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I wouldn't call it "murder", but I do believe that anything which causes undesired pain to a sentient being is wrong.
Killing an animal painlessly would be morally acceptable. But we don't kill them painlessly. In fact, due to the atrocious conditions maintained in the factory farming industry, the entire lives of millions of sentient beings are filled with suffering.
And everybody who says "oh, but it's natural" just has their head up their ass. Natural does not mean morally acceptable. Rape is natural -- doesn't make it ok. Why don't people get that?
I wouldn't call it "murder", but I do believe that anything which causes undesired pain to a sentient being is wrong.
Meh, we're higher order animals. It's what we do. All predators do it: cause undesired pain to their prey, which are usually other sentient beings.
Killing an animal painlessly would be morally acceptable
Why is it morally acceptable to kill at all?
In fact, due to the atrocious conditions maintained in the factory farming industry, the entire lives of millions of sentient beings are filled with suffering.
So?
Why don't people get that?
Is a cheetah immoral for choking their prey to death or sometimes eating them alive? Do you yell at the discovery channel animals for doing what they do?
Well, that's not the point at all. The peripheral point is that higher order animals will cause undesired pain in sentient beings simply by living. The more substantive point is that you don't believe that anything that causes undesired pain to sentient beings is wrong. What you're really arguing isn't about pain in and of itself, it's about painful killing. And humans painfully killing, at that. Because clearly, I can tag an elephant in a preserve and it would cause undesired pain to a sentient being, and you probably wouldn't argue that I was doing something wrong. So your initial sentiment is what I am contending. It is in fact not the case that you "...believe that anything which causes undesired pain to a sentient being is wrong."
You believe in specific conditions and not the very general statement you made at the start.
It's wrong to kill humans, even painlessly, because if we don't condemn murder then we will not be able to function as a society.
You're going to have to flesh out this argument for me. How does not condemning murder result in a non-functioning society? What do you mean by a functioning society? Is your definition universal?
However there is a second aspect of morality at work here: Pain is bad and it should therefore be minimized.
Why is pain bad? Is all pain bad? Should all pain be minimized? Does minimizing pain make the act of killing the animal more "good"? And if it does, why does it make it more "good"?
Predators are not behaving immorally because they lack the intellectual capacity for morals.
Humans are predators, so are many of the other great apes. And like humans, many apes have the intellectual capacity to be moral and this morality has been documented.
As far as I'm concerned, so far you're trying to impress upon the debate a bit of special pleading on behalf of humans, when humans are animals, we are predators, like many other apes, have a moral compass and still behave true to our biological roots. What is immoral about treating other animals in the way other animals treat other animals? But to the major question itself. Do we have a moral obligation to not eat meat simply because we can live on other foods?
Tagging an elephant would be slightly wrong. But the badness of the pain would likely be outweighed by the goodness of the resultant scientific progress.
If we all believed that murder of humans was ok, we would have people killing each other left and right. The moment any authority figure tries to force someone to do something they don't want to do, there would be blood.
Pain is bad because we experience it that way (for the most part). We experience it as a bad thing because evolution has made us that way. Removing the pain takes the badness out of killing an animal because the animal experiences no negative emotions. It wouldn't make the act of killing good, it would make it neutral.
When I said predators, I was referring to your example of cheetahs killing their prey. If a cheetah kills a gazelle it is not behaving immorally because a cheetah is incapable of moral reasoning.
However if an animal with sufficient intelligence, such as a human, kills another animal knowing that it's wrong, then yes they are committing evil. If we can't kill animals painlessly, and can easily make do without killing them, then yes we have a moral obligation not to kill animals.
You showed him, hahaha. I don't know if he understood it though. You have to show those bullies they can't push other people around and tell them what to do, and what to eat or not to eat, and to mind their own business. And they think what they say matters at all, hahahaha.
He's probably skulking away right now with his tail tucked, consoling himself over some chicken nuggets. But I won't call him on his hypocrisy. After all, who can say no to chicken nuggets? No one.
Predators are not behaving immorally because they lack the intellectual capacity for morals.
With that argument, is it that immoral to kill a creature that doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand anything other than Mate Feed Kill Repeat?
It's not that bad, but it's still bad. Because they feel pain.
I suppose you could argue that wiping all predators off the face of the earth might follow from my logic, because it could prevent a greater amount of pain in their prey.
Meh, we're higher order animals. It's what we do. All predators do it: cause undesired pain to their prey, which are usually other sentient beings.
What exactly is a "higher order"? If you're saying as predators, let's see how well you fare in a pin with a leopard (or even in the wild, with a leopard). If you're talking about intelligence, why if we are so "high" in the order, are we still eating meat? There are plenty of healthy alternatives that cost much less in the way of work required, resources needed, associated pain, environmental impact, etc.
Is a cheetah immoral for choking their prey to death or sometimes eating them alive? Do you yell at the discovery channel animals for doing what they do?
Animals, like cheetahs, don't have a sense of morals... Humans do, and yet it seems to make little difference. Also, there isn't a cheetah grocery store to go to, and they are strictly carnivores, we are not. We have moral choice, many morally acceptable options that are just as good if not batter tasting, and we have the ability, physically, to choose... and you say that meat is perfectly acceptable?
I mean organisms that qualify as complex and not simple life: bacteria or archaea, and exist in higher taxanmic classifications like Aves and Mammalia.
If you're saying as predators, let's see how well you fare in a pin with a leopard (or even in the wild, with a leopard).
How humans (apparently how I) compete directly against particular predators has no bearing on whether or not humans are also predators. I could put a cheetah in a cage with a male silverback gorilla and the cheetah would lose, too. So what? Does the cheetah suddenly stop being a predator?
If you're talking about intelligence, why if we are so "high" in the order, are we still eating meat?
The question is moot: our intelligence has nothing to do with why we still eat meat.
There are plenty of healthy alternatives that cost much less in the way of work required, resources needed, associated pain, environmental impact, etc.
Only because they're not "mainstream". If everyone or even most people, for example, lived on a vegetable dominant diet and not a meat dominant diet, there would still be a need to have an industry that can produce the necessary quantities for people to survive on that diet. That means: farms, trucks, fuel, processing factories, machinery, increasingly more land for produce and a much larger labor force. You'd just be switching one for the other; it doesn't come "carbon-imprint" free. And to be honest with you, we are killing life either way. I don't buy into this whole humane bullshit. The whole pain angle is like saying it's better to shoot someone in the head than stab them in the throat - the latter unethical and the former morally acceptable because it's less painful. Humans kill life to survive. I don't give a flying fuck how much or little pain the life I kill and eat encounters; at the end of the day I'm still killing. Or someone is killing on my behalf. I don't put a hierarchy on killing or compartmentalize my ethical judgment. Killing is unethical. But I'm going to eat meat and vegetables.
Animals, like cheetahs, don't have a sense of morals... Humans do, and yet it seems to make little difference.
Which is not the point. The point is what moral judgment humans ascribe to other animal behavior, we recognize that cheetahs are doing what cheetahs do. Whether or not they have morals is immaterial. Humans are doing what humans do. We have bodies that have evolved to ingest and digest meats, vegetables and grains. So we eat these things. To say "killing painfully is unethical" is as meaningful a judgment as saying "cheetahs choking their prey to death is unethical". It's just what we do.
We have moral choice, many morally acceptable options that are just as good if not batter tasting, and we have the ability, physically, to choose... and you say that meat is perfectly acceptable?
Yes, I do say killing and eating organisms that have meat is perfectly fine.
Why should intelligence be linked to not eating meat?
The fact that we still eat meat even though we have a higher intelligence shows you that it makes sense to do so, no?
And did you say healthy, cost effective alternatives with less work required and less environmental impact? Is that REALLY true? How many people have the health, the money and the time and work required to grow their own fruit and veg? Their own "variety" of veg to make up for the protein. I mean c'mon! Let's cut the crap here. If everybody had to grow or kill their own food how many people would be vegans exclusively? If you had to choose between digging the land, planting the seeds, watering it for months, using chemicals to make sure it's a successful batch, then harvesting it months later for you to have a plate of beans for dinner... How many would give up and just kill a chicken instead?
The vegans are as hypocritical about food as meat eaters, cause at the end of the day, its always somebody else that has to do the work and provide you with your "morally acceptable" alternatives. You have a problem with the "usage" of animals, but you don't have a problem with the "usage" of other humans to prepare your food. Talk about acceptable morals!
You'd have to grow fruits and vegetables one way or another, because man cannot live on meat alone.
Are you seriously comparing buying from a farmer to exploiting animals in factory farms? We humans have this concept known as an "economy", in which "money" is exchanged for "goods and services". Frankly, I'm surprised you've never heard of it.
I really don't understand why you are on this side of the debate.
The debate is asking "is it our moral obligation to stop eating meat now that we can have vegan alternatives".
It's not asking "do you agree with factory farm living conditions".
By your admission, if the meat comes from your local farmer where the animals are treated well and killed humanely then that is acceptable. So your answer to the question of the debate should be NO.
Well, the bastard inside me wants to argue that factory farming is inextricably bound to the modern concept of meat, so it is impossible to discuss one without the other.
But instead, I'll take a more conciliatory approach and acknowledge that yes, I have nudged this debate along a slightly different trajectory than the one you originally intended. But the issue of factory farming is very closely related, and at the same time much more important. I'm taking a pragmatic approach to improving the lives of animals. "Are hardcore vegans right" wouldn't have made for a very interesting debate anyway, as you can tell by the fact that this debate had fallen off the charts before I kicked the hornet's nest with my initial argument.
Why should intelligence be linked to not eating meat?
Well, intelligent beings, I think, would be concerned about the future. We cannot have meat as we do today, forever, and it is much more efficient to grow plants than to grow plants to feed cattle. If you'd think about it a little harder there would be no need to "cut the shit". A huge quantity of grain produced in the world is dedicated to cattle. In fact, if you count calories from grain that it takes to feed cattle, and then count the end result of feeding the cattle and butchering it, etc, you'd find that meat is far far more expensive to produce and store than meat.
Efficiency will be important sometime in the future, when the world is overcrowded with people and labor is handed over to machines. It sounds like science fiction, and it is for now, but that's the most logical solution to many problems. People won't have jobs as they do now, so maintaining a personal garden won't be difficult, but I see community farming becoming popular before personal farming.
Even if you ignore the entire side of the debate that deals with the treatment of animals, or the suffering of animals, there are still very important questions about human nature and morals that need to be worked through... Where do we want to be in 50 years? Still slaughtering animals (more than we do now), in an even more careless fashion for so many more people who just want something to snack on for a minute... or do we want a self sustaining civilization that doesn't feel like it requires meat, that has an overabundance of food that is actually healthy?
It's not a personal problem so much as it is a societal one... but that doesn't mean it's not a moral issue.
