Veganism and Ethics

[RAM]

While I do agree that it is rather absurd that we squeeze cow nipples for a weird white liquid that we transform into a variety of delicious dairy products (and extraterrestrial visitors might think of this as a very odd monkey-practice), I am not a vegan or vegetarian. I avoid eating red meat out of concerns about climate change, however, as cows are a huge and unexpected contributor of greenhouse gasses.

My grandparents had a farm when I was growing up where I got to spend time with the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese they raised. We also went fishing and hunting often (and grew a variety of crops). While we all thought these animals were all very cute and we cared for them, we had no qualms about eating them when the time came. So, I still have no reservations about eating these animals.

Eating this way and not being ethically frustrated about it is largely due to my subjective childhood experience and current ability to afford reasonably-raised meats. My roommate and I sometimes pose a question to people where we believe that you should only partake in the fruits of activities that you would be willing to do yourself. Therefore, if someone is not willing to kill and skin a chicken or shoot a cow and hang it on a meat rack, then you probably should not eat those animals.

Personally, I would much rather kill a chicken than cut a tree down (I've done both). I meet very few people who agree (or are not alarmed) by this feeling, but I have always felt a much deeper connection to plants than animals. Also, trees mitigate climate change whereas cows contribute to it.

Furthermore, if aliens came to Earth and decided to eat us, I would not judge them for making that decision. Obviously I wouldn't want to be eaten, but I would understand and accept their ability to do so. This kind of thinking in my opinion reduces the hypocrisy associated with eating meat.

If everyone else became a vegan, I would too. My dad is a vegan so I often eat vegan food, and it's not bad. But I still think it is much easier to get all of our necessary nutrients if we are not vegans, as humans have historically eaten meat.

 

[Phantastica]

While I do agree that it is rather absurd that we squeeze cow nipples for a weird white liquid that we transform into a variety of delicious dairy products (and extraterrestrial visitors might think of this as a very odd monkey-practice), I am not a vegan or vegetarian. I avoid eating red meat out of concerns about climate change, however, as cows are a huge and unexpected contributor of greenhouse gasses.

An odd-monkey practice indeed :lol: I respect that you are mindful of the environmental impact of red meat and limit your consumption of it accordingly. I think it is a mindful decision.
I'd like to pose you a few questions for our discussion.
I understand your environmental perspective, but what about the social justice dimension of the issue? I assume that you agree that animals are sentient beings who want to live their life and have the ability to feel fear, pain and pleasure (let me know if you think otherwise). I also assume that you realize the abundance of healthy plant-based alternatives available to us today. Then what exactly justifies the killing of an animal for food?

Eating this way and not being ethically frustrated about it is largely due to my subjective childhood experience and current ability to afford reasonably-raised meats.

Do you think that if one is not ethically frustrated about their actions, that makes it a right action?
Do you think the ability to financially afford meat justifies the killing?
What is your definition of "reasonably-raised" meat? Do you mean "humane meat"?
I'd say that the way to determine whether something is "humane" or not is to ask if we would want that same thing to be done to ourselves.
If you believe in "humane" killing (especially when we have healthy alternatives), what are your views on "humane" rape?

My roommate and I sometimes pose a question to people where we believe that you should only partake in the fruits of activities that you would be willing to do yourself. Therefore, if someone is not willing to kill and skin a chicken or shoot a cow and hang it on a meat rack, then you probably should not eat those animals.

If one is willing to partake in an activity him/herself, does that make it the right practice? Does that justify it?
Am I justified in killing another human being if I am willing to do it myself?

Personally, I would much rather kill a chicken than cut a tree down (I've done both). I meet very few people who agree (or are not alarmed) by this feeling, but I have always felt a much deeper connection to plants than animals. Also, trees mitigate climate change whereas cows contribute to it.

I see you care about the environment. But RAM, what if you didn't have to cut the tree down? What if you just ate the apple that grew on the tree?
You are right about trees mitigating climate change and cows contributing to it. But the only reason we have 1.4 billion cows worldwide right now is because humans are breeding them for food. They are not naturally here, and eating cows will certainly not reduce our carbon footprint, but add to it - supply and demand. In fact, an average person who goes vegan cuts down their carbon footprint by more than 50%.

Furthermore, if aliens came to Earth and decided to eat us, I would not judge them for making that decision. Obviously I wouldn't want to be eaten, but I would understand and accept their ability to do so.

Let's talk in terms of right action vs. wrong action. If the aliens had alternative sources of food, and chose to breed and kill humans for taste and convenience, would that be justified? If an alien was slitting your throat, would you not fight till your last breath?

If everyone else became a vegan, I would too. My dad is a vegan so I often eat vegan food, and it's not bad. But I still think it is much easier to get all of our necessary nutrients if we are not vegans, as humans have historically eaten meat.

It's very interesting that your dad is vegan. It's usually the sons and daughters who go vegan first. As for your mention of nutrients, there is no nutrient that is found in meat (that the human body needs) that is not available in plants. Vitamin B12, Calcium, Iron, Omega 3's - all of it is available in plant sources and research has well-established the health benefits of a plant-based diet over a meat-based diet by this point (feel free to check the links I posted previously in response to some comments about nutrition and health).

Also, our ancestors had quite short lifespans compared to today, so eating meat because humans have historically done so doesn't apply. Historically, the meat eating people (such as Inuits, Eskimos, Masai and others) had quite short lifespans.

One last question - Just because humans have taken part in a certain practice historically, does that make it right? I'm thinking of other practices humans have done throughout history, such as wars, rape, slavery...

 

[dreamer042]

Anything that gets people thinking about the impact of their dietary choices is ultimately a good thing and a step in the right direction toward truly ethical eating. When one first becomes aware of the atrocities of industrialized meat and dairy production, going veg is the obvious solution, sprinkle in a bit of PETA propaganda at just that right moment and the vegan brand of extremism seems the only moral and sensible reaction to the realities of the ongoing torture and genocide.

Unfortunately, once people make the choice to go vegan, they tend to fall into a trap of self-righteousness and abandon critical thinking. Anything that adheres to the “is it vegan” policy is instantly healthy, moral, and sensible with no need for any further investigation. This enables all sorts of abuses on the part of the agrogiants and leads to some incredibly fallacious thinking and decision making on the part of the consumer. Following the money quickly destroys the myth of ethical choice at the grocer and reveals yet another marked-up niche market for the conglomerates to exploit.

The ability to maintain a vegan diet is entirely rooted in industrial culture and the disconnect we experience from the realities of food production. It’s easy to take the ability to eat plants based products all the year round for granted when we aren’t dependent on what we can raise in our garden and catch in the forest to sustain our families through the the winter. Without stocked produce sections and synthetic and imported nutrition pills, the fallacy of a vegan society quickly becomes evident.

Fortunately in 21st century industrialized culture, we do have the luxury of access a global year round food supply and unprecedented nutritional technologies, from juicers and blenders to whole food extracts and synthetic vitamins. Tropical fruits at under $1 a lb, fresh ocean products in even the most landlocked locations, and quality controlled, standardized, nutritional supplements; never before in history have we had such diverse and unparalleled nutritional density so accessible.

