As an aside: this is a gotcha question and doesn't fundamentally address the position that animal slaughter is cruel. It relies on an obviously false rhetoric that something performed by non-sapient creatures in an environment where the only way to survive for some creatures is largely through the personal killing of other creatures is morally equivalent to an environment where sapient creatures who have wide dietary availability make the choice to consume the flesh of another creature that has been usually killed for them.
>As an aside: this is a gotcha question and doesn't fundamentally address the position that animal slaughter is cruel.
I don't think so. If you think killing animals is cruel in itself, then you have only two logically consistent options: you either a) change your lifestyle to ensure you don't kill any animals whatsoever, or b) accept that some cruelty is inevitable and set some standard of acceptable cruelty for yourself. Anything else is a symptom of cognitive dissonance.
Neither of these are addressed by equivocating this to wild animals predating.
> I don't understand. You're saying the problem with eating animal meat is not that an animal has to die, but in who does the killing? So it'd be better if each person had to kill their own food, even though it would almost surely result in a lot more waste, and thus a lot more killing?
I don't know if it's better if each person had to kill their own food. I'm not making a prescription on what people should do. I am only pointing out that there are real consequences to the current way we consume meat in a way that damages people and communities in a way that could be described as cruelty.
Yes, because the question is about how "cruelty" is defined. You can either say killing in the wild is cruel or not cruel. If it's not cruel, then how is industrial slaughter cruel? If it is cruel, then one can pose the question of whether it's possible to slaughter industrially humanely.
>I am only pointing out that there are real consequences to the current way we consume meat in a way that damages people and communities in a way that could be described as cruelty.
Umm... Sure, but I think avalys was asking about cruelty to the prey, not to the predator.
That's only true assuming people would keep up their meat consumption levels, which I seriously doubt.
How do you grow crops without killing insects?
It would be really interesting if you could.
Though even before getting that far, humans are participants in one of your scenarios and not the other. What other animal behaviors justify your human behaviors? Can any of them? Does another intelligence have moral justification in farming humans on the same basis?
There are some absurd reductios here that you’d have to sign off on.
A nice example of this is omega 3 and similar: it is actually synthesised in kelp and works its way through the food chain to us with fish as an intermediary. It doesn't have to be that way, it just is right now. B vitamins are a similar story.
... the difference is we can choose not to.
That choice is more important to some people, less important to others.
This depends on which animals people consider to be moral subjects and therefore worthy of moral consideration, rights, and protections.
Some people (vegans) consider all animals as moral subjects. Some people (pescatarians) may consider most animals as moral subjects, but not certain ones like fish.
Most people consider some animals like dogs, cats, and horses, as moral subjects, and not others like cows, chickens, and pigs.
These definitions are unconsciously arrived at by sociocultural factors, but some people consciously arrive at them.
So, I checked my cam for the next couple nights, and found a fox strolling across the property with a chicken in its mouth. I figured they'd eat one, but nope... 7. And he's been back for more since.
What specific reaction are you referring to? Fire isn't the only natural source of heat. Why is evolutionary pressure from fire required for animals to evolve a sense of "something is too hot"? Why is it not sufficient for animals to evolve this due to e.g. exposure to sunlight, with the same mechanism being triggered through fire?
So the lobster feeling that they should ideally move to cooler water makes sense. Evolutionarily it wouldn’t surprise me if they don’t feel like they are in an emergency situation in the same way that a human would if they are standing in a fire.
Is there a "dangerous heat" environmental candidate for lobsters that we can speculate could be sensory-cross-triggered by boiling water? Underwater lava?
http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
Lobsters definitely feel pain at least as a stimulus responding to extreme heat.
Lobsters have nociceptors, special pain-receptors that are “sensitive to potentially damaging extremes of temperature, to mechanical forces, and to chemical substanceswhich are released when body tissues are damaged.”
Humans have similar receptors. Consider if you touch an extremely hot stove and remove your hand before you even realized what happened. That (temperature) pain stimulus is sent to your spinal cord (not your cortex) and then responds by moving your hand before you are consciously aware (through the cortex) of what is going on.
Lobsters do not have anything like the cortex which is involved in pain interpreation for humans (and also pain supression like in extremely traumatic events where a person doesn't feel any pain immediately after losing a limb).