The fact that we still eat meat even though we have a higher intelligence shows you that it makes sense to do so, no?
Not all people use their intelligence to do anything truly good... they, like animals, only seek to keep themselves happy... which is why this topic is an issue at all.
I have read all your arguments with a lot of attention cause for a long time I have wanted to understand the mentality behind this slogan.
I would like to point out that first you stated that Killing an animal painlessly would be morally acceptable, but you then took that back and said that killing is wrong regardless. I would also like to point out that modern day slaughter houses have made the process extremely quick and as painless as it can get (after all we are killing them), in any case it's a lot more humane and a lot less torturous than it would have been in the wild.
My last point is this: Morality is a very fickle thing, it changes all the time. Your opinion and arguments about this is only valid for as long as you live near a super market where you can buy your variety of vegan alternatives. If you were to go visit an African village where you either eat the killed pray or you starve to death, you would be singing a different tune. Am I wrong? Or if you were to go live with the Eskimos, and fish is your primary food source. Somehow, killing that fish doesn't sound so wrong, does it?
So the killing of animals for food is not a fundamentally wrong thing to do, after all.
This "moral obligation" attitude only comes to play once we advance to a level where you can choose to not eat meat without any consequences. But just because you can choose, doesn't mean that you have the moral obligation to make the choice. And to take the moral high ground and preach onto others is extremely self righteous and arrogant, especially as you would be very willing to eat meat if you had to eat it in order to live.
Some aspects of morality are fickle, others are strongly grounded in fundamental principles. If I had to kill to eat, I would. I would be committing evil, but that evil would be justified.
I am in complete agreement with you that we need to improve the conditions in which these animals live and also find better ways to make the killing perhaps completely painless.
But that is not what you have been advocating at all. That is not what the people that carry this slogan in the streets are advocating neither. They want us to stop eating meat period (someone else here used that word actually). That's what I have a problem with.
On the face of it, killing is something that sounds fundamentally wrong. But by your admission, the killing of animals for food is not so fundamentally wrong. What is more morally acceptable? That the Eskimos respect the fish and allow themselves to die? Obviously not. Why? Because that would be MORE wrong than killing the fish to survive.
Now, just because I'm not an Eskimo doesn't mean that somehow all the reasons that justified me eating meat are gone. What comes to play is choice. I am luckier than the Eskimo because if I don't feel comfortable eating meat then I have other alternatives to choose from. I can choose to eat meat one day and beans on the next day. But arrogant people feel really compelled to want to impose only one choice to everybody. And that is nothing short of fascism.
Actually, the humane treatment of animals is exactly what I've been advocating. It seems you have been reading into my arguments something that isn't there. I also think this position is the one endorsed by the majority of animal rights activists. Perhaps you're looking at the extreme fringe and assuming it represents the majority.
Survival is by far the most important justification for eating meat. Take that away and what do you have left? It tastes good? Is that really enough of a reason?
And, no, taking away a choice is not fascism. We have many laws which inhibit choice. Murder, for example, is illegal. The question is simply whether those laws are justified.
No, taste is not the only reason people eat meat. There are a few sources of protein, such as Meat, Poultry, Fish, Eggs and Vegetable sources such as Nuts, Soya and Beans.
But it's only the protein from animal sources that contains the full range of essential amino acids needed from an adult's diet. The best one being Poultry and Fish because they contain less fat than red meat.
If you were to stick to vegetable sources, you would need to supplement your diet with a larger variety of foods and possibly some additional vitamin supplements.
So you see, it doesn't come without consequences.
Think about this for a second. We all know there are bad consequences if your diet excludes fruit and veg. What makes you think that there are no consequences at all if you completely exclude meat from your diet?
First, combining multiple non-meat products gives you the full range of amino acids. You should be eating a range of foods anyway.
Second, dairy products contain complete proteins.
Third, protein powder, which I have mentioned a couple of times already, is another attractive option.
Your point about only eating vegetables is irrelevant because vegetables are not the only non-meat product that exists.
There are bad consequences to excluding fruits and vegetables from your diet because they contain vitamins and fiber. There are no negative consequences at all from excluding meat. In fact, studies have shown forgoing meat makes you less likely to die from a heart attack:
"We... compare the death rates from common diseases of vegetarians with those of nonvegetarians with similar lifestyles... In conclusion, vegetarians had a 24% lower mortality from ischemic heart disease than nonvegetarians, but no associations of a vegetarian diet with other major causes of death were established."
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."
Then, for the sake of your own health, eat what diet you think best. Don't tell other people what to do.
But that is beside the point, as we both know. We both know very well, that meat is not murder. Murder is murder, and meat is meat, and murder is immoral and meat is a part of life.
So if you say it is then the blood is on your hands hypocrite. Don't tell me you never tasted chicken nuggets.
Ending the life of any thing living is murder in the broadest sense, to feed, clothe and shelter humans something must die plant or animal. I agree nothing should have to suffer to sustain us, however things must die or we do. Lions kill and eat gazelles, however they would die if they only ate grass. We don't know if plants suffer or are aware because it is beyond our understanding. Vegans have the right to believe as they do, however they are no more, no less superior or moral.
We know very well how suffering comes about -- our senses send signals to our brain which in turn creates the feeling. Plants don't have brains or any other means of cognition, therefore they cannot suffer.
I agree. And ya know what I say to people and get some nasty looks? "Why don't you go ahead and commit some cannibalism now?" I mean, seriously, so we're the highest order of species, why waste already dead human bodies, too, and eat them instead of letting them rot into Earth while there's still millions of people starving? So, it's "immoral" to eat an already dead human for meat, but it's "natural and OK" to brutally kill animals for meat? Whatever. I don't think it has anything to do with morals to not eat a human, but rather because we're mentally trained to think it's disgusting and crass to eat another human, and it's OK to kill and eat animals, PERIOD. Most people are also mentally trained to believe in God and Jesus and church and worship (and on and on and on), but does that mean it's the "Right" thing? Not really.
However you slice it, whatever your moral/ethical feelings are towards this, eating meat is directly causing the end of multiple sentient lives. Ending sentient life is murder. Simple.
I wouldn't phrase it that way because it is too general but i agree with the idea. I think the way animals are bred, raised, and killed is morally wrong. Anything that eats meat could be considered a murder and people can eat meat but that doesn't mean people need to eat meat.
The fact that humans don't need to eat meat yet advocate and support the mass production and killing of various animals is cruel and obsessive.
Real carnivores and omnivores can eat meat raw without getting sick. They also enjoy eating raw meat. They are not repulsed by the idea of eating a dead animal if they pass it.
The human anatomy is not specialized for eating meat it is just able to cope with it. That doesn't mean it is natural for a human to eat meat such as a hamburger or grilled chicken. http://www.earthsave.ca/articles/health/ comparative.html has further explanations about the human anatomy's lack of optimization for eating meat.
Humans are willing to eat meat because once it's cooked it tastes good. Also humans generally don't catch their own pray and gut it and prepare to eat. They don't see the slaughterhouses. Infact humans are so far removed from the meat making process that they can't truly know how much of what they are eating is any certain type of meat or additional organic materials. They don't see the mass blood, sickness, weakness, or pain that is associated with slaughterhouses.
Killing any living thing without need is wrong and to induce suffering while killing that being is even worse. So yes meat is murder, because humans can easily survive without meat and are actually healthier when they do.
The title assumes that murder is wrong, which it is not.
As said by I don't know how many, the example of a predator killing a weeker animal is not immoral, because the predator has no capacity for empathy.
Problem is, we do. So what do we do about it?
Right now what we do is ignore it, and say it's okay because we're the predator and we observe in nature that this is what predators do.
I would argue that we should try to hold ourselves to a higher standard than this.
Does it really matter if we do?
Probably not, but that does not mean that we should not at least try to kill the food we eat with as little pain as possibe, and it also does not mean we should not attempt to allow our prey to live in comfort for whatever amount of time we give them here.
However, saying that, it is important that we as humans understand that other humans are more important than animals.
I love my tortoises. But if a human being is starving, and in some post-apocolyptic world there is no other means of sustanance, guess what, my great little toroises have to die.
This is where the far left occassionally takes it too far. Humans are more important than animals. End of story.
At the other end though. Just because we can kill whatever we want without penalty, and just because we sometimes do kill whatever we want, does not make it morally okay.
There has to be a level of understanding of what it means to be human and have self-awareness, I find many on both sides lack this completely, making me wonder if we really aren't just "predators" who by coincidence have extra large brains.
I think so, yes. The meaning of murder though, at least as it is in the Oxford American Dictionary, involves premeditated killing of another human, but why differentiate between an animal that isn't human and humans? It's a superficial (purposeful) misunderstanding that keeps a lot of "unimportant" cases out of court.
Murder is the premeditated killing of any animal. The thought of killing a process, (consciousness in any form at all) is murder. This is even true for plants, though the severity differs greatly because plants aren't (as far as we understand the idea), conscious.
The problem is in the industry though, not the act of eating animals. It's human, to eat meat, but it's not human to treat meat as nothing more than a Big Mac. What I mean by that is, people used to respect animals and feel pain for each animal's death. Native Americans would purposely use every part of an animal that they killed to make it's death as meaningful to people as possible. There were spiritual aspects involved, but I feel the principle is most important.
We treat animals like shit now, if not worse. We raise them with the idea that they will all one day be shat out by someone a number of hours after being tasted. They are slaughtered without regard, which is understandable because of the emotional damage you would put yourself through if you had to slaughter so many a day... you would go insane, if you cared about each of them as your own pets...
Eugh, well my cat just died yesterday and I've been drinking to compensate for his loss... even though he was just a cat. Maybe I shouldn't be talking about the treatment of animals right now...
150 days ago | Tagged As: MY CAT IS DEAD AND I MISS HIM FFFFuuuuuu
I think that meat is murder! What gives us the right as humans to take the lives of innocent animals for our own selfish needs? There are so many other alternatives yet we choose to kill others to live ourselves. Animals live breathe and feel just the same as us humans do they just cant cry out in pain as we would. But they do feel pain and they shouldnt have to because of us!!!
What gives animals the right to kill each other? It's just survival of the fittest. Don't get me wrong, how animals are slaughtered is repulsive, wrong, and should be fixed. But if we didn't kill animals at all, they would rapidly overpopulate because of how we disrupt the natural food chain, and complete with us for space and resources. Meat may not be necessary for sustenance, but death is just part of the development of life on earth.
Animals kill each other because they lack the mental capacity to do anything else. We as humans are capable of choosing not to cause pain.
Animals could never compete with us for resources. We've got guns. If a vegetarian had to make a choice between a human dying and an animal dying they would kill the animal. (Well, maybe some fringe lunatics wouldn't, but the vast majority would...)
Practically all of the meat that we eat comes from animals that we breed. Hunting is something done mainly for recreation and is outside the scope of vegetarianism.
