Motivational wrote

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Pidge wrote I always find it funny when people try to defend eating meat. It's such a desperate sense of entitlement. I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian, but I can admit that I am being ethically unthoughtful when I eat a piece of bacon.

What's wrong with defending eating meat? Firstly, I'm allergic to nuts and soya, So being a vegan would be pretty hard for me considering I couldn't eat a good chunk of vegan food. Secondly, I literally need to eat meat to maintain my size. There's literally no way that I'm going to remain 200lbs+ without drinking milk and eating the amounts of protein that I do.

In all honestly, I don't kill the animals and neither do you. It's the actual farmers that are killing the animals that are being unethical and cruel towards the animals. This is the thing I honestly don't understand about being vegan or vegetarian and perhaps you or Ugly could help me out. How does a vegan not eating meat that's on the shelf in a shop, in anyway, shape or form, save or help the animals lives? The animal is already dead and that meat on the shelf will be bought by someone. It's totally irreverent whether you buy it or not, because someone else certainly will. The meat being on the shelf means that the farmer has sold the meat to the shop and he has made money. The deal is already done and it doesn't matter if you buy it or another product.

Not to mention, it's completely impossible to not use any animal products. Have a look at this photo if you don't know what I mean.

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I don't get why vegans and all are being praised as if they're not actually helping, there's absolutely nowhere near enough vegans to even get close to stopping farmers from profiting since so many people eat meat and only a very little amount are actually against it. Not to mention, the farmer profits probably like four or five times over on each animal, so not selling some of the meat certainly isn't going to harm him.

The farmers have already killed and sold the animal and you're simply eating parts of the remains, if nature didn't want us to have the option of eating meat then the animal wouldn't be edible and we wouldn't be able to digest it. Nether would we have incisors for tearing meat, and molars for grinding it, otherwise we would have smaller and less developed teeth or meat would be too difficult for us to chew.

I have full respect for the vegans going out and protesting in marches and standing outside farms trying to get farmers to stop killing so many animals but unless you're actually protesting then you're just a bystander to the animal slaughter, the same as everyone else.

Pidge wrote Why is it that we have no problem marching millions of cows, pigs, and chickens to the slaughter, yet we protest when China eats dogs and cats and the internet explodes when a dentist kills a lion?
Because dogs, lions and cats are more intelligent? No. Pigs have the same level of problem solving skills as Chimpanzee's, have social lives, and feel empathy for other animals. So it's not because they are intelligent, it's because we like things that are cute.
It is because of humans that having a fluffy tail has become a favorable trait in the animal kingdom.

Lambs have a fluffy tail and are extremely cute and love-able, yet they still sell raw lamb in the shop.

Cows, pigs and chickens are wild animals. They are clearly made for humans to eat and I'm sorry if that offends you but that's just the way it is. Look at a pig and then look at a dog? The pig is carrying a ton more fat, it's slow and it has virtually no muscle. The pig cannot defend itself in anyway, it's completely vulnerable.

Dogs can be trained to round up sheep, help blind people cross the road, police dogs, search and rescue dogs. Pigs and cows have no other purpose than food and I'm being brutally honest. What does a pig or cow achieve in its lifetime? Does it create music or leave behind a legacy? It sits in a field, eating grass and waiting to die. Not to mention, cows only have a lifespan of 15 years, a common housefly has a lifespan of 28 days! I'd imagine the cows lives atleast a year two before it's large enough to be killed and that's more than twenty flie's lives. Are we creating medicine to help the millions of flies that die everyday or to attempt to preserve their lives? No, because nobody cares. They're a nuisance and the don't contribute to the planet or humanity in a positive way.

Pigs and cows are not the same as cats and dogs. There is virtually no profit to be made in fattening up a dog or cat for them to be killed. They were simply not made to be farmed and killed and instead they're pets for humans, they have uses. A pig cannot be trained to be a guard dog or help the blind cross the road, especially since they only have a lifespan of around five years which is the sametime it takes to help train an animal to do these things.

