So if Star Trek is to be believed in the future most food will be made from reorganized matter and energy. So this begs the question, for an ethical vegan, meaning a vegan who refuses to eat animal products primarily due to ethical rather than heath reasons, is a replicated steak ok or would it be forbidden? Keeping in mind the matter used to make the steak was probably hydrogen atoms or some other inorganic material.
If you killed an animal to make the original steak, why wouldn’t it be forbidden?
If you didn’t kill an animal, but made a synthetic original steak, how is that different from soy burgers?
Because the cow is already dead at this point, and buying a replica of its steak does not lead to more animals being killed.
At some point Keiko O’Brian was aghast that her mother-in-law handled “real meat”. That gives the impression that eating dead animal is generally thought of as “gross”, even if the replicated meal looks exactly the same.
Well, fair enough. So we’re never killing another animal again? All steaks we eat henceforth are made of non-animalistic matter, and based on the transporter pattern of a past steak?
Yeah, screw it, I’d eat the steak. Or, I wouldn’t, I don’t like steak. But if I did, I would.
Well, there are people who won’t eat certain plant foods because they resemble animal flesh. I also recall a friend of a friend being so proud of her little daughter who, when offered some animal crackers, said “I can’t eat those, they’re animals!”
:rolleyes:
No doubt there will be some who wouldn’t eat replicated meat because of what it represents.
Tranya!!!
Made from Bandersnatch milk.
.
Some people in the future still eat organic food (as opposed to replicated food). Benjamin Sisko’s father taught him to cook, believing that replicated food was lacking, and he owned a restaurant. Will Riker went fishing in Alaska with his father and also learned to cook. I’m sure most people replicated their own food by the 24th century, but there were still some who preferred fresh food every now and then.
What if the replicator recycles poop atoms to make the steak, bearing in mind that the poop contained billions of living bacteria from your gut; but that these bacteria would have died anyway?
Really? Are you implying that there are vegans (barring any who might be clinically insane) who give a rat’s ass about the death of bacteria? I very much doubt that to be the case, as vegans eat plants, and bacteria are even stupider than plants.
Your problem here is more likely to be with the “poop” aspect. Although I would expect that, in the Star Trek universe, eating replicated food made from poop atoms is pretty much routine.
BTW, since we’re talking about Star Trek: These answers may not apply if by “Vegan” you mean someone who lives in the Vega star system.
Thread relocated to Cafe Society from IMHO.
I’ve know several vegetarians and one vegan who have said they’d gladly eat “vat grown” meat that was never attached to any sort of brain or nervous system. Presumably, replicated steak would fall under the same heading.
In TNG we got this (of course in that ep the issue was that these particular aliens needed to eat their food animals live, not processed). You do wonder, once you pause to think about it, if the transporter pattern recorded in the replicators for the simfood did originate from actual animal flesh, whether that was already-slaughtered, or on-the-hoof (so that the replicator computer later runs a simulation of virtual butchering and cooking to create the served meal). If the latter, which would mean no harm was done to the living model animal, well why not.
Unless we’re talking about the insufferables who just absolutely object to ever getting any sort of use whatsoever out of an animal. Let them eat ricecakes. (remember though that notwhitstanding that clip, Riker did not seem to have any compunction about fresh live gagh)
As for opposing views, in ST6 one of the Klingons, looking at the set banquet, asked something like “how long has that bird been dead”? And in very early TOS the galley is ordered to take the reconstituted meatloaf and try to simulate turkey out of it (this one being obviously just the writers throwing in an old military mess joke).
I get the impression that vat-grown meat isn’t very far off, so the discussion may be moving away from the theoretical.
Isn’t that…all of them? 
The canon suggests yes. Vulcans push that whole IDIC thing that makes them all vegetarians. Yet we know that Tuvok bought chili dogs for breakfast (when they were in the 20th Century). This suggests that he has eaten hot dogs from the replicator, and thus didn’t realize the real ones contain meat.
Like I said, just a suggestion–but coupled with the fact that all vegan complaints seem to go away when a replicator exists, and it seems a pretty good head-canon.
Of course, alternatively, not all Vulcans take the IDIC to mean they must be vegetarians. Maybe Tuvok is a rare meat eater.
Sometimes a Medium-rare eater…
“Infinite Combinations” ought to include surf ‘n’ turf.
Logically, Captain, if replicated hot dogs are ok for Vegans (I keep wanting to say Vogons), then it follows that replicated barbecued human flesh should be okay for all of us.
By that analogy, I can see that perhaps there is an argument for Vegans declining the replicated hot dogs.