I was getting at the idea that although it might be less energy efficient, it's still efficient enough for evolution and natural processes.
We can keep populations in check without eating members of them. And even if we were to eat those, there's an enormous difference between that and actively breeding ☺☺☺☺loads of animals and their feed and then eating them.
We're overpopulated. The alternative would be actively breeding ☺☺☺☺loads of plants and then eating them. I already said why I don't see as any better and you already said why you do.
"For every girl you don't rape, I'm going to rape three."
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"Virtue, Jacques, is an excellent thing. Both good people and wicked people speak highly of it..."
Certain Asian sects, some version of Buddhism or Hinduism does as a part of their practice only eat roots and do not kill the planets wholesale. They also wear face masks to prevent themselves from eating insects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism is the one your looking for which really is neither Buddhism or Hinduism but does go back to India along time ago. They also sweep where they are going to walk so they don't step on any insects thus killing them. Buddha himself even tried Jainism before becoming enlightened through Buddhism.
I couldn't see this pointed out already, and I don't remember the source, but here goes:
If you make a moral argument for vegetarianism based on all lives being equal in value, the combine harvesters and other machines used for gathering some vegetarian foods take as many lives in the form of killing rodents as the process of raising and slaughtering animals for meat does. Some estimates go so far as to say that vegetarian alternative kill many MORE animals overall than meat farming does.
BS didn't say he doesn't like animals. He was merely pointing out the fallacy that is to say "what is natural is right". His answers are succinct but really all that are needed for a reasonable, rational human to feel justified in eating animals.
You're misunderstanding. It doesn't taste great because of some eon-spanning selective process. It tastes great because it tastes great.
Exactly. There's no need to overly justify the exact evolutionary and biological social structures as to why exactly from the very faucets of our DNA that we are genetically and intrinsically raised and propagated to love meat.
That's over complicating the point. You can either over explain why we love meat, of you can just say "because we love meat". It's the same thing, only simplified. You still get to the same ending argument. One simply expresses it in a way that everyone can understand.
We love meat because we love meat, there's no two ways around it.
Certain Asian sects, some version of Buddhism or Hinduism does as a part of their practice only eat roots and do not kill the planets wholesale. They also wear face masks to prevent themselves from eating insects.
Nutritious? Absolutely. Delicious? Not really. I've had it, tried it, and attempted to cook it. It makes a huge mess thats hard to clean, is very small in it's serving sizes, and unless you load it with spices you're not going to get a very pleasing taste from it.
Now fried tarantula legs, now that's something I can get into!
On the one hand, yes i takes 10 calories of grain or more to produce 1 calorie of meat and our population is exploding. On the other hand, our population is exploding and squeezing out other species populations, so anything that we dont eat is going to be driven to near extinction, or complete extinction
The only reason there are about a 1-2 billion cows (pigs too) on this planet, is because we raise and eat them. 30 billion chickens also.
If we don't eat them, the chickens and cows will simply get NO LIFE AT ALL, and not be allowed to reproduce or live. The only reason they live now at all in such big numbers is because we buy a lot of real estate, then house and feed them at great cost.
So becoming vegetarians will relegate pigs, cows, and chickens to extinction.
I would like some justification to my meat eating. Appealing to evolution doesn't really cut it since that's just a fancy sounding naturalistic fallacy. Claiming that we are just doing what other animals do doesn't work either since we have the ability, given our current state of technology and advancement, to get around our need for such a diet, while animals do not.
There is no getting around the fact that we cause a great deal of pain and suffering to animals. It seems that we just have made a calculation that this pain is worth our convenience and pleasure.
Yes, there is a threahold at which life can be miserable enough to be preferable to no life... But it's subjective, and often influenced by expectations.
Who are you to judge what life is miserable enough to be preferable to death or non-life? Maybe chickens have hope.
For you living your current life, you may perceive living in constant fear of death, and living off scraps to seem worse than death. But rats do it all the time. How can you judge the life of a mole? Or a chicken? Sure they might prefer to be free Range if they had the option, but few chickens choose suicide over life.
Did you know that if you leave a turkey out in the rain it will drown? It stares up at the rain and doesn't have sense enough to quit and get out of it. The also make great sandwiches.
