Vegetarianism

[NikolaiI]

Hello, I wanted to bring this up. I'm not judging people for their diet-choice of non-vegetarianism, because that would be hypocritical since I ate meat off and on for a few years. However I wished to share some thoughts (in quotes) which struck me. I'm excluding quotes which are more graphic or which attempt to shock, as I don't think it's necessary or necessarily effective. My goal is simply to encourage people to become or at least think about becoming vegetarian.


To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.
Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
Henry David Thoreau

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
George Bernard Shaw


Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
Leonardo da Vinci

If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling -- killing.
Leo Tolstoy

The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
Thomas More

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904- )

[Mortis Anarchy]

I've been an on/off vegetarian for the past few years...whenever I do eat meat, I avoid red meats, especially pork and beef. But I do eat chicken now...but where I buy my groceries they have a lot of cage-free products as well as hormone free. My vegan friend calls me a conscious eater, which I would agree with. It really isn't that hard, especially with all of the options now for vegetarians/vegans.:)

I really like that Singer and Gandhi quote. Very powerful.

[AshleyMare]

I've been a lacto-ove vegetarian for I think seven months and it's probably one of the best decisions I've made in my life so far. Although it does mean going through a conversation about it every time someone finds out I'm a vegetarian, but I deal with it. Ha.

[PierreGringoire]

I've thought about this. Have you ever thought about what I'm about to say?:
There are many main classes of animals.
You have: reptiles, amphibians, birds (animals that lay eggs),... and mammals.
Mammals are most like us. So don't eat mammals but eat everything else. (very incomplete argument).

I think eating a diet of vegetables is very stimulating for your moral values (It makes you a better person), (provided you don't eat twinkies and doritos as substitutes). Its very plain and its humbling because of that. It also promotes consciousness of everything else you eat. And sometimes all you need is a little stimulus to do the "right thing" in life, and feeling refreshed all the time becasue of a super healthy vegetarian diet can limit the negative effects you have on other people because of poor eating choices/habits which may promote a certain amount of irritablility. Life is about limiting the variables.

[mayneverhave]

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
George Bernard Shaw

This is absurd rhetoric. The act of burying an acorn in order to grow it into an oak is the reproduction cycle of trees - what amounts to two sheep copulating to produce a new sheep.

That's as stupid as saying "If I inseminate a fertile sheep with an acorn, nothing comes of it (except sheer discomfort). How useless acorns are!"


Life is about limiting the variables.

How un-Falstaffian of you.

[NikolaiI]

I've thought about this. Have you ever thought about what I'm about to say?:
There are many main classes of animals.
You have: reptiles, amphibians, birds (animals that lay eggs),... and mammals.
Mammals are most like us. So don't eat mammals but eat everything else. (very incomplete argument).

I think eating a diet of vegetables is very stimulating for your moral values (It makes you a better person), (provided you don't eat twinkies and doritos as substitutes). Its very plain and its humbling because of that. It also promotes consciousness of everything else you eat. And sometimes all you need is a little stimulus to do the "right thing" in life, and feeling refreshed all the time becasue of a super healthy vegetarian diet can limit the negative effects you have on other people because of poor eating choices/habits which may promote a certain amount of irritablility. Life is about limiting the variables.

Kind of. I feel strongly about it anyway, that it's so much, so much better not to eat any animals at all. When I did become fully vegetarian it was such a relief, and it helped me grow a lot. Are you a vegetarian then too?


This is absurd rhetoric. The act of burying an acorn in order to grow it into an oak is the reproduction cycle of trees - what amounts to two sheep copulating to produce a new sheep.

That's as stupid as saying "If I inseminate a fertile sheep with an acorn, nothing comes of it (except sheer discomfort). How useless acorns are!"

You may be right that it's out of place. I probably should have used a different quote from Shaw. Do you think the rest of the quotes are equally meaningless/stupid?


I've been an on/off vegetarian for the past few years...whenever I do eat meat, I avoid red meats, especially pork and beef. But I do eat chicken now...but where I buy my groceries they have a lot of cage-free products as well as hormone free. My vegan friend calls me a conscious eater, which I would agree with. It really isn't that hard, especially with all of the options now for vegetarians/vegans.:)

I really like that Singer and Gandhi quote. Very powerful.

No, no, it's not that hard at all, although it does exclude the majority of restaurants (at least in America). That's how I was for a couple of years but I really regret it and I won't eat meat anymore.. thanks for your reply!


I've been a lacto-ove vegetarian for I think seven months and it's probably one of the best decisions I've made in my life so far. Although it does mean going through a conversation about it every time someone finds out I'm a vegetarian, but I deal with it. Ha.

I feel that way about my decision too. Thanks for the response.

[PierreGringoire]

I am not a vegetarian. But I realize its potential.

[Petronius]

In order to provide vegetal food for consumers, crops and orchards must replace natural ecosystems. Even the animals that thrive in such environments, such as rodents, insects and birds have to be kept in check, otherwise the harvest would be compromised.
The plants' lives and evolutionary paths are also controlled by humans; less productive species and subspecies will be weeded out. Extensive agriculture is a much more sinister human activity than, let's say, hunting, as it asserts control over entire species rather than individuals, and entire habitats are siezed for the better manipulation of said species.

Regarding the benefits of green food, Einstein is certainly entiteled to his opinion, but note that he said "evolve" rather than "suddenly change". Also note that the planet's most resourcefull species are omnivores, followed by carnivores and insectivores. Our lifestyles demand a lot of energy and a variety of nutrients. An ox may be strong (he isn't as smart as a tiger though), but he also has a different metabolysm than humans. We can't survive on grass. We are not ruminators and such a diet would get us sick in a short time. Even if we go for green food, which I consider to be a good and healthy idea by the way, we require diversity and complexity in the menu.
But if all the globe's human population switches exclusively to such a menu, it would be very hard or impossible to supply for the demand, especially without further harming the environment.

I think the situation is far more complex than thinking wether or not the thing in your plate was able to move and had to be killed to get there (plants are alive too by the way, when you eat a carrot you destroy the whole biological entity). Life feeds on life, such is the natural way. What should actually concern us is susteinability and genetic future of the species involved in our food chain. I think that's the trully responsible/enlightened perspective.

[blp]

In order to provide vegetal food for consumers, crops and orchards must replace natural ecosystems. Even the animals that thrive in such environments, such as rodents, insects and birds have to be kept in check, otherwise the harvest would be compromised.
The plants' lives and evolutionary paths are also controlled by humans; less productive species and subspecies will be weeded out. Extensive agriculture is a much more sinister human activity than, let's say, hunting, as it asserts control over entire species rather than individuals, and entire habitats are siezed for the better manipulation of said species.

Regarding the benefits of green food, Einstein is certainly entiteled to his opinion, but note that he said "evolve" rather than "suddenly change". Also note that the planet's most resourcefull species are omnivores, followed by carnivores and insectivores. Our lifestyles demand a lot of energy and a variety of nutrients. An ox may be strong (he isn't as smart as a tiger though), but he also has a different metabolysm than humans. We can't survive on grass. We are not ruminators and such a diet would get us sick in a short time. Even if we go for green food, which I consider to be a good and healthy idea by the way, we require diversity and complexity in the menu.
But if all the globe's human population switches exclusively to such a menu, it would be very hard or impossible to supply for the demand, especially without further harming the environment.

I think the situation is far more complex than thinking wether or not the thing in your plate was able to move and had to be killed to get there (plants are alive too by the way, when you eat a carrot you destroy the whole biological entity). Life feeds on life, such is the natural way. What should actually concern us is susteinability and genetic future of the species involved in our food chain. I think that's the trully responsible/enlightened perspective.

I'm sorry, but this is entirely wrong. What your argument ignores, Petronius, is how very much more intensive animal farming is than arable farming. It's not hard to work out at least one reason why: farm animals have to be fed on something, so vast tracts of land are used to farm grains and grasses to feed them when the same land could have been used to farm crops for human consumption. And that's not to mention all the acreages of rain-forest destroyed to make way for ruminants, predominantly cows, to graze, a double or even triple environmental whammy: destruction of the rain-forest contributes to global warming, cow dung releases methane - more warming - numerous other species lose their habitats and indigenous people lose their traditional sources of sustenance; and finally, the soil in these areas is actually unsuited to growing grass, so, after a while, the cattle farmers have to move on, destroying more forest and leaving the land effectively barren (and highly susceptible to flooding). Did I say triple? Forget it. I've lost count. It's just like, really ****ing totally ****, basically.

As the (vast) population of China becomes wealthier as a whole, their demand for meat increases and this is one of the factors commonly cited to explain increasing food shortages globally. Not that westerners with their extraordinarily high consumption of meat have any right to point the finger. Under current conditions, there is a direct correlation between the number of meat eaters in the world and the number of people going hungry. And the latter, resulting from the former, are by far the larger number, increasing exponentially. If sustainability is really what you're concerned with, a vast increase in vegetarianism globally would be a major step towards this.



Life feeds on life, such is the natural way.

By which you mean that eating meat is natural. Be very very cautious about using nature to justify anything. As Brecht said, 'We should never mistake what is common for what is natural.' There are many many incidences of humans surviving very well indeed without meat. In fact, they tend, in the main, to live longer without it, perhaps because a diet dependent on vegetables, especially one that includes a lot of nuts and pulses, is liable to contain a much more varied range of nutrients than one dependent on meat. Ever hear of the wealthy woman who would eat nothing but chicken - and died of malnutrition? Besides, meat is certainly harder for humans to digest.

It's quite right what you say about omnivores being the most resourceful species - and it gives the lie to your later remarks about different metabolisms. The point is that ours are adaptable. We're lucky enough to be able to gain nutrition from a huge variety of foodstuffs. Distinct from other animals, we're also able to make rational and ethical choices.

[Petronius]

I'm sorry, but this is entirely wrong. What your argument ignores, Petronius, is how very much more intensive animal farming is than arable farming. It's not hard to work out at least one reason why: farm animals have to be fed on something, so vast tracts of land are used to farm grains and grasses to feed them when the same land could have been used to farm crops for human consumption. And that's not to mention all the acreages of rain-forest destroyed to make way for ruminants, predominantly cows, to graze, a double or even triple environmental whammy: destruction of the rain-forest contributes to global warming, cow dung releases methane - more warming - numerous other species lose their habitats and indigenous people lose their traditional sources of sustenance; and finally, the soil in these areas is actually unsuited to growing grass, so, after a while, the cattle farmers have to move on, destroying more forest and leaving the land effectively barren (and highly susceptible to flooding). Did I say triple? Forget it. I've lost count. It's just like, really ****ing totally ****, basically.

Very good points. However, agriculture includes animal farming, at least where I come from, so I did not exclude it from being anti-environmental.
That doesn't mean though that crops are entirely eco-friendly and they don't involve any destruction of life.
Exclude milk and eggs that these animals produce for us, as well as their meat, and you would only replace one kind of farm land with another (you said it yourself). There is a difference between irresponsible agricultural habits and the unsustainability of that branch of agriculture. The problem with south american countries is that they have relatively little land for planting crops; they mostly produce coffee, cocoa and soy (which some vegetarians use), for which there is more world-wide demand and helps their economy. That they feel entitled to practice animal farming in such unusual and destructive ways is a consequence to this.


If sustainability is really what you're concerned with, a vast increase in vegetarianism globally would be a major step towards this.

No, the only thing that would help sustainability is decrease of human population. Vegetarianism might, on short term, seem like a good idea (although I have severe doubts that an entirely plant-based diet would be as healthy as it is claimed and that it would not require a similarly strict control to prevent negative side effects), but even if it is sustainable now, it would only lead to a new wave of ignorant confidence and relief, further increasing the rate of growth for human population and eventually straining our natural resources.


By which you mean that eating meat is natural. Be very very cautious about using nature to justify anything. As Brecht said, 'We should never mistake what is common for what is natural.' There are many many incidences of humans surviving very well indeed without meat. In fact, they tend, in the main, to live longer without it, perhaps because a diet dependent on vegetables, especially one that includes a lot of nuts and pulses, is liable to contain a much more varied range of nutrients than one dependent on meat. Ever hear of the wealthy woman who would eat nothing but chicken - and died of malnutrition? Besides, meat is certainly harder for humans to digest.

It's quite right what you say about omnivores being the most resourceful species - and it gives the lie to your later remarks about different metabolisms. The point is that ours are adaptable. We're lucky enough to be able to gain nutrition from a huge variety of foodstuffs. Distinct from other animals, we're also able to make rational and ethical choices.

Some people are allergic to things like nuts, berries and citrics, which makes me wonder if extensive, sustained consumption can't at some point be harmful for a healthy person as well.
I never claimed humans can't survive without meat, or that we shouldn't eat less meat and more fruits/vegetables, but why exclude animal products entirely? According to a study (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/516S), vegetarianism helps lower the risk for heart disease, but has a higher risk for stomach cancer than a meat-eating diet. In fact, it was found that fish-eaters actually have the healthiest lives, followed closely by diary & egg-including vegetarians and occasional meat eaters (these two having the same overall mortality ratio). Vegans actually fare just as bad as regular meat-consumers in terms of mortality rates.

Omnivores are resourceful precisely because they can combine and switch between multiple diets and gain benefits from either or both, not because they can regress right back to being herbivores (or carnivores for that matter).
I think not eating animal products for moral issues linked to the killing of individuals is a bit silly, because those animals will still be part of a food chain, being hunted or fighting for resources, wether we intervene or not and yes, that is very natural.

[Jozanny]

Oh come on. Life, in order to be sustaining, is a process of consumption, and primates eat meat, not all of them, but it is in the species. One can take issue with the morality of industrialized farming of herd animals, like cattle and horses and pigs, and I have an intrinsic distaste for blood sport, though I accept hunters who hunt to put food on the table, but plants have a right to life as well, if one is going to take it that far, but if the grass isn't cropped, the herds starve, and if the herds aren't stalked, the health of the herd suffers. What humans do badly is to compete unfairly, and slaughter our high end competitors and herds alike in too vast a quantity, and the irony of that will be we're setting the stage for our own vast die off, because we eliminate diversity. I do not think we can ultimately survive on corn force fed to cattle, as is done in the US, which has an epidemic of heart disease due to it.

Respect for life is one thing, but accepting that life has to die for life that needs to eat is just as valid. I don't like it when my cats kill mice, but as carnivores that is what they do, and I dispose of said remains, however unpleasant, but if someone killed my cats I'd probably do my damnest to commit murder in return--it is killing in malice that humans have to answer for.

Well, lions kill in malice, but that is balanced biological competition, and we won that game before recorded history, and should have the decency to keep our aggression in check. This doesn't mean an all green diet is right for our design type.

[hoope]

Oh God Nikolai! ... Do u mean eating Meat is not good ?
Even chicken :-( ............i love grilled chicken but lamb meat not much i can stop that .

well .. lets get to the point ! Ok i agree with the idea that eating more vergetables is healthier & better for us ( medical side ) But that doesn't mean we should stop eating meat at all.. our body need special proteins that are present in meat, components that we need for our survival that are not available in vegetables. Now that is why Eating meat was never forbidden, eating other animals might be quite harsh but its not a crime . And God has created all these creature for helping human being .
Though , I guess its not hard to stop eating meat & becoming a vegetarian. But honestly i have never tired so, nor i met someone who is.?
Do vegetarian eat egg ? lol ( well i know they don't eat chicken but what about the egg) .

[bazarov]

Once when I get why is homo homini lupus, they I will think with why is homo lupo lupus!

Killing of an animal for food and leather is a moral crime, but wearing diamonds that made some kid suffer and being tortured somewhere in Africa is OK? Vegetarianism is one of the most hypocritic issues in todays society; if it isn't from health or ''I don't like it's taste'' reasons.

[blp]

Very good points. However, agriculture includes animal farming, at least where I come from, so I did not exclude it from being anti-environmental.
That doesn't mean though that crops are entirely eco-friendly and they don't involve any destruction of life.

My argument wasn't about the ethics of destruction of life and I wasn't trying to put forward a plan for perfectly eco-friendly farming. All I was trying to do was refute the idea you seemed to be putting forward that, if we switched as a global population to a vegetarian diet, it would be very difficult to meet the world's needs. The point is, land used for farming plants can feed many many more people than land used for farming animals and there is a direct relationship between the demand, in wealthy countries, for meat, and food shortages in poorer countries.



Exclude milk and eggs that these animals produce for us, as well as their meat, and you would only replace one kind of farm land with another (you said it yourself).


Did I? You'd replace very low-yield farmland with very high-yield farmland.



There is a difference between irresponsible agricultural habits and the unsustainability of that branch of agriculture. The problem with south american countries is that they have relatively little land for planting crops; they mostly produce coffee, cocoa and soy (which some vegetarians use), for which there is more world-wide demand and helps their economy. That they feel entitled to practice animal farming in such unusual and destructive ways is a consequence to this.

That rich countries have a very high demand for meat is what perpetuates this. Take away the demand and the practice would stop.



No, the only thing that would help sustainability is decrease of human population.

The only thing? Sorry, but this is a simplistic argument and it touches on subjects too big to go into here. Suffice it to say, populations increase most rapidly in conditions of poverty. In wealthier countries, indigenous populations are actually in decline. Ergo, increase wealth in the poorer countries and the likelihood is, populations would shrink there too. How to do this is what's too big to go into here.



Vegetarianism might, on short term, seem like a good idea (although I have severe doubts that an entirely plant-based diet would be as healthy as it is claimed and that it would not require a similarly strict control to prevent negative side effects), but even if it is sustainable now, it would only lead to a new wave of ignorant confidence and relief, further increasing the rate of growth for human population and eventually straining our natural resources.


Like wha-?

OK, it's true you can't eat just any veggie diet and be OK. You need to make sure you get your basics: protein, B12, iron, calcium etc. But that's not that hard and a lot cheaper than getting it from meat. Anyway, tons of meat eaters are malnourished because they don't know the right things to eat either. Just making sure you've got a lot of meat in your diet is not the way to ensure health.

'increasing the rate of growth for human population'? Er, so what you're saying is, a global veggie diet might be too beneficial for humanity? I'm really really tempted to break Godwin's law at this point. No, wait, I can get around it: Well hark at you, Mr. Malthus. Perhaps you'd like to put forward your own modest proposal (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html) for addressing both over-population and food scarcity.

The following piece, by a leading environmentalist, tackles the population question head on and deals specifically with the question of food production near the end, backing up my points about the wastefulness of large-scale meat production. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/29/politics.greenpolitics



Some people are allergic to things like nuts, berries and citrics, which makes me wonder if extensive, sustained consumption can't at some point be harmful for a healthy person as well.

Sustained consumption of...what? Vegetable matter? Sorry, but this is just empty scaremongering. The world of edible plants is extremely varied. There isn't a nutritionist in the world who'd suggest going without any vegetable matter because there's no way you could get enough nutrition if you did. Everything you get from meat, however, can be got without eating meat.



I never claimed humans can't survive without meat, or that we shouldn't eat less meat and more fruits/vegetables, but why exclude animal products entirely? According to a study (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/516S), vegetarianism helps lower the risk for heart disease, but has a higher risk for stomach cancer than a meat-eating diet.


That's flat-out not true. The following is a direct quote from the paper:



For the other causes of death examined (lung cancer, stomach cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and other causes) no overall association with vegetarianism was expected and none was observed.

And furthermore



In conclusion, vegetarians had a 24% lower mortality from ischemic heart disease than nonvegetarians, but no associations of a vegetarian diet with other major causes of death were established.




In fact, it was found that fish-eaters actually have the healthiest lives, followed closely by diary & egg-including vegetarians and occasional meat eaters (these two having the same overall mortality ratio). Vegans actually fare just as bad as regular meat-consumers in terms of mortality rates.

Could you point to where these finding occur in that paper? I didn't even see any reference to vegans.




Omnivores are resourceful precisely because they can combine and switch between multiple diets and gain benefits from either or both, not because they can regress right back to being herbivores (or carnivores for that matter).

Just because you call it 'regress' doesn't make it so.



I think not eating animal products for moral issues linked to the killing of individuals is a bit silly, because those animals will still be part of a food chain, being hunted or fighting for resources, wether we intervene or not and yes, that is very natural.

There's nothing natural about current industrial farming practices of either animals or vegetables and they have very little to do with food chains or bio-diversity in general. You'd be on a stronger footing if you pointed out that domesticated animals such as cows and pigs wouldn't survive in the wild at all. The only reason they're alive at all at this point is because they're farmed to be used for meat and dairy. None of that, however, addresses my points about the environmental harm of meat farming, as compared with that of farming crops.


Oh come on. Life, in order to be sustaining, is a process of consumption, and primates eat meat, not all of them, but it is in the species. One can take issue with the morality of industrialized farming of herd animals, like cattle and horses and pigs, and I have an intrinsic distaste for blood sport, though I accept hunters who hunt to put food on the table, but plants have a right to life as well, if one is going to take it that far, but if the grass isn't cropped, the herds starve, and if the herds aren't stalked, the health of the herd suffers. What humans do badly is to compete unfairly, and slaughter our high end competitors and herds alike in too vast a quantity, and the irony of that will be we're setting the stage for our own vast die off, because we eliminate diversity. I do not think we can ultimately survive on corn force fed to cattle, as is done in the US, which has an epidemic of heart disease due to it.

Respect for life is one thing, but accepting that life has to die for life that needs to eat is just as valid. I don't like it when my cats kill mice, but as carnivores that is what they do, and I dispose of said remains, however unpleasant, but if someone killed my cats I'd probably do my damnest to commit murder in return--it is killing in malice that humans have to answer for.

Well, lions kill in malice, but that is balanced biological competition, and we won that game before recorded history, and should have the decency to keep our aggression in check. This doesn't mean an all green diet is right for our design type.

The writer on religion Karen Armstrong theorises that the origin of religious ritual, specifically blood sacrifice, is humankind's attempt to come to terms with the uncomfortable fact that it it's impossible to live without, in some measure, participating in cruelty and even killing. Blood sacrifice becomes both atonement and a way of facing and formalising the problem head-on.



This doesn't mean an all green diet is right for our design type.

By 'all-green' I assume you mean vegetarian (though the two things aren't really synonymous).

No, but the 24% lower rate of ischemic heart disease among vegetarians cited by Petronius above might be more of an indicator of what we're 'designed' for. I'll say it again: there are numerous instances of human beings, throughout history, surviving very well indeed, often better than the meat eaters, without meat consumption.

[billyjack]

i tried go vegetarian for a few months a while back. i didnt notice any beneficial health affects so i gave it up.

i still rarely eat meat, mostly bc i dislike doing dishes (at least not right away after a meal and leaving greasy meat pans around is stanky) and cooking meat involves just that.

ethically, which should be synonymous with physiologically, there is nothing wrong with eating meat. its kingdomism to consider consumption of veggies more ethical than consumption of beast.

as far as overpopulation goes, type of food has nothing to do with it. people need to stop ****ing. we can still have our fun, but come on...there's ways around planting a seed

[blp]

i tried go vegetarian for a few months a while back. i didnt notice any beneficial health affects so i gave it up.


What did your vegetarian diet consist of?

[Petronius]

My argument wasn't about the ethics of destruction of life and I wasn't trying to put forward a plan for perfectly eco-friendly farming. All I was trying to do was refute the idea you seemed to be putting forward that, if we switched as a global population to a vegetarian diet, it would be very difficult to meet the world's needs. The point is, land used for farming plants can feed many many more people than land used for farming animals and there is a direct relationship between the demand, in wealthy countries, for meat, and food shortages in poorer countries.

Did I? You'd replace very low-yield farmland with very high-yield farmland.

That rich countries have a very high demand for meat is what perpetuates this. Take away the demand and the practice would stop.

I'm not saying it would be much more difficult, I'm saying it's not going to be easier. Imagine the amounts of vegetables needed to replace animal products given the difference in calories. Not any kind of soil is good for fruit & vegetable-growing, so not everything that's now a meadow can turn into orchards. Oats fields can perhaps be replaced by other cereals, but I wouldn't consider processed grains among the healthiest of foods, and I don't think you refer to them either as a meat-replacing source of nutrients.
The example about the rainforests is pretty unique. I'm not sure about the related statistics there, but in my country at least most deforestation comes from the lumbering industry.
Ideally, natural grasslands can support heards of ruminators with less impact on the environment than if these areas were to be turned into crops; after all large herbivores have natural ecosystems too.

Not to mention that many "green" products in the marketplaces today may come from genetically altered plants and are certainly treated with pesticides and fertilizers in order to ensure plentiful harvests.


The only thing? Sorry, but this is a simplistic argument and it touches on subjects too big to go into here. Suffice it to say, populations increase most rapidly in conditions of poverty. In wealthier countries, indigenous populations are actually in decline. Ergo, increase wealth in the poorer countries and the likelihood is, populations would shrink there too. How to do this is what's too big to go into here.

Wrong! Populations grow rapidly when the future looks brighter than the present and there are little worries about resources. That this is apparent in hopeful third world countries today may be decieving. Realistically, having Africa catch up to America and Europe consumption-wise and growing in numbers all the while would already be unsustainable.


OK, it's true you can't eat just any veggie diet and be OK. You need to make sure you get your basics: protein, B12, iron, calcium etc. But that's not that hard and a lot cheaper than getting it from meat. Anyway, tons of meat eaters are malnourished because they don't know the right things to eat either. Just making sure you've got a lot of meat in your diet is not the way to ensure health.

And I remind you I never said that we should only eat meat. I support a balanced diet, but saying that meat should be removed entirely from the menu of a vast majority of the world's population is an untopian and unjustified exaggeration.


'increasing the rate of growth for human population'? Er, so what you're saying is, a global veggie diet might be too beneficial for humanity? I'm really really tempted to break Godwin's law at this point. No, wait, I can get around it: Well hark at you, Mr. Malthus.

The following piece, by a leading environmentalist, tackles the population question head on and deals specifically with the question of food production near the end, backing up my points about the wastefulness of large-scale meat production. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf....greenpolitics

A lead environmentalist with a subtly populist flavour... just what we need to save the world. ;) You can blame the rich for hoarding the wealth all you want, but it's human nature to aspire at that... take their heads, spread the loots, and in a short while another "elite" will rise again, most likely from the very ranks of the previously poor. You will never achieve balance promoting strict control over billions while they lean on the brink of unsustainability and each of them yells for his desires to be met. The only way our societies can work is if we have enough to spare.

Another thing that comes to mind is that, wasteful as they are, the rich do not actually eat more than a normal person; so even if economic value would be more equitably spread, that doesn't mean Earth can sustain enough vegetal and animal nutrients for everybody to have access to a healthy and diverse diet.


That's flat-out not true, etc..

Could you point to where these finding occur in that paper? I didn't even see any reference to vegans.

Make sure to check the tables, particulary Tabel 7, "Mortality in 5 diet groups", for both stomach cancer ratios and vegan reference.


There's nothing natural about current industrial farming practices of either animals or vegetables and they have very little to do with food chains or bio-diversity in general. You'd be on a stronger footing if you pointed out that domesticated animals such as cows and pigs wouldn't survive in the wild at all. The only reason they're alive at all at this point is because they're farmed to be used for meat and dairy. None of that, however, addresses my points about the environmental harm of meat farming, as compared with that of farming crops.

Both are comparably harmful I would say, more or less depending on circumstance. I don't think switching to vegetarianism would help with our eco problems, though. I still stand by an educated decrease in both consumption and human population. Educate people about the risk of overpopulation, don't encourage families to have lots of children through enticing social ensurance for mothers (I mention that because in some countries, mine included, legislation allows for poor women to become pregnant as a source of income), don't ostracize singles, let the gays go their merry unfertile way, legalize abortion, educate children about safe sex, legalize prostitution as a means to vent sexual urges in a controlled environment, increase wealth without burning non or slow-regenerating resources and coerce clients to take periodic medical exams, allow the terminally ill to opt for euthanasia, think politics and investments from a green and long term perspective, and humanity will sort itself out.

[NikolaiI]

i tried go vegetarian for a few months a while back. i didnt notice any beneficial health affects so i gave it up.

i still rarely eat meat, mostly bc i dislike doing dishes (at least not right away after a meal and leaving greasy meat pans around is stanky) and cooking meat involves just that.

ethically, which should be synonymous with physiologically, there is nothing wrong with eating meat. its kingdomism to consider consumption of veggies more ethical than consumption of beast.

as far as overpopulation goes, type of food has nothing to do with it. people need to stop ****ing. we can still have our fun, but come on...there's ways around planting a seed

Vegetarianism is good for your health and for the health of the animals you do not eat. :D


What is kingdomism?

Don't you see a flaw in the argument: "Plant life is sacred too, so let's eat animals"?

[NEEMAN]

For me, the real issue with proposing vegetarianism as a measure which can improve social/enviromental standards in the third world is that it is a lot more difficult than many other measures which would be easier to implement, and would probably be inffective without those measures anyway.

If you think that as soon as people stop eating meat in the west, it will solve food shortages elsewhere, you're being naive. There will probably be more grain production, but that will only push prices down and hurt farmers. Besides, there's more than enough production capacity in the world; I remember being taught about the grain mountains and wine lakes of Europe. You have to remember that more grain = lower prices, and that hits farmers hard.

As a result, they'll turn to cash crops, just as they've always done, or go bust, with their land going with it. When you simplify things and say 'less grain used for producing meat, more for feeding people', you lose sight of the real issues, which is the way trade is carried out. The way food markets work is the problem, and vegetarianism is not a solution.


That said, most westerners eat too much meat and too little veg, from a simple health point of view. Mum & Dad were right: you need to eat more greens.

[aBIGsheep]

Meat tastes too good to give up.

[NikolaiI]

For me, the real issue with proposing vegetarianism as a measure which can improve social/enviromental standards in the third world is that it is a lot more difficult than many other measures which would be easier to implement, and would probably be inffective without those measures anyway.

If you think that as soon as people stop eating meat in the west, it will solve food shortages elsewhere, you're being naive. There will probably be more grain production, but that will only push prices down and hurt farmers. Besides, there's more than enough production capacity in the world; I remember being taught about the grain mountains and wine lakes of Europe. You have to remember that more grain = lower prices, and that hits farmers hard.

As a result, they'll turn to cash crops, just as they've always done, or go bust, with their land going with it. When you simplify things and say 'less grain used for producing meat, more for feeding people', you lose sight of the real issues, which is the way trade is carried out. The way food markets work is the problem, and vegetarianism is not a solution.


That said, most westerners eat too much meat and too little veg, from a simple health point of view. Mum & Dad were right: you need to eat more greens.

You are right that there is enough food to sustain this population. But as Petronius pointed out, it could not happen suddenly, at best it would happen gradually. A gradual increase of food available for the population wouldn't devastate farmers, I wouldn't think.

[NEEMAN]

But the problem is that people seem to believe there is a shortage of food. There isn't. There's loads of it; the problem is related to the distribution of wealth and peoples access to food. It's a question of buying power; people in the west have more of it.

Today, there is more than enough food to feed people across the globe, and in terms of capacity, based on current technology, we could feed a population of somthing like 15 billion people.

All I'm trying to say is that this is infinitely more complex than simply reducing the amount of grain we use to produce meat. Unlike in Europe, third world governments do not guarantee farmers a price for food. If the supply increases or demand decreases, farmers will leave the land; they have no safety net.

[kiz_paws]

Ya know, it always slays me the way that the topic of vegetarianism and veganism become such heated arguments (even within my own family for gawdsakes).

I am a vegetarian who rarely eats egg, but I like cream in my coffee and the occasional slice of marble cheese. I also eat seafood once in a while, so maybe I am a hyprocrite, maybe not. I just hate the idea of slaughter, I love cows, pigs, deer, the list goes on.

I thought I'd come forward as Nik should not have to stand alone, nor anyone else who has adopted this lifestyle. It is admirable, healthy and not that difficult to adhere to, once you come up with some good menu planning. More and more restaurants are catering to vegetarianism.

blp, you have given good information with the discussion -- bravo. :)

[Bakiryu]

I do not believe in vegetarianism anymore, I am a vegan. All others choice still depend in the suffering of poor animals.

Yes, it's hard, especially when you're just beginning, I miss milk, eggs, cheap lotions and shampoos and a bunch of other stuff, but it's still worth it.

[mayneverhave]

Meat tastes too good to give up.

Amen.

[NikolaiI]

Oh God Nikolai! ... Do u mean eating Meat is not good ?
Even chicken :-( ............i love grilled chicken but lamb meat not much i can stop that .

well .. lets get to the point ! Ok i agree with the idea that eating more vergetables is healthier & better for us ( medical side ) But that doesn't mean we should stop eating meat at all.. our body need special proteins that are present in meat, components that we need for our survival that are not available in vegetables. Now that is why Eating meat was never forbidden, eating other animals might be quite harsh but its not a crime . And God has created all these creature for helping human being .
Though , I guess its not hard to stop eating meat & becoming a vegetarian. But honestly i have never tired so, nor i met someone who is.?
Do vegetarian eat egg ? lol ( well i know they don't eat chicken but what about the egg) .

Yes, we should use animals for different things, but we should not slaughter them! For instance there is an old idea from Hinduism which is that the bull and the cow are like our father and mother. The bull has the strength to plow our field, and we drink the cow's milk to help sustain us. Since the cow gives us milk, she is like our mother, and so to kill her is very wrong. Chickens are not as sacred to us because we don't have such a close relationship to them, but we should not kill them either.

I understand that your religion and the people in your life might not advocate vegetarian, but I urge you to consider it.

[Petronius]

Yes, we should use animals for different things, but we should not slaughter them! For instance there is an old idea from Hinduism which is that the bull and the cow are like our father and mother. The bull has the strength to plow our field, and we drink the cow's milk to help sustain us. Since the cow gives us milk, she is like our mother, and so to kill her is very wrong. Chickens are not as sacred to us because we don't have such a close relationship to them, but we should not kill them either.

But we would still be using them. The bull doesn't plow on his own free will, nor does the cow decide to share her calf's milk out of kindness. We control their lives, their breeding - what would we do with the young since we need more cows than bulls?
What if the animal grows old or sick, and dies of natural causes? Throwing away the meat that could feed others would be terribly wasteful.
What is your opinion of carnivores then, who have to kill in order to survive? Should such species be wiped out for the well-being of wild herbivores? Why should an oxen have more rights than a buck, and why would a buck have more rights than a tiger, and the grass that's chewed at none at all?
I think it is hypocrisy to deplore the killing of animals while promoting slavery and inequity. Sacred cows for hindus is a religious choice; it has no bearing with other cultures.

[blp]

blp, you have given good information with the discussion -- bravo. :)

Thanks, kiz.

[NikolaiI]

But we would still be using them. The bull doesn't plow on his own free will, nor does the cow decide to share her calf's milk out of kindness. We control their lives, their breeding - what would we do with the young since we need more cows than bulls?
What if the animal grows old or sick, and dies of natural causes? Throwing away the meat that could feed others would be terribly wasteful.
What is your opinion of carnivores then, who have to kill in order to survive? Should such species be wiped out for the well-being of wild herbivores? Why should an oxen have more rights than a buck, and why would a buck have more rights than a tiger, and the grass that's chewed at none at all?
I think it is hypocrisy to deplore the killing of animals while promoting slavery and inequity. Sacred cows for hindus is a religious choice; it has no bearing with other cultures.

It's logically absurd to argue that we should not subjugate animals at all at the same time you think we should breed them in pens, and then slaughter them for food. In other words, you cannot argue for veganism and for meat-eating at the same time. Yet sometimes meat-eaters will do this-- as an insult? Saying to Vegetarians "You eat animals, but what aobut plants? Do you think it's okay to eat plants?" Meat-eaters are complicit with slaugtherhouses, where living, breathing, feeling animals are killed for food. So they can't argue for veganism at the same time.

I suppose your shackles have already been raised at this point, though I sincerely hope not. But to address a couple of your other questions: I am not an expert about cow-herding, so I cannot answer all of your questions perfectly. I do not know the right answer to what is done with all of the bulls. But as for inequality and subjectivity; a bull is not harmed by helping us farm, not if we treat them well. Cows can be milked humanely, without separating their calf from them. I will research this more when I have a bit more time, but I think that's the case. And again; and this I take exception with, in your reasoning... my position is that it's ethically wrong to slaughter cows (very wrong). It's a contradiction to say that it's okay to slaughter them, but also that it's not okay to "not slaughter them, although they are kept in subjectivity, because they should not be kept in subjectivity." Keeping them in subjectivity and slaughtering them is keeping them in subjectivity .So which is it?

And lastly, in response to this statement "I think it is hypocrisy to deplore the killing of animals while promoting slavery and inequity." You people need to learn what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is when you say one thing and do another. If I said it was wrong to slaughter cows but then I ate hamburers, that would be hypocrisy. Saying that bulls and cows can give us their labor and milk, if we do so humanely and respectfully, and do not hurt them, is not hypocritical. Please look up the definition of hypocrisy.

[billyjack]

What is kingdomism?

Don't you see a flaw in the argument: "Plant life is sacred too, so let's eat animals"?

randomly choosing the animal kingdom as more sacred than the plant kingdom.

elaborate the flaw if you will

[Petronius]

I was merely pointing out the fallacy of vegetarianism as a life-loving philosophy... I'm not arguing for veganism, I'm just showing it's absurd to try and make moral arguments about food chains or thinking that any kind of natural nourishment isn't a form of predation on other species. I'm a bit confused as I don't think I'm being that crypitic.


