True, but if you cut back on your computer usage you can do the same thing, and you'll probably be more productive for it. That argument can be made for anyone.

Secondly you don't account for the fact that cutting back on meat consumption implies that I am consuming copious amounts of meat. While I do eat meat frequently, I don't eat it -every day- and I don't eat only one kind of meat either.

I'm pretty liberal. I support the climate change prevention movement, I support evolution as fact, I support biology as explanations for the way our world works.

I don't really support not purchasing meat in order to somehow combat 'the industry'.

If I was going to beat the industry I would, like I said and like I do, purchase meat from free range farms and from organic sources raised by local farmers from my farmer's market.

Similarly to if you wanted to support good movies, you would purchase good movies and not bad ones. If you don't purchase any movies, and instead buying CDs (good or bad), well then you're not really making a vote at all on your opinions on movies.

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If our evolution depended on knowledge and logic alone we'd be enjoying peace throughout the planet and we would be travelling the stars already. Unfortunately it isn't that simple: we are both blessed and cursed with the "consciousness" thing.

Quote:Then I begin to see that eating a piece of beef and eating a head of lettuce are both the consumption of Life. If the life being taken has been honored, cared for, given proper respect, then the act of eating becomes about unity and connection to other life forms, which is the underlying truth of existence on this planet.

From Rethinking Veganism

I do think if people were forced to kill their own meals, there would be far more vegetarians, and the question of whether a pig or a head of lettuce is more likely to suffer as a result would no longer be debated. Plus the head of lettuce is going to rot in the soil shortly after anyways.

There was one day as a teenager that changed the way I viewed animals as far as their capacity for emotion. My friend and I were out in the forest shooting our shotguns (I had three as a child). He shot a bird out of the tree, but it had a mate that dove immediately down to her newly deceased partner. She seemed to be going crazy flapping her wings and jumping around him completely unafraid for her own life as we approached. My friend cried in shame by what had he had just done. Neither of us really thought about animals having families that could be broken up or mourned over the way a human could. We never took our guns into the forest again though.

It can be argued animals have been doing this to each other every day since the beginning of time, but the reality hits when you contribute to it in such an intimate way, especially out of sport.

I find comparisons of animals to vegetables to be frankly insulting to common sense.
I could just as easily say: "Then I begin to see that eating a piece of human and eating a head of lettuce are both the consumption of Life." You wouldn't bother to laugh.
Anyway, bodhisamaya summed it up very articulately.

@zachandhobbes: here's the wiki article on the environmental impact of meat production. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment...production

obviously, if you're already buying local, you're not encouraging the destroying of rainforests, which is one good thing.

The way that reducing consumption impacts the industry is just through the economic principle of supply and demand. If the supply of meat outweighs the demand, then farmers reduce their livestock and use land in other ways.

The basic idea is that almost all meat consumption is above what is necessary for healthy human living, especially of red meats, and is a wasteful and harmful to the environment in a lot of different ways. So, it's not about assuming that you're eating copious amounts of meat, just that we can all probably find ways to cut our meat consumption a little more.

Becoming vegetarian or vegan is extremely difficult for a lot of people, i think, just because meat tastes so good!!! So, i think that just making the choices with this thought in mind and choosing other options where you can, without going to extremes about it is something most people can do without any real issue, and strikes a nice balance...

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The thing is people don't change their habits after being made guilty of something. All you get is resistance and more apathy. That's why I prefer the middle way.

As of today cutting out meat entirely is not a practical proposition. Yes, you can do it, but then you have to replace it with something nutritionally equivalent, and with all the processed, canned, recomposed, "enhanced" etc. food you have in your average grocery store, it is not all that easy.

When I read some materials about vegetarianism there were things I never even thought of. Did you know for example that we still use rennet for the production of cheese? It's pretty mind boggling to think today in 2011 with the technology we have, that we continue to use animal parts for such simple things as making cheese.

