In industrial slaughterhouses? I don't know, probably not, as least how I'm thinking of it. However, there are guillotine contraptions that can be invented which serve the same purpose.
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Is Reducing but Not Eliminating Meat Consumption More Ethical than Not Reducing It?
- Thread starter Debater Slayer
- Start date
I have added both poll options about free-range meat for meat eaters too. I didn't add them when I started the thread because the main purpose of the thread was to see to what extent, if at all, the opinions of vegans/vegetarians and meat eaters would align on the issues of industrial animal farms. One of my premises was that a meat eater who chose the first option would, to one extent or another, also be agreeing that free-range meat was more ethically produced than its industrial counterpart, or at least agreeing that industrial meat farming had enough issues to warrant reducing one's consumption of meat.
The purpose of the poll has nothing to do with deciding who is or is not an "arbiter of morality" on the subject or designating vegans as such. I eat meat, myself (although I have attempted to become vegetarian).
I would strongly support solutions that managed to keep costs down while reducing suffering of animals and addressing the environmental issues with meat production (e.g., deforestation and destruction of ecosystems), but do such solutions exist? For example, how could production volume be kept high enough to satisfy demand at a low cost while avoiding issues like the cramping of as many animals as possible into tight spaces?
We can agree on humane killing being
the goal, however it is achieved, eh.
In some poorer neighborhoods where I live, some people raise rabbits and various types of poultry at home when they have enough space, such as an unused rooftop. In addition to eating the meat, they also sometimes sell meat to other people when they have a surplus of it.
I wouldn't be able to kill the animals myself if I raised them like that, but I think a chicken or rabbit raised on a spacious rooftop has a better life than one raised and forced to live inside a small cage.
Yes, definitely!
This is one of the reasons I made this thread: I wanted to see how much common ground one could find between the views of vegans/vegetarians and those of meat eaters. It's easy for anyone to emphasize the disagreements on whether eating meat is ethical or not, but I think it's useful to consider what both groups could agree on when it comes to meat production.
I've never had meat in my life.
It's something I used to be somewhat dogmatic about, my family thought we were making a difference by not participating.
I've come to see how wasteful the supply chain is and how much food goes to waste in our economy that our individual consumer opinions change very little. I'm doubtful that any consumer centric movement really has much they can hope to achieve in modern times. Unless it's a place like India where vegetarianism has been a relevant cultural current for a long period I doubt it makes much difference.
I've not changed my habit though. At risk of upsetting some, having gone my life so far without the stuff it does feel barbaric of me to think of approaching. I also bet it would give me quite the stomach pains at this point.
It's something I used to be somewhat dogmatic about, my family thought we were making a difference by not participating.
I've come to see how wasteful the supply chain is and how much food goes to waste in our economy that our individual consumer opinions change very little. I'm doubtful that any consumer centric movement really has much they can hope to achieve in modern times. Unless it's a place like India where vegetarianism has been a relevant cultural current for a long period I doubt it makes much difference.
I've not changed my habit though. At risk of upsetting some, having gone my life so far without the stuff it does feel barbaric of me to think of approaching. I also bet it would give me quite the stomach pains at this point.
And i'd reckon the people who did would be participating in a much more humane production process than the factory farms we have today.
The book is loaded with factual claims. For example, the fact that it takes well over 2,000 gallons of fresh water to produce a pound of beef. It matters not what your political leanings are, that claim is either true or false. He also talks about things like rates of topsoil depletion and rates of freshwater aquifer depletion. Factual claims.That's a political book, not a scientific one:
Diet for a New America - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Might as well recommend a PETA pamplet.
I feel that she considered meat-less as healthy, but seems as if she did Not replace nutrients that were needed for healthy bones. In other words, going meatless seemed healthy to her, but now her bad bone problems seem to indicate the opposite in her case.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
Evolutionary studies, show that part of what separated humans, from other apes, was our growing brain. This would have benefited by a more high quality protein diet; more of a meat eating diet.