It's pretty simple, we have the teeth for eating both meat and veg. We raise our animals to be eaten, it not like we all have to roam the country side and pick off buffalo with a rifle.
How can you judge the life of a mole? Or a chicken? Sure they might prefer to be free Range if they had the option, but few chickens choose suicide over life.
Did you know that if you leave a turkey out in the rain it will drown? It stares up at the rain and doesn't have sense enough to quit and get out of it. The also make great sandwiches.
This is a myth. It is true that modern turkeys have been bred so far from what they were in the wild that they can hardly be called the same animal.
But, I think vegetarian is much more efficient. A meat factory is "a protein factory in reverse." It takes 16-20 units of protein feed to the animal to make one unit of meat protein. It's just not the best way to go about it.....
Why don't you? The burden of proof is clearly on you.
I've claimed that the billions of cows, pigs, and chickens only live right now because we eat them, and are people therefore are willing to spend money and space to house and feed them. If we all stop eating meat, those animals will not get life at all (except for milk cows and chickens for eggs).
You've countered with the claim that the animals' quality of life is so "miserable" that the animals would prefer death.
I've refuted that by pointing out that the huge majority of these cows, chickens & pigs are NOT attempting to kill themselves.
So YOU should figure out why the pigs, cows and chickens are tenaciously clinging to life, and NOT killing themselves.
Prey animals frequently suffer hunger, malnutrition, live lives constantly in danger, and eventually either die of starvation, disease, or predation. Many die when they're young, and its extremely unusual for them to ever feel sated. Their life may be better than that of domesticated livestock.
And life for cattle on a cattle ranch is bad by human standards, but how can you reasonably argue that GENOCIDE & EXTINCTION are categorically preferable to being a domesticated livestock species living at population billion plus? Who knows, maybe they just need to wait us out so their descendants will eventually be free?
As I said earlier, I am a vegetarian and I find the very premise of this thread to be nothing but self-righteous, pretentious hogwash. The human body is designed to consume certain things, to starve your body of those things for something as ridiculous as "morality" is a travesty. If you take issue with the way consumer livestock is raised, then only buy free-range, organic meats. It will be more expensive but maybe then you can get over your "conscience" trying to tell you you're a bad person for being a human. Then you don't have to worry about things like BHGH or whatever other terrible thing of which people say our meat is loaded.
I would like some justification to my meat eating. Appealing to evolution doesn't really cut it since that's just a fancy sounding naturalistic fallacy. Claiming that we are just doing what other animals do doesn't work either since we have the ability, given our current state of technology and advancement, to get around our need for such a diet, while animals do not.
There is no getting around the fact that we cause a great deal of pain and suffering to animals. It seems that we just have made a calculation that this pain is worth our convenience and pleasure.
If eating meat being a basic and natural need for your bodily organs to function at maximum capacity is not a valid justification for you to eat meat and naturally embrace the fact that you are an omnivore, then there's probably no hope for you.
CAN a vegetarian get the same amount of nutritional value out of diet that consists of no meat whatsoever? Sure. But you'd need a whole lot of dietary supplements to match the protein gained from a nice juicy steak. And you can be guaranteed to never find anything quite as tasty as an A-1 marinated medium rare 24oz of good stuff. That's just fact. Your taste buds agree with me and you know it.
Did you know that if you leave a turkey out in the rain it will drown? It stares up at the rain and doesn't have sense enough to quit and get out of it. The also make great sandwiches.
Your argument is like saying to a girl "hey, if we don't have unprotected sex right now you could not possibly get pregnant and a potential human being would never come to exist!".
Thank you sir, I'm going to use this line of thought when approaching the very next woman I see. I will let you know if it was successful.
It's pretty simple, we have the teeth for eating both meat and veg. We raise our animals to be eaten, it not like we all have to roam the country side and pick off buffalo with a rifle.
Plus, meats just good. LONG LIVE BACON!!!!!
Dogs don't know it's not Bacon. Therefore, humans > dogs and by extention, animals. End thread.
These animals are not solely used for meat production. If anything, they could be used for something that wouldn't be production, as various threatened species are now.
Cows for milk, if we continue to do milk. Chickens for eggs, if we continue to eat eggs.