The lack of a pain suppression mechanism is a little scary to think about in the context of being boiled alive, but this could potentially be because lobsters' experience of pain is so radically different from our own that they may not even have use of a pain supressor.
There are interesting anecdotes about people who received frontal lobotomies experiencing pain as a neutral experience that is neither bad or good. As in they feel pain from, but it is not perceived or interpreted as "bad" by them.
Also in general, lobsters are unusually sensitive to temperature among invertebrates, responding to temperature changes in lab studies as small as 1°, and their seasonal migratory patterns also seem to highly motivated by finding their preferred temperatures.
If you drop a lobster in a container of room temperature sea-water, the lobster just kind of sits at the bottom looking for the darkest most isolated space if there is one (normal behaviour) vs boiling sea-water you will notice lobsters trying to use their claws to not be fully submerged, push off the lid, etc... in the 35-45 seconds it takes for boiling water to kill them.
p.s. I hope this response is useful, I wrote it partially to let the mentioned article I just read sink in for myself.
Nature has a lot of horrible deaths, don't get me wrong.
But boiling sensory wise (at least for humans) is similar to immolation (being burned alive) and it unfortunately takes longer to actually kill the person than burning them alive.
Tigers naturally kill prey quickly to avoid injury, often going for the neck.
We hold ourselves to a higher ethical standard in other cases, and maybe we should here too?
If you consider yourself better than other animals then stop comparing your behaviour to theirs and be better.
Animals in the wild obviously do not have any such choice.
2. Necessity: Lions have no supermarkets. 95% of the people reading this can most definitely go vegan (and 99% vegetarian). Just like how self defense and murder are different.
3. Non-existence: 99% of the animals we slaughter we also artificially bred into existence. It's a false equivalence, because those animals wouldn't even exist
4. Practicality: Regulating wild animal feeding behaviour would be stupendously difficult. A vegan world on the other hand is not just possible, but also better for everyone. In zoos, where we can control "wild" animals, we already reduce suffering by not feeding live prey.
[0] while the question "what even is this sentience thing anyway?" remains open, animals-as-food is not environmentally sustainable for 8e9 humans, so ending that is still good even when the ethics has a layer of indirection from suffering
> It's not, but I find it distasteful when people are feeling sad for the crab being boiled, while children are dying of hunger in Yemen because of politicians and their enablers.
The issue why I'm "missing the point" is pretty simple: you say we can only pay attention to one of the two things, but you haven't shown that to be the case. You're just saying that's how it is.
I know you believe that attempting these things sequentially will save more human lives. But until you've shown me that we really can only pay attention to one of the two, sequential attempts will only prolong animal suffering, not shorten human suffering!
But just so you realize, your argument sounds EXACTLY like all the right wingers that suddenly care about all the poor americans once immigrants enter the discussion. Most people that make these arguments care about neither, all they care about is not having to actually do anything and still feel moral.
You are aware, you are implying things. (By the same means I could suppose you want the invasion to succeed a 500K dead later, since you weren't ruling out this chance explicitly.)
Back to the conversation that was happening, it was about hypothetical peace treaties. Are you going to answer the question about your suggested treaty? It was a reasonable question based on your phrasing and you're deflecting. It wasn't some kind of made up gotcha, like your deflection was. And if you won't answer it then you've gone from conversation to trolling.
However, I'm not here to discuss specific politics, just principles of reasoning.
(Isn't this even more at random? How does this contribute to the articulation of the will of the people? Isn't this, why we have such a thing as a political process in the first place? The only thing guaranteed will be slaughtering en mass. Also, if "peace" is just exhaustion, the next round of the conflict will be just around the corner, probably at an even larger scale, compare WWII following WWI. Where is any answer in this? Enforcing treaties – there had been the Minsk agreements, there had been Turkish diplomacy early on – and armistices and following through on this, is, however, at least some answer to the problem. On the other hand, if you reserve for strategic action "beyond politics", this is what you will get eventually. The answer, if there is any, is in removing the strategic option from any armed conflict.)
Funny you should mention the Minsk agreements. Why did Russia not keep to them? Why should we trust them with an armistice considering they already broke the Minsk agreements?
