It’s not the meat eating that’s immoral, it’s the industrialization of meat production that is - robbing an animal of all its freedom and all its chances to actually be alive. It kills evolution. It is anti-life.
What is happening on these industrialized meat farms is utterly disgusting and will become a crime once synthetic meat production is economically viable. It’s existentially wrong beyond any morals.
Absolutely can’t wait for lab grown meat to reach industrial scale.
Hunted meat is really ethical in the mean time, in my country that usually means pheasant (at the right time of year) or venison (which is unfortunately not cheap at all, I’d really like to see deer hunting for meat encouraged by the government).
I do eat farmed meat, but I definitely eat less of it than I used to.
One pretty consistent moral among societies is that needlessly causing harm is considered wrong. Outside of lab grown, its impossible to acquire meat without grievously harming an animal. Further, the vast majority of our meat is NOT gained by hunting but instead by factory, and the conditions of meat factories are appalling and horrific. So yes, if we CAN get the nutrients we need without the consumption of meat, that is the most moral way to get our nutrition met. All that being said, even today, being able to meet all nutritional needs without any form of animal cruelty is an incredibly privileged position to be in, and we arent quite at the stage where its fair to judge others for not doing so
(edit: and I say this as a meat eater, meat is fuckin delicious and I dont want to give it up. I’m personally banking on lab grown meat becoming an economical option, at which point we have removed the ethical muddiness of it)
(Edit 2: Lmao, I ruffled the feathers of a lot of meat eaters who’ve likely never actually had to kill any if the animals they’ve eaten. I have, I still eat meat. Reality is messy, fucking own it)
Well hunting is a pain in the ass as it is. In an industrialized society we traded markets with shared goods to more specific specialties. Sure I can hunt for food because of licenses and availability but the trade off is most of the people have really good health care. At least objectively they have access to healthcare that can cure things that back in the 1500s would kill you within days.
My point is that at some point someone said “Hey I can take care of the meat portion if you take care of (insert many specialists careers).” There was no morality involved. Choosing to be vegan is fine. I think that it’s easier to get certain things from animal sources. So does nature.
One pretty consistent moral among societies is that needlessly causing harm is considered wrong.
The problem with this as your moral compass is that “needless” can mean whatever you want it to mean. It’s not actually a guideline to any specific behavior
Thats a semantics arguement to a generalized statement which is special kind of stupid. I gave a detailed response to further explain why this applies to meat eating and even ended with saying we havent reached a point in society where its fair to judge others for not abandoning eating meat. Just because society has always done things a certain way, doesnt make it right or moral, slavery was the NORM until around the last couple 100 years, and now its near universally considered atrocious. Meat eating from once living animals will likely be the next once norm, now evil, societal concept. But we arent there yet
Damn near everything is subjective dumbass, its why theres so many societal problems that are still around even though they’ve plagued us for centuries
The entire purpose of a moral compass is to not be subjective. I didn’t make the claim that everyone should, or does, live by one set guideline. You did
The idea that morality is entirely based on subjectivity is your personal opinion. You can’t use it as if it was a fact and ground your argument upon it like you could do with an actual fact.
One pretty consistent moral among societies is that needlessly causing harm is considered wrong.
besides your total lack of specificity about ethical systems or societies in which they exist, your use of “needlessly” is doing a lot of work there. on the one hand it sets up a no-true-scotsman where you can always claim no need is great enough, but it also gives anyone challenging this claim a loophole the size of a walmart to walk through: just claim it’s necessary.
i don’t think you really understand the claim you made. worse, if you do, that means you’re intentionally using vague language and intellectually dishonest tactics to persuade. this is called sophistry.
Im kinda done arguing with dumbasses in good faith about whether or not killing an animal is less ethical than not killing one. I’m a meat eater, I find meat delicious, and I ALSO recognise that most of the world isnt in a privileged enough position to NOT eat meat in order to fulfill their dietary needs. None of this takes away from the fact that killing is less ethical than not killiing
Im kinda done arguing with dumbasses in good faith about whether or not killing an animal is less ethical than not killing one.
calling your interlocutors names is a great way to indicate you’re done arguing in good faith, but you just came out and said it. too bad you don’t seem capable of defending the claim you’re making.
Plants dont experience life the same way we do dumbass. Do you think its ok to torture a pet cat as fun? Probably not, if so, you already recognize that harming an animal is less ethical than harming one. Really not that hard a concept to grasp. Eat meat, meats fucking delicious, but dont fucking delude yourself into thinking NOT killing an animal isnt less ethical than killing one.