Have you never killed a spider? Cockroach? Mosquito? If so, was it for a selfish human need?
I don't know that there's anything wrong with killing other animals for our own needs, though it is wrong to kill for sport. The way an animal is killed and the freedom it was given in life is what matters.
The difference is they are stupid animals, while you are a stupid human. Or did I get that wrong? You are a stupid animal too then? Bwahahahaha.
And you actually believe you have a right to tell other people what to do and what to eat and not eat? You know what you are? You are a bully. That's right, you are a bully who tells other people what they should or shouldn't do. And you actually think anyone will respect you? HAHAHAHAAHHAHAHHAHa.
Ok. I am not religious by any means but I do know for a fact that the Bible clearly says God created all cloven hooved animals for the benefit of man. Although, judging by some of the comments on here, the majority of you are atheist, maybe Buhddist. By the way. Meat IS murder....Tasty Tasty murder! I love my bovine, swine, poultry, fish, fowl, venison (that's any of the cervid species), and crustaceans. TED NUGENT ROCKS!
We have the right of domain over animals. Animals don't have souls a dog doesn't even know it's dog or any animal even know what it is. If you are starving and are out in the wild any walking animal that is not human i guarantee that you would look at any animal as dinner in order to survive.
Firstly, I really want to stress that human beings are NOT meant to eat meant(Naturally). You can double check this with any biologist. It can be told from our teeth structure, which indicates the kind of foods our body was meant to eat, and meat is NOT one of them.
Secondly, meat is not just killing animals, but also killing us! Every year, to meet the consumers' demands, lots of animals are brought up. The first problem, is that the animals will have to get food from plant sources(usually), however, cutting down greens will mean that there are less plats removing carbon from the air. Secondly, animals also give out alot of methane, which like carbon dioxide, enhances the green house effect, contributing to global warming.
On the other hand... well, its true... eating meat has become part of our life, so taking meat away is, and will be a difficult task.
100 days ago | Tagged As: you cant say no to chicken nuggets
Another hippie huh? Alright, I'll say it again. The Bible says God made all cloven hooved animals for the benefit of man. The beast of burden ring a bell? That's right, any and all cloven hooved animal. If you are at a loss?.... Any bovine, swine, cervid, ( cow, sheep, goat, pig, venison [deer, elk, caribou, reindeer, antelope, moose, impala, gazelle, etc.]). Secondly, the offset of oxygen to carbon dioxide and methane is so minimal it pales in comparison to the overpopulation and ridiculously large amounts produced by big cities. Global warming? HAH! Another falsehood in the long list of propaganda brought forth by self proclaimed scientists. But if you are truly concerned? As Ron White put it.."I'm Doin' MY Part By Eatin' The Cow."
Meat is murder, but hey, it's natural. We eat meat, we also eat plants. We shouldn't eat as much meat as we do, and we should treat our live stock better. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat meat. It's part of of our natiral diet.
Why cause unnecessary suffering? If it is easy (easier, actually) for humans to prosper and flourish without meat, why go ahead and cause unnecessary suffering?
Have you ever seen the Lion King? Because it really is the circle of life, and it moves us all. Would you rather feed a lion tofu? Would you like sharks to go around chanting, "fish are friends, not food!"? Or would you like to embrace the real world that we all know, love, and evolved into?
Because Disney mimics life, life doesn't mimic Disney.
Lions and sharks, besides being true carnivores, have no choice in their actions. Humans, alternately, have several other options available to them, making the killing completely unnecessary. Human anatomy also suggests quite strongly that we are not meant to consume meat or be "predators." Again: why cause suffering if it's unnecessary?
Carnivores: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores
Carnivores: have sharp front teeth, with no rear molars for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, with rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, with rear molars for grinding
Carnivores: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length
Carnivores: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a carnivore
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a carnivore
Carnivores: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Carnivores: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Yes, humans are obviously created to eat meat....
(Not going to lie, I feel like I'm attacking you. I usually enjoy your debates so much. I hope I'm not coming off as rude or defensive... No hard feelings?)
We weren't created to do anything. We have simply, as of now, evolved to a point where we can eat both meat and plants. If you choose to not eat meat then that is fine.
I grew up on a farm where I cared for and loved every type of animal. And, at times, we ate them. Death is an aspect of life.
If your opinion differs, that's fine. But I love and respect animals. I'm not every religious, but whenever I pass road kill I say a little prayer that if the animal had any specific beliefs about their afterlife that it be realized. I think of animals as companions, friends and food. I'm sorry that you aren't on the same wavelength as me. But as long as an animal is treated well, killed humanely and respected then I don't have an issue eating their meat.
I am an abolitionist. I am against the use of animals, both human and non-human. I campaign for equal rights and compassion for all sentient creatures. That's how I'm different.
As I said before, it really is the circle of life. Everyone dies somehow. We all become food for something. Whether that be microscopic or larger it doesn't matter to me.
In fact, eat me. I don't mind as long as I'm dead when it happens.
Oh, no, that wasn't a response to eating you. I don't particularly want to eat you. I'm just saying that my lifestyle was chosen to cause as little suffering as possible.
Dammit, I wish CD made it so you could see what people were opposing or favouring... I don't remember what I've said and, having arrived home from AC/DC at 5am this morning and not getting much sleep, I'm too tired to look for it.
Agreed. But I do. I use my dollar demand to buy free range, organic meat. It's all I can do at the moment. All my money is going to the Courage Campaign. I can't fight for animals and gay rights at the same time.
Human rights and animal rights are one and the same. It's a search for equality and the abolition of destructive, unfair, unequal, harmful practices. You don't need money to fight for animal rights; it's easy to not finance animal oppression.
That is bullshit. I fought against factory farming for my entire middle school and high school career, when I was your age. I visited factory farms, and free range farms both. I grew up raising goats and chickens of my own, and named them all.
There is a difference between Free Range and Factory Farmed animals. And you're just a bullshitting, angry little girl if you let a fear-mongering website like that sway you.
Animals are not equal to humans. That is a foolish statement. Sure, animals love and care for each other. Animals feel pain and heartbreak. But animals are not humans.
That's my opinion. I'm sorry you're not on the same page as me. Better start reading.
I'm sorry for being rude, but it's frustrating when uneducated people try to assume they know everything.
No, it's not typical. But, as I said before, if people ate less meat and took an interest in where their meat comes from it could become typical. Which I do. I only buy meat when I know where it comes from. In fact I usually only eat fish from the local market where I can see the boat it was brought in on and know the fishermen.
But if all animals were raised and killed humanely, I bet you would still have a problem with it. Because you don't agree that Humans and animals aren't equal. That's fine. But that's delusional.
To be called a "bullshitting, angry little girl" is not why I'm here. That's enough.
I'm not trying to hurt your feelings or scare you or whatever, and I'm sorry that a went to that level. I'm just trying to shock some sense into you. It's not a perfect world and humans and animals aren't equal. If you want to spend your time trying to change something so widely accepted, fine. But you wont win. People like meat, they crave it.
But that website is the bullshit. The creators probably have good intentions, but they know the have to exaggerate to make a point, and that's what they've done. It's bullshit.
I wouldn't consider myself uneducated, but I am certainly ignorant in some areas. This does not make you all-knowing, either. Everyone is ignorant.
Fish feel pain. Commercial net fishing destroys ecosystems. And imagine being caught on a line: a hook, through your cheek, dragging you through the ocean. And fish farming? The overcrowded conditions make the trains to concentration camps look roomy. (Or maybe that's horribly politically incorrect. I'm not sure. If it is, I apologise.)
I differ from your opinion; that makes me delusional. Why? To quote middle school brightly coloured posters: "What is right is not always popular. What is popular is not always right." At points in history, slavery was widely accepted. The lynching of blacks and gays was widely accepted. So I have no problem with trying to change something that is widely accepted. I hope that in fifty or one hundred years, humans will look back in disgust on our eating habits, just as most of us look back in disgust on a history of slavery and inequality based on race, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera (although much of that is still present today).
Exaggeration is clearly necessary to prove a point about something that is widely accepted. Although it may not be right, shock is sometimes necessary to get past something that is ingrained so deeply into minds.
Most fish aren't caught on hooks, but in nets. And a quick smack to the brain does the trick. And regarding fish farming, they are just as overcrowded as they would be in a school of fish. It's how they swim... I doubt the fish mind.
You may accept being delusional, but just be careful about who you believe.... You'll figure it out someday.
Net fishing kills not only fish, but every living creature caught up in the nets. It ravages ecosystems, destroys the ocean floor, and is generally terrible for the planet. Netting for shrimp, for example, is the most environmentally destructive animal agriculture practice there is.
Commercial fish farming is nothing like schools of fish. Nothing.
I honestly hope that I don't "figure it out someday," if it means thinking like the rest of the meatheads (not supposed to be an offensive term, just one generally used amongst vegans to refer to omnis). If it means believing that life is not equal, that causing suffering and death is okay, then I hope I don't figure it out.
Can't you accept that my opinion is not wrong? That it's my opinion? Why does that make me delusional, or misled?
Net fishing on the bottom can cause those kinds of problems. So eat Tuna. It's caught with mid level nets which don't do much damage. They're also not terribly endangered. Of course if everyone ate just tuna, they would be. But that's what diversity and choice is about.
Commercial fish farming is nothing like schools of fish. Nothing.
How so? Have you ever been to a commercial fish farm? Because that's almostexactly how it is. Sure, farmed fish don't swim as far as ocean or river fish, but I doubt they are uncomfortable. Yes, fish feel pain. But they're also stupid (in the scientific sense).
Think of the Africans who still live in small villages, and have never heard of cars or air conditioning. They're plenty happy. But you put some bitch from Malibu out there, and she's miserable. Fish are the bush people, we're the bitch from Malibu. (I'm not saying that the Africans are stupid, just "uneducated" by modern terms).
Can't you accept that my opinion is not wrong? That it's my opinion? Why does that make me delusional, or misled?
Right back at ya. You can have your opinion, and there is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian. If we were all vegetarians the environment would be better off. But there are also environmentally responsible ways to eat small portions of meat. And as omnivores we can decide for ourselves to eat meat or not.
The delusional part is that you believed that website about the free range farming. Which is a pile of bullshit, in my educated opinion. And also the part about "equality and peace and happiness." Death is part of life, and so is eating.
Fish suffer. Bush people aren't crammed together so tightly that their skin is rubbed off.
As far as environmental concerns, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Governmental Panel on Climate Change, says, "Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there. In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." Essentially, ceasing to eat meat is the most effective way that a consumer can help the environment.
Death is a part of life. Eating is a part of life. Causing suffering and death don't have to be.
Oh, and netting for tuna doesn't guarantee that only tuna will be caught in the net. All fish who are amongst the tuna will be caught, too. Endangered fish. Any fish that happens to be there. Then they'll be left to suffocate.