Next time I went shopping I checked the labels, and sure enough, there were a few alternatives without animal rennet. It was as simple as acknowledging something and picking another kind of cheese which tastes just as good.

bodhisamaya Wrote:I do think if people were forced to kill their own meals, there would be far more vegetarians, and the question of whether a pig or a head of lettuce is more likely to suffer as a result would no longer be debated. Plus the head of lettuce is going to rot in the soil shortly after anyways.

That idea has been disproved by history many times over. The fact that in the past more people killed animals to eat and also there were less vegetarians. Most people had to hunt, skin and prepare the animals all on their own, yet most of them never turned vegetarian even though they could of planted enough crop to feed themselves plenty.

Whether or not one finds humans killing animals for sustenance immoral or not I will leave up to their moral compass, but what I cannot leave as a question of subjective morality is the degree of cruelty that is involved in the modern animal industries. People that eat meat are by no means evil, immoral people, and I imagine that the vast majority of the population is blissfully ignorant of all the details of their food, and are more than happy to stay that way. If everytime someone ate bacon they were forced to watch the entire process, from birth to slaughter, of how that bacon got on their plate, how many people wouldn't second-guess whether or not they're still going to take a bite? The problem is that there is a complete emotional and intellectual disconnect from the food and its source. All you have to see is the finished product, packaged, and on your plate, and dig in. You do not have to see the animal's hellish, torturous life, nor know every other detail of where your food came from; all you have to do is grab your fork.

And this is despicable. We're all guilty of it, myself included, but the simple fact that everyone bathes in blissful ignorance does not excuse it. As I mentioned before, the U.S. meat industry slaughters 10 billion animals every single year. Let that number sink in. All of those lives experiencing cruelty, suffering, and nothing short of a turtorous existence, and why? None of those things are necessary for the food production, but are simply symptoms of a system where animals are treated as product in a factory setting, without regard to their well-being, pain, or life. The only bottom line is the revenue of the meat industry.

And we, the consumers, are responsible for letting this continue. A system where slaughtered animals can live decent lives devoid of the agony and suffering they experience currently is entirely feasible, and the only consequence would be an increase in costs and a decrease in the animals produced. God forbid that we pay a few dollars more for our meat. No, far better that we spend less on meat, so then we can have extra money to buy our big screen TVs and video games, at the cost of ten billion animals virtually being tortured every single year.

That emotional disconect is the same problem for many other consumer fields, where we have no problem buying clothing produced in sweat shops, supporting major corporations that endanger the environment and are responsible for a host of other ethically skewed acts, and all because we don't perceive it as directly affecting us. Selfish ignorance. This also applies to politics, where we're all happy to let our countries go to hell because we can't be damned to get off our asses and do anything about it.

Also, I'm not understanding the diet arguments in this thread at all. It's been a while since I took classes on nutrition and did thorough research on these topics, but unless there's been sound groundbreaking research in the past year that says otherwise, vegan and vegetarian diets are perfectly healthy when done right, and are acknowledged as such by all major nutritional and dietary establishments.

My post in a single sentence: Let's all stop being lazy asses and try to make the world a better place, especially when it requires little effort on our part.

The crux of the issue is this:

Humans eat meat by instinct. As someone mentioned, even as hunters and nomads, we ate meat even though we could have replaced it completely with crops.

By this logic, most people in the world will want to eat meat. Some will go vegetarian for whatever various reasons, but you will regardless have a large population of meat eaters.

This causes a problem because of the way the food chain works and how we are the top of the food chain. Typically the bottom of the food chain is the most plentiful and the top is the most sparse in terms of biomass because each level needs more and more sustenance per organism so it is not sustainable to have more predators than prey in terms of biomass and energy.

However as humans we have put ourselves in the position of the ultimate predator. Because of this we were able to sustain ourselves to a gigantic population through intense farming (livestock and crops). Turns out, we're abusing the animals and raping the land and habitats.

