I have never understood this logic. If a lion eats a zebra, there’s nothing wrong with it, but when a human eats a cow, they’re a horrible person. (also I know that not all vegans think like this)
I personally believe there’s nothing inherently wrong with eating meat, and instead the problem is how we treat the animals we eat and that we eat way too much meat, taking it for granted.
We are intelligent and capable of considering the idea that an animal may not want to die, and we have it within our means to survive without meat, or with much less meat than we currently consume.
Animals who are being lead to slaughter have been observed to panic and try to flee. They do not want to die. What right do we have to take the life of an animal that wants to live as much as any other person? We are capable of considering this question. Animals are not. That’s the difference.
Even as a carnivore you would not eat a freshly born baby straight out of the mother’s womb, whereas any other predator would see it as an easy meal. There IS a moral implication in taking life.
We can only afford to question this because we are in a utopia of sorts compared to just a few hundred years ago. We are capable of understanding that there are philosophical, moral, and ethical dilemmas to eating meat in 2023. However, if the world went to shit and say an electrical storm wiped out all electronics on Earth, we would not even hesitate to eat meat in as little as a few months in.
People have been able to “afford to question this” since antiquity - it’s not some modern affectation. You see plenty of instances of people arguing for or outright mandating vegetarian or vegan diets dating back thousands of years. I am not sure if PETA’s specific reasoning (“you shouldn’t eat a fish because the fish would prefer you not do that”) is represented, but you definitely see scholars and rulers in the ancient world arguing for a variety of reasons that people should not kill or eat animals.
Socrates was already criticising it in 450 BCE. Also all Indian religions were championing non-violence as early as mid-1st millennium BCE. This is nothing new nor revolutionary and people were already questioning their actions when “the world was shit” as you put it.
People can strive to become better in any situation.
Necessity is obviously a factor.
Agreed. Once lab-grown/synthetic meat becomes widely available and reasonably-priced, the necessity/demand to keep large farms full of livestock for meat production will take a downturn.
Arguing that something’s okay because it’s a natural behaviour is the naturalistic fallacy. The difference is that other species don’t have any choice over how they live or even the mental capacity to think about the morality of their actions. Humans that are well-off and don’t have medical conditions that clash with veganism do.
I used to agree with the second paragraph, but watching videos of pigs/cows/chickens being slaughtered changed my mind. Imo their prior treatment doesn’t really negate what happens there- and even if it did, I couldn’t use ideal farm conditions as a defense when the vast majority of meat I’ve been eating is raised under less ideal conditions.
(This isn’t calling anyone who eats a burger satan, to be clear. Just trying to say my views in good faith.)
I used to agree with the second paragraph, but watching videos of pigs/cows/chickens being slaughtered changed my mind. Imo their prior treatment doesn’t really negate what happens there- and even if it did, I couldn’t use ideal farm conditions as a defense when the vast majority of meat I’ve been eating is raised under less ideal conditions.
Methods of slaughtering them are terrible and absolutely criminal.
One good thing PETA has done is raise awareness about how the meat industry treats its animals - I’ll give them that, definitely.
PETA itself is an organization I place in the same category as a cult, though. Their own practices make the sincerity of their intentions almost blatantly questionable.
Agreed. Not the biggest fan of PETA; am very much a fan of animal welfare and rights being advocated for. CO2 ‘stunning’ of pigs especially gets to me.
Moralizing about eating meat is a fallacy as well. You have no qualms with killing bugs or plants. You might even support killing humans in some cases. The thresholds you describe are nothing more than your own subjective, personal comfort level. Every single life form in the universe consumes other life forms in order to survive. The way we treat our food, now that is the real issue.
The difference between killing animals and plants, which do not have a CNS and therefore almost certainly aren’t sentient, has been discussed thoroughly elsewhere in this comments section. Do you believe mowing a lawn is equivalent to harming a dog?
Regarding insects, it should be emphasised that veganism is avoiding anything that causes animal suffering or exploitation as far as is practical. Necessary cases, like the unavoidable death of insects for plant agriculture, aren’t morally equivalent to unnecessary cases in the same way that killing other humans can sometimes be justified by circumstances, eg. self-defence. (EDIT: And any livestock raised on feed are indirectly causing more insect death regardless.)
People can indeed have different personal comfort levels when it comes to moral debates, but we can also discuss whether those comfort levels are reasonable. Otherwise ‘we have different personal comfort levels’ could be used in response to any moral question. It could be within someone’s ‘personal comfort level’ to kill and eat babies as long as they were treated well until then.
