Ethics of veganism

[zapatos]

10 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Yes, in the US and Canada, where we have big grasslands and don't want buffalo roaming all over the place. You'd still need to build slaughterhouses in the prairie, as the highway system prevents any big cattle drives to New York and LA. That means many large refrigerated trucks, laying rubber and spewing carbon from gasoline, which itself is not an environmentally friendly resource to harvest. I suppose you could make the slaughterhouses efficient and relatively humane - but would the people likely to be in charge make that a priority? In other parts of the world, free range grazing presents bigger problems.  Also, of course, far too many people are demanding meat more often that as just the occasional treat.

It's the scale of the thing that's troublesome. Too many people consuming and wasting too much; not enough land and water.

You've already made up your mind. No need for me to try to reason with you.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

You've already made up your mind. No need for me to try to reason with you.

That's an excellent conclusion. Reasoning would probably entail supplying factual information o which i am currently ignorant. 

I made up my mind over a period of years, during which I studied data from all aspects of meat production, human consumption and dietary requirements, land use, agricultural practices, climate and environmental considerations. I didn't decide on the basis of this thread; this has been an on-going debate for a couple of decades.

Edited Thursday at 05:38 PM by Peterkin

[zapatos]

13 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

That's an excellent conclusion. Reasoning would probably entail supplying factual information o which i am currently ignorant. 

I made up my mind over a period of years, during which I studied data from all aspects of meat production, human consumption and dietary requirements, land use, agricultural practices, climate and environmental considerations. I didn't decide on the basis of this thread; this has been an on-going debate for a couple of decades.

Your over the top responses indicate emotion is playing a large part in your interactions. 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

It's the scale of the thing that's troublesome. Too many people consuming and wasting too much; not enough land and water.

Well, the scale is just crazy.  Somewhere (if anyone asks for citation, I will do my best) I've seen estimates that if we humans were to live as hunter-gatherers, the carrying capacity of the planet would be somewhere between 200-500 million - at most 1/16 of today's population.  And pre-industrial revolution, the population stayed under 1 billion, which is probably a reasonable guess at a ceiling on low tech agri, with animal-powered cultivation.  A regression to anything like that now would likely be even fewer people, given the prevalence of depleted soil, fisheries, aquifers, etc.  

Politically, culturally....yeah, I have no idea if any current society is really going to exert maximum consumer force on agribusiness to do humane and sustainable meat production.  Right now, it's just a niche, among many.  Probably won't change until there's a crisis, or society evolves towards some kind of post-capitalism, post-oligarchy.

Or there's massive eco catastrophe, wiping out 9/10 of the population.  That tends to get attention towards sustainability issues.  If they don't eat all the historians before they can remind people how they got into that reduced condition.  

[LuckyR]

3 hours ago, Ten oz said:

Which is why I said "Humans evolved eating insects, fish, and meat in addition to fruits and vegetables. It is natural for us to eat some amount of meat." My post wasn't attempting to imply one should be vegan. 

I got that, though I predicted (correctly) that others would use it as a springboard to make the leap that the "vegetarianism is best" argument has therefore been settled ethically. 

21 hours ago, Peterkin said:

They're facts, and none were intended to stand individually: 

At least, that's how I read it. I'm unaware of any ethical considerations that would guide us to carnivorism.  Some form of vegetarian diet, or possibly an omnivorous one involving cultured meat, coupled with very different agricultural practices would probably serve us best. To preserve some semblance of a liveable environment, to distribute available food more equitably and to improve human health.

As far as the bible is concerned, there are two versions of the creation story in Genesis, probably contributed by two different cultures. 

The herbs and things were for the beasts of the field to eat; no mention of what humans should and should not eat. In Chapter 2, there are only two humans and they're in a walled garden. They're given no dietary restrictions but for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

There may be some biblical approval of butchery in Chapter 4, when God accepts the lamb offered by Abel and rejected Cain's 'fruit of the ground'.  However, i believe that's a reference to the antipathy of migratory herders to settled farmers. Not unlike the range wars of the American frontier. 

