to take your life into account. It’s just absurd and you know it. You are trying to rationalize so that you do not have to take their lives into consideration.

I use the ethical principles of the Golden Rule/Utilitarianism/Least Harm Principle as defined in my original post. The line is very clear. Would I want to go through a factory farm and be killed so someone could eat me if I were that animal? Hell no.

@DSeid

If anything ethical reciprocity would apply as follows:

You would find others telling you what you should and should not eat, telling you that you are unethical if you eat otherwise, to be disagreeable; therefore you should not do that to others.

You think ignoring the suffering of the innocent so someone does not feel bad is following the golden rule? If that were the case, nothing would be a crime for fear we would offend someone.

@drewtwo99

Since you seem to be INCREDIBLY picky about how people structure their arguments, I’ll play your little game.

Proposition: Those who choose not to eat animals or animal bi-products are only limiting the suffering of animals to an extent that does not overly inconvenience them.

Definition: “Limit the suffering” means to limit physical pain and to limit the amount of animals killed.

Definition: Animal, for our purposes, is anything that is not human which has a nervous system capable of experiencing physical pain.

Definition: Vegan/vegetarian refers only to those people who engage in their chosen diet because of a belief in the least harm principle, or to limit the suffering of animals.

1: Combine harvesting of many different kinds of vegetarian and vegan foods is directly responsible for the injury and deaths of animals such as field mice, voles, gophers, etc.

2: The use of pesticides and other chemicals to produce vegetarian and vegan foods sold in super markets are directly responsible for the deaths, illness, injury or suffering of many types of animals.

3: Human beings driving cars and operating other machinery are directly responsible for cats, dogs, birds, bugs, squirrels and others being maimed and killed.

4: By 1 and 2, dedicating less land to growing crops to feed farm animals, and by not farming animals themselves, there would be less animal suffering.

5: By 3 and 4, animal suffering could be limited if humans stopped driving cars and operating other heavy machinery, and stopped consuming crops that were harvested using methods that kill and injure animals.

6: Living without 1, 2 and 3 would be very inconvenient for most individuals including the vegetarian/vegan.

Assumption: Those who are vegans/vegetarians do engage in and directly benefit from at least some activities outlined in statements 1, 2 and 3.

7: By the fact that vegetarians/vegans do not engage in statement 5, they are directly responsible for some level of suffering of animals, though by 4 vegetarians/vegans do limit the suffering of animals to a greater extent than those who do continue to eat meat and animal products. By statement 6, they are exhibiting the property of limiting the suffering of animals only to a level that does not inconvenience them too much.

Assumption: People who eat meat also want to limit the suffering of animals to an extent that does not inconvenience them too much.

Conclusion: Both vegetarians/vegans and omnivores work to limit the suffering of animals to whatever degree they feel is convenient.

This reminds me of this

"Engel claims that you hold the following beliefs:
(p1) Other things being equal, a world with less pain and suffering is better than a world with more pain and suffering.
(p2) A world with less unnecessary suffering is better than a world with more unnecessary suffering.
(p3) Unnecessary cruelty is wrong and prima facie should not be supported or encouraged.
(p4) We ought to take steps to make the world a better place.
(p4’) We ought to do what we reasonably can to avoid making the world a worse place.
(p5) A morally good person will take steps to make this world a better place and even stronger steps to avoid making the world a worse place.
(p6) Even a minimally decent person would take steps to reduce the amount of unnecessary pain and suffering in the world, if s/he could do so with very little effort.
(p7) I am a morally good person.
(p8) I am at least a minimally decent person.
(p9) I am the sort of person who certainly would take steps to help reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world, if I could do so with very little effort.
(p10) Many nonhuman animals (certainly all vertebrates) are capable of feeling pain.
(p11) It is morally wrong to cause an animal unnecessary pain or suffering.
(p12) It is morally wrong and despicable to treat animals inhumanely for no good reason.
2
(p13) We ought to euthanize untreatably injured, suffering animals to put them out of their misery whenever feasible.
(p14) Other things being equal, it is worse to kill a conscious sentient animal than it is to kill plant.
(p15) We have a duty to help preserve the environment for future generations (at least for future human generations).
(p16) One ought to minimize one’s contribution toward environmental degradation, especially in those ways requiring minimal effort on one’s part. (pp. 888-889)

He adds, “While you do not have to believe all of (p1) – (p16) for my argument to succeed, the more of these propositions you believe, the greater your commitment to the immorality of eating meat” (867-868).

@Dr.Colossus

one of the most obviously neglected factoids about vegans and vegetarianism that i’ve noticed is the fact almost unanimously, these people simply don’t like the way meat tastes. they think it’s gross.

i’m not saying it’s a 100% across the board trait, but in all the people i know *personally *who abstain from meat, they just flat never *liked *meat.

i knew one person who really, really wanted to be a vegan…but would go on meat benders and eat, say, a whole package of bacon. then hate herself for it.

in at least her case, i’d exchange the term “vegan” for “idiot.”

my gf is vegan and admits it’s mostly due to the fact she hates how meat tastes.
she acts outraged about human issues and the ethics involved, but even without those struts stilting up the matter, she still wouldn’t want to eat meat just because it’s not something she really likes.

i just have as of yet never come across anyone who really, really, really loved steak but felt too ethically compelled to not eat it.