Counterpoint, something can be less moral than another thing WITHOUT being immoral. There are many MANY reasons to continue eating meat in this day and age, being just as moral as not, is NOT one of them
There are many MANY reasons to continue eating meat in this day and age, being just as moral as not, is NOT one of them
most ethical systems, in fact, do support that position: meat eating in and of itself is amoral to nearly every ethical system i can think of (and i know a lot)
i have a tendency to write very short comments, but i feel i’ve been misunderstood. let me try again:
you set up an claim that, if i’m reading it correctly, says “people believe torturing cats is wrong because they think harming an animal is less ethical than not harming an animal”
but that doesn’t necessarily follow. people may believe torturing cats is wrong, and that belief may have nothing to do with the other (that harming an animal is less ethical than not harming an animal). in fact, they can hold that belief without out believing the other at all.
Dude the level of semantics you are arguing is NOT important in the real world. The general reason torture is bad is because its harmful and inflicts pain. The fact that that translates to animals means that (non human) animals deserve to be considered in human morals. Therefor having to harm an animal to sustain oneself is LESS moral than not having to. Since you’ve been actually arguing with me in good faith, even though I feel like this is a semantics arguement, I do feel I need to point out that my stance was never that meat eating is Immoral, I don’t feel with society as it is today that it is. In the future, I think that will be likely, but right now we NEED meat, and far more people would be harmed by removing it as a food staple until we’ve reached a point where access to ethically untainted food has matured to a point that everyone has access to it.
problem is that only some well of westerners can reliably eat vegan and cover their nutrient intake, if you are worried about animal cruelty look into sustainable and ethical meet production
Spoken like someone who’s never had dirt-cheap lentils or beans & rice in their life that feeds literally billions. But we can delve into precisely what nutrients you’re referring to, versus the average nutrients (or excess of anti-nutrients) the average poor omnivore American gets in their diet. This doesn’t even cover the fact that if you’re poor, then you also are going to struggle to afford sustainable, healthy, and ethical “meet” production just the same.
sounds like someone who doesn’t understand that lentils rice and beans does not cover all the nutrients you would need, and thus you would be nutrient deficient. a massive problem for the people stuck eating lentils beans and rice (because hint: it is a massive problem), as for the ability to afford said meat, you don’t need a daily portion of meat.
It’s funny how you dodged the substance: Exactly which nutrients are you referring to?
When we finally get there, it’s going to boggle your mind that Beans & Rice and Lentils have a more diverse nutrient profile, while simultaneously having a greater calorie-density yield per square-mile of farmland.
That’s not even to raise soybean in combination with rice, which has gone on to feed massive populations of people for cheap in Asia for literally thousands of years…
Edit: The user below is incorrect. 60-80% of soybean production goes straight to the livestock feed. 34.3 million tons of soybean meal goes straight to feeding livestock. By contrast, only 11.9 million metric tons goes to soybean oil production; it’s thus likely the other way around and the extraction of oil is a byproduct of soybean meal production for livestock.
Expressed this way, it is clear that soybean meal actually contributes the bulk of the crushing value of soybeans on a per bushel basis.
Edit: The user feels as though they proved me wrong, but that graph only aids my case: 76% is used as animal feed. Soybean oil needs processed out and is sold in addition to the soybean meal, and the aforementioned links continue to prove that it is indeed the animal feed that is the most profitable part overall. Thank you. To repeat:
The demand for soybeans is currently tied to global meat consumption and is expected to grow, fuelled by Asia.
Per USDA:
Just over 70 percent of the soybeans grown in the United States are used for animal feed, with poultry being the number one livestock sector consuming soybeans, followed by hogs, dairy, beef and aquaculture
It continues to amuse me that one cannot find a single source supporting their case that animal feed supply would drop if soybean oil demand dropped. All evidence points to soybean oil being dependent upon animal feed demand in all actuality.
(Friendly reminder, again, that 2/3 of the Bushel value for the farmer comes from – you guessed it - the processed meal for animal feed. Waste products aren’t generally the driving value-maker).
Finally, the nail in the coffin:
"meeting animal [farmers’] needs drives meal demand,” and soy “meal is the engine that drives profitability,”
the vast majority of the soy that is fed to livestock is the industrial waste from pressing it for oil. feeding it to animals is conserving resources.
edit: about 7% of the global soy production goes directly to livestock. about 17% of all the end uses of soy is as soybean oil. since a soybean is only about 20% oil that means that 85% of all the soybeans in the world must be crushed for oil. The industrial waste from that process is called soy cake or soymeal and that is what is fed to livestock. if we didn’t feed it the livestock it would be a waste product.
It’s only wrong if you believe hurting other living things is wrong, it depends on your upbringing / mental framework and how you relate those between different species.
But I believe most people agree that the current way we mass produce meat and how we treat these animals is like a dystopian endgame. If humans were treated like that by a higher intelligence that would be extremely disturbing and cruel. We just accept it as we place the priority on a steak on our plate.
