Sorry in advance! The morality of meat really interests me.
It seems almost guaranteed that we will look back on factory farming in this fashion. The current system requires significant help from the legal system (banning documentation of the animals’ conditions, excessively prosecuting people who break the rules, looking the other way when farms hire people who will lose their jobs if they rock the boat) just to keep going.
Whether or not meat consumption in general meets the same societal fate seems less certain to me. We don’t view any other animals killing their prey as immoral, and before the industrial agricultural takeover lots of folks lived on farms and raised livestock for slaughter and treated them far better. Groups that lives successfully and sustainably off the land, like the Polynesians who settled Hawaii, raised livestock and fished a renewable amount. That’s been going on for ages and ages. Is it the act of killing a conscious animal we’ll have issue with? Will that sentiment focus on the smart animals like pigs and cows, and leave chickens and fish as acceptable? Will it rule out all animals even though some of them are so dumb that their form of consciousness is unrelatable? What about insect biomass based food? Will it spread to certain plants or fungi as we learn more about their forms of awareness and how they experience the world? Plants sharing knowledge through pheromones and root systems seems quite similar to the level of communication ants and other colony insects have. Where is the line going to be drawn?
From a knowledge standpoint, I simply don’t know enough about nutrition to understand whether or not humans can be ‘maximally healthy’ on a vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian or w/e diet. If we can, sweet! If not, what’s the next move? Lab grown meat seems like it’s just around the corner but then when you listen to a podcast on where they’re at you realize they can’t mimic any of the complex structures that give meat texture; they’re sometimes only 20, 30% meat with the rest being additives; they suck an undetermined but certainly super high amount of energy from the grid just to perform these relatively rudimentary feats. It does make me wonder if having some cows that wander around eating grass and killing one or two of the herd periodically is really worse from a moral standpoint than covering entire ecosystems in solar panels to run the scaled up meat labs. Not to mention how either option seems like there’s no way it can scale to how many people are living on the planet right now!
I certainly don’t envy the next generations. Which is a weird feeling. I don’t think we’re supposed to feel bad for our descendants. I hope they figure out the things that stumped us.
My family is mostly veggie, still eat dairy and some meat on the weekends. No pork because I’m trying to keep pushing the line further towards a place I feel better about. Pigs are just too dang smart for the hellish conditions they’re raised in on U.S. farms. Drawing that line felt hard, pepperoni might be my favorite use case for meat. But I think my kids will grow up just a little further toward the point of outrage we need to be at to save these animals from the madhouse created to feed us.
From a knowledge standpoint, I simply don’t know enough about nutrition to understand whether or not humans can be ‘maximally healthy’ on a vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian or w/e diet.
According to science, a whole-food, plant-based diet is basically the healthiest way to eat. You would need to supplement vitamin B12, but that’s it (and it’s very easy to do that). So from a health perspective, there is really no point against a vegan diet.
If you are interested in the morality of meat / veganism I highly recommend the debate videos by Ed Winters on Youtube where he talks to people about why they’re not vegan and it’s very respectful and also insightful. Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdqAyFhWL2s (some are way more controversial though, this guy is already quite “vegan-positive”, still an interesting discussion)
He goes to elite universities and interviews people his age. Where the hell do you think he should go to find more equal debate partners? Maybe he just has the better arguments?
I disagree. Everyone who eats meat should be able to reflect on that fact and if you can’t defend your behavior in a debate, maybe you should change it.
if you can’t defend your behavior in a debate, maybe you should change it.
abushed adolescents who have not developed a debate around a topic may not be capable of defending their behavior in a debate at the drop of a hat, but they have not prepared for such a circumstance. on the otherhand, this charlatan shows up with a pocketful of cheap rhetorical tricks and makes them look foolish for money.
That is true, but there are statistical trends that you can observe in scientific studies. How else would you rate how healthy something is? Just because some person is allergic to nuts doesn’t mean they’re not generally a healthy snack.
As far as I know a lot of vegans for example draw the line at a specific set of complexity of the being. Usually the property “has a central nervous system” is sufficient, which is why some vegans even eat oysters. The wording “sentience” is also used often.
The argumentation is also that emotions are tied to higher processing capabilities. A lot of animals fear joy, pain can get sad etc… Plants don’t. Reactions of plants to external stimuli are rather very primitive reflexes than the result of active processing and reflection about stimuli, i.e. thinking, which is something only observed in animals with brains.
Don’t pin me down on that, I’m not a vegan. That’s just something I picked up through discussions with them.