But their numbers will plummet though of course. But pigs are doomed except in small numbers as pets.
while currently over a billion of cows & pigs get to live, only a select few millions will get to live... or less if we nix cow's milk.
At the same time, the disappearance of the majority of meat animals would make room for various other (more diverse and natural) species.
If by more "diverse and natural", you mean it will make more room for caucasians, asians, latinos and african americans, then I get you.
If you mean that stopping the consumption of ham and bacon will result in more habitat space for antelope and lions, then you're you're way off base.
It might temporarily slow down the rainforest deforestation (for new grazing land), but eventually we'll still take that land for growing cash crops and putting human beings on.
The only land that non-food animals are allowed, is the land that people don't want to live on or grow on or mine on, etc. Hell, even when it was Native American human beings on reservations in the US, we kept moving them to crappier and crappier land, whenever we wanted to homestead or found minerals and whatnot on it.
We got 7 billion people itching for elbow room. If there's arable land with water supply, we're going to stick houses, food crops, cash crops, or food animals on it.
The potential animals that would be lost would be replaced by others. Your argument is like saying to a girl "hey, if we don't have unprotected sex right now you could not possibly get pregnant and a potential human being would never come to exist!".
That analogy makes no sense at all.
The current animals live at great financial cost to humans (you know what it costs to feed a cow for a year?), because they have cash value. Have you ever seen what happens to the horse market in these tough economic times? Imagine what happens when there is NO market for cow meat... The land and resources currently used for meat animals will NOT go to subsidizing the lifestyle of tree frogs or spider monkeys.
We will grow food plants on it, or people on it, and the number of non-human "macro-animals" in the world will drop by a few billion.
Because relegation to zoo or petting farm status is what happens to any "useless (to humans) species", especially one that can't survive on its own in the wild (what little "wild" there is left).
Seriously what "diverse and natural" niche opens up when we stop breeding and feeding cows, chickens and pigs?
Why don't you? The burden of proof is clearly on you.
We don't apply this kind of thinking to humans. We don't look at a father who abuses his children and say "well, they wouldn't be there if he didn't have them, and they aren't trying to kill themselves, so there is no problem here." The correct course of action is to prevent that suffering.
Besides, I don't see a good reason to protect potential life.
If eating meat being a basic and natural need for your bodily organs to function at maximum capacity is not a valid justification for you to eat meat and naturally embrace the fact that you are an omnivore, then there's probably no hope for you.
I would like to point out that I do eat meat and make use of animal products, I just wish I didn't, or at least didn't have to.
CAN a vegetarian get the same amount of nutritional value out of diet that consists of no meat whatsoever? Sure.
If we have a reasonable alternative, then I can see why vegans and vegetarians say that we should use it.
And you can be guaranteed to never find anything quite as tasty as an A-1 marinated medium rare 24oz of good stuff. That's just fact. Your taste buds agree with me and you know it.
The argument that you can't meet your dietary requirements without meat is a way stronger argument than this. This one just appeals to me wanting to feel good.
Claiming that we are just doing what other animals do doesn't work either since we have the ability, given our current state of technology and advancement, to get around our need for such a diet, while animals do not.
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.
There is no getting around the fact that we cause a great deal of pain and suffering to animals.
So does every animal ever. Every single animal is trying to eat another animal in order to survive. Every animal fights other animals for space so that it can live. THAT is reality. We cannot avoid it. You've lived long enough in a society of such unbelievable opulence and technological advancement that you're able to pretend that this is not the case and avoid enough reminders of it in a given day to maintain your bubble-world somewhat, but it is a given that our existence will mean the death of other animals. That's a fact of life.
Now we can either run around feeling guilty about our existence and fill our heads with idiocy, or we can actually live in reality.
Interesting article here a buddy of mine posted on FB this morning.
Perspectives from a former Vegan.
Good article.
Amazing to me about the sense of guilt she felt giving a vegan lifestyle up. This emphasizes to me how delusional the whole "eating animals is wrong" idea truly is. This girl was willing to starve herself to death out of a completely misplaced sense of guilt that she would have to kill an animal and eat it. It's textbook insanity.
Yep. As long as we keep a few alive in petting zoos and "revervations", er... "wildlife reserves", then we've done the cow race a big favor when we reduce their numbers from 1 billion plus, down to a few thousand.