It is how it is, everyone is ignorant or a hypocrite in some parts of life. Good or bad are only subjective perspectives. But if you look at the harm we cause to other beings with eating meat and in what mechanistic way, that might be one of the things in 100 years we look back at and just can’t fathom.
Circle of life. If I were in the wild and defenseless and animal wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, as it should be. It’s not wrong, it’s nature. Morality isn’t the same from person to person.
You appealed to nature and threw a desert island scenario when the OP is clearly about animals raised in captivity and to be slaughtered way before their natural end of life. Also, eating meat is natural for carnivores. Us omnivores can do well (even better) without animal products.
There was no desert island scenario. There was a comparison to eating and being eaten, which is natural in both senses. As omnivores we developed to eat both meats and plants just like all other omnivores on the planet. To deny one part of our natural diet is unhealthy. You seem to have some kind of agenda which I will not be a part of.
You are entitled to your opinions and I will respect that but I will no longer communicate with you on the subject. Have a good week.
I agree with the people here calling out the cruelty of the industrialized meat industry, but eating meat in and of itself is not inherently wrong. The universe seems to consume itself by design—there is a reason Ouroboros (the serpent eating its own tail) is an ancient symbol for eternity. We are in an interlocked system that recycles matter and energy to sustain life.
Moderation in all things. Don’t take more than you need, but don’t deny yourself either. If I had my druthers, I would much rather be eaten by a cool animal after I die than sit in a box embalmed. Live a good life, and at least the animals you eat will be part of that positive contribution too.
I can completely agree the means to get to the end is indeed very cruel. We are all animals and I would not like to be treated so inhumanely just to die. However, eating meat is as natural as breathing.
I agree that I would rather my body go back into the circle than decay in the ground.
Breeding animals to slaughter is more water, land and time intensive than growing crops, and produces substantially fewer calories for even more land area. Breeding animals to slaughter also generates far more CO2 then crops, either from the animal directly or from transport and butchering processes.
What does /s mean? Does it mean back by science? Does it mean I should do this?? Please answer quickly, I have a piece of uranium here and I’m dying to eat it
1 cow, consuming 1.8 acres of land, produces on the scale of 0.5 to 1.4 million calories, according to this estimate
However farming produces up to 18 million calories per acre, so if you were growing potatoes you’d have 32 million calories. On the same land that produced up to 1.4 million calories via grazing cow.
aren’t most pastures also planted, fertilized, and watered?
no. they’re grasslands, and hilly terrain or rocky soil is a common feature of land designated as pastures because of the difficulty of working the land.
However farming produces up to 18 million calories per acre, so if you were growing potatoes you’d have 32 million calories. On the same land that produced up to 1.4 million calories via grazing cow.
so? the work of lettin a cow eat what grows is still less work than planting, tending, and harvesting.
no, i’m not. i was comparing the work done to plant a field of potatoes against raising an equivalent amount of cattle. i’m making no sweeping policy proposals.
if you ask a seed salesman whether you should buy his product for your pasture, he’ll try to sell it to you. but no, for the most part pasture management is very low intensity: repair fences and deter predators. these have direct analogues in raising crops though in warding off pests that would eat the crops.
Much more land can be used for growing animals than for growing crops. And without animals there would be no dung so the only way to let crops grow would be chemical fertilizer (which is made of oil).
You’re talking about a different issue which is food shortages.
There is absolutely no shortage of arable land on earth, the problem is it isn’t evenly distributed but that’s an easy enough problem to solve if we actually wanted to solve it. The solution isn’t cattle.
It’s obviously not the solution because if it was the solution there wouldn’t be world hunger, you can’t feed millions of people on cow.
Not relevant. The field that is used to grow food stock for animals could have been used to grow food stock for humans. Potatoes have a high calorie count and are not particularly difficult to grow.
You’ll get far more calories out of the field of potatoes than a field of cows, unless you’re packing them in at the same density as the potato plants which I’m assuming you’re not.
You still need to grow food to feed the cattle, if only for winter stock, so you have to find a fertile field to grow food stock, so that field could be used for growing crops and the field that’s unsuitable for anything else could just be, well not used. There’s absolutely no scenario where cattle are going to be more sustainable than crops.
Well, you have full permission to eat my corpse if I die first. Because it’s pretty psychotic to demand that another person die to preserve a body you don’t need anymore.
I’ve never given this much thought before, however I’d argue that once you view other humans as food, your interactions change.
If you’re stuck in a mountain and your partner breaks a leg, if you view them as a food source you’re much less inclined to provide aid. “It sure would be a shame if you died”.
viewing humans as food is essentially a prisoners dilemma - society has an agreement to not do so (similarly to how folks don’t snitch in prisoners dilemma). This encourages more mutual aid between members of society for the reason I described above.
