this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Would you prefer people advocate for freeing all slaves or "slave free monday"?
I think it's really a difference about whether you approach meat consumption as a moral issue or an environmental and social one.
I tend to agree with @Melpomene that any improvement is a good thing, maybe a better analogy would be in CO2 emissions. If we can convince 10% of people to bike to work one day a week then that'll make meaningful difference, and it's exactly the same from an emissions standpoint as taking X cars off the road.
Convincing someone, at least in the USA, to do without a car is fundamentally difficult, but convincing them to use it less is a significantly more accessible proposition.
I just don't see reduction as enough or what should be advocated when it comes to something so serious as billions of animals getting needlessly killed.
Billions of animals are killed wherever crops are grown.
Even if you are entirely vegan, animals have to die if you want to eat.
In fact, if your food is grown on a farm then you are probably contributing to more animal deaths than someone who obtains food from hunting or fishing.
Source on billions of crop deaths?
Besides, most plants grown are used for animal feed.
Killing animals when we don't have to is inherently cruel, farming can be done without harming animals.
Billions of invertebrates and other small animals are killed during tilling before planting, with pest/weed control during the growing season (even with "organic" or "natural" compounds), and of course during harvest.
This is inevitable, farming requires controlling soil and plants, and this will inevitably kill animals that you don't even see. Do you really think you can flood a rice paddy without killing countless mesofauna?
Fishing/hunting also kills animals, but you can catch a fish or hunt a deer without restructuring an entire ecosystem. Which means you can feed yourself without killing quite so many animals.