Vegetarian/Vegan. Ethics and other discussion.

[Geti]

Before you rant about crazy hippies and a lack of protein, shut up and read.

I've been vegetarian for just over a month now. I've always disagreed with slaughter and other forms of animal cruelty, but haven't had the motivation to do anything about it. Recently, I found this motivation, and stopped putting meat in my food, and eating cheese with rennet. It really hasn't hurt me. If anything, its helped me, I've been getting up more awake in the morning, had clearer skin, and been able to look at my pets a little more happily.

But now, to the ethics of the matter.

This is all towards factory farming.

The meat industry sickens me. The idea behind the whole mess is repulsive: breeding something to be killed and eaten. Those of you thinking "animals don't have emotions/thoughts" are wrong. If you've ever had a dog or cat, you'll know that animals feel pain, and have emotions. The cows and sheep who's flesh you eat daily feel pain and have emotions as well.

Here's what good old wiki has to say about "meat". [cropped and bolded for conveniance]

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to organs, including lungs, livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood. The word meat is also used by the meat packing and butchering industry in a more restrictive sense—the flesh of mammalian species (pigs, cattle, etc.) raised and butchered for human consumption, to the exclusion of fish, poultry, and eggs. Animals that consume only, or mostly animals are called carnivores.

if you care, read this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_eating_meat

a tl;dr for you lazies:

• Questioning the ethics behind killing for food: if you dont need to do it, why? it is completely viable for everyone (bar those allergic to gluten) in a 1st world country to both drop meat, and still eat interestingly.
• The Animals are treated badly. No damnit they dont live in fields, or eat grass.
• Weather the animals are conscious enough to feel the pain, or understand what's going on. the general rule is that if an animal "exibits" behaviour similar to that of a human when put in a painful situation, it is being hurt. this means that any arguments concerning human mistreatment and abuse can and should be extended to animals.
• The whole industry wastes a lot of resources. The animals are fed grain, which needs to be grown in space and requires water.

  According to the USDA, growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the U.S. water supply and 80% of its agricultural land. Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain.

  all of this could have been put towards growing _human_ food, removing the middle group altogether.
• The "We're evolved to eat meat" argument. Actually, we do just fine eating only vegetables, and our internal biology is more suited to plant digestion anyway. Eating meat has also been linked by many studies to a variety of health issues, including heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer.

And just for the record, you can get protein out of a lot of foods. everything made of cells, that is, plants, animals, bacteria, viruses & fungi contains protein. however, for a vegetarian, the most obvious choices for foods high in protein would be eggs and milk/dairy products. other (vegan) choices would be vegetables (amazingly), legumes, soy ^___________^, and seitan (wheat based pseudo-meat from asia!).

Anyway, I think its all unethical, hypocritical, inefficient, and unnecessary.
So I'm a vegetarian.

Discuss, yo'.

[Thomas]

You've got some great points.

However, there's some economic deals with this issue, mostly dealing with farmers. Meat farming generates a lot of business, especially in infertile soil. If everyone started eating only vegetables (Or other products), farmers would lose their jobs, or make a tiny profit out of eggs and milk.

The same applies for slaughterhouses and meat packaging companies.

I appreciate your points, but I don't think that everyone should go vegan/vegetarian.

[runningninja]

I mostly agree.
I'm not a vegetarian however.
I stand by the eating meat point because the majority of species eat others.
It's a part of life. Not neccesarily an ethical one, but one regardless.
I believe that humans should eat a balance of meat and vegetables.
And if you believe that eating meat is unethical, then consider this: plants are living things - when you eat it, you are effectively killing it.
No comment on the slaughtering issue.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

I mostly agree.
I'm not a vegetarian however.
I stand by the eating meat point because the majority of species eat others.
It's a part of life. Not neccesarily an ethical one, but one regardless.
I believe that humans should eat a balance of meat and vegetables.
And if you believe that eating meat is unethical, then consider this: plants are living things - when you eat it, you are effectively killing it.
No comment on the slaughtering issue.