It just takes one party who thinks it’s acceptable to eat a person before coming across hardship for the final night’s of a stranded group to be spent eying each other in suspicion.
It’s neither moral nor immoral to eat any of those things… “moral” is objectively not a word that holds any context whatsoever in a conversation about food…
If you would literally die before you would eat another human, you are psychologically broken. Your decision not to do that except as a last resort has nothing to do with morality whatsoever. It’s simply adherence to societal standards, rules, and personal standards.
If the neighbor’s pet is a pig or cow, it would literally be the first thing I ate if food truly became scarce enough to warrant that effort and upset. If it’s another animal, it simply follows the hierarchy of preference all humans have established for themselves. Zero morality involved.
Sure? I don’t think they’d taste very good, but some cultures eat dogs. There’s definitely a hungry enough that I’d eat dog, and it’s way before shit like shoe leather
Who said I would eat YOUR stuff? What if I purchased a puppy from a breeder (hence, my property), raised it till it was three, slaughtered it one day, marinated its meat, stuffed its ass with some of those noice spices, chucked it in the oven and served it to my kids for Thanksgiving? Would that be animal abuse?
Let’s go a step further. Let’s start a breeding farm for kittens.
“Meow”
“Shut the fuck up u furball! Now get into my fryer you! Gotta keep our Kentucky Fried Kittens profitable, don’t we?”
Would that be animal abuse? Would I be allowed to start my KFC alternative- KFK?
Oh, sorry, I somehow misread your comment as “if I killed and ate your puppies and kittens”. I gotta read more careful next time.
Now get into my fryer you!
(That kinda sounds like you’d want to fry the animal without killing it before, which would obviously be animal abuse.)
If you don’t abuse the animal, it’s ok that you eat kittens and puppies.
That being said, I myself would still not want eat cat meat, because cats resemble humans too much, and because we interact with them a bit like they were human. For similar reasons I also wouldn’t want to eat ape meat, for example.
What sort of meat someone wants to eat can’t only be as rigid as either anything but human or anything but animal. One could for example decide not to eat any mammal meat, but still eat fish and bird. Or one could not want to eat the meat of any life-form, nor exploit any life-form for their needs (how gross of you to hold trees in masses and rip off their unborn offspring!), though living like that would be super difficult as of now.
It just so happens to be that many people decide that lamb meat is ok for them to eat.
Removed by mod
It’s not the meat eating that’s immoral, it’s the industrialization of meat production that is - robbing an animal of all its freedom and all its chances to actually be alive. It kills evolution. It is anti-life.
What is happening on these industrialized meat farms is utterly disgusting and will become a crime once synthetic meat production is economically viable. It’s existentially wrong beyond any morals.
Absolutely can’t wait for lab grown meat to reach industrial scale.
Hunted meat is really ethical in the mean time, in my country that usually means pheasant (at the right time of year) or venison (which is unfortunately not cheap at all, I’d really like to see deer hunting for meat encouraged by the government).
I do eat farmed meat, but I definitely eat less of it than I used to.
Hunting is also beneficial to the health of game animal herds, and is a fundamental part of wildlife conservation.
So it can be ethical, healthy, and tasty to eat meat from killed animals.
Not true they hunt the wrong ones. In nature the sick and weak are eaten by predators. We shoot the healthiest ones. Bad idea.
OK smart guy, go ask any wildlife conservationist about it or just google it. I’m right and you are absolutely wrong.
Could you explain which part of eating meat is wrong? We have evolved to what we are today, thanks largely to our ancestors’ diets.
One pretty consistent moral among societies is that needlessly causing harm is considered wrong. Outside of lab grown, its impossible to acquire meat without grievously harming an animal. Further, the vast majority of our meat is NOT gained by hunting but instead by factory, and the conditions of meat factories are appalling and horrific. So yes, if we CAN get the nutrients we need without the consumption of meat, that is the most moral way to get our nutrition met. All that being said, even today, being able to meet all nutritional needs without any form of animal cruelty is an incredibly privileged position to be in, and we arent quite at the stage where its fair to judge others for not doing so
(edit: and I say this as a meat eater, meat is fuckin delicious and I dont want to give it up. I’m personally banking on lab grown meat becoming an economical option, at which point we have removed the ethical muddiness of it)
(Edit 2: Lmao, I ruffled the feathers of a lot of meat eaters who’ve likely never actually had to kill any if the animals they’ve eaten. I have, I still eat meat. Reality is messy, fucking own it)
Well hunting is a pain in the ass as it is. In an industrialized society we traded markets with shared goods to more specific specialties. Sure I can hunt for food because of licenses and availability but the trade off is most of the people have really good health care. At least objectively they have access to healthcare that can cure things that back in the 1500s would kill you within days.
