???

!!??

sigh.

imabi Wrote:I think the whole notion that meat is unhealthy is ludicrous.

I'm not sure that anyone is making that argument here?

Irixmark Wrote:The easiest solution would be for all of us to eat just organic/grass-fed beef etc. It would be quite expensive, actually prohibitively expensive for most people to eat meat, but the cost would reflect how much we can actually afford without damaging the environment.

Same with fish & seafood: if the EU, Japan and Korea stopped subsidizing their fishing fleets and quotas were sustainably managed, the price of fish would reflect the true damage we do to the environment. There are a handful examples of where that works well, mostly from the US and some from New Zealand and Australia.

This isn't an answer. Its another hand waving response that most people will hear and go, "So you really can't tell me how much is too much meat. Well I don't eat that much meat so I'll just continue how I usually am." When the reality may be that they actually are eating quite a bit.

Additionally, by removing subsidies from the industry you're likely to turn it into something that only well to do people will be able to afford. Everyone else will be stuck with greens. Which technically theres nothing wrong with this, but people have been eating meat for a long time and trying to up and say "Hey, meat now will cost $15 a pound." (which is what it can feel like for many poorer households) is likely to end up having many people complaining and voting for the candidate that will push to lower food prices.

rahsoul Wrote:

imabi Wrote:I think the whole notion that meat is unhealthy is ludicrous.

I'm not sure that anyone is making that argument here?

That's indeed what it seems like to me. I'm fine with people wanting to make sure animals are being treated well, but I don't really care about this until all humans are treated fairly. That should be first. There are ways to make food healthier, sobeit. However, meat has its benefits, and quite honestly, it's delicious. So, vegetarians can just leave us true omnivores the choice to eat what we please. Pass over the ribs please.

腹八分目に医者いらず！

This whole idea that removing feed subsidies = middle class no longer able to buy meat - is pure fantasy.

imabi Wrote:I'm fine with people wanting to make sure animals are being treated well, but I don't really care about this until all humans are treated fairly.

I'm fine with people wanting to make sure people don't get raped, but I don't really care about this until no humans are getting murdered.

kitakitsune Wrote:This whole idea that removing feed subsidies = middle class no longer able to buy meat - is pure fantasy.

The middle class gets along fine, its the lower class that doesn't. All those people working 1-2 jobs that are at fast food or wal mart inventory, what have you. Those people, and some of my friends fall in this category, can't even really afford to by vegetables and fresh produce. They spend all their money on bills and then maybe end up with $40-50 to live on for 2-3 weeks.

This kind of brings me to another point I never made in the previous post. But I suspect that much of the factory farming is propped by the prepackaged/microwavable food market, which poor households tend to buy a lot of.

EDIT: Oh and based on the growing trend. Those people that are middle class now, probably won't be in a few decades. The gap between upper and lower is growing and the people in the middle are getting pushed into one of the extremes.

Tzadeck Wrote:

imabi Wrote:I'm fine with people wanting to make sure animals are being treated well, but I don't really care about this until all humans are treated fairly.

I'm fine with people wanting to make sure people don't get raped, but I don't really care about this until no humans are getting murdered.

These are not the same things at all. Animals are not humans. Humans are far more important than some cow in a pasture.

imabi Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:

imabi Wrote:I'm fine with people wanting to make sure animals are being treated well, but I don't really care about this until all humans are treated fairly.

I'm fine with people wanting to make sure people don't get raped, but I don't really care about this until no humans are getting murdered.

These are not the same things at all. Animals are not humans. Humans are far more important than some cow in a pasture.

That wasn't my point dude. My argument style was analagous to yours, in the hope of showing you how ridiculous what you said sounds (i.e., it didn't have anything to do with how important I think animals are. I'm not arguing in favor of animal rights, as I have no opinion on the topic. I'm just pointing out that what you said is silly regardless of the topic). Basically, you said, "If difficult-to-solve-problem-A is not solved, I don't care about slightly-less-important-difficult-to-solve-problem-B." The fact is, all humans beings being treated fairly is an unachievable goal, so to ignore other goals based on the fact that it hasn't been solved is ridiculous and naive.