As good as we’ve got it, we have to recognize that it’s not a sustainable model, and sooner or later this artificial bounty is going to come to an end. This is where making sustainable choices here and now comes into play. Those places with active gardens and strong local food movements aren’t so dependent on precarious supply networks predicated on cheap oil and political benevolence. By lessening the petroleum input in our diets and easing up our dependency on big ag now, we can help to ensure a more resilient local food economy well into the future. Backyard chickens will continue laying eggs whether the semis have fuel to get those “certified vegan” supplements to your doorstep or not.

 

[Godsmacker]

POO-TEE-WEEET

[YOUTUBE]

Save an animal: eat a vegan

 

[Jagube]

Great points, dreamer.

Veganism has never been as viable as it is in the 21st century thanks to the advanced technology, science, genetic engineering etc. But hey maybe that's the way of the future. Maybe one day we'll be bio-cyborgs with chlorophyll injected into our skin to make our own food from sunlight and veganism will be out of fashion for being unsustainable.

BTW those statistics that say "going vegan reduces this or that by X%" don't mean anything unless they come with qualifiers stating *how* the vegan / non-vegan food must be grown for the numbers to apply, because the "how" makes all the difference.

 

[Animistic]

I too respect people who consciously choose their food as opposed to eat what the dominant culture feeds them. I think veganism is a reasonable reaction to mainstream factory farming but I do think it's equally as extreme. I was vegetarian for 2 years, trying only to eat as local as I could possibly do. I eventually, though losing some extra weight, started to just not feel right, blood test was fine. When I felt into my body the message was clear, I needed meat again.

These days I still eat a mostly plant based diet, meat maybe once every month or two. I have the most interest in meat I can hunt myself. I think that this is the honorable way to eat meat. Though at the moment my meat comes from a local small scale farm which I have had a personal interaction with. One thing I have noticed is that to try and eat clean meat in a respectable way tends to get more of a reaction from vegans than someone who just goes along with the farming machine even though we agree on basically everything else. When I say I would rather hunt my own meat I have been attacked especially that I want to do it with a bow. Even though it only requires a single small tree to be chopped down and a few stalks from a local plant, some stone to make some decent arrows and some feathers from a chicken. As opposed to a gun which requires mining and all the ecological damage that comes from the practice, plastic and often other damaging environmental chemicals.

I echo the sentiments shared that all life is sentient and the only reason animals get a special treatment is because they express themselves in ways we can more easily recognise. Ultimately I view this as sort of like 'specism' that vegans have spoken to me about before, we only recognise intelligence and suffering when it is similar to one species, that of humans. Take an ecosystems perspective and plants, fungi, bacteria are no less and basically are more important to a functioning eco-system than animals. Though you will find no eco-system in the biosphere without animals and since we should imitate nature/ecosystems in our food production animals should be included in them.

I have seen claims of scientific articles being put forward about plant-based diets leading to better health outcomes than meat eaters. I would be surprised if that wasn't the case, the modern diet is horrendous and what is expected to happen when you merge your being with one who was basically tortured? However, how does that compare to someone who eats otherwise fresh/organic food and preferably wild food and meat? To look at hunter-gatherers lives, the best access we have is through the limited groups which still exist and have not adopted agricultural practices.

It is a myth that hunter-gatherers expect to live shorter lives [1]. This data comes from the fact they have higher child mortality rates if they get past that stage they enjoy similar lifespans to the rest of us. With the very little cancer rates ever reported in hunter-gatherer societies surely this is less than vegans and meat eaters (which is 50% less likely from what I can tell) [2,3]. So is the issue really with the meat or something else?

I also echo that veganism is only possible in the dying industrialized/globalized culture we live now. Try and live locally, completely from your own bio-region and see how well you are in 10 years. I have ultimately found that in the discussions I have had with vegans one key difference is how we see the future. Most of them see a future as a progression from where we are now where as I see the future society bringing some of the modern comforts but returning to something also similar to how we have lived in the past. Also regarding Eskimos and Innuits - try and live in their climate only eating a local plant-based diet, it's impossible.

I know that if everyone foraged and hunted we'd wipe the planet because the fact is there are too many humans on this planet, thats another difference I've found a number of vegans have an idea that the Earth can support this amount of people on a plant based diet. While I am here and able though I am going to live as I have evolved to, within the limits of my ability. Evolution psychologically can happen in an instant but you cannot defeat physical evolution overnight rather hundreds of thousands of years.

Thanks for a respectful conversation all!

References:
1. Hunter gatherer lifespan: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf

2. Hunter-gatherer disease rates:
Epidemiological factors: health and disease in hunter-gatherers
Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context (This one references other studies which show similar counts for other cancers)

3. Plant vs meat disease rates:
Reduced cancer risk in vegetarians: an analysis of recent reports

 

[dragonrider]

Anything that gets people thinking about the impact of their dietary choices is ultimately a good thing and a step in the right direction toward truly ethical eating. When one first becomes aware of the atrocities of industrialized meat and dairy production, going veg is the obvious solution, sprinkle in a bit of PETA propaganda at just that right moment and the vegan brand of extremism seems the only moral and sensible reaction to the realities of the ongoing torture and genocide.

Unfortunately, once people make the choice to go vegan, they tend to fall into a trap of self-righteousness and abandon critical thinking. Anything that adheres to the “is it vegan” policy is instantly healthy, moral, and sensible with no need for any further investigation. This enables all sorts of abuses on the part of the agrogiants and leads to some incredibly fallacious thinking and decision making on the part of the consumer. Following the money quickly destroys the myth of ethical choice at the grocer and reveals yet another marked-up niche market for the conglomerates to exploit.

The ability to maintain a vegan diet is entirely rooted in industrial culture and the disconnect we experience from the realities of food production. It’s easy to take the ability to eat plants based products all the year round for granted when we aren’t dependent on what we can raise in our garden and catch in the forest to sustain our families through the the winter. Without stocked produce sections and synthetic and imported nutrition pills, the fallacy of a vegan society quickly becomes evident.

Fortunately in 21st century industrialized culture, we do have the luxury of access a global year round food supply and unprecedented nutritional technologies, from juicers and blenders to whole food extracts and synthetic vitamins. Tropical fruits at under $1 a lb, fresh ocean products in even the most landlocked locations, and quality controlled, standardized, nutritional supplements; never before in history have we had such diverse and unparalleled nutritional density so accessible.

As good as we’ve got it, we have to recognize that it’s not a sustainable model, and sooner or later this artificial bounty is going to come to an end. This is where making sustainable choices here and now comes into play. Those places with active gardens and strong local food movements aren’t so dependent on precarious supply networks predicated on cheap oil and political benevolence. By lessening the petroleum input in our diets and easing up our dependency on big ag now, we can help to ensure a more resilient local food economy well into the future. Backyard chickens will continue laying eggs whether the semis have fuel to get those “certified vegan” supplements to your doorstep or not.

For this reason, i think a vegetarian is a little more sustainable than a vegan diet. It allows you to be a little more flexible and not to rely on expensive supplements and such.

