I respect your noble pursuit of not eating meat, and I have encountered arguments similar to yours enough times now that I feel compelled to respond in genuine kindness as someone who does like to eat meat (within "reason").
Animals are benignly cruel to each other beyond your imagination or the production of what nature documentaries will show you. Nature is a fight of survival. No animal wants pain or to be eaten, yet that is the reality that every wild animal faces. The conversation of humanizing animals is very interesting, but in the process we disregard the reality of their natural existence. Their lifespans are short, and often brutal. I weigh the reality of wilderness to the reality of industrial farming and ask myself if there isn't some kind of middle ground. I think there is. You can raise animals in pastures where they free range outside. They have a relatively peaceful, predation, free life after which you consume them (by killing them quickly and painlessly).
I deplore the reality of industrial farming and "agricultural waste". Chickens being raised for one singular body part and then thrown away. We do not treat any of our food with respect, living or otherwise. We are not efficient. We do not care about quality. We don't even try consuming the whole thing. That's where I find this industry disgusting. Meat should not be this disposably cheap.
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/animals-eat-animals
> They have a relatively peaceful, predation, free life after which you consume them
1. No, animals do not have rights.
2. No, animal lives are not morally equal to human lives.
3. No, eating animals is not cruel.
If you disagree with these then that's fine, we can have a discussion about that, but you have to understand that not everyone agrees with you on these points otherwise you'll become that annoying vegan that pushes their beliefs on everyone.
> No, animals do not have rights.
What about pets? Let's talk about dairy industry ... why don't we switch to dog milk? Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk.
Why?
No bugger'll drink it. Plus of course the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.
> No, animal lives are not morally equal to human lives.
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/animals-are-not-intelligen...
> No, eating animals is not cruel.
I won't talk about this until you watch this: https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch (warning: very graphic content).
Then come back and tell me that what we do to the animals is humane and morally ok. Killing (and skinning alive) living beings who don't want to die when you don't have to is not humane.
> otherwise you'll become that annoying vegan
I'm already there ... and I don't care. I'm using my voice for those who can't speak. And they don't matter less than you do.
1. Animal Rights
Animals don't have rights because rights are a human construct. Absent humans, animal rights don't make any sense. Animals can only have "rights" in their relationship to humans, and humans are the ones enforcing those "rights". Therefore I don't think animal rights as a term makes sense. To me, they're closer to societal rules (or laws) for interacting with animals. This also goes for pets.
I don't know what you're getting at with dog's milk. Sure, I'll drink dog milk. Lots of people eat dog all over the world too.
2. Animal lives
Morality is a concept that applies to humans as they deal with other humans. You can only be judged immoral by another human being. A human being slaughtering a cow isn't judged to be immoral by the cow, because the cow has no concept of morality, only survival.
Therefore, the unprovoked killing of animals is not inherently immoral, like killing humans is. However, the purpose and method can be deemed immoral.
3. Eating animals is not immoral
Killing an animal for food is acceptable to me, and to the vast majority of people, since it is something we are all subject to in nature. Having food preferences is also not immoral. Bears and other animals have food preferences. Therefore choosing to eat meat instead of something else is not immoral.
However, I believe causing undue harm and cruelty are immoral. I don't want to contribute to a system that enables that cruelty.
4. Dominion
I don't know why you linked me this. I've already seen it. I know how fucked up industrial farming is. That doesn't mean eating animals is immoral.
Lastly, I disagree that they don't matter less than me. They do, I think humans are more important than animals.
Actually, many non-human animals have been shown to have strong view on fairness .
If we assume evolution is mostly correct, then the assumption that "morality" only originated in humans is rather suspect; it should be a component of every social animal.
Cows are herd animals. Thus very likely to have a sense of morality.
Morals are a specifically human societal feature.
These two things are intrinsically tied in practice. The utopia where well cared for animals feed 8 billion people does not exist, and cannot exist without many more earths.