I don't disagree, though there are numerous cogent non-ethical facets that bear consideration. 

Edited Thursday at 06:59 PM by LuckyR

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Your over the top responses indicate emotion is playing a large part in your interactions. 

Your labeling of PKin's responses as "over the top," could reveal some emotion on your part, as well.  Since PK has written a novel that includes such issues of sustainability, I would give the BOTD that they have researched rather thoroughly and are not posting idly or with disregard of relevant facts.  I would post a link, but that might technically constitute doxxing, so I can't.  

 

Edited Thursday at 08:29 PM by TheVat
pyto

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Your labeling of PKin's responses as "over the top,"...

My problem with his responses has to do with the fact he seems to find meat production as a whole is inefficient, bad for the environment, is poor use of the land, uses more water, etc. based on some of the western mass production methods. That is cherry picking poor methodology and suggesting that it thus applies to ALL methods of meat production. People have eaten animal protein for thousands of years without ruining the environment and those methodologies should not be lumped in with, for example, modern beef production. I get all the protein I need out of my backyard without taking any up any agricultural land or water other than rain. I can't even have a successful garden without pumping water from the ground.

And casting doubt on solutions ("you could make the slaughterhouses efficient and relatively humane - but would the people likely to be in charge make that a priority?") by suggesting bad actors won't follow the rules, is IMO over the top. It is a cheap trick to make something seem bad without really saying it is bad, and is a trick that could be done just as easily with the agriculture production methods. ('I suppose you could treat agricultural workers as human beings but would the people in charge make that a priority?')

Some modern meat production has a lot of problems. Meat from local sources, the ocean, wild game, free range cattle on grasslands, and many other methods should not be lumped to together with cattle feed lots and inhumane animal treatment. There is plenty of meat consumed in the world right now that doesn't cause any more harm than other functions of humans living their lives.

 

[Peterkin]

5 hours ago, LuckyR said:

I don't disagree, though there are numerous cogent non-ethical facets that bear consideration. 

I'd like to read them so I can reconsider. That is, if non-ethical is not a synonym for unethical. Since that's in the thread title... 

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

That is cherry picking poor methodology and suggesting that it thus applies to ALL methods of meat production.

It's referring to the vast majority of meat 'production' in use today. There are small-holdings and crofts that do things differently, but they cater to a tiny up-market minority of the population. There have been other methods - not all of them necessarily ethical - in the last 100 centuries, but I do not consider them relevant today.

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

I get all the protein I need out of my backyard without taking any up any agricultural land or water other than rain. I can't even have a successful garden without pumping water from the ground.

I'm more than willing to discuss alternative urban lifestyles, though I still don't trust everyone with a backyard to keep and kill their livestock humanely. Most of them wouldn't be allowed to keep livestock anyway, due to zoning laws. Much could be done toward the efficient and ethical feeding of cities, and some interested groups are making remarkable efforts, but I don't see enough of a trend to feed 10 billion ATM.  

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

suggesting bad actors won't follow the rules, is IMO over the top.

First you'd need legislators to make ethical rules, which isn't likely to happen. Bad actors are unlikely to follow inconvenient rules (or they'd be good actors, no?). Agricultural workers don't make the rules or policy decisions; executives do. And even if nice rules were enacted and nice people lived by them, there remains the logistical problem: getting the meat to the consumers.

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Meat from local sources, the ocean, wild game, free range cattle on grasslands, and many other methods should not be lumped to together with cattle feed lots and inhumane animal treatment.

I don't lump those; I consider them irrelevant. Local sources may be local to a small town, not Hong Kong, Boston and Manchester. The oceans are increasingly warm, diluted and polluted; the fish still safe to eat are 'harvested' by rather horrific methods. Wild game is growing scarcer by the minute and hunters are not necessarily ethical or humane in their methods, while only feeding their immediate family and maybe a local restaurant. The grasslands and forests of the world are already under threat from free range grazing.  Yes, a little fraction of present meat consumption is sustainable, if not particularly good for the animals. The bulk of it is not. 