There are vegetarian cheeses btw, that taste just as good as 'normal' cheese. I don't know why they still use renet from animals (mostly goats, i believe) because it tastes just the same.

Veganism is probably going to be much more sustainable in the future because all over the world, people are experimenting with alternative sources of fatty acids and vitamin b12, like algea, fungi, and bacteria, etc.

 

[Phantastica]

Anything that gets people thinking about the impact of their dietary choices is ultimately a good thing and a step in the right direction toward truly ethical eating. When one first becomes aware of the atrocities of industrialized meat and dairy production, going veg is the obvious solution, sprinkle in a bit of PETA propaganda at just that right moment and the vegan brand of extremism seems the only moral and sensible reaction to the realities of the ongoing torture and genocide.

I agree with you dreamer, that thinking about dietary choices is a step in the right direction towards ethical eating. I think PETA has had a major impact on shifting people away from animal products, but it also has a lot of room for improvement. I also think that majority of true propaganda comes from meat, dairy and poultry industries - we've all seen images of happy cows and pigs on fields basking in the sun.
I don't view the vegan movement as extreme, but rather as assertive. And I think it's only as assertive (or extreme if you prefer) as people who've been involved in any kind of social justice movement in the past (like racism, chauvinism, heterosexism, etc.)

Unfortunately, once people make the choice to go vegan, they tend to fall into a trap of self-righteousness and abandon critical thinking. Anything that adheres to the “is it vegan” policy is instantly healthy, moral, and sensible with no need for any further investigation.

That seems to me to be an overgeneralization of an entire group of people. Some of the most humble people I've ever met in my life were vegan. When I was eating meat, I myself got in heated debates with vegans and would often tease fellow vegan friends - I just couldn't understand their viewpoint. But throughout it all, many vegan people I knew weren't offended by this and continued to remain humble and friendly to me. This made me have massive respect for these people.

Following the money quickly destroys the myth of ethical choice at the grocer and reveals yet another marked-up niche market for the conglomerates to exploit.

For me, this is a lesser concern than the suffering and death of innocent animals. If McDonalds wants to turn itself into a vegan joint (they're introducing McVegan in Finland), I have no problem with this - what matters is only the net positive/negative ratio on our society as a whole.

The ability to maintain a vegan diet is entirely rooted in industrial culture and the disconnect we experience from the realities of food production. It’s easy to take the ability to eat plants based products all the year round for granted when we aren’t dependent on what we can raise in our garden and catch in the forest to sustain our families through the the winter. Without stocked produce sections and synthetic and imported nutrition pills, the fallacy of a vegan society quickly becomes evident.

I agree that veganism is only truly possible in today's day and age. There have been vegans throughout history, but it is possible for veganism to become a global movement because of the choices made possible to us today.
But could you clarify what "fallacy of the vegan society" you are referring to? I don't see any fallacy here. The philosophy is rather simple - minimize harm to innocent beings as much as possible to the best of your ability.

As good as we’ve got it, we have to recognize that it’s not a sustainable model, and sooner or later this artificial bounty is going to come to an end. This is where making sustainable choices here and now comes into play. Those places with active gardens and strong local food movements aren’t so dependent on precarious supply networks predicated on cheap oil and political benevolence. By lessening the petroleum input in our diets and easing up our dependency on big ag now, we can help to ensure a more resilient local food economy well into the future. Backyard chickens will continue laying eggs whether the semis have fuel to get those “certified vegan” supplements to your doorstep or not.

Yes, I think sustainability can be improved, and as pointed out in the discussion with endlessness earlier, I agree that locally grown plant-based foods are the most sustainable. So anyone growing their own food in a garden is doing an amazing job at taking personal responsibility.
If someone uses eggs from their own backyard chickens (And takes good care of the chickens, and doesn't kill the chickens for food), then there is no ethical dilemma there - that's all good in my view.
I've heard your views from an environmental perspective Dreamer and I wonder what's your position on the ethical dimension of the issue (i.e. of killing animals for food in today's day and age when we have healthy alternatives)..?

Veganism has never been as viable as it is in the 21st century thanks to the advanced technology, science, genetic engineering etc. But hey maybe that's the way of the future. Maybe one day we'll be bio-cyborgs with chlorophyll injected into our skin to make our own food from sunlight and veganism will be out of fashion for being unsustainable.

Yes veganism has never been as viable as it is today - yay! :d It's first about minimizing harm to sentient living beings, and then about sustainability. I believe minimizing harm to living beings takes priority here over sustainability, because the whole point of a sustainable planet is to serve the living beings on it.

BTW those statistics that say "going vegan reduces this or that by X%" don't mean anything unless they come with qualifiers stating *how* the vegan / non-vegan food must be grown for the numbers to apply, because the "how" makes all the difference.

I think even if the "how" is not explicitly stated, it is still is a powerful statistic. Allow me to mention it here for you:

The land needed to feed one person for 1 year is 0.17 acres for a vegan; and 3 acres for an average meat eater. That means it requires 18 times more land to grow food for a meat-eater than it does to grow food for a vegan person.

Whether the "how" is explicitly stated or not, it is still noteworthy statistic, because you can be assured that the average meat-eater simply cannot have a lesser environmental impact than a vegan.

I too respect people who consciously choose their food as opposed to eat what the dominant culture feeds them. I think veganism is a reasonable reaction to mainstream factory farming but I do think it's equally as extreme. I was vegetarian for 2 years, trying only to eat as local as I could possibly do. I eventually, though losing some extra weight, started to just not feel right, blood test was fine. When I felt into my body the message was clear, I needed meat again.

I think it's great that you tried to eat as locally as possible and be mindful of your environmental impact on the world. I wonder if your craving for meat was psychological? I say this because medical science is heavily balanced in favor of plant-based diet. Meat, dairy and poultry (wild caught or not) are associated with a wide range of health problems (see my response to your comment regarding Inuits).

These days I still eat a mostly plant based diet, meat maybe once every month or two. I have the most interest in meat I can hunt myself. I think that this is the honorable way to eat meat.

I think you're having a positive impact on the world by opting for plant-based diet. But I must pose some questions from an ethical standpoint in response to hunting.
What exactly makes hunting honorable?
What is honorable about killing an innocent animal when healthy food alternatives are available?

When I say I would rather hunt my own meat I have been attacked especially that I want to do it with a bow. Even though it only requires a single small tree to be chopped down and a few stalks from a local plant, some stone to make some decent arrows and some feathers from a chicken. As opposed to a gun which requires mining and all the ecological damage that comes from the practice, plastic and often other damaging environmental chemicals.

You're considering the environmental component which is good, but what about the ethical component? Comparing which way to kill is better - bow or a gun - is not the right way to look at the matter, because killing is killing. Why not introduce a third option - let's not kill at all and eat plant-based..?

I echo the sentiments shared that all life is sentient and the only reason animals get a special treatment is because they express themselves in ways we can more easily recognise. Ultimately I view this as sort of like 'specism' that vegans have spoken to me about before, we only recognise intelligence and suffering when it is similar to one species, that of humans. Take an ecosystems perspective and plants, fungi, bacteria are no less and basically are more important to a functioning eco-system than animals. Though you will find no eco-system in the biosphere without animals and since we should imitate nature/ecosystems in our food production animals should be included in them.