Now that we have this gigantic population, there's not much we can do about it. We will continue to consume massive amounts of food and it will continue to be impractical to tell everyone to raise their own cattle. It will even be impractical to tell everyone to go to the farmers market, because in many parts of the world where humans inhabit, animals can't live and grow naturally for consumption (especially considering those parts of the world are usually cities, with high need for food).

It's a lot more complicated than "We're disconnected from the animal, and we should feel bad about it and make change!!"

There are a lot of ecological and biological problems with the situation we are in.

Why do you feel that meat consumption is instinctual rather than conditioned through our environments? We human beings are incredible in that nearly every quantity and quality we possess is created through acculturation; our parents and social groups consume X, and therefore X becomes the norm of consumption. Taste preferences in the modern age are entirely subjective to individual cultures, nothing instinctual about it; children will eat what they are feed, and those food groups become their norm.

I simply can't fathom any excuse to let the meat industry continue operating this way. What necessity is there? We have more than enough land, technology, and resources to ensure that animals slaughtered for consumption live out decent lives. I'll leave the statistics to someone more versed in them, since it's been well over a year since I went over all this with my cultural anthropology professor, but the bottom line is that the high number of our global population is no excuse for the meat industries to be so streamlined. It is done purely for their profit at the suffering of the animals, without any necessity involved; our planet is capable of feeding far, far more people than are currently alive, without exploiting and abusing both the environment and the animals. The problem is cost, and yes, that is in our power as the consumers.

As consumers we have the choice of whether or not we financially support these practices, as the corporations cannot exist without our cash in their pockets. And as you say: for many farmers markets and better sources of animal products are not readily available. But to me that's not exactly a valid excuse. If one doesn't have the means to find meat or animal products that weren't created at the suffering of animals, then don't eat animal products until you have access to those resources. Period. People will not keel over if they miss out on their daily BigMac. Ultimately whether or not one is willing to contribute to animal cruelty simply to satisfy their own taste preferences with ten minutes of pleasure while they chomp on their burger, despite the fact that the same nutritional content and neurochemical joy can be obtained from sources that don't rely on animals being tortured, is up to their individual morality.

It's a complex issue like anything else, but saying that we don't have the power to change it, as consumers, is simply giving ourselves an excuse to continue indulging in these practices rather than doing something about it.

Aijin Wrote:Why do you feel that meat consumption is instinctual rather than conditioned through our environments? We human beings are incredible in that nearly every quantity and quality we possess is created through acculturation; our parents and social groups consume X, and therefore X becomes the norm of consumption. Taste preferences in the modern age are entirely subjective to individual cultures, nothing instinctual about it; children will eat what they are feed, and those food groups become their norm.

This is kind of true but kind of false--normally human instincts show themselves as tendencies throughout different cultures. For example, if you wanted to define human sexuality, you would give features like: humans have sex in private; the father of a child plays some role in helping to raise it; men and women have sex even when the woman is not ovulating; humans often have sex for recreation; one man and one woman often make a bonding pair (marriage) for a long time throughout their life.

Now, in some cultures this varies quite a bit. For example, you get cultures where polygamy or polyandry are legal. There are situations where people do sexual things in public that are considered acceptable by the culture. In some cultures the man plays more or less of a role in raising the child. Yet, human sexuality for the most part follows these tendencies even across cultures. Even in countries where polygamy is legal, or having sex in public is legal, people for the most part only have sex in private and only take one spouse.

It's just that it's much more difficult in humans to determine what is instinct and what is culture. A tendency could be from instinct, or it could be just a popular way of thinking that has spread to many cultures. I'm not sure about eating meat. It's possible to choose to not eat meat, but it's also possible to choose to be celibate--and celibacy is obviously contrary to instinct. In fact, much like not eating meat, a lot of people think that celibacy is the most moral way to live.

Not that I'm arguing about the problem of this thread really--I was a philosophy major and in the long run have just accepted that ethical norms are irrational, will always be irrational, and that trying to talk about them in a rational way is fruitless. I gave up on metaphysics and ethics.

This is getting into psychology and the topic of a collective unconscious.

I don't think it's really that deep.