Edited Friday at 12:21 AM by Peterkin

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

People have eaten animal protein for thousands of years without ruining the environment and those methodologies should not be lumped in with, for example, modern beef production. I get all the protein I need out of my backyard without taking any up any agricultural land or water other than rain. I can't even have a successful garden without pumping water from the ground.

I appreciate you expanding a bit on your earlier answer, esp since you seem to have a perspective (subsistence from your own plot) that's less common these days.  And it does make the point that subsistence from one's plot is sorta the ultimate "locavore" method, eliminating many carbon footprints between farm and plate.  It would be interesting to try and figure what size population would that require for everyone to live off their acreage (the acres needed would vary considerably from place to place - my cold semiarid steppe would need more acres than someone in Amazonia or a Burmese jungle or the lusher parts of eastern Mizzou).  Aquaculture and Tilapia would add up differently than grazing large ungulate or FR poultry.  

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Bad actors are unlikely to follow inconvenient rules (or they'd be good actors, no?).

Of course. But that applies to nearly every enterprise on the globe. Why single out meat production?

 

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

but I don't see enough of a trend to feed 10 billion ATM.

No one said it was. Again, you are lumping all enterprises together.

 

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

First you'd need legislators to make ethical rules, which isn't likely to happen.

I don't understand this statement. Legislators create laws that apply to all steps in the human food chain.

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I don't lump those; I consider them irrelevant.

That's a shame as they provide a good method to lessen our dependence on mass produced meat. In the US there are about 12 million household who have backyard chickens. They don't take up much space and can be grown by a significant portion of the population. In addition, about 6 million deer are harvested in the US each year.

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

I appreciate you expanding a bit on your earlier answer, esp since you seem to have a perspective (subsistence from your own plot) that's less common these days.

I don't wish to mislead so I want to make clear that I do buy plenty of food. But we do grow much of our own vegetables and fruits, keep bees, eat our own chickens, eggs, wild game, fish, collect walnuts, hickory nuts and pecans, wild grapes, pawpaws, mushrooms, wildflower seeds, generate a lot of fiber, cut our own firewood, etc. Today I've been making maple syrup. We trade with family members who are similarly minded. But variety is the spice of life and my wife is a great cook so we do buy food but probably much less than the average American.

Commercial production of meat is not an all or nothing proposition. Cutting back by using viable alternative methods and modified diets can allow us to continue to eat meat and not feel bad about it. Humans will always have an impact on the environment. We simply need to make sure that impact can be absorbed without causing to much pain for the rest of the world.

Edited Friday at 01:36 AM by zapatos

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Why single out meat production?

The OP did that. If you want to discuss all the other unethical, harmful and unsustainable enterprises on the planet, it could take several more threads. But I'm up for that, if you'll bring information.

 

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Again, you are lumping all enterprises together.

 

Again, I'm referring to the way most food production is carried out over most of the world for most of the people. I mentioned some exceptions; you mentioned some exceptions - but they are just that - exceptions. 

 

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Legislators create laws that apply to all steps in the human food chain.

Yes. And we have the system we have, which is both legal and wrong.

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

That's a shame as they provide a good method to lessen our dependence on mass produced meat. In the US there are about 12 million household who have backyard chickens. They don't take up much space and can be grown by a significant portion of the population. In addition, about 6 million deer are harvested in the US each year.

If all the households with chickens eat no turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat products, and all the households that 'harvest' deer eat no chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat, that only leaves 109,000,000+ families shopping in supermarkets for packaged meat that's been factory farmed, killed in a slaughterhouse, packaged, shipped over vast distances and refrigerated for protracted periods. In the US alone. And I'm not convinced all those chickens and deer die happy. Oh, lots of Americans also fish. 

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

Commercial production of meat is not an all or nothing proposition. Cutting back by using viable alternative methods and modified diets can allow us to continue to eat meat and not feel bad about it. Humans will always have an impact on the environment. We simply need to make sure that impact can be absorbed without causing to much pain for the rest of the world.

Good idea.

