I mean, I personally would have inserted something about getting a spinal transplant, because he clearly doesn't seem to have one of those, that's a choice I would have gone with, but I can otherwise see no possible way to word it better.
Stardust: I think Mad Mat had a valid point. If you stopped farming these animals for food, it would NOT benefit the animals. We would have large numbers of feral species in the United States alone that we would have no use for. No one's going to take care of fields of Longhorn cattle when they're not being raised for food, and they sure as crap can't be released in the wild, they would utterly annihilate the ecosystems around them.
Stardust, you're obviously just skimming, and not actually reading, if you think that comments about cash are somehow irrelevant in an ethical disussion.
The mention of cash was in an argument over what would ACTUALLY happen to the land that is freed up in the "no more cows scenario". I argued that it was ludicrous to think all that land is going to be turned into wildlife preserves for biodiversity, because somebody would have to cough up the cash to make it happen. If there's really somebody out there willing to do that, why would he be waiting for the "vegetarian era" to begin?
People feed a billion cows because somebody will pay for meat. If the land gets frees up, people will not feed a billion spider monkeys and tree frogs on that land. The land will be used for what the market allows. (and some of that may be grain, but much of it won't).
I repeat: the cash comments were about predicting the outcomes of decisions.
Likewise your comments about zoos, etc in relation to what I'm writing prove that you have absolutely no idea what my position is because you haven't read it. I'd appreciate it if you actually take the time to read my post (instead of pulling statements in isolation) before calling my comments "stupid".
This is bull☺☺☺☺, both on a nutritional level and a factual one. You, being in a small pocket of the world that has fantastic wealth, might be able to do so, but there is global famine. To say that human beings need to justify eating to survive is like a king lecturing a beggar how to deal with poverty.
I intentionally made no comment regarding the nutritonal needs of people in a circumstances where they have to eat meat because it is all they have. You're absolutely right that if someone needs meat to survive, there is no ethical reason not to eat it. I say what I have said coming from a very privileged position, and I realize this.
It's obvious that you feel just TERRIBLE doing something that is totally natural and needs NO justification for doing so. You're so horribly wracked with guilt that several people on these boards can give you PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE reasons why you should still eat meat, and yet you are dead set on still saying it's the ultimate evil.
The reasons I have recieved fall into two categories.
The first is the "it's natural so there is no problem" category, and I flat out reject this one on the grounds that something being natural has no bearing on whether it is right.
The second argument is the nutritional requirement, and I find this one valid if it is in fact the case that a person needs meat in order to meet their nutritional needs. As Highroller pointed out, this is definitely true in most areas of the world and throughout most of history. My only stipulation is that if there is a reasonable way to get this nutrition in ways that cause less pain, do we have a responsibility to use those means?
Also, "ultimate evil?" I never said that, I never even implied it.
But the fact that you wanna sit here and DEBATE about your moral grandstanding demanding that we offer you solutions, and then you RECEIVE those solutions very bluntly and still refuse to accept them, then it's pretty obvious you have no interest in feeling good about eating meat.
I'm not trying to grandstand here. I have no moral high ground here.
I mean, I personally would have inserted something about getting a spinal transplant, because he clearly doesn't seem to have one of those, that's a choice I would have gone with, but I can otherwise see no possible way to word it better.
Why does an animal's ability to feel pain make any difference?
I don't know exactly, maybe it's because the people who say that know they have to eat, but in things like factories, cows are skinned alive and etc. So it might have to due with lowering the demand of meat to lessing the overall suffering of animals, but many people I know who are vegetarian say part of the reason they don't eat meat is because other animals also have feelings.
You were trying to say that we eat meat because we evolved in such a way that meat would taste good because otherwise we would not eat meat. Except that doesn't make a single ounce of sense.
Are you going to eat meat that literally tastes like ☺☺☺☺? I don't think so.
Well if you think magic is the reason things taste the way they do to us, feel free to back up why you think that.