I agree completely that all life is sentient and that it is only a matter of culture that only some animals get some treatment - this is in fact "speciesism." To clarify for those who may not have heard of this term before, "speciesism" is a term analogous to racism, sexism (and other -isms) and is the belief that humans are superior to all other life forms (and thus are entitled to dominion over all other life forms).

From what medical science understands so far, bacteria, fungi and plants have no nervous system and are therefore incapable of feeling any pain. Therefore this doesn't justify our use of animals. Also, even if we were to assume that plants do feel pain, let's keep in mind that it takes 18 times more land to grow the food for an average meat-eater. That means that more plants were grown to feed the livestock than would be required to feed the human. Inevitably, the ratio of bacteria and so on would also be greater in the production of food for a meat-eater.

The whole point of the "circle of life" and "natural ecosystem" is survival. The fact is that in today's world, we don't need animal products for survival - rather, we do it for taste and convenience.

It is a myth that hunter-gatherers expect to live shorter lives [1]. This data comes from the fact they have higher child mortality rates if they get past that stage they enjoy similar lifespans to the rest of us. With the very little cancer rates ever reported in hunter-gatherer societies surely this is less than vegans and meat eaters (which is 50% less likely from what I can tell) [2,3]. So is the issue really with the meat or something else?
...Also regarding Eskimos and Innuits - try and live in their climate only eating a local plant-based diet, it's impossible.

The main reason that Eskimos didn't eat plants is because of the lowered supply in the winters. There is hard evidence that Greenland Eskimos (Inuits) suffered from heart diseases and had shorter life spans. Take a look at this video that compiles many research studies on this very topic. Also you can read these studies if you'd like (click on the Sources tab on the page I linked). Also in regards to Maasai people (who primarily ate meat and dairy) and in regards to further information about Inuits, please also read this - it is a very well-cited paper.

I have ultimately found that in the discussions I have had with vegans one key difference is how we see the future. Most of them see a future as a progression from where we are now where as I see the future society bringing some of the modern comforts but returning to something also similar to how we have lived in the past.

I echo your nostalgia for the past - we all love sharing stories with good friends around the bonfire. But for me personally, it wouldn't be at the expense of a life unnecessarily taken.

I know that if everyone foraged and hunted we'd wipe the planet because the fact is there are too many humans on this planet, thats another difference I've found a number of vegans have an idea that the Earth can support this amount of people on a plant based diet. While I am here and able though I am going to live as I have evolved to, within the limits of my ability. Evolution psychologically can happen in an instant but you cannot defeat physical evolution overnight rather hundreds of thousands of years.

Well, speaking of physical evolution, our bodies are at their healthiest on a plant-based diet (which medical literature confirms). There is also very strong evidence to suggest that human physiology is designed for plant-based foods (although this hasn't been concretely proven yet).
For instance, all omnivores retain their carnivorous physiology to a large degree. This means that all true omnivores have sharp teeth and claws. Here is a list of true omnivores that all meet this criteria: Bears, Sloths, Foxes, Coyotes, Raccoons, Squirrels, Skunks, Opossums, Hedgehog, Badger, Rat, Mouse, Chipmunk, Coatis, and Civet.
Find me an exception to this - I've tried and I couldn't find any omnivore that didn't have sharp teeth and claws. By the way, apes like chimpanzees and bonobos are often mis-categorized as omnivores. They aren't true omnivores, but rather frugivores. As our closest cousins, chimps and bonobos share about 98.5% of their DNA with us. They eat a diet of 97% plants and 2-3% insects/worms.

References:
1. Hunter gatherer lifespan: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf

2. Hunter-gatherer disease rates:
Epidemiological factors: health and disease in hunter-gatherers
Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context (This one references other studies which show similar counts for other cancers)

3. Plant vs meat disease rates:
Reduced cancer risk in vegetarians: an analysis of recent reports

I found these studies to be very interesting. The third study you linked confirms the reduced cancer risk associated with a meat-free diet.
The cross-examination of the hunter-gatherer people was also interesting. It showed me that their lifespans were longer than I originally thought. But since this study doesn't directly examine the role of meat and dairy, I am led to believe that the hunter-gatherer tribes were very physically active and also ate a lot of healthy plant foods which countered the effects of meat and dairy consumption - I say this because of the current medical literature on this subject. The paper you linked also says that meat wasn't always available to these tribes, therefore, I think that this paper is interesting, but doesn't prove that meat/dairy is healthy in any way. But thanks for sharing that!

For this reason, i think a vegetarian is a little more sustainable than a vegan diet. It allows you to be a little more flexible and not to rely on expensive supplements and such.

Dragonrider, some questions:
1) Which do you think takes priority? Lives of living beings or environmental sustainability? Though they both often go hand in hand, I'm curious about which do you think is more important.
2) Is the life of an animal more important or personal convenience?

There are vegetarian cheeses btw, that taste just as good as 'normal' cheese. I don't know why they still use renet from animals (mostly goats, i believe) because it tastes just the same.

And vegan cheeses! Allow me to open a portal into a new dimension here. These are the top of the line products - give em a try - you can get them on Amazon

Veganism is probably going to be much more sustainable in the future because all over the world, people are experimenting with alternative sources of fatty acids and vitamin b12, like algea, fungi, and bacteria, etc.

Yes it's a very strong and growing movement and I agree this will be the case in the near future

 

[Jagube]

The land needed to feed one person for 1 year is 0.17 acres for a vegan; and 3 acres for an average meat eater. That means it requires 18 times more land to grow food for a meat-eater than it does to grow food for a vegan person.

To feed a vegan with (relatively) fresh food for 1 year you need to transport it and burn a lot of fuel, unless the vegan lives in the tropics. Most of the developed world doesn't.

That aside, your point brings up another question. If we manage to increase our space efficiency and need less land to sustain a person (be it by changing our diet, using better technology, or any other means), will that increase our quality of life, or will the population growth simply catch up with the Earth's increased capacity and still fill it to the brim? If we get to a point where we need 10x less land per person, will we have 10x more green spaces and a cleaner planet to enjoy, or will our population simply grow 10x - just because our planet will suddenly be able to sustain it - resulting in a more 'efficient' yet miserable, packed-like-sardines-in-a-can life for us all?

 

[Phantastica]

To feed a vegan with (relatively) fresh food for 1 year you need to transport it and burn a lot of fuel, unless the vegan lives in the tropics. Most of the developed world doesn't.

This depends - we can strive to opt for locally grown plant-based food. Even if we take transportation into consideration, transporting meat still leaves a far larger carbon footprint than transporting plant foods. Also, meat and dairy are FAR more likely to be transported than plant foods, because meat and dairy are produced in large facilities in country sides, hidden from the public eye (because of the natural activism it gives rise to and the environmental impact of the waste generated by livestock).

That aside, your point brings up another question. If we manage to increase our space efficiency and need less land to sustain a person (be it by changing our diet, using better technology, or any other means), will that increase our quality of life, or will the population growth simply catch up with the Earth's increased capacity?