This is the exact opposite of my experience. I have never met anyone that does not like meat. I love the taste of meat. A huge part of my life was going all around trying to find the best steak and the best burgers. I still get emails from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

[Dr.Colossus]

[QUOTE=Trust]
I have responded to this argument many times in this thread so I am not sure how it was glossed over. You are going to have to come up with a source for “more critters die by farming than slaughterhouses” since we know this is blatantly false. In many cases it takes seven times the amount of crops to end up with meat so meat indirectly kills more animals
[/QUOTE]

it’s really annoying to have to cut and paste something i’ve already posted in the thread, unmodified, because someone chose to disregard it.
nonetheless:

Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argued in 2001 that the least-harm principle does not require giving up all meat, because a plant-based diet would not kill fewer animals than one containing beef from grass-fed ruminants. Davis wrote that cultivating crops also kills animals, because when a tractor traverses a field, animals are accidentally destroyed. Based on a study finding that wood mouse populations dropped from 25 per hectare to five per hectare after harvest (attributed to migration and mortality), Davis estimated that 10 animals per hectare are killed from crop farming every year. If all 120,000,000 acres (490,000 km2) of cropland in the continental United States were used for a vegan diet, then approximately 500 million animals would die each year. But, if half the cropland were converted to ruminant pastureland, he estimated that only 900,000 animals would die each year—assuming people switched from the eight billion poultry killed each year to beef, lamb, and dairy products.[100]*

while many want to debate the actual numbers involved, maybe the stats are hard to pin down–but there is some truth to the concept.

do YOU have a statistical analysis on the amount of flatworms and other small, living things killed on the broad scale in typical farming vs amounts killed in ruminant grazer ranching? ive seen no data to dispute what davis claims, only naysaying.

also, ethically speaking, what is your opinion on pet ownership and feeding them (all dog and catfood has some amount of animal product in them)…?

[Stoid]

@Trust

First point is that whether something is easy or hard has very little to do with whether something is ethical.

I agree completely, and I don’t believe I said anything that would lead you to believe otherwise.

The second point is that from a high level, those who eat animal protein are more likely to live shorter lives. Just because I can point to studies that “prove” cigaretts lower heart disease in Asians, it does not make it true. Some people can eat vegetables their whole lives and die at an early age of heart disease. Some people can eat steaks every day of their lives and live to be 100. And vice versa. The point is that we need to look at all evidence and you will see that, as a whole, those who do not consume animal protein are healthier than those who do.

You are equating correlation with causation. As someone else pointed out, the reality is that people who choose a plant based diet tend very strongly to do a wide range of things that contribute to better health. It is entirely possible (even likely in many cases) that their choise of diet is not at all the most healthful for them, and they are doing their health some degree of harm, but they do so many other things that are beneficial for their health that it balances out and even tilts in favor of greater health.

It is entirely meaningless to pull one fact out, especially that fact, which barely qualifies as a fact at all since it’s self-reported on questionnaires from memory, and decide that it’s a key factor of anything at all.

Which doesn’t the press and many others from doing that, of course, but just because its done constantly doesn’t change how meaningless it is.

I have responded to this argument many times in this thread so I am not sure how it was glossed over. You are going to have to come up with a source for “more critters die by farming than slaughterhouses” since we know this is blatantly false. In many cases it takes seven times the amount of crops to end up with meat so meat indirectly kills more animals.

Uh oh, I think someone is letting their warm and fuzzy mammal bias rule again…but I don’t have the research strength. I’m sure someone else will.

…since it would be absurd to claim that we all want to be treated the same. We all have different likes, dislikes, etc. As I pointed out, a chicken likes to dust bathe. If I were literally applying the elementary golden rule, I would never allow the chicken to dust bathe. But I am not applying this elementary golden rule. I am applying the more advanced golden rule that we imagine ourselves as them and study what they enjoy and what they do not enjoy. This advanced golden rule takes that into account. The very thing you are saying I am not taking into account.

No, not really. You are making the shallow and obviosu observation that where you might like to play XBOX or go to a movie, a chicken would prefer to flop around in the dust and peck for earthworms. But you take that into account from the perspective of a highly advanced human being, observing, considering, and thinking about it from that place, and then you insert your human fear and dismay over the fact of death (NOT SUFFERING) into the dustbathing chicken when you have no reason to do so.

I am the most realistic person I know so you are going to have to do a better job of pointing out what is unrealistic. Currently there are billions of animals being killed in factory farms each year. As demand slows, that number would start going down. We would no longer artifically inseminate the animals. This trend continues until a point where there is roughly, maybe a few times the current number of farm animals we have in farm sanctuaries. ***People would view the animals as animals for what they are and not what they benefit us. I think the only reason you consider this fantasy is because you are not looking at the alternatives that are already in development. ***

You must know very few people, all of whom are fantasists.

It is a fantasy because it discounts the nature of human beings generally. It is a fantasy because you think the only reason people haven’t already abandoned their meat-eating ways is because there aren’t satisfying alternatives.

I am not saying that killing to eat is unethical in all situations. I am saying it is unethical when we have alternatives.