The kicker is: We know that appeasement doesn't work. We know that if Russia gains any territory, they will attack again, and that if they don't the chance of another attack is massively smaller (since the population will not see the current war as a victory, making it political - and most likely literal - suicide). But somehow that doesn't matter to you, just like it doesn't matter to you what happens after the armistice.
But I really don't want to discuss particulars. We may keep in mind, for there being a conflict, there must be several, incompatible perspectives on the subject in question, there have to be "contested concepts". This question of concepts has to be addressed and to be resolved, and this is a political agenda. The question is really, do we want to address the underlying conflict or just the armed escalation, or just a particular of several steps of escalation?
That's the thing - your solution doesn't do this. Your solution makes it clear, beyond any doubt, that armed conflict does resolve disputes. Russia started an armed conflict, and your solution is to give them something in return for stopping (since you've still not mentioned anything about Russia retreating). So I will repeat the same question I've repeated a number of times: HOW DO YOU ENSURE THAT PEACE IS KEPT AFTER THE ARMISTICE? WHAT KEEPS RUSSIA FROM ATTACKING AGAIN? If you really can't give a clear answer to this question, but you keep to your previous solution, you've made it pretty clear what your real goals are.
> However, in order for Austria joining the EU, this conflict had to be dissimulated and eventually resolved, and both sides managed to crack down on the structures supporting the conflict. And, voila, nowadays, this isn't even a topic. In hindsight, it's just a ridiculous episode.
Tell me - during the conflict, how much land did Austria give to Italy, or vice versa? It seems you're talking about a diplomatic solution that you explicitly do not want for Ukraine, since you never mentioned them retreating.
Regarding Austria–Italy as a potential parallel: There are notable differences. There had been an autonomy granted and minority language and cultural rights asserted by Italy, and Austria was the official power of guaranty for the autonomy. Neither of this was ever gained in the Ukraine (some of the rights granted in the previous constitution were eventually revoked). The land in question was the Southern part of Tyrol, with a predominantly German speaking population. (This really goes back to the 19th century and a (failed) military action serving the purpose of a Southern diversion in the greater context of the German unification on the one hand, and the Italian unification on the other hand, and the territory was eventually granted to Italy in the treaty of St. Germain in the aftermath of WWI, as this had been a promised price for Italy switching alignment.)
HOW DO YOU ENSURE THAT PEACE IS KEPT AFTER THE ARMISTICE? WHAT KEEPS RUSSIA FROM ATTACKING AGAIN?
You were contesting the need for a political solution. So, where is your special, proven way? On the other hand, if there's need for a political resolution, why have the military interlude, at all?
If you are ignoring the conflict, assuming, there's just a bad actor and everyone else is just in the right, you're actually part of the problem and the resurgence will be nearly guaranteed. As can be observed in all those amazingly long-lived zones of conflict, where only instability is stable, we've established after WWII and we're constantly adding to. It simply doesn't work.
They're not the one that should have been flagged here, for using all caps for a single line.
At some point - we have to eat something that is alive. Even plants react to being damaged in intentional and measurable ways (including trying to repair themselves, signaling neighbors of the damage, and passing nutrients to each other in response). I think it's impossible to ditch incrementalism, because EVERYTHING we eat is already somewhere on that sliding scale of "something alive that is trying to stay that way".
I am in favor of reducing the harm I am able to, while still acknowledging that simply existing requires that I consume resources (And those resources have to be a living thing, because humans are consumers... not producers). Those resources could have gone to keep another living thing alive, but I am using them. At some point, I expect to die, and it will be something else's turn.
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Also - It would be really, really cool if we could get the whole "KloraDerm" thing going from "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi.
I would LOVE to be able to do photosynthesis.
I also agree that minimizing that pain is a reasonable goal, and worth taking steps to do at most every point we can afford to (and realistically - we are fairly rich as a species, we could be doing better).
I don't particularly agree that forgoing meat consumption entirely is the right call - although reducing it likely is (especially if you live in the US).
I also don't think that just because you happen to be eating a plant, you're off the hook - I think monoculture production and certain farming practices (see: palm oil) are causing suffering on similar scales.
In my opinion - we should be trusting large conglomerates less with our foods (whether they're plant or animal) and doing more production locally. Acknowledging and respecting where the food you eat comes from is a huge step up from where many folks are right now.