You mostly agree, even though:

• You're not a vegetarian
• You believe humans should eat meat
• You stand by the fact that eating meat is natural and ethical (well, you suggest it's ethical twice and suggest it isn't once)

So what exactly are you agreeing with?

That said, I agree with you in that meat is tasty and I like to eat it. I don't like cruelty to animals, and I'd like to see all my tasty meat produced in as humane a manner as possible, but I don't consider the entire concept of raising animals for slaughter to be wrong.

[runningninja]

I mostly agree.
I'm not a vegetarian however.
I stand by the eating meat point because the majority of species eat others.
It's a part of life. Not neccesarily an ethical one, but one regardless.
I believe that humans should eat a balance of meat and vegetables.
And if you believe that eating meat is unethical, then consider this: plants are living things - when you eat it, you are effectively killing it.
No comment on the slaughtering issue.

You mostly agree, even though:

• You're not a vegetarian
• You believe humans should eat meat
• You stand by the fact that eating meat is natural and ethical (well, you suggest it's ethical twice and suggest it isn't once)

So what exactly are you agreeing with?

That said, I agree with you in that meat is tasty and I like to eat it. I don't like cruelty to animals, and I'd like to see all my tasty meat produced in as humane a manner as possible, but I don't consider the entire concept of raising animals for slaughter to be wrong.

I meant it's natural. Not ethical.
I agree with you about slaughter.

[Zelda_S_Kenneth]

Face it. We're omnivores. We eat both meat and plants (though meat is just plants already chomped up by an animal). We are not meant to focus on only one source of nutrition, although meat from land animals should be less common than fish and veggies. This does not equal "focus on only veggies".

Oh yeah, Geti, in terms of breeding only to provide food, just what do you think we do with chicken eggs?

[DemonzLunchBreak]

I think that there is nothing wrong with eating meat.

Animals that are frequently eaten are sentient, yes. This means that they feel pain and it is possible to abuse them. It does not mean that they are qualified to have rights. Rights, from a legal perspective, come from a social contract with a government. Animals don't have this. From a philosophical perspective, any creature that is on some level an abstract thinker (and I'm not talking about Pavlovian tricks) has the right to self-ownership. A cow does not meet the requirements to have rights, and so I have no problem killing it and acquiring its deliciousness. A chimpanzee, on the other hand, might come a little too close to these requirements for me to be comfortable killing and eating it. I'd like the suffering to be minimized, because the animals probably do feel it, but I don't think that the meat industry should be shut down.

Man, I could go for some breakfast sausages right now.

[Twistkill]

A reason that supports eating meat is that it is the largest source of protein outside of acquiring it artificially. Beef, pork, fish, and poultry are all categories of meat. If you are vegetarian, more power to you, but omitting such an important aspect of nutrition is, to me, ill-advised.

I consume meat because it gives me protein and it tastes good. I enjoy steaks, hamburgers, sausages, chicken, and fish (especially tuna and talapia), among other things. Does this mean I support what some of the farmers are doing to the cattle and the chickens? Absolutely not. I do agree that some of the animals are being treated poorly, and what I would like to see is more regulation and quality control implemented on cattle farms to ensure the safety of these animals. Or perhaps an alternate/more humane method of killing the animals? Slaughtering seems like such a harsh word, and the act of slaughtering isn't exactly what anyone would call nice.

In the end, however, animals are not humans and their lives are not equal to ours, no matter how emotionally attached we may become to our beloved pets. I have 2 cats of my own, and as anti-social as they are, I adore them. I certainly do believe that most animals are higher than some other lifeforms, like insects, but they are raised for our consumption, with companionship only residing with domesticated animals.

[blackson]

If you make the arguent that animals have feelings and are living things, so are plants.

[Turtle]

I don't see much of a problem with eating meat. It just makes me upset to hear the way some animals are treated before they are eaten. It gets pretty bad.

[blackson]

Throughout time, mammals have depended on others to live. We are no different, and just because animals have feelings, so does our body. It's a bit silly that people would go without protein because of their concerns about animals. Animals die, and animals get eaten. This has been happening before we were here. If we never existed, cattle and other livestock would be "slaughtered" by the mammals a step down from us.