Going vegan has the following impact:

Save 1,520,850 L of water (can provide clean drinking water)
Save 7,455 kg of grain (can be used to end world hunger)
Save 1,018 sq. m. of forests (preserve nature)
Save 3,373 kg of CO2 (can stop climate change)
Improve their health and vitality
Save the life and suffering of 196-365 animal lives

...every single year.

Based on this data, it is reasonable to expect that the quality of life and environment should improve if we all go vegan. Will the Earth's population catch up with increased capacity? I don't know, but probably. The important thing to remember here though is that there wouldn't be needless suffering and killing of animals anymore. The lives of living beings (and their pain and suffering) takes priority. Again, the heart of the vegan philosophy is to minimize the harm we cause.

If we get to a point where we need 10x less land per person, will we have 10x more green spaces and a cleaner planet to enjoy, or will our population simply grow 10x - just because our planet will suddenly be able to sustain it - resulting in a more 'efficient' yet miserable, packed-like-sardines-in-a-can life for us all?

Nobody knows that Earth's increased capacity would result in a miserable packed-like-sardines-in-a-can life. Also, this doesn't justify unnecessary killing of animals when healthy food alternatives exist - wouldn't you agree?

 

[dreamer042]

I should preface this by saying I spent 8 years as a very strict vegan. 10 years ago I was on the bandwagon rehashing the claims about ethics and sustainability and throwing around the pro-veg statistics. This was before I really had a good grasp of nutrition and began actively growing my own food and spending time on farms learning about the mechanics of food production. It is very much from personal experience that I came to understand the ideals of veganism to be misinformed.

Some of the most humble people I've ever met in my life were vegan. When I was eating meat, I myself got in heated debates with vegans and would often tease fellow vegan friends - I just couldn't understand their viewpoint. But throughout it all, many vegan people I knew weren't offended by this and continued to remain humble and friendly to me. This made me have massive respect for these people.

I refer not to humility, but to critical thinking skills. I can only speak for myself when I was vegan and what I have observed in the vegans I've interacted with, but once one goes vegan, the viewpoint seems to become very black and white. All animal products are detrimental and all plant products are beneficial, but that's not really the case at all which leads right into this next section.

For me, this is a lesser concern than the suffering and death of innocent animals. If McDonalds wants to turn itself into a vegan joint (they're introducing McVegan in Finland), I have no problem with this - what matters is only the net positive/negative ratio on our society as a whole.

You seem to misunderstand the implications of that infographic. Say you go to your local grocer and pick up a nice Lightlife product, this was one of the first companies to go out of their way to source 100% vegan ingredients and certify that their food is vegan right on the label. So while we're feeling good about having made an ethical choice at the grocery store and supporting a vegan company, we miss the fact that Lightlife is a subsidary of Conagra foods who run a huge portion of the very factory farming operations we are claiming to be against. So in purchasing our "certified vegan" product we are actually funding the perpetrators of what we would claim to stand against.

But could you clarify what "fallacy of the vegan society" you are referring to? I don't see any fallacy here. The philosophy is rather simple - minimize harm to innocent beings as much as possible to the best of your ability.

The fallacy is that being able to enjoy a plant based diet year round is 100% rooted in unsustainable practices. It's predicated on abundant petroleum, net loss calorie input for calorie output, and substantial human exploitation in third world economies. Eating avocados imported from Argentina instead of eggs from your neighbors chicken coop ultimately causes greater suffering for a larger amount of sentient beings.

If someone uses eggs from their own backyard chickens (And takes good care of the chickens, and doesn't kill the chickens for food), then there is no ethical dilemma there - that's all good in my view.
I've heard your views from an environmental perspective Dreamer and I wonder what's your position on the ethical dimension of the issue (i.e. of killing animals for food in today's day and age when we have healthy alternatives)..?

Chickens get old and die like everything else. From a sustainability perspective it's absolutely unethical to let that homegrown nutrition go to waste in favor of imported nutrition from elsewhere so that one can adhere to the ideal of a plant based diet in January in the cold north.

I think the ethical argument is not as cut and dry as you'd like to think it is. As other's have pointed out, the "healthy alternatives" of corn, wheat, and soy are transforming biologically diverse landscapes into monocultures, depleting topsoil, and leaking huge amounts of pollutants into ground water stores. Let's delve deeper into all this with the next section on statistics.

The land needed to feed one person for 1 year is 0.17 acres for a vegan; and 3 acres for an average meat eater. That means it requires 18 times more land to grow food for a meat-eater than it does to grow food for a vegan person.

Whether the "how" is explicitly stated or not, it is still noteworthy statistic, because you can be assured that the average meat-eater simply cannot have a lesser environmental impact than a vegan.

This is exactly the PETA propaganda I was referring to. Let's first understand these statistics apply to factory farming, which we all can agree is absolutely a horrendous practice for the animals, for the people (immigrants) that work in those places, and for the environment. There however, are alternatives which turn those numbers on their head. Cows are not meant to eat corn, they are ruminants. Raising beef cattle in a healthy biodiverse grassland prairie (pasture) requires no input whatsoever, the grasses grow naturally and flourish from being grazed upon and the soil fertility in the area increases over time from the grazing and manuring. The rains provide all the water necessary without any kind of need for irrigation, even in the dry desert southwest where the majority of pastured beef cattle are raised and growing grain crops without irrigation is impossible. Compare this with the amount of water, fertilizer, petroleum to run farm machinery, and net loss of soil fertility required to monoculture grains to feed a vegan world.

What is really comes down to is that ALL large scale factory farming, whether animal or vegetable, is inherently detrimental and predicated on unsustainable practices. Supporting a small scale person raising animals locally on pasture is technically more ethical and doing more for animal rights than buying 100% certified organic and vegan products from the grocery store and continuing to fund the giant agrocorps that depend on industrial scale processes to keep all those shelves constantly full at the expense of ethical morality and human and environmental health.

Going vegan is a step away from unconscious consumerism and that's a good thing, but don't get caught up in the labels and propaganda. Taking time to look at the larger impact of your buying decisions and actively seeking out and supporting those engaged in more sustainable practices such as polyculture farming and pasture raising animals is ultimately the truly ethical choice.

Edit: I should probably mention something of my own dietary choices. I do not eat beef, pork, chicken, turkey or any of the other common meat commodities as I don't find them appetizing any more. I very rarely will eat a bit of local pastured buffalo or deer/wild game meat when it's made available. I eat a lot of fresh local eggs and sometimes treat myself to a nice local raw cheese, from ethically raised animals of course. I do eat a lot of fish because it's a nutritional powerhouse and I try to go for local as much possible and make sustainable choices when local isn't an option. I just wanted to point out that I'm largely playing devils advocate here as I'm not a big meat eater either.

 

[dragonrider]

For this reason, i think a vegetarian is a little more sustainable than a vegan diet. It allows you to be a little more flexible and not to rely on expensive supplements and such.

Dragonrider, some questions:
1) Which do you think takes priority? Lives of living beings or environmental sustainability? Though they both often go hand in hand, I'm curious about which do you think is more important.
2) Is the life of an animal more important or personal convenience?

