this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
166 points (90.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43812 readers
926 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
...And how exactly do you think people are going to be able to eat meat otherwise? Or have dairy, eggs, wool, etc.? Do you think that people should e.g., raise chickens in the city?
And that's ignoring the small obligate carnivores that make up most of the pets in the world.
Hey, I'd rather hunt my own food too, but we no longer live in tribal or feudal societies where you can reasonably expect to engage in animal husbandry yourself.
We very much so do live in a society where you can easily engage in animal Husbandry on your own.
Almost everyone I know raises their own food and sells the excess to City Dwellers.........but, to be fair I manage a 40k bird turkey farm
No offence fam but thats just straight up generational wealth. I live in an extremely farmer filled area and there's not a chance me in my 1.4 k monthly apartment could ever dream of owning even a small farm - much less have the time to and still pay bills.
I know a couple people who produce 70% of their own consumption, and are only able to do so cause theyre loaded as tits.
Im glad you're able to be shielded from the economy, but not everyone has that privilege (and ngl im even well off in my area)
Lmao no I said I manage I don't own it but, even when I owned my own house (all wealth I have is self gotten my parents are broke too) we still grew most of our food and raised a flock of birds.
I bought my first house with money I saved when I was in the Army. Then when I got my job at the farm they provided housing. Lived in my truck for almost 6 months after getting out of the Army before buying my house. Which was a POS and I slowly rebuilt it. Sorry you live in a apartment
If you don't mind me asking what year did most of this happen? Its all pretty important even in the past like 5 years things have changed insanely. To have enough land to grow your own food is insane, and definetly not broke lol
19' I'm not saying it's easy I'm saying it's not that hard and not unapproachable for people.
We shouldn't be eating meat or any other animal products.
Animals are living and feeling beings who experience the world much like humans do, we shouldn't be exploiting, abusing or killing them for profit/taste when we can easily avoid it.
And it's terrible for the planet.
Environmental Impacts of Food Production
First: How do you reconcile that view with the idea that animals also experience the world as people do with the idea that animals kill and eat other animals? Bears, for instance, are roughly as intelligent as a kindergartener, and yet happily kill and eat any other animals that they can. Pigs and crows are also omnivorous, and will eat any source of meat that they come across. They can all likewise avoid killing if they choose, yet they don't. Are they immoral? Or does morality only apply to humans? (Even animals that we traditionally think of as herbivorous are opportunistic meat eaters.)
Second: What would you propose replacing animal products with, when there are no alternatives that function as well? What about when the alternative products also cause greater environmental harms?
Third: So you would not have a problem with, for instance, hunting and eating invasive species, since those species cause more harm to existing ecosystems than not eradicating them would? What about when those invasive species are also highly intelligent, e.g. feral pigs? Or is it better to let them wreck existing ecosystems so that humans aren't causing harm? To drill down on that further, should humans allow harm to happen by failing to act, or should we cause harm to prevent greater harm?
Fourth: "Exploiting" is such an interesting claim. Vegans are typically opposed to honey, since they view it as an exploitative product. Are you aware that without commercial apiaries, agriculture would collapse? That is, without exploiting honey bees, we are not capable of pollinating crops?
Would you agree, given that all food production for humans causes environmental harm, that the only rational approach to eliminate that harm is the eradication of humanity?
I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian - but your message is so full of logical fallacies and whataboutisms, it's enough to drive someone to veganism. Is that really the best you can do?
The first sentence is like when a child has done something wrong, and their mother tells them off, so the child says "Well, did it too", to which the mother responds, "Well, if jumped off a cliff, would you also jump off a cliff?"
Isn't it crazy the kind of things people will say and upvote as soon as it's about owning vegans?
Such obviously flawed arguments would never fly for any other topic lol.
I copy paste the first two from the bingo board.
First:
Yes, animals kill in the wild - to survive. We humans are, as opposed to predators, omnivores. We know how to grow crops, vegetables, etc. and cultivate fields. We have a choice, a conscience and have morals.
Are you identifying with the intelligence and life situation of that of a lion? Do you also commonly ask yourself "What would a lion do in my place right now"? Are lions that kill newborns of other lions, for example, really good role models?
I can add to this regarding your question about more intelligent animals. So because some animals choose to kill, does that justify you doing so when you know it causes suffering? That does not make sense.
Second:
There are no nutrients that stem exclusively from animals. Originally derived from bacteria and microorganisms, they are accumulated in the food chain via plants and animals. You can leave out the middleman, which is the animal. Accordingly, a balanced vegan diet can meet needs at any stage of life. For certain chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, some cancers and heart disease), positive effects are even to be expected. Admittedly, it requires an initial conversion effort, since you have to get your nutrients via other foods and sometimes supplements. But don't worry - it's not rocket science and it's for a good cause.
See also: https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/academy-nutrition-and-dietetics-publishes-stance-vegan-and-vegetarian-diets
Third:
I actually didn't find this one on the bingo board, so kudos. And this is sort of a grey area argument that isn't really the core of the vegan proposition. But anyway my personal opinion is that it is ethical to kill for self defense (depending on the situation), even for an animal of "higher intelligence". The same way as killing a person in self defense can be ethical in certain situations. But at the same time I don't think we have an obligation to "step in" and save animals that are subject to predation etc in the wild, see the argument under "first". This argument is quite close to the common one about killing for conservation, which is quite hillarious when you think about it. We have killed off all the natural predators, so the prey animals become overpopulated so we have to step in to kill them off for their own good.
