Are we vegetarians hypocrites?

[Madhuri]

As I said, fortunately I come from place where the major population is Hindu and cows are treated with a lot of care and it's a big crime (a verrryyyyyy big one) to kill them. So, as long as I live here, I guess I don't have to worry about giving up dairy products (sine we don't use packaged dairy product anyways that we might have to worry about industrial misuse of animals).

If you look around, you'll find a lot of street animals, cows included. No one kills those cows but no one cares about them. These animal eat filth from the garbage, polythene full of junk and other harmful things.

Not all buy from the cattle owners, and you can't be sure if they haven't mixed anything artificial or added more water. I tried this but I couldn't manage it as I don't own a fridge, so now I buy milk from the super market available as tetra-paks, which can last for over a month. There are companies like Amul, Mother Dairy, Nandini, etc., that procure milk from farmers, process it and sell variety of dairy products, like milk with different fat levels, ghee, paneer, butter, curd and so on. These work on cooperative structure and also provide additional support services like artificial insemination, cattle-feed, etc. The cattle-owners are doing a business so one can never be sure if the cows/buffalos are treated well. I think, they won't be killing it but they make sure that it produces more than enough milk, and I am not sure what they do after it dries up. Maybe they sell it to a butcher or let loose like a street animal as maintaining cows past that stage would just add to their expense. So, a cow is a sacred animal but it is a part of a business too.

[OrphanPip]

I would think that seeing a plant or insect respond to external stimuli IS evidence of sentience.

If one doesn't like that evidence because one wants to feel it is OK to eat them or kill them, then one would have to define "sentience" in such a way that it excludes plants or insects and add a theory that dismisses the contrary evidence of their response to external stimuli. One would then claim that the experience we have of them is only an illusion that plants and insects are sentient.

Not quite, all sorts of machines react to external input in complex ways. Sentience is certainly difficult to define, but we know just from relatedness that most other chordates have brains sufficiently like ours that they probably have the same basic feelings of pain and fear. Plants lack the actual organs involved in sense. What good would it do for a plant to feel anyway: they can't move away from what is hurting them, they can't fight back, they can't perceive their environment to any great extent. Plants not only lack the sensory organs that would explain how they would feel, they lack the impetus to evolve such a response.

Insects are more problematic because they are more similar to chordates than plants, but it is difficult to say for sure how their brains function.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Okay I get what you mean. I'll rephrase my question. Would you mind eating humans if need arises? If yes, why? If no, I understand.

Well, if the need arose, I wouldn't have that many reservations--I mean, if it's like one of those trapped on a mountain scenarios where it's eat or die, I'd eat. I wouldn't eat other people just for the heck of it, though. I'd do it on a dare, maybe, if I knew how the meat was obtained and what-not, but it'd be too creepy just to go to a store and buy some human ribs.

[Delta40]

I didn't quite make it to the Vietnamese Dog Market where I could buy all sorts of cuts but I would have quite happily tried a dog steak, merely out of curiosity. Meat is meat and I can cross the borders of cultural tastes. Eating humans would certainly be a curious experience indeed but I would need to know how they landed on my plate first...

[Dodo25]

I would think that seeing a plant or insect respond to external stimuli IS evidence of sentience.

Does that mean you think that robots and machines, as OrphanPip pointed out, are sentient?

I didn't quite make it to the Vietnamese Dog Market where I could buy all sorts of cuts but I would have quite happily tried a dog steak, merely out of curiosity. Meat is meat and I can cross the borders of cultural tastes. Eating humans would certainly be a curious experience indeed but I would need to know how they landed on my plate first...

[My emphasis]

That's my view as well, the mere act of eating dead flesh isn't problematic because it's dead, no one gets hurt anymore. It depends on how it got there, and whether eating it encourages more of the "how it got there" happening in the future.

What I can't understand is the double standard, why not have qualms about trying dog meat from a Vietnamese dog market? How do you think that meat got there? It's a Vietnamese dog market, for Dog's sake! (Not trying to be racist, American and European factory farms are just as bad.)

[Delta40]

I guess I don't feel all that inclined to question the livelihood of the poor.

[YesNo]

Not quite, all sorts of machines react to external input in complex ways. Sentience is certainly difficult to define, but we know just from relatedness that most other chordates have brains sufficiently like ours that they probably have the same basic feelings of pain and fear. Plants lack the actual organs involved in sense. What good would it do for a plant to feel anyway: they can't move away from what is hurting them, they can't fight back, they can't perceive their environment to any great extent. Plants not only lack the sensory organs that would explain how they would feel, they lack the impetus to evolve such a response.

Insects are more problematic because they are more similar to chordates than plants, but it is difficult to say for sure how their brains function.

Regarding machines, they are not alive. I know that might come as a shock to people hoping Kurzweil's "singularity" will save them, but let's stay with reality for a moment. Since machines are not alive, that means they are not sentient. As far as this discussion of vegetarianism goes, you are free to eat them.

The fact that living things respond to stimuli is evidence that they may be sentient. For some definitions of sentience, that is all the evidence that is required. For others, one might have to look further.