Just look at human ancestors. They all consumed meat - we know this to be true because if they didn't eat meat then they wouldn't have developed such powerful jaws that could consume not only plants but meat as well, efficiently.

I should add in that I didn't say we don't have the power to change it. In fact I have been against that belief the whole time.

What I DON'T believe helps change the issue is going vegetarian. I'll repeat myself again : a minority of people going vegetarian won't put a single dent in the industry, and pigs will fly before enough people go vegetarian for it to make a difference.

What WILL make a difference and -is possible- is making smart decisions with the meat we buy, such as from local farms and organic/free range farmers. This encourages exactly what we want because we are using our purchasing power to invest in these smaller farmers.

Going vegetarian takes a little away from industry and gives nothing to the little guys.
Going organic takes a little away from the industry, and a lot to the little guys.

Tzadeck Wrote:I was a philosophy major and in the long run have just accepted that ethical norms are irrational, will always be irrational, and that trying to talk about them in a rational way is fruitless. I gave up on metaphysics and ethics.

If by "irrational" you mean 'value-based', then I don't see what the big deal is. Even science, the paradigm of objectivity, is value-based and largely arbitrary (see Thomas Kuhn and Bas Van Fraassen for more explanation). And despite the efforts of the logical positivists, Quine, and company, I think both ethics and metaphysics survived as serious fields of inquiry thanks to the likes of Anscombe, Kripke, and others. I definitely recommend taking a look at the literature. Very few philosophers still think that philosophy is simply logical or linguistic analysis.

vileru Wrote:If by "irrational" you mean 'value-based', then I don't see what the big deal is. Even science, the paradigm of objectivity, is value-based and largely arbitrary (see Thomas Kuhn and Bas Van Fraassen for more explanation). And despite the efforts of the logical positivists, Quine, and the like, I think both ethics and metaphysics survived as serious fields of inquiry thanks to the likes of Anscombe, Kripke, and others. I definitely recommend taking a look at the literature. Very few philosophers still think that philosophy is simply logical or linguistic analysis.

I'm not going to see Thomas Kuhn or Bas Van Fraassen--it's too hard to get a hold of stuff like that in Japan. So if you want me to understand then explain it.

I've read the logical postivists, and I've also read Anscombe and Kripke--in fact I really like logical positivism AND both Anscombe and Kripke (though, for Kripke, I admit I've only read Naming and Necessity, but I find it pretty entertaining). I'm aware of the current trends in philosophy, though I know I've gotten rusty after three years in Japan with little access to books.

Actually, in terms of ethics I found a lot of pragmatists to have the most interesting ideas--I liked constructivist ethics, but it never really caught on in philosophy beyond a meta-ethical idea. I'd refer you to good essays about it, but I don't have any of my philosophy stuff wth me and I can't remember which ones were good or even the names of some of the authors. I actually probably know more about consequentialist ethics than anything however, since my thesis dealt with it.

I guess the thing is that any ethical system that requires people to be rational is supererogatory. People just don't make ethical decisions in a rational way, and it's probably impossible to get a large number of peope to think rationally about the ethical problems they face in their lives. So if you say "It's immoral to eat meat because the arguments against eating meat are more rational" it's just not a type of immorality that has a lot of meaning. You can't call people immoral for failing to go against their culture in favor of rational thought, because it's just not going to happen.

But at a deeper level, I think there's very often just no real answer. That's a big problem with anything that can't be determined empirically (you can tell that to a certain extent I still relate to the logical positivists). Or even if we all choose consequentialist ethics, and agree on the end point we're trying to achieve, it's just not possible to know the right path thanks to limited knowledge.

Changes in ethical norms usually are by way of slow changing cultural memes, some people go along with them earlier than others and some of them never catch on.

(Edit: I realize that this makes it sound like I would be okay with slavery or sexism in the context of the past, but actually not really. I can explain constructivist ethics to some degree if people want me to, which would kind of explain my thoughts on that.