Alive and sentient aren't the same thing. You can eat non-sentient beings that are alive (like plants) and they won't suffer.
Define suffer?
It's all very stimulus-response for a plant. If things responding to inputs means they can feel or think, then I suppose single cell organisms and computer programs and doorbells count.
Also - almost every plant out there is capable of repairing damage to itself, which I would take as fairly strong evidence that it prefers to not die. That repair is a complicated and involved process as well, and often includes adaptations that attempt to prevent further damage (ex: Lots of plants signal neighbors when eaten, and those neighbors chemically adjust to change how they taste to the animal eating them).
I'm just saying...
I can vividly picture the alien farting out a cloud of pheromones that essentially say "It's all very stimulus-response for a human - they just begin emitting auditory response to a wide range of stimuli" before he eats them.
There is nothing in plants that should make us believe they can do anything like thinking, certainly short of sentience. They have no neurons, or anything resembling neurons, only cells locked into a grid that behave in deterministic ways. It's not impossible to imagine a system that thinks using chemical signaling alone, but what makes you think plants have this quality?
They respond, for example, to light. The cells can detect light, and this induces chemical signaling that directs the plant on internodal length and direction. We could make a robot or something that does this. Could we say such a thing "wants" light? Probably not, except as a convenience of explanation out of personification.
Or, to summarize, these simple stimulus-response effects are not sufficient to justify a belief that there is intelligence. I suppose it's argumentum ad absurdum.
Let me counter: I do not believe you have sufficiently proven that we ourselves are anything more than chemical signaling mechanisms.
We happen to not understand the signals that the plants are making (we really are only just barely scratching that surface - but we KNOW plants use VOCs to communicate both among themselves as well as much more distinct species like insects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405699/)
We just don't have nearly as much empathy available because that experience is so foreign to our understanding.
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To follow - I find it particularly interesting that people still cling so dearly to your argument as we watch machine learning tackle and overcome many behaviors we considered uniquely human. Those machines can talk just like us, their signals mirror the complexity of our own (and are much more complex than those we currently understand from plants). Does that signaling complexity now mean that it's alive?
I certainly don't think so - I would still call a plant more alive than that machine (at least right now, things are shifting fast here). Yet that machine is using a fairly simple system to process, internalize, and then create complexity that mirrors your own.
I guess I'm saying that I, personally, don't find your moral argument nearly so clear as you seem to be implying that it is. There is no easy out. We are dealing with shades of grey.
This is especially important in developing children.
It isn't at all evident that forcing kids onto a meat-free diet is the best path forward for society as a whole.
Bio-engineering is one route (KloraDerm), but I could see alternative routes that are essentially just chemical/material sciences.
I think it's probably an incredibly complicated supply chain we'd have to really work through to make sure you can synthesize all the required components without going through something living, but we know that producers exist - so there's hope.
Probably not realistic on industrial scale. And then how do you get to the clean starting point...
E-fuel plants do this for synthetic aviation fuel.
You can also do it slightly more indirectly via acetate: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00530-x.pdf
Not necessarily as we could wait for living things to die naturally and then consume them (maybe becoming fungus-like in the process). For livestock, that could possibly create a loophole of farms having conditions that cause a premature death.
With plants, there's the option of following fruitarianism and just eating plant material that falls off such as fruit. (Fruit is unusual when it comes to being consumed as it arguably "wants" to be eaten so that the parent plant can better distribute its seeds). There's problems with following such a fruit heavy diet though and I don't think it's a good idea by itself.
Alternatively, we could go the Soylent Green route?
I guess this is why it's so complicated (and you can't get off the scale). From the perspective of the fruiting plant - I agree with you, it doesn't mind if you eat some fruit. From the perspective of each seed, they'd probably rather you didn't.
And interestingly - if we're willing to go multi-body (since we're admitting that eating fruit is bad for some seeds, but possible advantageous to the species as a whole) I think you'd have to make the same argument for herd animals: It might be bad for a single deer to be eaten, but it's pretty good for the herd if someone happens to remove the weakest single member every now and then.
Anyways... I'm rambling at this point. Not sure why you're getting downvoted but long story short: I hope people acknowledge and respect the things they eat (plants, animals, or other), I'd love to see us move back a step from the automated and industrial production methods we're using right now (Both animals and plants - monoculture crops are a real ecosystem killer) and work to make food something that is local and folks can connect with.