When you are faced with multiple important problems that are difficult to solve, you should do your best to work on them concurrently. And you shouldn't ignore one that's slightly less important just because a more important one exists. It's not like you're all that occupied solving the first problem--you just said in another thread that you would spend 100% of your time studying Japanese if you had the time.

It's not like I'm going to be able to work on either issue too, although my philanthropy class is going to distribute a big donation to charities, but they probably won't deal with animal rights. I really don't think my statement is stupid. Yes, it was silly. I've been parading through this thread. I'm trying to inject humor. I think it's very common for people to do just that.

Although subsidized farming and the meat industry are undoubtedly major threats to sustainability, the biggest threat is ourselves. There are simply too many of us influencing the environment in too many ways. Of course, this is not to say that it is not important to reduce our consumption of meat, but rather that the number one way to protect the environment is to not reproduce. If our numbers were fewer, our current dietary habits would be sustainable, albeit unhealthy. Additionally, population reduction appeals to those who refuse to change their diets: the imabis of the world. Regardless if they change their diets or not, population reduction would produce a more sustainable environment.

We certainly cannot suddenly sever all farming subsidies or impose child taxes, but such policies can be gradually implemented on the basis of research. Such a gradual implementation supported by careful research would help mitigate issues, such as protests, overnight bankruptcies (e.g. farms, supermarkets, suppliers, schools, day cares, etc.), or Social Security deficits. This strategy is the most effective and ethical way to proceed since it protects individual rights (dietary and parental freedoms), while protecting the collective right to live in a healthy and sustainable environment.

As for the moral issue of animal suffering, as I have mentioned elsewhere, only self-aware animals suffer in a morally relevant way. An animal that is not self-aware does not suffer when it does not live a "natural" life because it is morally equivalent to a plant and does not feel pain.

Non-self-aware animals and plants are morally equivalent because all life is sentient, i.e. equipped with some form of sensory, and therefore it is arbitrary to assign moral relevance to certain forms of sensory, such as the senses of touch and sight that many animals possess, but not others. Since the only apparent morally relevant difference between non-self-aware animals and plants is their sensory apparatuses (perhaps because it is much easier to sympathize with life forms that share common characteristics with us), it is inconsistent to view the cultivation and killing of one as wrong and the other as perfectly acceptable.

Regarding pain, self-awareness is a precondition for pain, and so animals lacking self-awareness cannot feel pain. It is hard to conceptualize this claim, so let me offer a thought experiment. Imagine that you are sleep-walking and you hit your head against the top of a door frame. You scream, touch your head, develop a bruise, and show all other signs we associate with having felt pain. Nonetheless, would it be accurate to say that you suffered? You experienced no self-awareness throughout the duration of the ordeal, and the event did not even enter your short-term memory. Surely, your suffering did not begin until you regained your self-awareness upon waking.

Nevertheless, I'm already aware of some glaring flaws in my argument. For example, if non-self-aware animals do not feel pain, then is it morally permissible for a doctor to rape a sedated patient? Although I think it's relevant that it is possible for the patient to be self-aware but not a chicken, I haven't the time to further explore the issue. So, I'll stop here and let others continue the discussion.

On a semi-related note: why is it natural when a non-human animal influences the lives of other animals, but unnatural when a human does the same? For example, why is it natural when a lamb is born in wolf territory and will surely be killed and eaten, but unnatural when another lamb is born in human territory and will surely be killed and eaten? Since when were humans excluded from nature? I think it's far more productive to think in terms of health and sustainability, rather than a muddled term like "nature", which is often misleadingly used to sympathetically refer to anything non-human.

vileru Wrote:We certainly cannot suddenly sever all farming subsidies or impose child taxes,

Except that the people that are straining the society by having too many kids are also the ones who are generally going to be unable to pay for a "child tax." As has been shown time and time again, if you want to decrease your country's birth rate, you do so by making everyone middle class. When people reach middle class and get money and education, they generally have fewer children.

Quote:On a semi-related note: why is it natural when a non-human animal influences the lives of other animals, but unnatural when a human does the same?