It's like ending the suffering of Indians in American society (subject to attack by settlers), by putting them on reservations and reducing their population to a fraction of what they were before. Problem "solved". Really better off never having been born, than live as an Indian among the white man, right? Who cares that the population was once millions? "Potential lives" and population numbers are meaningless, right?
Well, I'm assuming the sustainability movement gets something done. If not, we're going to be (near-)extinct within a couple of centuries anyway.
It would open up some breathing space for food production to be less unmissable. In this abundance, more reserves could arise.
Natural reserves, woodland managed with ecosystem services in mind or just left to develop naturally... The way you describe it, these things won't necessarily be used this way.
Think it through:
If there is currently room in people's hearts and budgets for supporting a trillion more pounds of non-edible wildlife in "woodland preserves", why hasn't that money and land already been spent?
Why would discontinuing the multibillion dollar cattle industry magically induce people to start a new growth industry in "wildlife preserves"?
It's no better than arguing that if we ban football stadiums and golf courses, we'll get thousands of new "wildlife preserves". (Or alternatively, arguing that if we discontinue the multibillion dollar cattle industry, we'll magically induce people to build more football stadiums and golf courses)
We don't apply this kind of thinking to humans. We don't look at a father who abuses his children and say "well, they wouldn't be there if he didn't have them, and they aren't trying to kill themselves, so there is no problem here." The correct course of action is to prevent that suffering.
You seem to like analogies. Here's one for you.
Let's say in the future, we become the Great World Nation of Vegetarians, that wants no humans on earth to eat meat. This society of Vegetarians is much like our world today, where, OTHER than the animals that we EAT, keep as PET, or parasites like RATS that can survive off our scraps, we pretty much have reduced all other animal populations to less than 1/100 of humans...
We encounter a weaker civilization on another planet Carnivore, humans like us, except that they are backwards, and still eat meat. They have a population of 1 billion cows that live, ☺☺☺☺, have calves, and are kept like modern cows today, penned up, eating grain, etc. and eventually slaughtered when they get fat.
Since our prime directive is "EAT NO MEAT", we tell them:
"People of Carnivore, you are being enormously cruel to cows... you must eat grain only. Let us show you how."
So we then forcibly [1] shut down all cattle ranches (we don't plan to sustain a trillion pounds of cattle indefinitely)... [2] put a few hundred cows into zoos and petting farms and reservations at a cost of thousands a year per cow [3] neuter almost all the male cattle (or spay the females, whatever. what are we going to do, let them reproduce and starve to death as nobody feeds them?) [4] requisition all the old ranch land to be evenly distributed by market forces into the general purposes that any other land would.
After we've done all that, are you really going to tell me the cows are better off after we came to the planet?
Of course they do: they're both land. And the conversion is not as difficult as with, for instance, urban territory.
Except that a "woodland preserve" that is a money SINK, and the grazing land was a money SOURCE.
The "difficulty of conversion" is not the issue. The rate limiting step is ultimately CASH. A budget or an endowment to maintain the land as a preserve or whatever you like. The CASH isn't there now. Neutering the private beef industry, and the tax revenues it generates is going to be a net NEGATIVE cash flow for the govt and the owners of the land.
But let's be straight here: It's utterly facetious, just frankly disingenuous, to argue that "maybe" neutering the cow population will result in a replacement "woodland preserve" industry that will benefit other populations of animals. It's hard to believe anybody could offer that argument with a straight face.
It's a deliberate, calculated, distraction from a legitimate argument about whether existence as a symbiotic species with humans is preferable (to that species) to being extinct or marginalized to miniscule populations.
I'm not going to dive into the mess this debate is becoming, but I do want to offer my advice to the OP. Meat is good and good for you and (surprise!) it's a natural way for our bodies to keep running. Perhaps you could argue for a reduced diet of meat, only eating what your body needs (which is much less than the average westerner consumes). However, I don't think you can reasonably argue that killing an animal for sustenance is immoral.
Of course, you can make reasonable arguments against the mistreatment of animals. I am ashamed to say that the majority of the beef industry is tied up in feedlots, which are disgusting places for any animal to live. Indeed, they boast some of the highest employee turnover rates among humans... if only cows could quit and get a new job grazing an open field like they're meant to, and undoubtedly want to.
