Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m very familiar with the seal hunting issues, from both sides. I didn’t mean “what is the problem with hunting seals.” I was wondering why What_Exit specifically singled out seals. It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether he was referring only to the commercial seal harvest or all seal hunting. In retrospect I imagine it was the commercial hunt.
Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation circulated about the commercial seal hunt, and people tend to be outspoken about it, without knowing much about it.
I have worked in wildlife conservation for 30+ years. Over that time, I had many students and volunteers work for me. It has been really common for them to start by asking what we were going to about the seal hunt. When I would ask them what the problem with the hunt was, I would get vague “its bad”, “its cruel”, “its horrible” type responses with not much substance. There would usually be some comment about killing white coats and the cruelty of clubbing seals to death. There would usually be disbelief when I explained that (as you noted) white coats hadn’t been legally hunted for decades and that most of the seals were shot, not clubbed. Furthermore, clubbing is not necessarily inhumane. In any case, I would explain my program focused on wildlife conservation, the seal hunt wasn’t even remotely a conservation issue and that we wouldn’t be doing anything about it.
What is “unnecessary”? It is nutrition, food, and that is necessary. When it comes to eating vegetables, we can ask how people feel about animal cruelty.
Vegetarians are not gonna get a free pass on this killing animals for their meals since they kill zillions of animals for their food also.
It’s okay, they don’t: as you doubtless figured out from my response to you in post #248, my opinion on the subject remains the same as it was in the earlier post you replied to.
I was just somewhat surprised at your asking a question, in post #246 on March 10, about a statement I’d made in post #31 on January 15, seemingly out of the blue with no quote of what you were responding to and no obvious connection to where the thread had got to in the meantime.
But that’s more on Discourse than on you, ISTM, since a reply to an earlier post now doesn’t show anything more than the name of the poster being replied to, unless the name is clicked on to expand the posting history.
It could just as readily be argued that for anyone who can be adequately nourished without eating meat, meat is just as much a luxury as fur is for anyone who can be adequately clad without wearing furs.
As discussed above, people who include meat in their diets are also inadvertently killing “zillions of animals” for their bread, for their vegetables and fruits, for their drink, and in the process of rearing and processing their meat livestock.
The only major difference AFAICT is that the meat-eaters, who are responsible for causing just as much inadvertent/byproduct killing of animals as the vegetarians, are also responsible for the intentional killing of the meat animals.
Like I said, as a non-vegetarian myself, I’m not trying to shame or condemn any other non-vegetarians for this fact. But ISTM you’ll get nowhere with this attempt to fake a moral equivalence between the two positions. If killing animals is morally wrong, then meat-eaters are indisputably “wronger” than vegetarians, even though vegetarians aren’t guiltless.
If we don’t consider killing animals morally wrong, on the other hand, then there’s nothing immoral about meat-eating. And in that case there’s also nothing immoral about wearing fur.
Well, by that rationale, you have no grounds for condemning the hunting and wearing of fur either. Fur-wearers and non-fur-wearers alike are constantly causing the death of zillions of animals in the process of producing non-fur clothing.
If deliberately killing meat livestock when one can adequately nourish oneself without meat is no worse than the inevitable killing of zillions of other animals in the production of non-meat food, then deliberately killing pelt animals when one can adequately clothe oneself without fur is no worse than the inevitable killing of zillions of other animals in the production of non-fur clothing.
This is certainly where I come down in the conversation and why I’ve largely read but not participated. I have no problems with wearing fur and I own a mink blanked that despite being 30 years old is in amazing shape and incredibly warm. I want more for my kids.
Where I have a moral problem is waste. I don’t like that most fur animals have the rest of them left to be disposed of. We need to focus on turning their bodies into food for dogs or people and finding ways to utilize their bones and organs too.
By that logic, it’s necessary for me to behead my neighbor and scoop out his brains.
Human brains are nutritious, and nutrition is necessary.
I just explained the reasons why mammals and birds appear capable of suffering and insects don’t.
You’ve chosen to just ignore that argument, as well as others such as the fact that meat eaters also eat vegetables and that land also needs to be cleared for raising livestock (so it is not even obvious that meat eaters would be responsible for fewer insects dying as well as livestock).
In terms of your rhetoric, why have you drawn a line at animals? Why not point out that our individual actions cause trillions of bacteria to die every day? I mean, if you’re not going to engage with the discussion of which organisms can suffer, and the degree of that suffering.
Livestock grazing kills lots of other animals whether their pasture land is newly cleared or already open. Also, crop growing for livestock feed kills lots of other animals too.
You really cannot get away from the fact that meat-eaters are at least equally responsible as non-meat-eaters for the constant vast slaughter of non-livestock animal life in the process of human food production.
On top of that, meat-eaters are directly responsible for the slaughter of livestock animals for human consumption.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the issue of relative capability for suffering in the case of livestock animals such as cows and pigs versus non-livestock animals such as insects and microorganisms.
Well then, that’s the basic moral argument against meat-eating, at least in a modern society of nutritional abundance, right there.
Namely, we agree that we’re all already inevitably entangled in responsibility for the constant slaughter of many sorts of non-livestock animal life as a side-effect of human food production of whatever kind, even if we try to minimize it with “eco-friendly” agricultural practices as much as we can.
But that inescapable responsibility is not a moral excuse or justification for taking on the additional responsibility of causing the deaths of livestock animals.
Similarly, I can acknowledge that my using and depending on automotive transport means that I share in the responsibility for the inevitable death and injury toll from vehicle accidents, like everybody else. However, that inescapable responsibility doesn’t make it morally okay for me to also run somebody down with my car just for fun.
For all the concomitant animal-killing that inevitably comes along with food production of any type, yes, meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters are both responsible for that. But as I noted, the meat-eaters are solely responsible for the additional slaughter deliberately inflicted on livestock animals.
That’s the basis for the moral argument against eating meat in developed societies where meat is not necessary for adequate nutrition, even if you agree that non-meat food production also inevitably involves some killing of animals.
Similarly, as I said, all users of automotive transport share the responsibility for the statistically inevitable amount of death and destruction on the roads. But that doesn’t invalidate the moral argument against voluntarily running down somebody with your car just for fun.
In short: The fact that you’re already participating in an activity that inevitably results in some killing doesn’t give you a moral defense for deliberately and intentionally engaging in more killing for your own enjoyment.