I suppose your shackles have already been raised at this point, though I sincerely hope not. But to address a couple of your other questions: I am not an expert about cow-herding, so I cannot answer all of your questions perfectly. I do not know the right answer to what is done with all of the bulls. But as for inequality and subjectivity; a bull is not harmed by helping us farm, not if we treat them well. Cows can be milked humanely, without separating their calf from them. I will research this more when I have a bit more time, but I think that's the case. And again; and this I take exception with, in your reasoning... my position is that it's ethically wrong to slaughter cows (very wrong). It's a contradiction to say that it's okay to slaughter them, but also that it's not okay to "not slaughter them, although they are kept in subjectivity, because they should not be kept in subjectivity." Keeping them in subjectivity and slaughtering them is keeping them in subjectivity .So which is it?

The young bulls are usually slaughtered except for a few kept for breeding, while cows are being kept longer for milk, and it's usually the same facilities that provide the livestock for both milk and meat production, at least as far as I know. Sure, bulls may be used for ploughing but that's rather an archaic view, as this job is performed by machines these days, and in some cases when animal force is still employed (in my country at least), horses or female bovines are prefered to bulls because their tendency to be less agressive. I have no ideea how cows are treated in regions where they are considered sacred though.

[NikolaiI]

randomly choosing the animal kingdom as more sacred than the plant kingdom.

elaborate the flaw if you will

We can understand animals a little easier because they are more like us; eating, sleeping, mating, defending.

The flaw is not saying that plants have life which is sacred too. The flaw is saying that because plants have life, just like animals, therefore it's okay to eat animals. Isn't eating animals kingdomism too? Randomly choosing it's okay to kill and eat them?

I was merely pointing out the fallacy of vegetarianism as a life-loving philosophy... I'm not arguing for veganism, I'm just showing it's absurd to try and make moral arguments about food chains or thinking that any kind of natural nourishment isn't a form of predation on other species. I'm a bit confused as I don't think I'm being that crypitic.

The young bulls are usually slaughtered except for a few kept for breeding, while cows are being kept longer for milk, and it's usually the same facilities that provide the livestock for both milk and meat production, at least as far as I know. Sure, bulls may be used for ploughing but that's rather an archaic view, as this job is performed by machines these days, and in some cases when animal force is still employed (in my country at least), horses or female bovines are prefered to bulls because their tendency to be less agressive. I have no ideea how cows are treated in regions where they are considered sacred though.

In the way I think society should exist, bulls would never be slaughtered. I am aware that until the sixties or seventies, in America, there wasn't a single dairy farm that wasn't associated with meat farming, and the cows and bulls were slaughtered. My response to Billyjack explains a bit what I meant about the plant life/animal life argument. It's a flawed thing to argue that it's wrong to keep them in slavery but NOT slaughter them (for their sake), in the attempt to say it's okay to keep them in subjectivity FOR slaughtering.

It doesn't make any sense to me to argue against the predation of plant species of life in an effort to support the existence of getting our food from slaughterhouses. And not all food kills life, for instance fruit doesn't require the host to die or anything, just not to spread the particular seed in the fruit we eat.


Ya know, it always slays me the way that the topic of vegetarianism and veganism become such heated arguments (even within my own family for gawdsakes).

I am a vegetarian who rarely eats egg, but I like cream in my coffee and the occasional slice of marble cheese. I also eat seafood once in a while, so maybe I am a hyprocrite, maybe not. I just hate the idea of slaughter, I love cows, pigs, deer, the list goes on.

I thought I'd come forward as Nik should not have to stand alone, nor anyone else who has adopted this lifestyle. It is admirable, healthy and not that difficult to adhere to, once you come up with some good menu planning. More and more restaurants are catering to vegetarianism.

blp, you have given good information with the discussion -- bravo. :)

Thank you then, Kiz! :) I hope this thread doesn't get heated, I just want people to think about what they are eating and if it's ethical or not. And according to wikipedia, a "Semi-vegetarian" may eat fish. :)

I also think it's interesting all the famous people who have been vegetarian. George Harrison, Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Plutarch, George Bernard Shaw, Leonardo da Vinci, Percy Shelley..

[PierreGringoire]

That is a really good list. Particularly Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Plutarch, and Leonardo da Vinci

"Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist, engineer and creator of the Mona Lisa, was such a fervent vegetarian that he would buy caged birds from poultry vendors and set them free."

"The first prominent modern vegetarian was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras who lived towards the end of the 6th century BC. The Pythagorean diet came to mean an avoidance of the flesh of slaughtered animals. Pythagorean ethics first became a philosophical morality between 490-430 BC with a desire to create a universal and absolute law including injunctions not to kill "living creatures," to abstain from "harsh-sounding bloodshed," in particular animal sacrifice, and "never to eat meat." "

"I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience." - Einstein. Einstein only converted to Vegetarianism the last year of his life.

Following excerpt from Plutarch:
Well I have taken away the excuse of those who allege that they have the authority and sanction of Nature. For that man is not, by nature, carnivorous is proved, in the first place, by the external frame of his body - seeing that to none of the animals designed for living on flesh has the human body any resemblance. He has no curved beak, no sharp talons and claws, no pointed teeth, no intense power of stomach or heat of blood which might help him to masticate and digest the gross and tough flesh-substance. On the contrary, by the smoothness of his teeth, the small capacity of his mouth, the softness of his tongue, and the sluggishness of his digestive aparatus, Nature sternly forbids him to feed on flesh.- Plutarch (Einstein shared a similar sentiment)

Definitely something to think about. Plutarch is probably my favorite author of all time. I had no idea he was a vegetarian.

[NikolaiI]

The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant number of people come from ancient India[22] and the ancient Greek civilisation in Southern Italy and in Greece in the 6th century BCE.[23] In both instances the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence towards animals (called ahimsa in India) and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers.[24] Following the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, vegetarianism practically disappeared from Europe.[25] Several orders of monks in medieval Europe restricted or banned the consumption of meat for ascetic reasons, but none of them eschewed fish.[26] Vegetarianism re-emerged somewhat in Europe during the Renaissance.[27] It became a more widespread practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1847 the first Vegetarian Society was founded in England;[28] Germany, the Netherlands and other countries followed. The International Vegetarian Union, a union of the national societies, was founded in 1908. In the Western world, the popularity of vegetarianism grew during the 20th century as a result of nutritional, ethical, and more recently, environmental and economic concerns. Today, Indian vegetarians, primarily lacto vegetarians, are estimated to make up more than 70% of the world's vegetarians. They make up 20–42% of the population in India, while less than 30% are regular meat-eaters.[29][30][31] Surveys in the U.S. have found that roughly 1–2.8% of adults eat no meat (including poultry or fish).[32][33][34][35]

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism#History)

I thought it was interesting that Indian vegetarians make up 70% of the world's vegetarian population.



And Pierre, don't forget Scott Adams! (I just learned about him.)


In a similar assertion, Scott Adams, who is also a vegetarian, once wrote humorously: "I point out that a live cow makes a lion salivate, whereas a human just wants to say 'moo' and see if the cow responds."[155]

:)

[Petronius]

The only thing I have to say, Nikolai, is that herbivores, when not kept in check by meat eaters, will over-breed, consume the vegetal resources faster than they can regenerate, and die of famine after their ecosystem has been turned into a barren wasteland.

[blp]

Love the Scott Adams quote. Very funny.

Plutarch's science may not be exact, but he's right that our digestive systems are rather different from those of pure carnivores. They have very short intestinal tracts, which means the meat never stays in the system for long. I've heard health food shop types allege that meat actually has long enough inside the human intestine to start rotting, but I'm not sure how this can be the case since the entire digestive cycle in humans is generally only about 24 hours.

Petronius, where are you getting this stuff - and what do you mean by it? First of all, that's just not true of all herbivores. Herds often migrate with the rains, leaving the land they've been grazing on to regenerate. But anyway, what does that have to do with the way humans eat meat? The meat we eat is mostly farmed. The herds in question wouldn't even exist otherwise, ergo, they'd present no threat of over-grazing. Or are you saying that, if humans stopped eating meat, we'd need to be culled by carnivores? :D Well, let me set your mind at rest: we wouldn't. Unlike herds of bison or zebras, we'd still eat a varied diet and manage our agriculture rationally.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I feel myself being pulled towards becoming a vegetarian more and more these days. I have almost stopped eating meat totally over the last couple of months and intend to stop completely as I adjust to a non-meat diet.

[Petronius]

Petronius, where are you getting this stuff - and what do you mean by it? First of all, that's just not true of all herbivores. Herds often migrate with the rains, leaving the land they've been grazing on to regenerate. But anyway, what does that have to do with the way humans eat meat? The meat we eat is mostly farmed. The herds in question wouldn't even exist otherwise, ergo, they'd present no threat of over-grazing. Or are you saying that, if humans stopped eating meat, we'd need to be culled by carnivores? Well, let me set your mind at rest: we wouldn't. Unlike herds of bison or zebras, we'd still eat a varied diet and manage our agriculture rationally.

Ok, it seems I'm not making myself very clear. There are two main things I'm arguing against in this thread:

1) Nikolai's idea that killing individual animals for meat is imoral. Relations of predation are essential o virtually all ecosystems and animal life would not exist without them. Are you challenging this?

2) Your claim that people turning vegetarian would have any significant impact on global sustainability. The eco-problem of agriculture is not simply the destruction of landscape, but the loss of genetic diversity, which plantations can achieve on their own. Sure, you can replace monocultures with polycultures and get better biodiversity and higher yields, but these would be harder to manage. It's funny you say humans would manage agriculture rationally, as this could be applied to animal farming too (http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/sustpast.html). In the end, no matter what we eat, it will follow the principles of contemporary economy. Everyone eating veggies means they will have to be more accessible. Fruits and vegetables may be cheaper than meat (though in my country some come close) per kg, but not by caloric value. If they grow cheaper and everybody buys them, producers will be interested in quantity over quality, which means treated crops (that's already a popular choice), and low costs, meaning they wouldn't care if the production process is eco-friendly or not since that would lead to supplimentary expenses.

The only way to achieve sustainability is to have a rationalized global economy, which would basically put reins in the hands of centralized administrations, or a decrease in human population to limit the impact of our lifestyles to the planet.

[blp]

Ok, it seems I'm not making myself very clear. There are two main things I'm arguing against in this thread:

1) Nikolai's idea that killing individual animals for meat is imoral. Relations of predation are essential o virtually all ecosystems and animal life would not exist without them. Are you challenging this?

Who me? Nope. Go for it. And see my response to jozanny earlier.



2) Your claim that people turning vegetarian would have any significant impact on global sustainability. The eco-problem of agriculture is not simply the destruction of landscape, but the loss of genetic diversity, which plantations can achieve on their own. Sure, you can replace monocultures with polycultures and get better biodiversity and higher yields, but these would be harder to manage. It's funny you say humans would manage agriculture rationally, as this could be applied to animal farming too (http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/sustpast.html). In the end, no matter what we eat, it will follow the principles of contemporary economy. Everyone eating veggies means they will have to be more accessible. Fruits and vegetables may be cheaper than meat (though in my country some come close) per kg, but not by caloric value. If they grow cheaper and everybody buys them, producers will be interested in quantity over quality, which means treated crops (that's already a popular choice), and low costs, meaning they wouldn't care if the production process is eco-friendly or not since that would lead to supplimentary expenses.

All of these problems already exist. To clarify, this all began not as an eco-discussion, but with you asserting that if everyone in the world went veggie, it would be difficult to meet demand. All I was really trying to show was that it's much much much easier to feed a lot of people on crops than meat and that meat production was already responsible for food shortages.

I wouldn't argue for a moment against the idea that there would still be numerous eco-problems with farmed veg. When I said humans would manage plantations rationally, I meant only in the very limited sense that they wouldn't just gobble everything up and leave the land barren like the herd herbivores you mentioned.



The only way to achieve sustainability is to have a rationalized global economy, which would basically put reins in the hands of centralized administrations, or a decrease in human population to limit the impact of our lifestyles to the planet.

The Monbiot piece does deal with the this, I'm afraid, perpetually occurring canard about population control. Your only rebuttal of it seemed to be that it was 'populist' in attacking rich people. Actually, it's about the problem of rich countries, which is rather different - not quite such a populist crowd-pleaser given that his main readership is in these countries.

[Petronius]

All of these problems already exist. To clarify, this all began not as an eco-discussion, but with you asserting that if everyone in the world went veggie, it would be difficult to meet demand. All I was really trying to show was that it's much much much easier to feed a lot of people on crops than meat and that meat production was already responsible for food shortages.

I wouldn't argue for a moment against the idea that there would still be numerous eco-problems with farmed veg. When I said humans would manage plantations rationally, I meant only in the very limited sense that they wouldn't just gobble everything up and leave the land barren like the herd herbivores you mentioned.

We're not in so much of a disagreement, though I still have some concerns about wether or not there would be resources for a fully vegetarian world population... According to wiki, vegetarians make up for about 11% of the world's population; add what random fruit and vegetables the rest of the people eat, and you'd get about 25% of the human population consuming the fruits and vegetables that are produced today. And that's as a whole. We would need a diverse diet, so a little bit of all, and I'm sure rates are much lower for habitat-specific plants.
The top producers in the fruit department are tropical countries, with India in clear lead. It's still them who would have to supply the bulk of the increase, as temperate countries can only produce fresh vegetables for one, maybe two seasons. China, Russia, Europe and North America would have to import for the winter. Many arid African country would import too. Are you still seeing these countries doubling, maybe tripling their production without cutting even deeper into their rainforests?
Then we have to think that of those 11%, more than half (70% percent by the wiki) are lacto-ovo, so there would still exist a strong milk and egg producing industry, only now it would be more wasteful because no one would want the meat from the poor beasts.

Sure, with carefully planned investments and economical string-pulls, we could set an infrastructure for mass-production agriculture in poor african countries, and build vast greenhouses to supply winter veggies for temperate regions, but it would involve costs, time and effort beside people just switching diets, and I still say it's not worth it - it's not sustainable and strain on supply would encourage agricultural methods that may sabotage the healthyness of the products.


The Monbiot piece does deal with the this, I'm afraid, perpetually occurring canard about population control. Your only rebuttal of it seemed to be that it was 'populist' in attacking rich people. Actually, it's about the problem of rich countries, which is rather different - not quite such a populist crowd-pleaser given that his main readership is in these countries.

I feel for the poor, I'm not a fascist as you may think, but I think some people don't realize how bloody many of us there are and how circumstantial the resources we use. And I don't see how saying that is an attack against the poor. About three quarters of the world's population now comes from countries with first or second rank HDI.
Do you think it would be bad if people started having fewer children and is it really of no concern that we jumped up nearly 5 billion in the last century?

[blp]

We're not in so much of a disagreement, though I still have some concerns about wether or not there would be resources for a fully vegetarian world population... According to wiki, vegetarians make up for about 11% of the world's population; add what random fruit and vegetables the rest of the people eat, and you'd get about 25% of the human population consuming the fruits and vegetables that are produced today. And that's as a whole. We would need a diverse diet, so a little bit of all, and I'm sure rates are much lower for habitat-specific plants.
The top producers in the fruit department are tropical countries, with India in clear lead. It's still them who would have to supply the bulk of the increase, as temperate countries can only produce fresh vegetables for one, maybe two seasons. China, Russia, Europe and North America would have to import for the winter. Many arid African country would import too. Are you still seeing these countries doubling, maybe tripling their production without cutting even deeper into their rainforests?

There's no simple answer to all this. Thank god we don't have to actually work it out. BUT remember that all the meat production you'd be getting rid of consumes vast acreages of crop production already. That and only that is the simple equation I've been hammering since the start of this discussion.

Here are figures to give you some idea

No of people whose food energy needs can be met by food produced on 2.5 acres/land:
If the land is producing rice: 19
If the land is producing corn: 17
If the land is producing wheat: 15
If the land is producing chicken: 2
If the land is producing beef: 1 person

Got this from comments below a Times of London article. Source credited: The Food Revolution, which I presume is a book. Another commenter there says:


Just stop eating beef and our food problems will be gone. It's that simple. The amount of energy & land resources used to feed cattle is astounding. Our bodies were made to live on a diet of Carbs and some protein and fat. A balanced Vegetarian diet more then adequately supplies that balance.

It does occur to me to wonder what we'd feed our cats on, though. Dogs can survive on a vegetarian diet.



Then we have to think that of those 11%, more than half (70% percent by the wiki) are lacto-ovo, so there would still exist a strong milk and egg producing industry, only now it would be more wasteful because no one would want the meat from the poor beasts.

Not sure you can really say that's more wasteful. You'd have to compare how much nutrition you got from letting a chicken live out its natural life laying eggs and slaughtering it when it was, say, a year old, for food.

Best source for lacto is probably sheep and goats, for several reasons: they can survive on hillsides where it's difficult to farm anything else, their digestive systems are less different from ours than those of cows, so their milk is much easier for humans to digest and they don't release the massive amounts of methan that cows do, so they don't contribute to global warming.

I guess, realistically, if you wanted to keep eating meat and didn't mind the killing aspect, it might be OK to eat sheep and goats. And the odd chicken.



Sure, with carefully planned investments and economical string-pulls, we could set an infrastructure for mass-production agriculture in poor african countries, and build vast greenhouses to supply winter veggies for temperate regions, but it would involve costs, time and effort beside people just switching diets, and I still say it's not worth it - it's not sustainable and strain on supply would encourage agricultural methods that may sabotage the healthyness of the products.

I dunno, P. This suggests that people are eating meat instead of veg, when, at the moment, they eat both. I actually don't think most veggies replace their meat with extra fruits and veg. Recommended amounts are in the region of 5 to 9 portions of these a day whether you're a vegetarian or not. It's more like, the rest is made up with extra consumption of grains or grain derivatives like bread and pasta - exactly the kind of thing vacated grazing land could be used to farm - and also the kind of stuff that constitutes the staple diet in the areas most likely to suffer famine.



I feel for the poor, I'm not a fascist as you may think, but I think some people don't realize how bloody many of us there are and how circumstantial the resources we use. And I don't see how saying that is an attack against the poor. About three quarters of the world's population now comes from countries with first or second rank HDI.
Do you think it would be bad if people started having fewer children and is it really of no concern that we jumped up nearly 5 billion in the last century?

Don't worry, I don't think you're a fascist! ;) And I didn't think you were attacking the poor. I was just trying to point out that Monbiot's article wasn't just pandering to hatred of the rich.

I do think it would be good if people started having less children in areas of overpopulation. But that's Monbiot's point: where people are educated about family planning, populations decrease.

[Cellar Door]

Some good posts on this thread! I just wanted to say from my POV, (as a vegetarian for 11 years) that I don't want to convert anyone to it; I want to make people think and make wiser choices. An overhaul of the meat industry wouldn't hurt anyone, either. In my corner of the world, lots of people were concerned about getting sick from tainted meat. This wouldn't be happening if there were more conscientious ways of conducting said business. Again, I do not try to convert anyone. Whenever people learn I am a vegetarian, they kind of roll their eyes and expect a lecture, or ask if I am offended if they eat meat. I am not. The world would have a lot more problems if everyone switched from being omnivores to herbivores. A LOT MORE. I just know it was the right choice for me...

[Petronius]

I see what you mean, blp, but as far as I know meat-eaters still eat a lot of grain products. Replacing fried chicken with a fruit salad, pork chops with spinach and bolognese meat balls with broccoli was more what I had in mind. In my country at least, regular meat eaters also rarely eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and that's the problem. I'm not sure you'll convince them to just eat more grains, or if that's even healthy - the risk of becoming overweight is still serious.

The problem with grain products is that refined grain isn't healthy - it has less nutrients than whole grain and the ones it has are added artificially, might as well eat pills - but is also more profitable. Most bread & pasta you get today are made from refined grain, and it's a safe bet it'll be the same or worse if demand increased.

Egg&diary industry - you need a certain ammount of live animals at any given time to supply it, and the animals need to be fed. It doesn't really matter if their life cycle is long or short as if their numbers remain constant. Also, you can't really control their sex; the males would have to be killed because they don't produce anything, and that is wasteful if nobody eats their meat. The best thing you'd achieve is cut the costs of meat-processing industry, but you still need vast areas to supply the beasts' food.

Of course, there is the idea that chicken will still lay eggs if they're skinny. :D

As far as sheep and goats go, and that's just some dim memory from ecology classes so I may be wrong, they are more harmful to the land they graze in because they cut grass from the root instead of just the tips like cows do; also, their dropping are not good fertilizer, so they will depleat an area a lot faster and make it unusuable for a longer time. They produce less milk, too. Not sure about it but may be less productive than a cow.

[blp]

Well, P, you've fought your case long and hard and I am actually being won around to the idea that we can't do without animal husbandry. And that this is going to involve some killing of animals.

Cards on the table: I'm an ex-veggie. A friend and I reneged on our vegetarianism together one day at a barbecue and gratefully tucked into some really succulent jerk chicken. Not sure the author of this particular dish realised what a seismic effect she'd had on the diets of two of the guests. For a while, like a lot of sudden converts, I went for the new thing tooth and nail. But a few years down the line, I've sort of reverted to my old veggie ways, just without being absolutely strict about it, and it's because it really does feel like a preponderance of veg is the right diet for humans. For a while I actually thought maybe the lack of meat in my diet had been unhealthy and I was making up for it, but gradually it's become quite clear to me that where, say, a stew of lightly cooked veg and lentils will give me a noticeable boost, a comparable amount of meat will make me feel sluggish and even, at times, a little toxic. It's often hard to avoid saying to myself after a meat meal, 'I didn't need that' (and hence the animal died in vain), whereas with veg I frequently find myself wolfing the food as if my body's desperate for it.

You're right about refined flours. A bane. Never mind what they do to any other aspect of people's health - the trouble it gives them on the toilet is enough to damn them to hell. I'm constantly astounded at the difficulty of getting wholewheat snacks when out and about. At home I have brown rice, millet, which is superbly cheap, easy to cook and tasty (and always seems quite posh), and wholewheat bread and pasta.

Don't know what country you're from - America? The situation with a lot of meat eaters is the same here in the UK. They've been seen a lot on TV food programmes here lately. A presenter called Gillian McKeith goes to see morbidly obese people, gets them to keep food diaries, then lays out their diets of predominantly beige and brown food in a horrific, almost scatological table tableaux, at which the subjects often cry, especially if they've also been feeding this stuff to their children. Then they're shown a similar sized table, but covered in lovely fruit and veg and told this is what they should be eating, cuing a lot of doubtful looks and frequent childish remarks such as, 'It looks like rabbit food' and 'I'll try anything, but I'm not touching avocado.' The fear of avocado, in particular, is very great. Over the following weeks, as their skin clears up and their flatulence dissipates, they come to see the light. Or at least, so TV would have us believe. There was another of these sad people on toff chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's show recently and his diet consisted of no veg at all except 'chips' (that's 'fries' to you US folk). Hugh was desperate to get him to eat at least one piece of some other kind of veg and eventually got him to eat a piece of roasted parsnip, which the subject grudgingly admitted was 'Not bad. Quite like a chip.'

Realistically, our plan for a global veggie revolution is a long way off even if it's practicable.

Still think there are massive problems with farming beef and it should basically be hugely curtailed. There's actually some talk of reducing it as an environmental measure here in the UK. You may be right about goats. I don't think you're right about sheep. There are tons of them all over the English countryside and it never looks as if they're scorching the earth. May be partly that they're shifted between fields quite a bit by the farmers, but, anyway, don't think they're doing much damage. I'm sure you're right about cows giving more milk and that's probably why we get virtually all of ours from them, but the fact remains, it's designed for a drastically different metabolism from ours and, specifically, to help infant cows grow at an extraordinary rate, far greater than that of humans. An ex-girlfriend of mine who'd had a serious spinal problem as a teenager believed, having looked into it, that it could well have been caused by drinking milk.

[Jozanny]

No offense to anyone, but how is the vegan or not-vegan an issue of philosophical literature? I realize:

1. That this sub-forum is a bit vague

and

2. Many of the threads which offer no authorial citations lead to debates like this one, but how we eat, and the way we eat it is a geopolitical, economic, maybe occasionally moral or religious issue. One modern philosopher whose work has some bearing on this in his comments on the necessary pressures of industrial farming, is Peter Singer, the controversial Aussie who brought disability activists to protest at the citadel of Princeton University.

Personally, I think it is a non-issue, and that being an American vegan is chic, and a fake salve to a conscience of those who don't want to fight progressive battles, but this has precious little to do with a philosophical literature, at least as a category.

[blp]

Fair point, Jozanny, but, to try to take this into the realm of dialectics, I'll respond that

1. I think Nikolai feels it's part of his philosophical outlook on life

2. Possibly the only citation of an author who might (loosely) be described as philosophical was mine, of Karen Armstrong, in response to your only other post in this thread. I do think there's the potential here to have a philosophical discussion about our (humans') fundamentally conflicted relationship to cruelty.

Here's some relevant philosophy to, ah, chew on:

'A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.' - Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

[Jozanny]

Okay blp. I am not really sure I understand Niko's argument; plants may not have an organ like a brain to serve as a CPU, but they no more like dying than mammals or insects. Mammals are simply more graphic about being extinguished. Again, respect for life itself does not mean all life is equal. Sorry, but primates, in comparison to sheep, are an engineering marvel. We have hands, and the hand is no small evolutionary feat; we are bipedal--and for a crip like me that is miracle enough to gawk at. Now, the sheep has talents, I am sure, and it has an evolutionary niche too, and I am civilized enough to be nice to the sheep even when it stupidly butts my wheelchair and scares me, and I would not torture the creature anymore than necessary if I needed its wool and its meat, but I would so kill it for that if I needed it. I have seen wolves kill coyotes--not particularly nice--I've seen lions murder each other and their cubs, and chimpanzees make you close your eyes and think of how remarkable it is that humans haven't wiped each other out--so I have no problem being an omnivore. I do not like American farming practices, but that is a separate issue, and not eating meat will not change the unhappy fate of force-fed cows. The issue is a balanced diet, and the healthest one possible, but we are not herbivores.

[blp]

I'm not sure I understand Niko's argument either, jozanny. Or, if I do, I think it's something to do with simply trying to live without harming other creatures.

You say the issue is a balanced diet and we are not herbivores. I'm more interested now in your question of whether we can have a philosophical discussion about this, so I'm going to try not to get sucked in by dietary questions except to reiterate: it does seem to be quite possible for humans to live without eating meat and even that there are significant health benefits. But we've kind of been over that.

On the question of cruelty, it was certainly my hope as a vegetarian that a certain amount of cruelty would be decreased by my choice and that might be part of a literally progressive movement, i.e. we would progress to a situation in which less and less people ate meat. I won't go as far as to admit that this was just vanity on my part, but I did come to see that there were, perhaps, more pressing issues as I became older. Still, I can't resist pointing out that many vegetarians, fully aware of how easy it is to get by without meat, also devote themselves to other, more immediate political and social causes. I visited an environmentalist camp last summer, pitched in protest at the building of a third runway at Heathrow. The food was entirely vegan and entirely satisfying and delicious.

The problem here, and the place where we might start to feel philosophy has a role, is in a sort of balance of cruelty. A lot of vegetarians, starting from the basic, simplistic position of being opposed to all cruelty, rapidly discover that, in having given up meat, they are still collusive in animal slaughter, whether because of the shoes they wear, the glue they use, the animal rennet used in the cheese they eat or, most unsettlingly of all, the slaughtered male calves that are a bi-product of milk production. They are faced starkly with a question that may actually be insidiously relevant to all of us: since we apparently can't oppose all cruelty, how much should we allow? And to what extent should we be cruel to ourselves in order to avoid cruelty to others? So far I don't know of any vegetarians who walk along brushing the ground in front of them in order to avoid treading on insects, as some buddhist sages are said to have done or perhaps still do, but there might be one or two who, like certain old English mystics, would rather allow infestations of vermin than participate in any form of killing.

You seem to have your own moral position all worked out and to want to be able to say it's all pretty simple. No need for any conversation, philosophical otherwise. My reference to Armstrong, earlier, was intended to allude to the fact that, for a lot of us, the realisation that cruelty is unavoidable cuts deep. For me, it hit particularly hard when a partner I hadn't been with for very long got pregnant and had an early term abortion, an act which I supported. I'd never imagined something like this would affect me as much as it did. An anti-abortionist would have said we shouldn't have done it. I say, we no more denied this foetus the right to life than if we hadn't conceived it in the first place and it made no difference. But my parental instincts still kicked in and the irrational part of me still felt terrible for this 'kid' of mine that never got a chance.

Armstrong cites abortion specifically, along with meat eating, as one of the painful quandaries about killing that may be at the root of religious ritual, specifically blood sacrifice.

[Jozanny]

Well, I think one of the points I was trying to make was, even if you take homo sapiens out of the picture, the drama of life and death is still what it is. Biologists speculate that felines are actually designed to take pleasure in killing, and it seems they've hit on something there. I have actually seen Joey kill a mouse, and eat it too, even though I spend a small fortune keeping him fed, and he seems to see it as his job to make sure the rodent doesn't move anymore, so obviously Hinduism doesn't operate on the trickle down theory--when the mice do get in though, it is my reaction that is interesting. I roll as far away as possible until I have to clean things up, as if it isn't my place to interfere. I don't know many walking pet owners who do either, not when it comes to your regular mouse--but even consumation of plants involves manipulation which is harmful to natural habitat, which is why I think vegan is a bit faux pas--not that I do not respect good dietary choices--for me though, and it might be due to bouts of colitis as a secondary symptom of aging with cerebral palsy--too much fiber makes me sick. I try, however, to eat a decent salad without too much fat, twice a week, and until my power chair died, cut down on beef, not eliminate, but cut down, and try not to eat bacon anymore.

That said, I am stout, pallid, and will either stroke or have an acute heart incident--heart disease runs deep on my full Italian side. As to pregnancy termination--it is a complicated issue, even for me with my anti-exceptionalism views.

[Petronius]

I think the problem with us humans is that we've evolved too fast in the last millenia, and much of the environments we reacted to while doing so were of our own making, artificial constructs, thus distorted. We are so far up on the food chain that we're practically unassailable in our social habitats. Since we had the ability to consolidate our defences against systematic loss of human life, we have come to believe abhoring it is the only possible right way, much like a spoiled child who genuinely feels that his parents must, at all times, provide for him.
There still exist, though, areas such as the Sunderbans, where locals are still in danger of being killed by tigers (about 50-250 deaths per year, according to wiki) - partially because the area is a tiger reserve and people are not allowed to hunt down the animals unless they are positively identified as man-eaters. As shown on television, their reaction is one of respect, reverence, or acceptance towards the big cats, but I wonder... I also wonder if these people feel it's wrong to kill a boar in order to survive.

The culture and media in developed countries aggravates our... lack of realism I'd call it. Think of the principles fed to us as children, and the great lengths parents go through to make us feel the world is a safe and wonderful place where everything is possible if you truly believe. I think I can separate a pattern in a wide number of entertainment media, such as movies or books: a hero descovering something truly valuable to him, reveling to sky-high extremes in the stupefaction of experienced emotions, almost losing that special something (very sad), then from the brink of disaster comes the epiphany of salvation and the gratification of a happy finale. We have become overly sensitized to generic, superficial yet very acute views of love, family, security, life, etc.
This I believe distorts in many cases the priorities and reactions of human beings. Our social web and its symbols are percieved stronger than the gritty truths of an existence we are perilously levitating over. The realisation that we, as a whole, are destructive is becoming more and more evident, but, like the niche animals we also are, we deal with it through the lenses of our own empirical habits... like now, we seek to make it a philosophical matter, or a literary one, since these are the colours the subforum dictates - and of course, Jozanny was right in pointing out we had strayed too far, but Nikolai in his assertions, not so much.

We pitty the animals we kill because we ourselves seek to evade natural balance; to live off of an ecosystem, yet allow nothing back - just get this silly feeding over with and carry on with our artificial lives. It's how we choose to separate ourselves from nature, without exercising any self-restraint, that is wrong, and not the killing. We have grown into parasites who can't destroy their host because there's only one around.



Hope this is more to the point... As far as nutrition goes, since blp adressed it earlier, I think it's not so much what we eat, but the connection between our diet and the way in which we use the aquired energy. Carnivores need a lot of it because there's a lot of intense physical activity involved in their lives; they may also have to go on for long periods of time without feeding, so they need some form of caloric energy that can be stored. It's this last part that veggies don't have, their energy gets burened pretty fast - that's why herbivores need to spend a lot of time eating, and why you feel like wolfing your green food.

And I'm from Romania, actually. Very bad eating habits are part of the tradition here. :D

[NikolaiI]

I don't think Herbivore is the right term, Jozanny, because we eat fruit and dairy products as well. You said you weren't sure about my position -- part of what I was saying was in response to several who said things along the lines of, like you said, that plants don't wish to die either. But these people are saying this to recommend meat-eating. So-- because plants don't wish to die, we ought to eat meat just as well? And I just don't want to be the only one this makes no sense to. Now what you have said about it is fine. You think we ought to eat meat for various reasons such as health or simply that you don't think it's wrong. While I don't agree with you, I respect this.

Blp you are correct there are many cruelties in today's world. But we have to start somewhere. Basically my reason for vegetarianism is that I don't want to partake in killing every time I eat food. I don't want it to be necessary to kill animals for me to eat. I'm aware that the whole system and government and country and everything also causes suffering, but again, we can only do one at a time. Someone said on this forum a while back they thought nothing could be helped, could be improved. This doesn't sway me at all. I think we should try to improve things.

Jozanny, what is philosophical about it? Well it's very philosophical. I don't mean about diet and nutrition, nutrition is sort of a side-issue. It's philosophical becuase it has to do with the value of life. Is it right for us to kill other animals? Very philosophical. Why would we think it is right to kill animals? I can't think of a good reason excpet that it's inertia and we seek to justify it. If you take a full step away from it, it seems quite clear that it's wrong to kill. But then if you enter into our society (and I live in America, actually, Kansas City, Missouri to give you an idea) then you are surrounded by it. 97% of people eat meat. Restaurants serve almost only meat. And so it goes on by inertia, peer pressure (that is, association) all of these things. Nobody questions what everybody does. Then add onto it you get such a wide range of reasons for the action; ranging from rational ones (such as yours) to irrational ones or even angry ones.. (they belong on my plate) and you have a complicated issue. One of the quotes at the beginning, the opening post, by Thomas More was from a book, it was "The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable." When I saw this I thought it was an interesting parallel to what some religious people say. There are four prohibitions for Vaisnavas, no eating meat, no illicit sex, no gambling, and no intoxication. The most important one of these is not eating meat, because it leads to a loss of compassion. So the main reason for not eating meat is compassion for the animals. Yes there are other ways in which we are complicit in the suffering of others. But because they exist does not mean we should not be vegetarian!

I think the only way to overcome the culture of ours (again, speaking of one who lives within an American culture), where meat-eating is accepted, justified, and encouraged, is to escape the influence enough to not be controled by it; and second, to connect the action with what happened to make it possible -- to connect eating meat with the pain and suffering caused when the animal lost its life. And then to realize that it's not necessary at all for this to happen. If one can put oneself in the place of the animal, if one can understand the suffering of the animal (That is, to connect that suffering to oneself; to one's own pain or the feeling of losing one's life, or another's,) then one will not say something like meat tastes too good to give up.

I am not saying we are karma-free after giving up meat; that's a whole other story, but it's an important step...

[girlygirlemc]

I've been a pesco-ovo-lacto vegetarian all my life (I'd give up fish if sushi wasn't my favorite food). I find that vegetarianism makes so much sense, and that the most intelligent and inspiring people support/supported it (Einstein, DaVinci, Gandhi, Pythagoras, Diogenes, Plato, Newton, Edison...the list goes on). That quote you listed by Thoreau, one of my favorite authors, is truly great. How delightfully ironic the whole situation is :D

By the way, is that quote from Walden?


I do not like American farming practices, but that is a separate issue, and not eating meat will not change the unhappy fate of force-fed cows.

It has been said that a vegetarian saves the lives of over 100 animals per year. I believe that makes a huge difference. Besides, becoming a vegetarian can't hurt. I think it's foolish to think that one cannot change the fate of another... and buying meat only supports those cruel and inhumane industries.

[Jozanny]

Well, those livestock industries are not sustainable, and that is not really what my objection is about. My objection rests on the fairly proven fact that living things have to die so that other living things have the energy to succeed in procreating and maintaining a viable species. It may be inconvenient to acknowledge this, Niko, but that is the way it works. One cannot remove suffering from the equation; it is impossible, whether that suffering stems from human action or other sources. Watch a colony of army ants kill a huge animal sometime. The ant isn't evil; the colony is performing a necessary function as a super-predator.

I won't get into the debate about humans being quasi-supernatural, or extraordinary. I don't believe it, but in this forum one fights a losing battle against the divine calling thing--but, even with that argument aside, life is a dynamic contest and struggle, and some win that struggle, but all living things eventually lose, and get consumed, regardless of the attractions of non-violence.

When you say, girlygirl, that 100 animals per year are *saved*, saved from what? Domesticated cattle are not returned to the wild. In the US they are force-fed corn; if they were not slaughtered they would die, in agony, from being pressured to eat a grain they were not evolved to eat. In the UK, they are fed ground meal which includes animal by-products, hence mad cow disease. You aren't saving them from pens barely large enough to stand in; 10 billion people put arable land under a great deal of pressure.

Utopian visions may be precious, but they just don't jive with the cost of having modern, industrialized, market-based civilizations. Good luck with that.