And, like I said, nobody is checking that free-range meats/animal by-products are actually free-range. Personally, though, as a vegan abolitionist, I wouldn't care if the calves were cuddled and sung a lullaby to before bed. I still don't agree with killing them. /shrug
Why kill a non-human animal and not a human? As long as the human is fed properly and given comfortable lodging.
I simply believe that animals are not ours to use. Ever. For any purpose.
Regardless, there is not enough land on Earth to humanely raise enough 'meat' to feed the world. The land simply doesn't exist. Unless we create floating ground for cattle....
First of all, we HAVE eaten humans. Watch a movie called "Alive". It's a true story.
Secondly, eating from your own species is something that already happens in nature but for two significant reasons. One, is that when an animal is extremely hungry, it will eat the dead flesh of a same-species animal. The story above, proves that humans do the same thing.
Two, is when the eating of your own species is linked to social structure. For example, some lions, when they become leaders of the pack, they will eat the young baby-lions of other couples in the pack in order to prevent any future rivals and also in order to make it easier for the babies that they will produce to have less opposition as they grow. Humans have been known to do exactly the same thing, especially when they become kings.
There is also another reason why some animals will eat their own. It happens when the baby-animal is born with a disability. Some mothers will kill their own disabled or weak babies if they think that the chances of their survival in the environment are slim. Humans have been known to do exactly the same thing (Spartans).
So there you have it. These are the rare reasons why animals and people resort to eating each other.
But it is in no way the normal state of affairs. The normal state of affairs is that lions eat gazelles, giraffes, elephants, and every other animal apart from their own kind. Which is no different to the normal state of affairs for humans, i.e. we eat other animals instead of other humans.
Because that is not the normal state of affairs. From an evolutionary point, it makes sense to not eat from your own species because they carry the same genes as you. Also, a human being is more likely to contribute to your life than another animal (sheep, cows, chickens, etc). If it was between you and a chicken, I would always eat the chicken, because with you lies the hope that you might discover the cure to cancer for example. With you lies the hope that you will contribute to society (and by extension, contribute to MY life) by doing a job and by being productive. Now do you see why human life is not equal to any other animal life?
I have read you saying that all life is equal and that all sentient beings are equal. Now, let me ask you something. If you were to walk by a river and you saw a little boy and his dog drowning in the stream. Their distance from you is equal, but if you go for one, the other is likely to move down the stream and possibly drown and die. Which one do you go for? Is there any doubt in your mind that you would try to save the boy first??????
Please read my last post again.
No one "chooses" to eat from their own kind. Cannibalism, whether between humans or animals, is a rare occurrence and only happens under extreme circumstances. For humans, those circumstances are even more extreme, i.e. your life has to be at stake and the other person is probably already dead.
Ah, so you wouldn't eat humans because they're productive, aside from the genetic standpoint. Would you then eat a severely mentally retarded person? Isn't that essentially the same thing as an animal?
And the "who would you save" question is just absurd. It's always the fall-back, that and "plants have feelings, too!". If I could, I would probably save the child, because, try as I might, I, too, am subject to speciesism. Or perhaps I'd save the dog first, if it was smaller, as a heavier object is less likely to move.
Well what else do you think racism stands for, if not for the belief that one race carries with it an inherent superiority?
You really think that by saying that you are a "specie-ist" you are saying something other than that your species is superior to another species?
And also, having read your response about humans having abolished slavery and persecution of homosexuality etc.... can I just point out that all those issues pertain to how we conduct our affairs within our species, none of them have anything to do with other species, they were a "family" problem. It's not the same thing...
It is the same thing if you believe that all sentient life, regardless of species, is equal. Like I do.
And, yes, I am mildly speciesist, despite my efforts not to. Just as I suppose I'm mildly racist; walking down a New York street at night alone or with a friend and seeing a large black guy up ahead of me is scary. If it was a white guy, I might not be quite as scared. So, yes, despite efforts not to discriminate, I do. I try not to. It's all I can do.
Because it's illegal. I've actually always wanted to try human. I wouldn't kill someone to eat them. But if someone died, why not?
After death, it's just a body. Just a lifeless pile of flesh. I assume that nutritionally, human meat would be fantastic like wild deer. I'd love to try a really well toned person's thigh. Maybe with an '07 Chardonnay.
I guess that's why I nibble on the gym rat boys I sleep with.
Animals fight back. Slaughterhouse workers have described the screams of animals, their thrashing, et cetera. If you shackle a human, it's pretty easy to drive a bolt through their brain, if not easier than it is for a cow, as humans are lighter.
I suppose you could just pick up roadkill and eat it. Then you "wouldn't need to kill someone to get your hand on a bit of meat."
Possibly less unsanitary than meat that comes out of a slaughterhouse. Workers have testified to dropping meat on the ground, spitting on it, and often mixing meats to get the right portion sizes; e.g., mixing horse leftovers generally used for dog food into ground beef.
Hens do not lay eggs for human consumption. They lay them to create offspring.
Bees do not produce honey for human consumption. They produce it for food. And they sometimes die (via stinging) to protect it.
Cows do not produce milk for human consumption. They produce it to feed their young.
And while cows don't mind being milked, they might mind being mechanically raped to become impregnated so they'll begin to produce milk, then having their babies taken from them to go their separate ways (if they're female, they'll have the same fate as their mother; if they're male, they're turned into veal), then being hooked up to machines that cut their udders and fill the milk with blood and pus. And, actually, the US allows more pus in milk than any other nation, I believe.
And the free-range bullshit... no way. That's still using an animal.
Animals, human and non-human, do not exist to serve others.
But those eggs that are unfertilized then go to waste.
Bees produce honey to feed off of during the winter. But they make much much more than they will ever need. They are also having a rough time right now, with everything that contributes to CCD. Because of hobbyist beekeepers honey bee populations are stabilizing on the west coast. And they are also placed in places that pollinate their environment so that plants can thrive too.
And while cows don't mind being milked, they might mind being mechanically raped to become impregnated so they'll begin to produce milk, then having their babies taken from them to go their separate ways (if they're female, they'll have the same fate as their mother; if they're male, they're turned into veal), then being hooked up to machines that cut their udders and fill the milk with blood and pus. And, actually, the US allows more pus in milk than any other nation, I believe.
That's factory farming, again. And organic, free range farming isn't bullshit. Cows don't have to be raped to get pregnant. They can also be milked by hand, and that's the kind of milking I was talking about.
And even in organic farms, yeah, we eat the males. It's for the good of the heard.
Animals, human and non-human, do not exist to serve others.
That sounds pretty selfish. We serve the animals. We care for calves abandoned by their mothers. We treat their wounds and illnesses. We find food for them in drought or flood. It sounds like you underestimate the value of teamwork.
One of the primary suggested causes of CCD: malnutrition. Another huge cause: commercial beekeeping. Commercial beekeepers rent their hives to farmers to pollinate their plants, causing unrest to the hives. Also, commercial hives are constantly shifted arrive, causing stress.
It is absolutely impossible to feed the world on a truly free-range diet. I've already mentioned this.
What I meant is that we don't exist solely for the benefit of others.
That's why I specified local beekeepers, known as hobbyists. Commercial beekeeping is essentially factory farming. I have done nothing but denounce factory farming.
Who do you think the biggest opponents of commercial beekeping are? It's the hobbyists.
Also, I didn't say we should eat meat all the time and as much as we do. I've already stated it should be a side dish. If we reduced the intake of meat, we could support the entire world on a omnivore diet.
I don't advocate 5lb stakes with a side of stake. Just like a salad with two tablespoons of tuna made with hummus. Or a stir friend veggie plate and a half a breast of chicken. We eat too much meat for our own good right now, yes. But that doesn't mean we have to.
We're really just running circles. I clearly don't think meat should be a main dish, a side dish, an ingredient, a... drink? (Ew.) Or any animal by-products. I've thoroughly stated my opinions on animal ab/use, as have you. Neither of us seem to be swaying, and it seems that both of us want the last word.
So... good debating with you? Or shall we continue?
What I stated to begin with was an opinion. I've made my life decisions based on a lot of experience and with a deep respect for and love of animals. I hope you can understand that I live in reality and you live in your own.
I find it very self-righteous of you to believe that you are absolutely right here, with no room for other opinions or other thought processes. I'm quite done with this.
I have my opinions, which you refused to accept or even entertain. You just have this ideal that life should be painless for all animals. That's not life.
Again, I simply choose to not cause suffering and death in my life. Of course life is painful; to make it more so for yourself or others is sadomasochistic and cruel, in my opinion. This opinion does not make me delusional or living in my own reality. I don't believe I ever said anything about your opinions making you delusional. I try not to use personal attacks/judgments in what should be an impersonal argument.
Well the point is that difference in opinion is what this debate is about.
So really we could both just take our own opinions and shoove them. Because yours doesn't matter to me, and mine doesn't matter to you. So I think were done.
When I said, "If your opinion differs, that's fine. But I love and respect animals."
You said, "That's just a difference of opinions.
I am an abolitionist. I am against the use of animals, both human and non-human. I campaign for equal rights and compassion for all sentient creatures. That's how I'm different."
I wasn't implying anything. I certainly wasn't calling you insane/delusional/unrealistic/bullshitting. Or telling you to shove it.
Perhaps now I do feel "holier than thou," though, since I've managed to not attack you. I feel pretty damn good about my debate and my conduct. You've just been rude.
But, really, this is just enough now. Do both of us need to have the last word?
But you've insulted me quite a lot. I've been having to defend my opinion with facts, while you with opinions and I resent your intollerance. You insulted my opinion based on a bullshit websites and no actual knowledge of situations at organic free range farms. When I grew up on one and worked for years to stop factory farming. So bascally all you have is your opinion which you used to label me as a user and as a whole bunch of nasty things.
It's a fact that all animals suffer. It's a fact that this suffering can be reduced, and it's a fact that I'm doing all I can to reduce it. That's all I know.
That is all you know. And yet you threw around a whole bunch of accusations at me.
I resented that. I'm sorry for calling you names, but I felt attacked by nonsense. It infuriates me to have to waste my time knowing I'm not going to change my mind, and you're not going to change your mind. So why the fuck don't we both shut up?
Wow that's a very general dismissal of a practice. Are you sure about that? We wouldn't have come so far as a society if we hadn't used anything and everything at our disposal.
If people hadn't used horses and made carriages, we would have never communicated with people that lived far away. If we hadn't used pigeons to deliver mail, you would have to walk for a year to deliver your news to your relatives. If we hadn't used sheep wool to protect ourselves from cold winters, we might not be here today. Your dismissal of those practices is so so ignorant.
"Hens do not lay eggs for human consumption. They lay them to create offspring.
Bees do not produce honey for human consumption. They produce it for food. And they sometimes die (via stinging) to protect it."