It's been going on, it's going on now, and it will continue to go on, no matter if we want it to or not.

[notsteve]

people are /suppost/ to eat meat
thats why our teeth are like this
so I personally, will keeping eating meat

i do think it would be better if more of the meat was *wild*
i hear it tastes better that way too

[Twistkill]

people are /suppost/ to eat meat
thats why our teeth are like this

Uh... actually, it's the other way around. Our teeth are flat and more suited for eating vegetables and not meat, but we adapted to eating meat anyway because it's delicious and good for you.

[blackson]

people are /suppost/ to eat meat
thats why our teeth are like this

Uh... actually, it's the other way around. Our teeth are flat and more suited for eating vegetables and not meat, but we adapted to eating meat anyway because it's delicious and good for you.

They are suited for both. Our back teeth support meat, and the front teach are good for tearing up plants.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Humans are omnivores, technically, yes, but we're far closer to the herbivore side of omnivorism than the carnivore side.
That being said, I'll continue to eat meat for a number of reasons:

• it's delicious
• the negative consequences on my body based on the amount of meat I eat is negligible
• it would be inconsistent of me to refuse to eat meat but tolerate the innumerable other circumstances in my life that do me far more harm
• the animals are not within my Dunbar's Number; I can't care about what happens to them

[Geti]

addressed in reverse chronological order.

@twistkill: thank you for pointing out the teeth difference. the only teeth that we have that are "for" eating meat are our canines, which in most people are pitifully small anyway. id like to also draw your attention to the way our digestive system is structured. we have a caecum, of quite a large size, which is used solely for the digestion of cellulose, thanks to some little bacterial friends. in species "supposed to eat meat" and meat only, the caecum is either completely absent, or replaced by an appendix (for the record, we have both a caecum and a vestigial appendix). we have the enzymes present from our pancreatic juices that allow us to digest protein. protein can be taken from a lot more than just animals. again, good old wiki:

All essential amino acids may be obtained from plant sources, and even strict vegetarian diets can provide all dietary requirements, provided they are based on a variety of whole plant foods. Some believe that careful monitoring of nutrient levels is important in strict vegetarian diets, but there are virtually no cases of protein-deficiency among populations consuming adequate calories. The only common cases of protein-deficiency occur among populations that are chronically undernourished.

ill leave you to "chew that over"

@notsteve: actually, wild animals by all accounts should taste worse. wild animals would not be castrated, and would therefore start to build up muscle that is less palatable, and tougher, due to them being subject to their own hormones, instead of the ones injected into them. they would also definitely be stressed before they died if they were wild, and everyone knows meat tastes better when the animal was less stressed when it died, right? that's why the pathways the animals walk through in a slaughterhouse are curved instead of straight, it puts the animal under less stress, and means you get meat that's softer.

@Blackson: see above quote about the protein, i'm tired of saying it. also in the wild, the animals arent bred for the sole purpose of dying, and arent killed in such huge numbers. in the US alone, over 10 Billion animals are slaughtered annually. there arent that many people in the world!

@zelda: if one has the capacity to live healthily and eat interesting food while only eating vegetables, why not do so? i like food just as much, if not more than your average guy, i wouldnt give up meat if it meant giving up good food. and on the subject of eggs, im lucky enough to have my own chickens. ive never bought cage eggs in my life (though i have been to a battery farm) and have only bought ~30 cartons of free range eggs. my chickens make more than enough eggs for me, if i dont want an egg that day, the chicken can have the egg back, and get its nommy protein for the day. in "the wild" chickens eat their own eggs, if they arent stolen or fertilised. or fertilised, then stolen :P

@maestro: each to his own.

hope this cleared up any concerns.

ooooooooooh wait. blackson posted again!.

wrong. back teeth are for grinding plants, frontmost teeth are for cutting food, any food, and canines are for tearing meat, though theyre pretty small in humans.

and suki.. though actually thank you for that. damnit let me post this!