[NikolaiI]

Well, those livestock industries are not sustainable, and that is not really what my objection is about. My objection rests on the fairly proven fact that living things have to die so that other living things have the energy to succeed in procreating and maintaining a viable species. It may be inconvenient to acknowledge this, Niko, but that is the way it works. One cannot remove suffering from the equation; it is impossible, whether that suffering stems from human action or other sources. Watch a colony of army ants kill a huge animal sometime. The ant isn't evil; the colony is performing a necessary function as a super-predator.

I won't get into the debate about humans being quasi-supernatural, or extraordinary. I don't believe it, but in this forum one fights a losing battle against the divine calling thing--but, even with that argument aside, life is a dynamic contest and struggle, and some win that struggle, but all living things eventually lose, and get consumed, regardless of the attractions of non-violence.

No, I am aware of this and I have been some time. There is a verse in a scripture I am studying, Srimad Bhagavatam, which states exactly this (1.13.47):

phalgūni tatra mahatāḿ
jīvo jīvasya jīvanam

"The weak are the subsistence of the strong, and the general rule holds that one living being is food for another."

I'm aware you don't believe in a supreme will, and I wasn't planning to speak of it either.

Srila Prabhupada, in his purport of this verse, writes


The living being is the source of subsistence for other, stronger living beings. No one should be very anxious for his subsistence in any circumstances because there are living beings everywhere, and no living being starves for want of food at any place.

An elephant is much larger than we are, but it is provided for... basically, there are suitable foods which can be made from fruits, nuts, beans, vegetables, and milk, and it is not necessary to eat animals.

Prabhupada also writes:


Exploitation of the weaker living being by the stronger is the natural law of existence; there is always an attempt to devour the weak in different kingdoms of living beings. There is no possibility of checking this tendency by any artificial means under material conditions; it can be checked only by awakening the spiritual sense of the human being by practice of spiritual regulations. The spiritual regulative principles, however, do not allow a man to slaughter weaker animals on one side and teach others peaceful coexistence. If man does not allow the animals peaceful coexistence, how can he expect peaceful existence in human society?

I will write more later. I understand you do not put authority in any scriptures, but as you asked for philosophy, there it is, a vegetarian philosophy. :D

[Jozanny]

How is your believe system going to change the reality of a global market society?

[blp]

A quick note on diet, jozanny. I'll risk telling you something you already know, just because you mentioned a salad without too much fat: there's a diametric difference between meat/dairy derived fat, which is harmful to humans because it raises cholesterol, and the kind of fats you'd generally eat in a salad: vegetable oil such a sunflower oil or olive oil. Your body needs these and they help maintain a healthy heart. Other sources include nuts and fish. It's still fat and so, in theory, can make you fat if you eat enough, but you actually really have to eat quite a lot of it for that to happen, whereas meat fat, butter and cheese are comparatively quick routes to obesity and heart disease - with no real upside since the nutrients you get from eating these things can all be got from other sources.

I take your point about fiber making you, in particular, sick though. Can't really argue with that.

To try, try to keep this on a philosophical bent, still in answer to you, jozanny, it's one thing to say, roughly rightly as you do, that



life is a dynamic contest and struggle, and some win that struggle, but all living things eventually lose, and get consumed, regardless of the attractions of non-violence

But it's not a simple matter to extrapolate from that that we should eat meat or that it is ethical to do so or even that it doesn't matter if we do so. For one thing, I don't think you have to have an exaggeratedly rosey view of things, let alone a religious one (I'm an atheist), to see that the struggle and selfishness you talk about frequently coexist with kindness and selflessness, that, for instance, as the philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts it, human beings are, frequently, spontaneously moral. (That said, Zizek himself, in the documentary Zizek!, when he finds out his interviewers and film crew are all vegetarian responds, only partially with his tongue in his cheek, 'Degenerates! You will turn into monkeys.')

To elevate the decidedly quasi-Darwinian observation of a struggle for existence to a principle is to run the very serious risk of putting the ethical cart before the horse, doing harm for the sake of a principle and not, in fact, out of the expediency from which the principle is derived. ****, there's got to be a simpler way of saying that. What I mean is, yes, it seems to be almost impossible to avoid doing some harm, but that it's a serious (moral) error to turn that into an argument for doing harm when it's not necessary. An error, I would add as an aside, that I think a lot of parents make all the time in the raising of their children. Yes, the world is a harsh place. That should be an argument for avoiding harshness when we can, not being harsh all the time. The harshness of life can more than take care of itself without us adding to it gratuitously.

This is what I meant, earlier, about working out our balance of cruelty. A relatively simple way of looking at it is to ask how much harm we can avoid doing to others without doing harm to ourselves. However, the much more interesting angle on this is that, very often, what's good for the goose and gander is good for us too. Meat eating seems to be an example of this. The animals don't want to be eaten and, in the main, human metabolisms seem to be in agreement. A well-balanced veggie meal is a kindness to the animals and a kindness to the consumer of it. (And if you can say that about meat, you can say the same ten-fold about paté. Just ask the goose and the gander.)

OK, so some vegetables had to die for the vegetarian meal and that's cruelty too; but let's be as clear as we can about our taxonomy here. This is necessary. We have to eat something. Even if we eat meat, the nutritionists universally agree, we need our 5, 6, 7, 8 or so portions of fruit and veg each day.



How is your believe system going to change the reality of a global market society?

This is called 'capitulation'. You might as well say the same thing or similar to William Wilberforce or Emmeline Pankhurst. Didn't your mother ever tell you, just because everybody else is doing something doesn't make it right?

However, I would add, that the overwhelming, sublime fact of the global market place does probably change something in our examination of a balance of cruelty - by which I mean, to put it perhaps too simply, some of this stuff, without tying ourselves up in absolute knots of austerity, we're probably stuck with, at least for the moment.

You say you don't want to get into the unsustainability of the meat industry, but then you use the facts of it (corn-feeding etc.) to argue against the notion that animals are 'saved' by vegetarianism. I really don't know if you can separate the industry and its decidedly bad practices from the rest of this topic. As you yourself show, the cruelty of the meat industry is not just in the final slaughter of the animals, it's the inhumane conditions in which they are kept - all of which is only sustained by the enormous global demand for meat. These kinds of things can change, sometimes quite quickly given the right circumstances.

[Jozanny]

Fair enough blp, since you and I are at least having a discussion which is adjusting itself to various parameters. You know, I changed my diet in about 03 to eat healthier, and my ex-fiance insisted that was why I was getting *sick*, and I dismissed this. My power chair died over Thanksgiving, and though I now can make limited excursions in the piece of junk I am sitting in now (getting a new chair takes a process) I have indulged some in rich processed food because I cannot drive to grocery as conveniently, and I seem much more stable, which makes not a lick of sense. I suppose internal medicine will look at their batty cripple askance when I ask them what is going on... (sigh); all I have is the colitis theory, which is difficult to confirm, but associated with cerebral palsy in some instances.

Maybe I should have been a biologist. However, it is not that I do not appreciate nobel sentiments, but I do insist on looking at what is real, even in the aspiration of the possible. Public radio this morning had a mildly alarming segment on species loss due to human activity, and they said it might be too late for X number of species--and I am not sure how putting 10 billion people on a diet of rice, greens, and roots, even if it could be done, changes that our extraordinary success has done almost incalculable harm.

[blp]

Hope this is more to the point... As far as nutrition goes, since blp adressed it earlier, I think it's not so much what we eat, but the connection between our diet and the way in which we use the aquired energy. Carnivores need a lot of it because there's a lot of intense physical activity involved in their lives; they may also have to go on for long periods of time without feeding, so they need some form of caloric energy that can be stored. It's this last part that veggies don't have, their energy gets burened pretty fast - that's why herbivores need to spend a lot of time eating, and why you feel like wolfing your green food.

And I'm from Romania, actually. Very bad eating habits are part of the tradition here. :D

No time to respond to all your points about unreality and such just now, but perhaps they relate to this question of specific dietary needs dependent on lifestyle. I believe athletes do eat quantities of fat that would be considered deeply unhealthy for ordinary people and, perhaps in former times, a huntsman's diet had a certain neatly symmetrical aptness to his lifestyle (i.e. he needed a lot of slow-burn energy to go after his prey). To keep eating like a huntsman when we're spending most of our day sitting in front of a computer might be said to constitute a certain failure to engage with reality.

[Jozanny]

This is my last post on this topic, but I wanted to clarify: Vegetarians who view lifestyles choices with complacency, are, to my mind, fooling themselves. Civilization has a price, and Western New Age guilt conciousness isn't going to undo the damage that over 200 years of colonial, and the creation of consumer economies, has wrought on global eco-systems. Like any other species, we are a self-interested one, and the only way to undo our damage to the planet is to go against our self-interest, and that is a very difficult thing to do. Even the Indian government, Niko, shoots tigers, these endangered and beautiful beasts, who develop a taste for Indian flesh. It might be nice, before quoting Buddhists teachings as a superior moral stance, if you visited some sites like Greenpeace, and looked up the Japanese whaling industry, and saw how many hundreds of dolphins they slaughter, and consider the magnitude of that over your lettuce. The problem is much larger and more intractable than the new American chic.

[NikolaiI]

This is my last post on this topic, but I wanted to clarify: Vegetarians who view lifestyles choices with complacency, are, to my mind, fooling themselves. Civilization has a price, and Western New Age guilt conciousness isn't going to undo the damage that over 200 years of colonial, and the creation of consumer economies, has wrought on global eco-systems. Like any other species, we are a self-interested one, and the only way to undo our damage to the planet is to go against our self-interest, and that is a very difficult thing to do. Even the Indian government, Niko, shoots tigers, these endangered and beautiful beasts, who develop a taste for Indian flesh. It might be nice, before quoting Buddhists teachings as a superior moral stance, if you visited some sites like Greenpeace, and looked up the Japanese whaling industry, and saw how many hundreds of dolphins they slaughter, and consider the magnitude of that over your lettuce. The problem is much larger and more intractable than the new American chic.

Ok, I'm sorry you feel that way.

[Jozanny]

Ok, I'm sorry you feel that way.

I am not trying to make anyone sorry Niko--just trying to bring age, and experience to bear, and maybe I fail, in bringing that age and experience to the young, as a challenge to think.

This is off-topic, but I use it as an analogy: After years of being carted around by my parents from one hospital after another, and other institutional environments of interest, I was courted by Disabled In Action, and they did me some good, sued my school district, and even gave me a career. I became something of a True Believer in the movement (sound familiar?) and then I got burned, and I am still getting burned by this ideology even though I'd like to flee from it as far and as fast as I could.

Nothing to do with vegan as lifestyle--but, it does point to what I'm trying to convey: Changing the world is hard, and that goes for the sincerely religious faithful, the serious activist, advocate, and those who are serious about scaling back on what they need in their social environment. What are you willing to give up to conserve the planet? Meat? That is easy. Greenpeace risks the lives of its members to save whales from our modern killing technology, but those who are really invested in raping the sea could care less. It is something to think about.

[NikolaiI]

I am not trying to make anyone sorry Niko--just trying to bring age, and experience to bear, and maybe I fail, in bringing that age and experience to the young, as a challenge to think.

This is off-topic, but I use it as an analogy: After years of being carted around by my parents from one hospital after another, and other institutional environments of interest, I was courted by Disabled In Action, and they did me some good, sued my school district, and even gave me a career. I became something of a True Believer in the movement (sound familiar?) and then I got burned, and I am still getting burned by this ideology even though I'd like to flee from it as far and as fast as I could.

Nothing to do with vegan as lifestyle--but, it does point to what I'm trying to convey: Changing the world is hard, and that goes for the sincerely religious faithful, the serious activist, advocate, and those who are serious about scaling back on what they need in their social environment. What are you willing to give up to conserve the planet? Meat? That is easy. Greenpeace risks the lives of its members to save whales from our modern killing technology, but those who are really invested in raping the sea could care less. It is something to think about.

You are not trying to make people feel sorry-- great. I am not trying to make them feel guilty. Nor am I trying to get them into anything New Age or American chic. I brought this up to discuss- vegetarianism. That is all, nothing more or less. It was not a Buddhist I quoted, but I quoted it because you mentioned that one living entity is the food of another, and I thought you might find this verse in scripture interesting, since it was saying the same thing. It was Prabhupada's purport to this verse I quoted. The main idea here is that there is suitable food we can make from nuts, fruit, beans, grains, and milk, and it is not necessary or good to kill animals as well.

Please understand this is all I am trying to say, and I am not saying that if you become a vegetarian the rest of the world will as well, or that nobody will ever suffer again. If someone thought that because they were vegetarian, they were going to solve everything; this would be an instance of them fooling theirself-- but the choice of not eating meat does not carry with it implicitly some kind of self-delusion, which is what I understood you to imply. Please respond or not as you wish.

Also I would say that the discussion of what would happen if the entire world became vegetarian is not very relevant or helpful, for one because it is pure speculation, and secondly it is 100% unlikely to happen. I agree very much with Petronius about world-population (which by the way is about 6.7 billion, not 10). He makes a good point that we have increased in 5 billion in the last century. This should alert us or make us try to be careful and aware of what is going on. The absolute best thing for humanity would be to stop, or slow down... I mean in a general sense... slow down society, stop racing around, and try to find some peace. We need to do this collectively. Aren't the older, wise people of our society always telling the young ones to calm down, that things will be alright, to slow down? If this is the wisdom of our elders, then why isn't society following their advice?

Okay, finally there should be nothing wrong with a calm discussion of vegetarianism. We are all mature enough to discuss like this. All I want people to do is think, not to change their views without thinking or if it goes against what they believe in. I quoted nothing to try to gain some kind of moral superiority. As I said in the opening post, my reason for my approach is that I was not a vegetarian for every meal of my life, and so I am not judging harshly those who, by a span of time, are doing nothing I didn't do. That's why I am forced not to be judgemental. :) At the same time, I will defend the right to be vegetarian or to speak of it. William Blake is quoted to have said "When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do." Therefore part of this is to present vegetarianism and to encourage people to always consider thoughtfully their actions, and the other part is to assure you that vegetarians are not fooling themselves, as the only thing they (as vegetarians) have in common as a group is that they do not eat meat.

If there's some reason you don't wish to discuss vegetarianism, you don't have to alert us to your last post, just don't post anymore. We will see that you quit the discussion. At the same time, you are more than welcome as far as I am concerned.

[NickAdams]

I was a vegetarian for some time, but it seemed like a ready made philosophy. The motives behind my actions, although the involved the same dietary practice, was not the same. PLants live too and a strict consumption of them is excessive. I am interested in a balance, but am also interested in playing on an equal playing field. I only eat wild animals that I hunt myself, which is how animals obtain their food. I don't eat the domesticated.

[curlyqlink]

Pythagoras believed it was indecent for men to eat the flesh of animals, fattening the one on the destruction of another, especially since nature provided all that man needs to live and thrive in the fruits of the soil. This is perhaps the most convincing argument I have encountered in favor of vegitarianism. It still falls short of the mark, I think.


To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.
Mahatma Gandhi
This statement seems to me to be in dire need of proof. If a building were on fire, and a child and a lamb were inside, and the Mahatma could save only one of them, are we seriously to believe that he would not have immediately chosen to save the child?

I am very fond of animals. I consider my 2 cats practically family-- practically! But there really are such things as higher and lower animals. My cats are very intelligent-- considering they have brains the size of a brussels sprout-- and they are higher creatures than a fly or a bacterium. But I am still more intelligent, for unlike them I have the ability to think abstractly and the foresight not to bite into electrical cords or chase rabid squirrels. I am a higher animal than a chicken or a cow or a lobster.

It does bother me (a little) that chickens and cows die so that I may have a nice meal. I hope that they are killed as painlessly as possible, and raised in a humane manner. (Lobsters, being basically giant bugs, I care less about.) Gratuitous or selfish cruelty is, I believe, unquestionably wrong.

Beyond a certain point, I believe, compassion for animals becomes essentially irrational. There is nothing wrong with this: my fondness for my cats is mostly irrational. But because it is irrational, I don't think it's possible to formulate a philosophical argument in favor of vegetarianism.

[NEEMAN]

To be honest, for me the whole debate is settled when I think of the hippie from Futurama saying "We taught a lion to eat tofu!"

To my mind, man is, to quote (though perhaps misuse) Aristotle, a 'political animal', but an animal nonetheless. If it is acceptable for animals to eat meat, I see no reason why people shouldn't.

I mean, for example, as a vegitarian, would you buy cat food for your cat? Dog food for your dog? Is that any worse than buying meat?

[NickAdams]

I am very fond of animals. I consider my 2 cats practically family-- practically! But there really are such things as higher and lower animals. My cats are very intelligent-- considering they have brains the size of a brussels sprout-- and they are higher creatures than a fly or a bacterium. But I am still more intelligent, for unlike them I have the ability to think abstractly and the foresight not to bite into electrical cords or chase rabid squirrels. I am a higher animal than a chicken or a cow or a lobster.


So you wouldn't mind taking a bite out of an autistic person or a comatose patient with little or no brain activity. If the importance of a creatures life is based on their intellect then those who are pro-life on the issue of abortion and PVS are completely irrational. A similar hierarchy where one believed that they were superior to another group and there for their life was not as significant can be seen in Nazi Germany.


To be honest, for me the whole debate is settled when I think of the hippie from Futurama saying "We taught a lion to eat tofu!"

To my mind, man is, to quote (though perhaps misuse) Aristotle, a 'political animal', but an animal nonetheless. If it is acceptable for animals to eat meat, I see no reason why people shouldn't.

I don't think that animals, non-human, have acquired the capabilities for agriculture. It makes sense for animals, who can be related to our nomadic ancestors, to hunt for food; eating what is needed and moving on. We are settled in modern society and have the luxury of supplements. We are not on equal grounds with animals. We eat animals that have grown defenseless because of domestication, and the killing of these animals is slaughter. Their meat goes bad in stores, in our homes and with throw unwanted portion into the garbage. Aristotle had a theory on virtue also with excess on one side and deficiency on the other.

[JBI]

There are various health issues connected with vegetarianism. For instance, Vegans and vegetarians often have stunted growths, and other growth related problems because of their lack of meat in their diet. Perhaps they can be supplemented, but in truth, meat seems to be quite healthy, especially meats like venison.

On moral grounds - that is all relative. If not eating meat is, as Jozanny pointed out, used as a new age load of crap to pretend to oneself that they are saving the world, then I am all against it. If someone doesn't like the taste of meat, and doesn't eat it on those grounds, I can see that, but in terms of morality, in the long run it makes no difference, as less cows will be brought into this world if less people are eating them.

That is the strange thing - cows are bred - and therefore, they are calculated in terms of amount to fill the demand of the market. If people stop eating, cows will stop being bred, and generally the herd size will diminish significantly.

It costs money to have a cow, unless you are using it for milk. You need a field for it to graze on, and other things to sustain it. If there is no profit involved, the cow simply will not be brought into life.

[NickAdams]

There are various health issues connected with vegetarianism.

Deficiency.

[blp]

There are various health issues connected with vegetarianism. For instance, Vegans and vegetarians often have stunted growths, and other growth related problems because of their lack of meat in their diet. Perhaps they can be supplemented, but in truth, meat seems to be quite healthy, especially meats like venison.

This requires rather a lot of substantiation. Actually, I suspect it's just not true. I've known many many vegetarians and none of them had stunted growths, including those who'd been raised vegetarian from birth and never eaten meat in their lives. There are also areas of the world such as Southern India where meat just isn't eaten at all, without apparent detriment to the population's health. As my previous remarks about China's changing diet indicate, meat is, in fact, a luxury for many people and is eaten either rarely or not at all among many of the world's poorer people.

I'd be surprised if you could name a single vital nutrient you can get from meat that you can't get from other sources. As far as I know, pulses - beans and lentils - are the most healthy staples you can eat and contain the protein, iron and B vitamins frequently obtained from meat. There are many other sources of iron too, including dried fruits such as raisins and prunes and certain green leafy vegetables such as spinach.

A recent study found that the most nutritious foods, at least in the English diet, by which they meant the foods with the highest concentrations of the widest possible variety of vital nutrients were broccoli and runner beans.



On moral grounds - that is all relative. If not eating meat is, as Jozanny pointed out, used as a new age load of crap to pretend to oneself that they are saving the world, then I am all against it. If someone doesn't like the taste of meat, and doesn't eat it on those grounds, I can see that, but in terms of morality, in the long run it makes no difference, as less cows will be brought into this world if less people are eating them.

I refer you to my numerous remarks elsewhere in this thread about the environmental damage caused by cattle farming. It would be a far far better thing if 'less cows [were] brought into the world...'



That is the strange thing - cows are bred - and therefore, they are calculated in terms of amount to fill the demand of the market. If people stop eating, cows will stop being bred, and generally the herd size will diminish significantly.

Sound both plausible and desirable for the greatest good for the greatest number.



Fair enough blp, since you and I are at least having a discussion which is adjusting itself to various parameters. You know, I changed my diet in about 03 to eat healthier, and my ex-fiance insisted that was why I was getting *sick*, and I dismissed this. My power chair died over Thanksgiving, and though I now can make limited excursions in the piece of junk I am sitting in now (getting a new chair takes a process) I have indulged some in rich processed food because I cannot drive to grocery as conveniently, and I seem much more stable, which makes not a lick of sense. I suppose internal medicine will look at their batty cripple askance when I ask them what is going on... (sigh); all I have is the colitis theory, which is difficult to confirm, but associated with cerebral palsy in some instances.

I'm all for adjusting parameters and I sympathise with this in particular, having been physiologically self-sabotaged a few years ago in my attempt to go vegan by the fact that I suddenly couldn't digest pulses. I won't go into disgusting detail, but horrible times were spent in toilet cubicles. No doctor treated the problem seriously. ****ing doctors, I swear, sometimes... Even supermarket bread brought it on to my bafflement and distress. I eventually realised it was probably because it all contained soya flour. Eventually, I solved the problem - don't ask me how I worked this out, it just suddenly made sense - by scarfing down large quantities of citrus fruits. But I'm also aware that, for a lot of people with more serious health problems such as yours, diet's no simple matter. A friend of mine was diagnosed diabetic a few years ago and it's still an ongoing source of anxiety to him trying to figure out what he can and can't eat to feel OK.

What did your healthier diet consist of? If you don't mind my asking.



Maybe I should have been a biologist. However, it is not that I do not appreciate nobel sentiments, but I do insist on looking at what is real, even in the aspiration of the possible. Public radio this morning had a mildly alarming segment on species loss due to human activity, and they said it might be too late for X number of species--and I am not sure how putting 10 billion people on a diet of rice, greens, and roots, even if it could be done, changes that our extraordinary success has done almost incalculable harm.

But I've spent a lot of this thread arguing that vegetarianism is more than possible for most people. You're not sure how 10 billion people could be put on a vegetarian diet, but I've spent a lot of this thread explaining that it's cheaper and easier to produce this food than to farm livestock (while conceding that some animal husbandry would probably have to continue). Still, I'm not sure we've quite worked out whether the possibility of a 'global vegetarian diet' needs to be a predicate for every individual decision on this matter. Are we saying, uh oh, if everyone did this, it might cause a lot of damage? Is it likely that everyone is going to do this? Are we trying to subject vegetarianism to some version of Kant's categorical imperative?

Look, I'm getting tired of repeating myself, but, seriously, curtail beef farming and and you free up vast quantities of land for things like soya and wheat and feed about twenty times more people thereby. I posted a more exact figure and a source elsewhere in this thread.

You still seem to be saying, jozanny, that the fact that we can't solve all the problems caused by our evolutionary success, we shouldn't even try to solve any of them - no matter how much bloody sense it makes or how easy it is. Anyway, I'm getting blue in the face making all this sense and I'm about ready to quit. Any veggies who want to fight the tide of arguments I've already refuted, feel free repost my comments. Ciao kids.

[NickAdams]

I refer you to my numerous remarks elsewhere in this thread about the environmental damage caused by cattle farming. It would be a far far better thing if 'less cows [were] brought into the world...'

I was going to mention that but I wasn't sure of its validity.

[curlyqlink]

So you wouldn't mind taking a bite out of an autistic person or a comatose patient with little or no brain activity. If the importance of a creatures life is based on their intellect then those who are pro-life on the issue of abortion and PVS are completely irrational. A similar hierarchy where one believed that they were superior to another group and there for their life was not as significant can be seen in Nazi Germany.
I don't think anything in my post suggested that I am pro-cannibalism. Or a Nazi.

[NickAdams]

I don't think anything in my post suggested that I am pro-cannibalism. Or a Nazi.

I didn't say you were either, but your argument was based on the hierarchy of intelligence and superiority. You can have said that you have a biased as a human to value human life and left it at that instead of an attempt at objective reasoning.

[PierreGringoire]

Following excerpts are from Dennis Leary's no cure for cancer. I thought they were controversial and interesting enough to post...you could extract some truths through it...its satire

Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-****ing-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision. Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it's about. "I don't want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals." Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He's so cute. My fluffy little dog.. He's so cute- There's the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don't we? Yeah. Why don't we just have animal auditions. Line 'em up one by one and interview them individually. "What are you?" "I'm an otter." "And what do you do?" "I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands." "You're free to go." "And what are you?" "I'm a cow." "Get in the f***ing truck, ok pal!" "But I'm an animal." "You're a baseball glove! Get on that truck!" "I'm an animal, I have rights!" "Yeah, here's yer f***ing cousin, get on the f***ing truck, pal!" We kill the cows to make jackets out of them and then we kill each other for the jackets we made out of the cows.

You will eat the meat folks, because this country was founded on two things. Meat, and war. You eat enough f***ing meat, you wanna kill somebody. That's the way it works. That was the ultimate American dream. During that Persian Gulf War, I was sitting in my living room, naked, with a can of Budweiser and a three inch stake watching the war, live, on TV. I had a six foot "expletive" with a giant cheese burger on the end of it. I ate so much meat during the war that by the time the war was over three weeks later, I was like, "No no no. We need to keep fighting."

[blp]

"You will eat the meat folks, because this country was founded on two things. Meat, and war."

Yeah. Don't even get me started on the arms industry. ;)

[girlygirlemc]

Pythagoras believed it was indecent for men to eat the flesh of animals, fattening the one on the destruction of another, especially since nature provided all that man needs to live and thrive in the fruits of the soil. This is perhaps the most convincing argument I have encountered in favor of vegitarianism. It still falls short of the mark, I think.


This statement seems to me to be in dire need of proof. If a building were on fire, and a child and a lamb were inside, and the Mahatma could save only one of them, are we seriously to believe that he would not have immediately chosen to save the child?

I am very fond of animals. I consider my 2 cats practically family-- practically! But there really are such things as higher and lower animals. My cats are very intelligent-- considering they have brains the size of a brussels sprout-- and they are higher creatures than a fly or a bacterium. But I am still more intelligent, for unlike them I have the ability to think abstractly and the foresight not to bite into electrical cords or chase rabid squirrels. I am a higher animal than a chicken or a cow or a lobster.

It does bother me (a little) that chickens and cows die so that I may have a nice meal. I hope that they are killed as painlessly as possible, and raised in a humane manner. (Lobsters, being basically giant bugs, I care less about.) Gratuitous or selfish cruelty is, I believe, unquestionably wrong.

Beyond a certain point, I believe, compassion for animals becomes essentially irrational. There is nothing wrong with this: my fondness for my cats is mostly irrational. But because it is irrational, I don't think it's possible to formulate a philosophical argument in favor of vegetarianism.


Not the point. Gandhi's argument lies more in the belief that the murder of an animal should be as severe as that of a human. Animals have the same capacity for love and pain as humans (animal psychology and brain wave studies prove this! Anyone who has had a pet should confirm this). Of course anyone would save the life of a human over an animal if they had to, but to be able to torture millions of animals daily and call it a legal industry is ludicrous.

The thing is, all meat you purchase in the grocery store has been crammed in tiny trucks in either scorching hot or freezing cold weather with hundreds of other panicked animals, driven for hundreds of miles without break, beaten and tortured into movement, and in the end stunned (if lucky) and slaughtered. Whether they're sick, lame, blind, deaf, old, it makes no difference. THAT is the reality of the meat industry. You can hope and dream that the food on your plate has had a painless death, but by continuing to purchase such products you are funding this legal cruelty.

On a side note, my father has been a vegetarian for about twenty years. He's about 45 now, and is a 3rd dan black belt in karate, and excels in hockey, tennis, snowboarding, and basically any other sport you can name. He's in top shape all around for his age, and he believes a vegetarian diet made a huge difference in his health.

Gladiators were almost all vegetarians. They got their protein from beans and legumes, and obviously had the muscle strength to perform amazing feats of athleticism.

[NikolaiI]

Vegetarianism moralkly, yes that is what I meant. Thank you everyone for your great posts, and for being respectful.

[Jeremy_PA]

First, let me say that I am asking a question and I am genuinely interested in receiving a response because I have also thought about changing my diet. I am just curious; I am not trying to anger anyone.

But, how do vegetarians, vegans, frugivores, who chose their lifestyles from a moral standpoint, counter the argument about harming plants? And I don't mean about causing suffering or pain: I can reasonably agree that plants sense no pain due to a lack of nervous system. (Even though it is confusing to me that plants develop poisons, thorns, etc.) However, I mean more about the idea of sensation. I would argue that although a plant cannot sense pain, it can still sense SOME things. Yet, if I eat a plant, I have ended its sensation of the world; I have still caused it death, although a harmless, painless death.

These sort of questions have always confused me; I always come to a conclusion that there is no way for me to eat without causing some sort of harm. Are there not minuscule bacteria, etc that are on plants, fruits, etc anyway? Will not these be destroyed as well from consumption? I guess it may come down to the lesser harm: choosing that which does not feel pain.

Or maybe something else. Perhaps viewing the world as a cycle (which I often do), with a lightheartedness (I'd rather die than live too seriously) in which all things interact with each other in a natural, reincarnating cycle? Animals predate on other animals, and to me, the ethical-moral distinction between humans and nonhuman animals seems arguable. Similarly, I have already accepted that I am a part of this cycle; I may be killed and eaten by an animal, or I will definitely be consumed by something once I am dead. I could argue that I'd prefer not to be killed and eaten (as an animal), but also I could argue that I'd prefer not to be eaten even if I could not sense pain either (as a plant).

Well, this may be confusing because I just wrote this quickly. I am just trying to make some sense for myself. I hope to hear from anyone who is interested in responding. Thanks.

[subterranean]

This requires rather a lot of substantiation. Actually, I suspect it's just not true. I've known many many vegetarians and none of them had stunted growths, including those who'd been raised vegetarian from birth and never eaten meat in their lives. There are also areas of the world such as Southern India where meat just isn't eaten at all, without apparent detriment to the population's health. As my previous remarks about China's changing diet indicate, meat is, in fact, a luxury for many people and is eaten either rarely or not at all among many of the world's poorer people.

I do have little doubt whether the diet itself is the sole factor. Vegetarians in general have a healtier life, i.e. tend to be non-smokers, have less alcohol intake, and live an active life (excercise, do sports, etc). The socioecnomic factors can not be disregard in this case.
There was an old thread in the General Chat section that discussed the same topic long time ago. And I still have the same point of view now as I had then.

[Tsuyoiko]

But, how do vegetarians, vegans, frugivores, who chose their lifestyles from a moral standpoint, counter the argument about harming plants?

I became a vegetarian from a moral standpoint, and I remain a vegetarian from a philosophical standpoint. We're just one animal among many, and I think it's pure speciesism to draw a moral distinction between humans and other animals.

I think yours is a fair question, and one I've asked myself. For me, it comes down to balancing the need to live against the need to avoid harming another creature. I don't eat anything that comes from a dead animal, because it's pretty easy to do that without any detriment to my health or quality of life. I tried a vegan diet, but it made me so miserable I starting eating dairy again. I try to avoid leather shoes, but struggle to find a comfortable alternative, so I reluctantly wear leather, although I'm always on the lookout for an alternative. At the very minimum I have to eat plants if I want to survive. I have come to a compromise with myself; it's necessary sometimes to act counter to my principles in order to survive.

[NikolaiI]

But, how do vegetarians, vegans, frugivores, who chose their lifestyles from a moral standpoint, counter the argument about harming plants? And I don't mean about causing suffering or pain: I can reasonably agree that plants sense no pain due to a lack of nervous system. (Even though it is confusing to me that plants develop poisons, thorns, etc.) However, I mean more about the idea of sensation. I would argue that although a plant cannot sense pain, it can still sense SOME things. Yet, if I eat a plant, I have ended its sensation of the world; I have still caused it death, although a harmless, painless death.

Thanks for your question, and sorry I didn't reply sooner. You raise a good piont and I did some research but a lot of it was beyond me! Tsuyoiko gave a satisfactory answer. For me, I think about it like this. Yes, plant life has life. But for me it takes an intellectual step to understand that it does, and that I should not kill it (unnecessarily). I must be in the same place about plants as non-vegetarians are about animals. For me, with animals, over the years, it's become very clear that I should be a vegetarian. Especially since my health is very good. If my health is better or the same without eating meat, then the only reason to eat meat would be to satisfy my tastse. Well for one it doesn't, it repulses me. But if it did, I would refrain the same way I do from indulging in something like cake.

What I'm trying to say originally is that it takes a mental effort to understand the position of plants. It's natural that one life form consumes another, this is the way of nature. But consider the elephant, the rhinocerous, and the ox - they are much stronger than humans, and they are herbivore. Humans can be vegetarian and be strong. There is at least more than one top athelete who is a vegetarian. This is pretty convincing evidence for me. In light of this evidence, the only reason I can see that there are non-vegetarians is simply that it is so immersed in our culture. Less than 3-5% of people do not eat any meat at all. When 95% of people do something, there is a strong pressure to do it as well.

I know I still haven't even answered your question... I guess it takes a mental effort to understand (at least partially), or put oneself in the place of the animal (empathy, the only way to understand their suffering, to connect their suffering to what it would feel like for us to suffer in the same way) - and it takes a greater mental effort to understand plants. But another thing, plant life is nearly infinite. Look at a rain-forest. We of course can't eat randomly the leaves of those trees, but plant life very naturally dies of all kinds of causes. It is abundant and it doesn't suffer pain. Still, as you say, it has some sense of life, so it is sacred too. We shouldn't kill more than we need of anything.

(the statistic I mentioned is about America)

[Oniw17]

I'm surprised that the argument for eating plants wasn't that plants aren't sentient beings. I've heard convincing arguments for vegetarianism for moral reasons based on not killing things that think. It would actually be better economically if everyone were a vegitarian. I've heard that it takes much more land to feed cows unitil adulthood than it does to grow enough crops to have the same mass as an adult cow(I've seen the sources too, but I forget what they were). I've thought about becoming a vegetarian before, but not because you have to kill animals to eat meat. I see no real problem with killing sentient beings(including humans), but I do believe that there's something wrong with malice. As much as a lion isn't being malicious by killing to eat, a person isn't either. However, I don't see how raising an animal(and forcing it to live how you want it to) and then killing it could be anything but malicious. Maybe that's an arbitrary distinction, I certainly don't see impeding on the liberty of dogs by keeping them as pets as a bad thing, but there's just a feeling of insanity that I get when I think about raising something with the ultimate goal of killing it. Maybe it's some kind of primitive pack instinct, like if I'm raising something, it's part of my family. Anyway, I'm not a vegetarian. I never buy meat but if somebody offers me some meat, I'm not going to turn them down, and I do really like the taste of birds and shellfish. I may become a vegetarian one day, but it would probably be less a moral issue and more because I wish to live self sufficiently at some point, and I can likely achieve this goal much easier without a bunch of animals around. I know that I'll NEVER give up milk though.

[Mathor]

i'm not vegetarian, though i like very few things with meat in them.

As an American I find it pretty hard to not eat meat at all as like you kind of said it's just a part of the culture kind of, but often times I can go months without eating meat simply out of mere taste. Like I go downstairs and what I usually want to eat is a PBandJ

Although I eat meat on a very small amount, like the poster above mentioned, i do not like the raising of animals just to be killed. However, often times i've dreamed of living in a cabin out in the middle of the woods for a couple of years. There are a lot of places in the midwest like this, where you'd be a long way from the nearest town, and in such cases I do not see anything wrong with that person hunting and gathering for survival

[1n50mn14]

Instead of arguing with posts I disagree with on this thread, I'll simply say WHY I am a vegetarian, and leave it at that. Agree, or disagree: each of us has our own opinion.

I do not eat meat for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, I grew up on a farm, with cattle, chicken, geese, sheep, pigs, etc. I had many pets, and whenever we went to the grocery store, my grandmother would point out packages of beef on the shelves, and say to me, 'That is what Selene is going to be when she gets too old.' Now, I didn't think it was right to have something as a pet for it's lifetime, then kill and eat it. If you name something, it is no longer nutrition, it is a life, and a companion, and killing and devouring it is one of the most barbaric things a human being can do.

Here in North America, at least, we wouldn't eat a dog, or a cat: what makes those lives more valuable than those of cattle, or pigs? Who decides what species of life deserve more rights and respect?

Because I do not personally kill my own food, I do not think I deserve to eat it. I don't think anybody deserves to eat meat unless they kill the animal providing the meat themselves. People don't seem to realize that meat came from an animal, and that is the fault of grocery stores, which provide people with neatly pre-packaged meat, some distance from the blood and slaughter. We're able to entirely disassociate the meat from the animal. I believe some thanks should be given when we take a life for ourselves, and you don't get that with things pre-packaged in plastic. We EARN the right to eat our meat when we kill it ourselves.