Try going vegan for say... a year. Make it a fun game. You get to try out some new foods and restaurants! You can always start eating meat again if you decide you want to take part in the stuff you saw watching Dominion.
You don't even have to give up pedantic moral discussions and infighting (i.e. the distinction between "fucked up" and "immoral"). Those are deeply entrenched traditions in the vegan community!
> Therefore, the unprovoked killing of animals is not inherently immoral
So, killing a human newborn is not immoral because it cannot judge its killer?
> Killing an animal for food is acceptable to me, and to the vast majority of people, since it is something we are all subject to in nature. Having food preferences is also not immoral. Bears and other animals have food preferences. Therefore choosing to eat meat instead of something else is not immoral.
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/eating-meat-is-personal-ch...
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/animals-eat-animals
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/ancestors-ate-meat
I would also argue that food preferences / choices leading to the destruction of the environment / ecosystems are not moral.
> I know how fucked up industrial farming is. That doesn't mean eating animals is immoral
> I believe causing undue harm and cruelty are immoral. I don't want to contribute to a system that enables that cruelty.
But you contribute to it ... you vote with your money and purchase animal products. It's nothing else than your choice, it's not a necessity. A life of those animals is full of harm and cruelty. You've seen Dominion, you know.
> I think humans are more important than animals.
That thinking got us here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
Killing a human newborn is immoral because it has the capacity of moral thought, even if at the moment that capacity isn't developed. But morality is a grey area, it's not like that's always true since I think abortions aren't immoral either.
On your other points, it seems like you really have the industrial farming and meat eating concepts so tightly wound in your brain that you can't possibly understand that they don't have to go together.
And no, prioritizing human lives over animals didn't get us here. Capitalism did. Even if we all stopped eating animal products tomorrow, we're still fucked.
As a member of an older school farming community, livestock make natural fertilizer and meat from grass, bugs, and surplus grain. They play an important role in completing the nutrient cycle. Meat ends up being a bit of a luxury (limited quantities), but it's a product of sustainable land use imo
False equivalences abound. Do you argue against people legally consuming marijuana because the cartels skin people alive?
> And they don't matter less than you do.
Do you think life in prison or even the death penalty should be on the table for a drunk driver that hits and kills a pregnant skunk? Because that’s what would happen if it was a pregnant woman instead.
Skinning people alive is not vegan. Humans are animals too.
> Do you think life in prison or even the death penalty should be on the table for a drunk driver that hits and kills a pregnant skunk? Because that’s what would happen if it was a pregnant woman instead.
Driving over a sentient being with your car is not vegan, skunk or woman, pregnant or not.
I'm not being sarcastic. Vegans are so often accused of not caring about humans that some people actually believe the FUD, and you might be one of them.
I didn’t say it was. But you support it if you smoke marijuana by the logic being proposed.
> Driving over a sentient being with your car is not vegan, skunk or woman, pregnant or not.
I didn’t say it was. But the equivalence of animal and human life leads to the conclusion that life in prison (or the death penalty) would be appropriate for the “murder” of the skunk.
Parent was saying killing animals to eat them is not necessarily cruel. All animals die. In nature, this death is often painful and drawn out. Farming, with very little compromise, can be immensely more humane that what the average wild animal experiences. It is often not, but that can be fixed, both by the individual (buy from local less horrible farms) and by society (better regulation).
All that being said, I mostly avoid meat and dairy due to concerns over animal treatment.
We eventually saved the mother, but that donkey was truly scarred. For about two years, I would of said that donkey was clinically depressed. It really changed my perspective on just how intelligent animals actually are, and I’m sure they feel complex emotions just like us.
I had never paid much attention to donkeys until the neighbours got one a couple years ago. They really are a fascinatingly emotive and sensitive animal and more like a pet than typical livestock. It comes up to the fence to socialize with us and get snuggles, and rubs noses with our border collies. It plays with their German Shepherd and with their kids in the yard. It likes to snuggle. It is protective of the miniature goats and sheep that it cohabits with.