I think one could say that plants probably have a more refined sense of sunlight than we do. Just because they don't sense things the way we do doesn't mean they don't sense things at all. So their sensing sunlight is further evidence of sentience. Some plants react when you touch them. Again, this is further evidence of sentience. As far as an "impetus to evolve such a response", I can see how sensing light and touch would likely be very useful to plants.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I didn't quite make it to the Vietnamese Dog Market where I could buy all sorts of cuts but I would have quite happily tried a dog steak, merely out of curiosity. Meat is meat and I can cross the borders of cultural tastes. Eating humans would certainly be a curious experience indeed but I would need to know how they landed on my plate first...

I think I'd eat human before I eat dog. I love dogs more than humans. Like, of a dog dies in a movie, I'll feel way sadder than if any of the human characters. It doesn't even have to be main character, it can just be some random dog. It can even be a mean dog and I'll still feel bad, like when the dog gets shot in No Country for Old Men.

[Basil]

I'd eat human, but only if I could taunt them about it while they were still alive:

"Hey Joe, guess what I'm having for supper tomorrow night?"
"Aww, shut up!"

[Paulclem]

This is an oddly anxt ridden thread. Starvation has little to do with the choice of vegetarianism that we are lucky enough to have in richer countries.

In a survival situation - we are unlikely to know or appreciate what we would do, though the examples of cannibalism we have such as in famines, mean that people can be driven to it. In that crash in the Andes, they had to eat the dead, and why wouldn't they? It seems logical to me, though no doubt hard to execute.

[PoeticPassions]

I'm not a vegetarian, but I do support animals being treated well and killed humanely (if killing can be humane in the first place). Like Mutatis, I feel bad if I kill an insect, even a cockroach, but generally I will only kill insects if they are causing a havoc (cockoroach infestation means you can't leave any food out... mosquitoes carry diseases and I get soooo many bites every summer it is almost unbearable, etc). I try not to kill even any insects on purpose and will often 'save' drowning spiders, bugs, etc and take them outside, rather than squashing them. So I suppose I might be a reverse hypocrite... I eat meat (though not that often, and I try to eat from local farms and all that), but I find the killing of animals still quite awful...

But reading these posts about cows, I wanted to mention the claim that methane from decomposing cow dung accounts for 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (about five tons of CO2 per cow per year). So it makes me wonder whether all those cows wandering around in India really are rather harmful... what do people think about this??

Another note, it is custom in Islam for during the Eid-al-Adha (the 'Festival of Sacrifice') an animal is sacrificed and slaightered (usually a Ram) and the meat is divided: the family keeps one third; another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors; and the other third is given to the poor and needy (though with my friends and family, generally they give all of it to the needy). Rams can definitely sense that they will be slaughtered, as they get very anxious and nervous... One time I saw one being slaughtered, and I am still traumatized to this day... but on the other hand, I do see the benefit in it, and the fact that there is a humanitarian and charitable aspect to it helps...

I don't even have any clear arguments or opinions here... just writing.

[YesNo]

But reading these posts about cows, I wanted to mention the claim that methane from decomposing cow dung accounts for 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (about five tons of CO2 per cow per year). So it makes me wonder whether all those cows wandering around in India really are rather harmful... what do people think about this??

I've heard of that also. I didn't know it was such a large percentage of the greenhouse gas. If the cow is kept in a more mechanized barn, is the methane able to be harvested as well or does it contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions?

I suppose if most of us became vegetarians, the number of animals on the earth would decrease and the number of humans could increase. We may also live healthier lives by cooperating less with other animal species.

[PoeticPassions]

I've heard of that also. I didn't know it was such a large percentage of the greenhouse gas. If the cow is kept in a more mechanized barn, is the methane able to be harvested as well or does it contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions?

I'm supposing you could use the dung for fertilizer, and maybe even harvest it in some way to use it as energy (bah, I'm not well informed on the science behind this, but just using common sense). But this is where the problem in India is-- it seems as though, largely, the cows are uncontrolled and free to roam. A lot of them are starving, so they scavenge for food and mix in with humans in markets, stores, garbage heaps etc. causing another kind of social and health problem... I'm just wondering if maybe there is a reason humans eat meat and that there should be some way to balance things out. We should protect endangered species, but at the same time perhaps allow some kind of natural cycle in which predators eat prey and all that... I don't know. Animals eat each other. It would be better if we hunted though instead of mistreated animals as we do now in these mass production farms and slaughterhouses. It pains me when I see the way that the animals are kept and treated and fed just so that they can be food for humans. It seems really quite unfair.

[YesNo]

A lot of them are starving, so they scavenge for food and mix in with humans in markets, stores, garbage heaps etc. causing another kind of social and health problem...

It makes me wonder if modern dairy farming is not better than what is done in India for both humans and cattle.

[JuniperWoolf]

Well, if the need arose, I wouldn't have that many reservations--I mean, if it's like one of those trapped on a mountain scenarios where it's eat or die, I'd eat.

Not me, I'd suicide (why isn't "suicide" a verb?). I decided a long time ago that that's my exit strategy if I ever found myself in a seriously horrible situation eg. stranded in the frozen woods surrounded by my family's corpses faced with the prospect of eating them, chained up in some monster's rape dungeon, &c.

I think I'd eat human before I eat dog.

I could eat dog, no problem. Actually, when I see a dog that's in particularly good shape or who looks nice and plump, I sometimes think "that would be good eating if we were ever lost in the mountains or something." My friend Steve has a delicious looking dog. His name is even "Porky."



Lookit him, he's shaped like a ham. His eyes always look like he knows I'm thinking of eating him, though.