Also, there is the fact that eating meat provides much less energy than eating plants.
Simple explanation (Trophic levels). The more trophic levels there are, the more energy is lost. The first trophic level in the chain of meat-our digestive system is the sun causing photosynthesis to occur in the plants. I can't tell you off the top of my head what percentage of sunlight actually reaches the plants on earth, but it is very small. Then, when a cow/sheep/pig eats the plant, only 10% (roughly) of that energy is passed on to the consumer. Then, when we, the humans, eat that meat, we only get 10% of the animals energy.

How much time, energy and farmland could we save if we just ate the plants?


There are various health issues connected with vegetarianism. For instance, Vegans and vegetarians often have stunted growths, and other growth related problems because of their lack of meat in their diet. Perhaps they can be supplemented, but in truth, meat seems to be quite healthy, especially meats like venison.

The only reason anybody would experience stunted growths and other issues would be because they are not properly supplementing their diet with other proteins. The vegetarians that have issues are the ones who quit eating meat and survive solely off of pasta and junk food.

Meats like venison aren't actually very healthy. Venison has little to no nutritional value, and is less of a hearty, healthy meat than a meat that hunters like to eat for pleasure, and out of pride of having killed it themselves. I do actually have a firm basis for this, having grown up in quite a poverty stricken family who hunted venison for nutrition.

[Babyguile]

I became a vegetarian from a moral standpoint, and I remain a vegetarian from a philosophical standpoint. We're just one animal among many, and I think it's pure speciesism to draw a moral distinction between humans and other animals.

I think yours is a fair question, and one I've asked myself. For me, it comes down to balancing the need to live against the need to avoid harming another creature. I don't eat anything that comes from a dead animal, because it's pretty easy to do that without any detriment to my health or quality of life. I tried a vegan diet, but it made me so miserable I starting eating dairy again. I try to avoid leather shoes, but struggle to find a comfortable alternative, so I reluctantly wear leather, although I'm always on the lookout for an alternative. At the very minimum I have to eat plants if I want to survive. I have come to a compromise with myself; it's necessary sometimes to act counter to my principles in order to survive.

Really? Why didn't you just respond: Because plants do not have a central nervous system and can't feel pain?

It was a ludicrous question anyway to try and give plants equality to animals when it comes to a philosophy of reducing the infliction of unnessasary suffering.

The source of these facts are from Diet For A New America by John Robbins. They underline the vein of argument associated with the environmental benefits of becoming vegetarian, which may prove more convincing in todays climate (excuse the pun):

Number of people worldwide who will die as a result of malnutrition this year: 20 million
Number of people who could be adequately fed using land freed if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10%: 100 million
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by people: 20
Percentage of corn grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 80
Percentage of oats grown in the U.S. eaten by livestock: 95
Percentage of protein wasted by cycling grain through livestock: 90
How frequently a child dies as a result of malnutrition: every 2.3 seconds
Pounds of potatoes that can be grown on an acre: 40,000
Pounds of beef produced on an acre: 250
Percentage of U.S. farmland devoted to beef production: 56
Pounds of grain and soybeans needed to produce a pound of edible flesh from feedlot beef: 16



The Environmental Argument

Cause of global warming: greenhouse effect
Primary cause of greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels
Fossil fuels needed to produce meat-centered diet vs. a meat-free diet: 3 times more
Percentage of U.S. topsoil lost to date: 75
Percentage of U.S. topsoil loss directly related to livestock raising: 85
Number of acres of U.S. forest cleared for cropland to produce meat-centered diet: 260 million
Amount of meat imported to U.S. annually from Central and South America: 300,000,000 pounds
Percentage of Central American children under the age of five who are undernourished: 75
Area of tropical rainforest consumed in every quarter-pound of rainforest beef: 55 square feet
Current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforests for meat grazing and other uses: 1,000 per year



The Cancer Argument

Increased risk of breast cancer for women who eat meat daily compared to less than once a week: 3.8 times
For women who eat eggs daily compared to once a week: 2.8 times
For women who eat butter and cheese 2-4 times a week: 3.25 times
Increased risk of fatal ovarian cancer for women who eat eggs 3 or more times a week vs. less than once a week: 3 times
Increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily vs. sparingly or not at all: 3.6 times.



The Cholesterol Argument

Number of U.S. medical schools: 125
Number requiring a course in nutrition: 30
Nutrition training received by average U.S. physician during four years in medical school: 2.5 hours
Most common cause of death in the U.S.: heart attack
How frequently a heart attack kills in the U.S.: every 45 seconds
Average U.S. man's risk of death from heart attack: 50 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat: 15 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat, dairy or eggs: 4 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption of meat, dairy and eggs by 10 percent: 9 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption by 50 percent: 45 percent
Amount you reduce risk if you eliminate meat, dairy and eggs from your diet: 90 percent
Average cholesterol level of people eating meat-centered-diet: 210 mg/dl
Chance of dying from heart disease if you are male and your blood cholesterol level is 210 mg/dl: greater than 50 percent



The Natural Resources Argument

User of more than half of all water used for all purposes in the U.S.: livestock production
Amount of water used in production of the average cow: sufficient to float a destroyer
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of wheat: 25
Gallons of water needed to produce a pound of California beef: 5,000
Years the world's known oil reserves would last if every human ate a meat-centered diet: 13
Years they would last if human beings no longer ate meat: 260
Calories of fossil fuel expended to get 1 calorie of protein from beef: 78
To get 1 calorie of protein from soybeans: 2
Percentage of all raw materials (base products of farming, forestry and mining, including fossil fuels) consumed by U.S. that is devoted to the production of livestock: 33
Percentage of all raw materials consumed by the U.S. needed to produce a complete vegetarian diet: 2



The Antibiotic Argument

Percentage of U.S. antibiotics fed to livestock: 55
Percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin in 1960: 13
Percentage resistant in 1988: 91
Response of European Economic Community to routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock: ban
Response of U.S. meat and pharmaceutical industries to routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock: full and complete support



The Pesticide Argument

Common belief: U.S. Department of Agriculture protects our health through meat inspection
Reality: fewer than 1 out of every 250,000 slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues
Percentage of U.S. mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 99
Percentage of U.S. vegetarian mother's milk containing significant levels of DDT: 8
Contamination of breast milk, due to chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in animal products, found in meat-eating mothers vs. non-meat eating mothers: 35 times higher
Amount of Dieldrin ingested by the average breast-fed American infant: 9 times the permissible level



The Ethical Argument

Number of animals killed for meat per hour in the U.S.: 660,000
Occupation with highest turnover rate in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker
Occupation with highest rate of on-the-job-injury in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker



The Survival Argument

Athlete to win Ironman Triathlon more than twice: Dave Scott (6 time winner)
Food choice of Dave Scott: Vegetarian
Largest meat eater that ever lived: Tyrannosaurus Rex (Where is he today?)

[NikolaiI]

The source of these facts are from Diet For A New America by John Robbins. They underline the vein of argument associated with the environmental benefits of becoming vegetarian, which may prove more convincing in todays climate (excuse the pun):

Those would probably convince me if I weren't already a vegetarian. Thank you for posting them.

[Chava]

Most of my friends are either vegetarian or vegan. I find it interesting that in some circles they are confronted with a stigma? I have often thought about becoming a vegetarian, though admittedly, It would be for environmental reasons before anything else. I grew up in a thirdworld country and used to help out killing our dinner chickens, or watch animals be halal butchered, which is a very bloody affair. It neither disgusts me, nor do I feel any particular empathy with the animals; rather it is a sense of gratitude and respect.
I think it is shocking to see how much CO2 emmission is involved in producing a steak, not to mention the meat producing business in general. Furthermore, perfectly good land is butchered to make pastures, or to produce animal feed instead of crops for human consumption. That doesn't make much sense to me; especially since I agree with Becca, and the irresistable logic of the throphic cycle.
At the end of the day, I would become a vegetarian in a hearbeat, all it would require is a minimal change in diet, and a consultation with a doctor or nutritionist to make sure I was getting poper food. In fact I don't think it is unlikely that I became a vegetarian even in the near future.

[Mathor]

I feel pretty similar to Chava. I am not a vegetarian, though the majority of my friends are vegan or vegetarian. I have never become vegetarian for the pure fact of I just usually eat what I'm given. If someone makes me food and it has meat in it i eat it, but generally on my day to day I don't really have any significant craving for meat at all. So I could easily be vegetarian, but I just like the ease of not being vegetarian. I LOVE vegan restaurants and vegan food and If there were many of those around here I would eat at them everyday. But if a bunch of my friends are going and getting fast food, I want to eat something that is going to fill me up that is not salad or french fries. I don't like burgers, I don't like chicken, but if i'm at a place that has few vegetarian options, i'll eat that over nothing any day.

[*Classic*Charm*]

An overhaul of the meat industry wouldn't hurt anyone, either. In my corner of the world, lots of people were concerned about getting sick from tainted meat. This wouldn't be happening if there were more conscientious ways of conducting said business.

A complete overhaul of the meat industry certainly would hurt!! How familiar are you with the meat industry?

A complete overhaul, by which I'm assuming you mean drastic, immediate changes to how animals are treated, handled, fed, transported, housed, slaughtered, dressed, and processed would cause serious harm to the animals, the farmers, and the consumers.

Animals are incredibly sensitive to sudden changes in their routine, and very prone to stress-related illnesses. An overhaul would lead to more illness, which is obviously bad for the animals, bad for the farmers in that they lose money, and bad for the consumers because they're buying poor quality product.

To say that the meat industry should be conducted more conscientiously is an uninformed position. There are extreme precautions taken in every single aspect of producing the meat you see in the grocery store. Of course there is always going to be an exception- illness is something that happens everywhere- it happens with your vegetables as well.

As well, the improvement of all these factors of the industry is a constant priority. The health and welfare of the animals is of the utmost importance.

I'm studying animal biology in university (pre-vet), and there is a huge emphasis put on education about the meat industry. Basically, I'm tired of being told that:

a) if I really love animals, I wouldn't want to eat them/ if I'm going to be a vet, eating meat is a contradiction
and
b) the meat industry is careless and does not take into account the health and welfare of the animals. Meat producers are a bunch of heartless uneducated killers.

(I'm not saying that you are saying these things, but that it what I often encounter from vegetarians- a lack of education about the actual meat production side of the issue)

Edited to Add: I do not discourage vegetarianism, no in the least! I just wish that those out to convert others were more educated than they often are.

[Mathor]

A complete overhaul of the meat industry certainly would hurt!! How familiar are you with the meat industry?

A complete overhaul, by which I'm assuming you mean drastic, immediate changes to how animals are treated, handled, fed, transported, housed, slaughtered, dressed, and processed would cause serious harm to the animals, the farmers, and the consumers.

Animals are incredibly sensitive to sudden changes in their routine, and very prone to stress-related illnesses. An overhaul would lead to more illness, which is obviously bad for the animals, bad for the farmers in that they lose money, and bad for the consumers because they're buying poor quality product.

To say that the meat industry should be conducted more conscientiously is an uninformed position. There are extreme precautions taken in every single aspect of producing the meat you see in the grocery store. Of course there is always going to be an exception- illness is something that happens everywhere- it happens with your vegetables as well.

As well, the improvement of all these factors of the industry is a constant priority. The health and welfare of the animals is of the utmost importance.

I'm studying animal biology in university (pre-vet), and there is a huge emphasis put on education about the meat industry. Basically, I'm tired of being told that:

a) if I really love animals, I wouldn't want to eat them/ if I'm going to be a vet, eating meat is a contradiction
and
b) the meat industry is careless and does not take into account the health and welfare of the animals. Meat producers are a bunch of heartless uneducated killers.

(I'm not saying that you are saying these things, but that it what I often encounter from vegetarians- a lack of education about the actual meat production side of the issue)

Edited to Add: I do not discourage vegetarianism, no in the least! I just wish that those out to convert others were more educated than they often are.

i completely agree with you. I find the same people in this thread who judge others for their inability to accept other people's religions in the religion thread come here and they go from being impartial to stating and preaching their opinions as fact. Seems like humility and accepting the views and practices of other cultures doesn't matter unless it applies to religion. :D

[NikolaiI]

i completely agree with you. I find the same people in this thread who judge others for their inability to accept other people's religions in the religion thread come here and they go from being impartial to stating and preaching their opinions as fact. Seems like humility and accepting the views and practices of other cultures doesn't matter unless it applies to religion.

Mathor who, what, when? :confused:

[Riesa]

Seems like humility and accepting the views and practices of other cultures doesn't matter unless it applies to religion. :D


yep. it gets old doesn't it?

[NikolaiI]

Seriously who and what are you guys talking about?

Classic, you said no one here was saying that, if you loved animals you would be a vegetarian, and the person you were replying to said twice in their post they don't, and they weren't, trying to convert anyone.

Riesa, no it doesn't get old. Not because it's okay but because, from what I can see, I don't see it happening. I just.. I didn't see any problem between anyone, and then suddenly come these accusations of shameless vegetarians browbeating everyone. Where did this come from, and if I missed someone's post, and someone was speaking like this, why would you take that and immediately jump to giving up all together? :(


Here in North America, at least, we wouldn't eat a dog, or a cat: what makes those lives more valuable than those of cattle, or pigs? Who decides what species of life deserve more rights and respect?

This is a good point. And if it's not unhumble for me to say, this is not unhumble. It's not abrasive in the least, it's not upbraiding in the least, and it is not browbeating, in the very least.


Again.... even if I missed a post that was upbraiding... it is greatly in the minority. Have faith Riesa and Mathor. :)

[Riesa]

Nik, I wasn't talking about vegetarianism, sorry, I was only focusing on the irony in "Seems like humility and accepting the views and practices of other cultures doesn't matter unless it applies to religion". I apologize for the misunderstanding. I applaud your thread, and vegetarianism.

[mystery_spell]

Some of those quotes really are fantastic. :) I am a vegetarian and have been for nearly all my life.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Seriously who and what are you guys talking about?

Classic, you said no one here was saying that, if you loved animals you would be a vegetarian, and the person you were replying to said twice in their post they don't, and they weren't, trying to convert anyone.

The first part of my post in in response to statements such as "A complete overhaul of the meat industry wouldn't hurt anyone" regardless of whether that person eats meat or doesn't, or tries to convert others or doesn't. I'm saying that the majority of people I've come across, on both sides of the argument, do not have a very thorough understanding of the meat industry but make claims like this one.

The statements I offered as examples of things I have had said to me are often opinions that stem from this lack of education and the extreme views people take towards vegetarianism. This was not a response to the specific poster, but to people in general.

Make more sense?:)

[NikolaiI]

The first part of my post in in response to statements such as "A complete overhaul of the meat industry wouldn't hurt anyone" regardless of whether that person eats meat or doesn't, or tries to convert others or doesn't. I'm saying that the majority of people I've come across, on both sides of the argument, do not have a very thorough understanding of the meat industry but make claims like this one.

The statements I offered as examples of things I have had said to me are often opinions that stem from this lack of education and the extreme views people take towards vegetarianism. This was not a response to the specific poster, but to people in general.

Make more sense?:)

Of course. It was a misunderstanding on my part.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Of course. It was a misunderstanding on my part.

No worries:)

[mono]

Oh, how many times I must have overlooked this thread! Fascinating quotes, NikolaiI - thanks for sharing them. :)
As an ovo-lacto vegetarian, vegetarianism to me does not seem so much a choice as to what we put into our gastrointestinal tracts, as how someone orders either a soup or salad for an appetizer at a restaurant, but deeply a lifestyle, and I take it very seriously. Most people in the world do not eat grass. Why? Because most people do not consider it food, even though, if consumed, it would likely have some nutritional value. I refuse to eat meat; if I did eat it, it may have some nutritional value to me, though after almost 8 years of not eating it I have likely stopped producing the necessary enzymes, but, just as most people do not consider grass a food, I no longer consider meat a food. Meat does not disgust me, and, while cooking for other people, I do not wince in the least while cooking meat for them, yet I would sooner consume the cast-iron skillet or baking sheet before the contents.
Why did I become vegetarian years ago? I get this question a lot and it gets a bit repetitious and annoying from time to time. I feel that I never 'became' vegetarian, on the contrary, and I never pronounced myself vegetarian when deciding to stop eating meat; it felt very natural that one day, at age 19, I stopped eating meat. From childhood to age 19, I would frequently get very ill, and doctors attempted to rule out diagnoses like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), lupus (SLE), and Crohn's disease, but all results proved negative; not once since age 19 have I had even one episode of excruciating abdominal pain after eating - one could blame it on meat, or on my gastrointestinal tract lacking the necessary enzymes to digest meat, perhaps both.
I did not 'become' vegetarian for health reasons, animal rights, environmentalism, spirituality, religion - nothing - it just felt natural, and these contingencies seem to 'come with the territory,' so to speak. We live in a world much more accepting of vegetarian and vegan ways, as opposed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's time, another notorious vegetarian, and, compared to starving children in less-industrialized countries who have little to eat, let alone much to choose from, we have a lot of choice - sometimes too much that we favor junkfood on the grocery store shelf for its taste over the organic produce.
I have put a lot of thought into what resulted in my ending up a vegetarian by almost no choice or valid reason. In applying Arthur Schopenhauer's idea of the Will and Determinism, I feel that nothing had a significant influence on my vegetarian ideas besides myself. I recall once, at about age 5, my father raised cattle and pigs; as afraid as I felt of them, due to their immense size, I loved watching them graze their fields, helped feed them, and clean after them. When my father had them slaughtered for food, I would associate a negative connotation with consuming something I helped tend; I could grow a garden of various vegetables and fruit, but an apple tree survives getting one apple plucked from its branches; once the cows and pigs, that I helped name, got slaughtered, they lay dead on the serving platter. After multiple times encountering this negative connotation and its subconscious cascade, I think Schopenhauer's determinism made me forever associate, in a non-religious animal rights manner, animals as companions rather than food.
As a note to other vegetarians and omnivores, let us not turn this into a battle. Just as no one enjoys wearing the same clothing, no one carries the same beliefs of what we consume, and preaching what seems best to introduce to the stomach hurts more than aides your cause. Even as a vegetarian, the preachy types of vegetarians and vegans irritate me to no end; on the other end of the spectrum, I have gotten asked to leave a restaurant in the midwest U.S. by the waitress because I asked if one specific soup had a meat base, since "we dun't serve yer kaind here." Between the same hunters and gatherers we all evolved from, we all require nourishment, and, at the Thanksgiving dinner table, the more turkey you eat leaves me more potatoes and cranberry sauce.

[Mathor]

and, at the Thanksgiving dinner table, the more turkey you eat leaves me more potatoes and cranberry sauce.

haha. I've actually never eaten turkey on thanskgiving. I always try to pretend i did, like I remember back in the day I would get a plate and put not much on it and finish it in like a minute and say "well i guess i've had my fill of turkey, i should probably move on to something else". It fooled people for a while, till finally my relatives caught on that I do not like turkey in the least bit. Nor do I really like any meats, though I'm not vegetarian. I'm a meat eater but I do not like meat. It's interesting. I just don't want to say "i do not eat meat", cause that's like saying "i do not eat mushrooms", i do not like mushrooms, but it'd be rude if someone asked me if i wanted mushrooms with my meal and i said "i do not eat mushrooms". And that's why i'm not vegetarian. I have no religious reasons to not like meat, I simply just don't like it, but at times there are occasions when I'm required to force it down, the same goes for mushrooms. So i wouldn't call myself a meat-eater, just like i wouldn't call myself a "mushroom-eater". But I certainly eat it, when my parents make it etc etc. Thanksgiving is nice cause it's usually more buffet style, and i don't have to be like "no i don't want that". I eat what i'm given, but i wouldn't select meat per say if i had another option.

[kiz_paws]

Oh, how many times I must have overlooked this thread! Fascinating quotes, NikolaiI - thanks for sharing them. :)
As an ovo-lacto vegetarian, vegetarianism to me does not seem so much a choice as to what we put into our gastrointestinal tracts, as how someone orders either a soup or salad for an appetizer at a restaurant, but deeply a lifestyle, and I take it very seriously. Most people in the world do not eat grass. Why? Because most people do not consider it food, even though, if consumed, it would likely have some nutritional value. I refuse to eat meat; if I did eat it, it may have some nutritional value to me, though after almost 8 years of not eating it I have likely stopped producing the necessary enzymes, but, just as most people do not consider grass a food, I no longer consider meat a food. Meat does not disgust me, and, while cooking for other people, I do not wince in the least while cooking meat for them, yet I would sooner consume the cast-iron skillet or baking sheet before the contents.
Why did I become vegetarian years ago? I get this question a lot and it gets a bit repetitious and annoying from time to time. I feel that I never 'became' vegetarian, on the contrary, and I never pronounced myself vegetarian when deciding to stop eating meat; it felt very natural that one day, at age 19, I stopped eating meat. From childhood to age 19, I would frequently get very ill, and doctors attempted to rule out diagnoses like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), lupus (SLE), and Crohn's disease, but all results proved negative; not once since age 19 have I had even one episode of excruciating abdominal pain after eating - one could blame it on meat, or on my gastrointestinal tract lacking the necessary enzymes to digest meat, perhaps both.
I did not 'become' vegetarian for health reasons, animal rights, environmentalism, spirituality, religion - nothing - it just felt natural, and these contingencies seem to 'come with the territory,' so to speak. We live in a world much more accepting of vegetarian and vegan ways, as opposed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's time, another notorious vegetarian, and, compared to starving children in less-industrialized countries who have little to eat, let alone much to choose from, we have a lot of choice - sometimes too much that we favor junkfood on the grocery store shelf for its taste over the organic produce.
I have put a lot of thought into what resulted in my ending up a vegetarian by almost no choice or valid reason. In applying Arthur Schopenhauer's idea of the Will and Determinism, I feel that nothing had a significant influence on my vegetarian ideas besides myself. I recall once, at about age 5, my father raised cattle and pigs; as afraid as I felt of them, due to their immense size, I loved watching them graze their fields, helped feed them, and clean after them. When my father had them slaughtered for food, I would associate a negative connotation with consuming something I helped tend; I could grow a garden of various vegetables and fruit, but an apple tree survives getting one apple plucked from its branches; once the cows and pigs, that I helped name, got slaughtered, they lay dead on the serving platter. After multiple times encountering this negative connotation and its subconscious cascade, I think Schopenhauer's determinism made me forever associate, in a non-religious animal rights manner, animals as companions rather than food.
As a note to other vegetarians and omnivores, let us not turn this into a battle. Just as no one enjoys wearing the same clothing, no one carries the same beliefs of what we consume, and preaching what seems best to introduce to the stomach hurts more than aides your cause. Even as a vegetarian, the preachy types of vegetarians and vegans irritate me to no end; on the other end of the spectrum, I have gotten asked to leave a restaurant in the midwest U.S. by the waitress because I asked if one specific soup had a meat base, since "we dun't serve yer kaind here." Between the same hunters and gatherers we all evolved from, we all require nourishment, and, at the Thanksgiving dinner table, the more turkey you eat leaves me more potatoes and cranberry sauce.
OMG, this was a fantastic post. Mono, I salute you. You have said so very much in such a small space, bravo. Bravo. :)

[*Classic*Charm*]

I agree, that is the best explanation I think anyone has ever given me for their vegetarianism or omnivorism (if that's a real word, which I doubt).

[mono]

OMG, this was a fantastic post. Mono, I salute you. You have said so very much in such a small space, bravo. Bravo. :)

I agree, that is the best explanation I think anyone has ever given me for their vegetarianism or omnivorism (if that's a real word, which I doubt).
Thanks, you two. :blush:

[NikolaiI]

I think the simplest reason for me is that I don't require, in my moral system, a being to have an intellect equal to mine, or the powers of reason, for them to have the right to life, and for me not to have the right to kill them. There are humans who fit this description, for instance, and yet they are still protected by law. In fact, it's possible for a human to have no skills in language or reason, either because they have atrophied or because they never learned them at all, or because of mental damage done by an accident, drugs, or even a mental illness. All of these are protected by law. Animals have an equal right in my eyes.

To put myself in the place of the animal; if some alien species came to earth, and they were more intelligent, had better reason, and could over power us, and then they started killing us and eating us, even breeding us and keeping us from moving about or leading anything remotely similar to our accustomed lives, at the end of which again killing us for food; no human would agree with this, no human would give their life willingly. Why should we? Because they have a higher intelligence? Two things: what we are doing with animals is absolutely no different. And second, a race more intelligent han us would probably not do this to us, because good traits in general run together: kindness, intelligence, discipline, etc.

So just to put myself in the place of the animals is enough for me. And again, I find it absurd to justify it by saying, it is the natural order. No being wants to die, or live in captivity, or suffer - and, as it happens, unnecessarily. One quote when I was looking for them to start this thread said, "some people say we've been doing it for thousands of years. But then we've also been killing each other for thousands of years, and it is not a good thing."

But my main philosophical reason for it is, again, simply by considering it from the animals point of view. And my knowledge that vegetarianism is healthier. I would like to be a three-time Triathlon winner. :)

Simply put: higher intelligence does not give the right to kill the life of those with lesser intelligence. I am not a vegetarian because of the good moral arguments for it. I am a vegetarian, and I cannot reconcile myself to the philosophical idea, which seems debunkt, that intelligence greater intelligence gives a right to kill those with lesser.

[Helen_of_Troy]

Because I do not personally kill my own food, I do not think I deserve to eat it.

Interesting opinion. But it's true. Don't get others to do the dirty work for you-- if you couldn't slaughter a chicken, you shouldn't be eating one. A few years ago, my biology class was dissecting pigs, and several people in the class (whom I knew to be meat-eaters) got red-faced and watery-eyed when they saw the cute little dead piglets. I don't understand that-- if you eat pork, you should have no problem seeing or dissecting a dead pig! If you're squeamish, how on earth can you eat the flesh of an animal?

Now, cute dead animals don't bother me (I have seen many a deer skinned and butchered in my garage), but I'm still a vegetarian, and that's because there are a bunch of other good reasons for abstaining from eating meat, most of which have been mentioned in previous posts.

But seriously-- when people argue that humans are natural omnivores and that our primitive ancestors ate meat, they're overlooking the fact that our ancestors wouldn't have been eating meat every day. You have to work pretty hard to hunt something-- imagine hunting something twice a day every day. Not easy. Primitive humans would have considered meat a special treat, and their typical diet would have consisted of plants and grains and such. So we are natural omnivores, but we're not supposed to be eating meat in abundance.

[grotto]

All that lives is born to die. That includes bean sprouts, carrots and things with cute little eyes. Only humans give special preferences to certain forms of life.

I am neither for nor against vegetarianism, I think if some one chooses a lifestyle for their own personal reasons, so be it. My only objection is when some seem to think they know better what life is and what is important and shoves it down my throat while expounding the virtues of saving the earth and life while they stand there with there bottled water, the Starbucks coffee made from paper where life was lost in the process of the making along with the plastic lid on the cup and they are wearing an entirely plastic wardrobe.

The earth doesn’t need us to save it, it has been going on for millions of years, continually reinventing it self. Since when do we humans think that we know what is best for everyone and everything?

NikolaiI, you quote many people in defense of vegetarianisms. I have no problem with that and this isn’t meant to be mean, but your tag quote from Alan Watts doesn’t come from a vegetarian, if you like Mr. Watts, read “Murder in the Kitchen”, a chapter in the book, “Does it Matter”.

Plant an acorn and you get a mighty oak! Very true! Is it murder if I eat the acorn and kept it from being a mighty oak? Kill a sheep and it gives nothing but decay? Oh a very wrong and simplistic view! There are many life forms that will flourish in the decay process including the acorn that will use the decay as food to become a mighty oak.

We will all return to the earth by some means and at some time, our bodies are not immune to the process, no matter how hard we try.

[mono]

To put myself in the place of the animal; if some alien species came to earth, and they were more intelligent, had better reason, and could over power us, and then they started killing us and eating us, even breeding us and keeping us from moving about or leading anything remotely similar to our accustomed lives, at the end of which again killing us for food; no human would agree with this, no human would give their life willingly. Why should we? Because they have a higher intelligence? Two things: what we are doing with animals is absolutely no different. And second, a race more intelligent han us would probably not do this to us, because good traits in general run together: kindness, intelligence, discipline, etc.
Interesting analogy, NikolaiI. A lot of things separate humans and other animals, and intelligence, yes, seems among them, even amid dolphins and chimpanzees, two exceptionally intelligent other animals; with that, it gives us the ability to organize, prioritize, and plan, for example, a hunting tactic. Lions have this ability in hunting as well, explaining another reason why they subsist in prides; various birds of prey also have amazing hunting abilities, but they do this entirely alone, amazingly. Their hunting abilities, as well as ours, cannot fully come from intelligence, but in addition instinct, want, need, and superior physical health.


Because I do not personally kill my own food, I do not think I deserve to eat it.Interesting opinion. But it's true. Don't get others to do the dirty work for you-- if you couldn't slaughter a chicken, you shouldn't be eating one.
Unfortunately this seems the way a supply-demand economy functions. If you want a saran-wrapped, headless, plucked chicken you can purchase one at a grocery store for the mark-up price of the farmer's work, manufacturing, producing, packaging, etc. In addition, if you want artichoke hearts for some sort of vegetable dish, I would not feel too happy to have to go through all of the immense labor of cutting them from their branches, clipping them, steaming them, then digging through their sharp leaves to get one heart per artichoke. As we have evolved we have learned to rely upon each other, and pay prices, sometimes in monetary value, for favors. I agree, however, and so would Immanuel Kant, in his application of Universal Ethics, that to wish something done, you ought to have the ability and moral to do it yourself, too.
Even as a vegetarian (and I consider myself a good sport), I laughed at first reading this response of yours, Helen of Troy, because I thought of one of the definitions of 'vegetarian' from UrbanDictionary.com:

vegetarian
A bad hunter. Someone who survives by consuming not food, but the stuff that food eats.
:lol:

[NikolaiI]

Interesting analogy, NikolaiI. A lot of things separate humans and other animals, and intelligence, yes, seems among them, even amid dolphins and chimpanzees, two exceptionally intelligent other animals; with that, it gives us the ability to organize, prioritize, and plan, for example, a hunting tactic. Lions have this ability in hunting as well, explaining another reason why they subsist in prides; various birds of prey also have amazing hunting abilities, but they do this entirely alone, amazingly. Their hunting abilities, as well as ours, cannot fully come from intelligence, but in addition instinct, want, need, and superior physical health.

My argument is an ethical one. For me a bird has as much right to life as a human. Why should it not? Because we have the ability to shoot it from the air? Or because it cannot understand reason, art, music, higher mathematics? The same is true with all animals. It is not necessary for others to have our same level of intelligence to still feel pain, fear, suffering, and the desire to live. I have never seen a good reason to think it's okay. Not when it is not necessary.

[Babyguile]

My argument is an ethical one. For me a bird has as much right to life as a human. Why should it not? Because we have the ability to shoot it from the air? Or because it cannot understand reason, art, music, higher mathematics? The same is true with all animals. It is not necessary for others to have our same level of intelligence to still feel pain, fear, suffering, and the desire to live. I have never seen a good reason to think it's okay. Not when it is not necessary.

This is absolutely key here.

Intense factory farming is the single biggest contributer to global warming, with an 18% contribution. The question is not can they reason, it's can they suffer. The answer, of course, is yes.

[*Classic*Charm*]

The question is not can they reason, it's can they suffer. The answer, of course, is yes.

Are you suggesting that the animals suffer? Where's your evidence, please?

Death itself does not equate to suffering.

[NikolaiI]

Are you suggesting that the animals suffer? Where's your evidence, please?

Death itself does not equate to suffering.

Factory farming cattle


Around 20% of British dairy cows are lame at any one time. In fact, inspections of the feet of cull cows at slaughter reveal evidence of past or present foot damage in nearly all animals. Lameness is caused by a number of factors. These include the quantity of bedding available, the move towards cubicle housing and the now near universal practice of feeding animals wet, fermented grass (known as silage), rather than dry hay. Silage produces wet faeces and acidic slurry in the dunging passageway, which eventually softens the feet and causes infection.

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/vegetarianism/ALL/477/


Dairy cows are prone to infection of the udder caused by bacteria and other environmental pathogens entering via the teat canal. This acutely painful condition is known as mastitis. Incidence varies from between 30 to more than 60 cases in every 100 cows during a year.


Male calves reared for beef are often castrated, despite being slaughtered before they reach sexual maturity. Methods commonly used include surgical castration, tight rubber rings that restrict blood flow, and appliances that crush the spermatic cord of each testis - the so-called "bloodless castrator".

Both dairy cows and beef cattle are de-horned - a painful procedure - to prevent animals injuring each other. Horns contain both blood circulation and nerve endings, and so local anaesthesia and cauterisation are necessary to stem bleeding. If horns have already developed, they are removed with saws, horn shears or cutting wire.

Young animals whose horns are not established can be disbudded. A hot iron is applied to the horn-forming tissue when the calf is 4-6 weeks old, permanently preventing growth.

The Suffering of Farmed Pigs


The piglets are moved from the farrowing unit into concrete pens, or metal cages with perforated concrete or slatted metal floors. These newly-weaned animals, desperate for their mother's teats, often frantically try to suckle their young penmates or indulge in tail biting. The industry's "remedy" is to amputate the lower part of the tail - a painful mutilation. Many piglets also have their pointed side-teeth clipped down to the gum in the first few days of life. This is said to prevent them from lacerating either the sow's udder or the faces of their litter mates. Once again the industry ignores the real problem - namely, the piglets are being forced to compete for teats in an unyielding metal and stone environment with an unnaturally large number of litter mates.

After about six weeks, the young pigs are moved to similarly unsuitable rearing pens for final fattening on a high protein diet. An estimated 15 per cent suffer painful leg and joint problems. This is caused partly by standing on hard floors, but also because they're bred to grow unnaturally fast, and are unable to support their own weight. Heart and respiratory problems are also endemic.

After four to seven months, pigs not selected for breeding purposes are sent for slaughter. Some die during transit due to stress caused by overcrowding, long journeys, rough handling, extremes of temperature.

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/vegetarianism/ALL/514/

Now this is only about factor farmed animals, but those definitely suffer. Even if they did not have disease from the different results of the practice, it is still inhumane to keep an animal in a pen where it cannot move.

[AimusSage]

I once considered becoming a vegetarian....

Then I realized I would do all the animals a disservice, taking from them their only purpose in life, I've been enjoying my meat ever since, although I do admit it would taste better if animals were treated better.

Less stress and better nutrition = better tasting meat.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Ooh Nik I can't wait to take on your post of evidence! I'll have to do it in a couple days though, once I have more time! I'll be back!

[Babyguile]

Ooh Nik I can't wait to take on your post of evidence! I'll have to do it in a couple days though, once I have more time! I'll be back!

As soon as you've attempted to you'll face a second wave :thumbs_up


I once considered becoming a vegetarian....

Then I realized I would do all the animals a disservice, taking from them their only purpose in life.

This can be cured by more people going vegetarian.

[skib]

So, if we take away their main purpose, what do we do with all the excess animals once everyone turns vegetarian? No animal is smart enough to stop reproducing after they've been bred solely to reproduce, and without people eating them, there will be no other sufficient means of keeping their numbers in check.

[mono]

So, if we take away their main purpose, what do we do with all the excess animals once everyone turns vegetarian? No animal is smart enough to stop reproducing after they've been bred solely to reproduce, and without people eating them, there will be no other sufficient means of keeping their numbers in check.
I would never advocate for everyone to "become" vegetarian; rather let us allow each other to live and consume within their own means.
In the extraordinarily rare and hypothetical, and somewhat absurd, case that everyone in the world ended up vegetarian, I feel quite convinced that if India, one of the most populous nations in the world, can live in harmony with animals subsisting among them, so can the rest of the world with enough tolerance. I would think it quite surprising to see a herd of cattle or a pig pen in Times Square of New York City, but much of the world could conform.
I would like to ask you, skib, why you would imply that the "main purpose" of an animal seems for consumption? Sure, dairy cows exist mostly for producing milk, but I have personally witnessed wild turkeys exist in their natural habitats without ending up on a serving platter (*gasp*). Not to belittle your statement, but I would like to think that cows, swine, chicken, and turkeys have existed before we thought of placing them in our mouths; neither the first single-celled organism, nor Adam, nor Eve (depending on which stance you prefer) looked at the first cow and called it food. Claiming that they exist only for human consumption sounds about as ridiculous as saying that human fingernails exist only for biting.

[*Classic*Charm*]

I would never advocate for everyone to "become" vegetarian; rather let us allow each other to live and consume within their own means.
In the extraordinarily rare and hypothetical, and somewhat absurd, case that everyone in the world ended up vegetarian, I feel quite convinced that if India, one of the most populous nations in the world, can live in harmony with animals subsisting among them, so can the rest of the world with enough tolerance. I would think it quite surprising to see a herd of cattle or a pig pen in Times Square of New York City, but much of the world could conform.


Yes, but Mono there's a distinct difference between wild turkeys and domestic bread-for-consumption turkeys, and between all domestic animals and their wild predecessors or current wild family members. It's simply not possible to just turn them all loose and say "Be Free, my Beauties!" For the most part, they would not know how to survive. And by this I don't just mean the generation we have turned loose, but their offspring as well.

Turkeys are actually a perfect example! The most valuable part of a turkey for consumption is the breast (the Pectoralis muscle). It makes up on average 50% of the bird's muscle mass, and is so large that most male turkeys are no longer physically capable of mating. Turkey fertilization is done through artificial insemination. The only possible matings that would occur would involve wild males, and if they cross with domestic females, there is still the distinct possibility that the offspring would have this muscle mass and not be able to fly or breed either. The population would decrease severely, and for what? So that the turkey could be killed by a prey animal rather than the quick, relatively painless death it would have experienced in an abattoir?