Lions on the other hand, seriously man. Are you asking why everyone loses their mind when a dentist (presumably intelligent because it's a hard job) goes into a foreign country for the purpose to hunt and kill endangered animals for no other purpose than a photo? Nobody would have complained if the dentist was starving to death or fought the lion without a weapon. It's the fact that the dentist shot the lion when the lion has a distinctive advantage over him, considering lions are just better at killing. Lions are not pigs. Lions live twice aslong, are endangered and have a ton more muscle and less fat. The lion would have slaughtered the man in a far fight but he killed him from a distance with a rifle. That's just wrong on a number of levels and it's an extremely cowardly act.

Pidge wrote Is it because humans have always eaten meat, and it's the natural thing to do?
With the 'it happens in nature!' argument you can literally justify anything. Rape happens in nature. It's natural to rape, so why can't humans do it?
Animals cannibalize one another all of the time, should they release all of the cannibals from prison?
Just because it happens in nature doesn't mean that we should continue doing it.

Animals are animals and humans are humans. If a cow eats another cow, I hardly doubt the cow is going to go to his friend's house and grab an AK-47 and then proceed to shoot up a school full off children. Animals have different laws than us because they're completely different and we lock cannibalistic humans up to keep other humans safe and not to protect the cannibals.

That argument can be used for anything. Nobody would be here today if we couldn't consume meat. It's that simple. If we didn't jail cannibals, would we still all be here? Almost certainly, yes. There was a time when you could do trial by combat and people were called witches and burned at the stake. It didn't work in history and after a long thought back, people realised it was stupid and made no sense. That's not the same as eating our primary source of food though.

We don't lock all cannibals up. Ever heard of the 1972 Andes flight disaster? The survivors had no choice but to eat the dead when their plane crashed because they ran out of food. If it's genuine cannibalism because you have to and because you have no other option then you're not going to be imprisoned for it.

Pidge wrote It's because the economy will be heavily affected if everyone becomes vegan? The economy would be fine. More vegan food manufacturers would be set up to replace the farmers, but the farmers would have to find new revenue streams... and I would expect the farmers to be OK with this given that the alternative is that they slaughter millions of animals every year.

As for animal population levels rising to the extremes and taking back their planet... please.
Look at the Amazon rainforest, the amount of animal habitat destruction that happens there. You think we can't keep animal populations down to controllable levels and create an equilibrium with the environment? These arguments are terrible.

If you admit to yourself that the goal of your ethical code is to reduce the amount of suffering in the world but you will still eat meat when there are other alternatives then you are being ethically unthoughtful. If that's not your goal and your goal is for the human race to flourish and become even more domineering then you have no ethical requirement to stop eating meat.

As I said above, being vegan or vegetarian does absolutely nothing to stop farmers. The animals are already dead so I honestly don't see the problem with buying the meat. Seriously, being unethical is completely irrelavent. Are you in Africa now, helping save the starving children? Nether am I. But I don't think we're awful human beings because of that, it's simply the way the dice rolls and how things happen. In terms of religion, If there is a God, he's not going to care if we slaughter animals or not, he's going to be more concerned about most of us supporting gay marriage and abortion.

Morality doesn't come into it in my eyes, the animal is dead and whether you eat the meat or not is totally irrelevant. The farmer has sold the meat to the shop and the farmer has made his profit. If none of the meat sells (which is literally impossible unless the town is a complete vegetarian town) then the farmer will simply sell the meat to a different shop where customers will purchase it.

Nature is extremely evil and it doesn't care about you or me. Remember how the dinosaurs died? How 96% of all marine life and 70% of all land life was wiped off the planet? Billions of things were killed and all because of nature. In my honest opinion, I don't think what he do on this planet matters unless it's nothing unforgivable like abusing a child or taking someone else's life on purpose. I highly doubt we're actually going to be judged for what we do or not and we should just try to live the best life we can. That's just my opinion though.

Surely you can see that an animals life is not equal to a humans because they neither live aslong nor contribute to the planet in the same way that we do. If anything, the grass grows and it's a living organism and the cows eat the grass. So should we stop the slaughter of trillions of cells of grass everyday?