Why do hens produce so many eggs, if not for the fact that nature has already taken into account that a lot of them will be eaten or not survive. Why do fish produce millions of eggs when they lay them in rivers? Cause they know that 90% of them will not survive the environment, which includes them being eaten by other animals.
Oh and, should we stop bears from eating honey? After all, the bees don't produce it for consumption, right?
And what makes you think that apples are there for your consumption? As far as we KNOW, the apple is created to protect the seeds inside.
You seem to be so touchy about using animals and yet happily oblivious as to how many humans YOU are using RIGHT NOW. Do you know how many people are "used" everyday to make sure you have electricity, to make sure you have a good show on TV, to make sure you have streets to drive on, to make sure YOUR RUBBISH is collected, to make sure your vegan food is within easy reach for you so you can be all smug and profess to be a "better person"?
Have you any idea how spoiled you sound when you say things like "Animals, human and non-human, do not exist to serve others." We are all "used" in some way or another. Being a postman and delivering letters might be something that the person aspired to do, but they are still paid and "used" to deliver the service even on the days they don't feel like being a postman. Which is why I think your being so young and having no great experience as a working person has a lot to do with your "opinions". When your turn comes to be "used", then come and talk to me again.
Let me remind you that someone else is putting the labor, blood, sweat and tears, in order to produce the products of your vegan diet. YOU are USING those people to produce your food. But you are happily ignoring that, because it's not IN YOUR INTEREST to acknowledge it and PUT AN END TO IT. Right? Instead, you are trying to fulfill your smug desire to be a person of higher morals by concentrating on animal rights. Because, THAT you can live with.
Modern technology has made it unnecessary to use animals. In our past, there weren't other options; now there are. We don't need carrier pigeons; we have telephones. We don't need wool; we have synthetics. In most places. Where there are no options, there are no options. But considering that you are using you a computer and have access to the internet, I'd say you have options.
Your argument about how humans are "used" is unsound and, quite frankly, angsty. We are lucky enough to choose our jobs and how we are "used"; I've been working since I was twelve, although I do have rather a lack of experience and I'm always looking for more knowledge, experience, and information. I don't profess to be a better person or to know everything; I accept that I'm ignorant in some areas, as we all.
Nature always provides more than it has to; that's how species are a success. But do you think that before commercial fish farming/netting was invented, fish laid less eggs? Before factory farms caged chickens, they laid less eggs?
I'm finding your argument rather judgmental and offensive. Maybe you should rethink the personal attacks and concentrate on the debate.
You started it by saying "i don't believe in using animals". That statement, whether you see it or not, is very broad and it implies that you disagree with the use of animals period. Regardless of whether there are options or not. That statement implies that if you lived back in that time, you would be campaigning for the using of horses for transport, which is silly. That's why I called it an ignorant statement, it was too bold and too broad.
Lions and sharks are incapable of moral reasoning.
Moral reasoning is nothing more than a by product of a comfortable society.
You take that comfort out and moral reasoning vanishes in thin air.
Have you seen the movie "Alive"? Those people possessed as much "moral reasoning" as you and me. But when it comes to your life being at stake you will eat the dead corpse of your own brother to survive. That's how set in stone your moral reasoning is... (I was gonna say something about "shoving it" but I'm more polite than that)
Humans can decide to renounce their brutal ancestry.
I would be careful before going around telling people to renounce their brutal ancestry altogether. Your "brutal ancestry" is what would keep you alive if you were to find yourself stranded somewhere with nothing by wilderness. Your "brutal ancestry" is what would make you put your fists up and defend yourself against the playground bully. And it's not all physical neither. Your "brutal ancestry" is what makes you apply for a job and not really care for all the other applicants, regardless of how much more than you they need the job.
If you think that this "brutal ancestry" is only part of our cave-living past, you are deluded!
Indeed. Outside the sanctuary of society human life is nasty, brutish, and short. Though in some circumstances evil may be justified, those actions are still evil. I suppose you could say we have a moral obligation to build a society which allows us to transcend our primitive state of being.
I will ignore your tangent about playgrounds and job applications because it is irrelevant to this debate.
Those actions are only "evil" once they are processed through the human judging brain. Nothing else on this earth is known to make a similar judgment. For animals, death and suffering are as much part of life as anything else. But they never judge it or dwell on it. They kill to eat and that's it. "Evil" as we understand it, is a description that resides only in the virtual world of our brain.
As for building a society that allows us to transcend our primitive state of being, that is an illusion. We are part of nature and we will always be bound to the same observed behavioral patterns we see in nature. Whether we do it by putting our fists up or by suing each other in court rooms, we are still doing the same thing. "Brutal ancestry" has simply taken another shape.
True, only humans are capable of recognizing evil. But that doesn't make it less real.
True, our primitive impulses push us to behave in a brutish manner. But we can also choose to overcome our base urges; see Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, etc.
Your argument doesn't make sense because the vast majority of the animals we kill are bred in factory farms. Understand? We're not talking nature here. We're creating them, subjecting them to a life of suffering, and then killing them. Can't you see that this is wrong?
Well it's a good thing that animals don't have the mental capacity to understand that then. Cause if you take out the "life of suffering", and instead, you create them, subject them to a happy life, then kill them humanely, then there should be no problem.
Your problem is that you are projecting your human cognitive abilities onto an animal that simply doesn't have those abilities. It's like feeling sorry for bears who live in caves.
You still don't understand the difference between campaigning for better conditions for animals, and campaigning to stop people from eating meat altogether.
You've made this conclusion in your head that just because some places don't treat animals very well then we should all stop eating meet. Is that cause you think the protest is going to trigger new measures in animal welfare? Or do you have a problem with people eating animals regardless of the animals' living conditions?
That's the difference between you and the user "believeyoume". She has a problem with the killing of animals period. For her it doesn't matter how well we treat them, cause she has a fundamental belief that we shouldn't use animals at all, period. You however, seem to be jumping from camp to camp. Every now and again you make a claim as to why we shouldn't kill sentient life for whatever reason. And then you change it by saying "killing them humanely would be fine, but we don't kill them humanely" which is a VERY DIFFERENT approach...
I clearly stated my position in the first argument I posted to this debate, which you can currently read there in the top-left. It can be succinctly stated as, "Meat, as we currently obtain it, is morally unacceptable." I have never wavered in this position, and I don't understand why you think I have. I can only guess you're imposing invalid assumptions on my arguments.
No, I don't fully agree with believe, but our views have a lot of overlap. You could say we've formed a coalition for the better treatment of animals.
I could say the same sort of thing about you. There are many people on your side of the debate saying, "Who gives a shit? It doesn't matter what we do to animals, they're just animals. Nature should go unquestioned. Vegetarians are stupid and unhealthy." If you really want to improve the conditions in which animals are treated, why are you on the side of these people? Or does it frustrate you that I'm lumping you in with the extremists?
Quite the contrary. I have made my position very clear and separated myself from the "don't give a shit" extreme camp.
I just wanted to point out that you seem to have lumped YOURSELF in the other side of the extreme represented by believeyoume, when in fact, your view is probably 99% similar to mine.
We both agree that meat eating is OK but only as long as the animals live and die in a very humane way.
But the debate is asking whether meat eating is generally immoral now that we can live as vegans. That's why I'm saying "No, I disagree".
That's the way to show those bullies. They think they can boss other people around and bully them to follow their own way, instead of leaving everyone to their own personal choice. Ahahahah what a fool.
He's probably just sculking away with his tail between his legs, consoling himself over some chicken nuggets. But I won't blame him for hypocrisy. After all, who can say no to chicken nuggets? No one.
You can't say no to chicken nuggets
106 days ago | Tagged As: you cant say no to chicken nuggets
Let's think of another overpopulated species, shall we? How about... humans? Let's breed them, take away their young, mechanically rape the females, cram them together without access to the outdoors or even light, inject them with hormones, deny them everything that is natural, cause them suffering throughout their shortened lives, kill them brutally, eat them because they taste good, and then they won't be overpopulated!
I also don't believe in breeding, so, no, all human-sustained species would die out.
The spiders and insects example only works because they adhere to a food chain. Humans absolutely do not, since we have the ability to eat anything, anytime.
May I remind you that in the last few weeks, Australia has been preparing the ground to allow crocodile hunting again because the crocodiles, having no predators to fear, have grown in high numbers and have become a danger to all other animals and humans alike.
Who said we don't have predators? We have predators. A human's predator is another human. They may not haunt you for food but loads of them will be more than happy to kill you for many other reasons.
In the wild you can also be eaten by all sorts of other predators.
You see, when you look at it from the other side, our animal predators have no problem at all eating us...
Your response to this so far has been "yes but animals don't understand that it is wrong". In other words, animals don't have the mental capacity to see death from the same "morally unacceptable" perspective you see it from. And yet you are still trying to project your hung ups about death onto them.
There is no predator curbing the human population significantly. That is what I meant.
In other words, animals don't have the mental capacity to see death from the same "morally unacceptable" perspective you see it from. And yet you are still trying to project your hung ups about death onto them.
This is exactly my point. Non-humans don't have the ethical and moral principles to choose to not cause suffering. We do. If we forsake those principles, what does that make us?
Those principles are there for you to use when dealing with your fellow human beings, because they are the only living things that recognize them and use them just like you.
Animals don't understand morality. But if you want to use that morality to make their lives a little better then by all means, treat them well, and find painless ways to kill them for food. That way, they are still being treated just like they would be treated in the wild (eaten for food) but in a non-torturous way.
Yes, animals are alive, but so are plants! So suggesting that meat is murder would also say that vegetables are murder. Therefore, we shouldn't eat any food and we should remove ourselves entirely from the food chain!
Plants have a nutritive soul and they react to different stimuli, like light, wind, and temperature. They can also grow in different directions depending on these factors and most are grown against gravity, in fact. They may not be sentient, as animals are, but they can still "feel" and react.
lol, what? They're frikin plants! They have no brain. They are incapable of thought or emotion. Are you seriously going to sit there and argue that plants carry the same moral weight as animals?
No. I'm just pointing out that eating a vegetable is destroying life just as much as eating a steak. I have no problem with vegetarianism/veganism, but I see them as unnecessary. Human beings are the master species and we have control over this world and it is our job to take care of it AND ourselves. Meat is essential to many people's diets, like mine, where I want a lot of protein. Sure, you could get these things in other foods, but we have the power to digest meat, just like a cougar or a bear.
Besides, don't you realize that I don't care if an organism can think? Remember our little debate about abortion? :)
Even if vegetables are sentient and can feel pain, eating solely vegetables directly is killing far less of them than it would by funneling them through the animals of the meat industry. If one day somebody can prove that vegetables can feel pain, I will maintain my vegan diet for this reason.