If you really want to make a difference in the lives of animals, continue eating meat, but make it exclusively wild or free-run organic. Then, with what pent up guilt you have left, lobby your government to enforce mandatory labeling displaying what conditions the animals were in and what antibiotics, drugs and hormones were put into their feed. That will change the industry on a far greater scale than you can do by simply stopping your consumption.
And now, despite my better judgment, I will respond to some other posters...
@dcartist: - Arguing "cash" in a conversation about ethics is stupid.
- Arguing that individual lives (and even those not yet born) have more value than the ecosystem and biosphere we live in is ludicrous. One billion cows are far more than a natural ecosystem can support. Reducing that number through reduced breeding is the moral thing to do. Same goes for humans. On your hypothetically planet Carnivore, the cows may not be "better off" but pretty much every other life form would be.
- Zoos are immoral. If cows cannot live without human support, so be it. Sounds like extinction is the way to go.
- While we might "technically" be symbiotic with cows, we're really more like parasites that have become so good at what we do that we can control their breeding and diet.
Your whole argument with Mad Mat is very anthropocentric. Humans aren't that great. In fact, we're pretty brutal as far as every other life form is concerned. Talking about what "use" various farm animals would have if we all went vegan is ignoring the natural world. Just let them figure out their own uses for themselves.
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And you can be guaranteed to never find anything quite as tasty as an A-1 marinated medium rare 24oz of good stuff. That's just fact. Your taste buds agree with me and you know it.
Actually, I can guarantee this. Eat something wild or organically fed. Delicious! Bonus that is doesn't have all those hormones or dyes (you know, to make the meat look redder!).
We don't apply this kind of thinking to humans. We don't look at a father who abuses his children and say "well, they wouldn't be there if he didn't have them, and they aren't trying to kill themselves, so there is no problem here." The correct course of action is to prevent that suffering.
Besides, I don't see a good reason to protect potential life.I would like to point out that I do eat meat and make use of animal products, I just wish I didn't, or at least didn't have to.If we have a reasonable alternative, then I can see why vegans and vegetarians say that we should use it.The argument that you can't meet your dietary requirements without meat is a way stronger argument than this. This one just appeals to me wanting to feel good.
I was originally taking this in a very light hearted and sarcastic manner, but seeing as you see absolutely zero humor in this situation, this has begun to become irritating.
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.
Then for Christs sake turn vegetarian. You've already made up your mind and nobody hear is going to condemn you for your own personal life choices. I could care less if you like bacon or carrots. It's really no skin off of my nose.
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.
You've made up your mind, so stop wasting our time and give up meat. Nobody here cares. We'll go on eating our turkey, chicken, fish, beef, pork and deer. You can go chew on celery or something and feel morally righteous for doing so. More power to you. Just for the love of beef quit whining about your inhibitions and be your own person.
We're overpopulated. The alternative would be actively breeding ☺☺☺☺loads of plants and then eating them. I already said why I don't see as any better and you already said why you do.
Congratulations for understanding the sarcasm/humor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism is the one your looking for which really is neither Buddhism or Hinduism but does go back to India along time ago. They also sweep where they are going to walk so they don't step on any insects thus killing them. Buddha himself even tried Jainism before becoming enlightened through Buddhism.
Thanks to Magus of the Sheep at Scuttlemutt Productions for the best ever sig.
If you make a moral argument for vegetarianism based on all lives being equal in value, the combine harvesters and other machines used for gathering some vegetarian foods take as many lives in the form of killing rodents as the process of raising and slaughtering animals for meat does. Some estimates go so far as to say that vegetarian alternative kill many MORE animals overall than meat farming does.
Food for thought. (OMFG BAD PUN LOLZORZ)
Exactly. There's no need to overly justify the exact evolutionary and biological social structures as to why exactly from the very faucets of our DNA that we are genetically and intrinsically raised and propagated to love meat.
That's over complicating the point. You can either over explain why we love meat, of you can just say "because we love meat". It's the same thing, only simplified. You still get to the same ending argument. One simply expresses it in a way that everyone can understand.
We love meat because we love meat, there's no two ways around it.
