The status of vegetarians

[madd0ct0r]

This is something I've had stuck in my head for a while.

Should I become a vegetarian?

Now, I love meat, I really do. However I'm not sure i can justify my diet anymore.

1) Morally/Ethically.

Do I have a right to kill other animals for food when it is a) wasteful and b) unneccesary. Simpy put, it is possible to lead a healthy lifestyle while being vegetarian.
Me, a cow and a desert island = steak tartre but in the normal run of things surely I don't need to be killing to feed?
[ This also includes dairy products as most of the calves are killed off to keep the milk flowing]

2) Ecologically.

Taking global climate change as read, how can i justify eating a diet that is so inefficent in both energy and the farm land required to sustain it?
I appreciate sprawling arable farms may not be more friendly to local wildlife then cattle pasture but on a global scale...
[ Welsh Lamb is an exception here as sheep are raised on land unsuitable for crops and the welsh part means I'm minimizing food miles]

So. Am i doomed to a vegetarian life, a rather sheepish life or continue with my black pudding breakfasts? I let you, the informed public decide.

[Darth Wong]

Why not simply reduce your meat consumption to a more reasonable level if you're worried about its impact on the environment? There's a middle ground between wanton cattle-killing and going completely veggie.

[Superman]

Asking "do I have a right to kill animals" is kind of pointless, isn't it? Why wouldn't you have a right? It's a personal choice.

[madd0ct0r]

well, i'm coming from the "do unto others ect" philosohpy

I certainly wouldn't want anyone killing me if it could be avoided. Wether animals appreciate this sentiment? No idea, but i don't smash beautiful objects for the hell of it either.

[Singular Intellect]

well, i'm coming from the "do unto others ect" philosohpy

I certainly wouldn't want anyone killing me if it could be avoided. Wether animals appreciate this sentiment? No idea, but i don't smash beautiful objects for the hell of it either.

Smashing valueable objects isn't a means of survival. Killing for food is.

Apologizing for being a predator is like apologizing because your shit stinks. It's a fact of life you should be used to and understand.

Face it, even as a vegetarian you're still killing living lifeforms. You're just more comfortable doing that because you're less capable of empathizing with a plant that an animal.

I have no qualms whatsoever about having to kill other anmals to survive. On that note, I also have no qualms about any predator seeing me as potential food; I'm just a vastly superior predator species and therefore much more likely to kill it instead (members of my species are so capable of killing that they routinely hunt and kill the most dangerous predators around just for sport).

I can certainly strongly object to reasons for killing like the above mentioned sport example, however I have never heard of a single good reason to feel guilty or apologize for being an apex predator on the planet.

[Hawkwings]

Also, it's not like you're doing the killing yourself. You go out and buy the packaged meat in the store. If you don't buy it, it's still going to be dead, so there's no reason to feel guilty about it.

[Singular Intellect]

Also, it's not like you're doing the killing yourself. You go out and buy the packaged meat in the store. If you don't buy it, it's still going to be dead, so there's no reason to feel guilty about it.

Actually, that's one point I think vegetarians might have. Purchasing meat products is sustaining/increasing the demand for meat.

However, I'm not sure just how much meat product gets thrown away daily, so one could argue they're wasting it depending upon those figures.

[Feil]

The killing animals argument is useless. Mechanized agriculture kills animals just as well by running them through a threshing machine with grain as by running them through an abattoir for meat.

[Singular Intellect]

The killing animals argument is useless. Mechanized agriculture kills animals just as well by running them through a threshing machine with grain as by running them through an abattoir for meat.

One could also point out that huge demands on agriculture is compromising the food sources of animals in those areas, and they regularily face starvation or actually starve to death.

[Shinova]

The overall point being, over the course of your life you're going to kill something directly or indirectly; there's no avoiding it.

[Broomstick]

There are different types of vegetarians, you know.

Also, those of us in the industrialized/Western world eat a LOT more meat than we really need to.

You could always start by reducing the amount of animal products you eat. This would, at least, reduce your moral and ecological impact. There's nothing wrong with making changes in your diet (well, try to do it in a healthy manner) and doing so for either health, ecological, or moral reasons is OK from my viewpoint.

You don't have to go full out vegan - that is, no animal products whatsoever - and it is debatable if that extreme is really healthy. Aside from some manufactured supplements, it appears that people really do need a small amount of animal flesh in order to obtain certain nutrients. A very, very, very small amount. So small that animal contanmination of stored food (insects and, um, rodent feces) has been sufficient to keep the Jains of India healthy for centuries. Unfortunately, when some of those same Jains moved to the UK and ate food with far lower levels of contamination after a few years they started showing signs of nutritional deficiencies.