I expected it to be more similar to a horse, but it's different. Far less aloof. Kind of want one of my own now.
There is nothing "ecologically" sound about keeping cows alive and burping on the cheapest feed available. This is not a criticism of your response, just pointing out that these kinds of cliches become culturally embedded after a certain amount of time, even if they do not reflect the reality.
That distress has to get into the milk; this is one of the pathways of epigenetic regulation -- meaning the distress is heritable, and may impact cross-species.
And it is a completely unneccessary practice. See https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en/find-connect/project...
On this farm, calves are kept with cows for 5 months after birth.
The heavily-processed vegetable-based "product" aggressively marketed to you has been shipped halfway round the world, having been farmed using just about the least sustainable farming practices imaginable.
Which one is harming the environment?
Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles.
Many of the foods people assume to come by air are actually transported by boat – avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate ... only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.
People will instead say nonsense like, “corporations are the problem.”
I think it’s great that you’re taking steps to reduce your impact on the world (I’ve made many myself: no meat, no kids, no driving, no flying, small dense housing), but honestly don’t get your hopes up for anyone else following suit.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
People will just vote it down. And not just the rich; the middle classes, the working classes, practically anyone who stands to lose even a few dollars or a few luxuries. People will only accept regulations that don’t affect themselves.
However I understand that people do need to eat something, and thus I would encourage people to consider their diet based on the more complex plane than vegetarian vs meat. Most food, especially cheap food, do have negative consequences on the environment. If you can, look into the background of food you buy, alternative raise and farm your own food (chickens are excellent pets and one of the best way to keep grass down without using machinery, and they eat practically everything that would go into a compost). It doesn't scale but it do reduce the problem. Those that want to take a even bigger step can try the few environment friendly choices like say seaweed and shellfish. There is zero risk of mussel genocide, through one has to be aware of the farming method.
80% of the population will starve to death if we do this. Is that what you want?
Long term we could have farming that has zero environmental impact, like vertical farming with fully contained and controlled environment. It would cost huge amount of money and with the current economical system it would be impossible to feed everyone on the planet, but the technology is technically there.
Right now however, a person should to take into account the environmental impact that different food has. Going into a store and buying a avocado will leave the buyer with some blood on their hands. They can try to reduce the amount of blood by making a difference choice depending on how a specific food is produced, but it will be more complex than just looking if it contains meat.
There ~are some plant products with well publicized ethical or sustainability scandals like coffee, chocolate, date palm, and avocados, that are worthy of looking into once you've already gone vegan. By all means look into those and try to source them carefully if you can or add them to your boycott, but be careful not to buy into the greenwashing false-equivalence that because some plant products ~are wasteful, it's OK to eat meat.
Being a mass murder of fewer victim than some other mass murders can be an important distinction for some people.
Still I would highlight that a small scale farmer or hobbyist who raises his own animals has likely less blood on their hand than a vegan who live in a city and eat imported fresh veggies.
There is also the aspect of long term strategies. Vegan diets are not sustainable and long term we do need to change how we produce food. Shell fish and seaweed are one of the few sources of food that we could produce in very large quantities without harming the environment around us. Insect farms would be an alternative, but those seems much less likely to be effective in term of changing the world.
There is a lot of green washing in crop farming. Practically all production of artificial fertilizers uses natural gas, and leaks from those operations is one of the major contributors to global warming. We have waters as large as the Baltic ocean being turned into a desert from runoff. People may feel happy to not eat fish, but fish were killed in order to produce the food that people eat. The deaths "just" happen to be a byproduct that accumulate slowly under the surface, and slowly moves towards mass extinction.
Animal farming in EU is reliant on Brazilian soy from Amazon. Nowhere on the packet you'll read this. But sure, blame avocado toasts, and ignore the fact that avocados grow on trees and as such are (may be) very sustainable. Just don't do the same stupid stuff as californians do with their almond monocultures.