Also, metaphysics always was and always wil be stupid, and don't let any contemporary philosophers tell you otherwise.)

A great essay which touches on the issue of people supporting free range etc with their dollar:
http://www.vgt.at/publikationen/texte/ar...dex_en.php

Also, a great speech which has been circulating on facebook recently:

I'm not here to sit and criticize your opinions or your arguments, but you have to get real.

If we don't 'enslave' animals (which isn't slavery, it's consumption), then we'll just 'enslave' plants.

Face it : human population is as big as it is because we are not nomadic, we settled down. We sit here and plant things and raise crops and livestock because we can be way more efficient for it. We can have electricity, we can have houses, we can have tables and chairs and cups and glasses and plastic because we utilize the world around us.

By doing some kind of "Animal Rights: They don't deserve to be eaten" campaign we are just defying nature, and besides, they'll just continue eating each other anyway.

He says multiple strange things:
"Animals are machines" because we eat them and kill them.
"If they can smell see and hear, then they must have a conscious just like humans"
"They're killing you [because they are advertising meat]"
"You're not a caveman, stop acting like Neanderthals, give it up. It's not cute, and it's not funny... it is not your right, or your freedom to do this to them."

He sounds like a self-righteous PETA spewing activist who probably hasn't taken a simple biology class.

One organism will eat the producers. Then an organism will eat that organism. It goes up the chain. Meet humans. We're at the top. We eat all of those animals under us, and have evolved to be able to eat plants too.

We're going to eat animals.

He has some good points about animal abuse, but like 99% of vegetarians who are so because of animal abuse, they sit and deny any possibility that there are ANY alternatives to intense industrial capitalist farming.

I'm reading that article you wrote, thecite.

It also seems presumptuous in the fact that "the answer" is 100% veganism.

It doesn't offer the alternative that we can live and coexist in harmony with our livestock and underlings in the food chain, and treat them with respect (which does happen if you look for the right farmers), it simply implies that any form of animal consumption is downright unethical, evil, and imperfect.

There are so many reasons in science and biology why that statement is extremely ridiculous and hilarious and heretical to say, down to the most basic fact that one organism eats another, regardless if you tell them "that's not nice" because it's survival of the fittest. As the intelligent species of the planet we do have more responsibilities because we create new problems (such as industrial farms) so we need to balance respect and proper treatment of the animals and our survival and consumption.

Yes, of course I believe veganism is the moral choice, otherwise I wouldn't be a vegan.
Comparing insentient plants to animals is ridiculous and I'm not even going to argue it (although I already have in previous posts). Your nature argument makes no sense. Saying it's morally acceptable to exploit animals merely because it's 'natural' is a terrible argument. Try applying that logic to rape.

Anyway, if we're going to talk about animal rights, I suggest you watch the video that I posted earlier (which you obviously ignored):
http://www.vimeo.com/4808525

Edit: grammatical error.

There must be a term like Godwin's Law for when threads about meat-eating give rise to misuse of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’.

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One of the craziest footage I remember is some area in the US where they raise cattle. It was shot from a helicopter. Imagine a bird's eye view of thousands of cattle and not a single blade of grass...

ファブリス Wrote:One of the craziest footage I remember is some area in the US where they raise cattle. It was shot from a helicopter. Imagine a bird's eye view of thousands of cattle and not a single blade of grass...

Perhaps this:

?

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It wasn't that one, but close. I wonder if it was in HOME.

nest0r Wrote:There must be a term like Godwin's Law for when threads about meat-eating give rise to misuse of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’.

Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubivore:_S...he_Fittest

Thought I'd copy this slashdot comment as it's relevant to the debate:

pinkushun Wrote:- Soybeans can produce at least twice as much protein per acre as any other major vegetable or grain crop, [1]

- 5 to 10 times more protein per acre than land set aside for grazing animals to make milk, [1]

- and up to *15 times* more protein per acre than land set aside for meat production. [1]

- soy farms _has_ encouraged Amazon deforestation [3]

- Ninety-eight percent of soy grown in the U.S. is used for livestock feed. [2]

Although soy has encouraged deforestation, a sad fact, this may have been avoided if consideration was given to the fact that fifteen fold more food could have been produced, if processed for human consumption, and not for cattle.