You could opt for, say, a vegetarian diet incorporating dairy and eggs from free-range chickens. Dairy cows are generally treated better than meat cattle because better treated cows usually give more milk. Free-range chickens are not kept in battery cages. So consumption of such will enable you to stay healthy and impose less suffering on other creatures. If you're really ambitious, I suppose you could raise your own chickens or get a cow - maybe a goat, a cow produces a lot more milk than one person needs - but that's a bit over the top for most. Of course, forget the dairy if you're lactose intolerant - people don't need dairy to stay healthy, either, but if you skip the diary do be sure to get calcium from somewhere.

Other people eat mainly vegetarian, but have the occasional slab of animal flesh whether it's mammal, bird, or fish. Maybe once a month, or only for holidays. Up until the 20th Century it wasn't that unusual for people to eat meat only once a week or less.

There are a few local families in my area known for eating only flesh that they get by hunting or fishing. Given that we've more or less wiped out the natural predators in the area this actually helps keep the local herbivores in balance. Again, not always a practical option for most people.

If you do decide to make such changes, I'd suggest you not give up meat cold turkey. Start by introducing vegetarian meals. Sudden radical changes in diet aren't really that good for you, and you'll want to figure out what vegetarian things you like to eat before you commit entirely to them.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

The killing animals argument is useless. Mechanized agriculture kills animals just as well by running them through a threshing machine with grain as by running them through an abattoir for meat.

The argument against wanting to kill or harm other animals isn't necessarily useless, as it depends on how it's formulated. Of course you are correct that it's virtually impossible to go without killing anything, it doesn't follow that if two lifestyles both kill animals, they are equal in the amount of harm they do. It also depends on what type of animal farming you are comparing to veggie farming, as there can be a significant moral difference between, say, factory farming ethics and the ethics of accidentally plowing a mouse. Can you demonstrate that mechanized agriculture causes just as much harm or killing or more?

It's about reducing suffering, not really eliminating ALL deaths. Only extreme vegans are really the latter.

As Mr. Wong mentioned, it's always good to reduce consumption, as that cuts demand (and we eat too much meat anyway).

Typically, mechanized agriculture can feed more people than mass animal farming, and it lacks the significant problems of factory farm conditions of livestock. A way to get around some of the problem is to use free range, but that has some of its own ecological problems.

I don't think it's necessarily wrong in the sense of we don't have a right to kill animals, but I'd rather do what causes less damage while still feed people. I don't think the average mouse or cow has a "right" to life, but I wouldn't want to kill it if there were alternatives.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Sorry for the double post, but I forgot to add:


I would agree that we can't avoid any deaths. We don't live in a koom-bai-ya world of Disney, so obviously there are costs to almost everything we do, so I don't want to pretend my lifestyle causes no harm. There are issues with everything: land use costs, accidents etc which can harm animals and the environment, and there is the factor that I don't want people to starve to death or die. If we tried to avoid ALL suffering or death, there really wouldn't be much living to do given reality.

So I try to minimize my meat consumption and support sustainable agriculture practices and things like GE than can hopefully limit land use.

[CaptJodan]

My status is just fine, thank you.

Being a vegetarian is not an easy thing, and that probably goes double for those who weren't raised as such (as I was). I'd say you're going to have to be really committed to those moral, ethical, and egological ideals for it to really stick. The fact that you are including dairy products on the "do not consume" list makes it harder still. That's boarder line vegan, and if you cut out eggs, you might as well be vegan all the way. I support Broomstick's mention of veganism being considered a healthy alternative though.

If you do cut out meat altogether, be aware that over time you may develop a far smaller tolerance for mildly contaminated meats if you go back. When the meat ban was lifted when I turned 12, my digestive system wasn't completely prepared for even the occasional meat diet, and I had several instances of poisoning that had both ends working overtime to rid my body of containments. It's not that you won't be able to eat meat ever again, far from it, just that you don't want to start eating meat again from questionable sources (fast food places, or places you're not sure of).

The length of time for someone's system to start to lose that ability for proper digestion of meat, I think runs about a year, though don't quote me on that. Since that time, I partake every now and then, usually with fish, in some meat just to make sure my system still knows what the hell to do with the stuff, though the only trouble I ever had was with beef.

To reiterate, though, unless you're dead serious, I wouldn't bother. It's not easy, and I know of several people who tried it and failed pretty quickly. But if you want to try it, Broomstick's right, don't go cold turkey. And I recommend not starting to go all the way to vegan. See if you can stomach standard vegetarianism first. At the very least, most of the people I know who have shot for the vegetarian goal usually at least end up reducing their meat consumption, and that's a step in the direction you want to take.