My theory is this change, was not genetic, but was connected to humans and canines; dogs, developing a cooperative relationship, way before the domestication of dogs. At first, we more like two animal species allies. Humans had cooking and tools, while the dogs had pack hunting skills. They could bring home the bacon, and we would fry it up, so it tasted even better. Dogs love human food.
This alliance allowed more meat in the pre-humans diets, allowing their veggie and omnivore ape brains to grow faster, than if they had stayed with just their own kind. This alliance may have been due to the necessity of the ice ages. The dogs were experts at survival in snow; sense of smell and team spirit to take down large game. It was to the human benefit to follow the dogs, and maybe make friends with the puppies; cultivate life long alliances. This lead to man made selection, leading to domestication about 23,000 years ago.
It is not coincidence, that the carnivores, as a group, are the smartest group of animals, on the planet. There are a few exceptions; elephants. But if you look at nearly all cats and dogs species, they score very high in animal IQ. Rats score high, but are omnivores. Rabbit are not so high; veggies. The common variable is meat. Cat diets has even more meat protein than do the dog; lion is king of the beasts. Cows only eat veggies. Meat eaters are at the apex of the food chain. If natural trends are important to human evolution, eat some meat; balance.
If we compare Conservatives to Liberals, Liberals eat less meat, as a group, and seem more vulnerable to any bizarre fad; meat is evil even if it is the food of choice for apex evolution. Liberals may benefit by some extra meat in their diet. But not too much, since the brain may grow, but the body also has to process this; balance.
My theory is this change, was not genetic, but was connected to humans and canines; dogs, developing a cooperative relationship, way before the domestication of dogs. At first, we more like two animal species allies. Humans had cooking and tools, while the dogs had pack hunting skills. They could bring home the bacon, and we would fry it up, so it tasted even better. Dogs love human food.
This alliance allowed more meat in the pre-humans diets, allowing their veggie and omnivore ape brains to grow faster, than if they had stayed with just their own kind. This alliance may have been due to the necessity of the ice ages. The dogs were experts at survival in snow; sense of smell and team spirit to take down large game. It was to the human benefit to follow the dogs, and maybe make friends with the puppies; cultivate life long alliances. This lead to man made selection, leading to domestication about 23,000 years ago.
It is not coincidence, that the carnivores, as a group, are the smartest group of animals, on the planet. There are a few exceptions; elephants. But if you look at nearly all cats and dogs species, they score very high in animal IQ. Rats score high, but are omnivores. Rabbit are not so high; veggies. The common variable is meat. Cat diets has even more meat protein than do the dog; lion is king of the beasts. Cows only eat veggies. Meat eaters are at the apex of the food chain. If natural trends are important to human evolution, eat some meat; balance.
If we compare Conservatives to Liberals, Liberals eat less meat, as a group, and seem more vulnerable to any bizarre fad; meat is evil even if it is the food of choice for apex evolution. Liberals may benefit by some extra meat in their diet. But not too much, since the brain may grow, but the body also has to process this; balance.
I rank using fire to cook food higher than carnivorism.
This technology made eating & digestion far more
efficient....essentially out-sourcing digestion.
Fire and the Brain: How Cooking Shaped Humans | AMNH
It takes a lot of calories to power a human brain. Find out how cooking and gut microbes help us make the most of our food.
Cooking Timeline Just Got Burned: Hominins Were Cooking 780,000 Years Ago
Researchers in Israel have found evidence of cooking fish dated to roughly 780,000 years ago. This pushes back the beginnings of humans being able to control fire and cook their food over 600,000 years, totally revising our previous knowledge.
www.ancient-origins.net
PETA also has facts in its pamplets, but they also misuse facts and twist things to suit their agenda of guilt tripping and scaring people onto veganism/vegetarianism.
Are the facts even accurate....or misleading.
About 2,000 gallons of water per pound of beef
sounds wasteful, but is it? That would depend
upon the location. In the small farms I've been
around here, no water is lost at all. We have
much snow & rain to replenish our groundwater.
And what goes in a cow, comes out the cow
to be recycled.
Yeah, I wouldn't trust it. I just know it's a book that some people love to use to try to scare others into being vegan eco-warriors. People have used talking points from that book for years online, especially when it comes to the nonsense about meat being unhealthy.
