Vegetarianism

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.

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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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by billyjack

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

elaborate the flaw if you will

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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?

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Originally Posted by 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.

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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. :)

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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..

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.

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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]

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(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.)

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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]

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:)

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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. 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.

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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?

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

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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. 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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?

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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:

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Petronius

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?

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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.

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...

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.

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.

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.