[CaptJodan]

Damn edit, it sounded better when I read it the first time.

Broomstick said veganism is questionable in the "healthy" department, and I happen to agree with her, leaning more towards the "not healthy" than healthy side of that argument.

[Lusankya]

I always figured that eating a certain amount of meat was the moral thing to do anyway, since if we didn't eat meat, the animals which we eat would have a good chance of going extinct or near-extinct. It's better that they live a short, happy life than not have a life at all, right?

[Stark]

Yeah, many of our food animals are engineered species that would either have no niche or be a pest without their role as food animals.

[Axiomatic]

You know, plants are living beings too. You have as much of a right to kill THEM as you do to kill animals.

[madd0ct0r]

Plants don't fel pain though.

The keeping my own animals - while a good suggestion dosen't really apply to someone in a 4th floor bedsit in a city. (although...)

So far I'm mainly convinced to move to a lower meat diet with emphasis on the quality of life the animal lived. As a plus - organic chicken IS much more satisfying; they have to use slower growing breeds.

@ CaptJordan - The point you raised about being able to cope with low quality meat is a bloody good one. I hadn't thought of that. thanks.

[Broomstick]

The meat tolerance issue is an example of what radical changes in diet aren't a good idea - your system does need time to adjust. Likewise, if you're moving to a vegee diet you'll likely end up with a LOT more fiber than you're used to, and that can cause digestive upset.

My college roommate was a vegetarian and due to her influence I wound up enjoying some non-meat dishes. I'm still very much an omnivore, but I'll sometimes go days without eating meat just because I'm enjoying the vegees and fruit so much.

Which reminds me, we need to make a new batch of hoummous...

[Lagmonster]

Do I have a right to kill other animals for food when it is a) wasteful and b) unneccesary.

You know, I hope to someday live in a world where everyone has enough to eat that they can afford the extreme luxury of turning down food. I maintain a very special vehemence for anyone who advocate producing less food purely because they feel sorry for Bessie or because they are worried about asshole farmers who dispose of pig shit unsafely or because they are fucking ignoramuses who are afraid of genetically modified foods.

There are people who are starving and don't give a damn about the so-called rights of a goddamn motherfucking cow. If you don't want to eat meat, don't eat meat, but any suggestions from moral vegetarians on what constitutes 'wasteful' or 'unnecessary' food production isn't worth shit.

[Rye]

There are people who are starving and don't give a damn about the so-called rights of a goddamn motherfucking cow. If you don't want to eat meat, don't eat meat, but any suggestions from moral vegetarians on what constitutes 'wasteful' or 'unnecessary' food production isn't worth shit.

Wait, sorry, what were the obesity levels in your country again? 30% or more?

Yeah, not wasteful or unnecessary food production at all, there.

[Hawkwings]

He's probably talking about the starving folks in the third world there, zuul.

We don't need more production right now, we need better distribution (and the interest in distributing it in the first place).

[Plekhanov]

The killing animals argument is useless. Mechanized agriculture kills animals just as well by running them through a threshing machine with grain as by running them through an abattoir for meat.

What a ridiculous strawman, the argument isn't that by going vege you magically stop harming animals in every respect (obviously simply by living you are 'harming' other animals by consuming resources they could otherwise use) but that by going vege you greatly reduce the harm you inadvertently do to other animals and minimise the harm to deliberately cause to be done to them.

It takes roughly 100 kg of plants to sustain 10 kg of herbivore which in turn can sustain 1 kg of carnivore. Because of this much mechanised agriculture is necessary to grow fodder for animals which are later eaten by humans. Consequently by eating plants directly rather than having them inefficiently processed into meat by an animal not only am I deliberately causing the deaths of 0 animals I'm inadvertently causing the deaths of roughly 1/10 the animals of a meat eater.

[Rye]

He's probably talking about the starving folks in the third world there, zuul.

Then why is he demanding all vegetarians stfu (no doubt going after any that can read his posts, i.e. have access to the internet, which implies a certain level of affluence) about wasteful food generation when it's manifestly true in the first world?

We don't need more production right now, we need better distribution (and the interest in distributing it in the first place).

Mass meat production has a whole host of environmental, health and ethical problems attached to it, substantially more so than vegetarian options. I like eating meat, but I am not going to kid myself here. I strongly support more humane killing methods like nitrogen gassing and think that intensive farming is immoral, and I recognise the health issues from consuming as much meat as we do.

Whether there's people starving in the third world or not makes no difference to whether the land is being put to best use where people in the western world get their diet from. There are literally people eating themselves to death because there's so much unnecessary food (much of it meat) available to us in the west, and there's also significant environmental knock on effects of such wasteful and often immoral production.