This is a line of thought I have had before on the issue as well. The only response I ever get to it is that "Well, Humans are sentient and intelligent and they have the choice of deciding to eat one thing vs another."

vix86 Wrote:

vileru Wrote:We certainly cannot suddenly sever all farming subsidies or impose child taxes,

Except that the people that are straining the society by having too many kids are also the ones who are generally going to be unable to pay for a "child tax." As has been shown time and time again, if you want to decrease your country's birth rate, you do so by making everyone middle class. When people reach middle class and get money and education, they generally have fewer children.

Good call! Hence my emphasis on careful research. The solution that seems the best is not always actually the best.

vix86 Wrote:

vileru Wrote:We certainly cannot suddenly sever all farming subsidies or impose child taxes,

Except that the people that are straining the society by having too many kids are also the ones who are generally going to be unable to pay for a "child tax." As has been shown time and time again, if you want to decrease your country's birth rate, you do so by making everyone middle class. When people reach middle class and get money and education, they generally have fewer children.

Remember though, that those children of the middle classes end up consuming more and using more resources through their lives though. The world could possibly support 20 billion people if everyone lived like people do in, say, Malawi. The world couldn't even support it's current population if everyone lived like a middle class American.

So yes, education is fantastic for bringing the birthrate down, and is going to be a major factor especially for developing countries moving forward. And we can all take a pledge to have 2 or less children, and adopt if we were hoping for a large family. http://www.populationmatters.org/what-yo...ly/pledge/

But we still need to cut our consumption of resources as well. That's the major problem of population in the developed world... every single birth in middle class America is probably worth around 5-10 lives in the developing world in terms of resource consumption.

vileru Wrote:We certainly cannot suddenly sever all farming subsidies or impose child taxes, but such policies can be gradually implemented on the basis of research.

That argument goes back to Malthus (1766-1834). Allegedly we'll run out of food because of population growth.

No matter what you think about that, our welfare and pensions systems are built on the assumption of a certain ratio of dependents to people paying in, and with too many pensioners and too few children you'd have to brutally cut pensions and medical care for old people. But old people vote, so it's politically difficult to cut pensions or medicare. We already have too few children in the developed world to sustain our populations, so if anything we need to encourage people to have children, or be willing to accept mass immigration of 2-3% per year from developing countries with a relatively younger population, meaning from Africa and India. Japan is the best example of a ticking demographic time bomb. That sort of works at cross-purposes with limiting the number of children for environmental reasons.

That aside, as a father I can tell you that in the US or Europe there is hardly any need for child taxes. For each child that you want to bring up with middle class standards, you're sacrificing between $250,000 and $500,000 dollars in income. That's how much it costs in food, clothing, daycare, needing a bigger apartment/house, school and college education.

On a different note, have you ever wondered why the countries with the cheapest food in relation to disposable income have the highest obesity rates? In the US and Canada people spend less than 15% of their disposable income on food, and more than 30% of adults are obese. In Japan and Korea food is much more expensive, especially beef, and obesity among adults is below 5%, and while rising in Japan, has apparently stabilized around 3-4% in Korea. I'm genuinely curious about the relationships here.
I'm not saying that the Japanese or Korean agricultural economy is a model (I'd be contradicting myself in the same thread).

@IceCream: While I'm not doubting what you are saying, I am bit curious how you are defining "resource consumption." Are we talking resources consumed by buying consumer goods (TVs, computers, cars, etc?) or food? Because if its the latter, then I would need a bit of a break down. If you google "obesity income" you get a lot of links pointing to studies/news articles referencing a strong correlation between low income households and obesity rates. Now this could just be a matter of poorer households not exercising enough and/or having poor nutrition, but its still something that stands out as at odds with "middle class consumes more."

That said, the "poor" in most developed countries still have better lifestyles and consume more than third world countries. I think people just need to realize that resource consumption (ie: Energy) is not going to go down and that the sooner people realize this and accept it, the sooner we can mobilize and find newer sources. Running out of iron and minerals? Develop a space program and mine some asteroids. Running out of fossil fuels? Renewable energy + fusion. No trees? Genetically engineer rapid growing species. Etc. Etc. I think its a lot harder (if not impossible) to put something back into the box (curb resource consumption) once its out. Its easier to just work around or forward with what we have instead.