[dimreepr]

8 hours ago, Peterkin said:

If all the households with chickens eat no turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat products, and all the households that 'harvest' deer eat no chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat, that only leaves 109,000,000+ families shopping in supermarkets for packaged meat that's been factory farmed, killed in a slaughterhouse, packaged, shipped over vast distances and refrigerated for protracted periods. In the US alone. And I'm not convinced all those chickens and deer die happy. Oh, lots of Americans also fish. 

Factory farm's are abysmal and should be properly regulated, but it's the only argument that vegans actually have.

A well husbanded animal, arguably lives a much better life and death than it's wild brethren, and I'm happy to support that animal;bc I fookin love cheese... 

[Peterkin]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

A well husbanded animal, arguably lives a much better life and death than it's wild brethren,

A short, imprisoned life. Yes, of course farming practices should be better regulated, but they're not. Even if they were, there remain the environmental consequence of raising food animals and distributing the product  on the scale demanded by modern consumers.

[TheVat]

14 hours ago, zapatos said:

don't wish to mislead so I want to make clear that I do buy plenty of food. But we do grow much of our own vegetables and fruits, keep bees, eat our own chickens, eggs, wild game, fish, collect walnuts, hickory nuts and pecans, wild grapes, pawpaws, mushrooms, wildflower seeds, generate a lot of fiber, cut our own firewood, etc. Today I've been making maple syrup. We trade with family members who are similarly minded. But variety is the spice of life and my wife is a great cook so we do buy food but probably much less than the average American.

I figured.  It's probably a challenge to grow one's own turmeric or oranges in the temperate zone.  (recently learned that it takes four to six years for an orange tree to bear fruit)  I think my wife would enjoy your sort of lifestyle, though she is too busy to do any of it.  I'm the one who gets a little squirrelly if I don't have manual chores to do.  

On the topic, one thing that seems to me wasteful is that suburbans take the main crop of their home turf and throw it away.  We need a District Goat Authority, or something similar, to keep all the lawns grazed and converted into goat milk, cheese and meat.  (though, per friend's personal experience on this, convertible cars need to be in the garage when not in use)

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

A well husbanded animal, arguably lives a much better life and death than it's wild brethren

Have you proposed yet?  😏

[Phi for All]

38 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

A short, imprisoned life.

Are you arguing that animals would choose non-existence instead? Otherwise this is just a cheap shot using Misleading Vividness.

We all know conditions should be better, but I find this argument specious and pointless. You absolutely CAN'T know their lives are shortened since they're more likely to die at a young age in the wild, and sheltering animals from other predators isn't exactly prison either. I have examples where humans have less freedom, even outside real prisons.

[Peterkin]

5 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Are you arguing that animals would choose non-existence instead?

No, I was responding to dimreepr's comparison to nature. Nature does not set my standard of ethical behaviour.

As to whether anyone who is alive would choose non-existence, many humans would, but other animals famously don't philosophize. The [human] ethical question is whether I have the right do decide for another conscious entity how they will live and when they must die. Modern dairy cattle could not survive long in the wild, nor could battery hens. That doesn't mean they prefer their present captivity to taking their chances, or to not having been bred in the first place.

5 hours ago, Phi for All said:

and sheltering animals from other predators isn't exactly prison either. I have examples where humans have less freedom, even outside real prisons.

Sheltering in tiny cages or a row of narrow stalls? Yes, it's prison. So is a coop in the back yard or a feedlot. Doing the same to our fellow humans is not a particularly apt standard of ethics, either.

I'm not trying to force my morality on you.

[Phi for All]

2 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Sheltering in tiny cages or a row of narrow stalls? Yes, it's prison. So is a coop in the back yard or a feedlot. Doing the same to our fellow humans is not a particularly apt standard of ethics, either.

Thanks for clipping what I said before quoting me. It tells me a lot.

3 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

I'm not trying to force my morality on you.

You really are when you make these claims about animal husbandry in general, after we've (tried to) establish that current methods aren't sustainable or ethical. Aren't you saying there's no ethical way to keep animals for food, since it's all cages and prisons?