[Atilla]

@twistkill: thank you for pointing out the teeth difference. the only teeth that we have that are "for" eating meat are our canines, which in most people are pitifully small anyway. id like to also draw your attention to the way our digestive system is structured. we have a caecum, of quite a large size, which is used solely for the digestion of cellulose, thanks to some little bacterial friends. in species "supposed to eat meat" and meat only, the caecum is either completely absent, or replaced by an appendix (for the record, we have both a caecum and a vestigial appendix).

Even ignoring the problems with "it must be wrong/right because it's unnatural" arguments as a whole, this is a terrible argument.

Yes, humans have a digestive system which can take plants, and creatures which eat only meat do not. This is entirely irrelevant because nobody is suggesting that humans should have a 100% meat diet. We're friggin' omnivores. We're capable of eating both plants and meat. I could also point out that entirely herbivorous creatures frequently have several stomachs for breaking down fibre, and humans don't. Oh no! We must abstain from the unnatural consumption of plants because we don't have the same digestive system as a dedicated herbivore!



@Vegetarians who keep dogs or cats: Do you buy pet food which contains meat? Because that's, y'know, slightly hypocritical. Why is it okay to breed flesh-eating beasts for your enjoyment, but not to eat flesh for enjoyment? Isn't owning a dog you don't need just meat consumption by proxy?

[Geti]

@Vegetarians who keep dogs or cats: Do you buy pet food which contains meat? Because that's, y'know, slightly hypocritical. Why is it okay to breed flesh-eating beasts for your enjoyment, but not to eat flesh for enjoyment? Isn't owning a dog you don't need just meat consumption by proxy?

cant comment, don't have a dog. damn well worded point though, i'm tempted to agree. be better to make your pooch hunt for his food.

also, though we do have the capacity to eat meat, we can exist happily and healthily without it. and trust me, it doesn't make you less of a man.

oh, i missed something

@blackson: plants dont feel pain, or dont exhibit much to show theyre being hurt, other than dying eventually. plants have never proven their sentience, so i feel that it is fine to eat them. also, the nature of our bodies kind of demands that we do eat something. it would be great if we could metabolise free floating N2, carbon and hydrogen, however we dont have the capacity to. it would be more respectable to eat an animal you raised and slaughtered or hunted (without a gun) yourself, but you dont do that, do you?

yay, controversy.

[jean-luc]

I'm in support of omnivorism. I think that we should go with the natural order of us eating other animals, particularly because our bodies, ecosystem, and economy are built to have us eating animals.

That said, it's important that animals raised for meat are treated in compliance with sound ethical standards. and by 'sound ethical standards' I don't mean USDA standards, which are all to low in my opinion. I think a group needs to be formed to develop sound ethical standards for the treatment of food animals, and then ultimately it would be nice to see products that are developed in compliance with these standards labeled. That kind of model would pay for itself too, in terms of people tending to purchase products that are 'certified ethical' over items that aren't.

[Atilla]

I don't understand the whole "It would be better if you hunted for meat, rather than slaughtered animals" argument. How is it more ethical to kill something slowly, frequently by inflicting several non-fatal wounds, than to kill it as quickly and painlessly as possible? Instead of putting condemned criminals before a firing squad or giving them a lethal injection, would it be more ethical to release them in a nature reserve, give them a head start, and then send the army after them with orders to shoot to kill?

The "it's better not to use guns" line is even sillier. Using tools is one of humans' natural abilities. Will you also campaign for lions to be declawed so they don't have an unfair advantage over the cows? And what's with the arbitrary line between guns and other weapons? Why is it (apparently) okay to use a modern crossbow with a scope, but terribly evil to use any sort of gunpowder weapon? If you're going to make such distinctions based on what's "fair", demanding hunters use only knives would be much more sensible, since it's roughly comparable to the claws of many animals. I still can't see how it's more ethical to hack something apart with obsidian knives than to use a gun, though.