@Irixmark
That's why I said the population reduction policies should be based on solid research, so that it occurs at a pace that won't strain the economy.

@vix86
Stable, unchanging conditions is the major faulty assumption I drew in my suggestions above. Unfortunately, current conditions must be assumed because they're the only conditions that are certain; it's hard to predict when, or if, biological engineers will successfuly produce fast-growing, high-yielding crops. So, you're absolutely correct that there is much potential for current problems to be solved by technological innovation. However, this potential does not preclude that we should abandon more readily available, conventional methods.

vileru Wrote:As for the moral issue of animal suffering, as I have mentioned elsewhere, only self-aware animals suffer in a morally relevant way. An animal that is not self-aware does not suffer when it does not live a "natural" life because it is morally equivalent to a plant and does not feel pain.

Non-self-aware animals and plants are morally equivalent because all life is sentient, i.e. equipped with some form of sensory, and therefore it is arbitrary to assign moral relevance to certain forms of sensory, such as the senses of touch and sight that many animals possess, but not others. Since the only apparent morally relevant difference between non-self-aware animals and plants is their sensory apparatuses (perhaps because it is much easier to sympathize with life forms that share common characteristics with us), it is inconsistent to view the cultivation and killing of one as wrong and the other as perfectly acceptable.

I'd say this is plain wrong. Going by the normal definition of sentience (consciousness/ the ability to feel pleasure or pain) *most* animals are regarded as sentient. However when it comes to some of the lower animals such as insects, oysters, shrimp etc it gets more difficult to know, and then when it comes to plants, no scientist seriously claims that they possess sentience, merely that they have chemical reactions.

The claim that animals don't feel pain is downright ludicrous, an idea that befits society of two-hundred years ago. It's proven that pigs are smarter than children up to around the age of three, would you seriously claim that toddlers don't feel pain? Fortunately, the empathy that any normal person is endowed with means that arguments such as this don't even need to be taken seriously; you can recognise the moral difference between 'harvesting' a lamb, and harvesting a broccoli.

Pigs are smarter than children up to the age of 3 is bullshit. I don't think anyone should think that animals don't feel pain, but so do people. People are much more important than all other animals combined.

The age of a child when it's in its first years is consumed by language acquisition, which then the brain starts to refigure to work on other things. However, a child is intuitive, clever, has emotions, and can think...things that I would never attribute to a damn pig that's going to become my bacon.

Pigs, cows, chicken, fish, etc. are meant to eat. Plain and simple. If you don't want to eat them, fine. But, leave the meat for people to eat like me without any regrets. I'm rather libertarian on this issue. I don't give a shit if something is unhealthy if I like how it tastes. Everything in moderation.

What's wrong about harvesting lamb? I don't eat lamb, but I know people that do. If people want to be a vegetarian, sobeit. If someone wants to become a carnivore in essence, sobeit. Cows and what not can be treated better for making healthier products, but this will happen in due time with higher expectations of the public.

In due time many of these issues mentioned here will hopefully not be issues.

thecite Wrote:The claim that animals don't feel pain is downright ludicrous, an idea that befits society of two-hundred years ago. It's proven that pigs are smarter than children up to around the age of three, would you seriously claim that toddlers don't feel pain? Fortunately, the empathy that any normal person is endowed with means that arguments such as this don't even need to be taken seriously; you can recognise the moral difference between 'harvesting' a lamb, and harvesting a broccoli.

I didn't make the claim that animals don't feel pain. I explicitly, and quite carefully, stated that only animals capable of self-awareness feel pain (e.g. great apes, dolphins, elephants, etc.). And while pigs may be smarter than young children in certain respects, such measurements are not sufficient for self-awareness. In addition, emotional appeals to the stronger empathy we feel towards animals than plants do not settle the question whether non-self-aware animals experience pain the same way we do.