Protein powder is better than meat. It's cheaper, has no fat, and is designed to be more easily absorbed by your body. And it doesn't require the killing of animals.
Killing an animal destroys just as much life as killing a plant? By that logic killing a human destroys just as much life as killing a plant. Again you're failing to distinguish between biological life and sentient life.
So you don't care if an organism can think? Why is killing wrong again?
In the abortion debate you said, "We do the right thing because we don't want to cause pain."
Animals are not human beings. They do not have rational souls and are on this earth because some of them are prey and others are predators. We just happen to be special animals, with logic and reason, that are predators.
No. I said some animals are prey and some are predators. We are predators at heart. We can also digest plants for when meat isn't readily available, but I believe we are predators first and foremost. Why else would we have evolved thought, thumbs, carnivorous teeth, etc? If you have the necessary anatomy to eat meat and you can eat meat, then eat meat! I'm not going to give up something that I was made to do. :)
The logic is still the same regardless of whether you agree with the content. Which is why telling people to not eat meat because they can live on other foods is as strong an argument as telling people to drop bombs because they can.
The fact is, we wouldn't be having this argument at all if we were Eskimos. Right?
Your opinions are only valid and honorable as long as there is a supermarket nearby for you to buy your vegan alternatives. Right?
If the food industry hadn't progressed to the point where you can get your protein from a powder and other vitamins from pills, then you wouldn't be so tough and preachy on people that eat meat.
Yes, it is true that we have the ability to abstain from meat because we have the wonders of the Internet and modern supermarkets, at least in many places over the world. But... why, exactly, do we need protein powders and vitamins from pills? There is absolutely no vitamin or mineral that you can't get from vegetable sources.
I wouldn't consider myself "tough and preachy." It's a debate. I'm debating. No need to be defensive.
The number one source for protein is Meat, Poultry, Fish and Eggs. You can also get protein from Vegetable protein foods such as Nuts and Seeds, Soya products, Beans, and some Dairy products.
From the above, protein from animal sources contains the full range of essential amino acids needed from an adult's diet. The best one being Poultry and Fish because they contain less fat than red meat.
Plant sources, however, don’t contain the full range of essential amino acids and so are not as high in nutritional value as animal protein. But it's still possible to consume the required amino acids, by eating a well-balanced diet that contains a variety of different foods. Which is why a lot of vegetarians complement their diets with powdered protein and vitamin pills. So, taste aside, you can be more certain that you have it all in your diet if you eat white meat than if you eat only the vegan alternatives.
That's from the BBC healthy living website, I didn't make it up.
There is consequences if you don't have any fruit and vegetables in your diet. What makes you think that there is no consequences if you exclude meat? We are not meant to eat from just one group of foods. Why do you think doctors are so skeptical about not eating meat at all?
You can make a case about the standards of animal welfare, and the living conditions in farms etc. I'm totally with you on that one. But that is entirely different to telling people to stop eating meat.
Preaching is to urge acceptance or abandonment of an idea or course of action. Which is why I think this is nothing short of preaching.
"Most amino acids are produced by our bodies and no amino acids can be "implemented." All essential amino acids (the ones our bodies don't produce) can be found in plants. The idea of combining foods to obtain "complete proteins" was passed over in the '70s; scientific knowledge moved on from that theory almost 40 years ago. And if you really want a complete protein, look no further than quinoa and amaranth, two plant sources."
Doctors are skeptical about cutting out meat because there isn't a lot of information about/support for veg*n diets. Meat is detrimental to your health; there's no doubt about it. That isn't opinion. Vegans, on average, live six years longer than omnivores.
I'm an abolitionist. Animals are not meant to be used by humans.
Red meat is detrimental to your health (in large quantities), but white meat is actually very healthy. Anything in large quantities is detrimental to your health, even beans.
The reason the doctors are skeptical about a diet that completely excludes one group of foods is because we still don't know the full consequences of a vegan diet. What we DO know however, is that if you eat a bit of everything in moderation then that is a good thing. So, personally, I see a risk with vegan diets. Why would I want to impose that risk on everybody else?
I'm also interested in something else. How do you see the ideal world in your mind? Humans are not allowed to eat animals, but its OK for other animals to eat animals? Or should we go around taming every lion and every tiger in the wilderness to prevent and stop ALL killing for food?
What separates humans from non-humans is the ability to make ethical, moral, and logical decisions. I believe in the abolition of the use of animals, both human and non-human. It's that simple.
What do you mean, "we still don't know the full consequences of a vegan diet"? Veganism has been around for... over six decades, as I believe it was founded in the 1940s, although I may be wrong.
You doubt the abolition of the use of animals? Really? What about blind people's guide dogs? Should we abolish them? What about police dogs? Should we abolish them? What about the mice used for cancer research drugs?
C'mon, face it, animal life is NOT equal to human life. You would rather test a very dangerous drug on an animal first before you give it to a human and risk killing them instead.
And where do you stop with the "use" of animals? Is it acceptable to use cows for milk? Or sheep for wool?
Oh, and, veganism may have been with us for a "whopping" six decades (basically since supermarkets came around), but meat-eating has been with us for thousands of years. So you can't tell me that we know as much about being vegan as we do about meat eating.
I do believe in abolishing guide dogs. I've never considered the matter of police dogs, but as I don't believe in breeding, I suppose that line of working animal would also eventually come to extinction. I am absolutely against researching on animals for any reason. Testing on non-humans gives no indication whatsoever of potential effects on humans. There are far more humane ways of testing drugs; on groups of cells, for example. Animal testing is absurd.
No, I do not believe it is acceptable to use cows for milk or sheep for wool in areas that it can be avoided. I believe that all sentient life is equal and none of it is meant to be used for any purpose other than its own life.
Meat-eating is a long tradition that, yes, we know a lot about. But only in (relatively) recent years has nutrition information really been available. So while we know a lot about meat-eating, we know a hell of a lot about veganism, too.
You would rather blind people not benefit from the help of a dog that is otherwise well fed, and loved, and trained to do something very useful...
Yeah... Fuck those blind people. Set the dogs free!
You would rather have no pre-testing of drugs on animals whatsoever, and instead inject them to human patients and pray that nothing goes wrong... All those doctors that have used mice to gather data on new drugs are basically idiots.
Yeah... Fuck those cancer patients. Set the mice free!
Also, all those poor third world country farmers should stop using horses and cows to help in agriculture. Their families should stop using the wool off the sheep to clothe themselves. They should also stop milking the cows for milk for their children. We can send them powdered milk and synthetic clothes right?
Yeah... fuck those farmers... and their children. Set the horses and the cows free!
At this point I think it has become evident that we have some HUGE differences in opinion, to the point that I don't think it serves anything to continue the debate. But I am more than thankful to have engaged in it because I truly needed some insight into the mindset behind this debate's slogan. Please don't take this post as an attack towards you. As a human being I love you as much as I love all my neighbors and having different opinions has never made me perceive people with an un-friendly eye. Some of your opinions on other debates have expressed my ideas as well.
Guide dogs are often mistreated. I'll never forget the time I saw a blind person being guided on a sweltering summer day across a crosswalk by a dog limping to be walking on the asphalt. After seeing that, I did some research and found that many guide dogs suffer similarly. Blind people can absolutely manage without dogs.
Medical testing on animals, as I said, brings no conclusive results. There are other ways. It is not necessary to torture a human or a non-human for these purposes.
And, no, my mindset clearly only pertains to those who have the resources to lead the sort of lifestyle I choose to lead. Hopefully, in the future, this will be everybody. But obviously not now. (Powdered milk, by the way, is not vegan.)
The purpose of veganism is not to harm anybody. Not the blind, not the cancer patients, not the farmers, not the animals. It is to help as many people as possible.
And, yes, I agree that it's just a different opinion/mindset, and neither of us will convince the other, although I hope something I've said makes sense. Good debating with you!
It's just examples. I mean, I tried to pick clear-cut issues. Maybe if I stuck in: "If you can murder young children with an ice pick, do it," it'd be more obvious. But you're right, those could be opinion-based and are vague. My apologies.
Sentience is not defined as having a central nervous system. The vast majority of what we label as "animals" do not even have that.
The only animals that come close are the most developed mammals and some fish. Even then, there are not many mammals that we consume that could be considered to have any advanced thoughts.
Our major animal food sources: pig, chicken, cow, fish are not known to have any conception of who they are, what they are, or anything resembling the sentience that we have. They may be more intelligent than plants or insects, but sentience as it is generally understood is limited to humans strictly.
The best you could do is include some species of monkey or ape....which we don't generally eat.
In reality sentience is not black and white. There is a gradient going from completely non-sentient to completely sentient. You have rocks on one end, and humans on the other. The farther along this spectrum an organism is, the more wrong it is to kill it.
As for how sentient the animals we eat are, well, that question is far from settled. I will say my judgment based on watching pigs, cows, etc, is that they are sufficiently sophisticated to make their slaughter wrong. You can watch them interact with one another. You can watch them exhibit fear. I think anyone who approaches this question from an unbiased perspective can't help but make the same call.
It's hard to have a gradient when there are only two distinct options: eat or do not eat.
If we determine an animal to be "half-sentient" we cannot "half-eat" it and expect it to live. I doubt you advocate having a policy of eating an entire insect, a half of a frog, or a leg of a goat (and no more).
At any rate, you're going to have to back up your point of view by telling me which animals are okay to eat and which are not. Unless you have other criteria that makes all animals off limits, whether they have central nervous systems or not.
Secondly, sentience is not simple intelligence and simple emotions. It's abit more than that. Most animals have rudimentary intelligence, they can solve simple tasks and engage in simple behaviors, even without brains.
Also, humans have the tendency to lay emotions on animals that do not necessarily have them. Many studies have shown that we project our personalities onto other animals, especially our pets.
That said, some simple emotions may still be found in some animals. But, again, emotions do not make a sentient being.
You are of course right that we can't "half-eat" something. It's the same problem we face with abortion. We are forced to draw a line somewhere and say, "After it reaches this level of cognitive sophistication, killing this creature is unacceptable." I think capacity for pain is a reasonable place to draw that line. Cows and chickens are clearly well beyond that point.
As for the precise meaning of the word "sentient", I'm not interested in semantic quibbling. If you have a better term for "more cognitive capabilities than a rock" we can use that instead.
Sentience is the conscious perception of one's own being and of the world around. It is the ability to conceptualize the world, to come up with abstract and subjective thoughts. That's been the traditional meaning, which you obviously were not aware of.
No animal known has the ability to conceptualize abstractions or understand itself, most animals cannot even recognize a mirrored reflection of themselves. Certain Monkeys and Apes come somewhat close, but, again, we don't generally eat them.
There is no semantic quibbling here, you simply are misusing a term. You are equating emotions, impulses, and feelings with the ability to engage in intellectual capacities of conception and understanding.