Edit: TL;DR: context matters for any moral question and I’m not a fan of total moral relativism.
There is no proof that the central nervous system is responsible for sentience. Mowing a lawn is a mass extinction event for the residents of that lawn. Does a broken grasshopper suffer less than a broken human, simply because it can’t wax poetic about its experience? Veganism promotes monoculture and environmental destruction as well, it’s just easier to pretend that it doesn’t.
My point about personal comfort is that it’s the ONLY metric by which you measure your moral code regarding consumption of other life forms to extend your own life.
While we can’t be completely sure, our current understanding of sentience makes it a reasonable assumption. Even if plants are sentient, eating from higher trophic levels causes more plant deaths than eating plants directly.
Regarding the rest, I feel like I addressed all of that in the comment above. I’m a fallible human being and personal discomfort with killing animals no less cognitively complex than our pets, and sometimes toddlers, is definitely a factor, but I’ve been arguing based on necessity and quantity instead of that.
EDIT: And to be clear, I’ve never claimed veganism is environmentally perfect. It doesn’t solve every problem with food production, it just helps with some, and it seems largely better for the environment (albeit with nuance around grazing certain types of land) even if we keep doing monocultures.
^ This is what reddit was like before it got big
If by that you mean both sides were civil, ty haha. I’m trying not to replicate the toxicity of the average reddit argument (which I got sucked into a lot) but I worry I still get too logic-as-my-blade, so I’m glad if my intentions still got through.
A great tip I’ve heard is to try to read others’ comments in the most good-faith tone possible, since it’s easy for that not to carry over text.
the issue is that we’re doing it on a massive scale semi-automatically.
keeping small amount of animals in decent-ish conditions (like on a small farm) and killing some for food/meat is fine.
keeping thouthands of animals in tiny cages where they basically can’t move at all is not.Removed by mod
Peta kills more animals in their shelters than most other organizations. It was never about protecting animals. It was always about hating humans.
It was always about hating humans
Or, to keep it simple: making money off of humans by exploiting their empathy?
“He kill them wi’ their love. That’s how it is, every day, all over the world.” ~John Coffey (Stephen King - The Green Mile)
Please stop spreading misinformation funded by the meat industry https://www.petakillsanimalsscam.com/
Tyvm for this, though to be fair this is a PETA source; do you have anything external?
Regardless, their claims about the petakillsanimals site being run by a disinformation org seem to be true. The wikipedia article on the CCF is damning; they seem to have a general goal of opposing any environmental, public health or social justice campaigns that harm certain industries.
Agreed, if a bear can eat a person why can’t I eat a person?!
I mean, you can… just don’t let law enforcement find out.
This is why I’m a pesca-pescatarian. I only eat fish that eat other fish.
To be completely serious, thats a bad idea. Predatory fish accumulate lots of mercury and shit in their meat.
To add to this, I’ve read recommendations from public health orgs to eat no more than two portions of oily fish a week, and minimise consumption of especially high sources like tuna steaks.
Some consumption is still recommended for omega 3s, though there are algae-based supplements for EPA and DHA as well as the fish ones. Flaxseed and some nuts are great sources of ALA, but afaik its conversion to EPA and DHA isn’t great and consuming all three is a good idea.
(Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist. Verify things yourself before making dietary changes.)
Fish eating fish doesn’t lead to ecological disturbance. Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
That is a slight understatement:
We’ve had some help though, i think i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us wherever we go, and letting them roam free in ecosystems that didn’t have any equivalent predator, leading to stories like this https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/25/species-extinct/
i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us
Do you have a source for that? Intuitively 1/3 of all species extinctions (keep in mind this in general includes plants and other kingdoms of life, not just animals) sounds far too high imo. Maybe you have read that number in a slightly different context, like bird deaths in urban areas, or perhaps in a more specific context similar to the one in your link? Don’t get me wrong, like your link shows, (house) cats can easily have a devastating effect on the local wildlife, in particular birds and small mammals or reptiles (wikipedia has an article on the topic, although I didn’t find anything like your numbers in it). But as far as I know the major ways in which humans have caused extinctions are historically overhunting (mostly affecting large birds and mammals), habitat loss in particular since the advent of agriculture, and more recently of course the effects of the climate crisis since the industrial revolution.
