I was actually referring to his previous post, which he made simultaneously with mine.
That post makes no attempt at all to answer my questions or even address the post that it quotes. Just more bluster and rhetoric and provably wrong assertions.
I don’t have any intention of wasting my time with someone who has so little idea about cattle agronomy that they believe that a feed conversion ratio of 600 is plausible, or that grass is food, or that poor people in third world nations don’t eat beef or goat.
I’m sure at this stage that everyone can see quite clearly how credible Crazyhorse is on his topic. I could keep going just to bait him into spouting more silliness, but when a position has hit rock bottom, it can’t be discredited any more. I’d just be trolling.
You seem to be the only poster that has expressed any objection to my not very controversial opinion that the impact that meat production has on the environment is another consideration when debating the ‘morality’ of eating meat, apart from any moral arguments about killing for meat in general. I also noted that with regard to the question of the welfare or suffering of the animals themselves, I’m a hypocrite because I can eat meat I buy at the store but know that if I had to actually kill the animal I wouldn’t do it. What exactly your objection is to that has still not been made clear.
If you want to state your objections to either of the points of my post, rather than nitpick a detail that was only offered in response to your irrelevant point about mice, I’m all ears.
Whether it takes 200kg of grain or 2000 kg of grass doesn’t matter at all to the discussion. Your mouse angle is totally irrelevant. It demonstrates that we aren’t even having the same discussion here.
If we’re talking about something destroying the environment - all of it, for everyone, including mice - then isn’t it kind of a waste of time to argue that some number of mice might die if there was less meat production? But beyond that there was never any question or discussion about how to replace the meat. I didn’t say anything about replacing the meat. I offered no opinion that agriculture should be increased or that any more innocent mice should die. You’re swinging at shadows.
What we are calling “excess meat consumption” isn’t being used to feed the world. It’s just extra food that a small portion of the world eats above and beyond what they need and could give up - without harming any mice.
But finally, none of that matters anyway! Whether or not excess meat consumption as described above, is an example of humans just being part of the natural food chain or not isn’t connected to anything you are arguing about. Your mice have nothing to do with that question. That is what we were talking about before you came in swinging for the mice.
In short, you’re wasting my time. I wish you well in your declaration of victory for wearing me down with an irrelevant hijacks until I finally get tired of engaging you any further.
There are good arguments in favor of eating meat, but all these appeals to nature are alarming. What’s natural, and what’s ethical, are not on the same spectrum. Plenty of “natural” behaviors (rape, homicide, child abuse) are not ethical. Plenty of “unnatural” behaviors (giving antibiotics to sick people, building houses, debating ethical principles over the Internet) are perfectly ethical.
(Note that the whole concept of “natural” has multiple contradictory definitions that render the word’s use in a discussion even more useless.)
So yes. We evolved eating meat, in the same way we evolved beating children, raping victims weaker than us, and murdering members of rival tribes; in the same way that we evolved sharing with the less fortunate, protecting children, and seeking fair solutions to problems. Evolution and the “circle of life” have nothing to say about ethics.
I didn’t find Blakes points to be that compelling. It’s as you said, it didn’t really address what you were talking about.
I share the same stance. It doesn’t matter as long as I don’t have to do it. But the concerns of the environmental impact were also something I had in mind. Although I did read that everyone going vegan isn’t sustainable either.
There is no ethics when it comes to consuming another life form for energy. In the end one must die for the other to live. From what I can tell plants are find because they don’t seem to feel any pain, as far as we know. But if by some stroke we did learn that they feel pain, it would certainly put us at a crossroads.
But when talking about ethics, it’s more about power than what ought to be. If there isn’t power to back up the words then they mean nothing. Like in nature, it’s the ability of one being stronger then the other. Someone could be “unethical” in their treatment of you but if you don’t have the power to stop them then your ethics mean nothing.
This is true, but since we’re humans, it’s relevant to us. (If I’m mistaken–if someone in this thread is a rutabaga or a star-nosed-mole–my apologies).
That’s what I was getting at with my tongue-in-cheek post at the beginning. Every living thing is alive. Once life is taken away from them, it can’t be given back. What’s the difference if ‘life’ is taken away from a plant, vs. an animal? Well, we’re animals. We relate to animals. Animals can relate to us.
But plants do the same thing animals do. Plants secrete defensive chemicals when they ‘hear’ a recording of a caterpillar munching leaves. They ‘wage war’ upon each other. They compete for resources. It all just happens so slowly, we believe they just sit there. They don’t have brains, and yet they behave in many of the same ways as animals. We can hand-wave killing plants because they are not like us, much like we have no compunction in killing insects we don’t even eat. For me, ethically, ‘life is life’. If it’s not unethical to kill a plant for food, it’s not unethical to kill an animal for food. We’re still taking lives.
Yet take lives we must. Where do we draw the line? Animals feel fear. Plants react to adverse stimuli in ways that suggest ‘fear’. Are they simply ‘running a program’? What about insects? What about fish? Why is it OK to eat pigs (which are intelligent), but not dolphins? To quote Spock, ‘In the strict scientific sense, Doctor, we all feed on death, even vegetarians.’ Given that we all ‘feed on death’, and given that most of the animals we eat are prey animals, there is nothing unethical about raising animals for the purpose of eating them – though there are ethical and unethical ways of doing that.
This is an argument I put forth seriously. What about it do you find un-serious?
We must eat food to live. Plants and animals are food. Therefore, we must eat plants and animals. What is so hard about this?
I don’t know about you, but I want to continue to exist on this planet, and therefore I will eat plants and animals. This is not a question of morality anymore than one might question the moral “rightness” of breathing or drinking water. It is a biological imperative, and all other questions about which animals we eat and how we acquire them are secondary to this imperative.
If I were placed in a situation where I had literally other options but cannibalism and starvation, I would even pick cannibalism. (There are people in the world for whom I would prefer to die so that they can consume me, if we were in such a situation, but that list is extremely short.)