I like leather and fur, I like hunting for both game and varmints, I hate seeing animals mistreated or under-fed. Further, I hate hearing about poaching for endangered species just because the Chinese consider them aphrodisiacs. The most cruel food preparation I like are 1) is “jumping salad”; live shrimp and small fish placed in a bowl with vinegar and lime and 2) boiled fertilized duck eggs.
Morality is a human concept. Therefore we can say what is and what isn’t moral. And it’s all very arbitrary if you ask me. Heck, 200 years ago, nobody thought twice about dog fighting or cock fighting.
I didn’t say it’s immoral (in fact, I have no problem with it - see the OP). But I’m stuck with the thought that for most people eating meat is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. Whole societies survive on vegetarian diets. So the only reason most of us eat meat is out of habit/ because we like doing it. There’s nothing ordained in the life cycle saying that most of us need meat to live.
2000 years ago we had gladiator contests and infant abandonment.
Yes, there is.
Understood. I’m just trying to make the point the morality is an ever changing construct and NOT a universal constant.
I agree. Peanut butter is much more effective.
I completely agree. It is just frustrating. I am willingly decreasing my meat portion on a weekly basis (2 nights a week vegetarian) to try to lessen my impact on animals…and what happens? Eventually it would make meat cheaper and people will just eat more.
The out-of-control world population just absolutely fucking disgusts me. It has gotten to the point where…well…the other day I see a squirrel corpse in the road. Sure, it’s just a squirrel, who cares, right? 10 days later the corpse is still there…or at least a few meager shreds of it. There is so little respect for non-human life it just sends me into a depression sometimes. And I know I am part of that system. I keep trying to make it better…
Okay, well, can you expand on that?
Well, disagree. While it’s true that people can survive on a strictly vegetarian diet, it doesn’t negate that eating some meat content is healthier and a more efficient way to obtain needed proteins (but like I said I didn’t research that in any meaningful way).
Let’s look at this in environmental and economic aspects too. Assume people can live super well if they complement their vegetarian diet with some exotic bean species that grows in the tropics (tofu or whatever - nevermind the particulars).
There’s already too much land dedicated to pasture and agriculture. Then an even greater percentage would be dedicate to growing these plants that allow modern humans to live adequately on a vegetarian diet. I’m not down with that.
Vegetarianism seems to me to be based on fluffy duffy look at the cuddly animal, plants don’t bleed logic. That’s crap. I “love” animals and I “love” nature and I hate unnecessary suffering and animal cruelty and disrespect but that’s still crap logic.
Sorry for triple posting.
I’ve never seen anyone stay vegan for longer than a couple of years, and there are no such things as vegan societies. Since this is IMHO, and I don’t need a cite, I’ll say it: veganism is unhealthy. Long term vegans look like walking cadavers.
Vegetarianism is certainly possible to survive on. In fact, in the past, meat was a rare luxury and most people were probably functional vegetarians. I’m not sure I want to live like a medieval peasant, but you can certainly survive on vegetables and grains as long as you get enough protein from somewhere, like milk or eggs or beans.
But human beings are omnivores and were once exclusively hunters. We evolved to eat meat and we are at our healthiest eating meat. There is nothing wrong or hypocritical about eating meat while supporting animal welfare.
It seems odd to me to apply morality to diet in the same way we might apply it to, say, sports or other activities involving animals. Sure, we may or may not be able to be reasonably healthy not eating meat, but witout a doubt we evolved eating meat. It would be like if/when an artificial womb is created such that a child could be conceived and grown without sex, then arguing that sex itself is immoral because we don’t need it anymore and it can create other complications.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t moral issues involved in things like eating meat. Certainly, I think that while eating meet is generally an ammoral act, that the manner in which we raise and slaughter animals are subject to moral discussion. For instance, like with the death penalty, even most of those in favor of it will argue that if we’re going to use it, it should be enacted humanely, and so I feel the same about slaughtering of animals for meet, that if we’re going to do so, it should be done as humanely as reasonably possible.
There’s also the question of where the burden of that morality rests. How much of it is on those raising and slaughtering the animals, and how much of it rests on the consumer? How much effort should a consumer go to to ensure the humane treatment and slaughtering of the animals butchered for his meat? Obviously, for the average consumer, we’re reasonably content to let the government inspectors handle most or all of that for us.
Anyway, as for how it relates to cockfight, fur, animal testing, I don’t think it does. I don’t see how my choice to eat meat at all conflicts with also thinking cockfighting is cruel and inhumane treatment of animals and flatly immoral. Though, I do think animal testing is a morally interesting discussion because, undoubtedly, we’ve gained enormous value scientifically, medically from animal testing, but at the same time, it’s often unnecessary, excessive, or can be done in more humane ways. But that’s a moral minefield, not because of complications from eating meet, but because any testing that involves life introduces problems, whether it’s mice, monkeys, or humans ourselves.
Most of the crops grown go to feed livestock. If you want less land devoted to agriculture, vegetarianism is the way to go. 33 lbs of corn to create 1 lb of beef is the number I vaguely remember.
Of course livestock lives on crops. But 1 lb of corn also doesn’t sustain as many people as 1lb of beef.
I’d bet a lot of money that 1 lb of beef is on average a lot denser in area than 1 lb of corn, accouting for humane cattle conditions and grain requirements, but I haven’t checked out the math so I won’t stress that point.
There are other factos too, like massive mono crops being harmful to the environment. Although massive cattle production is no joy either.
googling shows my 33 to 1 is incredibly wrong. Basic thermodynamics indicate that a cow has to take in more calories than it gives out.
this relatively pro meat cite says it takes 6 lbs of corn per pound to bring a 600-900lb cow to 1,250lbs. How much of that extra weight is edible meat is unknown, as well as how much of what it took to get the 600lb cow in the first place - the link says that is mostly forage.
Going by calories alone, as you suggest, ruminants are much better at digesting plant material than humans. Then we’d need to know how much energy a cow wastes. Then we’d need some ballpark numbers for density to translate mass to area between beef and corn. I’m keeping to my bet.
From the neutral point of science, we all do realize that to grow grains and other plant food sources, agriculture basically is a system for taking the available resources in a given area and funneling them into growing only a few (human created) species. We literally deliberately wipe out almost all of the competing natural species of plants, animals, fungi, and other living organisms. So we cannot escape the responsibility for the lose of the biodiversity and suffering that being modern humans entails. So we sacrifice the deer mice and snakes and worms when we plow a field without a thought, but shudder when a hunter culls a deer from a herd with no predators and limited resources. Selective vision it seems like.
Yes, it is more efficient to eat plants rather than animals if your goal is to feed as many as possible, but don’t pretend there is no conscious selection of what gets killed in the process of growing our veggies. I can’t tell you how many tomato worms I hunted down and squashed as a kid.
In our hunter-gatherer mode, we pretty much ate everything, but there were usually too few humans to cause too much destruction.
My advice is to act ethically where you can reasonably do so. For me, that includes eating just about anything. You may feel that killing animals is too much; only in the 20th century did that become a popular viewpoint. My grandmother would be appalled by the modern poultry industry, but I used to run down her very free range chickens so she could butcher them - with her own hands and tools. Raising the animals in a humane fashion was important in her eyes.
I am against dog fights, cock fights, greyhound racing, rodeos, dolphins used as weapons, and so forth. But a well managed zoo with more than just a collection of critters in cages is a boon to any number of endangered species. Apparently each human/animal interaction requires us to think a bit beyond our “love” of critters