I recall that some seeds are designed to pass through the mammalian digestive system and thus get deposited with some fresh manure in which to grow. Maybe they enjoy the experience.
I just think attempting to apply a moral imperative to how species happen to have adapted to their niche is hard.
Rabbits work around their prey status by rote production - which means if nothing eats them, eventually they go through a large starvation event once they hit the carrying capacity of their habitat.
Chickens are arguably one of the most successful species on the planet right now.
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I am in favor of free ranging animals, I agree that breeding animals moves them more into a niche that requires humans to exist - but I'm not convinced that's bad for them as a species (at least not as long as humans exist, and as a human that's my current preference with some admitted bias).
I think globally - monoculture crops are often also a huge risk, and find that they are destroying other animals indirectly (decimating the population of insects, small mammals, and birds in the area).
So I think the problem is hard, and that responsible stewardship likely means less industrialization in agriculture across the board (both plant and animal) and more local production of food. Intentional hunting grounds reserved for wild populations like turkey and deer (at least in my area) are very much a part of that, so I'm also with you on wild animals when it makes sense.
The dinosaurs didn't die out, they just got a lot smaller.
Secondly, this is utterly IRRELEVANT IN PRACTICE! Your consumption of animals causes far, far, far more plant "deaths" than if you actually just ate plants. BY YOUR OWN LOGIC you should be vegan. Of course, you can also use your logic to go the other way. If it's all the same morally, might as well start eating humans. Us white people have got some experience with that.
> I am in favor of reducing the harm I am able to
Wonderful, that makes you vegan. As in, that is the actual (common) definition of veganism: Reduce suffering and death as far as practicable and possible.
I wish I could stop having to hear people complain about slaughtering delicious animals, so it looks like neither of us is getting what we want.
Concentration depends on what you eat, and iirc you don't need that much protein anyways, if you aren't training/body building.
Tofu has about half the amount of protein per gram then ground beef, tempeh about 85%.
If you really crave protein tvp has between 50 and 70% per gram (absolute, not relative to ground beef) protein depending on the brand. You still need to hydrate it and cook it properly with a good marinade, but then it can pretty easily beat ground beef or even chicken breast in protein by weight.
For quality see the other reply.
Amino Acid Profile: Proteins are composed of amino acids, and the composition of amino acids can vary between animal and plant sources. Animal proteins tend to be "complete proteins" because they contain all the essential amino acids that the body cannot produce on its own. Plant proteins, on the other hand, may be "incomplete proteins" as they may lack or have lower levels of certain essential amino acids. However, by combining different plant protein sources (e.g., legumes with grains or seeds), vegans and vegetarians can achieve a complete amino acid profile.
Digestibility: Animal proteins are generally more easily digested and absorbed by the body compared to plant proteins. This is primarily because animal proteins have a higher biological value, meaning they contain all the essential amino acids in the proportions needed by the human body. Plant proteins, especially those from whole food sources, may be slightly less digestible, but this can be improved by cooking, soaking, fermenting, or sprouting certain plant foods.
Fat Content: Animal proteins often come with varying amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol, depending on the source. Plant proteins, on the other hand, are typically lower in saturated fats and devoid of cholesterol. Plant-based protein sources, such as legumes, tofu, tempeh, and certain nuts and seeds, can be particularly beneficial for individuals seeking lower fat and cholesterol intake.
Fiber and Phytonutrients: Plant proteins are often accompanied by dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients present in the whole plant foods. These components offer additional health benefits and can help support digestive health, cardiovascular health, and overall well-being. Animal proteins, particularly those from lean sources, tend to have less fiber and fewer plant-based nutrients.
Health Implications: Research suggests that the source of protein, whether from animal or plant sources, can have varying effects on health outcomes. High intake of animal protein, especially from processed or red meats, has been associated with increased risks of certain diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Plant protein, when part of a well-balanced diet, has been linked to lower risks of chronic diseases and overall improved health outcomes.A quick anecdote about "combining different plant protein sources": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35917066#35918941
How would you handle animals that are occupying land that you intend to plant crops in?
Good grief. I wish we could skip the incrementalism for once and just put an end to all animal slaughter, extreme or not.