I have been trying to get you to define sentience, hoping you'd notice that you don't actually have a definition whatsoever. You just heard the word and decided to apply it emotionally, not logically.
Anyways, capacity for pain is not sentience. There are alot of animals you probably wouldn't eat that don't feel pain at all. There are generally no invertebrates that feel pain: lobsters, shrimp, mussels, crabs,..etc. It just so happens that the vast majority (over 90%) of all animals on earth are invertebrates. Even many types of vertebrates, such as fish, do not feel pain.
So, the best you've got there is a ban on cows and most other mammals. Otherwise, you are allowing people to eat the vast majority of animals on Earth.
That, of course, is if I even accepted the "pain threshold", so to speak. Which I do not. I see no reason why the experience of pain protects an animal from being eaten. You can try out some moral mumbo-jumbo, but those are random value judgments which aren't based on anything objective. If I don't value what you value, any moral argument is going to be useless.
2 : having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge
Let me put it this way, you are equating an extremely basic, rough, and extremely applicable definition of "sentience" with human "sentience".
I don't hold that you are using sentience in its correct context, just abusing its various meanings. Words have specific, contextual definitions.
Human sentience, which is our current context, is inapplicable in almost all animals without debate. Some come close to human sentience, but no case has shown "awareness" (the defining characteristic of sentience in human beings) definitively in any animal.
If you are going to afford animals the same rights as humans, based on sentience, they need to have the same sentience as humans. If they have less sentience, they have less rights. And, in this context, we are talking about human sentience.
Since no animal has human sentience, or awareness, they are afforded no rights and may be eaten at will.
It is entirely irrelevant that you've found a definition of the word "sentience" that you can apply to animals you wish to protect. It is a "sentience" that is far removed from the context.
Let me be more clear: we can keep quibbling from occurring by resting our definition of sentience on what humans have. If you accept that there are many definitions of sentience (which there are), in the context of this debate we are talking about human sentience and granting human rights to animals based on the level of human sentience they have.
They have none, for they are not human or on the level of humans. They may have what you could call "animal sentience", but that is inferior to human sentience and therefor human morals are inapplicable.
You'd have to develop a moral system based entirely on animal sentience, and decide whether that moral system is equal to humans. To do THAT, you need objective criteria.
Technically speaking, animal sentience needs to create its own morals (just as human sentience did). Because animals cannot do that, and humans can, animals have no morals and actions from or towards them cannot be judged on a moral scale. Humans, who generate moral-making sentience, can be judged according to morality and may be forced to play by moral rules.
However, moral rules only cover beings that have morals. Anything that does not fall under moral rules can have anything done to it. Like: Hammers, Squid, Planets, Atoms..etc.
The only time morals can play a role is if a human-sentient being is affecting another human-sentient being.
"Subjective sensations of good and bad are the foundation of any system of ethics."
And my subjective sensations are different than yours. Which is what I was saying.
I am most definitely not associating sentience in the broad sense with human level sentience. Again, I see a gradient of cognitive sophistication going from zero to human-level. As we move along this continuum, an organism accumulates moral weight. You can't really capture that idea in a single word, so I'm using "sentience", in the broad sense, as a rough approximation.
I agree with you that human sentience is greater that animal sentience. If we could quantify suffering (which we theoretically could), we might come up with a formula that looked something like this:
amount_of_suffering = damage_inflicted x capacity_for_pain
(the x signifies multiplication)
Where capacity_for_pain might be 1 for humans and .01 for cows and .000001 for shrimp.
"Since no animal has human sentience, or awareness, they are afforded no rights and may be eaten at will."
First, I don't think the concept of "rights" makes a lot of sense. I think all ethics must come from a Utilitarian perspective. And from here I see no such thing as absolute rights, human or otherwise. There is only maximization of overall quality of life; a concept which in turn is based on the simple miracle that organisms have evolved a capacity to feel good and bad. The only reason people generally have a "right" to life is because society could not function if we didn't harshly condemn murder. "Thou shalt not kill" is a good guideline for practical reasons; it is not a universal imperative (there are times when murder can serve the greater good).
But I digress. My key point is that suffering is bad and should therefore be minimized; killing animals causes suffering and is therefore bad; factory farming causes massive, widespread suffering and is therefore an abomination.
"You'd have to develop a moral system based entirely on animal sentience, and decide whether that moral system is equal to humans. To do THAT, you need objective criteria."
We have objective criteria, at least in theory: suffering in all forms is a result of neural activity. The firings of neurons can be measured and quantified. Of course we lack the technical sophistication to measure suffering, but we can come up with crude estimations. For example if I were to flick my finger against my arm, a few nerves would fire, a bit of neural activity would occur, and I would feel a very slight amount of pain. If I were to take a knife and plunge it into a cow's side repeatedly, quite a lot of nerves would fire strongly, massive neural activity would occur, and the cow would feel a great deal of pain. So there you go, objective suffering.
"animals have no morals and actions from or towards them cannot be judged on a moral scale"
From yes, towards no. Most animals are not capable of moral reasoning, therefore their actions can't be judged on a moral scale. However, it does not follow that us causing them harm is irrelevant.
"And my subjective sensations are different than yours."
Not at a basic level. It's safe to say we both experience roughly the same thing upon being hit in the head with a baseball bat, or upon having an orgasm. At the very least I hope we can agree that one of these is better than the other in both your case and mine.
"Where capacity_for_pain might be 1 for humans and .01 for cows and .000001 for shrimp."
Okay, then cows get .o1 of the rights that humans enjoy. Please explain what that would entail. Or is there no correlation between sentience and rights? As long as it falls above o on a sentience scale a creature gets equal rights to humans?
Sounds like the exact opposite of a utilitarian system. It's too inclusive to be useful, and it is to convoluted to work as a guide to moral behavior.
There's no such thing as rights in the sense that you are using the term. We should simply do what we can to minimize suffering, both human and non-human.
I don't see this system as convoluted at all. To put it more simply: Animal suffering matters, although it matters less than human suffering. Even if it were convoluted I don't think that would be relevant because it would simply be reflecting the complicated nature of reality.
A good first step would be to stop breeding and slaughtering mammals and birds in factory farms. If you accept that animal suffering matters at all, factory farms are obviously a horrible thing.
I don't believe that animal suffering matters, not in and of itself. Unless you have an objective reason why it should, it is just a matter of personality and personal philosophy.
Suffering in mammals and birds matters because they have brains which process pain. There is your objective reason. Do you not accept that pain is generally bad?
How do you know, vegetables and other plants respond to sound (music and conversation). The respond to touch (patience plant), they trap and eat prey (venus fly trap). They are aware of light and warmth. Because you cannot communicate with them does not mean they do not communicate with each other.
How do you know? Have you ever tried to talk to a plant? Maybe they are suffering in silence when you rip them from their roots and throw them in a basket like holocaust victims thrown into pits.
I think Donnie Darko can rap this up a bit. It's pointless to care about the death of an animal.
Yes, when torture of an animal occurs it's wrong because it's prolonged pain of a living creature. But just to kill it (for food, vanity or sport) is part of what makes us human. We dominate.
I do think we eat more meat then we should but these last years have found us eating healthier foods in general. With the addition of poultry and fish added to our diets I think we've come a long way from the meat and potato meals many of us grew up with and even our snacks are healthier than ever. I don't think meat equals murder in any way since most meats are raised for human consumption and the supply is never depleted because of this. Meat, in adequate and reasonable amounts, balances our diet and it's not that we couldn't all be vegan's or vegetarians but why not eat the meat that is given to us via the age old system of supply and demand when being either of those doesn't appeal to our personal tastes.
all you vegetarians are an outrage! so you do not eat meat, hurray for you! I do not care what you eat to stay alive, after all everyone, including you, consumes the dead to stay alive! think about that for a minute. you eat how you want as will I. you don't need to throw a parade, I could care less, and so should you. worry about something important in life will ya? after all, if it weren't for a high protein meat eating diet, you would still be a monkey!
Humans have been eating animals since the beginning of time. Meat is a very good source of protein. We could eat other things but meat is very accessible as well as good tasting. God gave us these animals for our survival, we need to respect the animals that we eat, in other words we should not kill more than we can eat.
Just because we've been doing it for a long time doesn't make it right. This is basically just saying, "it's natural," like everybody else on this side of the debate.
Protein powder is better than meat. It's cheaper, has no fat, and is designed to be more easily absorbed by your body. And it doesn't require the killing of animals.
If we didn't eat meat, there would be way too many animals. How is it that we eat so much meat, yet none of the animals have population problems. Imagine the world if we couldnt kill animals for meat. And since you dont want to eat meat, then i guess you are against hunting. So without any hunting, imagine the world if animals couldnt be killed.
Well actually most meat people eat comes from animals raised for the sole purpose of consumption (cows, chickens, pigs, etc...). If people stopped eating meat, then there would be no reason for farmers to raise this livestock, and therefore would not exist at all. In this way, people eating less meat would mean less animals.
Where you are correct is with animals like deer, or other wild animals. Because most of the local predators for these animals have reduced populations, or in some cases are completely wiped out, there numbers probably would increase. When you factor in the amount of domesticated animals, however, there would more than likely be an overall decrease.
Meat is food. That is true. Some people do not understand that. And they are hypocrites and obnoxious boobs for trying to stop others from enjoying their food, and then they turn around and enjoy a guilty pleasure. Like chicken nuggets.
Get real !Get human! Eat a burger! Have you ever notice a humans brain function level who deprives their body of meat? it's like talking to a wet noodle. not to mention, without meat the brain funtion is also to passive for the ever natural aggressive nature of human kind! so you need to fight or flight, and without energy you can't do much of either one. by the way I love animals as much or more as the next!
Is meat murder? We dont call the lion who ate the lamb a murderer. And I wouldn't call myself a MURDERER after eating the 500g texas Tbone I had for dinner tonight. MMMMMMMMMMMMMM . I consider this totally different to the unlawful killing of another human being. I think for breakfast I'll have myself a double helping of scrambled chook period. YYYUUUMMMMYY!!!
No, meat is not murder. murder is murder. And meat is meat. And you can purchase both for the right price. But murder is immoral and wrong. But meat is not. But you will probably disagree.
106 days ago | Tagged As: MY CAT IS DEAD AND I MISS HIM FFFFuuuuuu
I already said this before in response to another argument, if you will call it that, really it was weak sauce, and weak sauce doesn't go well with anything really. But anyway I thought for the common good of the debate, I would include it separately so that if someone doesn't want to read all the debates, they can just scroll down and hit this one bam without having to click to see the argument. You know what I mean.
Killing animals for food? Not necessarily murder. Hunter-gatherers took down the slow and injured of herds, as do natural predators, and no one calls that murder. However, factory farming is disgusting, cruel, and environmentally unsound. The "meat is murder" viewpoint is a luxury of modern farming, and those who do not have access to the resources we do need meat in their diet for protein; however, they kill and process it.