My point is that at some point someone said “Hey I can take care of the meat portion if you take care of (insert many specialists careers).” There was no morality involved. Choosing to be vegan is fine. I think that it’s easier to get certain things from animal sources. So does nature.
The problem with this as your moral compass is that “needless” can mean whatever you want it to mean. It’s not actually a guideline to any specific behavior
Thats a semantics arguement to a generalized statement which is special kind of stupid. I gave a detailed response to further explain why this applies to meat eating and even ended with saying we havent reached a point in society where its fair to judge others for not abandoning eating meat. Just because society has always done things a certain way, doesnt make it right or moral, slavery was the NORM until around the last couple 100 years, and now its near universally considered atrocious. Meat eating from once living animals will likely be the next once norm, now evil, societal concept. But we arent there yet
The subjectivity of these takes is my entire point.
Damn near everything is subjective dumbass, its why theres so many societal problems that are still around even though they’ve plagued us for centuries
The entire purpose of a moral compass is to not be subjective. I didn’t make the claim that everyone should, or does, live by one set guideline. You did
Morality to some degree HAS to be subjective as its based on the time period it is formed. Society progresses for a reason
The idea that morality is entirely based on subjectivity is your personal opinion. You can’t use it as if it was a fact and ground your argument upon it like you could do with an actual fact.
Isn’t all morality subjective, rendering your comment moot?
Generally accepted morals certainly can be guidelines for behaviors.
besides your total lack of specificity about ethical systems or societies in which they exist, your use of “needlessly” is doing a lot of work there. on the one hand it sets up a no-true-scotsman where you can always claim no need is great enough, but it also gives anyone challenging this claim a loophole the size of a walmart to walk through: just claim it’s necessary.
i don’t think you really understand the claim you made. worse, if you do, that means you’re intentionally using vague language and intellectually dishonest tactics to persuade. this is called sophistry.
Im kinda done arguing with dumbasses in good faith about whether or not killing an animal is less ethical than not killing one. I’m a meat eater, I find meat delicious, and I ALSO recognise that most of the world isnt in a privileged enough position to NOT eat meat in order to fulfill their dietary needs. None of this takes away from the fact that killing is less ethical than not killiing
Abso-fucking-lutely based. Sometimes it’s better to just call a dumbass, ‘a dumbass’ than engage with their bullshit sealioning.
stealing this
calling your interlocutors names is a great way to indicate you’re done arguing in good faith, but you just came out and said it. too bad you don’t seem capable of defending the claim you’re making.
Nah, it just means you idiots arent worth the headache
more name-calling, but no defense for your position.
=D
No one’s obligated to debate you. 🙄
So, quit eating. You must harm the plant to eat as well.
Plants dont experience life the same way we do dumbass. Do you think its ok to torture a pet cat as fun? Probably not, if so, you already recognize that harming an animal is less ethical than harming one. Really not that hard a concept to grasp. Eat meat, meats fucking delicious, but dont fucking delude yourself into thinking NOT killing an animal isnt less ethical than killing one.
wrong. torture can be wrong while incidental harm may be totally amoral. one has nothing to do with the other.
Counterpoint, something can be less moral than another thing WITHOUT being immoral. There are many MANY reasons to continue eating meat in this day and age, being just as moral as not, is NOT one of them
most ethical systems, in fact, do support that position: meat eating in and of itself is amoral to nearly every ethical system i can think of (and i know a lot)
i have a tendency to write very short comments, but i feel i’ve been misunderstood. let me try again:
you set up an claim that, if i’m reading it correctly, says “people believe torturing cats is wrong because they think harming an animal is less ethical than not harming an animal”
but that doesn’t necessarily follow. people may believe torturing cats is wrong, and that belief may have nothing to do with the other (that harming an animal is less ethical than not harming an animal). in fact, they can hold that belief without out believing the other at all.
Dude the level of semantics you are arguing is NOT important in the real world. The general reason torture is bad is because its harmful and inflicts pain. The fact that that translates to animals means that (non human) animals deserve to be considered in human morals. Therefor having to harm an animal to sustain oneself is LESS moral than not having to. Since you’ve been actually arguing with me in good faith, even though I feel like this is a semantics arguement, I do feel I need to point out that my stance was never that meat eating is Immoral, I don’t feel with society as it is today that it is. In the future, I think that will be likely, but right now we NEED meat, and far more people would be harmed by removing it as a food staple until we’ve reached a point where access to ethically untainted food has matured to a point that everyone has access to it.