Dude, your argument was that meat tastes good but the reason it tastes good is that we evolved for it to taste good because otherwise we would not eat meat. That's bull☺☺☺☺. Unless you believe in intelligent design, evolution doesn't have an endpoint in mind. Evolution is just random stuff that happens.
I don't know exactly, maybe it's because the people who say that know they have to eat, but in things like factories, cows are skinned alive and etc. So it might have to due with lowering the demand of meat to lessing the overall suffering of animals, but many people I know who are vegetarian say part of the reason they don't eat meat is because other animals also have feelings.
I mean, I'm sure things don't like being killed by wolves either.
Not that meat factories aren't needlessly sick, but we eat meat. That involves killing something and eating it. It's going to have to hurt the animal in some way.
He's saying evolution isn't relevant, I'm saying it is.
Except it isn't, and you've displayed a misunderstanding of how evolution works.
Are you going to eat meat that literally tastes like ☺☺☺☺?
To survive is to kill or live off the killed. Vegetarians are no different than meat eating individuals to that extent: a plant is just as much alive as an animal is. One can argue that plants feel no pain in being killed unlike an animal, but consider the implications of this. I mean come on, is killing someone in their sleep any more moral just because they might not feel any pain? It is still murder.
You can argue the economic and nutritonal benefits of both lifestyles til the cows come home (hah pun), but the ethics are, at least in my mind, pretty much a non issue.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
He's saying evolution isn't relevant, I'm saying it is.
Sigh. I'm going to make one last attempt. I agree that evolution, in a scientific analysis of why we eat meat, is relevant. Or at least that's a very reasonable and probable guess. But if you notice the title of this thread, that's not what is being discussed.
Think about this. Imagine you have a life threatening illness, and the cure is a daily dose of some medicine. But the medicine tastes more foul than anything you can imagine. Maybe your ancestors evolved to not like bitter, acrid flavors because they weren't nutritious; whatever. It is unnatural (as in your instincts tell you not to do it) to take the medicine, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.
If raising animals to be slaughtered is unethical or wasteful because they are on a higher trophic level, then reducing demand for meat will cause less slaughtering and/or trophic waste. Obviously they don't have to release the animals to nature; the market would adjust by breeding them less.
But I'm not entirely convinced that not raising a X calorie cow would allow earths ecosystem to support 10X calories of plant life, especially considering that we aren't yet at earths carrying capacity; the problem lies in local scarcity and allocation. At that point the moral imperative to give up meat can be generalized to the argument for charity; namely: "How can you ethically induldge in any form of luxury when you could instead save lives by displacing demand for magic cards and pepsi and replacing it with demand for providing medicine and food to the destitute."
If raising animals to be slaughtered is unethical or wasteful because they are on a higher trophic level, then reducing demand for meat will cause less slaughtering and/or trophic waste. Obviously they don't have to release the animals to nature; the market would adjust by breeding them less.
Except that's still not a solution. Longhorn cattle are domesticated. They were bred to be eaten by humans. Releasing them in the wild would not only be terrible for the cow but for the surrounding environment.
So the idea that halting meat consumption would somehow be better for the cows is ridiculous. If no one's making money off the cows, they'll just abandon them. The cows will either starve to death or go wild and create far more problems.
At that point the moral imperative to give up meat can be generalized to the argument for charity; namely: "How can you ethically induldge in any form of luxury when you could instead save lives by displacing demand for magic cards and pepsi and replacing it with demand for providing medicine and food to the destitute."
I'm confused, are you advocating that argument or saying that statement is flawed?
I eat meat because I love it, and because I've been programmed to.
And for every stuck-up stuffed-shirt that tells me to eat less (or no) meat, I'm gonna eat more than my share just out of spite.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MTGS: Where criticism of staff is a bannable offense.
Quote from Blinking Spirit »
Quote from TheButt »
My sig is not trolling. And it's not opinion, it's fact.
And I'm not changing it. I'm not gonna be browbeated by a moderator, simply because you don't like the fact that I'm bringing to light that the staff suspends half-decent posters, while allowing trolls to run rampant.
Well, you've still got about fourteen hours before you're infracted for noncompliance. Talk to whomever you want.