1) I don't know. I think it would probably depend on the relative size of the environmental impact.

the production of eggs and dairy products does not nessecarily require the torture of animals, so fortunately this is mostly a theoretical dilemma.

With dairy products it is often the case, that it just tastes a lot better when the cows or goats providing the milk, are having a good life. Stress definately has a negative effect on the quality of the milk. And mass-produced cheese is often made with strains of bacteria or fungi that most of all let cheeses ripen very quickly.

So in terms of personal convenience you don't nessecarily have to make big sacrifices if you care about animal wellbeing. You only have to accept that many dairy products are seasonal.

 

[Phantastica]

I should preface this by saying I spent 8 years as a very strict vegan. 10 years ago I was on the bandwagon rehashing the claims about ethics and sustainability and throwing around the pro-veg statistics. This was before I really had a good grasp of nutrition and began actively growing my own food and spending time on farms learning about the mechanics of food production. It is very much from personal experience that I came to understand the ideals of veganism to be misinformed.

That's good to know Dreamer. 8 years of veganism takes quite a lot of mindfulness in my opinion.I would like to ask you a few questions:

1) I'm interested in knowing what made you go vegan in the first place (in the past)? Was it mainly because of animals, health or environment?
2) Exactly what new information did you discover that made you stop being vegan? For example, you mentioned a "good grasp on nutrition." What do you mean by this? Did you find that vegan food is not healthy?

I refer not to humility, but to critical thinking skills. I can only speak for myself when I was vegan and what I have observed in the vegans I've interacted with, but once one goes vegan, the viewpoint seems to become very black and white. All animal products are detrimental and all plant products are beneficial, but that's not really the case at all which leads right into this next section.

I find vegans to also have excellent critical thinking skills, which is why they're mindful of their actions on the animals and environment in the first place.
The vegan viewpoint is only black and white when it comes to unnecessary suffering. There doesn't need to be any middle path here. I will pose you the same question that I posed in a previous response:

Let's consider other issues of social justice for a moment - slavery, rape, racism, feminism, sexism, heterosexism - In these cases, is a middle path better or complete abolition?

...once one goes vegan, the viewpoint seems to be very black and white. All animal products are detrimental and all plant products are beneficial, but that's not really the case at all which leads right into this next section.

I would like to also quote myself here from a previous response in this thread:

To view "meat-eating=bad," and "plants=good" is an infantile view on the subject. The question is about unnecessary suffering and killing. Would you agree that unnecessary killing of animals is unethical?

You seem to misunderstand the implications of that infographic. Say you go to your local grocer and pick up a nice Lightlife product, this was one of the first companies to go out of their way to source 100% vegan ingredients and certify that their food is vegan right on the label. So while we're feeling good about having made an ethical choice at the grocery store and supporting a vegan company, we miss the fact that Lightlife is a subsidary of Conagra foods who run a huge portion of the very factory farming operations we are claiming to be against. So in purchasing our "certified vegan" product we are actually funding the perpetrators of what we would claim to stand against.

Yes I understand that part. That's why I gave the McVegan example. If I was to buy McVegan burger from McDonalds, a certain percentage of the money I pay for this McVegan burger will directly go into animal exploitation, because McDonalds will allocate that money into it's other animal-based products as well.
Still, if there was a choice between buying a McChicken burger or McVegan burger, which one would be the more environmentally sustainable option?
I agree that buying local and growing our own food are some of the best practices. But it doesn't make sense to just give up on vegan products because they're owned by non-vegan companies. In fact, companies mainly only care about profit at the end of the day. If more people buy vegan products, then the consumer shift will motivate non-vegan companies (like McDonalds) to allocate greater and greater resources to vegan products - a simple matter of supply and demand. That's progress from an environmental, ethical and health standpoint.
Having that said, I wouldn't buy from McDonalds and would instead choose a company (for buying vegan products) that I think causes the least harm.

The fallacy is that being able to enjoy a plant based diet year round is 100% rooted in unsustainable practices. It's predicated on abundant petroleum, net loss calorie input for calorie output, and substantial human exploitation in third world economies.

You confuse veganism with perfectionism. It's about doing our best to minimize harm. Generally speaking, an average vegan person has more than 50% lower carbon footprint than an average meat-eater. That doesn't mean that the vegan has zero carbon footprint.

Eating avocados imported from Argentina instead of eggs from your neighbors chicken coop ultimately causes greater suffering for a larger amount of sentient beings.

I have no problem with eggs if the animal isn't being killed, as I stated earlier. The thing is, we don't have to buy avocados from Argentina and we can eat local, but I see your point - it's a good point. This is why it is important here to prioritize either life or environment. If I only had 2 options - avocado from Argentina or egg from my neighbor, I would personally choose avocados (because of personal health reasons - eggs are unhealthy due to high amounts of cholesterol). If someone did choose eggs over the avocados however, this makes perfect sense to me, and I see no problem here. The only problem I see is if one chooses to kill a chicken for food rather than eat the avocado from Argentina. Perhaps our priorities will differ here - I would personally prioritize the life of a living being over the pollution caused by transportation of the avocado.

Chickens get old and die like everything else. From a sustainability perspective it's absolutely unethical to let that homegrown nutrition go to waste in favor of imported nutrition from elsewhere so that one can adhere to the ideal of a plant based diet in January in the cold north.

It *might* be okay to eat the chicken IF it dies of natural causes.
Would you agree that killing an animal for food (if local plant-based alternatives exist) would be unethical?

This also demands the question if it would be more sustainable to eat our pet dogs after they die..? What about humans? The reason we don't eat our pet dogs and fellow humans is out of respect of what they meant to us. It is a form of love. This leads me to pose you another question, which I posed earlier in this thread:

Would you eat your own pet dog (especially when you have plant-based alternatives)?
I ask this, because I want to know if it is possible to love an animal and eat it at the same time (especially when alternatives exist)..?

I think the ethical argument is not as cut and dry as you'd like to think it is. As other's have pointed out, the "healthy alternatives" of corn, wheat, and soy are transforming biologically diverse landscapes into monocultures, depleting topsoil, and leaking huge amounts of pollutants into ground water stores. Let's delve deeper into all this with the next section on statistics.

Dreamer, I'll restate some statistics I've mentioned previously:

91% of Amazon Rainforest destruction happens because of animal agriculture. Also consider these additional important stats:
1) 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from livestock and their byproducts (whereas only 13% comes from all forms of transportation combined - worldwide)
2) A plant-based diet cuts down your carbon footprint by more than 50%
3) It takes 660 gallons of water to produce one single hamburger (equivalent of 2 months of showering)
4) 1/3 of land is desertified due to animal agriculture
5) Meat and dairy industries use 1/3 of Earth's fresh water.
To take a deeper look into the environmental impact of animal agriculture, take a look at this infographic I linked above (or better yet, consider watching the documentary called Cowspiracy)

So which do you think is turning lands into monocultures more - animal agriculture or vegan alternatives? Again, veganism is not about perfectionism, but about minimizing our impact and harm.

This is exactly the PETA propaganda I was referring to. Let's first understand these statistics apply to factory farming, which we all can agree is absolutely a horrendous practice for the animals, for the people (immigrants) that work in those places, and for the environment.

