"You can't love animal's if you're not a vegetarian"
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I'm a vegetarian. But you can still care for animals if you're not - just because you're okay with eating animals doesn't automatically make you okay with all the horrible things the meat industry sometimes does. Plus you can still care a great deal about animals that you wouldn't typically eat, like dogs.
Arguing that 'it's natural, so I'm right!' is fucking stupid though. And seems to be the only point that non-vegetarians make in threads like this, other than 'I LIEK BACON'.
...I should stop clicking on thread like this, they only ever piss me off.
Arguing that 'it's natural, so I'm right!' is fucking stupid though. And seems to be the only point that non-vegetarians make in threads like this, other than 'I LIEK BACON'.
...I should stop clicking on thread like this, they only ever piss me off.
Hobohodo said:
Any form of ethics is a construct of the mind. As such, people can hold several opposing views simultaneously, and/or ridiculous, ones for their entire lives.
You say it is 'natural' to eat animals. That too is a fallacy, appeal to 'naturalness' - it does not mean anything to say that. It makes no difference whether an action or thing is 'natural' or not in the real, material world. It only has meaning within your personal mind-architecture.
Likewise, you can 'love' basically anything, yet destroy it, for love is only in your head. Love guides actions, but in itself it does nothing. What people should or should not be judged on is usually a societal structure, that changes over time - nothing is intrinsically good or bad.
In the end none of it is tangible, and so none of it will make absolute sense. Whatever conclusion you will reach will be temporary, until it is properly questioned or your opinion changes. You will then likely reach a new conclusion, thinking that one is correct. Etc.
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Oh, right. Animals are cute. They are also delicious. Maybe we can have lab-grown meat soon. Than I can haz delicious + not kill animals. Wouldn't that be swell?
1. Creatine is naturally produced by the human body, and it isn't considered a dietary nutrient. In fact, most health professionals don't recommend ingesting it.The Cool Kid said:
2. Who the fuck mentioned soy? There are plenty of sources of protein available for vegans.
3. Are you high? Plants take in far more CO2 than they give off through a process called photosynthesis. They turn the carbon from CO2 into sugars. That aside, it takes exponentially more land to produce feed to raise mass amounts of animals to maturity than it does to subsist of plants directly. Look at the soy used for animal feed compared to the tiny, tiny percentage of soy used for human consumption.
It's almost as fucking stupid as when vegetarians say " My morality is tingling positively, so I'm right!" At least the argument that it is natural, since humans inarguably did evolve to eat both plants and animals, is at least factually correct. The entire vegetarian argument is made out of a desire to pat oneself on the back, and have an excuse to look down one's nose at others like a snobbish ****.In Search of Username said:
As brutal as the meat industry is to the animals that are its products, its less brutal than a pack of wolves/lions/any other predator having at their prey. There is nothing wrong with that brutality, they are food. My father had me kill a deer when I was 13, had to clean and gut it to. I cried, the family ate it. Later he told me that when he killed his first animal, he had cried to. Turns out my older brother had as well. Had a moment, shared a beer. It was my first beer, tasted like ass.
That was the last time either my father or I went hunting. As far as I know, he only went hunting one other time(With my older brother) while he was an adult. He used to hunt all the time as a kid though, his family was broke, needed to hunt to eat meat. That was the 1950's.
I never asked why he even took my brother and I, as he said he didn't hunt anymore because he could afford to buy meat for his family at the store. I am guessing he saw it as something we should know how to do in case we ever need to.
Will I ever go again? Not for sport. I find hunting and killing for the sake of it distasteful. If I ever have children, will I take them once each in their teens? No idea. Burn that bridge when/if I come to it I suppose.
Back on topic: It's a choice of diet, nothing more. If someone chooses to consume or not consume meat it isn't a big deal. It's as significant a choice as deciding on peas or carrots. I have no issue with vegetarians, as I have no issue with people who prefer fish over red meat. My issue is when people make a choice over something so insignificant as their diet, then try to act as if they are somehow endowed with an enlightened sense of objective morality. That is the kind of thought process a child would have.
Both plants and animals are lifeforms, just different kingdoms. You cannot survive without eating something that was once alive. To say it is wrong to eat one kingdom of lifeform and okay to eat another, just because, is silly. If another species achieves sentience, I would agree that we shouldn't eat it, but until that happens at least one other time... Fair game.