I'm confused, are you advocating that argument or saying that statement is flawed?
I'm just pointing out why a "charitable argument" for vegetarianism, in my mind, reduces to a more general argument for charity. Is buying a cheaper car, or eating fewer steaks, and giving the money you saved to charity a good thing? But, no I'm not advocating it, because that would make me a hypocrite. My tastes do not discriminate against any of the delicious bounty given us by god: two by two they march into my gullet.
Eating meat is a duty we have to our planet, to save it from overpopulation of other organisms since we've destroyed other apex predators. If you believe phyrexia has a weird food chain, look at the data for one without and then with an apex predator.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Eating meat is a duty we have to our planet, to save it from overpopulation of other organisms since we've destroyed other apex predators. If you believe phyrexia has a weird food chain, look at the data for one without and then with an apex predator.
We could simply eradicate unnecessary species (that's only half facetious). Actually we're probably going to do that to bluefin tuna. But even so eating them to keep population in check probably represents an order of magnitude less than what Americans currently consume.
Well, Humans are at the top of the food chain, as such it is perfectly natural to assume that we can eat what we want. That being said, as sentient beings, with great power comes great responsibility. We should be good stewards but for the sole reason that we have the ways and means to propagate our future food sources without relying solely on nature to provide. If you feel the choice to sustain yourself by vegetable matter, the choice is yours to make as you are at the top of the food chain. Bears are pretty darn close to the top too, and they eat whatever they want as well.
No, actually, you might not have. I'm not even sure anymore.
My point was that we have domesticated cows for the purposes of providing us meat. If we magically didn't eat meat anymore, there would be no reason for the cows to exist. We, the creatures supporting their existence, would no longer have a reason to. Which means we either let them go wild, or just stop feeding them, which means they either starve or go wild, and either way bad stuff happens.
We don't do cows great favors by ceasing meat eating.
If your morals are based on your religion then get your answer there. For example: the bible states that the lord gave men animals to eat. Problem solved if you are christian: the big man says it's a go. Perhaps you should just eat meat more morally instead though. Eat more fish. Most studies show they feel very little pain. My favorite plan is this though. Only eat animals you kill yourself. Take them from nature on your own so there's no awful farmers involved. Here's the plan: Go to the party store and get a helium tank. Sneak up on a deer and put a trash bag on his head and run the helium tank into it. (I think this is how some euthanasia sites tell people to off themselves these days. It's an easy passing) Then WASTE NOTHING. Be native american about it and use every single piece of the animal for something. It shows respect to it's spirit that way. A single deer should feed a normal person for a long time if you consume all usable parts. Plus you probably get like a neat new hat, maybe a snappy vest, oh what about some skis made from bones to help you hunt in winter? No evil farms, no pain, no waste, and a freezer full of tasty meats. All is well.
In fact, the Jewish faith outlines rituals in which meat is eaten. You actually have to eat meat following the Jewish faith if you're observant of the rituals as they are written.
If we magically didn't eat meat anymore, there would be no reason for the cows to exist.
We don't do cows great favors by ceasing meat eating.
Dairy is another food source we get from them that doesn't require killing them. Also leather from cows. It just doesn't hold water since they have more purposes then just meat.
If we magically didn't eat meat anymore, there would be no reason for the cows to exist.
We don't do cows great favors by ceasing meat eating.
at least one person gets it 100%.
The question was about making a moral argument for eating meat.
A vegan human planet will be a planet with almost no cows. From a cow's perspective, that's apocalyptic.
As for milk: A vegetarian planet where we keep cow's milk will have far less cows than our world. But the situation will be morally similar to the current world, since we'd keep the milk cows under the same "unnatural" conditions we do now, utilizing as little space as possible, then eventually euthanize them when they stop making milk (unless you can realistically suggest something else would happen as that cow continues to chew through hundreds of $$$ a year, year after year, while making no milk).
The fact that we kill cows to eat them is not the biggest moral debate obviously. It's a no-brainer frankly.
