Killing animals by destroying their environment to get ground for soybeans is another form of cruelty. I wouldn’t be surprised by pumas (cougars for the americans, I don’t know how those beutiful animals are called on other places) supporting the intensive livestock.
Killing animals by destroying their environment to get ground for soybeans is another form of cruelty. I wouldn’t be surprised by pumas (cougars for the americans, I don’t know how those beutiful animals are called on other places) supporting the intensive livestock.
True though I think that’s a long shot argument ... I think if we (all of us) really cared so much about our animals brethren we should reduce our population by a factor of, maybe, 3 (a thousandth of what it is now) but IMO none of are truly that altruistic, we simply care about the relatively isolated things we do and the truth is that none of these things truly exist in isolation.
True though I think that’s a long shot argument ... I think if we (all of us) really cared so much about our animals brethren we should reduce our population by a factor of, maybe, 3 (a thousandth of what it is now)
Although I don’t have the exact figures, I tend to think that trying to feed 6b persons with animal friendly productions methods is almost imposible. Living in a country where agriculture is very important and a very important source of money, I am not ready to easily accept that thethe process to make ground available for agriculture is not cruel, but, on the other hand, the demand for food on the world is increasing (the current prices are a good proof of it) so I don’t see any simple solution.
(BTW, I don’t understand what does the expression ‘long shot argument’ mean. If you don’t mind to explain it… )
killing an animal is not the only way it can suffer.
I do agree with this point and should thank you for bringing it up. The avoidance of the infliction of suffering upon animals is my main reason for being a vegetarian and for taking an interest in animal rights and welfare. IMO killing and eating animals is not generally so bad as the suffering that often goes with it. Of course, what constitutes suffering is a complex topic in the case of animals, and there are surely differences in the way and degree to which different species are capable of suffering.
I must concede that this is a topic in which my views depart quite a bit from those of most members of PETA. But to be fair to PETA, I think that this problem is shared by most all animal rights/welfare activists and organizations. Most animal rights organizations tend to treat all species of animal as equal. This is clearly absurd when comparing cockroaches and cows. Such a view also doesn’t take into fair consideration the value of certain cases of animal experimentation that can save human lives, for medical research for example. And, in general, I think that human lives should be weighed above those of other species to the degree that it is necessary to choose.
Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri address the matter of assigning different degrees of status to different species and different members of particular species in The Great Ape Project. I am not altogether confident in my knowledge of the mental capacities of each and every species of animal to anguish over their own death or even to perceive pain in a meaningful way. But I think that the difference in suffering is rather obvious between a mosquito that is squashed and a puppy dog that is skinned alive for its fur.
We need to get to the bottom of the manner and degree to which specific animals suffer through scientific research in matters of animal perception and intelligence. Personally, I have much left to pursue in understanding the matter.
although I would never suggest forcing people to eat meat I personally find vegetarianism to be abhorrent. human beings have eyes on the FRONT of their heads, which means that we are meat eaters. we evolved this way to provide binocular vision, a trait found in predators and omnivores. I am right handed, but I would not use this fact as justification for cutting off my left hand, and it does not follow that because eating meat involves cruelty that we should stifle what is an essential part of or being. like hawks and tigers, carnivirous behavior is part of the very definition of being a human being. as far as cruelty goes, apparently none of you have ever seen a cat “play” with a mouse. death and cruelty is about all that nature does. in fact, I would say that the one and only rule of nature is that if you are alive it is because something else has died. corpses make fantastic fertilizer. furthermore, hunting (when done with a sense of respect) is the single most exciting thing that a human being can do next to sexual intercourse. by engaging in the hunt you are feeding a primal and deeply powerful part of yourself, a part of yourself that no matter how much you ignore it will never go away, and unless you embrace it and focus its power there is a part of your being that you will never understand. you will never be a complete human being. It is violent, uncomfortable, dirty, confusing, and sad, and that is exactly why it is so important for us, especially in the modern age, to embrace, and by embracing, understand, the aggressive part of our being.
I see two problems with your argument. The first is that it’s pure naturalist fallacy, i.e. what happens in nature is somehow what is right or what should happen. Humans make all kinds of moral decisions based on criteria that have nothing to do with what is “natural,” and most of us wouldn’t want to use nature as a guideline for what is right, since it would mean a lot more pain and suffering for all.
The second problem is that I think you’re wrong about what is “natural” for humans in terms of diet. Gorillas and many other primates have forward-facing eyes and yet are absolute vegetarians. Likely, the binocular vision evolved for depth perception necessary for arboreal locomotion (i.e. climbing trees), not for prey chasing. Chimps, the extant species most like humans morphologically and behaviorally, eat about 5% of the diet as meat and 95% as plant-based. Most hunter gatherer populations eat meat at about this level, on an opportunistic basis. And, of course, they scavenge or hunt the meat, they don’t raise it in industrial production facilities. Humans are healthier in terms of common lifestyle diseases (heart diseases especially) if they eat little to no meat, so to say that eating meat is an “essential” part of being human is mistaken evolutionarily, historically, and in terms of health.