[NikolaiI]

This is absolutely key here.

Intense factory farming is the single biggest contributer to global warming, with an 18% contribution. The question is not can they reason, it's can they suffer. The answer, of course, is yes.

Your post reflects a quote of Jeremy Bentham, saying the same. I didn't know it was by him but I saw it the other day. I did not state it but it was a thought in my mind as I posted. Thanks for your posts!

I agree with you that it is key. It is the center or basis of my philosophical approach to vegetarianism. Bentham puts it this way, “The morally relevant question about animals is not, Can they reason? or Can they talk? But can they suffer?” No, it is not a thesis, it is not a book, it does not have the force and power of the coorporations in the restaurant industry, which are connected to the slaughterhouse industry. But hopefully it will overturn those things.


I once considered becoming a vegetarian....

Then I realized I would do all the animals a disservice, taking from them their only purpose in life, I've been enjoying my meat ever since, although I do admit it would taste better if animals were treated better.

Less stress and better nutrition = better tasting meat.

I would challenge your assertion that animals' reason for being is to die by our whim and for our taste. I can find no reason to think this is true. The same thing has been said about black slaves. - Not to be eaten, but to be used and sold as property.

I am not trying to villify your position. Perhaps you meant that we require animals in our diet to live healthy. But this is not true, if I may take a position contrary to the vaster majority of population in the country in which I inhabit. I mean no disrespect to you, Aimus, but your statement is not sound.

[mono]

Yes, but Mono there's a distinct difference between wild turkeys and domestic bread-for-consumption turkeys, and between all domestic animals and their wild predecessors or current wild family members. It's simply not possible to just turn them all loose and say "Be Free, my Beauties!" For the most part, they would not know how to survive. And by this I don't just mean the generation we have turned loose, but their offspring as well.

Turkeys are actually a perfect example! The most valuable part of a turkey for consumption is the breast (the Pectoralis muscle). It makes up on average 50% of the bird's muscle mass, and is so large that most male turkeys are no longer physically capable of mating. Turkey fertilization is done through artificial insemination. The only possible matings that would occur would involve wild males, and if they cross with domestic females, there is still the distinct possibility that the offspring would have this muscle mass and not be able to fly or breed either. The population would decrease severely, and for what? So that the turkey could be killed by a prey animal rather than the quick, relatively painless death it would have experienced in an abattoir?
Agreed, good point. Wild and domestic turkeys have vast differences - size, for one; I felt astounded at seeing the impressive mass of feathers when seeing a wild turkey for the first time as a child on my grandparents' farm. With domestic turkeys, I agree, one could never set them free, like the Confederacy did in the 19th century southern United States, and say "now go try to live," as they have likely ended up unaccustomed to fight and fend for themselves, let alone to avoid a wolf, for example. I mentioned the citizens of India and animals many Americans would consider food living together, but I undoubtedly believe, as I have never visited there (someday . . . oh, one fine day), that the citizens take care of the animals, such as in preventing prey from attacking them.
Again, I hold true to what I replied to skib that I would never advocate for everyone to choose vegetarianism; simply said - live and let live. In the hypothetical situation that everyone in the world ended up vegetarian, it would likely not seem a sound transition for all; suddenly, we would have a vast, overwhelming quantity of cows, chickens, pigs, and turkeys, farms would go out of business, subsequently oat fields, for one example, would overgrow and rot, and eventually we would have an abundance of animals of prey, having soon fed off of the large quantity of predators. The world would turn upsidedown in terms of economy (perhaps rightside up, in this case, as it could not seem more upsidedown, but that seems another subject), agriculture, capitalism, etc.

[skib]

Yes, my statement was quite vague, but I'm pleased that you were able to understand what I was trying to get across about the drastic transition.

After reading the caliber of the rest of your posts, I've decided my intellect is not sufficient to adequately participate with you all on this subject.:( I shall bow out and bid you all good day! (or night)

[NikolaiI]

All that lives is born to die. That includes bean sprouts, carrots and things with cute little eyes. Only humans give special preferences to certain forms of life.

This is not philosophically sound either. It means absolutely nothing upon our relative morals to say that all is relavitive. I am not sure if this is what you meant but it's what I took from your post. You said, "all that lives is born to die," as a justification for living beings whose only fault is not being human. This just doesn't hold up for me, it is meaningless. It is true that after the animal dies, its suffering is ended, and it may not know of it anymore. But this is also true of humans - would you say therefore it is okay to kill humans because all is born to die? Absolutely not.

[NikolaiI]

Yes, my statement was quite vague, but I'm pleased that you were able to understand what I was trying to get across about the drastic transition.

After reading the caliber of the rest of your posts, I've decided my intellect is not sufficient to adequately participate with you all on this subject.:( I shall bow out and bid you all good day! (or night)

Aw, skib, you are modest, but I think you are very intelligent. You may leave if you wish but we'd love to have you stay. I don't post long posts nowadays, I just try to say what I wish concisely, though I may fail to always communicate clearly.

Anyway you raised a valid point. My own suggestion in response would be something like, reducing the population in a controlled way (this would definitely be feasible as an evolution to vegetarianism could not be but gradual), gradually.

If we control the numbers of animals - "we," such a big call for quotations - then it is not difficult for us also to diminish those numbers, by not breeding them. It does not seem to be a potent argument to me to say "we bred these animals, so we must eat them." In fact I see no limitation on our ability to decrease their numbers. If we did not breed them at all they would cease to exist in a generation. I am not saying we should act so to make them cease to exist, but merely point this out to show our ability to act with a free hand there.

And also as mono says, we can live in harmony with the animals. Cows are sacred in India and much revered, as are elephants. As Becca said, why are some animals such as dogs and cats considered pets, loved, part of the family, while others are not? In fact pigs are smarter than dogs. Dogs are pack animals and so they naturally fit in perfectly with our families, but pigs are certainly able to learn a great deal as well.

[mono]

After reading the caliber of the rest of your posts, I've decided my intellect is not sufficient to adequately participate with you all on this subject.:( I shall bow out and bid you all good day! (or night)
Oh, do not say such things, skib, and I hope reading others' posts never impede you from posting your thoughts - modesty can appear as such a curse!
Even as a newer member, I think it easy to perceive your obvious intelligence, and this forum's purpose proves to discuss things - why cannot we discuss things well by not refusing to barricade ourselves due to the intimidation of others? Fear not, friend.


All that lives is born to die. That includes bean sprouts, carrots and things with cute little eyes. Only humans give special preferences to certain forms of life.This is not philosophically sound either. It means absolutely nothing upon our relative morals to say that all is relavitive. I am not sure if this is what you meant but it's what I took from your post. You said, "all that lives is born to die," as a justification for living beings whose only fault is not being human. This just doesn't hold up for me, it is meaningless. It is true that after the animal dies, its suffering is ended, and it may not know of it anymore. But this is also true of humans - would you say therefore it is okay to kill humans because all is born to die? Absolutely not.
Interesting points, NikolaiI, as always. :nod:
This borders an entire discussion in itself, as to the "purpose of life," but I agree all life eventually leads to death; perhaps, however, the statement "all that lives is born to die" implies that every beginning has no real intrinsic value other than its end - there must subsist something between a beginning and end that bears some value. Whether these values end up obsolete during and following death, again, seems another long discussion in itself. This alludes to my former thoughts that certain animals own the sole purpose of ending up as food, or producing something for human consumption, such as dairy cows giving us milk to drink, or chickens laying eggs for us to eat.
Biology seems an immense grandeur of study, among it the study of the cycles of life. A heifer gives birth to a calf, then the calf grows, feeding off of his mother's utters; later, it feeds off grass, oats, water, and alfalfa. Quite possibly, later in life, following maturation (sometimes not the case, such as in the production of Kobe beef), the grown calf or cow will get slaughtered for its beef. Its bred "purpose" may have seemed for human consumption, but it served so much more, such as in the biological cycle; without that one cow, the field would have come that much closer to ending up overgrown, the oat and alfalfa fields and products rotted. Even an elementary animation shows other functions of animals some humans consider food in the nitrogen cycle:

http://www.kidsgeo.com/images/nitrogen-cycle.gif

Besides the point, and, once again, this borders a debate for the "meaning of life," but, while not trying to delve too strongly into animal right's advocacy, who do we seem to determine and judge the purpose of a life, and deem when it appears "necessary" to slaughter it and call it food? Do political, philosophical, and religious texts tell or command us to act that way? As we call ourselves a superior species in the world, does this seem so because we have learned how to control other species to the point of having the ability to breed them when we desire, slaughter them when we desire, contain them how we desire, and consume them when we desire?

[grotto]

No problem NikolaiI, my statement wasn’t meant to persuade or to challenge anyone’s morals, I was stating an opinion, same as you. You may argue until your blue in the face, I have nothing to gain, I don’t know all of the answers and arguing won’t help, I won’t argue.

My only point is, nature makes no distinction and does not use morals; it has gone on for millions of years without our help and people now arguing about the quality of life of domestic turkeys is, how should I say, a rather simplistic dialogue. As if some how we all of a sudden know what life is and how it should be cared for while at the same time having to eat of life it self. I am better than you because I don’t kill things with cute eyes! No! I’m better because I won’t eat things that produce eggs! The rationales are ludicrous! Is not a seed an egg?

I come from European ancestry where my parents had to scrounge food during the war. My grandfather would go out at night and steal what he could so they could eat. To this day, my mother won’t eat soup, because when it was all over, she found out what was in the soup. I grew up on a farm, I have watched my dinner being killed two hour before it was cooked and I have butchered my self. I have always had gardens and I have also hunted in the past. There are many of us that know far more about nature than middle-class suburbia does while they sit around a Starbucks deciding the fate of the world as long as the answers they come up with don’t inconvenience them selves. Most people who I have met who are adamant vegetarians have no concept on where their food comes from. To them, it’s wrapped in plastic or in some other form of Styrofoam in a well lit store with music playing in the back ground. They have no idea what it takes to produce their food yet they somehow seem to think they know all of the worlds food answers. Armchair nature lovers, spoiled little brats with nothing else in their life to do but tell others how to live. Oh yeah, I forgot! That’s how religions are started, of course, then the wars start, and yes, death. An army doesn’t live on carrots alone. hehe


You also say that at death comes the end of suffering, may I ask how you know this? Again, a belief you blindly believe because it makes sense but there has been no further questioning on your part, you take it for truth because it fits your ideal. Always question the ideal.

Would I say it is ok to kill humans because all that lives is born to die you ask? Would you like to think about that for a moment? Everything you have, every right you have gained and the freedom you now have to speak your mind has all come from the killing of those who you some how think shouldn’t die. Sorry, can’t have one with out the other. It isn’t just death from the past and you can now say that my current gains have no blood on them, it happens constantly, it’s happening today. What makes us better than turkey or lions?

One never knows what one will eat when they are hungry enough. How far would you go to stay alive? There is where you will find your answer, fortunately, few of us will ever need to answer that question. There are cultures however who have to answer that question every day.

[NikolaiI]

Even an elementary animation shows other functions of animals some humans consider food in the nitrogen cycle:

I didn't get your picture.

[revised]

In response to you, grotto, I find not much to say. You say you do not wish to argue yet your post assumes a very argumentative tone. Your exclamatory statements in your second paragraph serve nothing more than to indict vegetarians of self-rightouesness. However, as neither I, nor anyone on this forum, has said they are better than others because they are vegetarian, it is a bit sarcastic and juvenile, benefiting no one and lacking value in a philosophical debate.

And again, your statement that nature has no morals appears to me as being quite meaningless to our current debate. That has equal value in arguing that it is okay to kill humans or something like this. And your response that each of us here or... whatever - should feel guilty because our computers, clothes, and all the food is brought in an enconomy which, because all things are connected, is partly responsible for the suffering of humans is - I cannot really think of a good word for it, God forgive me; but it is not very wonderful. Please raise the standard of your argument. There is no reason to be negative in that way and insult people and say they go to Starbucks, though, even though I have not been to in many months, and less than 2 or 3 times in my life, this being the case, do not regard as a carnal sin.

Arguing that your opponents - vegetarians - are shallow, thoughtless, and hypocritical for vague reasons, for any reasons, is ad hominem.

Not trying to be harsh, just trying to underline the issues I have with your post.

[mono]

I didn't get your picture.
Even an elementary animation shows other functions of animals some humans consider food in the nitrogen cycle:
Ugh, technology fails me again - damn blind links. Thanks for pointing that out, NikolaiI. ;) I will try another one:

http://www.h2ou.com/h2images/NitrogenCycle-lgr-F.jpg

Once again, and this borders another whole subject, it seems impossible for us and from our standpoint to judge complete purposes of all life, including ourselves. The nitrogen cycle, for one example, demonstrates that even a common element we breathe (as we breathe more nitrogen than oxygen; without it, which human lung surfactant requires nitrogen, we could end up with atelectasis) relies heavily upon something as simple as bacteria, plant matter, and animal waste. This simple analogy makes me conclude that not only can we unjustly deem an animal's existence, breed them, slaughter them, etc. according to a time we see fit, but that animal's existence, beyond our intentions, serves more purposes, contributing that much more collectiveness.

[grotto]

Sorry NikolaiI, I have no need to raise the bar, if an argument for or against a specific ideal is to be raised, all sides and opinions need to be heard before anyone passes final judgment.

I never claimed vegetarians are self righteous, or meat eaters for that fact, only those that try to convince without having all of the facts, or have there own agenda to push, closed minded I might add.

I don’t feel anything I said was meaningless, same as you. In any debate where life is involved, you can’t compartmentalize it into a convenient every body feel good topic. Every debate has an ugly side.

By the way, I frequent Starbucks too!

You had a motive when you started this topic;

“My goal is simply to encourage people to become or at least think about becoming vegetarian.”

Ok, I hear you, but you went at with cute quotes from famous people who agree with your opinion. Again, fair enough. You did however leave out some of the quote on one of your famous people, he had added at the end, “while I think it would be ideal, I can’t help but liking my leather belt and shoes.”

I don’t think there is anything wrong with anyone’s personal decision to do anything, be it vegetarianism or religion; it’s when it’s put on a moral high ground that I will speak up. I’m doing this because I think its right and you should too! But when you start questioning them as to why, how and what will the short and long term effects be to a world economy, other countries, cultures and religious beliefs? they have no answers besides, “I think it’s right”. Ok, for you it’s right, and I respect your decision.

As you said, so God help me, well, some one then has to play the devils advocate. There are no easy answers, ever decision has a cause and effect. I apologize if I sounded like I was aggressive, I can assure you I wasn’t, just pointing a few things out when the moral majority starts to amass.

I will leave this topic now.

[Zee.]

I've decided to try vegetarianism for a lil bit. See how i feel

[skib]

Thank you all for now letting me downplay myself like that! I usually tend to shy away from discussing touchy subjects, but if you insist on my participation, I shall voice my opinion:

I was raised as a hunter and cattleman. My grandfather started me hunting when I was very young. I was raised harvesting and processing all my own meat. I herd beef cattle from time to time, and the question of vegetarianism was not raised until I was in high-school. I had heard of it, but in my blessed ignorance of youth, I dismissed it as a digestive disorder, not a lifestyle. I did not know any open vegetarians until I was a junior in high school, yet I never understood the motives. I am a meat eater by nature- obviously, and I never attempted to make the switch. I have noticed though, that on the rare occasion, if I eat more greens (the extent of my vegetable diet being leafy greens and carrots) that my energy level dropped significantly. Granted, this is not a legitimate source of many necessary nutrients, but after I realized this, my diet tends to consist of more animal proteins and less vegetables. In the lines of work I tend to gravitate towards, protein is a very necessary staple.
I have no issue with vegetarians (as long as they do not attempt to influence my choices) and I think Nikolai, you did a wonderful job putting your point of view out there without stepping on anybody's toes. I read this entire thread at one point in time, and I see that you have made a very well-thought out decision.

[NikolaiI]

Well, Skib, I sort of chanced into vegetarianism. As I child I didn't eat meat because I didn't like the taste. In America 95% of the population eats meat. As I grew up, I sort of gradually adopted moral reasons for vegetarianism. The two did sort of evolve together. I wasn't strictly a vegetarian for all of my life, though for most of it I was, again simply by preference. It's only now in my life that it is very simple and very clear for me. The question of morality of the rights of animals is not whether or not they can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. I cannot find a single reason to think it's morally alright to consider animals as food. Not for the reason that 95% of the population of America does it, nor for the reason that they cannot talk or reason. Not if it is unnecessary. If I were stranded in nature I would likely attempt to eat some animal. But as it is for me, I am not so I don't. Also, it doesn't seem to me to be an escapable justification to say that killing them painlessly is okay as it doesn't cause them suffering. First, factory farms do cause a great number of ways of suffering, and second, it is just a nonsensical argument. It doesn't work for humans, and for me, it doesn't work for animals.

Having said all that, I am not trying to put guilt on you or indicate I judge you or anyone else. I am somewhat like mono in this regard. For another reason I am not in a place to judge, and for another reason, I don't want anyone to feel bad. I am merely presenting my philosophical basis of vegetarianism - which is, I don't have the right to take the life of an animal if it is unnecessary. And for me it is unnecessary. I am an active person and in the best health of my life. If you were so inclined and motivated, you would likely be able to continue the types of work you wish on a vegetarian diet. One of the statistics TheDave posted was that Dave Scott, a vegetarian, won the Ironman Triathlete competition six times.

[skib]

I happen to be on the flip side of the coin- I dislike the taste of most vegetables. As a child, I ate very, very few. I have no basis beyond that for not eating many of them. It's a miracle my mother managed to get me to eat the ones I do today.

[Eugenie]

I love vegetables, and when as a child I had to go to the ranch or one of my cousin's farms to stay for a while in the summer before rejoining my parents in extensive travel,I only ate that with grains.
I was horrified watching the bulls get dehorned or what ever that was, prairie oysters, that made me scream. I could not bear to see the men put a chicken's head on the ground and then step on the neck and then rip and the chicken would run headless for a moment or two. ONce I managed to hide about fifty up a tree and I got the strap for it.And my cousins all belonged to the 4H club and raised calves, then sold them at auction. Being a ballerina city girl without a clue to how the world outside of huge department stores and fine restaurants obtained their wares, I was a wreck each fall when I returned home.
So I became vegetarian and was totally razzed by my whole family who could eat a steak the size of the table and then go back for more. I did this for years and one day I became ill with something or other and in the process I of course had blood taken.
The doctor ordered me to eat meat, he said I had way way too few red cells and they were small, not the right size.
It was hard, for the humanitarian thing. The truth is though I recovered quickly after that and I did like the taste of meat.
Now I eat a ton of veggies with a little bit of chicken or once in a while read meat. Mostly fish though. It is life.

[MisterInteger]

I eat everything but mammals. I feel like this is the most defensible (rationally justified) position.

My idea is that mammals have the cognitive capacity sufficient to be morally significant. I don't believe in the inherent value of life, and even if I did, I would be committed to the claim that eating carrots is just as wrong as eating shrimp (I think - if we're jettisoning ideas of cognition). Full on vegetarianism cannot, I think, be justified, and neither can meat-eating. So I eat chicken, because that's where I draw the cognitive line.

[BienvenuJDC]

I eat everything but mammals. I feel like this is the most defensible (rationally justified) position.

My idea is that mammals have the cognitive capacity sufficient to be morally significant. I don't believe in the inherent value of life, and even if I did, I would be committed to the claim that eating carrots is just as wrong as eating shrimp (I think - if we're jettisoning ideas of cognition). Full on vegetarianism cannot, I think, be justified, and neither can meat-eating. So I eat chicken, because that's where I draw the cognitive line.

I respect your thoughts on consistency. It seems that you've thought things through well.

[MissScarlett]

I eat wild salmon (not farm raised), and that's it for me. I just don't like the taste of meat, and I don't think meat is very healthy.

[NikolaiI]

I eat everything but mammals. I feel like this is the most defensible (rationally justified) position.

My idea is that mammals have the cognitive capacity sufficient to be morally significant. I don't believe in the inherent value of life, and even if I did, I would be committed to the claim that eating carrots is just as wrong as eating shrimp (I think - if we're jettisoning ideas of cognition). Full on vegetarianism cannot, I think, be justified, and neither can meat-eating. So I eat chicken, because that's where I draw the cognitive line.

I wonder why do you say vegetarianism cannot be justified?

[Omniglot]

I know that we could argue for ever on this subject, from a abasis of philosophy, ecology, anthropology, science, biology, etc.

Perhaps it's simpler just to work on two premises.

#1. Bentham's idea of suffering. ..... Bentham argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, must be the benchmark of how we treat other beings........It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.

What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?


#2. The idea of necessity. Regardless of your biological, ethical, philosophical, naturalistic stance; you can keep whatever argument you like and still opt for a policy based on necessity.


Given the two premises above; that of suffering and necessity, I think it reasonable for humans, who overwhelmingly acknowledge that animals can suffer and understand that there is no necessity to eat them, that we should refrain from then doing so.

P1. Animals Suffer.
P2. It is unnecessary to eat them.
C1. Eating animals causes suffering and is unnecessary.
C2. Eating animals is wrong.

Cheers

[NikolaiI]

Very strange occurrence... I was going to Online-literature, and there was one site above it, which was Omniglot.com, specifically, http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sanskrit.htm - and then I saw this post by you, Omniglot, did a mental double take, went back and saw it was the same as the site... haha, but to be on topic,

Thank you for your post, it's quite well-written! :)

I wish everyone could read Jeremy Benthams words, and give them a few hours of quiet contemplation. A living being's life has value, it has its right to life; even if it doesn't speak our language or know our art, religion, math, language.

Yes that is basically my understanding... And I don't see that it has yet been addressed adequately. For someone like Eugenie, it may be necessary, I do not know. For myself I am much healthier as I am now. So that is really an individual question I suppose. But I think this is a very vital question to raise. Is it morally okay? I haven't found reasons even slightly convincing that it is.

I was discussing with my boss and he said he tried to be a vegetarian one time but it made him sick. He said, both he and his sister had done this different times. He said, even being educated on what was needed to be eaten, he still became sick and he said, "I was dying." Now, this is very serious indeed! But I don't understand it at all. I wondered briefly and this may be unfair of me, if it was not psychological to some degree. Anyway my foreignness to this is because it is so strange to my own self. For me even if I did not get as much protein on a vegetarian diet - which I do - it wouldn't make me sick but just weak.

Christian monks have lived on bread and water for very long stretches of times. In fact humans have lived on very weird diets for long periods of time. Of course it is not healthy to have an unbalanced diet like bread and water, but it's a gradual thing, not an immediate one. So it doesn't make sense to me that it would do this to him, make him immediately sick. The only reason I can think that it would do this is that his body had just become so used to it and relied on it that it needed it? And yet this doesn't really make sense too much. Because it doesn't work that way with any other food, does it? So the second thought, is that perhaps his body was addicted to chemicals within the food? This is a scary thought. Now I know those aren't all the options, there could be many other reasons.

And yet at this point I simply must give another good reason for vegetarianism. There are places in the world where the whole city is vegetarian... Mayapur for example. Children are raised vegetarian and if you know these people, you would see that they are the best humanity has to offer. Healthy, strong, intelligent, living disciplined, spiritual, very happy lives... just my thoughts.

[skib]

Is it morally okay? I haven't found reasons even slightly convincing that it is.


Morals are based off one's own experiences and one's own reasoning. I have noticed a significant difference in attitude towards everything in in general between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. I believe that is because of our different moral basis. My morals are based off what my father and grandfather taught me through hunting. Even though to me it is not morally wrong to take a life, that does not mean I lack the understanding of life's value. If anything, I am given a greater appreciation for the value of life. Nikolai, you believe it is morally wrong to take a life. This is based off your personal reflection of your experiences. The way I see it, neither of us is wrong, and neither of us is right. We're just different in our thinking.

Did that make any sense at all? If not, disregard it! I'm trying to think of the reasons why we all have such different opinions here, which is a relatively new thing for me to do.

[prendrelemick]

When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

I write this so you can appreciate the intimate relationship I have with my animals, in their lives and in their deaths.

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

[skib]

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

As it should be. :thumbs_up

[NikolaiI]

Morals are based off one's own experiences and one's own reasoning. I have noticed a significant difference in attitude towards everything in in general between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. I believe that is because of our different moral basis. My morals are based off what my father and grandfather taught me through hunting. Even though to me it is not morally wrong to take a life, that does not mean I lack the understanding of life's value. If anything, I am given a greater appreciation for the value of life. Nikolai, you believe it is morally wrong to take a life. This is based off your personal reflection of your experiences. The way I see it, neither of us is wrong, and neither of us is right. We're just different in our thinking.

Did that make any sense at all? If not, disregard it! I'm trying to think of the reasons why we all have such different opinions here, which is a relatively new thing for me to do.


When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

I write this so you can appreciate the intimate relationship I have with my animals, in their lives and in their deaths.

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

Perhaps my main point should be it's infinitely better to do this yourself, to hunt animals in their own habitat or to raise your self. If you raise them yourself, if you have a relationship with them, as you say you do, prendel, then you care about them. This means you won't let them suffer in their lives. This is a big difference to me, for in factory farms, I can't imagine by any stretch that the animals are cared for; in fact they are treated quite badly and they suffer.

And I hope you won't think I'm judging you. I was a vegetarian most of my life, but there were times when I was off/and/on. So it would be hypocritical of me to judge. Even if I was a vegetarian all my life it would be hypocritical just by the nature of judging. I wouldn't want to go down that way.

But I still disagree with your idea that it's okay, even if you raise it yourself. To me the animal has an inalieable right to life, as much as any other animal. Even if you love the animal, the animal still doesn't want to die. Even if the animal can't understand our language, religion, reason, art, math, etc., the animal still has consciousness and a beating heart, etc. The heart bit means a lot to me.

Sometimes people have said that animals don't have souls. Sometimes they still do say this. But animals have the same number of appendages as we do; mammals are warmblooded. Animals have ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, a mind, blood, muscles, and a heart. All these similarities. And so what is the reason again they do not have a soul? I know nobody said that but I also know there are many who think that way.

Skib, my father, brother, mother, and most of the people I know are not vegetarian. But I do disagree with what they do, I disagree rather strongly. To have a relationship, I don't bring it up on my own. But anyway.

I am religious, and I know there are atheists who are also vegetarians, but religion is one reason I am a vegetarian. In my religion it's a great sin to eat meat, worse than intoxication, which is also a sin. :lol: I do not drink and I know alcohol is important to you, Skib, so it is another way we are very different. But that's not reallly a problem for me, diversity is good. :lol:

I just hope you'll consider it.

And... Omniglot posted as well as I can think of, and I agree with how he said, that it is simplest to look at it in that way, to look at it simply.

1. do they suffer?
2. is it necessary?

[skib]

If we all agreed on everything, we would not be able to have these quite interesting conversations! :nod:

[prendrelemick]

Animals can suffer pain.

But they have no self pity.

I have lived with and worked with animals all of my life, and this is my observation.

OK here's a question;

Last night after a long struggle, I managed to deliver a lamb that would have died, along with its mother, but for my intervention. Was I right to do this? the lamb is a male, destined for slaughter. It will have a summer of existence, is this worse than non existence? Does the end unjustify the beginning?

[Madame X]

Excusez-moi if I am arriving late and have not read this discussion in its entirety, however:


When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

You express a sense of satisfaction when delivering life; I’m simply curious as to what the emotional corollary happens to be, for you, whilst systematically taking life away.

[prendrelemick]

I feel sadness, but not regret.


Satisfaction is not quite right. Lambs just seem to burst into life when they come free of their mother. Every time I'm amazed anew.

[NikolaiI]

Animals can suffer pain.

But they have no self pity.

I have lived with and worked with animals all of my life, and this is my observation.

OK here's a question;

Last night after a long struggle, I managed to deliver a lamb that would have died, along with its mother, but for my intervention. Was I right to do this? the lamb is a male, destined for slaughter. It will have a summer of existence, is this worse than non existence? Does the end unjustify the beginning?

This doesn't have much to do with the answer for me.

I have a question. Why is it necessary to have a human population of 6.7-6.8 billion, the majority of whom are supported to some extent from animals from factory farms?

We do this because we are able, because it is habit, and because of the forces such as money involved. But those who actually work in slaughterhouses take a terrible toll.

The question is, why is it necessary for death and suffering to support life? Those animals have a life, hearts, minds; they have a voice we have just silenced it.

As I did say before, the way you are living is infinitely better to buying meat at a restaurant or grocery store, which comes from a factory farm.

And yet and I are probably coming from opposite sides of the issue and will never meet.

I rode the bus to school this morning. I am always observing people. Just on the bus, I am simply thinking about the way we interact with each other.

People are very self-aware. No one likes to be touched by a stranger. In line to get on the bus, we are aware of personal space. We may not even touch each other, because that is how storngly our social structure supports our right to self-space and comfort, etc., etc.

And yet the animals has no such rights. The animal doesn't even have the right to be safe from being killed.

Also, besides the codes of conduct of interaction in say a bus or a subway; people are also generally very demanding about certain things. They must have things their way, otherwise they are quite upset. All of this selfishness. And they cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, consider an animal, which cannot reason or talk or appreciate writing, has an individual existence.

Why are the codes of conduct in place about human interaction? Because, when you touch a human, when you hurt a human, the human reacts!

Now, the same is true of animals, if you try to push an animal around, it will react negatively. Only, if you get the better of it and shoot it, you win.

So the main thing is, is it necessary? It is not.

Prendel, this wasn't directed at you personally. I hope you're not upset by what I've said. I must reiterate the way you live is so much, so much better than buying meat at a restaurant which came from a factory farm. I find virtually no fault with the way you do this, because the animal does not suffer in its life. In factory farms pigs are put in things called gestation chambers, where they cannot move. I am assuming the lamb is not put in a 4x4 cage, or whatever. But factory farms are a horror for me, and I have shed many tears over this. I do not anymore because it doesn't help. But killing animals I consider to be as bad as killing humans.

[prendrelemick]

So far I've tried to keep my posts in the realm of my personal experience. I didn't really want to go beyond that, but in the intrest of debate, here are some more philosophical thoughts on your post

The population of the world isnt a necessity. But it IS an unavoidable fact.

In the natural world the survival of one animal often depends on the death of another.
Whatever cruelties Man can contrive Mother Nature can top. No wild animal has ever died of old age, that so called privilege goes to Man alone.

There is a growing trend to wrongly credit animals with human traits and emotions. For instance your observations from the bus was of humans, Yet you made the assumption that animals have the same social mores.

You seem to imply that meat comes exclusively from "factory farms"(whatever they are.) It doesn't, there are fields full of cattle and sheep.

[Madame X]

The population of the world isnt a necessity. But it IS an unavoidable fact.

Easily remedied by, say, an outbreak of human cannibalism, among other brutal, though, admittedly, far less amusing prospects. :cool: Besides, if the implication there is that meat-eating is somehow fundamentally unavoidable, I would ask in what sense? For much of the developed world at least, the consumption of meat is by no means compulsory; we can, -being the benevolent, rational beings we all claim to be :brow:- subsist, and quite swimmingly at that, on a diet that does not necessitate the rather inelegant, systematized, snuffing of life.


In the natural world the survival of one animal often depends on the death of another.
Whatever cruelties Man can contrive Mother Nature can top. No wild animal has ever died of old age, that so called privilege goes to Man alone.

I’m not under the impression that mother nature is much of a reflexive kinda gal. ;) True, many non-human animals may not possess an impressive degree of human-grade ‘intellectualism’ in most cases, (I mean, naturally, a tiger isn’t considering the possibility that, instead of de-throating that sprightly antelope it could just as easily run down to the corner store and whip up a batch of pancakes :rolleyes:), buuuut, let’s get real, it ain’t like mankind is exactly the pinnacle of evolutionary advancement here either...yet we can utilize whatever rational faculties we flatter ourselves into believing we have to choose to be just a bit, oh, nicer. :D

[skib]

EDIT- if anybody read what I just deleted, disregard it, and I apologize ahead of time for it appearing that you responded to something somebody didn't say.

[HollyLS]

Thing is, I don't like the thought of killing. I was vegetarian, twice, for about a year at a time. I just got sick because I have another condition which means I can't eat certain foods anyway. Sounds cruel, but our bodies are designed to eat both plants and animals.

I don't agree with the way we kill them, we should go back to times when we didn't have the so called useful technology for these things. We should kill animals in a natural way if we are going to do it.

I respect vegetarians, I just don't think that being a vegetarian is going to save the animals. It's sad, but it's true. If i could change our biological make up, so we only needed plants of course I would. I hate killing too, but meat is what our bodies want.

[Omniglot]

Thing is, I don't like the thought of killing. I was vegetarian, twice, for about a year at a time. I just got sick because I have another condition which means I can't eat certain foods anyway. Sounds cruel, but our bodies are designed to eat both plants and animals.

I don't agree with the way we kill them, we should go back to times when we didn't have the so called useful technology for these things. We should kill animals in a natural way if we are going to do it.

I respect vegetarians, I just don't think that being a vegetarian is going to save the animals. It's sad, but it's true. If i could change our biological make up, so we only needed plants of course I would. I hate killing too, but meat is what our bodies want.

I'm not sure I can agree with the our bodies are designed to eat both plants and animals bit above.

First of all, our bodies have evolved, not been designed. This is not just a play on semantics but of fundamental importance in the vegetarian debate. Biblical ideology has suppressed vegetarianism for a few thousand years on the basis of the dominion over animals nonsense.

Second, leaving that aside and looking to biological probability; there is pretty much overwhelming evidence that humans have evolved as herbivores due to our sost clawless hands and flat grinding teeth. Carnivorous animals tend to have large tearing teeth, extremely short intestines and devastating weapons in the shape of claws or beaks. Herbovores tend to have long intestines, low flat teeth and blunt hands, paws etc.

Contemporary evidence overwhelming points to (unless you are completely stupid or lethargic to change) diets of animal fats on human health as the number one killer of the human population in terms of cancer and heart disease.

It's up to you.

Have a nice day.

[*Classic*Charm*]

I don't agree with the way we kill them, we should go back to times when we didn't have the so called useful technology for these things. We should kill animals in a natural way if we are going to do it.

What's more natural than exsanguination? The only difference between slaughter now and slaughter in the past is that legally all animals have to be sedated first, which of course is for their own good. The only exception to this is ritual slaughter, which is an entirely different issue.

I'm not trying to start an argument since we share similar views on the subject, I'm just wondering what other options you see? :)

[Madame X]

I respect vegetarians, I just don't think that being a vegetarian is going to save the animals.

Oh, I’m not as optimistic as all that; it’s simply a matter of principle. :thumbs_up

[blp]

Interesting article on the environmental implications of vegetarianism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/16/ghent-belgium-vegetarian-town-environment

[NikolaiI]

Thank you so much for sharing that, blp, that was an enlightening article.

I think it's a good idea to start with 1 day of meat free a week. I am a vegetarian and I am in perfect health. Maybe it is more difficult to switch if one ate meat most of one's life - I was a vegetarian most of my life. Still, as The Dave so kindly pointed out, there was a person, vegetarian, Dave Scott, who won the triathlon gold medal 6 times.

For me it is a simple matter, the combined reasons of ethics, health, and environment. When we give animals chemicals, and then we eat those animals, we are eating the chemicals ourselves. It's better to keep the body pure, for good health and life. I understand as I said, the difficulty of switching lifestyle, especially when it is so, so engrained in our culture. And as to health, if one can't become a vegetarian, at least eating less meat is better. Being active is absolutely necessary to be a healthy vegetarian. I would be utterly miserable without breathing exercises, stretching, yoga/tai chi, a small amount of weightlifting, and walking at least a couple of miles a day. Probably the most important of all these is breathing exercises and meditation. Actually meditation has a great deal of benefit for one's health.

It's fairly necessary to be active in positive/healthy activities, not just "not eating meat" will be healthy. For instance one could eat pizza and chips and deserts and it would be vegetarian but quite degenerative health-wise. And also if one doesn't live an active life, one won't be healthy and strong. How do we expect to be healthy and strong without doing work?

So I think, if one would gradually switch to a more vegetarian diet, and as well, being aware... in terms of breathing exercises, meditation, and other exercise (whatever seems most important), then one could become very healthy. And so, if one can live healthy and strong without meat, then what need is there to kill animals, which have hearts and minds?

[kilted exile]

the need is because they are tasty

[NikolaiI]

the need is because they are tasty

eh..?

and the justification? perhaps because they can't figure arithemetic?

[kilted exile]

No that is a perfectly good reason they taste good. Your plant is alive, what is the justification for killing it to eat?

We dont question why the lion kills the antelope, or even why the bird eats the poor defenceless worm.

We are just at a high level on the food chain - this is nature, this is perfectly normal & acceptable, a little less of the proselytizing would be a good idea

[NikolaiI]

No that is a perfectly good reason they taste good. Your plant is alive, what is the justification for killing it to eat?

We dont question why the lion kills the antelope, or even why the bird eats the poor defenceless worm.

We are just at a high level on the food chain - this is nature, this is perfectly normal & acceptable, a little less of the proselytizing would be a good idea

Your argument is twisted. If it is morally not okay to kill a plant, that makes it okay to kill animals? I am saying, it is wrong to kill animals. Killing plants, to eat, is a necessity, though it should not be done any more than necessary. You are then trying to argue that it's wrong to kill plants, thus it's okay to kill animals.