Which you are entitled to do. But where do your ethics come from? What are they based on, and why are your ethics supposed to be the superior, more correct ones? I’m not saying they aren’t, I’m saying you haven’t done a very good job of convincing me that they are because it appears you are taking the position that it’s just so, it just is, it’s just self-evident. Except that it isn’t.

No, what I am arguing is that animals feel intense degrees of pain. You are trying to act like there is an ocean of difference between the pain we feel and the pain animals feel.

How do you arrive at that? Looks like an assumption to me because I sure didn’t say or imply it.

If you were talking insects then I might agree with you. But when I see an animal screaming as loud as it can, you have to be blind to ignore that suffering.

100% agreed.

What makes you think animals have not evolved to stay alive?

I don’t think that. I know that’s not the case, obviously, and I said that exactly, so why are you saying this?

The cow is thinking, “Holy shit, what you just did to that animal is going to happen to me. And I know that pain and those screams when I hear them”. There is a reason that animals will freak out when they see others like them suffering.

Yes, and it’s not because they are THINKING what you believe they are THINKING. (Leaving aside the most intelligent species, none of which we eat. At least I don’t!) THINKING is a very complex process which is done by cows and chickens at a level far too low to accomodate such projections if they were thinking at all, but in that situation they aren’t, they are reacting to stimuli, as I described in the post you quote.

I see where we are differing now. I am not referring to the * fear* of death, but rather to the fact that they do not want to die.

I agree. They also do not WANT to live, in the sense you mean it. They “want” to feel comfortable and satisfied so they respond to urges to do what feels good: eat, shit, sleep, fuck, graze, nurse their babies, rub up against each other, moo. They want to keep feeling good, so if something hits their nose, ears or eyse which is not peaceful and pleasant, they “want” to get away from it. Nowhere in there are they contemplating the nature of their existence.

They can only want or not want death if they are capable of contemplating what death is, and (leaving off the most intelligent) they can’t. They don’t.

However, the argument that we should simply kill them more humanely is not a very good one.

Why? Because of these things?:

[ul]

They still have to be artificially inseminated against their will to reproduce.

[/ul]
And how do you know what their will is? When a cow is sexually receptive and fertile, she isn’t thinking about artificial vs. natural, she can’t. As long as she’s not hurt, so what? (And I promise you the bulls are good with it.)
[ul]

They still have to be raised as quickly as possible by the industry to make money off of them.

[/ul]
And..?
[ul]

They still lose all of the chances to live natural lives.

[/ul]
First, they don’t have to, it dependson the producer.
Second modern food animals could never have truly “natural” lives, they have been bred to be human food and wouldn’t do too well in the wild yonder.

and most importantly, they have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. They know pretty much two things: feels good, feels bad. Go towards good, away from bad. Beyond that, you are projecting your human hangups on to wonderfully present beings living simple, straitforward lives.

There are far better alternatives than to continue the system of exploitation.

I am COMPLETELY on the side of creating comfortable, decent lives for food animals, and painless deaths they never see coming. But you have yet to make a single argument that doesn’t reference a human POV about why death to be food is inherently bad. Subtract the suffering. Make their lives pleasant. Leave them to be themselves until the day comes in green fields under sunny skies, doing exactly as they please. I just don’t see any problem at all, none.

I just don’t see how anyone who is honestly examining themselves could read this article and try to argue that we should continue this form of exploitation. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/colu…olish-slavery/ Literally every reason given so far for why we should continue on with our current system is listed in this top ten list.

Well if we were talking about human beings, you’d have a point. Bu we’re not. We’re talking about chickens and pigs and cows and sheep. What applies to people does not apply to chickens and pigs and cows and sheep.

I reject any argument that claims that you have to be X amount similar to me before I take your life into account; If you don’t meet that arbitrary threshold, then so sorry but I don’t have to take your life into account. It’s just absurd and you know it. You are trying to rationalize so that you do not have to take their lives into consideration.

If you feel badly eating meat, I have no quarrel with that. I would never try to convince you that you shouldn’t. But it’s your personal feeling and you have not made the case that it should be embraced as a larger ethical truth by everyone.

"Engel claims that you hold the following beliefs:
(p1) Other things being equal, a world with less **pain and suffering **is better than a world with more pain and suffering.

(p2) A world with less unnecessary suffering is better than a world with more unnecessary suffering.

(p3) Unnecessary cruelty is wrong and prima facie should not be supported or encouraged.

(p4) We ought to take steps to make the world a better place.

(p4’) We ought to do what we reasonably can to avoid making the world a worse place.

(p5) A morally good person will take steps to make this world a better place and even stronger steps to avoid making the world a worse place.

(p6) Even a minimally decent person would take steps to reduce the amount of unnecessary pain and suffering in the world, if s/he could do so with very little effort.

(p7) I am a morally good person.

(p8) I am at least a minimally decent person.

(p9) I am the sort of person who certainly would take steps to help reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world, if I could do so with very little effort.

(p10) Many nonhuman animals (certainly all vertebrates) are capable of feeling pain.

(p11) It is morally wrong to cause an animal unnecessary pain or suffering.

(p12) It is morally wrong and despicable to treat animals inhumanely for no good reason.
(p13) We ought to euthanize untreatably injured, suffering animals to put them out of their misery whenever feasible.