I'll start another thread to talk about the pet prison system, and all the unethical treatment by billions of wardens suppressing freedom all over the world.

 

[TheVat]

Thus does get into Peter Singer territory where the most basic kinds of human intervention in animal lives are called into question.  I guess I lean towards minimizing cruelty but not to complete autonomy for domesticateds.  For some hypothetical natural state to prevail, we would have to stop all calving, farrowing and hatching, everywhere in the world, while we humanely slaughter all the remaining domesticated livestock, as we make sure wild variants of ungulates and woodland scavengers (e.g. wild boars and razorbacks) are gradually folded into restored ecosystems.  To get back to topic, I would see this scenario as one where our infrequent meat treats were derived from the culling of such rewilded populations.  Many might choose veganism in such a culture, and if that happened, then we might end up outsourcing culling to the original predators like cougars and wolves, i.e. full eco-restoration.  (keep your toddlers close!)

[zapatos]

50 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

So is a coop in the back yard or a feedlot.

You are generalizing again.

[Peterkin]

4 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Aren't you saying there's no ethical way to keep animals for food, since it's all cages and prisons?

Pretty much. Some methods are less cruel than others, but none, afaic, are right.

 

4 hours ago, zapatos said:

You are generalizing again.

I'm citing examples that are not uncommon. 

We could, if we had the will, phase out animals raised for meat, so that the ones already intended for slaughter are killed as humanely as possible and no more are bred to replace them, while we phase in cultured meat production, especially in cities, close to the majority of consumers. We could, if we had the will, be more effective in closing down puppy mills and preventing the dumping of unwanted pets. We do not have the will, so it won't ever happen.

[Sensei]

16 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Pretty much. Some methods are less cruel than others, but none, afaic, are right.

..the right way of doing this is to create GMO bacteria which will create the all proteins etc. which are in the animals etc..

After that, the existence of animals will cease to make sense, and they will become only interesting as museum objects in the zoo....

 

 

 

... just like people..

 

  

5 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I'll start another thread to talk about the pet prison system, and all the unethical treatment by billions of wardens suppressing freedom all over the world.

..what pets? You are in a sphere with 6370 km radius prison and you can't realize it because of the infirmity of your simple mind..

 

 

  

40 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

We could, if we had the will, phase out animals raised for meat, so that the ones already intended for slaughter are killed as humanely as possible and no more are bred to replace them, while we phase in cultured meat production, especially in cities, close to the majority of consumers. We could, if we had the will, be more effective in closing down puppy mills and preventing the dumping of unwanted pets. We do not have the will, so it won't ever happen.

People used to breed horses. After the 20th century they became expendable and now there are only tiny remnants of the previous population. The same can happen to the populations of cows, pigs and chickens. From the billions of animals raised annually, it will drop to hundreds of thousands or thousands or even to zero.

Their growing population is correlated with human needs in meeting the demand for their meat. When this disappears, their population will also disappear like the dinosaurs.

From a biological point of view, their prosperity is correlated with human demand for meat. If the demand disappears, their existence will also disappear, since they solved human needs.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

I'm citing examples that are not uncommon. 

 

That may be what you meant, but again, your language is saying something else. Since one cannot distinguish between what you say and what you mean your arguments don't offer much of value.

[dimreepr]

20 hours ago, Peterkin said:

A short, imprisoned life.

Yet, strangely, all of my free range duck's, voluntarily, line up at dusk to be re-imprisoned; maybe they feel safer... 😉 

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Yet, strangely, all of my free range duck's, voluntarily, line up at dusk to be re-imprisoned; maybe they feel safer... 😉 

Mine too. And my chickens.

[Phi for All]

12 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Pretty much. Some methods are less cruel than others, but none, afaic, are right.

OK. I make a BIG distinction between practices that are less than optimal and need improvement, and those that are just wrong. Eating a chicken doesn't compare with, say, racial intolerance to me. One seems definitely more not-right.

Perhaps if we can fix our intolerance for fellow humans, it will help us transition away from such reliance on the animal husbandry that allowed us to flourish as a species.