Actually you are just poking fun. And correcting me on my proslytizing. Why this pretence? Why can't we have unpretentious communication? Why accuse me of pretense (proselytizing)? Because I am saying something different than you?

The idea that satsifying our tastes is justification for any act is senseless. We must examine our actions to know whether they are not harming anyone. If they harm, then we must examine whether or not it is necessary.

You are saying it's necessary so you can satisfy your tastes. I am very appalled by this. Your reaction is to belittle me and my stance by calling it proselytizing. That is pretence.

And by the way, vegetarianism is a good idea. :thumbs_up

[kilted exile]

Firstly I am not poking fun. I am completely serious.

Two, no I see the argument is twisted, but it is the flaw in yours I was addressing how is it any better to kill plants as a necessity than it is to kill animals - maybe we should let the plants live and only eat the animals. After all from an environmental perspective the plants at least turn CO2 into oxygen helping the planet whereas the cows are producing all that harmful methane.

Three yes you are doing plenty of proselytizing, just look back to your OP


My goal is simply to encourage people to become or at least think about becoming vegetarian.

[NikolaiI]

I am trying to discuss vegetarianism. I am not perfect and if my imperfection offends you, forgive me. I know it is a touchy issue and I try to be sensitive. The country I live in is 95-98% non-vegetarian and everyone in my family except myself and my grandmother are not vegetarian. It does not hurt my relationship with them. I see no reason why this subject should not be discussed. Naturally as I am a vegetarian I am on the side of vegetarianism in this debate. All you are saying is, "Don't be on that side of the debate." I can only respond, "What the..??"


Two, no I see the argument is twisted, but it is the flaw in yours I was addressing how is it any better to kill plants as a necessity than it is to kill animals -

As I said, my position is that killing animals is wrong, and killing plants is a necessesity but doing so indiscriminately is also wrong.

Animals have hearts and minds, this naturally makes them closer related to us. They also have emotions, can feel fear, pain, joy, and attachment.


After all from an environmental perspective the plants at least turn CO2 into oxygen helping the planet whereas the cows are producing all that harmful methane.

Please read the article blp posted, as it is better written than I could explain.

We breed the animals that we slaughter for restaurants and grocery stores. If we stopped them breeding, they would be gone within a generation.

I refer to the article...

... in 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a study, Livestock's Long Shadow, showing that the livestock industry is responsible for a staggering 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is only the beginning of the story. In 2008, Brazil announced that in the 12 months to July it had lost 12,000 sq km (3m acres) of the Amazon rainforest, mainly to cattle ranchers and soy producers supplying European markets with animal feed. There is water scarcity in large parts of the world, yet livestock-rearing can use up to 200 times more water a kilogram (2.2lbs) of meat produced than is used in growing wheat.

[kilted exile]

I am not saying "dont be on that side of the debate" at all. I have no problem with vegetarianism, I do have a problem with the way you are going about it. The idea that vegetarianism is the moral, environmentally friendly way to live is frankly absurd to me and it is that idea I have a problem with & question. Folk can eat/believe what they like for all I care, just dont expect when you post your opinion on a public forum that it is not going to get questioned and argued against. There is nowhere in my posts where I have been impolite or rude, I am simply arguing the oppostie side of the coin


In fact if we all became vegetarian, species diversity would decrease dramatically - the cow would go the way of the buffalo and the amount of wild flora would be reduced as fields or wheat, grain & corn rapidly expanded to meet the increased demand.

I am fully aware of the environmental impacts (studied them for a long time) but I refuse to have anything to do with organisations such as Greenpeace or Peta who are not interested in the environment as much as getting headlines.

[NikolaiI]

I am not saying "dont be on that side of the debate" at all. I have no problem with vegetarianism, I do have a problem with the way you are going about it. The idea that vegetarianism is the moral, environmentally friendly way to live is frankly absurd to me and it is that idea I have a problem with & question. Folk can eat/believe what they like for all I care, just dont expect when you post your opinion on a public forum that it is not going to get questioned and argued against. There is nowhere in my posts where I have been impolite or rude, I am simply arguing the oppostie side of the coin


In fact if we all became vegetarian, species diversity would decrease dramatically - the cow would go the way of the buffalo and the amount of wild flora would be reduced as fields or wheat, grain & corn rapidly expanded to meet the increased demand.

I am fully aware of the environmental impacts (studied them for a long time) but I refuse to have anything to do with organisations such as Greenpeace or Peta who are not interested in the environment as much as getting headlines.

I do not have any problem at all with you arguing with me. But accusing me of proselytizing is not discussing vegetarianism. It's okay, it's nothing, doesn't matter. Moving forward... I do not accept your speculation about the cow going the way of the buffalo ( please explain this, anyway ). (In India cows are considered sacred, and there's no reason to believe they would go extinct.

About the fields of wheat, grain, and corn rapidly expanded to meet the increased demand, this isn't right either. It takes 20 pounds of grain used as feed, when you grain-feed cows, to produce 1 pound of beef. So if you converted, only 10% of the beef industry to non-meat agriculture, it would free up vast amounts of grain, and there would be much, much more grain. You wouldn't have to rapidly expand fields of grain to get the grain; you can use the grain you were feeding cows.

As for Peta or Greenpeace, I have nothing to do with them, and this isn't necessarily about them at all.

[backline]

This thread has been an amazing read.

I have never seriously considered a vegan lifestyle for myself, but the civilized discussion here has been broadening. Maybe one day a week would be a good start.

I started to read The China Report, but its claims are controversial. Somehow I never finished the book.

The moral question is pretty academic to me. We (humans) just happen to be the foremost temporary tenents of the planet currently. This planet got along fine without us previously, and I think it will again after we've poisoned ourselves off the surface.

As to the suffering of slaughtered animals presently I'm afraid I see little difference in Nature: the lion is as deadly to the prey as Ted Nugent.

I was going to say vegetables is what the food eats, but after reading this thread thought better of it. I may be more open minded now. Time (and further discussion) will tell the tale.
I may have to reconsider my prejudices.

[billl]

what makes us different from the carnivores is that we have a choice.
what makes us different from the other omnivores is that many of us can see a moral difference (between dead plants and dead animals), and respond accordingly.

[blp]

As to the suffering of slaughtered animals presently I'm afraid I see little difference in Nature: the lion is as deadly to the prey as Ted Nugent.


That's literally true, but actually, the lion is feeding off sustainable stocks of locally sourced animals that, themselves, have no impact on the environment and feed of grasses and shrubs unsuitable for consumption by any other creature.

Humans, on the other hand, are farming vast tracts of wheat and soya in order to feed cattle, cutting down rainforest to do so on land which isn't really fit for purpose, so the topsoil washes away after a few seasons leaving barren land, contributing hugely to environmental destruction, global warming and food shortages.

[prendrelemick]

I can only speak of Britain because that is where I farm. There are 5.5 million acres of upland pasture. This is area is unsuitable for arable or vegetable cropping. It is too steep, and too exposed. It is currently being efficiently harvested by sheep and cattle.

Now, if I could grow crops I would, and so would all my nieghbours, not from any pseudo ethical stance, but simply because it is more profitable. But we can't, and thats a fact. The only thing that grows here is grass, so its livestock or nothing. The question is, can we afford to take 5.5 million acres or about 20% of farmed land out of food production?

[billl]

prendrelemick, thanks for the great point. I've always felt that some of the (otherwise good) environmental arguments for vegetarianism conveniently ignored the 'efficiency' of grazing.

What is your opinion of cattle and/or other animals being raised in less 'natural' ways (e.g. being fed soy, stressful confines, etc.)?

Also, do you have an opinion regarding the large slaughter-house operations that are more mechanized and far less 'sensitive' to the experience of the animals?

[prendrelemick]

I have seen indoor cattle rearing, and many years ago I worked on on a pig farm, before the current welfare standards were introduced. (Pig crates have been illegal for many years over here.)

I'm not an expert in animal welfare, but I have long experience in rearing sheep and cattle. One thing I have learned is that you simply cannot rear them profitably if they are suffering from constant stress. I don't know about other types of livestock but I suspect the same is true.

The pig farm where I worked (over 30 years ago) put up a new crate house for about 200 sows. Statistically the health of the herd dramatically improved, management was easier, costs were less, there were fewer casualties, injuries or diseases, BUT I didn't like it because the sows could hardly move. The sows seemed content, but I didn't like it.

The size of the slaughter-house doesn't matter, it's the design of pens, race, crush that really count. I've seen systems that had sweating men struggleing with bellowing cattle, and systems where the cattle just strolled into the crush without any drama. The mechanisation is mostly on the meat processing side.

What I am certain of, is that the Stun, then bleed method of slaughter is quick and painless.

[blp]

prendrelemick, good to have your perspective. I think the point about certain land being unsuitable for anything but grazing comes up in the Guardian article too, or the comments below. Something about this being the rationale for most ruminant farming in much of Africa. The thing I struggle with, especially as a lover of cheese, is the thing in that article that says the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock farming account for a whopping 18% of overall UK emissions. Problematically for veggies (as opposed to vegans), cheese making is actually said to have higher emissions than meat farming.

But all that aside for the moment, it seems the major environmental problem is global demand for meat, especially beef, which apparently can't be met by farming only on existing grazing lands and that's why so much rainforest destruction is occurring.

[Dodo25]

I'm reviving this thread because it's is an issue I care about. Thanks to the OP for starting this (years ago haha).

I think there are strong ethical and ecological reasons to be a vegetarian (or a vegan, which is of course even better).

Ethics:
Why is sexism wrong? Why is racism wrong?
It may seem surprising, but the above are wrong for the same reason as our treatment of animals is wrong. Racists or sexists categorize people as 'inferior' without actually looking at their individual abilities. They think these 'others' don't deserve the same rights, simply because they don't belong to the priviledged group (say the white 'race', or the male gender). Even if it were true that i.e. women were on average dumber than men (it isn't), denying them all the rights men have is wrong, because the smartest woman would still be much smarter than an average man. One has to consider the actual abilities, not the 'group label'.

It is obvious to everyone that torturing humans is wrong, and that when they suffer, they should be helped. Is this so because humans are 'intelligent'? Do the intelligent deserve more moral care and attention than dumb people? Obviously not. Because what matters is the capacity to suffer.

A human infant, or a person with severe mental disabilities, have the same (or lesser even) mental abilities and capacity for suffering as pigs or cows. If a company were to inflicted suffering in human infants or disabled people for a marginal benefit equal to 'some tasty meals', the public would be beyond outraged and scream 'nazi'. So why is it suddenly okay to do the same thing to animals, if they're just as 'consciously aware of suffering' as the above mentioned members of the human species? The answer that unfortunately, we're biased. Biased to an 'in-group / out-group' mentality. Biased towards racism and sexism. But we've overcome these evils with time and are now aware that they're wrong. We're also biased towards 'speciesism'. And as of now, not much seems to be done against it. We can't just assume that the interests of beings ought only be considered when they belong to the species Homo sapiens. What matters is the capacity to suffer. And if it's wrong to let infants suffer (even if they're orphans and no one directly cries for them), it's also wrong to let pigs or cows suffer (and chicken, and other sentient animals).

Killing is another matter. Is it wrong to kill (non-human) animals? Many vegetarians would say 'yes', yet some say 'no' in theory. If it's done painlessly, there's not much wrong with it because as long as the animals aren't self-aware (and only humans and maybe some other great apes seem to be), they don't have future plans or interests. They live 'in the moment'. Analogically, abortion is allowed too, even at stages when the fetus has some level of consciousness and definitely feels pain. So while killing non self-aware beings might not be intrinsically 'wrong', it definitely is wrong when it's done with pain. And since the common practice of killing animals involves scary transports, crowding and a bolt into the brain (that in a significant percentage of cases doesn't kill instantly), it's safe to assume that killing animals the current way is wrong.

To me, those reasons alone seem absolutely sound and enough, and even though I LOVE eating meat, I stopped eventually (though only after about a year of rationalizing it, despite actually being aware of the facts and the ethical case). But there are other reasons still:

Ecological reasons:
Two pounds of meat (beef) use up 15'000 litres of water for its production, and obviously a whole lot of grain and crops too. The energy conversion from plant -> meat is very inefficient (only 10% at best). If the world went vegan, we could easily produce enough food for twice the current population.

Meat production releases a huge amount of greenhouse gases, it alone is responsible for nearly 20% of the planet's total emissions.

Health arguments:
The argument 'humans are omnivores and should thus eat meat' is absurd. What 'is', doesn't 'have to' be the case. Nature isn't ethical. And do we really need meat? The answer is cleary 'no'. In fact, vegetarians are significantly healthier than people who eat meat. There are virtually no risks of nutritional deficiencies for vegetarians, except for girls or young women with strong menstrual blood flow (they should make sure they get enough iron, but if you're aware of it then it's easy to cover it).

Veganism is a bit more difficult. In order to become a vegan, one actually has to learn a bit about nutrition and devise a plan as for what to eat. It's hard to find 'tasty menus' initially, but one does get used to it. Vegetarianism isn't hard, veganism is a bit of an effort, especially in the beginning, but it's the right thing. (Some vegans don't eat ANYTHING at all made from animals. That's clearly exagerated, there's nothing wrong with eating honey for instance, bees don't suffer from producing it.)

And if one simply 'can't abandon eating meat because it's so damn tasty', then one can at least eat less of it. For instance, only eat meat on weekends, or only eat it once a week. That already helps a lot and makes a difference. I was incapable of giving it all up at once, so I started by reducing it at first.

Think about it.

[ladderandbucket]

I have been thinking about this subject a lot recently. I have been trying to avoid buying intensively farmed food and only eating meat a few times a week.

I don't see that, simply because an animal may not have a sense of self, it should be less deserving of compassion. Animals feel pain and fear and trauma just the same as humans do. Why should I have more right to a pleasant life than an animal simply because I may be better able to appreciate it?

I don't actually have a problem with eating meat. It seems quite natural. I think, if I was hungry enough, I would eat a human flesh without too much revulsion. It is impossible to live in this world without being complicit in the death and suffering of others. How is eating meat any different from eating dairy products, wearing leather, wearing clothes made in a sweatshop, living in a country which profits from arms sales etc, etc? I guess everybody has to find a point at which they will draw a line they will not cross but, unless you are a jain monk, the line can only be arbitrary.

I have more reservations about the farming of animals. I don't like to think of intensively farmed animals but, arguably, an animal in captivity has a better life than an animal in the wild. I can imagine the majority of wild animals to be half starved, riddled with parasites and living in constant fear of their lives.

My real problem is with the production of a life to be used solely for consumption. It seems to be using a life as a means rather than an end, which is surely wrong in all but the most extreme of circumstances.

But are human lives that much different to those of farmed animals? Contrary to popular belief we are not born free. We (most of us) are born dependent, raised until we are fit enough to work, spend our lives in servitude and finally left to die when we are no longer strong or coherent enough to be of any use. Our lives are hopefully more rewarding than that of a battery hen but we are no less consumed by the world than any farm animal.

Perhaps it comes down to the religious idea of sanctity of life. If every life is worth living, no matter how degrading or painful, then I guess it is ok to breed animals and keep them locked up until they are fat enough to eat. Personally I don't believe there is any intrinsic value to just 'being alive' no matter what the cost, but this is just how I feel. It may be more a reflection of my pessimistic nature than anything else.

Well, these are some of the incoherent and contradictory thoughts I've been having lately. I am thinking about reading some books on animal rights. J M Coetzee's The Lives of Animals looks interesting, but I am worried it might completely freak me out.

[conartist]

I've been vegetarian since my teens. Eating meat is unjustifiable.

'It's the natural way. Lions eat zebras; big fish, little fish etc' Lions die if they don't eat zebras. If I was trapped in the wild for days and starving I would kill a rabbit. I'm not. There's no nutritional argument against vegetarianism. If you can't be bothered making healthy dishes then there are imitation schintzels, sausages, burgers etc that you could only reject because they taste ten per cent worse than the real thing. That downside is hardly the equivalent of dying.

Looking through the older posts there were arguments against vegetarianism made on an environmental basis. These should be given the same amount of credence that goes to those who believe that Shakespeare and Cervantes were the same person. The livestock industry produces more greenhouse gases than ANY OTHER MAN-MADE SOURCE. The biggest cause of deforestation is grazing ground for cattle. More than 200 times the amount of water per kilo is needed to rear cattle than wheat. I live in a country that has spent most of the last decade in intensive water restrictions.

But anyway, people can do as they please.

[faithosaurus]

I've been a vegetarian since December and I must say I just feel all-round healthier (since I don't really eat junk food or drink pop, either). I have gotten a lot of ridicule - mostly from my peers - for it, but I just brush it off because I do this for me, not them.

[chipper]

I'm pesco vegetarian and there's no special reason to it.

I don't like the thought of animals being slaughtered and me eating them.

[Delta40]

I wonder why non-vegetarians feel 'confronted' when somebody says they're vegetarian. Are they threatened in some way? I find my daughter is often asked to justify her choice not to eat meat.

[faithosaurus]

I wonder why non-vegetarians feel 'confronted' when somebody says they're vegetarian. Are they threatened in some way? I find my daughter is often asked to justify her choice not to eat meat.

I wonder about that too. I'm always asked to justify it.

[Ecurb]

Beau Brummel, the Regency Dandy, never ate vegetables. At one dinner party, his dinner partner asked him, "Do you eat any vegetables at all, Mr. Brummel."

He glanced at her through his quizzing glass. "Once, several years ago, I ate a pea."

[Paulclem]

I wonder why non-vegetarians feel 'confronted' when somebody says they're vegetarian. Are they threatened in some way? I find my daughter is often asked to justify her choice not to eat meat.

I never mention it unless I need to inform someone about it. I think many are challenged by it. You do get a couple of responses though. The embarrassed "well I only eat white meat and a bit of beef" type response, as if to say "I'm not all bad". Or you get the confident and sniffy put down of the Beau Brummel type mentioned earlier. This last sometimes seems an over compensation, and there's really nothing to say to it. It's usually followed by scornful comments varying in degree depending upon whether the speaker is an "alpha male bloke man", or just an ordinary person.

In my opnion soap box vegetarianism is as annoying as Beau Brummel's. It can only be down to personal choice - whatever that may be - at the moment. I certainly don't like embarrassing people or having them feel they have to justify themselves, when our eating habits are often just the result of culture and personal environment. Haranguing people doesn't produce converts to anything - which you'd lke to tell the preachers in town often. (I don't know what it's like in other places, but British public preaching often has an embarrassed edge to it. Perhaps it's the British character - but I digress).

[Emil Miller]

There are some very interesting points raised in this thread. I recall a time when being a vegetarian was lampooned by the media and general public alike. It's indicative of a a shift in public opinion that vegetarianism is much more widespread than a few decades ago. I briefly took to it because I am a small eater and couldn't be bothered cooking anything that required much time to prepare. I also found that vegetables, such as those used for salads and stir fry dishes etc., appeared to be adequate for my requirements. Then a medico advised that I eat some meat as it was necessary for a person's nutrition, so I began eating things that could be grilled rather than oven cooked but, even so, it's kept to a minimum.
Food is a difficult subject to generalise about because people have different perspectives on it, but one thing I am certain of is that many people in the developed countries eat more food than is necessary for their general well being and meat is a major component of the excess.

[The Comedian]

Food is a difficult subject to generalise about because people have different perspectives on it, but one thing I am certain of is that many people in the developed countries eat more food than is necessary for their general well being and meat is a major component of the excess.

Totally agree. I try to limit my meat eating to one meal a day, and a small serving of it at that. And while I don't follow any strict "diet", I set myself a "limited meat" culinary guideline. As a result, I tend to eat more healthy, and ironically, less expensive foods.

[Helga]

feel like I am jumping into the middle of a conversation but anyway....

when I first became a vegetarian I felt I had to tell everyone about it but that was a childish act and I got over it. Now I rarely tell people but I always find it interesting when the discussion comes up, some people like some of you have mentioned before get a bit defensive like it means that they are doing something wrong but I often get a detailed description of their favorite meat as if to get me hungry for it.

I really don't care what other people eat and I think it is their choice what they eat and I include my son in that, I only cook vegetarian food but he gets to eat anything he wants at school and having dinner with his grandparents or anyone else.

almost everybody has some food thing and here on the ice many people don't eat horse meat even though they eat everything else. also more and more people won't eat pigs because of recent news of very bad treatment of pigs in their early life.

my son often reminds me that I don't eat dead animals but he himself does... I often hope he will follow into my footsteps but it is his choice.

[Paulclem]

feel like I am jumping into the middle of a conversation but anyway....

when I first became a vegetarian I felt I had to tell everyone about it but that was a childish act and I got over it. Now I rarely tell people but I always find it interesting when the discussion comes up, some people like some of you have mentioned before get a bit defensive like it means that they are doing something wrong but I often get a detailed description of their favorite meat as if to get me hungry for it.

I really don't care what other people eat and I think it is their choice what they eat and I include my son in that, I only cook vegetarian food but he gets to eat anything he wants at school and having dinner with his grandparents or anyone else.

almost everybody has some food thing and here on the ice many people don't eat horse meat even though they eat everything else. also more and more people won't eat pigs because of recent news of very bad treatment of pigs in their early life.

my son often reminds me that I don't eat dead animals but he himself does... I often hope he will follow into my footsteps but it is his choice.

Both my wife and I are vegetarian, and we made the decision to bring our kids up as such with the proviso that they could eat what they wanted when they were adults/ 16/ expressed a preference - whichever came first. This is really only the other way round to how my wife was brought up. She declared an intention to be vegetarian at a young age. Her mum, diplomatically said she could when she was 16, probably thinking that my wife would forget. She didn't and duly became vegetarian at sixteen and has been so ever since.

My two kids are still vegetarians, but it remains up to them of course. I think you just have to do what fits your circumstances best. With us there was no pressure, as my wife had already been a veggie for twenty-odd years already.

[JuniperWoolf]

I don't see why anyone should care at all about what anyone else eats, or about what they themselves eat for that matter (what I mean is, why use the food that you happen to prefer as a description of your identity?). Why even bother to call yourself a "vegetarian?" No one else goes around calling themselves "omnivores" (as in, people don't say: "hi, I'm Scott, I'm 27, I like to play squash and I'm an omnivore"). It's just not that big a deal, what someone decides to eat is the most redundant decision that anyone in our society has to make.

[Dodo25]

I don't see why anyone should care at all about what anyone else eats, or about what they themselves eat for that matter (what I mean is, why use the food that you happen to prefer as a description of your identity?). Why even bother to call yourself a "vegetarian?" No one else goes around calling themselves "omnivores" (as in, people don't say: "hi, I'm Scott, I'm 27, I like to play squash and I'm an omnivore"). It's just not that big a deal, what someone decides to eat is the most redundant decision that anyone in our society has to make.

It IS a big deal to all the animals living miserable lives and dying misrable deaths. Some things are simply ethically wrong, and asking 'why should anyone care?' shows you haven't understood that part. There has been a time where hardly anyone, not even the founding fathers of America, questioned the ethics of slavery. But why should we care how others handle labor affairs at their estates? Why should we care about our own treatment of fellow sentient beings?

Edit: Obviously the 'defining oneself by what one eats' is a different issue, and it needn't be exagerated, meaning it probably shouldn't be the first thing you tell someone if they ask you about yourself (maybe the third thing).

[JuniperWoolf]

And what are you going to do about it? Preach like that at people who decide to eat meat? Yeah, I'm sure the moral superiority angle will play out really well for you (read: people will do the opposite in the most blatant way possible just to piss you off, and it will be your fault). It's just the way things are: you can't tell people what to eat. Meat simply tastes really good to humans and they're not going to stop eating it (trust me, I'm from Alberta, you're not going to make these guys into vegetarians).

If you're so concerned with animal wellfare, you'd be better off advocating for more humane treatment of cattle and poultry because all consumers benefit. The people who don't share your views benefit in that the healthier the animals are that they and their families are eating, the healthier they themselves will be. Animal rights activists benefit in that they can pat themselves on the back and make actual leeway because they're shooting for something that's actually possible. The animals themselves benefit in that they don't live miserable lives (they still die, but hey, so does everything else and if it weren't for the cattle industry they may not have even existed in the first place - at least their lives don't suck while they're alive, and if you do it right, they won't even notice when they die). People like me benefit in that we don't have to listen to boring kids with superiority complexes and nothing else to define their identities (ergo the "boring") trying to tell everyone else what to put in their own bodies (seriously, there is nothing else in the world that makes me want to rip into a big steak more than when these people start talking and pull out their stupid postar boards depicting crying calves with "where's my mommy?" speech bubbles above their heads - true story, I swear that actually happened to me). It's a win-win situation.

[Dodo25]

And what are you going to do about it? Preach like that at people who decide to eat meat? Yeah, I'm sure the moral superiority angle will play out really well for you (read: people will do the opposite in the most blatant way possible just to piss you off, and it will be your fault). It's just the way things are: you can't tell people what to eat. Meat simply tastes really good to humans and they're not going to stop eating it (trust me, I'm from Alberta, you're not going to make these guys into vegetarians).

If you're raised with it (I was), meat DOES taste really damn good. So what? We can't just put our desire to 'have a tasty meal' above the much more important desire of 'not suffering hell'. If you haven't already, please read my longer post on the last page. Yeah, I suppose I'm 'preaching', but contrary to religious preaching, my case is actually based on logical arguments and empirical evidence. There's nothing wrong with making people aware of important issues. And yeah, improving farming conditions is a first goal. But as of now, even the best larger farms are very unethical.

By the way, I know exactly what you mean with the 'where's my mommy' example. I've been there. I remember once deliberately trying as hard as I could to eat as many chicken wings as possible (and definitely an odd number) so I could rub it into the face of a vegetarian colleague how many chickens just died because of me (: Actually it's not very funny and I don't really know why I did it back then.. It's an interesting psychological reaction anyway.

[Paulclem]

I don't see why anyone should care at all about what anyone else eats, or about what they themselves eat for that matter (what I mean is, why use the food that you happen to prefer as a description of your identity?). Why even bother to call yourself a "vegetarian?" No one else goes around calling themselves "omnivores" (as in, people don't say: "hi, I'm Scott, I'm 27, I like to play squash and I'm an omnivore"). It's just not that big a deal, what someone decides to eat is the most redundant decision that anyone in our society has to make.

You have to let people know sometimes what your food preferences are. As I said some posts earlier, I don't usually mention it.

Then someone will post about it on here, and so I like to have a balanced and reasonanble discussion about it. :D

[Ecurb]

It seems to me that where one draws the line on what is acceptable dinner fare is somewhat arbitrary. I’ll bet most cannibals refuse to eat members of their own family (Jason of Argonaut fame notwithstanding). Many omnivores would refuse to eat apes, or even monkeys. I know plenty of people who don’t eat mammals, others who eat fish but not warm-blooded animals. How about insects? Is it OK to eat them?

Some Jainist monks sweep the sidewalk before them as they walk, to avoid stepping on insects. Other people here in tree-hugging Oregon revere some plants as much as animals.

[Paulclem]

It seems to me that where one draws the line on what is acceptable dinner fare is somewhat arbitrary. I’ll bet most cannibals refuse to eat members of their own family (Jason of Argonaut fame notwithstanding). Many omnivores would refuse to eat apes, or even monkeys. I know plenty of people who don’t eat mammals, others who eat fish but not warm-blooded animals. How about insects? Is it OK to eat them?

Some Jainist monks sweep the sidewalk before them as they walk, to avoid stepping on insects. Other people here in tree-hugging Oregon revere some plants as much as animals.

It's not arbitrary. It's based upon a person's own reasons - moral, health related or matters of taste.

[Dodo25]

It seems to me that where one draws the line on what is acceptable dinner fare is somewhat arbitrary. I’ll bet most cannibals refuse to eat members of their own family (Jason of Argonaut fame notwithstanding). Many omnivores would refuse to eat apes, or even monkeys. I know plenty of people who don’t eat mammals, others who eat fish but not warm-blooded animals. How about insects? Is it OK to eat them?


It's totally arbitary if you exclude humans from the 'category which we're allowed to torture' while at the same time include chimpanzees, cows, chicken or fish. It's not arbitrary if your criterium for moral consideration is sentience, and with it, the capacity to suffer. Because nothing else really makes sense.

Sentient beings have interests, and all these interests should be considered equally. Humans want to eat tasty food. Cows don't want to suffer. Which interest is more important? Do we suffer as much as the cow does if we eat vegetarian instead? If yes, eat the cow. If not, don't. It's that simple.

(Obviously the cow doesn't suffer when being eaten, she's dead then! If the cow is raised in a healthy environment, and is killed without (much) suffering, then by all means don't waste the opportunity to have a tasty dinner. But factory farming and EVEN most large-scale 'organic' animal-friendly farms just cause too much suffering. Ever seen footage of a slaughterhouse? It's inhumane.

[Armel P]

I believe killing for food is amoral. If one decides not eat meat it is an issue of sensibilities not morality. There is nothing wrong with either choice on a moral level.

I do however feel that it should be the duty of the meat industry to reduce as much as possible, cruelty toward animals. I eat meat but as often as I can, I eat sustainable, organic, pasture raised meat from small, non-factory farms. This goes for chicken, beef, pork, eggs, milk etc. And I don't eat lobster.


Ever seen footage of a slaughterhouse? It's inhumane.

It depends on which slaughterhouse. They are not all created equal.

[Dodo25]

There is nothing wrong with either choice on a moral level.

Are you aware that making this claim requires you to have a consistent ethical system? And not just that, actually it needs to be better than preference utilitarism. Well, good luck with that. If you really have one, publish it, thousands of philosophers are waiting for just that.



It depends on which slaughterhouse. They are not all created equal.

There's the 'shooting a bolt into the animal's brain'. This is done while the animal is scared and often hysterically moving around in the narrow 'death box'. It happens a lot that the 'executor' misses the brain and the bolt hits somewhere else, causing a huge amount of pain additional to the scariness of the situation.

There's the 'cutting throat while hanging upside-down' method. It's surprising how long a cow can remain conscious with a slit throat, but compared to the other method this seems the 'best'. (Kosher slaughtering is similar, but it's not specified that it has to hang upside-down. Some animals are forced to lay on the back when their throat is cut, then they literally drown in their own blood.)

There are other methods, but I'm not sure whether they're used large-scale. Either way, killing painlessly seems to be just too expensive for the meat industry, and it will remain so until the public becomes aware of the atrocities and changes its buying behavior.

[Armel P]

As far as I can see, I don't have to create any ethical system to claim that killing for food is amoral. It's amoral because it is an element of animal nature that preceeds morality. The very existence of morality was dependent upon it.

Before I spend time creating an ethical system, I would like to see a list of organisms -- plants, fungi, protists, arthropods, mammals, bacteria -- (ones own species excluded, of course) organized by importance and the reasons why they have their place on this list whether it be for objectively definable genetic reasons or objectively defined reasons of sentience and consciousness described at the quantum level.

[Dodo25]

As far as I can see, I don't have to create any ethical system to claim that killing for food is amoral. It's amoral because it is an element of animal nature that preceeds morality. The very existence of morality was dependent upon it.

Before I spend time creating an ethical system, I would like to see a list of organisms -- plants, fungi, protists, arthropods, mammals, bacteria -- (ones own species excluded, of course) organized by importance and the reasons why they have their place on this list whether it be for objectively definable genetic reasons or objectively defined reasons of sentience and consciousness described at the quantum level.


I wasn't referring to your claim about killing for food (but I still don't agree with it), I was referring to 'chosing what to eat being a morally irrelevant issue'.

The theory of consciousness that makes the most sense to me doesn't require the 'quantum level'. I'm a bit surprised that you'd think bacteria might have consciousness... I'll just give you a list that's grounded in empirical facts and experiments on consciousness in animals and possibly other beings. For what it's worth, I have read a couple of philosophical and scientific books on these issues because it interests me and I consider it a highly relevant question for ethics. So here the list:

Category A: Rationality
Mentally healthy humans (out of the baby / little children age)

Category B: Self-Awareness
Humans (older than infant-age, mentally more or less healthy), chimpanzees, possibly other great apes; maybe though less likely: dolphins, whales, elephants...

Category C: Consciousness
Humans (all of them except forever comatose ones, or dead ones), all mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes. Possibly arthropods.

Most definitely not: Bacteria, protists, fungi, plants.

So what do these categories mean?
First of all, they don't have to be black-white, sometimes there are gradual differences. A fetus isn't self-aware, a six year old definitely is. Somewhere in between self-awareness emerges gradually.

A isn't very relevant, rationality is only needed for getting things like 'the right to vote' or 'the right for education'. It might even be considered a bad thing because it gives us responsibility. A lion can't choose whether he cruelly kills a gazelle. We can.

B is highly relevant when it comes to killing. Since non-suicidal beings of category B have a strong interest to live, killing them is wrong, even if done painlessly while they're sleeping.

C is highly relevant when it comes to suffering. Suffering is bad, that should be obvious to anyone. No being should suffer if it can be avoided.

[Nikhar]

Sorry for butting in. But I do have very strong opinions (incomplete, may be, but strong)when it comes to this topic.

What I often wonder is why should you give different names to a non vegetarian and a cannibal? Please do not take this as an insult or something but I am genuinely asking this question. Whenever I posed this question to my friends, they'd ridicule that they wouldn't mind eating human meat if need arises. Obviously, they only do it coz they dont have an answer to it and they dont want to think about it.

I mean, why is eating animals right and eating humans the most heinous of crimes? Animals don't have senses? They don't feel the pain when someone chops their limbs off? Or is each animal like the cow in 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'?

Is it not indirectly supporting the fact that humans are the most intelligent of the species and they have the right to eat the 'lesser' of the animals? I mean, I cant imagine the brawl if an Einstein or a Newton wanted to eat his servant.

Imagine a world like the one in 'Soylent Green'! Urgh!

[chipper]

i honestly think that part of it is guilt. i am not saying vegetarianism is the right way.

medically, red meat has been proven to have more disadvantages than advantages. everything it has, you can get from other sources without the disadvantages. then there's the fact that these animals are killed for them.

for someone to take "actually" do something about it and not just talk about it is as hardcore as you can get.

[Paulclem]

Questions about the morality of vegetarianism are bound to come up against its relativity. For a Jain, vegetarianism is the only way. For a Christian, eating meat is not immoral due to the sanctioning of the use of the world's resources in the bible. Presumably other moral system fall somewhere between the two. It can only be an inividual choice given the disparity of view.

The other point I'd like to make is that if you label non-vegetarians as immoral, you are taking the high, and possibly a presumtious, ground. Food culture is all about culture, upbringing and environment. Some people cannot be vegetarian due to health. Some live in an environment where vegetariansim is not possible - Tibet for instance. Also, as Juniper pointed out, you are not going to make any positive impression on non-vegetarians by telling them they are immoral, wrong, cruel etc. We in the West are fortunate to be able to choose such a course, but we shouldn't merely condemn people.

As for the killing of cattle - the bolt in the brain is as humane as you can get, and remember slaughtermen do this every day. They don't often miss. I used to work in a slaughterhouse and have seen it done a lot. The animal drops straight away.

Vegetarianism is growing because, in my opinion, it has more advantages than eating meat - cheaper, healthier, and not inflicting suffering.

[Armel P]

I wasn't referring to your claim about killing for food (but I still don't agree with it), I was referring to 'chosing what to eat being a morally irrelevant issue'.

The theory of consciousness that makes the most sense to me doesn't require the 'quantum level'. I'm a bit surprised that you'd think bacteria might have consciousness... I'll just give you a list that's grounded in empirical facts and experiments on consciousness in animals and possibly other beings. For what it's worth, I have read a couple of philosophical and scientific books on these issues because it interests me and I consider it a highly relevant question for ethics. So here the list:

Category A: Rationality
Mentally healthy humans (out of the baby / little children age)

Category B: Self-Awareness
Humans (older than infant-age, mentally more or less healthy), chimpanzees, possibly other great apes; maybe though less likely: dolphins, whales, elephants...

Category C: Consciousness
Humans (all of them except forever comatose ones, or dead ones), all mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes. Possibly arthropods.

Most definitely not: Bacteria, protists, fungi, plants.

So what do these categories mean?
First of all, they don't have to be black-white, sometimes there are gradual differences. A fetus isn't self-aware, a six year old definitely is. Somewhere in between self-awareness emerges gradually.

A isn't very relevant, rationality is only needed for getting things like 'the right to vote' or 'the right for education'. It might even be considered a bad thing because it gives us responsibility. A lion can't choose whether he cruelly kills a gazelle. We can.

B is highly relevant when it comes to killing. Since non-suicidal beings of category B have a strong interest to live, killing them is wrong, even if done painlessly while they're sleeping.

C is highly relevant when it comes to suffering. Suffering is bad, that should be obvious to anyone. No being should suffer if it can be avoided.

I know you spent a long time typing that but I still don't see how it's an issue of morality. Killing and suffering are two different things for me. The killing for food is still amoral for me. It just doesn't make sense to me any other way. Reducing suffering as much as possible is something that I feel is a responsibility. Any way, this is not as clear cut as everybody wants it to be. And it's not going to be resolved here. When it comes to these topics, everyone reads literature that's supportive and ends up having great personal stake in communicating this to others...

... And, by the way, that goes for discussions of issues of health as well.

medically, red meat has been proven to have more disadvantages than advantages. everything it has, you can get from other sources without the disadvantages
People love to quote studies saying that some things are proven to be healthier than others. But they are not proven. They are studies. And for every study saying one thing, there is a study saying something else. For example, studies saying that even if zinc is present in different foods it does not get absorbed by the body as it does with red meat because red meat has certain enzymes present to aid the process. Let's not act like we have peer-reviewed concensus in the majority of the scientific community.