(p14) Other things being equal, it is worse to kill a conscious sentient animal than it is to kill plant.

(p15) We have a duty to help preserve the environment for future generations (at least for future human generations).

(p16) One ought to minimize one’s contribution toward environmental degradation, especially in those ways requiring minimal effort on one’s part. (pp. 888-889)

He adds, “While you do not have to believe all of (p1) – (p16) for my argument to succeed, the more of these propositions you believe, the greater your commitment to the immorality of eating meat” (867-868).

I agree with every single word of points 1-16.

I completely disagree with his conclusion.

The goal is to eliminate suffering. Animals can be raised for food free of suffering, and they can be killed humanely, free of suffering. That is what needs to be accomplished.

Eliminating killing for food does not eliminate suffering.

Eliminating suffering eliminates suffering.

[gamerunknown]

@dontbesojumpy

while many want to debate the actual numbers involved, maybe the stats are hard to pin down–but there is some truth to the concept.

The intention is different though. Slaughtering animals is an act of comission, failing to prevent the slaughter of animals is an act of ommission. If we accepted the premise that the reduction of suffering for as many animals as possible (with humans being the priority) would be ideal, then we could discuss this (with reference to the potential increase in suffering that would result from increased emissions from raising cattle instead of crops). However, this is completely divorced from reality since no-one has demonstrated that the current rate of meat consumption is sustainable with pasture fed cattle.

@Stoid

Defined as what, experienced by whom?

Firing of nociceptors by any entity in possession of them.

@Stoid

Pardon? What is it you think the USDA regulates?

Poultry.

@Stoid

therefore eating meat is unethical is a false correlation and I think that’s kinda what you’ve been trying to do

No, people have been asserting that an omnivorous diet is healthier than a vegetarian diet, which I have been disproving. Don’t get me wrong, I think the health of humans is the first priority and if there were no vegetarians in the world and no starving people, I would be ecstatic. I think the fact that millions of people starve to death every year is tragic. However, if people can live on a vegetarian diet and thus reduce the suffering of animals without noticably affecting their own pleasure, I think that is ideal.

@Stoid

Pardon?

You accept the fact that animals can suffer. Not interfering in their life is one way to reduce their suffering by definition. It would be disingenuous to state that we’re making their lives more comfortable by providing them with secure environments, as much as it would be to adopt slaves from regions where individuals would otherwise starve to death (homologous, not analogous). The intention is divorced from the effects.

@Stoid

Just cuz “the proles” weren’t serving up grade A prime beef from the local butcher doesn’t mean they weren’t loading up on squirrel, or racoon, or deer, or trout or whatever they could find and kill themselves.

Capital by Marx discusses the average working class diet prior to industrialisation. I also have anecdotes from a friend that lived in the USSR that ate meat perhaps three times a year and was disgusted that I chose to be a vegetarian when I could eat meat in abundance.

@drewtwo99

Vegetarianism/veganism is an inherently poor way to limit the total suffering of animals.

His analysis misses out a crucial element: the number of insects inadvertently consumed by cattle while grazing. In my opinion, the primary principle is “first do no harm”: do not participate or fund suffering in order to prevent more suffering, until sufficient evidence determines that it causes less harm. Not to mention, such a depiction is a fantasy divorced from the current state of society, where cattle are raised on crops anyway. A pound of beef in the market (average meat consumers diet) requires several more pounds of crop material, so multiples of the number of animals killed in order for every pound of beef.

[erislover]

@Trust

At least you are partially logically consistent. If only you would admit that your current viewpoint that humans are worth the ocean and animals are worth a drop in the ocean is not logically consistent then we would get somewhere.

I have asked a direct question several times. That question is: how do I compare humans and animals? What is the measure? You make a very specific comparison here that is close to being quantitative. Why do you suppose that is incorrect? I will not ask you again. If intend to not answer, then our portion of this discussion is finished.

Most people today would not agree that animals in general are simply to be used however we want.

What most people think is not in itself a good basis for anything. I know this because when most people were farmers and treated their animals however they wanted, you would consider them ignorant of the realities. I know this because when most people eat meat, that doesn’t count, they’re just being “inconsistent”. Your standards for judging others are adopted merely for convenience and that really is illogical.

If this were the case, there would be no laws against animal cruelty. Most people recognize that it is wrong to inflict suffering to our pets. Most people deep down know the same thing about farm animals, we just want to ignore it because it points out our moral inconsistencies.

The only reason there is an inconsistency is because you are speculating on the ideas of people making these decisions and then use that speculation to reach a conclusion. This is your problem, not theirs.

It is interesting to me that your argument relies on both downplaying the importance of animals yet at the same time relies on comparing your moral intelligence to the same level of animals.

Since you said, and I agreed, and then you said again, and then I agreed again, that intelligence is not a good basis, it is extremely irritating for you to nevertheless accuse me again of doing this.