Source? Dumbass
problem is that only some well of westerners can reliably eat vegan and cover their nutrient intake, if you are worried about animal cruelty look into sustainable and ethical meet production
Edit: well off western vegans be mad
Spoken like someone who’s never had dirt-cheap lentils or beans & rice in their life that feeds literally billions. But we can delve into precisely what nutrients you’re referring to, versus the average nutrients (or excess of anti-nutrients) the average poor omnivore American gets in their diet. This doesn’t even cover the fact that if you’re poor, then you also are going to struggle to afford sustainable, healthy, and ethical “meet” production just the same.
sounds like someone who doesn’t understand that lentils rice and beans does not cover all the nutrients you would need, and thus you would be nutrient deficient. a massive problem for the people stuck eating lentils beans and rice (because hint: it is a massive problem), as for the ability to afford said meat, you don’t need a daily portion of meat.
It’s funny how you dodged the substance: Exactly which nutrients are you referring to?
When we finally get there, it’s going to boggle your mind that Beans & Rice and Lentils have a more diverse nutrient profile, while simultaneously having a greater calorie-density yield per square-mile of farmland.
That’s not even to raise soybean in combination with rice, which has gone on to feed massive populations of people for cheap in Asia for literally thousands of years…
… Forget the impact to climate change and general sustainability… Meanwhile feed for the animal has to come somewhere, and 60-80% of all meat is fed…Soybean. Perhaps, I dunno — cut out the middle-man… ?
Edit: The user below is incorrect. 60-80% of soybean production goes straight to the livestock feed. 34.3 million tons of soybean meal goes straight to feeding livestock. By contrast, only 11.9 million metric tons goes to soybean oil production; it’s thus likely the other way around and the extraction of oil is a byproduct of soybean meal production for livestock.
To drive home the point more clearly:
To add insult to injury:
Edit: The user feels as though they proved me wrong, but that graph only aids my case: 76% is used as animal feed. Soybean oil needs processed out and is sold in addition to the soybean meal, and the aforementioned links continue to prove that it is indeed the animal feed that is the most profitable part overall. Thank you. To repeat:
Per USDA:
It continues to amuse me that one cannot find a single source supporting their case that animal feed supply would drop if soybean oil demand dropped. All evidence points to soybean oil being dependent upon animal feed demand in all actuality.
(Friendly reminder, again, that 2/3 of the Bushel value for the farmer comes from – you guessed it - the processed meal for animal feed. Waste products aren’t generally the driving value-maker).
Finally, the nail in the coffin:
- United Soybean Board
Case closed.
the vast majority of the soy that is fed to livestock is the industrial waste from pressing it for oil. feeding it to animals is conserving resources.
edit: about 7% of the global soy production goes directly to livestock. about 17% of all the end uses of soy is as soybean oil. since a soybean is only about 20% oil that means that 85% of all the soybeans in the world must be crushed for oil. The industrial waste from that process is called soy cake or soymeal and that is what is fed to livestock. if we didn’t feed it the livestock it would be a waste product.
I agree, I addressed this in my response
And some civilisations practised human sacrifice. “We did it in the past” isn’t really an arguement.
Congratulations, you’ve completely missed the point. Apples and oranges.
Our bodies grew and developed thanks to the nutrients meat provided. What does that have to do with human sacrifices?
It’s only wrong if you believe hurting other living things is wrong, it depends on your upbringing / mental framework and how you relate those between different species.
But I believe most people agree that the current way we mass produce meat and how we treat these animals is like a dystopian endgame. If humans were treated like that by a higher intelligence that would be extremely disturbing and cruel. We just accept it as we place the priority on a steak on our plate.
It is how it is, everyone is ignorant or a hypocrite in some parts of life. Good or bad are only subjective perspectives. But if you look at the harm we cause to other beings with eating meat and in what mechanistic way, that might be one of the things in 100 years we look back at and just can’t fathom.
Our ancestors hunted wild animals
Industrialized meat production is horrible and wrong
That’s the part that is wrong
Let a pig have a happy life, then kill it. There is no need to force feed it in a coffin size pen for its whole life.
I didn’t ask what is wrong with the current industrial approach to farming animals, I asked what is wrong with eating meat.
You said which part.
That’s the part that is wrong
When you go to the store and purchase meat from an animal that was kept in inhumane conditions, you are supporting the system.
That’s an incredible weak argument. Our ancestors did all kinds of stuff which lead to societies prosperity. Doesn’t make all of it morally right.
Circle of life. If I were in the wild and defenseless and animal wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, as it should be. It’s not wrong, it’s nature. Morality isn’t the same from person to person.
Quite an assumption. There’s nothing natural in factory farming. Circle of death, that is.
it’s not supernatural
You are assuming now. I never said anything about factory farming, just that eating meat was natural. I agree the methods are detestable.