That is why I default to the product of my evolution. I know it works. I know it's who I am and how all the generations that led to me were. And no matter how much I surround myself with science and culture and society I don't see myself as being more than a human animal. A collection of phenotypes which includes being an omnivore and as far as I can see nothing can convince me that it is an objective moral imperitive to go against my genetic nature. With the inevitable variance among people, driven by sensibilities, some are more able to supress it than others and that's just fine. But neither choice is immoral for me. And that's not going to change no matter how much clever dancing around with words will be done in my presence. Because this is akin to original sin. I'm born in sin with an immoral nature that I have to change. In my eyes that's absurd.

[Paulclem]

That is why I default to the product of my evolution. I know it works. I know it's who I am and how all the generations that led to me were. And no matter how much I surround myself with science and culture and society I don't see myself as being more than a human animal. A collection of phenotypes which includes being an omnivore and as far as I can see nothing can convince me that it is an objective moral imperitive to go against my genetic nature. With the inevitable variance among people, driven by sensibilities, some are more able to supress it than others and that's just fine. But neither choice is immoral for me. And that's not going to change no matter how much clever dancing around with words will be done in my presence. Because this is akin to original sin. I'm born in sin with an immoral nature that I have to change. In my eyes that's absurd.

As a higher sentient beig - you have a choice, and you are not dictated by evolution - you have to choose it.

It's not akin to original sin. It's making the best choice in an imperfect world based upon your needs.

[Armel P]

As a higher sentient beig - you have a choice, and you are not dictated by evolution - you have to choose it.

It's not akin to original sin. It's making the best choice in an imperfect world based upon your needs.

What you're saying is not related to an objective morality.

[Dodo25]

Questions about the morality of vegetarianism are bound to come up against its relativity. For a Jain, vegetarianism is the only way. For a Christian, eating meat is not immoral due to the sanctioning of the use of the world's resources in the bible. Presumably other moral system fall somewhere between the two. It can only be an inividual choice given the disparity of view.

Who cares about what Christians say about the issue? Christianity is most likely wrong. Same with Jainism (though at least they're never hurting anyone, if they want to do MORE than technically necessary then let them do it, if it makes them happy that's great). Of course it comes down to individual choice eventually, but that doesn't mean all ethical systems are equal! Do you really think all ethical systems result in the same amount of well-being? Is slavery even wrong under Christianity? Suppose it wasn't (might well be the case, I think it's ambiguous), would you say the same stuff you're saying now about slavery? It's a 'personal choice'?



The other point I'd like to make is that if you label non-vegetarians as immoral, you are taking the high, and possibly a presumtious, ground. Food culture is all about culture, upbringing and environment. Some people cannot be vegetarian due to health. Some live in an environment where vegetariansim is not possible - Tibet for instance. Also, as Juniper pointed out, you are not going to make any positive impression on non-vegetarians by telling them they are immoral, wrong, cruel etc. We in the West are fortunate to be able to choose such a course, but we shouldn't merely condemn people.

You're thinking in absolutes, but that's not necessary. Eating meat causes suffering. Not eating meat when you HAVE TO in order to survive causes suffering too, and even death. So obviously the moral thing to do is to choose the path with less suffering (which would be eating meat, while still trying to treat the animals well). Who eats the most meat in the world? Rich Westeners. They DO have alternatives. Many of them.

I'm not even a perfect 'vegan' myself. I still eat milk/eggs/cheese quite often. I know it's bad, but it's also hard to make the transition. At least I try not to be too much of a hypocrite.

As for '(not) making a positive impression', who cares? I'm not trying to be loved by everyone, I'm trying to raise awareness that we should reduce the suffering in the world. And I don't condemn people (merely their habits), how could I when I've been a meat-eater for the most part of my life. I know how it is.



Vegetarianism is growing because, in my opinion, it has more advantages than eating meat - cheaper, healthier, and not inflicting suffering.

True, it's a good thing. And maybe science is soon able to produce artificial meat out of the lab. Without 'brains' and 'consciousness'. That would solve all the problems (if people could get over their 'gross!!-intuitions' that is).



I know you spent a long time typing that but I still don't see how it's an issue of morality. Killing and suffering are two different things for me. The killing for food is still amoral for me. It just doesn't make sense to me any other way. Reducing suffering as much as possible is something that I feel is a responsibility. Any way, this is not as clear cut as everybody wants it to be. And it's not going to be resolved here. When it comes to these topics, everyone reads literature that's supportive and ends up having great personal stake in communicating this to others....

Another relativist... Why not accept that some positions make more sense / produce more happiness than others? You don't even have to agree with ME, but at least you can take a stand and DISagree with the more outlandish suggestions. I have good reasons to think killing for food is only intrinsically immoral when the killed beings are self-aware. But since we agree on suffering, our views aren't too far apart. What I'm wondering now is just why you can make statements like 'x is immoral' while (further below) maintaining that you're a product of your biology. Either you have moral responsibility, or you don't. You can't make claims about morality and then hide behind biology. Make a choice (:



People love to quote studies saying that some things are proven to be healthier than others. But they are not proven. They are studies. And for every study saying one thing, there is a study saying something else. For example, studies saying that even if zinc is present in different foods it does not get absorbed by the body as it does with red meat because red meat has certain enzymes present to aid the process. Let's not act like we have peer-reviewed concensus in the majority of the scientific community.

Yeah I get it, some studies are biased. But saying 'for every study saying one thing, there's a study saying something else' is a huge exageration calling into question the whole enterprise of science. You can't be that pessimistic. Think of all the diseases we can cure at the moment. We managed to more than double the life expectancy in the last 200 years. A lot of that is due to findings from 'studies'. Every new drug has to complete study trials (and yeah, they're sometimes 'bought', but that doesn't mean you should abandon its merit altogether).

Anyway, vegetarianism IS healthier than a meat-heavy diet. There's a scientific consensus.


That is why I default to the product of my evolution. I know it works. I know it's who I am and how all the generations that led to me were. And no matter how much I surround myself with science and culture and society I don't see myself as being more than a human animal. A collection of phenotypes which includes being an omnivore and as far as I can see nothing can convince me that it is an objective moral imperitive to go against my genetic nature. With the inevitable variance among people, driven by sensibilities, some are more able to supress it than others and that's just fine. But neither choice is immoral for me. And that's not going to change no matter how much clever dancing around with words will be done in my presence. Because this is akin to original sin. I'm born in sin with an immoral nature that I have to change. In my eyes that's absurd.

Why wouldn't you go against your 'genetic nature'? Many people are born with hereditary diseases. We treat these diseases. In the short future, we'll be able to splice out the defective genes from the genome, or at least select sperms or egg cells that don't have the particular defect (this is already done actually with the gene for Huntington's Chorea) and then perform an in-vitor fertilization with only 'healthy' chromosomes.

Nature isn't 'good', that the naturalistic fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

Nature is indifferent to good and evil, indifferent to suffering. Xenophobia and hatred of out-groups is in our genes too. So is pronness to violence or rape, at least in some cases. That doesn't mean we HAVE TO act that way. Genes aren't deterministic (except for i.e. Huntington's Chorea), there are other factors shaping human behavior. And fortunately, compassion, empathy and reason are in our genes too. We have to cultivate the good stuff and beware and supress the bad stuff.

I don't believe in 'free will' in the sense it's most commonly understood. But if you think about it, who really does? If free will means you could technically do several different actions at some exact point in time, with all the input (genes, memories, outside situation, memes / neuron firing patterns etc.) being the same, then what/who would actually be making the decision?? Without 'deterministic factors' (the input I was talking about), we wouldn't have REASONS for our actions / decisions. It would have to be random. The traditional definition of 'free will' is self-contradicting.

Daniel Dennett came up with a new, useful definition:
Free will is whatever gives us moral responsibility, if we have it.

And yes, most people do have it. That's why punishment works as a deterrent, at least to some extent. We can grasp moral truths, and we try to act morally, at least most of the time, if the temptations aren't too big.


"Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight - something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection - and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos."
- Richard Dawkins

[Paulclem]

What you're saying is not related to an objective morality.

I never mentioned objective morality. I'm saying that your stance about evolution making you a meat eating omnivore is not the whole story. That's just the starting point. As an individual, you can make the choice about what you eat. Evolutionary excuses can be given for all kinds of activity which are really about power an domination.


Who cares about what Christians say about the issue? Christianity is most likely wrong. Same with Jainism (though at least they're never hurting anyone, if they want to do MORE than technically necessary then let them do it, if it makes them happy that's great). Of course it comes down to individual choice eventually, but that doesn't mean all ethical systems are equal! Do you really think all ethical systems result in the same amount of well-being? Is slavery even wrong under Christianity? Suppose it wasn't (might well be the case, I think it's ambiguous), would you say the same stuff you're saying now about slavery? It's a 'personal choice'?

You're thinking in absolutes, but that's not necessary. Eating meat causes suffering. Not eating meat when you HAVE TO in order to survive causes suffering too, and even death. So obviously the moral thing to do is to choose the path with less suffering (which would be eating meat, while still trying to treat the animals well). Who eats the most meat in the world? Rich Westeners. They DO have alternatives. Many of them.

I'm not even a perfect 'vegan' myself. I still eat milk/eggs/cheese quite often. I know it's bad, but it's also hard to make the transition. At least I try not to be too much of a hypocrite.

As for '(not) making a positive impression', who cares? I'm not trying to be loved by everyone, I'm trying to raise awareness that we should reduce the suffering in the world. And I don't condemn people (merely their habits), how could I when I've been a meat-eater for the most part of my life. I know how it is.


I merelly referred to Christianity and Jainism as representing two poles of attitudes concerning eating meat. I'm not quite sure why you are going on about all ethical system being equal. I'm talking about the range of perspectives on eating meat.

I'm a vegetarian because killing animals causes suffering. I've mentioned choice in earlier posts.

As for '(not) making a positive impression', who cares? I'm not trying to be loved by everyone, I'm trying to raise awareness

This is misguided. Nor am I interested in being loved by everyone. My point is that it is less effective to be aggressively vegetarian than to set a positive example. Soap box vegetarianism does more harm than good. It hardens attitudes, and polarises the argument. There is a good case for vegetarianism which can stand by itself - health, morality, as it causes inordinate suffering, and it is economically more sensible.

[Emil Miller]

As for the killing of cattle - the bolt in the brain is as humane as you can get, and remember slaughtermen do this every day. They don't often miss. I used to work in a slaughterhouse and have seen it done a lot. The animal drops straight away.

Unfortunately the terror of the slaughterhouse begins some time before this process. Many years ago, I was being driven along a country road in a friend's car when we were held up because a large van had stopped in the road. The vehicle was a cattle transporter and one of the cows had broken out and was trying to run into a field while two men were trying to force it back into the van. When we managed to pass the van we could see by the sign painted on it that it was a slaughterer's vehicle. I said to my friend what a terrible thing it was for the animal but he didn't reply and looked fixedly ahead with this jaws clenched. From that day on he refused to eat meat.

[Paulclem]

Unfortunately the terror of the slaughterhouse begins some time before this process. Many years ago, I was being driven along a country road in a friend's car when we were held up because a large van had stopped in the road. The vehicle was a cattle transporter and one of the cows had broken out and was trying to run into a field while two men were trying to force it back into the van. When we managed to pass the van we could see by the sign painted on it that it was a slaughterer's vehicle. I said to my friend what a terrible thing it was for the animal but he didn't reply and looked fixedly ahead with this jaws clenched. From that day on he refused to eat meat.

Yes. As I said, I worked in a slaughterhouse in the 1980's - times were hard, I couldn't get a job etc etc. I saw this all the time; the fear present in the animals as they were unloaded from the wagons. Pigs would often die in transit due to stress, and there was always the chance that animals would be injured going into the lairage. There were vets on site to ensure that the animals were looked after whilst they were there - which always seemed a bit odd to me, but must have had a better effect than if they weren't present. Some of the workers were not exactly cruel, in the pain inducing way, but would terrorise the animals into the slaughter pens. It's not a nice industry.

[Dodo25]

I merelly referred to Christianity and Jainism as representing two poles of attitudes concerning eating meat. I'm not quite sure why you are going on about all ethical system being equal. I'm talking about the range of perspectives on eating meat.

I'm a vegetarian because killing animals causes suffering. I've mentioned choice in earlier posts.

I know you're a vegetarian, even for the same general reasons as I am. Some of what you said earlier just had this relativistic component in it. Meaning 'I am vegetarian for personal reasons, but if other people choose something else then there's nothing wrong with it'. If you have sound moral reasons, so should they. So basically if we're disagreeing somewhere (I'm not even sure we are), then it's about meta-ethics, the 'reach' of ethics.



This is misguided. Nor am I interested in being loved by everyone. My point is that it is less effective to be aggressively vegetarian than to set a positive example. Soap box vegetarianism does more harm than good. It hardens attitudes, and polarises the argument. There is a good case for vegetarianism which can stand by itself - health, morality, as it causes inordinate suffering, and it is economically more sensible.

Fair enough. It's the same with 'strategies promoting atheism', either be blunt and risk to alienate lots of 'moderates', or be respectful while still subtly pointing out things. I personally think the former is more effective, but I can't be sure. Something to think about though: You mention 'morality' as a reason. That's just what I'm doing too, making a strong moral case. And as I see it, it's either right or wrong, there's no middle ground. People should at least try to eat less meat, and look where it comes from choosing the more animal-friendly ways of production. Many already do this -- great! And fortunately, as you said, there are also ecological (this sorta touches morality too because we have responsibility for future generations, as well as towards starving / dying of thirst people living in the present), money- and health related reasons.

[Paulclem]

I know you're a vegetarian, even for the same general reasons as I am. Some of what you said earlier just had this relativistic component in it. Meaning 'I am vegetarian for personal reasons, but if other people choose something else then there's nothing wrong with it'. If you have sound moral reasons, so should they. So basically if we're disagreeing somewhere (I'm not even sure we are), then it's about meta-ethics, the 'reach' of ethics.


We are basically in agreement about the meat thing, just not about whether we can change others' behaviour by what we say. I don't think we can, and I would not want to try. Some religious people try this method, but I'm pretty sure it puts off more than it attracts. Against the weight of family and culture, what we say is probably meaningless in the wider sense. I have little faith in that method. We can perhaps hope to influence people near us by our example, but not necessarily.

Of course there's always more that can be done - pressure groups, whistle blowing, monitoring etc etc. It depends whether you or I are in a position to do any of that, or are even willing to do it. I'm wary of radical groups - it's not perhaps their ideals, but the type of people they attract and their personal agendas. I prefer a softer approach.

[JuniperWoolf]

I remember once deliberately trying as hard as I could to eat as many chicken wings as possible (and definitely an odd number) so I could rub it into the face of a vegetarian colleague how many chickens just died because of me (: Actually it's not very funny and I don't really know why I did it back then.. It's an interesting psychological reaction anyway.

That's exactly my point. We could talk forever about why, that part doesn't really matter. What does matter is that when people try to take the stance that they're "educating" us, especially on issues of morality (implying that we are the ones who are immoral), we'll take the opposite stance and do it in as blatantly and excessively as possible. In short, if you keep preaching about eating meat, people are going to get annoyed and eat MORE meat, and it will be your fault that more animals died (which I assume is the opposite reaction to what you want). This isn't just true of vegetarianism, it's the way things are with almost everything. I first became an atheist because of evangelists (you've got to admit that they're annoying, and when was the last time that Jehovah's Witnesses actually converted someone?). You'd be better off shutting up about how morally superior you are. If you want people to listen to your point, you've got to think of a less heavy-handed way to do so.

[Cunninglinguist]

I remember once deliberately trying as hard as I could to eat as many chicken wings as possible (and definitely an odd number) so I could rub it into the face of a vegetarian colleague how many chickens just died because of me (: Actually it's not very funny and I don't really know why I did it back then.. It's an interesting psychological reaction anyway.

And Augustine wasted 15 minutes of my life talking about how he stole some pears?...He woulda' written volumes over this. xD

[ladderandbucket]

I don't think the argument about the way in which animals are slaughtered is a good one. It doesn't take into account that, whatever your circumstances, there is no pleasant way to die. Consider the ways in which an animal may be killed in a slaughterhouse and compare them to the ways in which an animal may die in the wild. I know which kind of death I would choose for myself.

In all honesty, if I was to be reborn as an animal, I think I would prefer the security of a farm than the life of a wild animal. From a certain point of view farming is the best thing that happened to animals, much as you might say industrial civilisation was the best thing to happen to us. It reminds me of Hobbes's idea about the state of nature being nasty, brutish and short. Perhaps you believe in the idea of a noble savage...maybe a pig left in the wild leads a blissful uncorrupted life, but it seems to run counter to the principle of natural selection.

In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett writes:


How clever of wild sheep to have acquired that most versatile adaptation, the shepherd! By forming a symbiotic alliance with Homo sapiens, sheep could outsource their chief survival tasks: food finding and predator avoidance. They even got shelter and emergency medical care thrown in as a bonus. The price they paid – losing the freedom of mate selection and being slaughtered instead of being killed by predators (if that is a cost) – was a pittance compared with the gain in offspring survival it purchased.

I don't know what I think about this idea. I think it comes down to where you find the value in being alive. I do have a big problem with animals being battery farmed but I don't see that eating meat is necessarily wrong. I feel quite happy eating free range meat...in fact I think it may be better than not eating meat at all. Nobody will notice if I become a vegetairian but if I pay twice as much money for an ethically farmed chicken I am sure it will register somewhere.

[Dodo25]

I don't know what I think about this idea. I think it comes down to where you find the value in being alive. I do have a big problem with animals being battery farmed but I don't see that eating meat is necessarily wrong. I feel quite happy eating free range meat...in fact I think it may be better than not eating meat at all. Nobody will notice if I become a vegetairian but if I pay twice as much money for an ethically farmed chicken I am sure it will register somewhere.
[my emphasis]

That's exactly what it comes down to. Additionally, there's the question whether our treatment of animals being 'somewhat better' than nature's is 'enough'. (And we'd be talking about nice farms here, factory farms are clearly worse than nature's average.)

I think the argument you introduced doesn't hold up. Nature is indeed cruel, but that doesn't give us the right to mimic it.
In Saudi Arabia, all religions except Islam are severely discriminated against. Does that mean other countries should/can ban Islam? Obviously not, because by repeating the mistakes of others, we'd be giving up the edge that allows us to call it a 'mistake' in the first place. We know better, so we should do better.

Now to the 'value of being alive'. This is a far-reaching question, but I think the answer is obvious when you think it through. I don't see any reason why 'life' should have intrinsic value. Maybe 'happy life / happiness' has it, but even that's highly questionable. If we accept that 'happy life' is ethically desirable, we would have to try our very best to fill the whole universe with happy sentient beings (and, if necessary, even sacrifice some pre-existing happiness for more beings). Parents would be obliged to have as many children as possible if they're wealthy enough to raise them happily. Intuitionally, that doesn't seem right.

I think 'creating life' is a morally neutral process, the interests of a sentient being can only come into play once it actually exists. So we're not doing the animals a favor by having them in masses, because if they didn't exist, they couldn't care.

Dennett is probably right about the sheep, but only in a limited way. If 'sheep consciousness' only lives 'in the moment' and doesn't care about future plans, then they might as well have gone extinct, ethically it wouldn't make a (direct) difference. This may sound counterintuitive, but the conclusion rests on solid assumptions (preference utilitarianism, see 'Practical Ethics' by Peter Singer for an introduction). Anyway, cows, pigs and chicken have it, on average, much worse than sheep, so the 'better than the state of nature' reasoning doesn't apply there.

Off topic:
The Dennett quote is awesome in regard to religion. I wish I had read 'Breaking the Spell' instead of 'God Delusion' (I love Dennett's books; Dawkins is great too but he's better with biology), but since I've had my fair share of religion debates, I'd probably be bored by the unavoidable redundancy that comes with reading several books on the same topic.


[...] What does matter is that when people try to take the stance that they're "educating" us, especially on issues of morality (implying that we are the ones who are immoral), we'll take the opposite stance and do it in as blatantly and excessively as possible. In short, if you keep preaching about eating meat, people are going to get annoyed and eat MORE meat, and it will be your fault that more animals died (which I assume is the opposite reaction to what you want). This isn't just true of vegetarianism, it's the way things are with almost everything. I first became an atheist because of evangelists (you've got to admit that they're annoying, and when was the last time that Jehovah's Witnesses actually converted someone?). You'd be better off shutting up about how morally superior you are. If you want people to listen to your point, you've got to think of a less heavy-handed way to do so.

I see your point. Maybe I'm naive, but I'm somewhat optimistic regarding the strength of reason. Admittably, from all the countless discussions I've had with religious people, I only changed the minds of four (that I know of, and three of them were already starting to doubt certain things they'd been told); and regarding vegetarianism, I've only managed to make some people a little bit more aware of the issue (i.e. they'd try to eat a bit less and look better where they buy from), but still, I'm trying (: After all, I myself became, against my primordial meat-loving desires, convinced that the choice was either vegetarianism or hypocricy, all this by mere arguments. Also, I don't like the word 'preaching' because it implies dogma. I don't see myself as having all the answers, I'm just providing input for dialouge. I'm very confident about my views, but I have changed them regarding some issues in the past, so they might change again in the future if I ever encounter convincing arguments against them. But yeah, maybe being less 'aggressive' works better. Actually, I'm less 'aggressive' about the issues in real-life, there I'm more 'polite'. Here it's all about hard facts and arguments, mere text, no emotions (:

[Paulclem]

[my emphasis]

Now to the 'value of being alive'. This is a far-reaching question, but I think the answer is obvious when you think it through. I don't see any reason why 'life' should have intrinsic value. Maybe 'happy life / happiness' has it, but even that's highly questionable. If we accept that 'happy life' is ethically desirable, we would have to try our very best to fill the whole universe with happy sentient beings (and, if necessary, even sacrifice some pre-existing happiness for more beings). Parents would be obliged to have as many children as possible if they're wealthy enough to raise them happily. Intuitionally, that doesn't seem right.


The Buddhist view on this concerns suffering. I don't want to railroad the discussion into Buddhism, but it does provide a consistent worldview on this topic. The view is that all sentient beings strive to achieve happiness. Some good points were made earlier about farmed animals having food, shelter and medicine, which won't necessarily happen in the wild. Herd animals may benefit from this, though it is not clear cut.

As for filling the universe with happy beings, the Buddhist worldview sees this as impossible, as we exist in a state of constat suffering. Besides this, resources are scarce and you could suffer due to the lack. Who is happier - poverty stricken kids in large families in the third world or limited children in a progressive economy?

[faithosaurus]

I never mention it unless I need to inform someone about it. I think many are challenged by it. You do get a couple of responses though. The embarrassed "well I only eat white meat and a bit of beef" type response, as if to say "I'm not all bad". Or you get the confident and sniffy put down of the Beau Brummel type mentioned earlier. This last sometimes seems an over compensation, and there's really nothing to say to it. It's usually followed by scornful comments varying in degree depending upon whether the speaker is an "alpha male bloke man", or just an ordinary person.

In my opnion soap box vegetarianism is as annoying as Beau Brummel's. It can only be down to personal choice - whatever that may be - at the moment. I certainly don't like embarrassing people or having them feel they have to justify themselves, when our eating habits are often just the result of culture and personal environment. Haranguing people doesn't produce converts to anything - which you'd lke to tell the preachers in town often. (I don't know what it's like in other places, but British public preaching often has an embarrassed edge to it. Perhaps it's the British character - but I digress).


This is partially why I don't tell people about it. Usually the only time it comes up is when I go out to dinner with people and they want to know why I don't get the meat entrées. One such time was just a week ago, when I chose a salad since every other item was with meat. The reactions were not pleasant.

[Paulclem]

This is partially why I don't tell people about it. Usually the only time it comes up is when I go out to dinner with people and they want to know why I don't get the meat entrées. One such time was just a week ago, when I chose a salad since every other item was with meat. The reactions were not pleasant.

Unfortunately the majority are meat eaters, and so they can gang up on you. You're an easy target, but then again, who's folowing the herd?:D

[Propter W.]

I don't consider it morally wrong to kill an animal in order to feed myself. I do consider the meat industry to be morally wrong. So I make sure I know where my meat comes from. I'm very strict about this.

I believe a healthy diet is a balanced one with lots of vegetables and fruit and small amounts of meat. I believe a balanced diet is a lot healthier than a vegetarian diet.

I like the fact that I can have a natural, nutritious healthy diet composed solely of local produce and meat without having to take supplements. That's something none of my vegetarian friends can do. And they do admit this.

It would be a lot better if people in general ate less meat and even insert a few "veggie days" in their week, though.

[Paulclem]

It's my understanding that there are fewer cancers associated with a veggie diet. On a more mundane level, I never get the stomach troubles of the kind that are associated with meat. Nor does the family.

[billl]

I like the fact that I can have a natural, nutritious healthy diet composed solely of local produce and meat without having to take supplements. That's something none of my vegetarian friends can do. And they do admit this.


I don't see why a vegetarian would need supplements (if that's what is being suggested--it might not be...). I don't use them. Vegans apparently need supplements, but a vegetarian that eats dairy products and/or eggs shouldn't need them at all.

That being said, it sounds like you have a good thing going on, Propter--I certainly don't mean to disparage the main thrust of your post (that being your approach to nutrition.)

[Ecurb]

Who cares about what Christians say about the issue? Christianity is most likely wrong.

I think this is a misguided approach. The logical error is:

P1: Christianity is based on historical errors (such as, "God exists").
P2: Christian ethics are the result of such errors.

Therefore: Christian ethics are "most likely wrong".

However, the conclusion may very well be in error. Whether or not the Christian ethos is based on factual or historical errors, Christian ethics have a few things going for them: 1) They have stood the test of time (nearly 2000 years); 2) They have been thoroughly investigated by the leading intellectuals of many centuries; 3) They are inextricably connected to standard, Western ethics (and most of us are Westerners).

In addition, the above conclusion does not follow from the premises. The ancients believed the sun revolved around the earth. They were wrong. Nonetheless, they could predict when the sun would rise, or when the winter solstice would occur. Although their premises were incorrect, their conclusions about when the days would start growing longer were accurate. It would have been incorrect to say, “Who cares what ancient astronomers said about when the solstice would occur – they were most likely wrong.”

My point is that one cannot assume that because there is no God, it is now OK to refrain from loving one’s neighbor as oneself, or that it is now OK to kill, steal, and covet one’s neighbor’s wife. Basic Christian ethics remain the essence of modern, atheistic, liberal ethics. When we believe that modern, scientific US can ignore the wisdom of the past because it was based on precepts we no longer accept, we do so at our peril (as a century of Marxism may suggest). All ethics are culturally constituted, and “dialogic”. Westerners cannot (and do not) invent new ethics in a vacuum.

By the way, I've been reading some Mikhail Bakhtin recently (hence my use of "dialogic" in the above post). Here's a Wikipedia explanation:


The term 'dialogic', however, does not just apply to literature. For Bakhtin, all language - indeed, all thought - appeared dialogic. This means that everything anybody ever says always exists in response to things that have been said before and in anticipation of things that will be said in response. We never, in other words, speak in a vacuum. As a result, all language (and the ideas which language contains and communicates) is dynamic, relational and engaged in a process of endless redescriptions of the world. That said, Bakhtin also emphasized certain uses of language that maximized the dialogic nature of words, and other uses that attempted to limit or restric their polyvocality. At one extreme is novelistic discourse, particularly that of a Dostoevsky (or Mark Twain) in which various registers and languages are allowed to interact and respond to each other. At the other extreme would be the military order (or 1984 newspeak) which attempts to minimize all orientations of the work toward the past or the future, and which prompts no response but obedience.

[Propter W.]

I don't see why a vegetarian would need supplements (if that's what is being suggested--it might not be...). I don't use them. Vegans apparently need supplements, but a vegetarian that eats dairy products and/or eggs shouldn't need them at all.

That being said, it sounds like you have a good thing going on, Propter--I certainly don't mean to disparage the main thrust of your post (that being your approach to nutrition.)

One of my best friends has to take supplements mainly due to iron deficiency, as did my ex-girlfriend. Most other vegetarians I know don't take supplements but eat all kinds of foodstuffs that contain vital minerals, proteins... The bulk of this food is not produced locally, however. That's why I said I can find everything my body and mind need locally whereas my veggie friends can't.

I like to think I have a good thing going on too :smile5:


It's my understanding that there are fewer cancers associated with a veggie diet. On a more mundane level, I never get the stomach troubles of the kind that are associated with meat. Nor does the family.

No doubt that's true. But these studies usually focus on the typical meat eater. And the typical meat eater eats too much meat. I'm talking about a balanced diet. Generally I eat red meat two or three times a week and my portions don't exceed 150g.

I've never had stomach troubles at all. I'm not talking about scientific studies, by the way, I'm talking about my own experience.

I tried a vegetarian diet twice. Both times it had the same result: I felt weaker, I had less energy, I was tired, got head aches and felt lifeless. When I started to eat meat again I felt better almost instantly. It didn't take three days before my skin had a healthier, livelier hue and my energy levels were completely replenished. I simply felt a thousand times better and healthier. The second time I was a little bit more careful, but to no avail, I stayed weak, tired and listless.

I then decided to simply stop buying mass produced meat. My opposition to the meat industry is the only reason why I'd consider a vegetarian diet anyway, so I've found a way around it. The chicken I eat walked and lived freely in my back yard, as did the sheep. I took care of these animals (together with my father and a friend of the family). We also have our own pigs (not in our backyard). We get our other meat from a local ecological farmer. This meat is not your average store bought meat. It's actually a lot healthier. The pork, mutton and chicken is actually a lot tastier too.

[Dodo25]

I think this is a misguided approach. The logical error is:

P1: Christianity is based on historical errors (such as, "God exists").
P2: Christian ethics are the result of such errors.

Therefore: Christian ethics are "most likely wrong".

However, the conclusion may very well be in error. Whether or not the Christian ethos is based on factual or historical errors, Christian ethics have a few things going for them: 1) They have stood the test of time (nearly 2000 years); 2) They have been thoroughly investigated by the leading intellectuals of many centuries; 3) They are inextricably connected to standard, Western ethics (and most of us are Westerners).

D'uh, so Christianity AND Christian ethics are most likely wrong, I'd of course agree with that.

1) Do you seriously believe that counts as an argument? People thought the earth was flat for probably over 40'000 years.

2) Intellectuals who believed in a God that gives dogmatic laws. If they can't think for themselves, then what use are they? (To be fair, some recognized that it can't be that simple. They saw that if 'the good' is good only because God chose it, he might as well have chosen that torture is good. If not, it exists indepently of God, so he's not needed for ethics. Still, those intellectuals were too influenced by the Bible to come up with great results.)

3) That's wrong, an unfortunately common misconception. People like to talk of 'Christian Values', but what they actually mean (mostly anyway) is values from the Enlightenment, which had specifically been eked out against Christian dogma. Women's rights, non-discrimination of homosexuals, freedom to have a private, guilt-free sex life, freedom of religion (one of the ten commandments is 'thou shalt not worship other gods'), freedom of speech (no blasphemy laws), no slavery (that one might be ambiguous, but the Bible did NOT specifically condemn it), I could go on! Western culture is based on SECULAR VALUES.



In addition, the above conclusion does not follow from the premises. The ancients believed the sun revolved around the earth. They were wrong. Nonetheless, they could predict when the sun would rise, or when the winter solstice would occur. Although their premises were incorrect, their conclusions about when the days would start growing longer were accurate. It would have been incorrect to say, “Who cares what ancient astronomers said about when the solstice would occur – they were most likely wrong.”.

I see your point, but the question is whether these predictions are dependent solely on the 'sung going round the earth' theory. They weren't because they weren't calculating the sun's movement at all, they simply noticed patterns.



My point is that one cannot assume that because there is no God, it is now OK to refrain from loving one’s neighbor as oneself, or that it is now OK to kill, steal, and covet one’s neighbor’s wife. Basic Christian ethics remain the essence of modern, atheistic, liberal ethics. When we believe that modern, scientific US can ignore the wisdom of the past because it was based on precepts we no longer accept, we do so at our peril (as a century of Marxism may suggest). All ethics are culturally constituted, and “dialogic”. Westerners cannot (and do not) invent new ethics in a vacuum.

Who actually loves one's neighbor as oneself? No one. And is it really that useful? Not really. And we don't need God to tell us that killing is wrong (and ironically, apparently god often ASKED people to kill for him, so what about that part?). Morality is 'dialogic', because society changes slowly. Christians today have, on average, hugely different moral beliefs than Christians 1000 years ago, yet the Bible is still the same! But that doesn't mean 'ethics' has to go that slow, dialogic way too. Kant, Mill, Rawls, they all proposed quite new ethical systems. Either way, don't act as if Western culture is based on 'Christian values', that's just absurd. Buddhists aren't Christians, but they don't kill each other all the time! Now isn't that surprising.

[Ecurb]

Obviously, there is a "dialogic" interaction betwen Christianity and Western values that has been going on for nearly two millenia. You think that you can reason your way to a superior set of ethics. I don't buy it. Ethics don't devolop in a vacuum -- they develop over the centuries; they are subject to evolutionary pressures (values that are overtly harmful to human societies, for example, are probably selected against and do not sruvive). That's why the test of time is a reasonable and important factor in developing an ethos.

I'll grant that we may not "need a God" to tell us what is right and wrong. However, all I suggested is that we refrain from throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It does not follow from the belief that there is no God that the moral precepts of the Bible (or the moral precepts of the Enlightenment, or of Liberal 19th century thinking) should be ignored. As Bakhtin might say, all moral precepts are relational, and exist in response to those that have gone before, and in anticipation of those to come.

[Paulclem]

No doubt that's true. But these studies usually focus on the typical meat eater. And the typical meat eater eats too much meat. I'm talking about a balanced diet. Generally I eat red meat two or three times a week and my portions don't exceed 150g.

I've never had stomach troubles at all. I'm not talking about scientific studies, by the way, I'm talking about my own experience.

I tried a vegetarian diet twice. Both times it had the same result: I felt weaker, I had less energy, I was tired, got head aches and felt lifeless. When I started to eat meat again I felt better almost instantly. It didn't take three days before my skin had a healthier, livelier hue and my energy levels were completely replenished. I simply felt a thousand times better and healthier. The second time I was a little bit more careful, but to no avail, I stayed weak, tired and listless.

I then decided to simply stop buying mass produced meat. My opposition to the meat industry is the only reason why I'd consider a vegetarian diet anyway, so I've found a way around it. The chicken I eat walked and lived freely in my back yard, as did the sheep. I took care of these animals (together with my father and a friend of the family). We also have our own pigs (not in our backyard). We get our other meat from a local ecological farmer. This meat is not your average store bought meat. It's actually a lot healthier. The pork, mutton and chicken is actually a lot tastier too.

Which is why it is difficult to be dogmatic about vegetarianism and meat eating due to individual needs. Having said that. I'm not sure what you mean about a typical meat eater - of course it is typical - usual in other words. More usual to have health related problems, and amount is an individual thing too.

[Ecurb]

A quick note: I haven't read Feyerabend's book "The Tyranny of Science", but it looks interesting:

http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745651897

[Dodo25]

You think that you can reason your way to a superior set of ethics. I don't buy it. Ethics don't devolop in a vacuum -- they develop over the centuries; they are subject to evolutionary pressures (values that are overtly harmful to human societies, for example, are probably selected against and do not sruvive). That's why the test of time is a reasonable and important factor in developing an ethos.

Evolutionary pressures? That's absurd, evolution favors power and oppression. Germany with its ethics did great in the beginning of the second world war. Values aren't overthrown because they're bad to human societies. They're overthrown because people realize they're bad for certain human beings.

I think you're confusing the practical with 'in principle ethics'. In order for a whole society to be following 'one code of morality', it has to be practically feasible. Even if Christianity was in principle right about sex being evil except for procreation purposes in married couples, this code of morality would not work for a society -- at least if we don't modify human nature.

Perfect utilitarianism can never be the official code of a society, because it would demand too many sacrifices (veganism, no luxury). But it is still useful as an ideal to aspire to, much like Jesus was useful for that.

My point is that objectively, there has to be one way to behave which produces the most happiness / preference fulfillment, and the goal of ethics would be to find that way. And why use dialogue if one can think it through with armchair reasoning?


A quick note: I haven't read Feyerabend's book "The Tyranny of Science", but it looks interesting:

http://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745651897

You already support such a position, it would be more interesting for you to read something you DISagree with. I strongly suggest you pick up 'Practical Ethics' at some point.

[Ecurb]

Since I don't know what Feyerabend's position is in "Tyranny of Science", I can't say that I support it. I do know that Feyerabend is probably the most respected philosopher of science since Kuhn (Feyerabend died in 1994, and this last book was published posthumously).

Evolutionary pressures, dodo, are more complicated than you seem to think. Nazi Germany did OK, for a few years -- which is the blink of an eye. Surely their ethics were selected against, not for, by evolutionary pressures. Even Communism (which outlasted Naziism in part by winning WW2), another system that worshiped the State, appears to be short-lived.


My point is that objectively, there has to be one way to behave which produces the most happiness / preference fulfillment, and the goal of ethics would be to find that way. And why use dialogue if one can think it through with armchair reasoning?