[DSeid]

@Dr.Colossus

it’s really annoying to have to cut and paste something i’ve already posted in the thread, unmodified, because someone chose to disregard it.
nonetheless:

Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argued in 2001 that the least-harm principle does not require giving up all meat, because a plant-based diet would not kill fewer animals than one containing beef from grass-fed ruminants.* …

Just pointing out that others have already responded to this. The answer given has been that such is an irrelevant comparison as most beef in this world is not exclusively grass fed. In addition to that I would add that in parts of the world creating pasture for beef has resulted in clearing of rainforest and “desertification” of grasslands. Thus while an idealized vision of eating only beef raised exclusively on sustainable pastureland with no additional external inputs needed would possibly justify that conclusion, the circumstances of the real world do not, and given the size of the current population, let alone the 9 billion we are expected to be, cannot without significant changes in meat technology.

Under current conditions, excluding the cows themselves, the beef industry causes more critter deaths than does farming grain for human consumption due both to the fact that so much grain goes into finishing the beef and due to destruction of forests and desertification of grasslands by grazing. IF beef consumption was significantly less, AND tastes were such that grass finished was the desired consumer product, THEN sustainable pastured only beef might fit his hypothetical.

@Trust

…The advanced part deals with imagining yourself as the other life … Would I want to go through a factory farm and be killed so someone could eat me if I were that animal? Hell no.

You really do not see that in your process of imagining you are imposing what you’d like, as a human and aware of what was coming, onto another creature whose thought processes do not include such things? How you completely ignore what you believe your “advanced” golden rule to be? If we assume, for the sake of the discussion, humane slaughter and living conditions, then my discomfort knowing that I was being raised for food ([TwilightZone]It’s a cookbook![/TZ]) is irrelevant, is imposing human preferences onto a chicken or a cow. You are still free to argue that current factory farming fails to meet those guidelines, but then your … beef so to speak … is with inhumane farming practices, not with eating meat per se.

You are trying to act like there is an ocean of difference between the pain we feel and the pain animals feel. If you were talking insects then I might agree with you…

You might exempt insects from your “advanced golden rule”? Previously you said otherwise:

Insects, however, do have brains and are aware of the world. Therefore, the golden rule starts with them

There is an ocean of difference between the awareness, sentience, intelligence, pain experience, etc. between a worm and me and a whole ocean full of gradation in between with creatures of various degrees of similarity and disimilarity to me and to each other. What I am asking you is to define exactly where you draw the line within that ocean and if at that line you value one … vole … the same as one human? One vole to one human losing an arm? I am pointing out the extreme oversimplicity of your either/or viewpoint. While I have no quantitative formula either I find that the version you set up, which I can only read that causing any animal suffering is only justifiable to save a human life, to be an unacceptable and naive equation.

Which are points you have been ignoring from several sources.

[rat_avatar]

@DSeid

Just pointing out that others have already responded to this. The answer given has been that such is an irrelevant comparison as most beef in this world is not exclusively grass fed. In addition to that I would add that in parts of the world creating pasture for beef has resulted in clearing of rainforest and “desertification” of grasslands. Thus while an idealized vision of eating only beef raised exclusively on sustainable pastureland with no additional external inputs needed would possibly justify that conclusion, the circumstances of the real world do not, and given the size of the current population, let alone the 9 billion we are expected to be, cannot without significant changes in meat technology.
.

Wait, so having all consumers drop meat is valid idea, but having them change to grass fed is not?

I would think getting them to drop fatty grain finished would be easier.

“desertification” of grasslands is due to poor grazing practice and is quit similar to poor farming practices, it is not a required outcome of grazing.

Many of these issues you are describing, e.g. the rain-forest destruction are more about poverty than food.

[DSeid]

All consumers at current and rising per capita meat consumption and rising global population is not viable as grass fed only without resulting in greater forest destruction (with resultant climate change impact) and even greater desertification of grasslands across the world. Yes it would be a positive step and is less ecologically harmful than is grain finished, but decreasing per capita meat intake by the high end outliers (like America and … Luxembourg) and hoping that both China tops off on its increase appetite for meat (mostly pork in their case) and India’s increasing taste for meat does not take hold too well, is going to be required. Getting everyone to drop meat is neither required nor realistic.

Poverty and food are of course intermingled and of course the poor will suffer the most when food with adequate nutrition costs more because of greater worldwide demand than supply. But the bottom line is still supply not meeting demand because of meat’s relatively inefficient production compared to plant protein per unit input and harmful output. An increase of 50% to my food expenses would be scarcely noticed as it would still be a small portion of my budget. Housing, kids college expenses … dwarfs it. If I want to eat meat three times a day I could and would still be able to afford it and would likely barely notice that my favorite cut was priced higher. Relative to most of the world I am rich beyond imagination even though I be no Mitt Romney or Oprah. Because of that I would still use up the same resources even in the case of low supply and overall increased demand. I just pay more for it, no real worries. But for most of the world increased demand without increased supply means hunger. In supply demand mismatch the poorest will go without and richest will perhaps whine a little that they can’t afford to eat out as much or as luxuriously anyway. No matter what if demand exceeds supply someone, whoever is relatively poorest, will go relatively without.

Desertification is not a required outcome of grazing but in the real world it is an outcome. And it is partially driven by demand for meat and overall inadequate food supplies.

