Ethics of veganism

[Peterkin]

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

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.

The scale of unrelated wrongs hasn't been presented in this thread, and seems rather too large for any single thread. We could compare all kinds of human iniquities as to the order in which each of us would like to see them tackled, but most of them would not be relevant to the diet of the masses. Still, I would like  - but do not expect - to see even one of those problems fixed.

I'm very happy that some mammals and birds destined for human consumption receive good treatment from their owners; I'm not happy that these remain the exception. If/when the demand for immense quantities of meat, eggs and dairy products ceases, I hope the well-treated ducks, chickens, sheep and cows may continue living in harmony with their human protectors. That is the cherished, forlorn hope. 

Edited Saturday at 06:21 PM by Peterkin

[TheVat]

I've had a glimmer of hope when I discovered a genuinely tasty tofu wrap sold at my nearby grocery.  Though we usually cook stuff and skip frozen preparations, they are handy sometimes and it was nice to find something with organic ingredients, not absurdly overpriced, and with visible vegetables.  I'm seeing more stuff like that in stores and noticing Gen Z and younger Millennials gravitating towards it.  For every Joe Rogan meathead there seems to be a counterbalancing vegan or semi vegan.  And there's less stigma - e.g. eating a burger of mung beans is less viewed as New Age flakiness.  

That said, nothing will ever replace butter.  I don't care if it's twenty dollars a tub and the cow has to receive regular back rubs and couples therapy to pass USDA regulations, I will pay.  

[LuckyR]

12 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I'm very happy that some mammals and birds destined for human consumption receive good treatment from their owners; I'm not happy that these remain the exception. If/when the demand for immense quantities of meat, eggs and dairy products ceases, I hope the well-treated ducks, chickens, sheep and cows may continue living in harmony with their human protectors. That is the cherished, forlorn hope. 

Several things. First, it is an error to suppose that the alternative for domesticated animals (by and large) should there no longer be a demand for their commercial value, would be reverting to the wild or living out their days as quasi pets. Rather they would, by and large die out (I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just a fact). Second, others in this thread have contrasted the life quality of domesticated animals with wild animals, which can be done, but is very misleading since domesticated animals aren't just wild animals on farms. They're different species and aren't interchangeable. Lastly, when I earlier referenced non-ethical reasons for meat consumption, you asked for an example of one. Because it tastes great, would be such an example.

And I assume none of the vegetarians on this thread own cats, right?

[KJW]

5 hours ago, LuckyR said:

And I assume none of the vegetarians on this thread own cats, right?

It's funny you should ask that. There is a series currently being broadcasted on Australian TV called "Eat the Invaders" based on the premise that Australians should consider eating species that for whatever reason have invaded the Australian continent and have become a major problem. Each episode deals with a particular invasive species. Last week's episode was about feral cats, a major killer of Australian native species in accordance with the prey naïveté hypothesis. And indeed, even pet cats kill lots of creatures if they are allowed to roam the neighbourhood. Anyway, during the episode was an interview with a researcher of the cat problem. But during the interview, she admitted to having a pet cat, and even that some of her colleagues also have pet cats. She said they were house cats, but nevertheless there did seem to be some surprise over the revelation.
 

[dimreepr]

18 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I'm very happy that some mammals and birds destined for human consumption receive good treatment from their owners; I'm not happy that these remain the exception. If/when the demand for immense quantities of meat, eggs and dairy products ceases, I hope the well-treated ducks, chickens, sheep and cows may continue living in harmony with their human protectors. That is the cherished, forlorn hope.

Seems to me that we're talking past each other, we both agree that factory farm's can be cruel and a well treated animal is happy.

It also seems to me that the scale of the farm isn't a barrier to kindness.

I get the vegan position, in terms of a protest, 'Malcom X' like, in order to restore a ballance; but the fundamental arguments don't work as an absolute. 

What would a vegan do to a million mice that are eating all their food?

[Peterkin]

9 hours ago, LuckyR said:

Because it tastes great, would be such an example.