I think you’re spot on there, this was the only thing i could find that was close to what i remembered reading, and it’s speaking about extinctions of bird, mammal and reptile species, where cats are behind roughly one third of the extinctions: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/worst-invasive-predators/
Sorry for late response
Hold on, the link you posted says 10 to 100 times more than the natural background extinction rate. That’s very far from "any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.
No, it says
100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate
both in the general intro and in the “Extinction rate” section, and
10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth
in the “Extinction rate” section (both verbatim quotes from its first sentence).
Oh, dropped a digit. Should have just taken that nap I was gunning for. My mistake!
OP will be real dangerous when he learns fish also don’t ask for consent.
They don’t? I’ve been wasting my time.
Nobody is saying that fish are moral agents that can empathise with other beings. That doesn’t man that they’re not moral subjects; the ability to understand that one is causing harm is not a prerequisite for the ability to suffer oneself. I think everyone knows this intuitively, but it does feel good to have our less moral habits be justified by memes that we would otherwise find to be illogical.
You are right, but I believe putting a cease to life is not inherently bad. If we could kill animals without letting them feel anything, that wouldn’t really be bad.
Ethical consideration has to extend to more than just painless death to be worth a damn. I can’t walk into an infant ward and painlessly murder infants in their sleep for a reason.
Yes, the reason being they are human.
Why is that a reason?
Because most people view it as morally wrong to kill another human.
I mean sure, but the animal agriculture industry is typically inhumane and cruel to animals while they’re still alive, because it’s more profitable that way. Minimising the suffering they feel when they die is not going to do much really.
This is why we should be killing pigs with nitrogen, rather than CO2. CO2 is how a mammal determines it is suffocating, meanwhile the air is mostly made up of nitrogen so we ignore it. However, it’s precisely this which makes it dangerous to humans working nearby (also the fact that CO2 is heavier than air so you can have open pits), and it’s ruled too expensive to do it humanely.
Or we could you know just not gas and kill pigs.
I like bacon. Also there’s something to be said of the simple fact that almost all life eats other life. Why is plant life lesser than animal life to you?
However, the day they start selling lab grown bacon I will gladly switch to that.
Because life is not the most important factor to me. Sentience is.
But let’s entertain the idea life was the most important factor. Raising animals to eat them kills way more plant life than just eating plants directly as you need to clear a ton of land and grow a ton of plant just to feed all these animals you’re raising. So even if that was the differentiating factor not exploiting other non human animals would be the way to go as you would preserve more life.
Liking something to me is not a solid argument to exploit another sentient being. If I was saying that I liked kicking dogs it would not make it ok to do so for example.
I didn’t say preservation of all life was the most important factor. I said almost all life eats other life.
There’s a big difference between kicking a dog and eating food.
You’ve clearly asked me why I considered plant life less than animal life which I answered. I then went further and showed that this question was actually irrelevant to the point I was making because even if I were to consider it as equal or more important I should still plants instead of animal products.
There is no difference between the two when not in a survival situation. One is done for taste buds pleasure the other might be done because you enjoy kicking dogs.
Actually I would dare say that kicking a dog is better than killing and eating them.At least I know I’d prefer getting kicked rather than killed and eaten.
We both know that’s not going to happen. If I want to have bacon, would you rather me quickly and painlessly kill the pig, or use a blunt butter knife to kill them?
I sincerely believe it’s going to happen. Furthermore of course when presenting between two horrible choices I would the choose the less horrible option. Fortunately the choice is not between these two it’s actually, “Would you rather me quickly and painlessly kill the pig, use a blunt butter knife or not kill them”. I think when not forgetting the third option it’s clear it’s the better one.
All I can say is that you’re much more of an optimist than I.
Maybe we should eat you instead of the pig. I’m pretty sure the pig does not want bacon.
Thanks, now I know you’re completely clueless about even the most basic things. Pigs will happily eat bacon.
Happily? Lol
And if someone did that to you?
They wouldn’t be able to think about it because they’d be dead.
By eating vegetables you are doing harm anyway, they are living organisms after all.
Common mistake, but plants are not moral subjects. If you harm any animal, even an insect, it will respond in ways that you or I would; fleeing, retaliating, or generally just panicking. I think you already understand that plants do not (although they do have biochemical adaptations to sense and respond to stress).
While plants don’t possess some of the superior organs of animals, we’re constantly being surprised by how much they actually sense and communicate. I wouldn’t discount the similarities between the two kingdoms as being lesser than their differences just yet.