You appealed to nature and threw a desert island scenario when the OP is clearly about animals raised in captivity and to be slaughtered way before their natural end of life. Also, eating meat is natural for carnivores. Us omnivores can do well (even better) without animal products.
There was no desert island scenario. There was a comparison to eating and being eaten, which is natural in both senses. As omnivores we developed to eat both meats and plants just like all other omnivores on the planet. To deny one part of our natural diet is unhealthy. You seem to have some kind of agenda which I will not be a part of.
You are entitled to your opinions and I will respect that but I will no longer communicate with you on the subject. Have a good week.
And good day to you, sir, too.
I agree with the people here calling out the cruelty of the industrialized meat industry, but eating meat in and of itself is not inherently wrong. The universe seems to consume itself by design—there is a reason Ouroboros (the serpent eating its own tail) is an ancient symbol for eternity. We are in an interlocked system that recycles matter and energy to sustain life.
Moderation in all things. Don’t take more than you need, but don’t deny yourself either. If I had my druthers, I would much rather be eaten by a cool animal after I die than sit in a box embalmed. Live a good life, and at least the animals you eat will be part of that positive contribution too.
I can completely agree the means to get to the end is indeed very cruel. We are all animals and I would not like to be treated so inhumanely just to die. However, eating meat is as natural as breathing.
I agree that I would rather my body go back into the circle than decay in the ground.
under what ethical system?
Under literally any ethical system you choose.
Forget harm to the animal for a moment.
Breeding animals to slaughter is more water, land and time intensive than growing crops, and produces substantially fewer calories for even more land area. Breeding animals to slaughter also generates far more CO2 then crops, either from the animal directly or from transport and butchering processes.
deontological ethicists aren’t concerned with the consequences, only the action itself.
If it’s pure calories you’re after, might I suggest Uranium? It’s pretty cheap considering what you can theoretically get out of it.
^/s
I don’t think that you Uranium contains any calories.
A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature one kg of water by 1°C, so uranium has quite a few, hard to digest though.
Edit: I was curious so I looked it up, 1 gram of uranium has 20 billion calories
Microdosing time!
I don’t think you understand what calories are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie
Food calories and scientific measurement calories are different. It’s literally in the first paragraph of the article.
My comment specifically says “pure calories”.
What does
/smean? Does it mean back by science? Does it mean I should do this?? Please answer quickly, I have a piece of uranium here and I’m dying to eat itYes, science has confirmed that Uranium is perfectly edible and that it’ll provide you enough energy for the rest of your life.
Wow!! Thanks
i don’t know of any divine command theory that says anything like that
letting a cow graze a field and killing it next year takes way less time than tilling and planting and fertilizing and watering and harvesting.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most pastures also planted, fertilized, and watered? You’re also assuming infinite land here - I don’t know shit about farming, but the first google hit I got suggests that cows need about 1.8 acres of pasture per year.
1 cow, consuming 1.8 acres of land, produces on the scale of 0.5 to 1.4 million calories, according to this estimate
However farming produces up to 18 million calories per acre, so if you were growing potatoes you’d have 32 million calories. On the same land that produced up to 1.4 million calories via grazing cow.
no. they’re grasslands, and hilly terrain or rocky soil is a common feature of land designated as pastures because of the difficulty of working the land.
so? the work of lettin a cow eat what grows is still less work than planting, tending, and harvesting.
no, i’m not. i was comparing the work done to plant a field of potatoes against raising an equivalent amount of cattle. i’m making no sweeping policy proposals.
Great, in a vacuum, and assuming efficiency of land does not matter, you are correct in saying it takes less work to produce less calories.
not just in a vaccuum but literally any time you have the option to plant a field or put a cow in it, it will always be less work to put a cow in it.
if you ask a seed salesman whether you should buy his product for your pasture, he’ll try to sell it to you. but no, for the most part pasture management is very low intensity: repair fences and deter predators. these have direct analogues in raising crops though in warding off pests that would eat the crops.
making food is a good use of land.
Much more land can be used for growing animals than for growing crops. And without animals there would be no dung so the only way to let crops grow would be chemical fertilizer (which is made of oil).
You’re talking about a different issue which is food shortages.
There is absolutely no shortage of arable land on earth, the problem is it isn’t evenly distributed but that’s an easy enough problem to solve if we actually wanted to solve it. The solution isn’t cattle.
It’s obviously not the solution because if it was the solution there wouldn’t be world hunger, you can’t feed millions of people on cow.
most of the crops fed to animals are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat.
Not relevant. The field that is used to grow food stock for animals could have been used to grow food stock for humans. Potatoes have a high calorie count and are not particularly difficult to grow.