So, I thnk the foundation for your argument is mistaken, and I think even if it were true it does not have any normative value. What we may have evolved to do is not necessarily what we should do.
Well hohenheim, you are more than welcome to find me abhorrent. But your suggestion that binocular vision is evidence of innate carnivorousness is flat wrong. Some vegetarian species have binocular vision. Some meat eating creatures do not have binocular vision. More fundamentally, your appeal to human anatomy as a means of arguing that humans are innately carnivorous is completely flawed.
Getting to the meat of the matter, the human species does not have the physical attributes generally attributable to carnivores. Take a look at your teeth and compare them to the tiger or the beak of the hawk that you mentioned, or to that of a cat or dog. Then compare them to the teeth of a cow or some other herbivorous mammal. Look more familiar? We also do not have ripping, slashing claws or sharp piercing beaks either. Humans literally have to fashion extravagant technologies in order to capture, maim, kill, slice, dice and cook animal flesh before consuming it.
Take a further look at your digestive system and compare it with the typical carnivore and herbivore. Carnivore intestines are generally about one third of the length of their bodies because they are able to pass the non-digestible portion of their food quickly through the body before it starts to decay or rot. Herbivores need more time to get nutrients from the vegetable matter they eat and have very long intestines. The human large intestine is about 1.5 meters long and the small intestine is about 7 meters long. Meat often sits inside the human intestines for days before passing through, leading to all sorts of health problems. Plant matter passes through quite a bit quicker.
I am not suggesting that humans can not eat meat. Obviously many do. But early humans were essentially scavengers. They were not carnivores and were not even “balanced diet” omnivores as is popularly heralded in fashionable food pyramids. They ate what they could find, which means that they primarily ate plant matter, with only the occasional bit of meat as road kill was made available to them. And before the discovery of fire and cooking, of course, eating meat that was not immediately fresh from a kill was dangerous because of the risks of infection.
All in all, vegetarian oriented diets are generally quite healthier than non-vegetarian diets, and are certainly truer to our physical anatomy.
although I would never suggest forcing people to eat meat I personally find vegetarianism to be abhorrent.
May I point out that vegetarians find meat eater abhorrent also- for many different reasons, some of which erasmusinfinity pointed out in the prior post. However, I would not attempt to force meat eaters to be vegetarians. I will warn them though, if they come to have dinner at my house, there won’t be any meat. My carnivorous friends love my spinach lasagna and say they don’t miss the meat. So, I can fix dishes that appeal to those who eat meat.
human beings have eyes on the FRONT of their heads, which means that we are meat eaters.
Where did you get this idea? This simply is not true, but I won’t go through and repeat all that erasmusinfinity said.
furthermore, hunting (when done with a sense of respect) is the single most exciting thing that a human being can do next to sexual intercourse. by engaging in the hunt you are feeding a primal and deeply powerful part of yourself, a part of yourself that no matter how much you ignore it will never go away, and unless you embrace it and focus its power there is a part of your being that you will never understand. you will never be a complete human being. It is violent, uncomfortable, dirty, confusing, and sad, and that is exactly why it is so important for us, especially in the modern age, to embrace, and by embracing, understand, the aggressive part of our being.
You sound like a Klingon. Not everyone considers killing as exciting as sex. If I had a choice, I rather make love than kill. Not everyone is aggressive either. In all honesty, I have no idea where you get your ideas. They are not in keeping with what medical science has found.
Meat is important. There are a few (i forget which ones) proteins that our body does not produce and can not be found in plants. Good human diet includes a little bit of meat. I’m not saying that you cant be healthy on a vegetarian diet, but you do need to be extra careful that you are not missing anything.
On the issue of leather: i consider it to be wrong to kill an animal and not use as much of it as you can, so i have no problem with wearing leather. on a side note vegans endanger themselves. if you want to be vegan thats your choice, but vegan+pregnant = Very Bad.
also, whos to say that a broccoli has less rights to continue living without adding to the food chain than a chicken does.
On a side note, (assuming that your ok with genetically modified food) do you consider it to be anti-vegetarian to eat plants that have animal DNA in them? It happens.
also, Imagen what would happen to the animals if we all became vegetarians on the same day.
There are a few (i forget which ones) proteins that our body does not produce and can not be found in plants. Good human diet includes a little bit of meat. I’m not saying that you cant be healthy on a vegetarian diet, but you do need to be extra careful that you are not missing anything...on a side note vegans endanger themselves. if you want to be vegan thats your choice, but vegan+pregnant = Very Bad
You are correct that there are several Essential Amino Acids that are generally not all present in most single plant food sources (though they are all in some), but the implication that it is difficult to get appropriate amounts of these from a vegetarian or vegan diet is incorrect. Mixing protein sources to get a complete protein is quite simple. Nutrient requirements ofr growing children, pregnant and lactating women, and people who are ill are a bit more exacting and while they can still be met by a vegetarian or vegan diet, more care is needed. Nevertheless, I don’t consider the essential amino acid issue to be a strong argument against a vegetarian/vegan diet.
On the issue of leather: i consider it to be wrong to kill an animal and not use as much of it as you can, so i have no problem with wearing leather. .
