Philosophy: Should we eat meat?

[Be Happy!]

I'm sorry, but none of this is necessary. To begin with, I've lived on farms and I've never seen any mistreatment. I don't doubt that it exists in some places, but I'll repeat what I said before. That is the case with any industry... Decent farmers do not deserve to lose business because of the immoral actions of their competitors.

I am glad to hear that you have not witnessed animal cruelty on farms. I am sad to say that small farms are quickly becoming a thing of the past and these days factory farms are replacing the mom and pop farms. According to USDA figures, almost 11 Billion animals are raised for food in the US...and over 95%of those animals are on factory farms. To get a real vision of how animals are raised and slaughtered visit www.MeetYourMeat.com (but somehow i have a feeling that you are going to say that the video only shows a few instances and that on a mass scale that doesn't really happen-- i hope that you are not so naive!)

The horrific truth is that there is no time to raise and kill animals "humanely" so you do what is fastest...you maybe interested in an article about this on www.CNN.com[/url] : [PLAIN]http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/11/chicken.cruelty.ap/index.html

of particular relevancy to you would be this:
The fired workers told Hardy County prosecutor Lucas See in August that they were expected to hang 28 to 33 live birds per minute and it was faster to toss some of them aside than to wring their necks the proper way.

BTW, I was most interested to read about derek1's accounts of going to a factory farm to investigate the treatment of animals and what he found was shocking! (see post #995)

If you have watched the video, read the article and done some more research on this, and still choose to live in a bubble and think that the animals you eat have not suffered tremendously, then I have no choice but to think that your arguments are selfishly motivated. I hope this is not the case, and hope that we can have a productive conversation about this very important issue.


Sangeeta

 

[Be Happy!]

One can go into many details, about bugs and microbes, but what I think that should be done is opening the book on livestock treatment. How are animals treated from being born to being slaughtered. I think the discussion should be opened and that farmers have to abide to welfare laws. I'm not an expert on the issue of animal culturing, it is a black box to me. What are the laws on livestock treatment, which agency inspects whether the laws are abided by and where do I find the information on how livestock is treated overall.

Hi Monique!

It's nice to see you in our discussion!

The Animal Welfare Act does exist in the US, but it's a joke and doesn't do much to protect animals...it was basically designed for animals in laboratories, but it doesn't even require that the animals be given pain killers (!) not to mention that it neglects to include rats, mice and birds under it's meager protection.

The Humane Slaughter Act exists, but again, it's is rarely enforced and it doesn't give any guidelines on how animals should be raised: http://www.peta.org/feat/usda/ Suffice it to say, food animals have extremely minimal to no protection under US laws. Interestingly enough, if you do the types of things which are done to animals raised for food to dogs and cats you could go to jail!

But there is hope! In over 30 US states, animal cruelty is a felony, slowly but surely people are getting prosecuted for mistreating animals other than those designated to be "pets."...Foie Gras is banned in CA and pig gestation crates were banned a few years ago in Florida!

For a more extensive look at the law and how it pertains to animals, please check out this link: http://www.cok.net/abol/16/04.php it is an interview with David Wolfson, Esq., who is the author of Beyond the Law: Agribusiness and the Systemic Abuse of Animals Raised for Food or Food Production, co-author of the chapter “Foxes in the Hen House; Animals, Agribusiness and the Law, A Modern American Fable” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, and Lecturer in Animal Law at Harvard Law School…of particular interest to people on this forum is this part of the interview:
Q. Can you give a brief overview of the ways in which abusive treatment of animals within agribusiness have been exempted from legal protection?

A. Sure. I like to think of a farmed animal’s life in three stages: on the farm, during transport and slaughter. There is no federal law governing the welfare of farmed animals on the farm, and the federal laws relating to transport and slaughter are very problematic; for example, the federal transport law has been determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) not to apply to trucks and the humane slaughter law does not apply to chickens (as a result of the USDA defining “livestock” to exclude chickens) and is very poorly enforced.

Given that the vast majority of an animal’s life is on the farm, the fact that there is no federal law governing this period is very troubling. It means that any protection must come from the states and here is where the real problem lies. State anti-cruelty laws fall into two categories: First, anti-cruelty laws that ostensibly apply to farmed animals but as a practical matter are not used to regulate common farming practices (such as the veal crate, battery cage and gestation crate) and which are highly problematic anyway (weak penalties, enforced by district attorneys who have no interest, limited access to animal production facilities, and so on), and second, anti-cruelty statutes that specifically exempt common farming practices. The majority of states fall into the second category—they have amended their anti-cruelty statutes to exempt common farming practices. This means that farmed animals in such states are literally beyond the law and any common practice, no matter how horrifying, is legal.

In Europe though, much of the practices that are employed in the US factory farming industry are banned...as physicsisphirst has posted, Europe is way ahead of the game!


Sangeeta

 

[sheepdog]

conincedences

SO can we please stop projecting our emotions, our morals and our ethics onto other animals in this argument? It just doesn't support the argument for wether eating meat is good/bad, right/wrong.