-
The truly tough moral question being debated, the question about the cruel conditions under which the product is made... Is a tricky one, and the same economic forces drive factory beef production, sweatshop textile production, and Third world labor made products, etc.
As consumers, can we make a difference in the conditions under which the product we buy is made? Hard to know. Making the most "moral"'choice is the most expensive choice. And the success of Walmart (3rd world labor) and McDonald's (cruel factory farming) tells you that most consumers are voting wallet over morals.
I, and most if the upper middle class, can afford to buy organic, free range, everything etc but most consumers can't. Seems unfair for the rich to tell the poor to sacrifice for morality.
We could simply eradicate unnecessary species (that's only half facetious). Actually we're probably going to do that to bluefin tuna.
Except that those biomes are a lot more complicated in that with the extrication of a single species, other factors are further more thrown into chaos such as plankton count and plant growth. So what may appear to be "unnecessary" upon further inspection becomes all the more necessary.
A very basic example is when you stop hunting in an area and the vehicles become the "apex predator" in an area, placing more humans and the very animals we seek to protect at risk. Furthermore, overpopulation creates a negative feedback loop on the food chain which can have devastating effect upon other animals we consider "necessary."
But even so eating them to keep population in check probably represents an order of magnitude less than what Americans currently consume.
Let us go about this in a different manner. The way we subsidize corn makes it more cheaper to feed animals seed than it is to feed them grass which gives meats more pro-human chemicals upon consumption like Omega fatty acids. So without even leaving the human domain, by getting rid of food subsidies for cheap corn would trigger a cascade effect on the price of products that use corn. Forcing other substitutes to be used in the food supply. This would create in a simple manner fewer cheap meats, and therefore less overall consumption.
We're at a point in history that food prices are going to climb, and the amount of meat we consume is going to decrease by sheer demographics and economics. Anyway, I could go on, but I'll end the point here. The basic point I am trying to make is that human forces without even entertaining animals rights can lead to a decrease in meat consumption per individual but an aggregate rise in the general human global population. So we are going to have to farm more efficiently in the coming decades, especially as the world grays.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Just as an additional side note, yes, it's really ugly how we treat some of our food animals, e.g. chickens, turkeys, as this article shows us. Ugh... We should try to reduce gratuitous suffering in the process. Ugh again. Ugh.
We're at a point in history that food prices are going to climb, and the amount of meat we consume is going to decrease by sheer demographics and economics.
You think that meat consumption per capita will decrease, or total meat consumption?
Meat consumption in the world or in the US?
Red meat? Or meat in general?
For example in the last decade, meat consumption has exploded in China, fed by an explosion in the chicken population there (the magic meat, that you can ramp production of exponentially in a short time frame, and cram into small space, compared to other meats).
Chicken will likely stay cheap relative to other meats for quite a while, at least in the developed world, because of the number of pounds you can pack on per day/per acre/per unit cost, and the fact that you can feed them so much cheap crap.
Anyway, I could go on, but I'll end the point here. The basic point I am trying to make is that human forces without even entertaining animals rights can lead to a decrease in meat consumption per individual but an aggregate rise in the general human global population. So we are going to have to farm more efficiently in the coming decades, especially as the world grays.
If we want to feed the world population as it grows, I agree we're going to have to farm more efficiently eventually, but "efficiency" is not the problem today, or even in the near future; because world supply is not the 'rate limiting factor'.
Most of the starvation in the world is due to politics, economics, and the inablility to distribute food to those who need it. It's also the fact that populations in areas exceed the ability of the infrastructure to support (e.g. huge parts of Africa).
If those broken nations in Africa are given grain that produces double the calories per acre, those nations will just quietly double their population of refugees who can't farm or do anything, living in camps in the open desert.
Population control and political stability are the big issues, and if they're not solved, "farming efficiency" is just a way to make sure that twice as many people live long enough to starve.
-
In the US, the #1 health problem in the US is probably OBESITY, so it's hard to see how "efficiency of farming" is a huge issue for us any time real soon. Efficiency will come though, because economics drive it.