Nutritious? Absolutely. Delicious? Not really. I've had it, tried it, and attempted to cook it. It makes a huge mess thats hard to clean, is very small in it's serving sizes, and unless you load it with spices you're not going to get a very pleasing taste from it.
Now fried tarantula legs, now that's something I can get into!
The only reason there are about a 1-2 billion cows (pigs too) on this planet, is because we raise and eat them. 30 billion chickens also.
If we don't eat them, the chickens and cows will simply get NO LIFE AT ALL, and not be allowed to reproduce or live. The only reason they live now at all in such big numbers is because we buy a lot of real estate, then house and feed them at great cost.
So becoming vegetarians will relegate pigs, cows, and chickens to extinction.
Refute that, vegetarians.
I would like some justification to my meat eating. Appealing to evolution doesn't really cut it since that's just a fancy sounding naturalistic fallacy. Claiming that we are just doing what other animals do doesn't work either since we have the ability, given our current state of technology and advancement, to get around our need for such a diet, while animals do not.
There is no getting around the fact that we cause a great deal of pain and suffering to animals. It seems that we just have made a calculation that this pain is worth our convenience and pleasure.
Who are you to judge what life is miserable enough to be preferable to death or non-life? Maybe chickens have hope.
For you living your current life, you may perceive living in constant fear of death, and living off scraps to seem worse than death. But rats do it all the time. How can you judge the life of a mole? Or a chicken? Sure they might prefer to be free Range if they had the option, but few chickens choose suicide over life.
Personally, I don't try to justify it. I'm an omnivore and I want meat.
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The simple truth is that there's no moral arguments for eating anything at all. We don't eat to feel righteous, we eat for nourishment.
At the very worst, anything you eat is something another animal can't eat anymore. So there's no fully "earth-friendly" way of eating.
Plus, meats just good. LONG LIVE BACON!!!!!
This is a myth. It is true that modern turkeys have been bred so far from what they were in the wild that they can hardly be called the same animal.
But, I think vegetarian is much more efficient. A meat factory is "a protein factory in reverse." It takes 16-20 units of protein feed to the animal to make one unit of meat protein. It's just not the best way to go about it.....
.... but it IS very tasty.
I've claimed that the billions of cows, pigs, and chickens only live right now because we eat them, and are people therefore are willing to spend money and space to house and feed them. If we all stop eating meat, those animals will not get life at all (except for milk cows and chickens for eggs).
You've countered with the claim that the animals' quality of life is so "miserable" that the animals would prefer death.
I've refuted that by pointing out that the huge majority of these cows, chickens & pigs are NOT attempting to kill themselves.
So YOU should figure out why the pigs, cows and chickens are tenaciously clinging to life, and NOT killing themselves.
Prey animals frequently suffer hunger, malnutrition, live lives constantly in danger, and eventually either die of starvation, disease, or predation. Many die when they're young, and its extremely unusual for them to ever feel sated. Their life may be better than that of domesticated livestock.
And life for cattle on a cattle ranch is bad by human standards, but how can you reasonably argue that GENOCIDE & EXTINCTION are categorically preferable to being a domesticated livestock species living at population billion plus? Who knows, maybe they just need to wait us out so their descendants will eventually be free?
As I said earlier, I am a vegetarian and I find the very premise of this thread to be nothing but self-righteous, pretentious hogwash. The human body is designed to consume certain things, to starve your body of those things for something as ridiculous as "morality" is a travesty. If you take issue with the way consumer livestock is raised, then only buy free-range, organic meats. It will be more expensive but maybe then you can get over your "conscience" trying to tell you you're a bad person for being a human. Then you don't have to worry about things like BHGH or whatever other terrible thing of which people say our meat is loaded.
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If eating meat being a basic and natural need for your bodily organs to function at maximum capacity is not a valid justification for you to eat meat and naturally embrace the fact that you are an omnivore, then there's probably no hope for you.
CAN a vegetarian get the same amount of nutritional value out of diet that consists of no meat whatsoever? Sure. But you'd need a whole lot of dietary supplements to match the protein gained from a nice juicy steak. And you can be guaranteed to never find anything quite as tasty as an A-1 marinated medium rare 24oz of good stuff. That's just fact. Your taste buds agree with me and you know it.