Do any of these one-off purchases that I've allegedly made intrinsically need to be made of animals, or is it made from by-products that are only cheap because so much waste is produced by animal agriculture?Devoneaux said:
Also, I'm confused: How exactly is it unsustainable to use less resources than wasting feed on farmed animals? That doesn't math.
I find it amusing that so many vegans and vegetarians say it is perfectly okay to only have a plant diet but there are limits to this:
1) there is simply not enough land to grow the crops in sufficient quantities for everybody to live a perfectly healthy lifestyle, one cow can feed more families than an entire field of grain can, because one, practically only a small portion of the grain plant is actually edible for us whereas nearly the entire cow can be eaten
2) even if we did go solely plant, it would take entirely too long to produce enough food for the human population which would cause mass amounts of us to starve just because you think it's morally right to save a cow over a human, this and coupled with the fact that we have to produce the necessary chemicals, clean water, and fuels in order to grow, protect, and harvest these crops
3) if we did decide to grow plants only, we would need to destroy millions of acres of animals' homes in order to grow sufficient amounts of crops, so in the long run, we would be rapidly increasing the rate at which animals are dying in order to supply the demand for food
4) without utilizing animals for food, we would essentially allow them to procreate without worry and cause population booms which would lead either to mass starvation of these animals or wide-spread damage to our crops due to the animals' need to feed
5) we are only now capable of understanding where and how to produce the vitamin and nutrient suppliments we could get from meat by (for thousands of years) steadily getting smarter by eating meat which helps our brains grow. If we did not eat meat, our brains would not have developed as far as they have and we'd still be a bunch of colonies of primitive humans, we wouldn't even have developed farming yet
6) the chemicals we need to produce to ensure a healthy crop as well as a bountiful harvest have chemicals that destroy animal habitats and even kill animals, if we were to switch over entirely to plants, the sheer amount of chemicals would pollute the environment and kill many more animals than the meat industry currently does.
And lastly (which is mere opinion) every vegan and vegetarian in the First World needs to get off their moral high horse and understand that poorer, Third-World countries cannot survive on a purely plant diet due to their economies and lifestyles rely on animal products. You, here in the US and other advanced nations, are only capable of living as you do because our modern society provides enough for you to do so, wanting poorer peoples to take up your, quite frankly, expensive lifestyle is insane.
1) there is simply not enough land to grow the crops in sufficient quantities for everybody to live a perfectly healthy lifestyle, one cow can feed more families than an entire field of grain can, because one, practically only a small portion of the grain plant is actually edible for us whereas nearly the entire cow can be eaten
2) even if we did go solely plant, it would take entirely too long to produce enough food for the human population which would cause mass amounts of us to starve just because you think it's morally right to save a cow over a human, this and coupled with the fact that we have to produce the necessary chemicals, clean water, and fuels in order to grow, protect, and harvest these crops
3) if we did decide to grow plants only, we would need to destroy millions of acres of animals' homes in order to grow sufficient amounts of crops, so in the long run, we would be rapidly increasing the rate at which animals are dying in order to supply the demand for food
4) without utilizing animals for food, we would essentially allow them to procreate without worry and cause population booms which would lead either to mass starvation of these animals or wide-spread damage to our crops due to the animals' need to feed
5) we are only now capable of understanding where and how to produce the vitamin and nutrient suppliments we could get from meat by (for thousands of years) steadily getting smarter by eating meat which helps our brains grow. If we did not eat meat, our brains would not have developed as far as they have and we'd still be a bunch of colonies of primitive humans, we wouldn't even have developed farming yet
6) the chemicals we need to produce to ensure a healthy crop as well as a bountiful harvest have chemicals that destroy animal habitats and even kill animals, if we were to switch over entirely to plants, the sheer amount of chemicals would pollute the environment and kill many more animals than the meat industry currently does.
And lastly (which is mere opinion) every vegan and vegetarian in the First World needs to get off their moral high horse and understand that poorer, Third-World countries cannot survive on a purely plant diet due to their economies and lifestyles rely on animal products. You, here in the US and other advanced nations, are only capable of living as you do because our modern society provides enough for you to do so, wanting poorer peoples to take up your, quite frankly, expensive lifestyle is insane.