From your criticisms, it seems like you neither read the rest of my argument nor noted the nuances and careful distinctions I drew. If you care to challenge my thought experiment and argue why non-self-aware animals are not similar to my sleep walker example, I will gladly be open to persuasion. However, denigrating my argument as old-fashioned and crazy will do little to convince me. In the search for truth, conventional thinking is an obstacle.

vix86 Wrote:@IceCream: While I'm not doubting what you are saying, I am bit curious how you are defining "resource consumption." Are we talking resources consumed by buying consumer goods (TVs, computers, cars, etc?) or food? Because if its the latter, then I would need a bit of a break down. If you google "obesity income" you get a lot of links pointing to studies/news articles referencing a strong correlation between low income households and obesity rates. Now this could just be a matter of poorer households not exercising enough and/or having poor nutrition, but its still something that stands out as at odds with "middle class consumes more."

Sorry, yeah, i wasn't clear enough. I wasn't referring to food specifically here, I was referring to resources in general, including energy, water, and space consumption, of which food production is only one part.

The types of subsidies talked about in this thread are going to skew the numbers on food a bit so the lower classes are consuming more than they would otherwise. Even so, even your average working class American is probably consuming way more than their fair share of the earth's resources right now.

vix86 Wrote:That said, the "poor" in most developed countries still have better lifestyles and consume more than third world countries. I think people just need to realize that resource consumption (ie: Energy) is not going to go down and that the sooner people realize this and accept it, the sooner we can mobilize and find newer sources. Running out of iron and minerals? Develop a space program and mine some asteroids. Running out of fossil fuels? Renewable energy + fusion. No trees? Genetically engineer rapid growing species. Etc. Etc. I think its a lot harder (if not impossible) to put something back into the box (curb resource consumption) once its out. Its easier to just work around or forward with what we have instead.

If the problems with resource consumption were only about energy, i might agree here. Unfortunately, it's not. Whether we like it or not, the earth does have a carrying capacity, just like every other environment. Technical solutions are going to be absolutely crucial, just like they have been for the past 50 years. But they aren't even close to solving all our problems. (And even where they're doing a pretty good job, people still reject them, such as GM foods).

For example, you can't engineer us more space. Space is a finite resource. We can use the space we have more or less efficiently, and technology is a big part of that. But choosing what we use the space for is equally important. The simple fact of it is that using it to grow meat is not a particularly efficient way of going about things, and we couldn't support the world's population eating meat to the extent that Americans do even now. We could continue to cut down rainforests to increase our capacity to grow meat (for a while anyway), but that endangers other systems that ultimately we are reliant on for our survival.

Water is also a growing problem. Here again, finding a technical solution is going to be absolutely imperative. It's estimated that 2/3rds of the world's population will be living in areas of water stress by 2050. At the moment we use a significant proportion of our fresh water for farming meat. I read that 1 pound of beef is equivalent to about 6 months worth of 7 minute showers a day.

Even where technical solutions are possible, quite often they end up causing more problems. For example, de-salifying salt water leaves you with piles of salt there is no use for. Putting it back in the ocean causes environmental damage and ultimately higher costs of de-salination. Modern farming practices have caused land degradation and water contamination.

http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/faqs.html

I guess it's better to think of changing the way we use resources rather "cutting" resource consumption. In a lot of cases, it's just a matter of changing culture, which is definitely NOT impossible. Think how much attitudes have changed just in our lifetime. It's definitely doable, especially if we don't think of it as an all or nothing choice.

p.s. This isn't just all theory. The struggle over land and water resources has already started, with land grabs going on as we speak. If we don't cut our resource consumption (or change the way we are using resources) we will become directly responsible for the starvation of millions of people. http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/pressroom/p...ion-people
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop...sfeed=true
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop...intcmp=239

IceCream Wrote:Yes, overpopulation is one of the most severe problems the world is facing right now, as it has a knock on effect on close to every other critical issue of our times. Remember that if everyone on earth lived as Americans do, we would need about 5 planets to support us all.