I think that to eat meat, one should have to process it him/herself, and be very aware of where it came from and how it lived, as well as make up for the carbon cost of eating it.
I must say that I do not do this myself, before anyone asks. And to some extent this is hypocrisy. Flay me for it, whatever.
97 days ago | Tagged As: Not murder but environemtally unsound
At which point does killing become murder? You can obviously take the lives of fungi, bacteria, and plants without causing an uproar. For animals it's a bit trickier. Insects are ok to kill because they're a nuisance. But other animals aren't?
I don't have any problem with using animals for food. My problem lies in the fact that they aren't respected prior to the time we kill and eat them. I'd much prefer it if animals were given a lot of roaming space, were killed humanely, etc. I want an animal used for meat to be given the most natural life we can possibly give within a farm setting.
Meat is not murder. I do think that there has to be good conditions for animals on farms and for the majority of livestock they do it is so regulated and monitored that you would have to look hard to find unsuitable conditions in this day and age of big commercial farm.
Everybody is different with there bio chemistry if i could only eat plants and not meat I would but my system is built around meat I would become anemic if I did not eat meat and only plants.
You ruined a perfectly good debate by bothering to respond to someone who as you claim is ruining the quality of the debate. So work on what you say before you say it or don't bother to say it at all. Do you get what I say? I don't think so, but I say it anyway.
Yes, you speak the truth. Couldn't say it better myself. But that will not stop me. High protein, as is found in meat, is essential for good nutrition.
Of course some animal farms are treating the animals not so great, but most people who criticize this are just hypocrites who go to Micky-D's and order super sized double cheeseburger and chicken nuggets. Or just order off the dollar menu. You know what I'm talking about.
While he may have overstated in an extremely idiotic way, most animal protein is complete, meaning it has adequately proportioned amounts of all the amino acids, while many vegetable proteins do not.
You are correct that animal protein is nutritionally complete, and protein from an individual vegetable is not. However, you can ingest the same proteins present in animal by eating a variety of vegetables, since not all vegetables contain the same proteins. Thus, the under-performance argument I believe you were attempting to support is again invalid.
1) Combining multiple plant foods gives you the full range of amino acids. You should be eating a variety of plant foods anyway.
2) Dairy products contain complete proteins.
3) Protein powder works too.
There are no negative consequences at all to excluding meat from your diet. In fact, studies have shown forgoing meat makes you less likely to die from a heart attack:
"We... compare the death rates from common diseases of vegetarians with those of nonvegetarians with similar lifestyles... In conclusion, vegetarians had a 24% lower mortality from ischemic heart disease than nonvegetarians, but no associations of a vegetarian diet with other major causes of death were established."
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."
"1) Combining multiple plant foods gives you the full range of amino acids. You should be eating a variety of plant foods anyway."
If we had to produce enough vegan protein alternatives for all people to be able to combine sources in order to get the full range of amino acids every day, the environment would come to a stand still. How environmentally friendly do you think it will be if we had to produce entire crops of beans, and entire crops of nuts, transport all these things with trucks that produce CO2, process them in bigger factories that would yield higher pollution levels, use stronger pesticides to ensure the success of the crop, which in turn will damage the environment and other animals heavily. The mistake you are making is that you are assuming that producing these vegan alternatives (to multiple quantities in order to make up the full amino acids) is less harmful than having a bunch of cows in a farm.
100 grams of lean beef or chicken gives me approximately 30 grams of protein and all the amino acids I need. In order to get that from beans (5g per 100g), I would have to eat 600 grams of beans. On top of that, I would need to eat another complimentary protein to make up for the amino acids. So in terms of quantity, we would need to produce 6 times (in this example) the amount of beans. That is 6 times the size of the land used. 6 times the amount of pesticides. 6 times the amount of petrol needed for transport. 6 times the amount of tins needed to package the beans. 6 times the amount of rubbish in my bin going to wastelands. 6 times the amount of pollution and toxics in the rivers. And that's just for the beans! Think about the multiples of the other protein source as well...
"2) Dairy products contain complete proteins."
Sure they do. But with our large populations you would still need animal factories that produce milk. The quantities we need make it almost impossible to be entirely "free range". You would still have animals trapped in a box and made to produce more milk than they normally would.
Either way, you cannot avoid using animals. Because going all vegan and combining protein sources would be financially impossible and environmentally disastrous.
You do realize that animals use up more resources than plants, right? Your first two paragraphs make an excellent argument against eating meat because "having a bunch of cows on a farm" is much less resource efficient than growing soy or what have you on that same farm. Cows don't live on air, you know.
As for getting milk from cows on a farm, I disagree with you that they would need to be "trapped in a box." Providing humane conditions may raise the price of milk a bit, but not prohibitively so. Also, because they aren't "cycled" nearly as quickly as animals which are bred to be used as meat, much less suffering occurs, and it is thus a big step up from killing them for meat.
That's not true. You can feed a bunch of cows with grass alone. You don't need to give them the same wide range of foods that humans require. Some farmers have fields with trees on them and grass underneath. The cows can live on the grass, which is essentially free to the farmer who is more interested in what the trees produce.
If you piled up the grass the cows need to live on, it wouldn't be any near the size of the field we would need for the amount of beans that would equal the amount of protein the cow would give us. So there you have it.
I would like to see a citation to verify that. How much grass does a cow require? How much free grass do we currently have? Are grass fed cows as economically viable as grain fed cows? Are they as nutritionally adequate?
Here's the most comprehensive report on the issue of livestock that I know of:
There is way more information in there than I'm capable of digesting in one sitting, probably even in ten sittings, but I did find this snippet:
"In fact, livestock consume 77 million tonnes of protein contained in feedstuff that could potentially be used for human nutrition, whereas only 58 million tonnes of proten are contained in food products that livestock supply. This is a result of the recent trend towards more concentrate-based diets for pigs and poultry, with nutritional requirements more similar to humans than ruminants."
The quote that you provided here, actually continues to say the following:
"This simple comparison obscures the fact that proteins contained in animal products have higher nutritive values than those in the feed provided to animals. Moreover, it does not capture the fact that livestock and their feed also make a contribution to food security objectives by providing a buffer in national and international food supplies that can be drawn upon in case of food shortages."
So there you have it. The amount of protein we feed them might be 77 million tonnes, but that 77 million is only complementary protein. In other words you have to combine it with other proteins to make up the full amino acids. Whereas the 58 million tonnes of protein that those animals produce, is full of amino acids and does not require further proteins to complement...
If you look at the full report there is a clusterfuck of pluses and minuses relating to the raising and consumption of meat. It's not at all clear what the best answer is.
Among the issues: ruminants like cows are less widely used than chickens because chickens are much more economically efficient.
Also, land used for feed could be used for crops better suited to humans. The protein yield would be higher and amino acids more diverse.
I'm still waiting for that citation about grass and cows, btw.
No it's not clear what the best answer is which is why the report does not call for and end to meat consumption, it actually does not make any recommendations. You said it yourself, there are pluses and minuses. Which basically indicates that the answer is somewhere in the middle.
But in this one issue we have been debating, the report makes it very clear that although the tonnes of protein the animals consumed was 77 million, the 58 million tonnes of proteins contained in the animal products had higher nutritive values than those in the feed provided to animals.
Now let's do some maths...
If the 77 million tonnes consumed by the animals were of the same food group (i.e. corn) and that group contained half the amino acids needed for humans, then you would need another 77 million tonnes of a different feed that would make up for the other half of amino acids needed. That is 154 tonnes of various feed in total, in order to produce 77 million tones of full-amino protein for humans. That's double the feed, for effectively only 32% more complete protein than what the animals produced on half the amount of vegan protein. But if you gave that 154 tonnes of feed to the animals, you would have 116 tonnes of fully nutritional protein instead of just 77 tonnes. And that's being generous, cause if the second food group does not make up for the entire second half of amino acids needed, then you would need a third...
But let's look at the other option.
If the 77 million tonnes of protein given to the animals were a composition of, lets say, soya and corn, then by the fact that one has to be complemented by the other, humans would only make up 38.5 tonnes of full-amino protein out of it. Which is 20 tonnes less than what the animals produced.
And the number gets a lot lower if the feed was made up of three different vegan proteins. Cause we would have to consume from all three in order to make up for all the amino acids.
So, effectively, if we all turned vegan, because of the fact that vegan protein has to be combined in different sources to make up for the full amino acids, we would need far larger quantities of vegan alternatives to be produced and transported etc etc. According to the maths, in the best case scenario, we would need double the amount of the feed we give to animals in order to get the high quality protein we are currently getting from them. And that's only if corn and soya can provide us with all the amino acids, which I doubt they do...
Well, first, soy is not a good example, because soy is a complete protein. Indeed you could replace the crop entirely with soy to yield a greater amount of protein. The only problem with soy is that it may have health complications, the research isn't clear.
Second, you're assuming the two crops would contain no amino acid overlap. This is most likely not the case. A more real world example would look something like this:
Crop A:
100% Amino Acid 1
30% Amino Acid 2
Crop B:
30% Amino Acid 1
100% Amino Acid 2
So you could end up with a greater than 50% protein yield by combining crops. You'd have to know the exact amino acid quantities of each possible crop to come up with an optimal combination.
Third, the crops would have additional health benefits aside from just the protein: high fiber, low fat, vitamins, etc.
No no no. You should butt out of other peoples choice of diet, instead of telling them what they should be eating to satisfy your own personal sensibilities. Or do you just like to boss other people around? Bossy boss. Bully. I call you out. We all laugh at you for trying to boss other people around. Its sooo funny too. Look! Look! Now he is telling someone he should eat vegetables, that they should put vegetables in their mouths! Ahahahaha. He thinks he is the boss of what people should put in their mouths. Ahahahahaha. Fool.
It does for SOME ppl and you have to be considerate of those ppl too.
You don't think so? Then what about the Eskimos? The Eskimos or Inuit as they call themselves lived exclusively off animal diet like seals, walrus, and birds with zero vegetables. That is because they had no vegetables at their climate. They needed to live that way to survive. If they tried to be vegetarians, they would die of starvation. Of course, today they have access to white man's food, and don't have to eat just meat anymore. Now they die of diabetes and alcoholism.
Meat a convenient and natural way to get that protein and it tastes good, not like those vanilla flavored protein shakes where they have to add vanilla to it because without vanilla it would taste so bad that people would never consume the stuff, let alone get near it.
But we both know that is beside the point, and that meat is not murder, but that murder is murder and meat is meat. Murder is immoral, while meat is just part of life. Anyone who says otherwise is most likely just a hypocrite who goes to Micki-D's and orders a big mac supersized with a large coke and side of fries, and 6 piece chicken nuggets, or just orders off the dollar menu. You know what I'm talking about.