Even if we grant that plant “pain” is 100% morally equivalent to the pain of other beings (it isn’t, and you don’t earnestly believe that), we still have to eat them as a matter of biology, since humans aren’t producers and must consume nutrients from other life. It’s the same reason we can’t pass moral judgment on a carnivore like a lion for eating a Zebra.
Morality depends on culture, what is wright in one culture is wrong in another. This is easy to see and pretty obvious, unless that you are some kind of supremacist that thinks that your beliefs are the only valid. If your problem is pain you can kill the animal with one shot in the head and it will be painless, some farmers do this in order to avoid suffering.
“Bro I really wanna eat your dog bro. Bro it’s my culture bro just let me take a little bite bro I swear it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted. Bro just let me eat your dog bro, what are you some kinda racist?”
Other people have pointed out the differences between plants and most animals, but it’s also worth noting that livestock need to eat plants. Because energy is wasted between each stage in a food chain, an omnivorous diet likely kills more plants anyway.
You know who’s not talking about the value of a fish’s life? Fish
Something needs to die for you to survive, what and how much is up to your individual tolerance for input/output ratio.
Death and suffering is a natural state of being in nature. I can reduce it, but I still need to survive.
I hate fishing. I don’t need to fish in my current station. If I did, I would fish.
In my experience I need to kill 1 large cow every 2 years to personally survive. That’s good, because that’s about my personal limit for how long I’m happy to have a cow in my freezer without charging it rent.
I need to kill an absolutely obscene number of avocados, tomatoes and other fruits and vegetable too otherwise that cow will not last me 2 years. Those are the screams that truly bother me. The daily cries of my vegetables going to slaughter.
Everything is good as long as no one messes with THE BEANS!!!
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the vegans vs meat eaters oozed on over from Reddit.
You mean, people?
By this logic, is it fair game to eat people who eat animals?
The best argument against vegans is always the fact that plants also are living beings. Now if you are gonna create hierarchy of living beings to justify your food consumption, well…
Plants aren’t sentient and you need more plants to feed a cow (and then eat the cow) than if you just eat plant-based.
We can’t prove plants are sentient. Then again, neither can we prove humans are sentient.
What do you mean? With our scientific knowledge we can prove plants aren’t sentient. They don’t have Central Nervous System.
And how does that prove anything? Can you prove sentience requires neurons? The clear answer is no, that’s just a confortable assumption we make to not be shackled to phylosophical inertness.
sigh Came from reddit to lemmy, still see stupid af carnist memes like this. Don’t know if it’s a win or what for the fediverse
I’m sorry, but I laughed at carnist. Lighten up.
Relax, I’m a carnist/flexitarian. There’s nothing wrong with attributing a name to non-vegans/non-vegetarians. The world isn’t divided into vegans/vegetarians and so called ‘normal people’. It’s just as normal to not eat meat in some parts of the world.
Yeah, the preferred term is bloodmouth
Vegans giving us the most metal nickname possible expecting us to not like it
Well, there are others like cheese breathers, pus quaffers, bee vomit suckers, chicken period munchers and so on.
Apart from cheese breather none of those hit the same, you need to get better slurs. Cheese breather also isn’t metal enough for my tastes. Stick with bloodmouth.
IMO pus quaffer has some grind core vibes. That said, in real life, there’s nothing “metal” in animal exploitation. If your mindset is truly like “they call me bloodmouth, it’s metal, I’m a bloodmouth”, then I guess you’d be either a 12 year old or trolling. In either case, i hope you grow out of it.
That said, in real life, there’s nothing “metal” in animal exploitation.
Bro, pull up a video of a McDonald’s meat factory and tell me that shit ain’t metal as fuck
Also why are you mad that I’m not being serious this is the meme community not the philosophy community
I like to go with morally bankrupt piece of shit loser
Other options include: corpse eater, flesh sucker, and meat mouth. :V
Bloodmouth just rolls off the tongue better than all those, please continue calling me that
Yeah it’s way better.
Pisses a lot of people off too, which is why I use it lol
Why would anyone be pissed off by that word?
You do you, soil muncher.
you lighten up on the animal exploitation maybe?
Im proud to call myself one! Cool name
Since im on a pure carnivore diet for health reasons. The phrase carnist sounds so metal. Thanks for a new term to call myself
Out of curiosity what illness do you have that makes you unable to eat plants
Sure, animals eats animals, so I can eat cat too. It’s natural.
How come fish can eat their own offspring but we can’t do the same to ours?