Yes, yes they do make great sammiches.
Thank you sir, I'm going to use this line of thought when approaching the very next woman I see. I will let you know if it was successful.
Dogs don't know it's not Bacon. Therefore, humans > dogs and by extention, animals. End thread.
But their numbers will plummet though of course. But pigs are doomed except in small numbers as pets.
while currently over a billion of cows & pigs get to live, only a select few millions will get to live... or less if we nix cow's milk.
If by more "diverse and natural", you mean it will make more room for caucasians, asians, latinos and african americans, then I get you.
If you mean that stopping the consumption of ham and bacon will result in more habitat space for antelope and lions, then you're you're way off base.
It might temporarily slow down the rainforest deforestation (for new grazing land), but eventually we'll still take that land for growing cash crops and putting human beings on.
The only land that non-food animals are allowed, is the land that people don't want to live on or grow on or mine on, etc. Hell, even when it was Native American human beings on reservations in the US, we kept moving them to crappier and crappier land, whenever we wanted to homestead or found minerals and whatnot on it.
We got 7 billion people itching for elbow room. If there's arable land with water supply, we're going to stick houses, food crops, cash crops, or food animals on it.
That analogy makes no sense at all.
The current animals live at great financial cost to humans (you know what it costs to feed a cow for a year?), because they have cash value. Have you ever seen what happens to the horse market in these tough economic times? Imagine what happens when there is NO market for cow meat... The land and resources currently used for meat animals will NOT go to subsidizing the lifestyle of tree frogs or spider monkeys.
We will grow food plants on it, or people on it, and the number of non-human "macro-animals" in the world will drop by a few billion.
Because relegation to zoo or petting farm status is what happens to any "useless (to humans) species", especially one that can't survive on its own in the wild (what little "wild" there is left).
Seriously what "diverse and natural" niche opens up when we stop breeding and feeding cows, chickens and pigs?
Perspectives from a former Vegan.
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Besides, I don't see a good reason to protect potential life. I would like to point out that I do eat meat and make use of animal products, I just wish I didn't, or at least didn't have to. If we have a reasonable alternative, then I can see why vegans and vegetarians say that we should use it. The argument that you can't meet your dietary requirements without meat is a way stronger argument than this. This one just appeals to me wanting to feel good.
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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.
So does every animal ever. Every single animal is trying to eat another animal in order to survive. Every animal fights other animals for space so that it can live. THAT is reality. We cannot avoid it. You've lived long enough in a society of such unbelievable opulence and technological advancement that you're able to pretend that this is not the case and avoid enough reminders of it in a given day to maintain your bubble-world somewhat, but it is a given that our existence will mean the death of other animals. That's a fact of life.
Now we can either run around feeling guilty about our existence and fill our heads with idiocy, or we can actually live in reality.
Good article.
Amazing to me about the sense of guilt she felt giving a vegan lifestyle up. This emphasizes to me how delusional the whole "eating animals is wrong" idea truly is. This girl was willing to starve herself to death out of a completely misplaced sense of guilt that she would have to kill an animal and eat it. It's textbook insanity.
It's like ending the suffering of Indians in American society (subject to attack by settlers), by putting them on reservations and reducing their population to a fraction of what they were before. Problem "solved". Really better off never having been born, than live as an Indian among the white man, right? Who cares that the population was once millions? "Potential lives" and population numbers are meaningless, right?
Think it through:
If there is currently room in people's hearts and budgets for supporting a trillion more pounds of non-edible wildlife in "woodland preserves", why hasn't that money and land already been spent?
Why would discontinuing the multibillion dollar cattle industry magically induce people to start a new growth industry in "wildlife preserves"?
It's no better than arguing that if we ban football stadiums and golf courses, we'll get thousands of new "wildlife preserves". (Or alternatively, arguing that if we discontinue the multibillion dollar cattle industry, we'll magically induce people to build more football stadiums and golf courses)
One has nothing to do with the other.
You seem to like analogies. Here's one for you.
Let's say in the future, we become the Great World Nation of Vegetarians, that wants no humans on earth to eat meat. This society of Vegetarians is much like our world today, where, OTHER than the animals that we EAT, keep as PET, or parasites like RATS that can survive off our scraps, we pretty much have reduced all other animal populations to less than 1/100 of humans...