It doesn't, actually. It needs flavouring and cooking to be palatable. The need for nourishment is inborn; food preference is acquired. True, desire is a non-ethical reason - in fact, the main reason - humans eat so much meat, fat and sugar; even if it kills them, it does so slowly and pleasurably.  If people keep craving meat, and having obligate carnivors for pets, there is no theoretical limit to the quantity that could be cultured from a single cow or goose. 

9 hours ago, LuckyR said:

First, it is an error to suppose that the alternative for domesticated animals (by and large) should there no longer be a demand for their commercial value, would be reverting to the wild or living out their days as quasi pets.

I didn't make that error. I'm supposing that if - IF - the demand for animal flesh decreases, that happens gradually. Since domestic livestock is deliberately bred by humans, as the profit from breeding decreases, so do the numbers of various food animals. Humans would presumably keep slaughtering them as long as there's a market, and some would keep their own private supply of domestic rabbits and fowl. 

I also don't doubt that, if the commercial value of beef suddenly dropped, some ranchers would just set their herd free on the prairie or in the woods. And some die-hard carnivorous humans would hunt them. Following that hypothetical scenario, a few hardy cattle would escape predators and start an evolutionary tend to revert to their natural version. Goats certainly would; they haven't far to go. Pigs might, too, if the environment were favourable.  The same with fowl: sometimes you see a domestic duck or goose among a flock of wild ones, just as budgies and canaries will sometimes escape and join the sparrows. 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Seems to me that we're talking past each other, we both agree that factory farm's can be cruel and a well treated animal is happy.

Of course. And we also know that in North America at least, the vast majority of food is produced by agribusiness on immense scales. I've given due consideration and respect to the exceptional farmers and crofters who treat their livestock well. Their prices reflect that extra care, and the chickens are still dead by 10 weeks; the lambs at eight months.)

 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

It also seems to me that the scale of the farm isn't a barrier to kindness.

There isn't room for kindness in a factory; it's unprofitable. The raw materials, the product - and very often the human workers, too - are mere commodities.

 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I get the vegan position, in terms of a protest, 'Malcom X' like, in order to restore a ballance; but the fundamental arguments don't work as an absolute. 

    Nothing works as an absolute. It's not an absolute world, nor are any of the biota in it capable of absolute adherence to an absolute rule, nor absolute divergence from its nature. Ethical standards are what we ought to aspire to, not what we can achieve. The argument is that causing pain and distress to other sentient beings is wrong and should be avoided as much as possible. 

Edited Sunday at 04:48 PM by Peterkin

[TheVat]

11 hours ago, LuckyR said:

And I assume none of the vegetarians on this thread own cats, right?

Do you think it is possible to ethically make a distinction between living with a cat, which is allowed to live as a cat, and the oppressions of industrial agriculture? I eat no factory farming products, but have a cat, or it has me.  I use wild catch sources for the fish based cat food, which is expensive but cats don't eat much.  

5 hours ago, KJW said:

It's funny you should ask that. There is a series currently being broadcasted on Australian TV called "Eat the Invaders" based on the premise that Australians should consider eating species that for whatever reason have invaded the Australian continent and have become a major problem.

Let's not share this concept with our current US president, eh?

[LuckyR]

7 hours ago, KJW said:

It's funny you should ask that. There is a series currently being broadcasted on Australian TV called "Eat the Invaders" based on the premise that Australians should consider eating species that for whatever reason have invaded the Australian continent and have become a major problem. Each episode deals with a particular invasive species. Last week's episode was about feral cats, a major killer of Australian native species in accordance with the prey naïveté hypothesis. And indeed, even pet cats kill lots of creatures if they are allowed to roam the neighbourhood. Anyway, during the episode was an interview with a researcher of the cat problem. But during the interview, she admitted to having a pet cat, and even that some of her colleagues also have pet cats. She said they were house cats, but nevertheless there did seem to be some surprise over the revelation.
 

Interesting, but not what I was driving at. The pet food industry accounts for as much meat volume as the country of Brazil annually. 

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Do you think it is possible to ethically make a distinction between living with a cat, which is allowed to live as a cat, and the oppressions of industrial agriculture? I eat no factory farming products, but have a cat, or it has me.  I use wild catch sources for the fish based cat food, which is expensive but cats don't eat much.  