Rainforest? It gets destroyed to meet the demand for beef by those who can afford it. Less a problem of poverty than of relative wealth, or rather what is chosen to do with it.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Trust]
“Most people” is the majority of the world. Just under one billion people in the world are suffering from malnutrition and we recently surpassed seven billion people in the world. As I said earlier, this does not apply in situations where people need to kill animals to survive. This is not anywhere near the majority of the world though. Meat eating is more of a luxury and the majority of meat consumption comes from the affluent.
[/QUOTE]

Do you have a cite that shows that ‘most people’ on the planet who eat meat do so because it’s a ‘luxury’, which was what I was addressing there? Because I’m calling horseshit here if you don’t produce a cite backing this ridiculous claim up.

Not that it matters, because you are defining ‘luxury’ as ‘something I don’t approve of’ in any case, and then going from there.

What you seem to be ignoring is that the two situations are tied together. As our population continues to grow, we will not be able to keep up with the demand. Over the next forty years we will need to produce the same amount of food that we have produced over the last eight thousand years. A huge reason behind why we will not be able to keep up with the demand is because it takes seven pounds of crops to create one pound of meat. If you read my prior posts, you will see that I imagine that I am everyone else. I am doing this probably even more for humans than for the animals. I am doing this so that I can do my part to give everyone the ability to have a full, natural life.

I’m not ignoring that at all. YOU are ignoring it by attempting to say meat is a ‘luxury’, where as for most non-1st world countries it isn’t. You have this fantasy going where we could simply stop consuming meat and (presumably) animal based products and this is going to somehow get us back all sorts of agricultural resources by make the switch. An all vegan diet is possible with a lot of care and diligence…trying to translate that to over 6 billion people, however, is going to put a huge strain on our system. And, as has been pointed out to you over and over again, it’s STILL going to be doing a lot of harm to animals. You seem very inconsistent on this issue. On the one hand, you are against eating animals, but on the other, you seem very blithe about the fact that farming actually causes MORE harm to animals and more deaths. How do you reconcile this? Or are you just ignoring that part of the debate?

What does drinking a coke have to do with purposefully causing suffering to the innocent? You are going to have to tie those together better than that.

Seems simple to me. Drinking a coke IS a ‘luxury’, as you don’t need a coke to live (which can’t similarly be said about meat, which is why your assertion that eating the stuff is a ‘luxury’ is so silly, and points out how that’s YOUR perception). The making and manufacturing of a coke, however, causes untold animal deaths due to the farming of the raw materials that go into a coke, the logistics of bringing those raw materials to the manufacturing plants, the actual manufacturing of the product and it’s associated component parts, the logistics of distributing, chilling, marketing, etc of the product…and that groundhog you killed when you drove your car to the store to pick up that coke.

I note that you inserted in ‘purposefully’ into the argument, in a weak attempt to justify the fact that you drinking that coke causes untold animal deaths and suffering…but since it’s not ‘purposeful’ that makes it ok, right?

(so, IOW, you don’t really need me to explain it all to you, since you are already attempting to handwave the argument away by injecting ‘purpose’ into the mix. Was I suppose to pretend otherwise?)

You say I am living in a fantasy world but you have not shown any reason why what I am saying is unrealistic. I am the most realistic person I know so you are going to have to do a better job of pointing out what is unrealistic. Currently there are billions of animals being killed in factory farms each year. As demand slows, that number would start going down. We would no longer artifically inseminate the animals. This trend continues until a point where there is roughly, maybe a few times the current number of farm animals we have in farm sanctuaries. People would view the animals as animals for what they are and not what they benefit us. I think the only reason you consider this fantasy is because you are not looking at the alternatives that are already in development.

And yet I HAVE explained, several times, why what you are projecting is unrealistic and fantasy. That you have pretended not to understand it isn’t MY lookout, since clearly you have and have either chosen to ignore it or pretend you don’t understand it.

Would I want to live through a factory farm as an animal? Not in a million years.

:rolleyes: You wouldn’t want to live the life of ANY animal, and probably wouldn’t want to live the life of most humans who don’t live in a modern, technological society…not if you had your memories and expectations. Would you want to be a wild ruminant, constantly in fear of predators, constantly in danger of starvation, disease, crippling injury…pain? Um, I’m thinking that’s a big fat NO. Would you want to live the life of a predator, constantly in fear of starvation, danger of disease, crippling injury, fights with rivals…pain? That’s a big fat NO as well. Would you want to live the life of s subsistence farmer in China, or Central or South America, or Africa? Constantly in…well, you get the point. Again, I’m guessing that’s a ‘no’.

This is a ridiculous argument you are making here…more ridiculous than your initial premise in the OP…and shows you are merely projecting. Most food (or even other) animals were domesticated in the first place because they preferred some sort of stability in their diet and shelter from random predators with humans (even if the end result was they gots et) to life in the wild. That’s how we DID domesticate them, because it was a better deal for them than being wild and free. Modern factor farm animals have been bred to BE food, and the trade off to all the things you see as horrible suffering is that they fed all they can eat, don’t have to worry about predators in their day to day lives, don’t have to worry about disease for the most part, and don’t have to fight for survival. If you weren’t a human with all your memories of how YOUR life is then it would probably seem a pretty good trade off, all things considered.