We encounter a weaker civilization on another planet Carnivore, humans like us, except that they are backwards, and still eat meat. They have a population of 1 billion cows that live, ☺☺☺☺, have calves, and are kept like modern cows today, penned up, eating grain, etc. and eventually slaughtered when they get fat.
Since our prime directive is "EAT NO MEAT", we tell them:
"People of Carnivore, you are being enormously cruel to cows... you must eat grain only. Let us show you how."
So we then forcibly [1] shut down all cattle ranches (we don't plan to sustain a trillion pounds of cattle indefinitely)... [2] put a few hundred cows into zoos and petting farms and reservations at a cost of thousands a year per cow [3] neuter almost all the male cattle (or spay the females, whatever. what are we going to do, let them reproduce and starve to death as nobody feeds them?) [4] requisition all the old ranch land to be evenly distributed by market forces into the general purposes that any other land would.
After we've done all that, are you really going to tell me the cows are better off after we came to the planet?
The "difficulty of conversion" is not the issue. The rate limiting step is ultimately CASH. A budget or an endowment to maintain the land as a preserve or whatever you like. The CASH isn't there now. Neutering the private beef industry, and the tax revenues it generates is going to be a net NEGATIVE cash flow for the govt and the owners of the land.
But let's be straight here: It's utterly facetious, just frankly disingenuous, to argue that "maybe" neutering the cow population will result in a replacement "woodland preserve" industry that will benefit other populations of animals. It's hard to believe anybody could offer that argument with a straight face.
It's a deliberate, calculated, distraction from a legitimate argument about whether existence as a symbiotic species with humans is preferable (to that species) to being extinct or marginalized to miniscule populations.
It is technically a symbiosis.
Of course, you can make reasonable arguments against the mistreatment of animals. I am ashamed to say that the majority of the beef industry is tied up in feedlots, which are disgusting places for any animal to live. Indeed, they boast some of the highest employee turnover rates among humans... if only cows could quit and get a new job grazing an open field like they're meant to, and undoubtedly want to.
If you really want to make a difference in the lives of animals, continue eating meat, but make it exclusively wild or free-run organic. Then, with what pent up guilt you have left, lobby your government to enforce mandatory labeling displaying what conditions the animals were in and what antibiotics, drugs and hormones were put into their feed. That will change the industry on a far greater scale than you can do by simply stopping your consumption.
And now, despite my better judgment, I will respond to some other posters...
@dcartist: - Arguing "cash" in a conversation about ethics is stupid.
- Arguing that individual lives (and even those not yet born) have more value than the ecosystem and biosphere we live in is ludicrous. One billion cows are far more than a natural ecosystem can support. Reducing that number through reduced breeding is the moral thing to do. Same goes for humans. On your hypothetically planet Carnivore, the cows may not be "better off" but pretty much every other life form would be.
- Zoos are immoral. If cows cannot live without human support, so be it. Sounds like extinction is the way to go.
- While we might "technically" be symbiotic with cows, we're really more like parasites that have become so good at what we do that we can control their breeding and diet.
Your whole argument with Mad Mat is very anthropocentric. Humans aren't that great. In fact, we're pretty brutal as far as every other life form is concerned. Talking about what "use" various farm animals would have if we all went vegan is ignoring the natural world. Just let them figure out their own uses for themselves.
Actually, I can guarantee this. Eat something wild or organically fed. Delicious! Bonus that is doesn't have all those hormones or dyes (you know, to make the meat look redder!).
I was originally taking this in a very light hearted and sarcastic manner, but seeing as you see absolutely zero humor in this situation, this has begun to become irritating.
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.
Then for Christs sake turn vegetarian. You've already made up your mind and nobody hear is going to condemn you for your own personal life choices. I could care less if you like bacon or carrots. It's really no skin off of my nose.
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.
You've made up your mind, so stop wasting our time and give up meat. Nobody here cares. We'll go on eating our turkey, chicken, fish, beef, pork and deer. You can go chew on celery or something and feel morally righteous for doing so. More power to you. Just for the love of beef quit whining about your inhibitions and be your own person.