-
Not disagreeing with you on the principles that we always benefit from more efficiency in farming, and eventually will HAVE to be more efficient farming (at which point, if we're truly in the "efficiency born of necessity" phase of mankind, then we'll be at the point where we can't afford to grow our population, and be subject to mass starvation whenever there's a famine. That time is far away for rich nations.
Not disagreeing with you on the principles that we always benefit from more efficiency in farming, and eventually will HAVE to be more efficient farming (at which point, if we're truly in the "efficiency born of necessity" phase of mankind, then we'll be at the point where we can't afford to grow our population, and be subject to mass starvation whenever there's a famine. That time is far away for rich nations.
Economics determines efficiency, well mostly likely profit drive and system shocks to set up technologies and rules. For example, the rural poor of India have issues shipping their goods to market because the goods rot on the way to the store. So in this example the "trade" or "movement" phase is highly inefficient, the "mover" companies don't like this so they invest in infrastructure and encourage governments to do the other parts of infrastructure. This is what is happening now in India, albeit slowly.
Altogether remote areas are remote by lack of infrastructure, so we have the aspect of moving and not just growing. The whole entirety of a supply chain is a part of the reason why societies change.
Now as for India, starvation sucks, true. However when you have globalization people gather to try and "solve" these "impossible to solve problems." Think tanks and the like, but also business itself tries to extract profit. Rising wages creates more opportunities. Poverty in a capitalist system is often fixed through wages and jobs and trying to achieve full employment. Inherently the whole system is utter anarchy built upon a handful of basic rules.
Now, let's shift from grains and sesame seeds to livestock. Livestock in the States live under harsh conditions as seen in works recently like Food, Inc. Traditionally there are "system shocks" introduced into the system such as human illness, press (Food, Inc. being an example of this), and government reaction. We had a "kickstart" to a progressive impulse in the American system, but it's since died off. The "kick start" will probably begin again during the next system shock, but there's so many system shocks right now we're swimming in a tide for a new rules and regulatory system.
With that said, when you connect the health of the animal to the health of the human, human morality, human sentiments, and human cash then you see conflict with the existing relations and then a new paradigm comes to the floor. This new framework creates a new reality with progressive elements and degenerative elements. Such as progress, no?
As for "rich countries can't take the heat." Look at UG99, new form of wheat rust, and see how it is affecting food prices. We're far from immune, the food supply is inherently unstable every year and with a global food supply chain that most of the world is now reliant upon we increasingly sink or swim together. There's evidence of this a few years ago with the sharp rises in food supply.
The issue with American diets is mostly economic, fat foods are cheap and good foods are expensive. Change that paradigm in part with food subsidies you see huge changes. The other factors are economics such as finance reform and culture that deals with perpetual poverty.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
They don't all have to be raised for something to be of use in that way and cows all die eventually so why can't someone use the skin for leather once they die? You don't have to kill them in order to get leather although it is more efficient.
They don't all have to be raised for something to be of use in that way and cows all die eventually so why can't someone use the skin for leather once they die?
Why would a farmer who farms leather wait until they die as opposed to expediting the process?
I mean, it works the other way: they will die eventually, and they are specifically being raised to be killed and used by humans. That's why it's called farming in the first place.
I mean, I personally would have inserted something about getting a spinal transplant, because he clearly doesn't seem to have one of those, that's a choice I would have gone with, but I can otherwise see no possible way to word it better.
Stardust: I think Mad Mat had a valid point. If you stopped farming these animals for food, it would NOT benefit the animals. We would have large numbers of feral species in the United States alone that we would have no use for. No one's going to take care of fields of Longhorn cattle when they're not being raised for food, and they sure as crap can't be released in the wild, they would utterly annihilate the ecosystems around them.
The mention of cash was in an argument over what would ACTUALLY happen to the land that is freed up in the "no more cows scenario". I argued that it was ludicrous to think all that land is going to be turned into wildlife preserves for biodiversity, because somebody would have to cough up the cash to make it happen. If there's really somebody out there willing to do that, why would he be waiting for the "vegetarian era" to begin?