I think the rest of your argument was perfect, the food market isn't going to crash and animals certainly aren't going to overpopulate the earth if we stop killing animals. Honestly though, there's no benefit to the farmers in raising an animal and killing it if the meat isn't going to sell, so shops are obviously buying these products which means people are eating them. If millions of animals have to be killed so billions of humans can eat then, then so be it.

Please don't take this as flame or a personal attack BTW. I doubt you will but I'm genuinely just trying to understand how people think that by not eating an animal that's already dead (that someone else will eat) will benefit the world or help save the animals when the farmer has already made his money and the animal is already dead.

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Pidge wrote It's not that difficult to examine what your goal for this planet is and then to think, "Is people eating meat going to help us get to this goal? Will it hinder us from achieving this goal? Or is it a non-factor?" For most people it will be a hindrance I think, but the simplest defense of eating meat is that people just don't care enough.


And for the vegans who think that they are more ethical than meat-eaters, congratulations, I think you are when it comes to eating food.
Unfortunately for you nobody really cares though.

It's not to be made of a joke, it's simplifying the scenario. Would you rather I rephrase my sentence to "if you want to eat leaves, nuts, watermelon, strawberrys, beans, sunflower seeds, grains, etc. go ahead and do so"? No, it's just simplified to what everyone knows to say "if you want to eat leaves, go ahead and do so". Again, it's not a joke as in "haha you eat leaves" it's simplifying the diet. I'm not going to list everything a vegan can eat for my post, that is just not necessary.

Pidge wrote There are two words that sum up the vegan diet very simply and concisely.

'Vegan food.'

Are you in Africa now, helping save the starving children? Nether am I. But I don't think we're awful human beings because of that, it's simply the way the dice rolls and how things happen.

002 wrote Just because I like to stir the pot a little, may I bring up a point that I don't think the people who are vegans because they don't want to hurt a living organism will like?

I've met a few vegans who are vegans because they don't want to hurt or kill anything. The point that you are not directly killing the animal has already been made, so I won't get into that. What I would like to touch base on is plants. Plants are living things too, they grow, the need nutrients, they use water, they reproduce, and they die. You are hurting plants because what you are eating has been sprayed by tons of pesticides later to be chopped up and killed so you can eat it.

No matter how you roll the dice, something is dieing so you can live. The difference is, in the 2-3 months it took you to grow a stock of corn, you don't have a meal. I can kill a 2-3 month old cow, deer, lamb, etc. and have a few good meals. It's just the natural life cycle, something dies so something can eat. Just because animals can walk and express their pain, does that mean they are somehow better than plants?

NinetySix wrote

002 wrote Just because I like to stir the pot a little, may I bring up a point that I don't think the people who are vegans because they don't want to hurt a living organism will like?

I've met a few vegans who are vegans because they don't want to hurt or kill anything. The point that you are not directly killing the animal has already been made, so I won't get into that. What I would like to touch base on is plants. Plants are living things too, they grow, the need nutrients, they use water, they reproduce, and they die. You are hurting plants because what you are eating has been sprayed by tons of pesticides later to be chopped up and killed so you can eat it.

No matter how you roll the dice, something is dieing so you can live. The difference is, in the 2-3 months it took you to grow a stock of corn, you don't have a meal. I can kill a 2-3 month old cow, deer, lamb, etc. and have a few good meals. It's just the natural life cycle, something dies so something can eat. Just because animals can walk and express their pain, does that mean they are somehow better than plants?

Plants don't have central nervous systems, so you are not hurting them as they are unable to feel pain.

According to researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, plants release gases that are the equivalent of crying out in pain. Using a laser-powered microphone, researchers have picked up sound waves produced by plants releasing gases when cut or injured. Although not audible to the human ear, the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick, and flowers whine when their leaves are cut [source: Deutsche Welle].

002 wrote

Furthermore:

According to researchers at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Bonn in Germany, plants release gases that are the equivalent of crying out in pain. Using a laser-powered microphone, researchers have picked up sound waves produced by plants releasing gases when cut or injured. Although not audible to the human ear, the secret voices of plants have revealed that cucumbers scream when they are sick, and flowers whine when their leaves are cut [source: Deutsche Welle].