Under the US's central plains is the Ogallala aquifer. This aquifer is essential to grow crops in the vast central plains region. Because of government subsidies for growing grains, farmers are draining the Ogallala much faster than it is naturally replenished. It's hard to predict the future accurately, but unless we change our habits, the Ogallala will be drained in something like 50 years.
A huge percentage of the crops grown in the central plains goes to feeding cows who exist in horribly cramped feedlots.
Do I have an agenda in telling you this? Of course, I think humans need to make some huge changes and start living sustainably on the planet. But the fact that I have an agenda does not make my facts wrong.
Farmers are depleting the Ogallala Aquifer because the government pays them to do it
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
It is so utterly bizarre that you would even politicize this!
Making a statement about water usage that
sounds outrageous & terrible without addressing
complexities is propaganda. It ignores location
& water resources.
BTW, I don't disagree about better water
management being needed in many areas.
But advocacy should avoid using misleading
tactics
Heyo
Veteran Member
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
I'm vegan/vegetarian (I try to be vegan/WFPB Whole Foods Plant Based). But I'm not a moral vegan, I'm a health vegan.
Yes, slaughtering sentient, thinking, caring animals to feed your particular taste for that afternoon is bad stuff.
As far as the cited articles and pamphlets above, in terms of "propaganda".
Follow the money.
Who do you think has more to gain and more to lose? The small groups of turnip and asparagus farmers, along with a few hundred young students in PETA, etc?.... Or....... the multi-billion dollar Beef & Dairy Big Ag international companies?
Really?
No. Just like smoking, wherein the scientific literature held over 6,000 articles by the early 1960's that "Yes, Smoking is bad". Yet, a $10 Million donation to the American Medical Association from the Tobacco Industry in 1964 kept the AMA from backing the Surgeon General's statement of 1963 that "Smoking is Bad".
Today, well over 10,000 articles in the scientific press show undeniably that meat eating is bad for you. Zero (other than Big Ag sponsored ones) say that eating veggies and cutting meat is bad. Zero. But there are a lot by Big Ag.
As for the environment and sustainable conditions on our one planet? Yeah, what matter goes into the cow, comes out again. But I'd rather have fresh drinking water than buckets of cow **** and blood. And unless you're about to suggest that cows, pigs, and chickens are 100% perfect matter and energy conversion machines.....
.... then feeding them the crops before getting the crop calories out of their meat is a losing game for land, water, sunlight, and all other resources.
Undeniably.
So, our 7.5 Billion population (and growing exponentially) should have no problem at all with land, water, resources, and their effects on climate. Right? All we have to do is maintain the status quo.
Yes, slaughtering sentient, thinking, caring animals to feed your particular taste for that afternoon is bad stuff.
As far as the cited articles and pamphlets above, in terms of "propaganda".
Follow the money. Who do you think has more to gain and more to lose? The small groups of turnip and asparagus farmers, along with a few hundred young students in PETA, etc?.... Or....... the multi-billion dollar Beef & Dairy Big Ag international companies?
Really?
No. Just like smoking, wherein the scientific literature held over 6,000 articles by the early 1960's that "Yes, Smoking is bad". Yet, a $10 Million donation to the American Medical Association from the Tobacco Industry in 1964 kept the AMA from backing the Surgeon General's statement of 1963 that "Smoking is Bad".
Today, well over 10,000 articles in the scientific press show undeniably that meat eating is bad for you. Zero (other than Big Ag sponsored ones) say that eating veggies and cutting meat is bad. Zero. But there are a lot by Big Ag.
As for the environment and sustainable conditions on our one planet? Yeah, what matter goes into the cow, comes out again.
But I'd rather have fresh drinking water than buckets of cow **** and blood. And unless you're about to suggest that cows, pigs, and chickens are 100% perfect matter and energy conversion machines..... .... then feeding them the crops before getting the crop calories out of their meat is a losing game for land, water, sunlight, and all other resources.
Undeniably.
So, our 7.5 Billion population (and growing exponentially) should have no problem at all with land, water, resources, and their effects on climate. Right? All we have to do is maintain the status quo.