Yes we can certainly agree on the horrendous practice of factory farms. I'd like to ask on what grounds do you think the statistic is propaganda? The statistic makes it clear that we're talking about the amount of land it takes to grow food for an average meat-eater and vegan. That's not propaganda, but rather a statistical fact, unless you have sources that show otherwise.

There however, are alternatives which turn those numbers on their head. Cows are not meant to eat corn, they are ruminants. Raising beef cattle in a healthy biodiverse grassland prairie (pasture) requires no input whatsoever, the grasses grow naturally and flourish from being grazed upon and the soil fertility in the area increases over time from the grazing and manuring. The rains provide all the water necessary without any kind of need for irrigation, even in the dry desert southwest where the majority of pastured beef cattle are raised and growing grain crops without irrigation is impossible. Compare this with the amount of water, fertilizer, petroleum to run farm machinery, and net loss of soil fertility required to monoculture grains to feed a vegan world.

You're right in that the free-range grass-fed alternatives do turn the numbers on their head - but in a way counter to what you would expect. From a sustainability viewpoint, free-range farms are worse than factory farms. Here's why (source: Cowspiracy documentary):
It takes 23 months for a grass-fed cow to grow to the size and age when it is ready for slaughter. Whereas a grain-fed cow takes 15 months. That’s an additional 8 months of water use, land use, feed, waste. In terms of carbon footprint, it’s a huge difference. If you let the animal live out its entire life naturally, that will create an even greater carbon footrpint, because the natural lifespan of cows is 10-15 years, whereas in factory farms, the dairy cows only live for 4-5 years. Due to land use, grass-fed free-range meat is even more unsustainable than factory farming.
Also, grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows. (Source)

Edit: I should probably mention something of my own dietary choices. I do not eat beef, pork, chicken, turkey or any of the other common meat commodities as I don't find them appetizing any more. I very rarely will eat a bit of local pastured buffalo or deer/wild game meat when it's made available. I eat a lot of fresh local eggs and sometimes treat myself to a nice local raw cheese, from ethically raised animals of course. I do eat a lot of fish because it's a nutritional powerhouse and I try to go for local as much possible and make sustainable choices when local isn't an option. I just wanted to point out that I'm largely playing devils advocate here as I'm not a big meat eater either.

I respect your mindfulness Dreamer regarding your environmental concerns, limited meat consumption and local-eating practices.
As you already do seem to have an abundance of healthy plant foods from local sources around you, I must ask the following:
Do you think that if you stopped eating fish (and other animal products) you'd be participating in less harm?

 

[Jagube]

I have no problem with eggs if the animal isn't being killed, as I stated earlier. The thing is, we don't have to buy avocados from Argentina and we can eat local, but I see your point - it's a good point. This is why it is important here to prioritize either life or environment. If I only had 2 options - avocado from Argentina or egg from my neighbor, I would personally choose avocados (because of personal health reasons - eggs are unhealthy due to high amounts of cholesterol). If someone did choose eggs over the avocados however, this makes perfect sense to me, and I see no problem here. The only problem I see is if one chooses to kill a chicken for food rather than eat the avocado from Argentina. Perhaps our priorities will differ here - I would personally prioritize the life of a living being over the pollution caused by transportation of the avocado.

If you live in a warm enough climate that you can eat local plant food all year round, good for you, but many of us can't.

The avocado from Argentina would probably cause more suffering than the eggs from your neighbor as Dreamer suggested, which you didn't address.
You'd choose the option you believe is healthier for you, even if it causes more suffering. That's understandable - we all want to be healthy. By the same token, many people eat meat because they believe it's healthier than being vegan and risking nutritional deficiencies.

The cholesterol in eggs is not bad at all if you eat them in moderation and as part of a diverse diet. On the other hand, relying on avocados (or anything for that matter) as some kind of vegan superfood is, and that's a trap many vegans fall into (not saying you do).

As for killing animals, every animal dies eventually and I don't see why killing for food would cause more suffering than letting it die of cancer or old age (which in nature generally doesn't happen - it would be eaten by a predator before reaching that age). But I can see reasons why it would be the other way around.
IMO what's more important is how the chicken lived.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Is it 'wrong' that I eat the aphids off the plants in my garden? What about roadkill?

And vegan cheeses! Allow me to open a portal into a new dimension here. These are the top of the line products

Looks like the usual, plastic-packed, industrial crap dross to me.

eggs are unhealthy due to high amounts of cholesterol

That's something of a fallacy, I think you'll find.

By the way, I was vegan for ten years and if there's one thing it taught me it's that preachy dogmatism about food is socially unhealthy.

Edit: HERE'S a cheese worth trying! :want:

 

[universecannon]

I don't consider myself "vegan" or "vegetarian" but I've been eating a raw plant/fruit based diet for about 8 years now with great results. However my approach is definitely not ordinary, and my reasoning was for the most part entirely different than most peoples, but I'll get to that.

When it comes to environmental sustainability... as local as possible and as plant-based as possible is obviously the best bet imo, but not at the expense of your health if you have poor access or ability to grow food.

Most people these days treat their smartphones better then they treat their brains unfortunately, and I'm certainly guilty of slipping up and eating crap from time to time.

The term "vegan" has so much baggage and applies to such a wide variety of diets (including completely crap ones) and people that I stay away from it entirely. A lot of factors seem to go into just how well someone can make do with this diet or that diet. I think there is steps that can be taken where most people would be able to utilize a raw plant based diet, but it can be a tricky thing to transition to for some and YMMV depending on your physiology and how you do it. This is why some have been thriving for 30 years, and some give up after 2.

Instead of "diet", try thinking of what we are eating as unimaginably complex biomolecular engineering...because it is. This is what builds and runs the most complex neural tissue in the known universe, from uterus till death, on a sub-cellular level, and there's some good evidence that it had something to do with how we got in this situation of being a strange naked primate with an unusually large and complex neural system with all sorts of strange traits and dormant "higher" states and abilities (savants, psychedelic states etc).

We evolved eating a hell of a lot of hormonally active chemicals (particularly, and oddly, those contained within the reproductive organs of flowering plants, aka fruit) and this hasn't been factored into the human equation at all. These are known to have potentially massive effects on the organism consuming them, yet we don't think anything of the fact that we ate plant sex organs filled to the brim with them for millions of years in a kind of symbiosis. If you were to suddenly take away the normal build materials and fuel of a spaceship and replace it with something else entirely (as with what we jokingly call "junk" food), you'd be crazy to think it won't have a massive impact on development or function, or that it'd even work at all. But we fail to apply this simple engineering 101 logic to ourselves.
There's a reason why that is too...

Ignore the lame title the podcast gave to this video and give it a listen if you have the time

 

[RAM]

I understand your environmental perspective, but what about the social justice dimension of the issue? I assume that you agree that animals are sentient beings who want to live their life and have the ability to feel fear, pain and pleasure (let me know if you think otherwise). I also assume that you realize the abundance of healthy plant-based alternatives available to us today. Then what exactly justifies the killing of an animal for food?