-XT

[Trust]

@Dr.Colossus

also, if it’s a matter of ethics, then vegans can’t own pets.

any vegan w a pet is a hypocrite.
after all, animals have to be processed to create dog and cat food…

Yes, if a carnivorous animal eats meat then it makes the owner a hypocrite. :smack: As discussed earlier, animals do not usually have the ability to make moral choices but more importantly, some animals require meat to live. If you look at my arguments earlier, you will see that I do not claim that ethics applies when it comes to eating meat to survive. Should we work on finding alternatives so these animals can eat meat without it causing any suffering? Of course. That day is not very far off when you look at the whole picture.

@Dr.Colossus

Steven Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argued in 2001 that the least-harm principle does not require giving up all meat, because a plant-based diet would not kill fewer animals than one containing beef from grass-fed ruminants. Davis wrote that cultivating crops also kills animals, because when a tractor traverses a field, animals are accidentally destroyed. Based on a study finding that wood mouse populations dropped from 25 per hectare to five per hectare after harvest (attributed to migration and mortality), Davis estimated that 10 animals per hectare are killed from crop farming every year. If all 120,000,000 acres (490,000 km2) of cropland in the continental United States were used for a vegan diet, then approximately 500 million animals would die each year. But, if half the cropland were converted to ruminant pastureland, he estimated that only 900,000 animals would die each year—assuming people switched from the eight billion poultry killed each year to beef, lamb, and dairy products.[100]

First off, if this were actually how things were done, this would be orders of magnitude better than our current system. However, when you look at how things are done from a high level, this is not anywhere close to how things are normally done. This study also makes a huge mistake and does not take into account the amount of food produced. When you take into account the amount of food produced, we end up killing many times less animals based on a vegan diet. He also does not take into account the intensity of suffering from an animal welfare perspective. Here is further explanation:

Contrasting Harms: Vegan Agriculture versus Animal Agriculture

@Fairy_Ana

I don’t think the golden rule applies to animals. I would not like to be put on a leash every time I went outside, made to eat from a plate on the floor and do my necessities on the open. But we make our dogs do all these things, not because we don’t love our pets, but because they are different in nature.

Humans are the only omnivores with a conscience. I find it very praiseworthy having in mind the well being of all animals and when vegetarians have the means to substitute meat for the proteins and vitamins found in plants, which I suppose people can do nowadays, then good for them. I personally find that when I eat meat I can go by a longer period of time satisfied than if I ate only carbs, vegetables and fruits.

Regarding the ethics of eating meat, I don’t think it is unethical, specially in times of famine and necessity. I would suppose that is how in some societies people eat all sorts of animals and insects that westerners find really gross. Besides, if I considered myself unethical for eating meat, than would I consider every other omnivore in nature unethical too?

What I find unethical is animal torture. I think if we are going to eat chicken and cows and so forth, at least give the animal a decent life and a clean kill when the time comes.

These points have been talked about many times in earlier replies. You are referring to an elementary definition of the golden rule. I do not consider it unethical to eat meat if you have no other choice. Other animals do not usually have a moral understanding that is as developed as us.

@Fairy_Ana

And they can’t own accessories made of leather too. That would be a contradiction.

What if someone becomes a vegetarian after they have leather accessories? Should they feel compelled to throw away everything they have? Or should they just buy anything new that is made without leather? Regardless, I can tell we are essentially on the same page here.

@drewtwo99

Both vegetarians and omnivores work to limit suffering of animals to differing degrees.

I don’t think this is universally true. Some vegetarians could care less about animal suffering and only do it for their own health. Some meat eaters do nothing to help animal suffering and work very hard to put up the mental block to align the inconsistent ethics of valuing animals yet at the same time eating them.

@drewtwo99

People who eat “free-range” meats as a primary source of food are not directly responsible for all of the deaths of animals that occur with food that would be made for a vegetarian diet. If I buy an entire cow at a county fair that was raised free-range, I can live off of that meat for a very long time. Number of animals killed for me to enjoy that beef: about 1. If I wanted to subsist on vegetarian foods over the same amount of time, I’d be directly responsible for dozens if not hundreds of deaths of animals. Unless of course I grew my own food and made sure that no little critters were harmed in the production of my crops. Which is completely impractical, of course.

In other words, a true, non-hypocritical point of view would be thus:

Let’s reduce our meat consumption to mostly (or all) animals that feed and graze naturally, where human-caused deaths of animals did not go into feeding/raising them. Things like free range beef, hunting for deer and other wild game, wild caught fish, etc. And then supplement that diet with vegetables and crops that do not need to be harvested with machinery that kill lots of animals.

Of course, that’s not what a vegetarian/vegan wants. They want humanity to stop eating meat REGARDLESS of how many animals would be killed by switching to a vegetarian diet. It’s not about least-harm principle. It’s about the fact that they feel bad about eating another animal, and they think everyone else should feel bad about it too.

Source? According to this, we kill less animals in your example by eating a vegan diet once we take into account the amount of food produced. More than three times the number of wild animals would be killed in your scenario. http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html

You are acting like there is only two options… kill or kill. There are far many more options than this. While one of them is to be vegetarian/vegan, another is to come up with alternatives to eat meat without the suffering.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Trust]
You are acting like there is only two options… kill or kill. There are far many more options than this. While one of them is to be vegetarian/vegan, another is to come up with alternatives to eat meat without the suffering.
[/QUOTE]

So, are you now saying that it IS ‘ethical’ to eat meat, as long as the animal being consumed didn’t ‘suffer’?

