Of course, if you don’t care about the deaths of mice or cattle, it hardly matters.
You guys seem to be misunderstanding the point of the rodent talk. To reiterate:
If you:
Object to the killing of livestock for food on the basis that killing animals for food is, per se, immoral
and you also
Consume food whose cultivation results in the incidental deaths of rodents and insects and so forth
but you
Have the option of sourcing your food in a way that actually does minimize or entirely eliminate the deaths of animals (and most Westerners have this option, even though it would require them to make sacrifices)
I don’t disagree with most of what you say except what may be the most important part: “most Westerners have this option…”
Sustainable micro farming such as you described in post 124 remains only a small niche market with very high prices and very low output. It would take a major shift in our entire approach to feeding the masses. It’s a nice utopian dream, and certainly resolves many ethical concerns and environmental problems, but it’s not likely to happen at least not anytime soon.
But cutting back a little on the meat consumption is something that everyone could do right away with no effort that would have a big impact on environmental concerns. And for those who are concerned that killing animals for food is immoral they are doing way better to avoid eating meat than worrying about the wildlife casualties of agriculture. If forced to choose the lesser of two evils there’s no contest.
I didn’t say it would be easy. It absolutely would require someone to make sacrifices. It absolutely would reduce their quality of life; probably to below what is considered a Western standard of living. But they could do it, if they were well and truly serious about not killing animals.
It’s actually quite parallel to a meat eater refusing to give up eating meat because doing so would reduce their quality of life. The difference is a matter of degree, not of kind. In both cases, the person is implicitly saying, “My diet results in the deaths of animals. It is within my power to alter my diet in such a way as to reduce or even eliminate these unnecessary deaths, but I refuse to do so because that would entail giving up more of my own pleasure than I am willing to forgo.”
Actually I think it would be literally impossible for many people at this point in time. How is someone who lives in an apartment with no land of their own and an income that barely meets their family’s needs going to convert to a diet of sustainable micro farming? Would making their family live on the street or forgo medical care be morally superior to them than accepting a few animal and insect casualties to provide them with food? I don’t know because I don’t know how strong their convictions are about it.
If you believe killing for food per se is immoral, and have the ability to do something as you suggest, then I suppose you’re right - they should - even if it is a big hassle and sacrifice.
But not nearly everyone believes that killing for food per se is immoral, myself included, so you’re only going to have a small percentage of the population willing to make extreme changes in their lives around what they eat and how it is produced even if they could. There still would need to be a huge mass production of crops and meat to feed the rest.
But many people would prefer to do what they can to lessen crop related deaths or livestock suffering without having a fundamental moral problem with the idea that something has to die in order for them to live. In the utopian society you describe the plants would still have to die so it’s all a question of how much and which life you believe it’s immoral to take for your food.
If you truly believe it is immoral to take any life for food then the only real solution is to starve. The plants are alive and home to zillions of microorganisms and are converting CO2 to oxygen for all living things. Why should they die so we can live even if growing them didn’t kill any animals?
For anyone who doesn’t think it is immoral to kill for food per se, but would like to at least lessen the number of animals that suffer in addition to cutting way down on the environmental problems that livestock production causes, they can simply eat less meat to accomplish that. They aren’t causing any extra animals to die due to agriculture than already would anyway right or wrong but would be lowering the number of animals raised as captives and slaughtered.
Again the lesser or two evils, if you believe it is immoral to kill for food and have zero interest in the environmental impact, is still to lower meat consumption.
Arguing that we might as well all eat all the meat we want because some animals die in the production of crops anyway is just a silly rationalization and that, not your angle on it, was the original intent of the ‘rodent talk’ in this thread.
I don’t think you’re correct in this regard. Someone who wants to lower deaths might, for example, make hunted venison a major source of their diet. Or, heck, might go after whale meat, per PETA’s stupid suggestion years ago.
Again, you’re correct that deaths of field pests are exacerbated, not mitigated, by grain-fed livestock. But grain-fed livestock aren’t the only source of meat.
I also offered two other defenses of meat in that post :).