Kudos to you, but the pet food industry as a whole is even more slanted towards factory farming than the human meat industry. BTW your post (reading between the lines) implies you're not a vegetarian and thus not the subject of my inquiry. 

Edited Sunday at 08:18 PM by LuckyR

[TheVat]

3 hours ago, LuckyR said:

Kudos to you, but the pet food industry as a whole is even more slanted towards factory farming than the human meat industry. BTW your post (reading between the lines) implies you're not a vegetarian and thus not the subject of my inquiry. 

Well, I was lacto-vegetarian until I reached a point where dairy was indigestible for me.  Veganism didn't work for me, apparently due to some inherited absorption issues, so I then switched to my present (mentioned up the thread, before you joined us) 5/2 regime, five days vegan, two days pescaterian with sustainable source wild-caught fish.  And like pretty much everyone, I fall off the wagon occasionally.  The hunter-gatherer DNA resides in all of us.

And the pet food issue is, as you note, fraught - if I let our very capable hunter live off birds and bugs and baby rabbits, then I'm part of the problem of depleted urban wildlife and threatened avian species particularly.  If I feed her, which almost completely suppresses her predation, then I'm faced with expensive cat foods whose provenance I'm not entirely sure about - industrial producers are known to wriggle through loopholes on certifications and such.  

So I just try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good - a principle which seems often relevant in ethics discussions.

BTW, to whom it may, I cancelled the downvote on Peterkin's last post, because while it may express a position some disgree with, it did seem to be thoughtful, reflective of some topical knowledge, and made in good faith.  The DV button is not meant to simply express disagreement - it should be reserved for disinformation, bad faith arguments, ad hominems, etc.  

[KJW]

4 hours ago, LuckyR said:

Interesting, but not what I was driving at.

Perhaps, but the point I was making was that even people who know much better than most people how bad cats are to the environment have cats as pets.
 

[zapatos]

24 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The DV button is not meant to simply express disagreement - it should be reserved for disinformation, bad faith arguments, ad hominems, etc.  

Making assumptions about why someone uses the DV is prone to error. I mean, how do you know what someone is thinking when they push that button?

Some surly rabbit may have objected to Peterkin's very first sentence where he told LuckyR without any qualification whatsoever that they were wrong about what they liked. It turns out that something tasting good is not an individual preference but a universal constant. LuckyR has just learned his whole life was a fraud because while he THOUGHT meat tasted good, Peterkin just informed him that in reality, meat does NOT taste good. How is LuckyR to deal with that? He's going to have to reexamine all his likes and dislikes. Does he actually hate ice cream? Was kale really a tasty snack all along? And what about the rest of us? Was I mistaken when I thought smoked chicken wings were a gift from god? Did I waste my money when on my wedding anniversary I ordered a filet mignon? Oh, the humanity...

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

LuckyR has just learned his whole life was a fraud because while he THOUGHT meat tasted good, Peterkin just informed him that in reality, meat does NOT taste good. How is LuckyR to deal with that?

You mean he's been eating meat raw and unseasoned all his life? Wolves do, and like it fine, so it's possible, but hardly universal among humans. I very much doubt any opinion of mine has ever caused anyone to question their preferences. 

It's okay to hate what I say and mark it down; I don't always like your generalizations but don't mark them down. As in food choices, it's a matter of taste.  

[zapatos]

6 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

You mean he's been eating meat raw and unseasoned all his life?

You mean it's no longer meat when cooked and seasoned?

[iNow]

The suggestion of good faith feels misplaced. 

[Peterkin]

3 hours ago, zapatos said:

You mean it's no longer meat when cooked and seasoned?

I mean, as I said,  meat doesn't taste great  to modern humans until it's been cooked and seasoned. Also, we no longer have the teeth or jaws for raw meat.  No infant is born craving any food but their mother's milk. After that, what they're fed is what they grow accustomed to. The child of vegetarians has a taste for salads and breads, just as the child of fisher-folk develops an affinity for aquatic foods and the children of hunter-gatherers learned to expect a diet of roots, fruits, nuts, grains, greens and eggs, meat or fish when available. Some tastes are acquired later in life, as we are introduced to unaccustomed flavours. In a cosmopolitan environment, people have opportunities to discover the cuisine of other cultures; in a isolated one, most remain content with what we're used to.   