-XT

[Stoid]

@gamerunknown

The intention is different though. Slaughtering animals is an act of comission, failing to prevent the slaughter of animals is an act of ommission. If we accepted the premise that the reduction of suffering for as many animals as possible (with humans being the priority) would be ideal, then we could discuss this (with reference to the potential increase in suffering that would result from increased emissions from raising cattle instead of crops). However, this is completely divorced from reality since no-one has demonstrated that the current rate of meat consumption is sustainable with pasture fed cattle.

For the record, I am now and always addressing only the deliberate actions taken by human beings directed at the animals they mean to eat, vs. collateral suffering and dying of creatures great and small caught by the processes, since collateral suffering is a consequence of feeding people no matter what:

Ending suffering stopping killing are not the same thing.

Ending suffering is best achieved by ending practices which cause animals to suffer.

Animals can be raised free of suffering and killed free of suffering, therefore it is not necessary to stop eating animals in order to reduce animal suffering. It is necessary to stop doing things which cause them to suffer.

So if your goal is to stop the animals from suffering, and your belief is that the only way this can be done is if people stop creating them to kill them and eat them, then you would be mistaken in this belief.

So what else you got? Unethical due to environmental damage that is greater by orders of magnitude than that which comes from agriculture in general, and cannot be mitigated by many of the same things that would mitigate suffering? Bring it.

Unethical because…?

No, people have been asserting that an omnivorous diet is healthier than a vegetarian diet, which I have been disproving. Don’t get me wrong,

No need, you’re getting yourself wrong. You’ve proved nothing. Proof has a real meaning, and you haven’t done it.

You accept the fact that animals can suffer. Not interfering in their life is one way to reduce their suffering by definition.

Seriously, without any rudeness intended at all, you have got to stop using terms, words, phrases that you obviously do not fully grasp. In this case “refraining to interfere in the lives of animals” is not the definition of “reducing suffering of animals”.

[ul]
[li]Animal suffering can be reduced by medical intervention, which, by definition abolutely is “interfering” with an animals’ life, but is hardly contributing to their suffering. [/li]
[li]If an animal is suffering from starvation, it can be ended by feeding the animal, which is, by definition, interfering in the animal’s life. [/li]
[li]Animals that are dying slowly and painfully can have that suffering ended by euthanasia, which is, by definition interfering with the animal’s life.[/li][/ul]

[ul]
[li]Therefore, “not interfering” in an animal’s life cannot, by definition, be a way to reduce their suffering. In fact, if an animal is suffering, it seems that interfering IS, by definition, a way to reduce their suffering.[/li][/ul]

What you really meant, I think, was to simply say that not inflicting suffering on them in the first place is one way to reduce suffering by preventing at least that suffering which we inflict.

Keerist…

It would be disingenuous to state that we’re making their lives more comfortable by providing them with secure environments, as much as it would be to adopt slaves from regions where individuals would otherwise starve to death.

Stop with the slave crap. Cows, sheep, chickens and pigs are not human beings. Slavery is anathema to a human being even if the slave is treated like royalty for reasons that would never be an issue in an animal’s life. Look at dogs: they are essentially our slaves, and they LOVE it. As long as the animal’s fundamental needs are met and its life is comfortable, the animal doesn’t give two nickels for the idea of “freedom”.

(homologous, not analogous)

:smack:

The intention is divorced from the effects.

What are you referring to? Which intention is divorced from what effects by what mechanism and what is the result and why does it matter?

Capital by Marx discusses the average working class diet prior to industrialisation. I also have anecdotes from a friend that lived in the USSR that ate meat perhaps three times a year and was disgusted that I chose to be a vegetarian when I could eat meat in abundance.

So? Of course some people sometimes can’t get meat. Some people sometimes can’t get fruit or vegetables or grains or anything else. In the context of the question of the ethics of meat eating, what is your point?

His analysis misses out a crucial element: the number of insects inadvertently consumed by cattle while grazing. In my opinion, the primary principle is “first do no harm”: do not participate or fund suffering in order to prevent more suffering, until sufficient evidence determines that it causes less harm.

Just for the record, I have zero concern about avoiding harm to every and any animal, so any argument that starts from that premise fails with me out the gate. I do not believe it to be at all unethical to kill or cause to be killed any number of insects so long as doing so does not cause an ecological imbalance and a ripple effect of damage and suffering everywhere. Death is not inherently wrong or evil or bad or unethical. It totally depends.

And I also am not part of the “brains dont’ count” contingent. They definitely do, in terms of species, not individual members of a species, which is one of a couple dozen reasons the “lets eat brain damaged people then” argument is incredibly stupid.

Just putting it out there so there’s no confusion.

[Stoid]

@Trust

another is to come up with alternatives to eat meat without the suffering.

@XT

So, are you now saying that it IS ‘ethical’ to eat meat, as long as the animal being consumed didn’t ‘suffer’?

-XT

YAY!

Said it in January, saying it again: Promoting vegetarianism or veganism is a lousy way to reduce animal cruelty

[XT]

Eat mor chikin (cows are SO cute when they try and spell phonetically :p)…

-XT