I simply don’t know enough about nutrition to understand whether or not humans can be ‘maximally healthy’ on a vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian or w/e diet
Idk what a “w/e diet” is, nor can I speak about pescetarians. But from what I’ve read it is perfectly possible to live a long and healthy life on a purely plant-based diet (respectively non-animal-based, bc mushrooms are not plants).
I can point you towards scientific literature on that topic if you would like to have some assistance.
It makes sense if you think about it that way:
What do we get from eating meat for example? What is it, that makes it somehow valuable for our bodies? What stuff is inside food in general which makes us need to eat?
It’s a bunch of specific chemicals, which we have come to name “nutrients”. You don’t need the flesh of the animal per se, you need the iron, the fats, the proteins, vitamins, minerals et cetera. We humans need a specific set of those nutrients in a specific amount in order to maintain a healthy and functioning body (also influenced by individual factors like whether someone has iron resorbtion issues or if someone is a child or old or pregnant or an athlete or whatever). Other animals require different amounts and possibly also different sets of nutrients.
The question for us is now whether we can get those nutrients from purely non-animal sources. And the answer is: yes, we can. That doesn’t mean eating only vegs will be healthy in the long run, as you probably need to supplement vitamin B12 and possibly more. But those supplements can be made from purely non-animal sources.
It does make me wonder if having some cows that wander around eating grass and killing one or two of the herd periodically is really worse from a moral standpoint than covering entire ecosystems in solar panels to run the scaled up meat labs.
If you are concerned about ecosystems, you know that the animal industry is one of the major contributors to climate change, right? And the fact that we use a huge chunk of agricultural land to grow animal food? In the EU alone about 71 % of agriculture is dedicated to feed animals. Source for the latter.
Furthermore, solar panels are not the only means of energy production. (And those are and should be regulated according to approrpiate environmental laws such that sensitive ecosystems are sufficiently protected.) There are also plenty of other renewables and concepts to meet demands such as rooftops covered in solar panels, wind turbines etc…
From an ecological perspective it would be best if we completely stopped producing animal based products.
From an ecological perspective it would be best if we completely stopped producing animal based products.
from an ecological perspective, it would be best if we completely stopped producing products. why single out livestock when we could be focusing on petrochemicals or mined metals?
In the EU alone about 71 % of agriculture is dedicated to feed animals. Source for the latter.
but the vast majority of that is grazing land. some of that may not agriculturally viable for any other purpose, and having it as grazing land is better than many of the uses we could develop there, like concrete jungles.
Sorry in advance! The morality of meat really interests me.
It seems almost guaranteed that we will look back on factory farming in this fashion. The current system requires significant help from the legal system (banning documentation of the animals’ conditions, excessively prosecuting people who break the rules, looking the other way when farms hire people who will lose their jobs if they rock the boat) just to keep going.
Whether or not meat consumption in general meets the same societal fate seems less certain to me. We don’t view any other animals killing their prey as immoral, and before the industrial agricultural takeover lots of folks lived on farms and raised livestock for slaughter and treated them far better. Groups that lives successfully and sustainably off the land, like the Polynesians who settled Hawaii, raised livestock and fished a renewable amount. That’s been going on for ages and ages. Is it the act of killing a conscious animal we’ll have issue with? Will that sentiment focus on the smart animals like pigs and cows, and leave chickens and fish as acceptable? Will it rule out all animals even though some of them are so dumb that their form of consciousness is unrelatable? What about insect biomass based food? Will it spread to certain plants or fungi as we learn more about their forms of awareness and how they experience the world? Plants sharing knowledge through pheromones and root systems seems quite similar to the level of communication ants and other colony insects have. Where is the line going to be drawn?
From a knowledge standpoint, I simply don’t know enough about nutrition to understand whether or not humans can be ‘maximally healthy’ on a vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian or w/e diet. If we can, sweet! If not, what’s the next move? Lab grown meat seems like it’s just around the corner but then when you listen to a podcast on where they’re at you realize they can’t mimic any of the complex structures that give meat texture; they’re sometimes only 20, 30% meat with the rest being additives; they suck an undetermined but certainly super high amount of energy from the grid just to perform these relatively rudimentary feats. It does make me wonder if having some cows that wander around eating grass and killing one or two of the herd periodically is really worse from a moral standpoint than covering entire ecosystems in solar panels to run the scaled up meat labs. Not to mention how either option seems like there’s no way it can scale to how many people are living on the planet right now!
I certainly don’t envy the next generations. Which is a weird feeling. I don’t think we’re supposed to feel bad for our descendants. I hope they figure out the things that stumped us.
My family is mostly veggie, still eat dairy and some meat on the weekends. No pork because I’m trying to keep pushing the line further towards a place I feel better about. Pigs are just too dang smart for the hellish conditions they’re raised in on U.S. farms. Drawing that line felt hard, pepperoni might be my favorite use case for meat. But I think my kids will grow up just a little further toward the point of outrage we need to be at to save these animals from the madhouse created to feed us.