This is a _huge_ ratio. For sake of our example, and in a most extreme case, producing meat for 9 billion people (estimated for 2050), we could be effectively be substituting that with plant protein at 9 billion mouths x 15 fold = 135 billion people fed.

Keep in mind, scientifically, what our bodies need and don't need. I don't want a debate of morality.

That's one extreme. For the other, even if we figure in a huge gap for the sake of example, that value halved to 67 million, is still huge. Heck, even a tenth of the possible output would able us to provide more consumable protein than we need in 2050.

From a practical, scientific view, does this make sense?

Naturally there are issues like infrastructure, bureaucracy, fingers-in-pies and control over industry that won't make this possible yet, but I'd like to hear your thoughts!

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-NSRL_4-0 [wikipedia.org]
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cit...nnica_26-1 [wikipedia.org]
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#cite_ref-23 [wikipedia.org]

One thing that greatly annoys me is when people looking to change the system don't take into consideration things like a middle ground, or consequences of action, or plain being unreasonable.

It's much easier to get someone to stop eating meat on Tuesdays and Thursdays than to get them to stop eating meat forever, cold turkey (pun not intended.) And let's consider their methods of 'guilt-trip, guilt-trip, you're a completely bad person, do this or we'll hate you! You're always wrong and we're always right!' Who wants to agree with that? Every time someone spouts info about why I should stop eating meat like it's the end of the world if I don't stop right now makes me want to eat another burger. This coming from a guy who wants to go more or less Vegan due to wanting a healthier diet.

And most of the reasons I see given to switch is how it will benefit everything else, but me. You're telling me to make a sacrifice, so what's in it for me? Most of the time the reason is 'So you won't be a sinner anymore.' I'd rather hear how it'll benefit me personally that it's worth making the switch.

If enemies are going to fight against what you want, why make more?

thecite Wrote:Yes, of course I believe veganism is the moral choice, otherwise I wouldn't be a vegan.
Comparing insentient plants to animals is ridiculous and I'm not even going to argue it (although I already have in previous posts). Your nature argument makes no sense. Saying it's morally acceptable to exploit animals merely because it's 'natural' is a terrible argument. Try applying that logic to rape.

Anyway, if we're going to talk about animal rights, I suggest you watch the video that I posted earlier (which you obviously ignored):
http://www.vimeo.com/4808525

Gary Francione's animal rights theory is as stupid as Peter Singer's. They both just start with the assumption that whether something can have an experience is important. Francione in particular is focused on the fact that any sentient organism has an interest in not dying. EVERY organism has an interest in not dying, and whether they are sentient is a weak way to differentiate.

You seem to think everyone shares some baseline set of morals, but they don't. For example, I don't think there's anything more wrong with cannibalism than with eating a different species. I wouldn't kill a person or a chicken, but I would just as soon eat a dead person as a dead chicken.

And rape is not necessarily morally wrong, since any moral judgement depends on your morals. It is widespread in nature and in humanity, but it's certainly socially wrong because human society couldn't function if it weren't illegal. [Before you or anyone flips out about this, I'm not saying rape is fine, I'm saying you can't assume everyone thinks it's morally wrong, although it's clearly wrong for other reasons]. So it isn't the same as saying it's morally acceptable to exploit animals because it's natural, because there's no threat to society from exploitation of animals.

Once again, it's not ridiculous to suggest that plants have some form of experience which is not similar to our own, because cellular and interactions and information exchanges in plants are at least as complex as ours.

So finally, why should I (or anyone) think sentience is important? Why does an organism which is aware that it doesn't want to die more important than one which has evolved in the same way to preserve its life, has the exact same reason for existing (i.e. none), and has the same goal (i.e. procreation).

edit: I'm not trolling, and maybe this should split to a separate thread.