I appreciate that choosing to kill but not wastefully is an attempt at a positive ethical position, but as the thread here and other illustrate, not everyone gets over the issue of killing itself so easily as you do. And if killing animals is bothersome to someone, it is unlikley they will be moved by the fact that at least the parts were all used. In any case, I think many of us feel that the ethical problem with meat/leather and so on is more about the suffering inflicted, usually as a by-product of economic efficiency or convenience rather than unavoidably in the pursuit of survival and health, than it is simply about killing animals. You don’t really address that in any of your comments.
whos to say that a broccoli has less rights to continue living without adding to the food chain than a chicken does
Again, really kind of missing the point. I think almost everyone, regardless of how they feel about eating meat, recognizes that chickens and broccoli differ in meanigful and ethically salient ways, generally in terms of their capacity for suffering.
On a side note, (assuming that your ok with genetically modified food) do you consider it to be anti-vegetarian to eat plants that have animal DNA in them? It happens.
I’m sure there are a wide variety of opinions about that. I personally don’t consider meat somehow intrinsically eviul or toxic, I just don’t approve of how it is produced. So having genetically modified plants w/ animal DNA, or even meat grown in vats without any nevrous system to experience suffering, doesn’t particularly bother me on an ethical level. Safety, health, all of that is a different question, but here we’re primarily talking about ethics.
also, Imagen what would happen to the animals if we all became vegetarians on the same day.
Ok just silly. You’re welcome to any opinion you have and to disagree as much as you like, but it’s appreciated if you attempt to take other people’s arguments and opinions seriously if possible.
So is your vegetarianism a boycott on the meat industry or a reluctance to eat something that was once living?
I’ve explained my personal views previously in this thread (posts #2, #28, #35 in particular). Basically, I think the way we produce most animal products involves an unacceptable degree of suffering on the part of the animals, I think there are deleterious environmental consequences to industrial animal production, and I think meat is rarely necessary and is generally unhealthy in the quantities most Americans consume it, so I am more comfortable avoiding it alltogether and limiting my use of animal foods (though I do eat invertebrates, and I will eat dairy products and eggs though I try to buy them only from sources where I think the treatment of the animals is reasonably humane, e.g. free-range chickens etc). I am not a zealot, so I don’t prosyletize vbegtarianism, though I’m happy to discuss the issues and my opinions. I don’t expect some kind of moral perfection from myself or anyone else, but I do think some change is better than the status quo.
As far as killing to eat, I don’t think it is categorically wrong, but I think it is better avoided if possible, at least in the case of animals that one can make some reasonable argument have an interest in continuing their own lives. If it is necessary for survival, I’m certainly wiulling to do it, but if it is merely a matter of pleasure or convenience, I am not.
You have so far only offered brief critiques of possible vegetarian positions. Do you have any thoughts on the subject yourself, or do you see there is any real issue worth talking about at all?
Silouette, what you say is not quite accurate. I have lived over 30 of my 42 years as a vegetarian without any ill affects from it. However, I am not a vegan, which does make a difference. I do eat eggs because no animal is killed in the process. If there is no rooster around, there is no chick. I also eat other dairy products too, because the cow is not killed in the process either. The thing is, I am not a vegetarian just on those grounds. I have never liked meat, so my mother gave up when I was around 10 or 11 trying to get me to eat it. Even the smell of it makes me nausiated. My older son has the same problem too. Another thing is, many of the preservatives in many meats causes my family migraines, which started at an early age too. Some so sever that our stomachs get upset too. My younger son can’t eat meats with nitrites/nitrates in them because he also gets migraines, but he’ll eat chicken like it’s going out of style with no ill effects. My aunt and grandfather has/had (one’s still alive) the same issues with migraines, only theirs does/did include cheeses as a trigger.
By the same token, if either my older son or I unknownly eat like say a cinnimon roll with some sort of meat fat in it, we have intestinal upset. Since we have to eat something and our systems handle plant sources better, we stick to nuts and soybeans for our protein, as well as eggs and other dairy products.
One other thing to make note of, Buddhists spend a lifetime not eating any meat sources and many live long healthy lives. So before you concern yourself with protein deficiancies, check out the people who live a whole lifetime without eating any meat sources. They are generally healthier than most Americans. Not always, but generally. I don’t think you will find many Buddhist monks with diabetitis and alike.
I have too many vegetable allergies to be a vegetarian, my diet would be very bland if I were to stop eating meat (the only meat I’m allergic to is lamb), but I did stop eating red meat about 15 years ago. I wish they would carry a wider variety of edible vegetation in the stores (I live in California), I’m always looking for new vegetables to eat. With my allergies, it is difficult to go to the store and even get something as simple as bread(I’m allergic to barley and sesame seed), when ever something is the latest and greatest, they add it everywhere. I make all of my bread now. My son and I both have nut allergies, and I am allergic to the entire squash/melon family which developed over the course of about 20 years--one by one (try going out to dinner with that one!). I have to carry an epi pen everywhere I go to eat--just in case. I would just not be able to eat as much of a variety if I did not have my chicken and fish. I miss my melons, it was the best part of summer!
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