Reminds me of a family friend we'd not seen in a few years posting an article (again, on Facebook) and agreeing with a commenter that it was good because it said things like, "I cannot condone non-veggies any more than I can condone people who beat their children." When said family friend subsequently commented that (s)he had difficulty finding a significant other within the sphere of veganism, I pointed out that the problem seemed to be that (s)he cut down his/her options considerably by considering people who didn't belong to this tiny minority group to be no better than child-beaters.Hobohodo said:
I got no reply, of course.
On a more related note to the question at hand, no, that logic is horribly flawed. It's based on the ridiculous idea that you have to treat every single thing in a very, very large group exactly the same, no matter what. Ergo, if you like cheese, then you must also like eating dogs. It's insane troll logic.
Yeah, it is natural. Just like every other fucking thing in the universe. That's still not an argument for doing it. The vegetarian argument is based on the idea that we should show empathy towards conscious lifeforms other than humans. Nothing else - some people do try to act like they're better than you because of their own moral code, but they do that with regards to pretty much every issue, not just vegetarianism. You can't logically argue whether it's right to eat animals, because it's not a matter of logic - you either feel like it's right or feel like it's wrong, there's no real reason for it, that's subjective morality. Which is why it bothers me when people (vegetarians or meat-eaters) try to say 'I'm right because nature is on my side' - that simply isn't an argument you can use, both vegetarians and meat-eaters evolved naturally, nature is on no-one's side, it's just a random collection of things that happen which we apply our subjective morality to.Caverat said:
And wow, glad I didn't have your dad. That's fucked up.
Nobody says we shouldn't eat animals because they're ALIVE, it's because they're conscious, they suffer, they feel pain and emotions. But I guess it's easier for you to just make up the other side's argument yourself than pay attention. And you think having an opinion on the morality of an action is somehow childish? So am I to assume you have no opinion on the morality of anything, just an 'anything goes' kind of attitude towards life?
Myths:BNguyen said:
1) Cows are fed soybeans, not inedible bits of plant.
2) The argument isn't to instantly switch the world over to vegan (I wish I had that kind of power). If you become vegan today, I'm sure the market will adapt.
3) You do realize we use more farmland to feed farmed animals than we could ever use by eating it directly, right?
4) No. We'd just stop breeding them into short lives of suffering. The animals we have in farms are the product of artificial insemination by farmers.
5) Even if that didn't totally misunderstand how the process of evolution works (Eating meat will not make you smarter - if it did the USA would be the smartest country in the world because of KFC...) what does that have to do with going vegan now? Nothing.
6) Again, if we weren't feeding farm animals we'd be producing far less plants.
7) When did I make demands to anyone in a third-world country? If you have the means to go vegan, your argument doesn't apply.
If you're not into zoophilia, you don't REALLY love animals. [/inflammatory counter-statement]
On a more serious note: I love meat, this year I finished the half-year course required by law to engage in hunting. I also lay claim to being a great lover of animals, edible and otherwhise. Not directly eating meat might make you feel better about yourself, but does little to nothing to reduce the killing and suffering of animals, lest you grow your own food locally (with no fertilizer or insect-repellant, and certainly no machines).
Fields are made from the natural habitats of animals, animals are killed protecting said fields, animals are poisoned by chemicals used to fertilize and de-bug said fields. And if you buy a lot of soy or other replacement-meat, know that most soy-based food is likely to be imported from asia (soy is grown elsewhere, but primarily used as feed for cattle), meaning it arrived by ship or plane: hello pollution!
I'll agree that there is probably room for improvement in the welfare of animals in the meat industry, but whoever made that statement strikes me as the kind of person who broke into the mink farms here in Sweden to release them into the wild; a particular wild that up until that point had no native population of mink. I'm sure the minks had no problem with this, but given that the mink is a voracious raider of birds nests, as well as an efficient fish-eater, it wreaked havoc on bird and fish populations where it settled. But the animal activists, no doubt vegetarians the lot of them, don't see that, or understand the ramifications. They get to continue seeing themselves as rebellious defenders of animals. And lest we forget; minks are a lot cuter than birds and fish!