[dimreepr]

19 hours ago, Peterkin said:

There isn't room for kindness in a factory; it's unprofitable. The raw materials, the product - and very often the human workers, too - are mere commodities.

Without looking, I'm sure there are many studies that show this to be false, stress, I think, is bad for growth.

But if we can get back to the ethical argument, this isn't in the political forum, 

20 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Nothing works as an absolute.

Veganism is an absolute position... 😉

From this position, you commit murder, if you humanely transport a house spider, outside...

[iNow]

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

meat doesn't taste great  to modern humans until it's been cooked and seasoned

Fascinating. This will be interesting news to all those lovers of steak tartare

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Some tastes are acquired later in life

While others are amplified when experiencing nutritional deficiencies like need for certain vitamins and minerals.

The challenge I see in your posts is in how you seem to be treating subjective preferences as objective facts. 

[Phi for All]

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I mean, as I said,  meat doesn't taste great  to modern humans until it's been cooked and seasoned. 

This is something you don't know that you're asserting strongly, over and over. It really detracts from any point you're trying to make.

[zapatos]

13 hours ago, Peterkin said:

You mean he's been eating meat raw and unseasoned all his life?

I mean, as I said, that meat tastes great to many people, despite your claim that "It doesn't, actually."

Pretending that you've proven your point by saying 'meat needs to be cooked first' is a bit ridiculous. That is similar to responding to a claim that one can travel to a friend's house by car by saying "You can't, actually. A car needs to have petrol added first to run", expecting us to believe that you've proven a car cannot transport you anywhere.

 

 

[Peterkin]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Veganism is an absolute position.

So are all ideals: something to strive for, even if they're unattainable in practice.

48 minutes ago, iNow said:

The challenge I see in your posts is in how you seem to be treating subjective preferences as objective facts. 

In this, I am not alone. Some facts regarding efficient land use, environmental and climatic impact, the logistics of preservation and distribution on the scale required by the current, largely urban population are based on available statistics. The ethical questions around factory farming and the methods of agribusiness in general have been in play for some time; I am not the first to find fault there. I did give due consideration to the small-scale exceptions, and made reference to the known existing regulations, which are inadequate to insure a high ethical standard of animal husbandry. None of this was my own invention.

The non-ethical component of what tastes good to whom, I thought was open to personal preference. 

On 2/9/2025 at 1:48 AM, LuckyR said:

Lastly, when I earlier referenced non-ethical reasons for meat consumption, you asked for an example of one. Because it tastes great, would be such an example.

was stated as a fact, and later reinforced as a universal one. I responded in similar fashion. In that sense, I am at fault. 

 

54 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

This is something you don't know that you're asserting strongly, over and over. It really detracts from any point you're trying to make.

Does it? The main motivation of human activity appears  - though of course I cannot know this as a fact - to be "I want". Desire, appetite, craving, preference. Desire is not a subject for ethical evaluation; action is. 

In any case, I have no point to make beyond what's been sufficiently critiqued.  

[iNow]

2 hours ago, Peterkin said:

In this, I am not alone

A fallacy being common makes it no less fallacious

[dimreepr]

19 hours ago, Peterkin said:

So are all ideals: something to strive for, even if they're unattainable in practice.

Not if you like cheese. 😉

 

 

[npts2020]

On 2/9/2025 at 7:39 PM, KJW said:

Perhaps, but the point I was making was that even people who know much better than most people how bad cats are to the environment have cats as pets

I have been a vegetarian since 1980. The first 10 years was a pretty strict macrobiotic diet but I have slipped to eating cheese and yogurt and even, once in a great while (maybe once or twice a year), fish or seafood. The reason I became a vegetarian has far more to do with things like sustainability, health and boycotting certain corporate entities than any concern for the animals being eaten. I also live with 3 cats, all of which were feral, caught, neutered and brought indoors. Would it have been better, instead, to just leave them alone or shoot them?