What justifies the killing of a plant, fungus, or bacterium for food? I might sound like an extreme deep ecologist hippy here, but who are we to say that animals are "more alive" than plants are? I understand that we know animals have nervous systems that can lead them to feel pain and suffering in ways likely similar to us, but how do we know that plants and the like do not feel some sort of different pain/suffering that we cannot begin to imagine?

I read a lot that tells me these organisms are more alive and interconnected than we might think, such as trees that can be "friends" with other trees or giant collective networks of fungi. To survive and evolve, living organisms have had to consume one another for billions of years.

Now if you argue that we should all just artificially synthesize our food (Can humans survive without consuming life?), then I would buy it and agree that all humans should just derive our necessary minerals, vitamins, etc. from nonliving sources to ensure no life was destroyed in the process. I would also buy it if you said we should develop human photosynthesis and simply live off of the sun's rays. But right now, I think drawing a line between animal and plant/fungus/bacterium suffering and existence is too arbitrary for me personally to make much of a distinction.

Do you think that if one is not ethically frustrated about their actions, that makes it a right action?
Do you think the ability to financially afford meat justifies the killing?
What is your definition of "reasonably-raised" meat? Do you mean "humane meat"?
I'd say that the way to determine whether something is "humane" or not is to ask if we would want that same thing to be done to ourselves.
If you believe in "humane" killing (especially when we have healthy alternatives), what are your views on "humane" rape?

If one is willing to partake in an activity him/herself, does that make it the right practice? Does that justify it?
Am I justified in killing another human being if I am willing to do it myself?

Let's talk in terms of right action vs. wrong action. If the aliens had alternative sources of food, and chose to breed and kill humans for taste and convenience, would that be justified? If an alien was slitting your throat, would you not fight till your last breath?

One last question - Just because humans have taken part in a certain practice historically, does that make it right? I'm thinking of other practices humans have done throughout history, such as wars, rape, slavery...

I put most of your other questions together in one big quote to kind of address them all at once. With my first post, I wasn't necessarily trying to prove why it is ethical for me to eat meat. I was trying to prove that I am not being hypocritical when I do it, which is kind of a precursor to being ethically allowed. The fact that I can afford meat that was raised in better settings (like raised locally and free range, etc.) compared to mass farms makes the meat I consume less problematic.

The example I will use is old-fashioned Japanese kobe beef. My grandfather lived in Japan for a time and always tells me about the Kobe beef farms there where they nurture the cows, massage them, etc. They then give them a peaceful death before they are turned into very tasty meat. Ask yourself: would you rather have lived a life of luxury then die peacefully or have never lived at all? I personally would take the life of luxury and peaceful death if I was able to choose. This satisfies my Rawlsian duty to be willing to be in the position of the eaten animal, so I don't see the problem.

Furthermore, it would be fallacious to say that something is moral just because "it's natural" or "we did it in the past." I was not trying to use the facts that eating meat is natural and historical to show that it is moral or justified, as you say. However, it is something to think about for sure, and to make sure that we aren't just rejecting some long-held system to be trendy.

All of my blabber converges back to my main two points:

1. Who is to say that plant/fungus/bacteria suffering is "lesser" than that of animal suffering, especially when we cannot really know what it is like to be any of those organisms and plants and fungi can actually be alive when we eat them versus animals that are dead? If you claim we should derive all of our food from inorganic, nonliving sources or develop human photosynthesis, then I will agree.

2. For something to be morally justified, I like to take the Rawlsian approach of using the veil of ignorance, which is essentially that a system is only justified if you are willing to be any random participant in that system. I would be willing to be a cow on a Kobe beef farm, living a life of luxury and a peaceful death before being eaten, so therefore I will eat Kobe beef. Also, I would rather be dead while being eaten myself versus alive and potentially suffering, which makes it harder to justify eating live plants/fungi/bacteria that could be suffering.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

How many people who are currently vegetarian or vegan would eat a product like lab grown beef, pork or chicken? There is no brain or CNS, so no consciousness or pain center to content with, so no moral or ethical problems there. Also no problems with antibiotics, soil depletion, deforestation or any of problems typical with farmed meat production. I'm curious if people would eat this alternative meat and why or why not. If it is healthy for you and inexpensive what would the problem be in eating it? Would vegans embrace this? Why or why not?

 

[urtica]

I would just like to respond to the questions raised a while ago about what minerals/nutrients I think are lacking in a plant based diet.

I work as a clinical herbalist & many of my friends and teachers do as well. It is hard to pin down what exactly are the 'missing nutrients' in a plant based diet, but it seems to centralize around fats & proteins.

My observations have been that often people will come into a clinic with long term chronic health problems who have been strict vegans for many years, these health problems can look a number of different ways, but generally these people's health will improve when they start to incorporate some animal products back into their diets.

Along with a lack of fats and proteins, often times people who are on a plant based diet can become really dependent on getting a lot of their calories from wheat gluten (seitan, pasta), soy (tofu), or corn. All of these foods have a tendency to be food allergens for humans, not for everyone but for more people than you might think. Also beans tend to be a major source of protein and these can be rich in phytates which can have a negative effect on health. If a person is even mildly reactive to one f their major foods this can lead to widespread inflammation in the body which is the source of so many diseases both physical and mental.

There also is a tendency so eat a whole lot of carbohydrates as the bulk of one's calories on a plant based diet, which can lead to issues with blood sugar regulation.

Just as an example, there was a comment earlier about how it is better not to eat eggs because they are rich in cholesterol. I would just like to point out that cholesterol is the source material for the creation of the vast majority of hormones (including vitamin D, a nutrient that is deficient in the majority of humans in the modern world) within the human body and is also an important part of the phospholipid bilayers that make up all the cell walls within the body. While too much cholesterol may be detrimental to health (this is debatable I think) having some cholesterol in the diet is really important for overall health.

I do think that switching from the standard American diet (SAD) to a plant based diet will improve a person's health. I also think that later on moving on from a plant based diet to a diet that incorporates some animal proteins will further improve that person's health.

 

[endlessness]

What justifies the killing of a plant, fungus, or bacterium for food? I might sound like an extreme deep ecologist hippy here, but who are we to say that animals are "more alive" than plants are? I understand that we know animals have nervous systems that can lead them to feel pain and suffering in ways likely similar to us, but how do we know that plants and the like do not feel some sort of different pain/suffering that we cannot begin to imagine?

I read a lot that tells me these organisms are more alive and interconnected than we might think, such as trees that can be "friends" with other trees or giant collective networks of fungi. To survive and evolve, living organisms have had to consume one another for billions of years.

Hey

I'm not Phantastica, but I mentioned a counter-argument to this in my second post in this thread:

Considering animals are very inneficient in terms of gram of protein per resources used, and considering all the animals will have eaten plants to grow, then if the argument is that all life is sentient and plants too, and if we want to avoid killing those sentient life forms, then we should eat less meat

Phantastica, I have a question to you.. If you saw a wounded animal that you knew was going to suffer an agonizing death for a long time, what do you think is the more ethical choice to make: Kill him to end his suffering, or let him die 'naturally' but suffering more?