> small scale farmer or hobbyist who raises his own animals has likely less blood on their hand than a vegan who live in a city and eat imported fresh veggies
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/vegans-kill-animals-too
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
> Vegan diets are not sustainable
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... - Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets - if the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all - a well planned vegan diet is suitable for people of all ages
https://plantbasednews.org/news/plant-based-lifestyles-imper... ... Plant-Based Lifestyles Now ‘Imperative’ For Survival, IPCC Climate Expert Says
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-chea... - Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study
https://www.tech-paper.com/2022/07/plant-based-meat-by-far-b... - Plant-based meat by far the best climate investment, report finds
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
"Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products (table S13) (35) has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8 to 3.3) billion ha (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 6.6 (5.5to 7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction); acidification by 50% (45 to 54%); eutrophication by 49% (37 to 56%); and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year."
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw9908
"In total, the “no animal products” scenario delivers a 28% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy relative to 2010 emissions (table S17)."
https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114449
"Our study finds that all dietary patterns cause more GHGEs than the 1.5 degrees global warming limit allows. Only the vegan diet was in line with the 2 degrees threshold, while all other dietary patterns trespassed the threshold partly to entirely."
> There is a lot of green washing in crop farming.
Sure.
https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow... - The meat industry is borrowing tactics from Big Oil to obfuscate the truth about climate change
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/09/academy-nutr... - group shaping US nutrition receives millions from big food industry
> artificial fertilizers uses natural gas, and leaks from those operations is one of the major contributors to global warming
At least 75% of those fertilizers are used for animal farming ( https://ourworldindata.org/land-use )
I think you also missed that I earlier said that small scale farming and hobbyists are not scalable. There is just not enough land to feed everyone using those farming techniques. A person raising a few chickens do not need to also have a corn farm to feed them. They can just let the chicken eat grass on the yard. Large scale factory farms however do not have enough yards outside the house to feed millions of chicken, so they need to use large scale farming of animal feed. Those two farming techniques are distinctly different.
No data and no sources don't either.
> you also missed that I earlier said that small scale farming and hobbyists are not scalable
I may have, and I don't agree. Take those vast grazing areas and crop land for production of the animal feed and there would be plenty of land for both new forests and new small scale farms doing the farming the right way (fruits, vegetables, small fields with plenty of trees in between, ponds and a lot of biodiversity).
> Large scale factory farms
We don't really need those. We have them now, and it may look now like its the only thing that could support our civilization, but that's the big ag propaganda talking - there are many other systems of farming we could switch to.
It may look very different, but the effectivity may/would be many times higher than it's now - it would need new machinery and it's knowledge intensive, but it was proven it can be done (see syntropic agriculture, food forests, agroforestry, permaculture atc.).
Some changes are needed on political & economic level, but agriculture production is a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries, so there's that.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
From the article
> "It's devastating," he said. "This is more than just an income issue for me. It's an inability to do what I love. So, on a financial level and on a personal level, it's devastating."
I'm glad it's a financial loss. Nobody should be a commodity. And it's wrong that it's what somebody loves to do.
If I didn’t raise these animals they just wouldn’t have existed to begin with. So I do feel bad they have to die but I also gave them a great life.
The idea that continuing to live is a personal decision is tempting as a part of a moral code (Ayn Rand takes this idea to absurd conclusions, for example.), but depression/suffering must be ~extremely severe for people to get over their self-preservation instinct. You are ~not, in any meaningful way, making a conscious decision to continue living for the rest of your natural life. You never gave consent to be in the situation you're in as a human being, and the animals you're raising ~certainly didn't.
It was so easy to stop eating animal "products". The whole thing started to seem obscene, like a nightmare - ads on TV trying to tempt people to eat slaughtered baby sheep etc. I thought I'd miss the taste of meat but never have. (I feel so weird writing that sentence now.)
I encourage everyone reading this not to be a part of the problem, to stop contributing to this desecration. If no-one ate meat, this genocide of sea life would just stop. For every person that stops, we get closer to that. I realize in some cultures, it's not so simple, but in many, it is.