The United States exports more food than it imports. If everyone on earth lived as Americans do, we would have a global food surplus.

vileru Wrote:I didn't make the claim that animals don't feel pain. I explicitly, and quite carefully, stated that only animals capable of self-awareness feel pain (e.g. great apes, dolphins, elephants, etc.). And while pigs may be smarter than young children in certain respects, such measurements are not sufficient for self-awareness. In addition, emotional appeals to the stronger empathy we feel towards animals than plants do not settle the question whether non-self-aware animals experience pain the same way we do.

From your criticisms, it seems like you neither read the rest of my argument nor noted the nuances and careful distinctions I drew. If you care to challenge my thought experiment and argue why non-self-aware animals are not similar to my sleep walker example, I will gladly be open to persuasion. However, denigrating my argument as old-fashioned and crazy will do little to convince me. In the search for truth, conventional thinking is an obstacle.

I apologise if I misinterpreted your views. However, your argument that self-awareness is a prerequisite for feeling pain is false. Although I think there's an argument that could be made that non-self-aware animals experience pain *differently* to self-aware animals, it's generally accepted that non-self-aware animals on a basic level can feel pain and pleasure, prefer to avoid pain and prefer to experience pleasure.

I brought up plants because it sounded as if you were grouping non-self-aware animals and plants together, a view which I believe to be untenable. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with your thought experiment. Even if the pain non-self-aware animals experience were comparable with that of a sleep walker (or a baby, or a severely mentally disabled person for that matter), which may well be true, would that make it any more acceptable to inflict pain on them?

imabi: I've read your posts up until I now and I feel that any attempt to communicate with you on this issue would be pointless. Your mind is made up.

Corodon Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:Yes, overpopulation is one of the most severe problems the world is facing right now, as it has a knock on effect on close to every other critical issue of our times. Remember that if everyone on earth lived as Americans do, we would need about 5 planets to support us all.

The United States exports more food than it imports. If everyone on earth lived as Americans do, we would have a global food surplus.

I can see how you arrive at that conclusion, but the reasoning is faulty. It doesn't make sense to look at it as a simple trade balance, because that doesn't take into account the resources being used to produce the food.

A lot of the measures of this are in terms of population to energy consumption atm (i made it clearer in the next post that i was referring to resource consumption in general rather than food consumption).

This is from 2007, so it's a little outdated, but you can see a straightforward example of this here: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/population_energy

In fact, you should be extremely worried if the USA didn't manage a trade surplus in food, simply because it does have so much space per person. e.g.
http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/po...ed_kingdom

vix86 Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:That's exactly the thing: It's the unsustainable consumption rates of livestock itself that is the main root of all the problems.

I would love to hear actual number for what environmentalists actually consider "sustainable" consumption that non-detremental. Stuff like "A person/family eating x pounds of beef/steak a week, and x pounds of chicken a week versus current amounts of Y and Z. Would be sustainable and trim back the carbon footprint." These are easier for people to meet and for people to check and see if they are consuming too much.

I guess we could make some reasonable target estimates, though making any real calculations would be incredibly complex. Qualitative decisions (such as the method used to produce the food, and how far away it was grown) are going to make quite big differences.

from one of Aijin's links: http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithA...icle_id=92

"Scientists agree that in order to keep GHG emissions to 2000 levels the projected 9 billion inhabitants of the world (in 2050) need to each consume no more than 70-90 grams (McMichael et al. 2007, Barclay 2011) of meat per day."

So, aiming for that level might be a good start. We can reassess again once more energy is produced from renewable sources.

There's a nice graphic here showing the carbon footprint of various foods:


It would be nice to have a rough number of how many kg of carbon to aim for from food production per person per week then decide how much meat we can eat based on that though. I'll see if i can find an estimate for that anywhere...

EDIT: Right. I found rough numbers for the UK, but it doesn't seem realistic to use them...

Average for carbon emissions per person in the UK is around 10 tonnes per year, about 1/5th of which is from food. We are aiming to get to 2.2 tonnes. 1/5th of 2.2 tonnes is 0.44 tonnes. Divided by 52 weeks is (rounded) 8.5kg per week.

So, i think that graphic must show too high numbers, or the 10 tonnes figure must be too low. It might be useful for ratios of what you can eat though (e.g. 1kg of beef is equal to roughly 4kg of chicken).