According to science, a whole-food, plant-based diet is basically the healthiest way to eat. You would need to supplement vitamin B12, but that’s it (and it’s very easy to do that). So from a health perspective, there is really no point against a vegan diet.
If you are interested in the morality of meat / veganism I highly recommend the debate videos by Ed Winters on Youtube where he talks to people about why they’re not vegan and it’s very respectful and also insightful. Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdqAyFhWL2s (some are way more controversial though, this guy is already quite “vegan-positive”, still an interesting discussion)
Thanks for the recommendation.
those aren’t debates, they are grandstanding. he picks on adolescents still in school and tries to make them look foolish for clicks.
He goes to elite universities and interviews people his age. Where the hell do you think he should go to find more equal debate partners? Maybe he just has the better arguments?
he should invite capable people familiar with the topic to prepare for the engagement
I disagree. Everyone who eats meat should be able to reflect on that fact and if you can’t defend your behavior in a debate, maybe you should change it.
abushed adolescents who have not developed a debate around a topic may not be capable of defending their behavior in a debate at the drop of a hat, but they have not prepared for such a circumstance. on the otherhand, this charlatan shows up with a pocketful of cheap rhetorical tricks and makes them look foolish for money.
two years ago, he was a guest lecturer teaching a course on media at harvard. the power imbalance alone makes the production of that video immoral.
there is no single answer that fits everyone universally.
General fact:
People need a specific set and amount of nutrients to survive.
Specifics:
Amount and composition is influenced by individual factors.
Various nutrient sources exist and you can cover all your required nutrients from non-animal sources if you want to.
some people might be able to, but even ideologically committed, educated people with common health conditions have found it difficult.
That is true, but there are statistical trends that you can observe in scientific studies. How else would you rate how healthy something is? Just because some person is allergic to nuts doesn’t mean they’re not generally a healthy snack.
As far as I know a lot of vegans for example draw the line at a specific set of complexity of the being. Usually the property “has a central nervous system” is sufficient, which is why some vegans even eat oysters. The wording “sentience” is also used often.
The argumentation is also that emotions are tied to higher processing capabilities. A lot of animals fear joy, pain can get sad etc… Plants don’t. Reactions of plants to external stimuli are rather very primitive reflexes than the result of active processing and reflection about stimuli, i.e. thinking, which is something only observed in animals with brains.
Don’t pin me down on that, I’m not a vegan. That’s just something I picked up through discussions with them.
Idk what a “w/e diet” is, nor can I speak about pescetarians. But from what I’ve read it is perfectly possible to live a long and healthy life on a purely plant-based diet (respectively non-animal-based, bc mushrooms are not plants).
I can point you towards scientific literature on that topic if you would like to have some assistance.
It makes sense if you think about it that way:
What do we get from eating meat for example? What is it, that makes it somehow valuable for our bodies? What stuff is inside food in general which makes us need to eat?
It’s a bunch of specific chemicals, which we have come to name “nutrients”. You don’t need the flesh of the animal per se, you need the iron, the fats, the proteins, vitamins, minerals et cetera. We humans need a specific set of those nutrients in a specific amount in order to maintain a healthy and functioning body (also influenced by individual factors like whether someone has iron resorbtion issues or if someone is a child or old or pregnant or an athlete or whatever). Other animals require different amounts and possibly also different sets of nutrients.
The question for us is now whether we can get those nutrients from purely non-animal sources. And the answer is: yes, we can. That doesn’t mean eating only vegs will be healthy in the long run, as you probably need to supplement vitamin B12 and possibly more. But those supplements can be made from purely non-animal sources.
If you are concerned about ecosystems, you know that the animal industry is one of the major contributors to climate change, right? And the fact that we use a huge chunk of agricultural land to grow animal food? In the EU alone about 71 % of agriculture is dedicated to feed animals. Source for the latter.
Furthermore, solar panels are not the only means of energy production. (And those are and should be regulated according to approrpiate environmental laws such that sensitive ecosystems are sufficiently protected.) There are also plenty of other renewables and concepts to meet demands such as rooftops covered in solar panels, wind turbines etc…
From an ecological perspective it would be best if we completely stopped producing animal based products.
from an ecological perspective, it would be best if we completely stopped producing products. why single out livestock when we could be focusing on petrochemicals or mined metals?
but the vast majority of that is grazing land. some of that may not agriculturally viable for any other purpose, and having it as grazing land is better than many of the uses we could develop there, like concrete jungles.
you can’t prove this.
… for some people.