You’ll get far more calories out of the field of potatoes than a field of cows, unless you’re packing them in at the same density as the potato plants which I’m assuming you’re not.
often, it is. as i said, most of the crops fed to animals are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat.
if the land is unsuitable for crop production, you can often still raise cattle on it.
You still need to grow food to feed the cattle, if only for winter stock, so you have to find a fertile field to grow food stock, so that field could be used for growing crops and the field that’s unsuitable for anything else could just be, well not used. There’s absolutely no scenario where cattle are going to be more sustainable than crops.
you can feed cattle silage and crop seconds from food grown for people. you don’t need to plant crops just to feed cattle.
why, though? making food is a good use of land.
wrong.
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deontological systems are unconcerned with consequences.
I don’t know of any divine command theory systems that hold this axiom.
I was hoping they’d commit to, yes, ANY ethical system when I asked this, but they didn’t seem to even know what options existed
it’s not a sealion: it’s a clarifying question.
There’s no morality in food. What the actual fuck is wrong with the world?
Cannibal time let’s go
Hey, trap us on a mountainside with no escape in the freezing cold - guess what?
Point taken, I will avoid camping trips with you.
Well, you have full permission to eat my corpse if I die first. Because it’s pretty psychotic to demand that another person die to preserve a body you don’t need anymore.
I’ve never given this much thought before, however I’d argue that once you view other humans as food, your interactions change.
If you’re stuck in a mountain and your partner breaks a leg, if you view them as a food source you’re much less inclined to provide aid. “It sure would be a shame if you died”.
viewing humans as food is essentially a prisoners dilemma - society has an agreement to not do so (similarly to how folks don’t snitch in prisoners dilemma). This encourages more mutual aid between members of society for the reason I described above.
It just takes one party who thinks it’s acceptable to eat a person before coming across hardship for the final night’s of a stranded group to be spent eying each other in suspicion.
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It’s neither moral nor immoral to eat any of those things… “moral” is objectively not a word that holds any context whatsoever in a conversation about food…
If you would literally die before you would eat another human, you are psychologically broken. Your decision not to do that except as a last resort has nothing to do with morality whatsoever. It’s simply adherence to societal standards, rules, and personal standards.
If the neighbor’s pet is a pig or cow, it would literally be the first thing I ate if food truly became scarce enough to warrant that effort and upset. If it’s another animal, it simply follows the hierarchy of preference all humans have established for themselves. Zero morality involved.
Lmao “you don’t get to actually disagree and the only options are you being wrong.”
Nah. Animals are lesser than people, and it’s fine to eat them
So u would be completely fine if I killed and ate puppies and kittens, right?
Sure? I don’t think they’d taste very good, but some cultures eat dogs. There’s definitely a hungry enough that I’d eat dog, and it’s way before shit like shoe leather
Alright, at least you’re morally consistent then.
No. I also wouldn’t be fine if you ate other stuff that I have for purposes other than eating, like a chocolate sculpture.Edit: Misread. My answer is yes.
Who said I would eat YOUR stuff? What if I purchased a puppy from a breeder (hence, my property), raised it till it was three, slaughtered it one day, marinated its meat, stuffed its ass with some of those noice spices, chucked it in the oven and served it to my kids for Thanksgiving? Would that be animal abuse?
Let’s go a step further. Let’s start a breeding farm for kittens.
“Meow”
“Shut the fuck up u furball! Now get into my fryer you! Gotta keep our Kentucky Fried Kittens profitable, don’t we?”
Would that be animal abuse? Would I be allowed to start my KFC alternative- KFK?
“KFK- Tasty, Cute, Meow meow”
Oh, sorry, I somehow misread your comment as “if I killed and ate your puppies and kittens”. I gotta read more careful next time.
(That kinda sounds like you’d want to fry the animal without killing it before, which would obviously be animal abuse.)
If you don’t abuse the animal, it’s ok that you eat kittens and puppies.
That being said, I myself would still not want eat cat meat, because cats resemble humans too much, and because we interact with them a bit like they were human. For similar reasons I also wouldn’t want to eat ape meat, for example.
What sort of meat someone wants to eat can’t only be as rigid as either anything but human or anything but animal. One could for example decide not to eat any mammal meat, but still eat fish and bird. Or one could not want to eat the meat of any life-form, nor exploit any life-form for their needs (how gross of you to hold trees in masses and rip off their unborn offspring!), though living like that would be super difficult as of now. It just so happens to be that many people decide that lamb meat is ok for them to eat.
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Yea, animal are basically slaves. They feed us and keep the ecosystem going. They are property, not individual.
Slavery was bad because it was people treating people like animals, so no they’re not like slaves, slaves were like them.
Important distinction