Fourth:
Not directly on the board, but anyway. We don't need a honey bee industry for crop production. There are alternatives. And it makes more sense to use native pollinators anyways (see also here https://doi.org/10.1890/02-0626 ).
And bee farming is exploitative. We cut off the wings of the queen to force her to stay. Forcibly impregnate her, and steal the honey. See more here https://youtu.be/clMNw_VO1xo
And as for your last point, ofc we cause environmental harm, that is unavoidable. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Should we just give up and torture and kill sentient beings because we can't avoid causing some harm to the environment? How does that make any sense?
Except it's not only just to survive. My dog can eat vegetables and a vegetarian diet just fine. But if I put meat in front of it it's gonna eat it.
Also your second point: B12 doesn't appear in plant based diets.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/clMNw
https://piped.video/clMNw_VO1xo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thank you, I couldn't be fucked to reply to these ridiculously cliche anti-vegan comments lol
Haha no worries, and yes they are so painfully cliche. We should make some bot that auto-replies to the most common ones.
bingo!
Genuinely curious: How do you feel about the lab-grown meat technology? Would you consider being an omnivore if no animals suffered or died to provide the meat?
Currently to produce lab grown meat they still need a fair amount of biological material for input into the process. So while it does appear to be the lesser of the two evils, especially from an environmental perspective, it's not a purely ethical process. So I'm not sure how many vegetarians/vegans would be convinced to incorporate lab grown meat into their diet at this time.
Not the OP. I'm not a vegan, and not even a vegetarian - however, I have hugely cut down on meat consumption because our western diet expectation of having meat in every single meal is absurdly excessive, and in my case resulting in increased cholesterol and other health risks. So I've cut back massively on meat such that it's once a week, and something very lean.
Lab grown meat has all the problems that farmed meat has, by and large, in terms of health impacts and energy intensiveness.
The other thing is that since going to a mostly plant based diet, is I've found I simply do not miss meat, in particular I don't miss red meat at all. So even if lab grown red meat could be less unhealthy, I'll still give it a miss because plant based food is to be honest perfectly enjoyable. I would imagine many vegetarians and vegans won't eat lab grown meat because they just don't need it to enjoy food. I think it's such a shame that so many eat lots of meat "politically" that they won't even try reducing their meat consumption and finding other foods that are just as pleasurable, and a lot less damaging to their long term health.
If no animals were harmed in the process I wouldn't mind but it's not something I really want all that much, I'm good with plant based stuff.
Wait just a hot second there. Plants are living, breathing, creatures as well. The largest organism on the planet is the aspen tree.
Why do people always pretend to suddenly be stupid when talking about veganism?
You know damn well that plants don't experience anything, pretending to be dumb isn't a gotcha.
I do enjoy how you went straight to insults to deflect your lack of knowledge. Then followed by implying I'm missing the same knowledge.
Just because we have yet to understand how plants experience life, does not mean that they do not. We know that plants respond to pain. We know plants respond to music.
Wife and I have been following the vegan eating habits for about 2 years now. We just don't feel the need to proselytize about it. Yes, proselytize is the correct word. You're trying to "save the animals because they feel pain", we're just trying to get in better shape in our 40s. We are not the same.
When you make bad faith arguments you can't expect well worded replies lol.
Even if this argument made any kind of sense(which let's be clear, it does not) then going vegan would still be the answer.
A plant based diet uses way less plants than a meat filled one because you get to skip the inefficient middleman of animals.
Ah yes, asking people to not needlessly abuse animals is the same as trying to force people to join your religion, totally!
You're right, we're not the same, I'm standing up for beings who are getting abused and killed by the trillions because of profit and taste, you're just not eating animals so you don't die quicker.
Not sure why you brought that up.
See how you skiffed right off of the "plants feel pain" and dug your heels into "I'm protecting the innocent animals"?
Edit: You realize that anyone can see that you're self-upvoting right?
Plant do not feel pain.. they respond to stimuli.
It's like saying antivirus software feels pain when it reacts to a virus on your computer.
And again, a plant based diet uses less plants, so even if plants did feel pain(they do not) veganism is the answer.
Yes, why wouldn't I upvote my own posts? Obviously I like what I myself post.
Just because you do not understand it does not mean it does not exist.
Pain is a human defined "experience" to specific stimuli.
You cannot state definitively that plants cannot experience something equivalent.
"Plants respond to herbivore attack through an intricate and dynamic defense system that includes structural barriers, toxic chemicals, and attraction of natural enemies of the target pests. " -- Nih.gov
So I mean they're just "defending" themselves for no reason, right?
https://bestlifeonline.com/how-do-plants-protect-themselves/
Even if this argument made any kind of sense then going vegan would still be the answer.
A plant based diet uses way less plants than a meat filled one because you get to skip the inefficient middleman of animals.
Plants feel pain.
Usually a discussion works by addressing the arguments the other person made.
I'm sorry, I must have missed where you had linked some scientific journals to indicate plants do not feel pain or are somehow inferior to "animals".
Aww you gave up on downvoting all my posts after three pages
https://owlcation.com/stem/Are-Plants-Alive -- Here's some more reading material while you brush up on your retort to my claim that "Plants Feel Pain". You know, the one you never addressed.
Youd hate herbivores then, they have the most expendable energy for defence and obviously don't need to kill - they're herbivores
Just look at how deadly fucking hippos are
huh?