People feed a billion cows because somebody will pay for meat. If the land gets frees up, people will not feed a billion spider monkeys and tree frogs on that land. The land will be used for what the market allows. (and some of that may be grain, but much of it won't).
I repeat: the cash comments were about predicting the outcomes of decisions.
Likewise your comments about zoos, etc in relation to what I'm writing prove that you have absolutely no idea what my position is because you haven't read it. I'd appreciate it if you actually take the time to read my post (instead of pulling statements in isolation) before calling my comments "stupid".
The first is the "it's natural so there is no problem" category, and I flat out reject this one on the grounds that something being natural has no bearing on whether it is right.
The second argument is the nutritional requirement, and I find this one valid if it is in fact the case that a person needs meat in order to meet their nutritional needs. As Highroller pointed out, this is definitely true in most areas of the world and throughout most of history. My only stipulation is that if there is a reasonable way to get this nutrition in ways that cause less pain, do we have a responsibility to use those means?
Also, "ultimate evil?" I never said that, I never even implied it.
I'm not trying to grandstand here. I have no moral high ground here. Is the insult necessary to support your thesis?
That's a solution how exactly?
Well if you think magic is the reason things taste the way they do to us, feel free to back up why you think that.
I don't know exactly, maybe it's because the people who say that know they have to eat, but in things like factories, cows are skinned alive and etc. So it might have to due with lowering the demand of meat to lessing the overall suffering of animals, but many people I know who are vegetarian say part of the reason they don't eat meat is because other animals also have feelings.
He's saying evolution isn't relevant, I'm saying it is.
Are you going to eat meat that literally tastes like ☺☺☺☺? I don't think so.
Dude, your argument was that meat tastes good but the reason it tastes good is that we evolved for it to taste good because otherwise we would not eat meat. That's bull☺☺☺☺. Unless you believe in intelligent design, evolution doesn't have an endpoint in mind. Evolution is just random stuff that happens.
I mean, I'm sure things don't like being killed by wolves either.
Not that meat factories aren't needlessly sick, but we eat meat. That involves killing something and eating it. It's going to have to hurt the animal in some way.
Except it isn't, and you've displayed a misunderstanding of how evolution works.
Depends on how hungry I am.
You can argue the economic and nutritonal benefits of both lifestyles til the cows come home (hah pun), but the ethics are, at least in my mind, pretty much a non issue.
Sigh. I'm going to make one last attempt. I agree that evolution, in a scientific analysis of why we eat meat, is relevant. Or at least that's a very reasonable and probable guess. But if you notice the title of this thread, that's not what is being discussed.
Think about this. Imagine you have a life threatening illness, and the cure is a daily dose of some medicine. But the medicine tastes more foul than anything you can imagine. Maybe your ancestors evolved to not like bitter, acrid flavors because they weren't nutritious; whatever. It is unnatural (as in your instincts tell you not to do it) to take the medicine, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.
If raising animals to be slaughtered is unethical or wasteful because they are on a higher trophic level, then reducing demand for meat will cause less slaughtering and/or trophic waste. Obviously they don't have to release the animals to nature; the market would adjust by breeding them less.
But I'm not entirely convinced that not raising a X calorie cow would allow earths ecosystem to support 10X calories of plant life, especially considering that we aren't yet at earths carrying capacity; the problem lies in local scarcity and allocation. At that point the moral imperative to give up meat can be generalized to the argument for charity; namely: "How can you ethically induldge in any form of luxury when you could instead save lives by displacing demand for magic cards and pepsi and replacing it with demand for providing medicine and food to the destitute."
... gerg, I feel like you've not read the context of my statement before responding to it.
Except that's still not a solution. Longhorn cattle are domesticated. They were bred to be eaten by humans. Releasing them in the wild would not only be terrible for the cow but for the surrounding environment.
So the idea that halting meat consumption would somehow be better for the cows is ridiculous. If no one's making money off the cows, they'll just abandon them. The cows will either starve to death or go wild and create far more problems.
I'm confused, are you advocating that argument or saying that statement is flawed?