First, since happiness and preference fulfillment are diological (in other words, since they are often based on the fulfillment of culturally constituted goals, and occur, for humans, only within the context of an ongoing cultural discourse) there does not HAVE to be one way to behave which produces the most happiness. Different ways to behave produce the most happiness for different cultures, different people, etc. Second, I don't think that "preference fulfillment" is (or should be) the goal of humankind. That's why Singer doesn't interest me all that much (although, perhaps, at your urging I'll look into him if I can drag myself away from my Russian Literature critiques, which I’m reading because I just started dating a Russian Literature Professor-- my only excuse for boring everyone by overusing the word “diologic”). If religion is the opiate of the masses, perhaps religion produces the most happiness? Are delusions that add to happiness or preference fulfillment preferable to the truth that does not? (I don't doubt that Singer addresses these questions, since they're obvious, but I don't know how he answers them.)

[Nikhar]

Sorry for butting in. But I do have very strong opinions (incomplete, may be, but strong)when it comes to this topic.

What I often wonder is why should you give different names to a non vegetarian and a cannibal? Please do not take this as an insult or something but I am genuinely asking this question. Whenever I posed this question to my friends, they'd ridicule that they wouldn't mind eating human meat if need arises. Obviously, they only do it coz they dont have an answer to it and they dont want to think about it.

I mean, why is eating animals right and eating humans the most heinous of crimes? Animals don't have senses? They don't feel the pain when someone chops their limbs off? Or is each animal like the cow in 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'?

Is it not indirectly supporting the fact that humans are the most intelligent of the species and they have the right to eat the 'lesser' of the animals? I mean, I cant imagine the brawl if an Einstein or a Newton wanted to eat his servant.

Imagine a world like the one in 'Soylent Green'! Urgh!

No one on this?

[Dodo25]

Evolutionary pressures, dodo, are more complicated than you seem to think. Nazi Germany did OK, for a few years -- which is the blink of an eye. Surely their ethics were selected against, not for, by evolutionary pressures. Even Communism (which outlasted Naziism in part by winning WW2), another system that worshiped the State, appears to be short-lived.

You're misusing the term evolution here because clearly this isn't about genes. Maybe in a broader sense you could call it 'cultural evolution', but your position still doesn't make any sense, because basically you're saying that 'whatever happens is good in the long run'. Great, so why even bother?





First, since happiness and preference fulfillment are diological (in other words, since they are often based on the fulfillment of culturally constituted goals, and occur, for humans, only within the context of an ongoing cultural discourse) there does not HAVE to be one way to behave which produces the most happiness. Different ways to behave produce the most happiness for different cultures, different people, etc. Second, I don't think that "preference fulfillment" is (or should be) the goal of humankind. That's why Singer doesn't interest me all that much (although, perhaps, at your urging I'll look into him if I can drag myself away from my Russian Literature critiques, which I’m reading because I just started dating a Russian Literature Professor-- my only excuse for boring everyone by overusing the word “diologic”). If religion is the opiate of the masses, perhaps religion produces the most happiness? Are delusions that add to happiness or preference fulfillment preferable to the truth that does not? (I don't doubt that Singer addresses these questions, since they're obvious, but I don't know how he answers them.)

The most fundamental preferences are 'not wanting to die' (for non suicidal self-aware beings that is) and 'not wanting to suffer' (for all sentient beings). These aren't directly dependent on culture. You're right about one thing though, different cultures can provide different reasons/structures/motives for being happy/unhappy, and just like there's not one single way to eat 'healthiest', there might not be one single culture to live 'happiest' in. But, and here comes the crucial point, this doesn't affact the fundamental ethical theory I'm talking about, suffering is still suffering and happiness is still happiness. It only affects the conclusions we would draw from the theory.

All things being equal, having one's beliefs represent reality is better than a delusion. However, if the happiness gained outweighs one's desire for truth, then delusions are better. Also, some people (I can't identify with them, but I accept there are such people) don't really care about truth, they might even on some unconscious level know they're deluding themselves. So being deluded is only intrinsically bad if one has a desire for truth (yet most people have it, and, more importantly, no one has a desire 'against truth'). What makes the matter easy is that delusions almost always increase the likelihood of bad stuff (religious people tend to make stupid decisions regarding ethical, sociological or technical issues, examples being euthanasia, abortion, gay rights, genetic engineering, stem cell research, education policies, HIV prevention, vaccination, sex-related issues, charity organizations etc), which results in unnecessary deaths and suffering. So it's a bad thing unless it provides a HUGE boost to happiness (which it doesn't). Atheists can be just as happy as the happiest religious people.


No one on this?

Well, technically 'eating' isn't really the problem (I mean, if the stuff is dead anyway it can't care anymore). There's nothing intrinsically wrong with cannibalism (yet there are slippery slope arguments against it, as well as the fact that most people are revulsed by it). However, if instead of just eating dead human flesh, someone would actually farm babies and eat them, people would be outraged (understatement). So you're totally right, it's pure hypocricy! Intelligence can't be a justification, because a) babies aren't more intelligent than cows, and b) as you rightly said, even Einstein would't be justified to torture/kill stupid people or babies.

[Ecurb]

I’m not misusing the work evolution. Obviously, I’m talking about cultural evolution, or the evolution of ethics. Nor do I think that all ethics that have lasted a long time are acceptable – however, I do think that they have some advantages over ethics that are a mere current fad or invention (I thought all this was clear, but apparently not). Just as the quality of a modern novel may be reconsidered over the course of time, so might the quality of a modern ethos. Those novels (or ethics) that have stood the test of time are, at least, slightly more worthy of our trust.

I disagree about the “virtue” of happiness, which is why I’ve never been intrigued by Singer. I’ll grant (maybe) that atheists can be just as happy as religious people, but that was not always the case. I’d guess that in the era of the Spanish Inquisition, for example, religious people were happier than atheists. In addition, what about Saints? Francis of Asissi seemed pretty darned happy. Mightn’t there be a JOY to religion that we atheists can’t experience, or even comprehend? Happiness does not involve bread alone.

[Dodo25]

I disagree about the “virtue” of happiness, which is why I’ve never been intrigued by Singer. I’ll grant (maybe) that atheists can be just as happy as religious people, but that was not always the case. I’d guess that in the era of the Spanish Inquisition, for example, religious people were happier than atheists. In addition, what about Saints? Francis of Asissi seemed pretty darned happy. Mightn’t there be a JOY to religion that we atheists can’t experience, or even comprehend? Happiness does not involve bread alone.

Forget happiness, focus on suffering and the non-fulfillment of preferences. Basically it's just the other side of the coin, but the argument becomes much more self-evident and powerful. What else could possibly the goal of ethics than to reduce suffering? If you name something else, then there will be cases of conflicts between whatever you propose and suffering. So are you prepared to accept that people should be torture in order to attain whatever goal of ethics you think is better? It really isn't arbitrary, suffering is the essence of badness in consciousness, and consciousness is the only thing that 'makes things matter' in the first place.

(You're an atheist, you shouldn't believe in saints. There most likely hasn't ever been a perfect human.) It's true that things like 'meditation', or 'deprivation of worldly goods for living for a higher purpose' can be fulfilling. But don't make the mistake of automatically granting religion the monopoly over these experiences. One doesn't have to believe Buddhist scripture in order to have meditation experiences. Similarly, the 'higher purpose' can also be 'living for others'. There are atheist doctors who gave up comfortable lives in order to cure illnesses resulting from miserable conditions in third world countries. There was a mathematician who locked himself into a room for several years in order to proof some theorem. I'm pretty sure he was happy, and he had a 'higher purpose'.

[Paulclem]

Forget happiness, focus on suffering and the non-fulfillment of preferences. Basically it's just the other side of the coin, but the argument becomes much more self-evident and powerful. What else could possibly the goal of ethics than to reduce suffering? If you name something else, then there will be cases of conflicts between whatever you propose and suffering. So are you prepared to accept that people should be torture in order to attain whatever goal of ethics you think is better? It really isn't arbitrary, suffering is the essence of badness in consciousness, and consciousness is the only thing that 'makes things matter' in the first place.

(You're an atheist, you shouldn't believe in saints. There most likely hasn't ever been a perfect human.) It's true that things like 'meditation', or 'deprivation of worldly goods for living for a higher purpose' can be fulfilling. But don't make the mistake of automatically granting religion the monopoly over these experiences. One doesn't have to believe Buddhist scripture in order to have meditation experiences. Similarly, the 'higher purpose' can also be 'living for others'. There are atheist doctors who gave up comfortable lives in order to cure illnesses resulting from miserable conditions in third world countries. There was a mathematician who locked himself into a room for several years in order to proof some theorem. I'm pretty sure he was happy, and he had a 'higher purpose'.

One doesn't have to believe Buddhist scripture in order to have meditation experiences.

One does not. It's nice to give credit where it's due though - be that Buddhist, Hindu or Christian mystic to name but a few. :D

Similarly, the 'higher purpose' can also be 'living for others'

There is an idea in Mahayana Buddhism called Bodhicitta which is precisely this living to alleviate others' suffering. It is linked to the highest form of Enlightenment too.

[Ecurb]

I'll grant that I don't believe in saints in the same way a Catholic does. Nonetheless, I think it's possible that people attain some sort of enlightenment (or, at least, some sort of special kind of knowledge) through meditation, faith, etc. Although I don't think enlightenment through an inward journey need be exclusive to religion, neither do I think that religion is irrelevant to it. After all, religions have been developing techniques for this kind of thing for millenia, and for an atheist to think he can be just as successful by winging it smacks of hubris. It’s a bit like my “test of time” argument for an ethos – to think we can develop atheist meditation techniques that work just as well as Christian or Buddhist monastic practices that have been developed over the centuries through the dedication, hard work and faith of millions seems iffy. Perhaps “faith” is necessary for such an inward journey. A great many Christians and Buddhists have worked on developing these techniques; a great many have reported success; etc., etc.

Let’s face it, the voluntary discipline and deprivation of an Assisi is difficult. Nobody would do it unless he felt “called” to do it. In fact, it involves suffering (Assisi had stigmata, for example, other monks practiced self-flagellation). I’ll grant that such suffering could be called a “preference” – but it still serves to show some of the difficulties in an ethos focused on limiting suffering.

I’m not sure what the goal of ethics should be – but the goal of limiting suffering, while admirable in a limited sense, appears questionable as an ultimate goal. After all, if all suffering were to be eliminated, so would all courage, fortitude, justice, charity, and patience. Perhaps that would be a good thing but perhaps not. Have you ever read the great pre-Tolkien fantasy novel "The Worm Orouboros"? The basic notion is that the heroes win out over their evil enemies, and then regret their inabilty to practice the above virtues without said enemies.

[Dodo25]

I’m not sure what the goal of ethics should be – but the goal of limiting suffering, while admirable in a limited sense, appears questionable as an ultimate goal. After all, if all suffering were to be eliminated, so would all courage, fortitude, justice, charity, and patience. Perhaps that would be a good thing but perhaps not. Have you ever read the great pre-Tolkien fantasy novel "The Worm Orouboros"? The basic notion is that the heroes win out over their evil enemies, and then regret their inabilty to practice the above virtues without said enemies.

Interesting point, I agree, eliminating ALL suffering might be unwise. If it is, utilitarianism would recognize it, because it's all about OUR preferences, and our preferences are definitely not 'doing unwise things'. So whether it's feasible is an empirical question we should be able to answer in the future.

What we can and should certainly do however, is to increase the 'starting point' in the 'happiness treadmill' of human existence. Imagine a scale from -10 to +10, representing the genetically determined starting point. Some forms of depression work that way (a lack of receptors in the brain or something), so the starting point for these people may be -2. Obviously we should cure that if we can. There have also been a rare amount of interesting cases with people that 'just feel happy almost all the time'. They were doing good in all other aspects of life, and simply had the huge advantage of being happy at it. Their starting point was above zero. +2 is definitely better than -2, and I'm pretty sure it's better than 0. Should we go all the way to +10? Maybe not, but saying 'zero it is' simply because that's what evolution (which doesn't care about ethics or suffering) has equipped us with it would be stupid. Coming back to the topic, the same reengineering should be done with animals too, obviously.

[Paulclem]

I’m not sure what the goal of ethics should be – but the goal of limiting suffering, while admirable in a limited sense, appears questionable as an ultimate goal. After all, if all suffering were to be eliminated, so would all courage, fortitude, justice, charity, and patience. Perhaps that would be a good thing but perhaps not. Have you ever read the great pre-Tolkien fantasy novel "The Worm Orouboros"? The basic notion is that the heroes win out over their evil enemies, and then regret their inabilty to practice the above virtues without said enemies.

This is completely unrealistic. In the short lifespan of humans, suffering in the ordinary sense will never eliminated, so to talk of limiting that is useless speculation. I suppose you're talking about necessity creating a stronger individual/ nation/ breed, but each generation finds different challenges to overcome according to the challenges that arise.

Trying to stop suffering is a noble goal and talk of limitation of that merely a distraction.

[Ecurb]

That's a reasonable point. However, there are two ways of looking at enhancing human life: one is positive, the other negative. We can either try to minimize suffering or try to maximize (joy, or virtue, or whatever word we want to use to describe admirable human experiences).

Here's a concrete example: when I was younger, I was an avid mountaineer. I even lived in Yosemite for nine months once. Mountaineering, far from limiting suffering, CAUSES suffering. Some of the climbs I remember most fondly were what mountaineers call "epics". In other words, they were made more dramatic by injuries, bad weather, and (in general) suffering. Of course these climbs weren't always fun at the time. But, looking back, it's these climbs I remember -- not the one's made in perfect weather when nothing untoward happened. Yet mountaineering was my choice -- and I freely chose, if not to suffer, at least to participate in an activity where suffering was inevitable, if you climbed often enough.

[Paulclem]

That's a reasonable point. However, there are two ways of looking at enhancing human life: one is positive, the other negative. We can either try to minimize suffering or try to maximize (joy, or virtue, or whatever word we want to use to describe admirable human experiences).

Here's a concrete example: when I was younger, I was an avid mountaineer. I even lived in Yosemite for nine months once. Mountaineering, far from limiting suffering, CAUSES suffering. Some of the climbs I remember most fondly were what mountaineers call "epics". In other words, they were made more dramatic by injuries, bad weather, and (in general) suffering. Of course these climbs weren't always fun at the time. But, looking back, it's these climbs I remember -- not the one's made in perfect weather when nothing untoward happened. Yet mountaineering was my choice -- and I freely chose, if not to suffer, at least to participate in an activity where suffering was inevitable, if you climbed often enough.

I think mountaineering and other extreme sports are a choice, and not really related to suffering in a wider sense. The achievement of fulfilling a climb, winning a game of rugby, a race etc, all involve a certain amount of chosen suffering, which is not the issue here. The suffering being discussed is of the unchosen, inevitable type.

[Ecurb]

Obviously, people choose to climb (although the choice is not to suffer, but to risk suffering). Nonetheless, the BENEFITS and THRILLS of climbing are inextricable from the risk of suffering. I assume some of these same benefits acrue to risky activities that may be UNCHOSEN. So although I see your point, my point continues to be valid as well.

[Paulclem]

Obviously, people choose to climb (although the choice is not to suffer, but to risk suffering). Nonetheless, the BENEFITS and THRILLS of climbing are inextricable from the risk of suffering. I assume some of these same benefits acrue to risky activities that may be UNCHOSEN. So although I see your point, my point continues to be valid as well.

Life is risky and unchosen. I don't think your point is valid in the sense that not only are these sports chosen voluntarily, they are a priviledge of leisure and wealth. They are not part of the intrinsic suffering that many people have to endure without choice.

I agree that there are thrills and benefits to extreme sports, and, don't get me wrong, I am not against them. I don't think that they are a significant factor in the wider aspet of suffering.

I bet it was good living in Yosemite. :D

[Propter W.]

Which is why it is difficult to be dogmatic about vegetarianism and meat eating due to individual needs. Having said that. I'm not sure what you mean about a typical meat eater - of course it is typical - usual in other words. More usual to have health related problems, and amount is an individual thing too.

Typically, (Western) people eat way too much meat. Excess is never good and usually leads to problems. I'd like to see a study where meat eaters are not all lumped together in one category. You could easily divide them in different groups e.g. people who eat, on average 1g - 75g of meat per week, people who eat 76g -150g per week and people who weekly eat an average of 150g of meat or more. I'd be interested in the results.

And people who only eat fish (no other meats) are also meat eaters, and they score pretty well in these studies.

Anyway, you hit the nail on the head, it's difficult to be dogmatic about our diets.

[Ecurb]

I bet it was good living in Yosemite. :D

It was the approximate equivalent of living in fairyland.

[cyberbob]

I am a vegan. I love my diet, but I usually keep it to myself unless someone asks.

PETA and hippies have given us a bad rep as arrogant or crazy.

[chipper]

i am pesco vegetarian. i am not ready to give up fish yet but someday i will.

i believe that the only vital nutrition that a vegetarian lacks is protein which he can get from soy.

i love animals but that is not the primary reason i gave up meat. it's health reasons. i feel better with only vegetables and fruits. I eat fish once a week. i eat mostly raw food. my digestion is better, i have more energy, i think better, i look better, i smell better, i run better, i talk better...

[Dodo25]

I am a vegan. I love my diet, but I usually keep it to myself unless someone asks.

PETA and hippies have given us a bad rep as arrogant or crazy.

I think PETA is indeed too radical, but I can very much side with vegans that go around (non-violently and respectfully!) challenging meat eaters to change their habits. I mean, once you realize that something is morally wrong, ought you not to try to prevent others from doing it too? If someone leaves a dog for hours caged in an overheating car in the sun in the middle of the day, the best thing to do would be to find the owner and talk to him, or call animal protection service right away. You don't just walk by and think 'Well I'm not the one doing this to the dog, so everything's fine'. It should be the same with eating habits. 'Respect personal choice'? Screw that, if beings suffer for it then that's clearly more important, or am I missing something?

Oh and thanks for bringing the discussion back on topic (:

[Propter W.]

I think PETA is indeed too radical, but I can very much side with vegans that go around (non-violently and respectfully!) challenging meat eaters to change their habits. I mean, once you realize that something is morally wrong, ought you not to try to prevent others from doing it too? If someone leaves a dog for hours caged in an overheating car in the sun in the middle of the day, the best thing to do would be to find the owner and talk to him, or call animal protection service right away. You don't just walk by and think 'Well I'm not the one doing this to the dog, so everything's fine'. It should be the same with eating habits. 'Respect personal choice'? Screw that, if beings suffer for it then that's clearly more important, or am I missing something?

Oh and thanks for bringing the discussion back on topic (:

The last thing we need is more people proletysing. It's those people that give vegetarians a bad name, indeed.

Is it morally wrong to eat meat?

[Dodo25]

The last thing we need is more people proletysing. It's those people that give vegetarians a bad name, indeed.

Fortunately, that's only a small problem. At least if I'm right and veganism (or vegetariansm) isn't just a personal choice due to health or taste reasons, but actually the only morally acceptable alternative to a serious evil, comparable to slavery, say.

Obviously, changing one's habits is difficult, and some people just can't go all the way. That's okay, and condemning or hating them helps no one! The best one can do is to encourage them to care and do what they can. If 100 people start eating half the amount of meat they'd normally eat, then the result is the same as if 50 of them went vegetarian!



Is it morally wrong to eat meat?

That's what a big part of this thread is/was about. If you want a short, somewhat oversimplifying answer, my answer would be yes, given today's circumstances.

Obviously, if you accidentally drive over a deer on the road, you might as well eat it since it's dead anyway. So eating meat isn't intrinsically wrong. What's wrong is how the majority (99% even) of meat is produced. Even organic 'animal friendly' farms have its issues, and they too use slaughter methods that cause a considerable amount of suffering. And anyway, the majority of meat comes from factory farms.

Here the moral case against eating meat:


Ethics:
Why is sexism wrong? Why is racism wrong?
It may seem surprising, but the above are wrong for the same reason as our treatment of animals is wrong. Racists or sexists categorize people as 'inferior' without actually looking at their individual abilities. They think these 'others' don't deserve the same rights, simply because they don't belong to the priviledged group (say the white 'race', or the male gender). Even if it were true that i.e. women were on average dumber than men (it isn't), denying them all the rights men have is wrong, because the smartest woman would still be much smarter than an average man. One has to consider the actual abilities, not the 'group label'.

It is obvious to everyone that torturing humans is wrong, and that when they suffer, they should be helped. Is this so because humans are 'intelligent'? Do the intelligent deserve more moral care and attention than dumb people? Obviously not. Because what matters is the capacity to suffer.

A human infant, or a person with severe mental disabilities, have the same (or lesser even) mental abilities and capacity for suffering as pigs or cows. If a company were to inflicted suffering in human infants or disabled people for a marginal benefit equal to 'some tasty meals', the public would be beyond outraged and scream 'nazi'. So why is it suddenly okay to do the same thing to animals, if they're just as 'consciously aware of suffering' as the above mentioned members of the human species? The answer that unfortunately, we're biased. Biased to an 'in-group / out-group' mentality. Biased towards racism and sexism. But we've overcome these evils with time and are now aware that they're wrong. We're also biased towards 'speciesism'. And as of now, not much seems to be done against it. We can't just assume that the interests of beings ought only be considered when they belong to the species Homo sapiens. What matters is the capacity to suffer. And if it's wrong to let infants suffer (even if they're orphans and no one directly cries for them), it's also wrong to let pigs or cows suffer (and chicken, and other sentient animals).

Killing is another matter. Is it wrong to kill (non-human) animals? Many vegetarians would say 'yes', yet some say 'no' in theory. If it's done painlessly, there's not much wrong with it because as long as the animals aren't self-aware (and only humans and maybe some other great apes seem to be), they don't have future plans or interests. They live 'in the moment'. Analogically, abortion is allowed too, even at stages when the fetus has some level of consciousness and definitely feels pain. So while killing non self-aware beings might not be intrinsically 'wrong', it definitely is wrong when it's done with pain. And since the common practice of killing animals involves scary transports, crowding and a bolt into the brain (that in a significant percentage of cases doesn't kill instantly), it's safe to assume that killing animals the current way is wrong.

To me, those reasons alone seem absolutely sound and enough, and even though I LOVE eating meat, I stopped eventually (though only after about a year of rationalizing it, despite actually being aware of the facts and the ethical case). But there are other reasons still:

Additionally, there are huge ecological reasons, which touch back on ethics again. Is it ethical to feed all the soya that's produced in developing countries to cattle, who need eleven times more food than they ultimately produce in form of steaks, which by the way use up about 7'500 litres of water per pound for 'production', while at the same time, the population in these countries is poor, starving and low on water? The food prizes go up, and the result is lots of people dying and suffering, so the wealthy people can eat some tasty meat.

And since we also owe something to future generations, what about greenhouse gases?



Ecological reasons:
Two pounds of meat (beef) use up 15'000 litres of water for its production, and obviously a whole lot of grain and crops too. The energy conversion from plant -> meat is very inefficient (only 10% at best). If the world went vegan, we could easily produce enough food for twice the current population.

Meat production releases a huge amount of greenhouse gases, it alone is responsible for nearly 20% of the planet's total emissions.

Ethics composiums almost always serve vegan food, and that not for fashion reasons!

[Propter W.]

Well, I don't think killing animals is wrong, nor do I think there's anything intrinsically wrong with animals suffering. It's part of the world. A rabit suffers greatly when it's attacked by one of its predators and even predators can suffer great injuries from their prey. It's a natural thing and I don't see how that can be wrong in any way.

We have the ability, however, to reduce their suffering. And that is something I stand behind completely. I'm very much against the meat industry (due to the way they treat animals) and I think I've explained in this thread how I deal with that (if not, I will elucidate later).

Yes, animal friendly farms also have issues and might cause some suffering to animals, but like I said, there's nothing wrong with a lil' good ole suffering. Besides, "vegetarian" farming causes suffering to thousands of animals as well, especially if you want to feed humans with your crops.

I'm perfectly aware of how much water goes into a steak. I'm also perfectly aware of how much water goes into a pair of jeans. I'm perfectly aware of how much suffering jeans causes to people. The rare earth metals used in our computers, cell phones and basically every piece of modern technology (incl. for example solar panels and wind turbines) is extremely polluting. In fact, mining these rare elements is one of the most polluting industries at the moment. I'm aware of a lot of things and it tells me that changing our diet will have very little impact on our lives, our environment and on the world unless we simple change our entire culture.

Going veggie, switching to green energy... won't make a difference at all unless we radically re-examine our place in the world.




cattle are not human, by the way. Not that i condone cruelty to animals...

typical speciesist statement. Let's move this to the vegetarianism thread, we're somewhat off topic. My fault btw, again. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1034294#post1034294

Well, sure it is. Tell me again, why is it ok to kill plants? Or invertebrates for that matter? Oh yes, that's right. Speciesism.

And if I had to make a choice between saving a cow or a human baby. I'd go for the human baby. Why? Speciesism. I'm sure you wouldn't care which one you saved. You value them equally, right?

[Dodo25]

Well, I don't think killing animals is wrong,

Neither do I. Unless of course the animals in question are self-aware like (older-than-baby) humans, and likely chimpanzees to a smaller extent.



nor do I think there's anything intrinsically wrong with animals suffering. It's part of the world. A rabit suffers greatly when it's attacked by one of its predators and even predators can suffer great injuries from their prey. It's a natural thing and I don't see how that can be wrong in any way.

Why do you have such faith in nature? Socialism, charity, health care, condom use, all these are extremely unnatural. Evolution would never produce such a thing. They're all the product of human minds, which have to some extent overcome the leash of the genes. We don't anymore behave in ways which maximize the spreading of our genes. And isn't that a good thing?

Suffering is intrinsically wrong. There's a case to be made that as long as we can't change it, we shouldn't be too bothered by animals suffering in the wild, I grant you that. But it changes if WE are the ones inflicting suffering. Without humans, there wouldn't be nearly as many cows, pigs, chicken and so on as there are now. WE are responsible for their suffering, and we CAN change it quite easily.

And if sometime in the future we'll have the technology to change the suffering in animals, we should do it. Why should we accept suffering? Evolution is blind and indifferent, simply because it produced something doesn't mean we have to accept it!



We have the ability, however, to reduce their suffering. And that is something I stand behind completely. I'm very much against the meat industry (due to the way they treat animals) and I think I've explained in this thread how I deal with that (if not, I will elucidate later).

I think I remember you commenting on the issue. See, we have some common ground here!



Besides, "vegetarian" farming causes suffering to thousands of animals as well, especially if you want to feed humans with your crops.

I assume you're talking about the animals that lose their habitats, or the ones suffering from pollutions? Or humans suffering in general? Well yeah, obviously. So what? We have a whole list of alternatives, some with a huge amount of suffering, some what a smaller (fraction of a fraction!) amount of suffering. Simply saying 'there's suffering in both, so we shouldn't change anything' doesn't make sense. We should try to minimize the suffering. And as for the human influences, it might be worth thinking about to reduce the global population. Education and information on contraceptives helps greatly in that regard.



Going veggie, switching to green energy... won't make a difference at all unless we radically re-examine our place in the world.

Of course there are other problems as well. But meat production is one of the biggest, if not the biggest problem. It creates more greenhouse gases than global traffic does! And it's something we can easily change. If people help to spread awareness and try to become vegan to the best of their abilities, the difference will matter.


Well, sure it is. Tell me again, why is it ok to kill plants? Or invertebrates for that matter? Oh yes, that's right. Speciesism.

Have you even read my posts?? I said what matters is the capacity to suffer. If done painlessly, killing isn't bad, unless the beings are self-aware. So yeah, there's a difference between humans and other animals, but only regarding to killing, not to suffering. Plants can't suffer, and even if they could, we'd have to choose the lesser evil. Plants are eaten regardless of us eating meat or vegetarian, what differs is only by whom/what they're eaten.




And if I had to make a choice between saving a cow or a human baby. I'd go for the human baby. Why? Speciesism. I'm sure you wouldn't care which one you saved. You value them equally, right?

Assuming the baby isn't yet 'self-aware' (depends on the age, and it's hard to tell), does the baby have parents that care about it? Could the baby make a family really happy that is looking for adoption? Would not saving the baby create outrage in some people and thereby make them less happy?

If the answer to all the above were 'no', then it depends on who would have less expected suffering in the future life, the baby or the cow. If the cow was to be killed cruelly for meat production, I'd still save the baby. If the cow was to lead a nice life, and the baby an average life, I'd choose the cow.

[Propter W.]

Why do you have such faith in nature? Socialism, charity, health care, condom use, all these are extremely unnatural. Evolution would never produce such a thing. They're all the product of human minds, which have to some extent overcome the leash of the genes. We don't anymore behave in ways which maximize the spreading of our genes. And isn't that a good thing?
It's not a question of what's natural or unnatural. It's a question of what's wrong and right and in my opinion suffering is neither wrong nor right.


Suffering is intrinsically wrong. There's a case to be made that as long as we can't change it, we shouldn't be too bothered by animals suffering in the wild, I grant you that. But it changes if WE are the ones inflicting suffering. Without humans, there wouldn't be nearly as many cows, pigs, chicken and so on as there are now. WE are responsible for their suffering, and we CAN change it quite easily.
I agree.


And if sometime in the future we'll have the technology to change the suffering in animals, we should do it. Why should we accept suffering? Evolution is blind and indifferent, simply because it produced something doesn't mean we have to accept it!
I completely disagree with you here. In fact, I think this kind of reasoning is what's wrong with the world. Why do people want to control everything? Why shouldn't we accept it?


I think I remember you commenting on the issue. See, we have some common ground here!
I have a bit of an odd stance when it comes to these matters but in general I will agree with the "vegetarian" stance.


I assume you're talking about the animals that lose their habitats, or the ones suffering from pollutions? Or humans suffering in general? Well yeah, obviously. So what? We have a whole list of alternatives, some with a huge amount of suffering, some what a smaller (fraction of a fraction!) amount of suffering. Simply saying 'there's suffering in both, so we shouldn't change anything' doesn't make sense.
That's not what I'm saying. If the suffering of animals is the reason why one becomes vegetarian, he might as well stop eating. Animals suffer regardless of the diet you choose.


We should try to minimize the suffering.
I agree. But it's you who rallies against the meat industry but keeps quiet about the loss and destruction of habitat and the killing and poisoning of all kinds of animals with pesticides and herbicides. Things which are of vital importance to the vegan diet. If we stop destroying habitats and stop using pesticides, the vegan world dream seems to fade rather rapidly. In fact, it seems that the human population would find itself in a bit of a pickle.


And as for the human influences, it might be worth thinking about to reduce the global population. Education and information on contraceptives helps greatly in that regard.

Totally agree.

Of course there are other problems as well. But meat production is one of the biggest, if not the biggest problem. It creates more greenhouse gases than global traffic does! And it's something we can easily change. If people help to spread awareness and try to become vegan to the best of their abilities, the difference will matter.

It might matter, but we'll still be polluting and raping our world. All in the name of progress.


Have you even read my posts?? I said what matters is the capacity to suffer. If done painlessly, killing isn't bad, unless the beings are self-aware. So yeah, there's a difference between humans and other animals, but only regarding to killing, not to suffering. Plants can't suffer, and even if they could, we'd have to choose the lesser evil. Plants are eaten regardless of us eating meat or vegetarian, what differs is only by whom/what they're eaten.

That's also a typical speciesist statement.

Also, animals are eaten regardless of us eating meat or vegetarian, what differs is only by whom/what they're eaten.


Assuming the baby isn't yet 'self-aware' (depends on the age, and it's hard to tell), does the baby have parents that care about it? Could the baby make a family really happy that is looking for adoption? Would not saving the baby create outrage in some people and thereby make them less happy?

If the answer to all the above were 'no', then it depends on who would have less expected suffering in the future life, the baby or the cow. If the cow was to be killed cruelly for meat production, I'd still save the baby. If the cow was to lead a nice life, and the baby an average life, I'd choose the cow.

Interesting.

[Dodo25]

I completely disagree with you here. In fact, I think this kind of reasoning is what's wrong with the world. Why do people want to control everything? Why shouldn't we accept it?

Why shouldn't we accept it? Why should we accept it? Merely asking rhetorical questions doesn't make a case. Suffering is the epitome of 'bad'. There's no reason to tolerate severe suffering if we have the means to change it.



That's not what I'm saying. If the suffering of animals is the reason why one becomes vegetarian, he might as well stop eating. Animals suffer regardless of the diet you choose.

They suffer LESS if people ate vegan. Or better, LESS animals suffer. Obviously the numbers do make a difference.



I agree. But it's you who rallies against the meat industry but keeps quiet about the loss and destruction of habitat and the killing and poisoning of all kinds of animals with pesticides and herbicides. Things which are of vital importance to the vegan diet. If we stop destroying habitats and stop using pesticides, the vegan world dream seems to fade rather rapidly. In fact, it seems that the human population would find itself in a bit of a pickle.

You're still missing the point about meat production being inefficient. An example:

I eat one pound of meat. The result: The cow had to suffer for it, AND eleven pounds of vegan food (not grass, actual soya or crops or whatever) were used by the cow to produce the meat I just ate. So altogether, eating one pound of meat is eating a pound of meat AND eleven pounds of vegan food (on average).

On the other hand, I could just as well eat one pound of vegan food, and that's it, no additional cost. See the difference? No matter how bad agriculture is and how much suffering it causes, eating meat causes, on average, eleven times more the damage AND the suffering in the animal.



It might matter, but we'll still be polluting and raping our world. All in the name of progress.

Sure. We should try to change that too. I'm just saying the food issue is comparatively easy to change, and it would a comparatively huge effect, so best start with that (but don't neglect the other problems of course).

[Dodo25]

"Originally Posted by Dodo25
Have you even read my posts?? I said what matters is the capacity to suffer. If done painlessly, killing isn't bad, unless the beings are self-aware. So yeah, there's a difference between humans and other animals, but only regarding to killing, not to suffering. Plants can't suffer, and even if they could, we'd have to choose the lesser evil. Plants are eaten regardless of us eating meat or vegetarian, what differs is only by whom/what they're eaten."


That's also a typical speciesist statement.

No it isn't! If you have to choose between once suffering and eleven times suffering, choosing the former isn't speciesist. We could technically stop eating altogether, but then everyone dies, and that produces suffering too, a lot of it, not to mention the violation of our fundamental preference 'not to be killed'.

It's not 'speciesism' if there actually are differences. If women were completely stupid and incapable of having a coherent thought, then not granting them the right to vote would not be sexist, but rather reasonable. The fact is though, that women aren't totally stupid, they aren't even stupider than men.

For that reason, painlessly killing a cow isn't morally wrong, while painlessly killing a human being would be (in most circumstances anyway). But the important point is that in suffering, humans and other animals are alike (to a great extent at least).



Interesting.

Yup. It's logical, consistent, and it produces the least amount of suffering. If you favor Homo sapiens above anything else, you're making the same mistake racists or sexists made. Unless you believe that humans have immortal souls while animals don't, you'll have a hard time justifying always picking the baby (but then again, you also have a hard time justifying that there are souls).

[Propter W.]

Why shouldn't we accept it? Why should we accept it? Merely asking rhetorical questions doesn't make a case. Suffering is the epitome of 'bad'. There's no reason to tolerate severe suffering if we have the means to change it.
Suffering is the epitome of bad according to you. I've already said that suffering is natural and therefore not bad and not good. It just is. It exists for all sentient beings (one may even include insects here). What gives us the authority to intervene in nature so drastically? If people want to lessen their own suffering, that's normal. And I also agree we should try to minimize the suffering we cause to animals we are responsible for. But simply saying we shouldn't tolerate suffering because we have the means to change it is absurd. I'm very much against the argument that it's good to do something, just because we can do it.

They suffer LESS if people ate vegan. Or better, LESS animals suffer. Obviously the numbers do make a difference.
Less animals would suffer. That's true. But we can change the way we raise and treat cattle too, and cause less suffering.


You're still missing the point about meat production being inefficient. An example:
I can assure you I'm not. I strongly believe it's wrong to feed cattle maize and soya. Instead they should be allowed to graze. This would probably mean we wouldn't be able to feed as much cattle as today. It would be impossible to produce the same amount of meat with "animal-friendly" and natural methods of raising cattle. In my opinion, it would lead to a healthy balance and not an artifcial one as exists today.


No it isn't! If you have to choose between once suffering and eleven times suffering, choosing the former isn't speciesist. We could technically stop eating altogether, but then everyone dies, and that produces suffering too, a lot of it, not to mention the violation of our fundamental preference 'not to be killed'.

It's not 'speciesism' if there actually are differences. If women were completely stupid and incapable of having a coherent thought, then not granting them the right to vote would not be sexist, but rather reasonable. The fact is though, that women aren't totally stupid, they aren't even stupider than men.

Actually, there are differences between men and women.


For that reason, painlessly killing a cow isn't morally wrong, while painlessly killing a human being would be (in most circumstances anyway). But the important point is that in suffering, humans and other animals are alike (to a great extent at least).

To a great extent? Or to some extent?

Anyway, speciesism is discrimination or prejudice based on species or assigning different values to beings on the same basis. Plants are a species and so are insects. You assign a certain set of values to one species (vertebrate species) based on their common characteristics and you a assign a completely different set of values to another species (plants, for example).
You rationalise your speciesism by introducing suffering, which is another question. Your statement certainly was speciesist and it shows why speciesism is a flawed concept.


Yup. It's logical, consistent, and it produces the least amount of suffering. If you favor Homo sapiens above anything else, you're making the same mistake racists or sexists made.

Actually, I put homo sapiens and all other creatures on the same level. You hold homo sapiens above all other animals.