[runningninja]

I disagree with the majority of meat eaters in this thread.
I believe that it is natural for us to eat meat. In the food chain, we are near, if not the top of the chain due to our greatly evolved intelligence.
This does not place us above animals in any way. Our lives are not worth more than a cow's, chicken's, or any other animal's rights. And are we really qualifed to decide whose lives are "worth" more? We will obviously be biased toward ourselves, and as we are the most evolved intelligence on Earth, there is no other species for us to debate this with.
Now something else that supports my above argument is how we have weaknesses as well. True, intelligence is the strength that has allowed us to dominate the food chain, but we do not have the speed of a leopard, or the flight of a bird, or the acrobatics of a monkey. Each species on Earth has it's own unique ability.
Also here's a scenario you might want to think about. Say aliens that are more intelligent than us came to Earth, kidnapped us, and brought them back to their planet to be put in zoos, or be made pets,or eaten. Just because the aliens have dominance over us, does that mean their lives are utimately better than ours? We would probably argue for equality, while the aliens would likely use their higher intelligence as "proof" their lives are more valuable.

[Pixon]

Vegetarianism is probably the best thing that could happen to us, because if everyone turned to it, then the world would be a much better place.

[krusch]

I've been vegetarian for the past six or seven months, based on much the same reasoning as Geti here. I think the conditions in which farm animals are kept are pretty Goddamn terrifying, and I don't want to support the industry by buying its products, so I'm vegetarian. I realise that by my own standard I should be vegan, because milk-cows aren't treated much better than meat-cows, but I'm not quite there yet. I still drink only soy milk (which actually has more calcium and protein than average cows' milk) and eat only local free-range, organic eggs (used to be my own chickens' eggs, but they became fox-food, and I haven't had the heart to replace them), but I don't eat many eggs anyway. So what I'm saying is, it's not a huge step to veganism for me, and one that I may just make in the coming months.

I have typed a lot more than will appear here, but I'm not posting it because it's all convoluted. Basically, I acknowledge that today's society would not be able to unanimously convert to my lifestyle for a variety of reasons. *sigh* I was going to address others' points too, but they're all too correct and I'm all too tired.


"The way I see it is: animals (humans included) eating other animals is okay, commercial farming is not. So I'd be happy to eat a fish I caught in the ocean, but not so happy to eat a fish from a farm or an overfished species. Conversely, I'd be happy for a lion if it hunted me down and ate me, but not so happy for it if it locked up me and my family, then forced us to breed so it may devour our offspring."

That was how I explained my reasoning to KA a few months back, and I think it works well enough. It's idealistic though, I know.

PNI: are you sure? I mean, do you think it's really possible for the world to become vegetarian?

[a happy song]

Firstly, I strongly believe that if a person couldn't bring themselves to capture, kill, skin and prepare an animal before eating it, then they have no right to.

As a species, we're no longer part of any kind of food chain. We dominate the entire planet, and the few frontiers that remain overtly hostile to us will be tamed with the advent of bigger and better technology. We've 'evolved' to this mark, we're above everything, we're no longer part of the true and natural order. The argument that eating meat is natural for us no longer holds any weight.

Besides, commercial farming is a hideous beast. We grow lives to slaughter purely to satisfy an urge. Eating meat is nothing more than that. We've learned enough about our bodies now to sustain them with all the nutrients we need without having to resort to eating the flesh of another living creature.

Growing bodies to drain them of their fluids to form decedent treats is possibly an even greater abuse of our power. Dairy farming is even more disgusting a practice than meat. Keeping a creature alive in a prison to satisfy a lust for a diverse pallet has to be one of the biggest evils we can commit, perhaps not so much for a small farm but certainly the way the commercial system is run.

Meat is not needed anymore, we're better than that. Once science catches up and certain baren climates can be tamed to produce vegetation or similar solutions, the last excuse will be lost.

For those of us within the benefit of such comfortable and educated society, consuming flesh is a disgusting and primitive urge, nothing more.

-

I'd be happy for a lion if it hunted me down and ate me, but not so happy for it if it locked up me and my family, then forced us to breed so it may devour our offspring.

Eloquently put. Even if I'm not sure how happy I'd actually be to be hunted and eaten in any context I do heart this analogy.

[Dead_N]

Eating meat is natural to humans. It has protien doesn't it? We need protien, yeah! It's impossible for me to be a vegetarian as I hate every type of vegetable there is. So, me giving up meat, not gonna happen.