And for every stuck-up stuffed-shirt that tells me to eat less (or no) meat, I'm gonna eat more than my share just out of spite.
I'm just pointing out why a "charitable argument" for vegetarianism, in my mind, reduces to a more general argument for charity. Is buying a cheaper car, or eating fewer steaks, and giving the money you saved to charity a good thing? But, no I'm not advocating it, because that would make me a hypocrite. My tastes do not discriminate against any of the delicious bounty given us by god: two by two they march into my gullet.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
We could simply eradicate unnecessary species (that's only half facetious). Actually we're probably going to do that to bluefin tuna. But even so eating them to keep population in check probably represents an order of magnitude less than what Americans currently consume.
No, actually, you might not have. I'm not even sure anymore.
My point was that we have domesticated cows for the purposes of providing us meat. If we magically didn't eat meat anymore, there would be no reason for the cows to exist. We, the creatures supporting their existence, would no longer have a reason to. Which means we either let them go wild, or just stop feeding them, which means they either starve or go wild, and either way bad stuff happens.
We don't do cows great favors by ceasing meat eating.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=489747
Dairy is another food source we get from them that doesn't require killing them. Also leather from cows. It just doesn't hold water since they have more purposes then just meat.
Thanks to Magus of the Sheep at Scuttlemutt Productions for the best ever sig.
Not all cows are raised for milk.
... Leather is the skin of a cow.
The question was about making a moral argument for eating meat.
A vegan human planet will be a planet with almost no cows. From a cow's perspective, that's apocalyptic.
As for milk: A vegetarian planet where we keep cow's milk will have far less cows than our world. But the situation will be morally similar to the current world, since we'd keep the milk cows under the same "unnatural" conditions we do now, utilizing as little space as possible, then eventually euthanize them when they stop making milk (unless you can realistically suggest something else would happen as that cow continues to chew through hundreds of $$$ a year, year after year, while making no milk).
The fact that we kill cows to eat them is not the biggest moral debate obviously. It's a no-brainer frankly.
-
The truly tough moral question being debated, the question about the cruel conditions under which the product is made... Is a tricky one, and the same economic forces drive factory beef production, sweatshop textile production, and Third world labor made products, etc.
As consumers, can we make a difference in the conditions under which the product we buy is made? Hard to know. Making the most "moral"'choice is the most expensive choice. And the success of Walmart (3rd world labor) and McDonald's (cruel factory farming) tells you that most consumers are voting wallet over morals.
I, and most if the upper middle class, can afford to buy organic, free range, everything etc but most consumers can't. Seems unfair for the rich to tell the poor to sacrifice for morality.
Except that those biomes are a lot more complicated in that with the extrication of a single species, other factors are further more thrown into chaos such as plankton count and plant growth. So what may appear to be "unnecessary" upon further inspection becomes all the more necessary.
A very basic example is when you stop hunting in an area and the vehicles become the "apex predator" in an area, placing more humans and the very animals we seek to protect at risk. Furthermore, overpopulation creates a negative feedback loop on the food chain which can have devastating effect upon other animals we consider "necessary."
Let us go about this in a different manner. The way we subsidize corn makes it more cheaper to feed animals seed than it is to feed them grass which gives meats more pro-human chemicals upon consumption like Omega fatty acids. So without even leaving the human domain, by getting rid of food subsidies for cheap corn would trigger a cascade effect on the price of products that use corn. Forcing other substitutes to be used in the food supply. This would create in a simple manner fewer cheap meats, and therefore less overall consumption.
We're at a point in history that food prices are going to climb, and the amount of meat we consume is going to decrease by sheer demographics and economics. Anyway, I could go on, but I'll end the point here. The basic point I am trying to make is that human forces without even entertaining animals rights can lead to a decrease in meat consumption per individual but an aggregate rise in the general human global population. So we are going to have to farm more efficiently in the coming decades, especially as the world grays.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
You think that meat consumption per capita will decrease, or total meat consumption?
Meat consumption in the world or in the US?
Red meat? Or meat in general?