On a more serious note: I love meat, this year I finished the half-year course required by law to engage in hunting. I also lay claim to being a great lover of animals, edible and otherwhise. Not directly eating meat might make you feel better about yourself, but does little to nothing to reduce the killing and suffering of animals, lest you grow your own food locally (with no fertilizer or insect-repellant, and certainly no machines).
Fields are made from the natural habitats of animals, animals are killed protecting said fields, animals are poisoned by chemicals used to fertilize and de-bug said fields. And if you buy a lot of soy or other replacement-meat, know that most soy-based food is likely to be imported from asia (soy is grown elsewhere, but primarily used as feed for cattle), meaning it arrived by ship or plane: hello pollution!
I'll agree that there is probably room for improvement in the welfare of animals in the meat industry, but whoever made that statement strikes me as the kind of person who broke into the mink farms here in Sweden to release them into the wild; a particular wild that up until that point had no native population of mink. I'm sure the minks had no problem with this, but given that the mink is a voracious raider of birds nests, as well as an efficient fish-eater, it wreaked havoc on bird and fish populations where it settled. But the animal activists, no doubt vegetarians the lot of them, don't see that, or understand the ramifications. They get to continue seeing themselves as rebellious defenders of animals. And lest we forget; minks are a lot cuter than birds and fish!
1) you only proved my point, we feed cows pretty much what we can eat. For cows to not starve, we'd be competing for the same food source, although we do have other options, cows still eat much more than we do and their diet could spill over into our food sources.ThrobbingEgo said:
2) the market may adapt but the processes are not so quick as to just shut down and that'd be it, first, you have to create the market and introduce it in such a way as for everyone to want to switch over, to do so would take years
3) plenty of the animals we raise for food do not consume what we do, pretty much what we leave over from the plants, but what we are capable of eating and digesting from plants is so little that we would have to produce crops on a much larger scale to be able to feed everyone. You don't seem to grasp that we are not herbivorous and cannot completely digest entire plants, only a small portion of that is edible and even then we can't completely digest it.
4) I'm not just talking about farmed animals, I'm talking about every animal we work to control to prevent such events as population booms and starvation from occurring. Vegans and vegetarians want animals to live long and relatively comfortable lives (I use the word comfortable because we all know not every animal is born completely healthy and capable) and that's a fine notion, but if we were to let these animals continue on without control, we would be competing with them and ultimately having to remove them (possibly causing them to starve) in order to meet society's demands for an all plant diet.
5)again you missed my point that we evolved into what we are with the aid of our diet, which consisted of meat. It means that 1) we are capable of changing now due to the evolutionary changes we made in the past, 2)without those changes made in the past, we could not make the changes now. It is only a point, not truly an excuse
6) do you even check prices at the store? High quality vegetables and fruits cost way more than a package of meat. And with the economy as it is, not everyone can afford to just switch over like you would want them to do, so yes, this argument can apply to First World countries as long as there is a poor class which can't make enough money to feed their family.
Growing a garden (with all that entails) or picking up enough greens at the store costs way more than a package of meat.
Take into fact that growing crops is not as easy as raising animals.
You have to worry about disease, pests, fungus, rot, the fact that the earth might not have enough nutrients to produce quality and edible food.
You also have to supply fertilizer, supplimental nutrients for better growth (aside from fertilizer), sufficient amounts of water, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides to prevent destruction of the crop, and sufficient amounts of land to produce enough food.
Raising animals on the other hand doesn't require as much since 1) the animals (not always) eat parts of plants and even whole plants that humans cannot, too many plants have silica in their foliage that would wear down human teeth
2) raising a flock or herd of animals is less time consuming and overall takes less effort to ensure a good end product than a crop
Most of the time, you have to wait several months to get food from a crop and it is not always guaranteed that the produce will be good, free of damage or poison, or even that the plant might produce at all
Nah, pigs are pretty smart. Smart enough to actually lose sanity from being penned up in those tiny cages (which means they had sanity to begin with). Sucks, really. The meat industry needs some, uh, humanitarian (animalitarian?) regulations.ThrobbingEgo said:
I'm still going to eat them though :|
captcha: "It's Super Delicious"
(albeit it was a Kellogg's cereal captcha ad)