For example in the last decade, meat consumption has exploded in China, fed by an explosion in the chicken population there (the magic meat, that you can ramp production of exponentially in a short time frame, and cram into small space, compared to other meats).
Chicken will likely stay cheap relative to other meats for quite a while, at least in the developed world, because of the number of pounds you can pack on per day/per acre/per unit cost, and the fact that you can feed them so much cheap crap.
If we want to feed the world population as it grows, I agree we're going to have to farm more efficiently eventually, but "efficiency" is not the problem today, or even in the near future; because world supply is not the 'rate limiting factor'.
Most of the starvation in the world is due to politics, economics, and the inablility to distribute food to those who need it. It's also the fact that populations in areas exceed the ability of the infrastructure to support (e.g. huge parts of Africa).
If those broken nations in Africa are given grain that produces double the calories per acre, those nations will just quietly double their population of refugees who can't farm or do anything, living in camps in the open desert.
Population control and political stability are the big issues, and if they're not solved, "farming efficiency" is just a way to make sure that twice as many people live long enough to starve.
-
In the US, the #1 health problem in the US is probably OBESITY, so it's hard to see how "efficiency of farming" is a huge issue for us any time real soon. Efficiency will come though, because economics drive it.
-
Not disagreeing with you on the principles that we always benefit from more efficiency in farming, and eventually will HAVE to be more efficient farming (at which point, if we're truly in the "efficiency born of necessity" phase of mankind, then we'll be at the point where we can't afford to grow our population, and be subject to mass starvation whenever there's a famine. That time is far away for rich nations.
Economics determines efficiency, well mostly likely profit drive and system shocks to set up technologies and rules. For example, the rural poor of India have issues shipping their goods to market because the goods rot on the way to the store. So in this example the "trade" or "movement" phase is highly inefficient, the "mover" companies don't like this so they invest in infrastructure and encourage governments to do the other parts of infrastructure. This is what is happening now in India, albeit slowly.
Altogether remote areas are remote by lack of infrastructure, so we have the aspect of moving and not just growing. The whole entirety of a supply chain is a part of the reason why societies change.
Now as for India, starvation sucks, true. However when you have globalization people gather to try and "solve" these "impossible to solve problems." Think tanks and the like, but also business itself tries to extract profit. Rising wages creates more opportunities. Poverty in a capitalist system is often fixed through wages and jobs and trying to achieve full employment. Inherently the whole system is utter anarchy built upon a handful of basic rules.
Now, let's shift from grains and sesame seeds to livestock. Livestock in the States live under harsh conditions as seen in works recently like Food, Inc. Traditionally there are "system shocks" introduced into the system such as human illness, press (Food, Inc. being an example of this), and government reaction. We had a "kickstart" to a progressive impulse in the American system, but it's since died off. The "kick start" will probably begin again during the next system shock, but there's so many system shocks right now we're swimming in a tide for a new rules and regulatory system.
With that said, when you connect the health of the animal to the health of the human, human morality, human sentiments, and human cash then you see conflict with the existing relations and then a new paradigm comes to the floor. This new framework creates a new reality with progressive elements and degenerative elements. Such as progress, no?
As for "rich countries can't take the heat." Look at UG99, new form of wheat rust, and see how it is affecting food prices. We're far from immune, the food supply is inherently unstable every year and with a global food supply chain that most of the world is now reliant upon we increasingly sink or swim together. There's evidence of this a few years ago with the sharp rises in food supply.
The issue with American diets is mostly economic, fat foods are cheap and good foods are expensive. Change that paradigm in part with food subsidies you see huge changes. The other factors are economics such as finance reform and culture that deals with perpetual poverty.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
They don't all have to be raised for something to be of use in that way and cows all die eventually so why can't someone use the skin for leather once they die? You don't have to kill them in order to get leather although it is more efficient.
Thanks to Magus of the Sheep at Scuttlemutt Productions for the best ever sig.
Why would a farmer who farms leather wait until they die as opposed to expediting the process?
I mean, it works the other way: they will die eventually, and they are specifically being raised to be killed and used by humans. That's why it's called farming in the first place.