Can we stop using "Factory Farming" just in reference to these huge slaughter houses. It needs to apply to the huge crops of wheat and corn I see also. These are aslo "Factory Farms" and can cause ecodamage as well. Eating meat and industry pollution are slightly connected issues in the fact that the industries connected with meat processing and raising meat pollute. But the garment industry pollutes. SO does the auto industry and the list can go on. That connection doesn't support your argument.

Life is filled with magical conincidences. A friend just today sent to me this fragment of a poem by Robinson Jeffers, without having read any of this thread:

[Nature] knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve... As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

You must see something of your words in these, FrancisM. I certainly see all of my heart within them. Do they "support the argument" or do they reveal the argument to be completely irrelevant and a painful distraction?

May you find the support you seek.

 

[Francis M]

I see arguments against eating meat based on the idea that animals raised for food are treated poorly and the slaughter is painful.
I see arguments against eating meat based on the idea that slaughter houses pollute the enviornment.
I even see the typical consentration on red meat and poultry with no regard to fishing.

The original question was "should we eat meat. Yes or No". Question to the question, A) what kind of meat and B) yes or no based on what criteria?

Because it seems to me that if we could solve the problems in the first part of my post there would be no reason not to eat meat as well as veggies.

It seems that this question wether posed to intentionally or not as brought up the meatless = guiltless argument which never was nor ever will be true. WE, all of us, have to get away from that emotionally charged assosiation otherwise this post goes round and round and round and does nothing except create animosity (which I'd really like to see avoided).

 

[Dissident Dan]

Francis,

I think that if you look at some of the previous posts made by myself, physicsisphirst, and Be Happy!, you'll see that most, if not all, of your points have already been addressed.

----------------------------------

I see that people are wanting to separate the questions of eating meat and the treatment of farmed animals. If you want to boil the question down to the ethical characteristics of putting a certain classification of material into one's digestive system, regardless of the related conditions, you can, but what is the point? I don't think that anyone will ethically object to you eating road kill (although you might get "Gross!" as a reaction).

To make the question useful, it has to be grounded in reality. And to ground it in reality, you have to make the connection between eating the meat and what had to happen in order for you to eat it. That means the intense suffering of factory farming, transportation, and slaughter.

 

[physicsisphirst]

I see arguments against eating meat based on the idea that animals raised for food are treated poorly and the slaughter is painful.

quite so.

I see arguments against eating meat based on the idea that slaughter houses pollute the enviornment.

no, slaughterhouses themselves don't really pollute the environment too much. the pollution occurs well before the animals are shipped there from factory farms.

I even see the typical consentration on red meat and poultry with no regard to fishing.

we can talk about fishing too, but let's finish up the meat stuff first since we are well into it.

Because it seems to me that if we could solve the problems in the first part of my post there would be no reason not to eat meat as well as veggies.

are you trying to argue that absolutely everything living has one of those right to life contracts and therefore nothing should kill it? this is similar to what russ presented way back in post #932:

if it is wrong for me to kill a cow, then it is wrong for a lion to kill a cow. Either the cow has a right to life or it doesn't.

(loseyourname tried 'defending' russ on this in post #962.)

are you applying their reasoning to vegetables?

It seems that this question wether posed to intentionally or not as brought up the meatless = guiltless argument which never was nor ever will be true.

why can it not be true that meatless = guiltless (at least with respect to the animals that are eaten)?
if you know that your eating meat is causing the suffering of animals (and destroying the environment, not to mention putting a terrible strain on healthcare), are you not somewhat guilty to continue? of course, if you don't know all this then the situation may be different, but the very least you could do is investigate the matter properly especially since some people in this thread have been very helpful in providing a starting point with links such as these:

http://www.hfa.org/campaigns/tribarticle.html
http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/
http://www.EggCruelty.com
http://www.MercyForAnimals.org/WeaverBros/overview.asp
http://www.MeetYourMeat.com

WE, all of us, have to get away from that emotionally charged assosiation otherwise this post goes round and round and round and does nothing except create animosity (which I'd really like to see avoided).

francis, the only person who has gotten all emotional within the past 25 posts is this Francis M individual, but then this Francis M 2 individual showed up and apologized for the former's ranting so it's all cool again, i guess. everyone else seems to be doing just fine and i don't think there is any animosity. rather there have been some really excellent posts along the way including part of your post #1170 where you make the rather good observation:

If so then wether eating meat is right or wrong shouldn't be the question but should be is eating meat of animals treated badly right or wrong.

(mind you your continuation about "factory farming" really doesn't make much sense, but we can discuss the ramifications of a pig or chicken factory farm vs a wheat or a corn factory farm later if you wish to.)

also, please understand that while some people are simply arguing on a forum for the sake of trying to construct clever responses, there are others who, because they work investigatively in the field, are aware of the atrocities that animals routinely endure. to them, it is a matter of great moral importance (as sheepdog has eloquently expressed in several posts) and not merely a trivial argument conjured up in pixelspace.

a belated welcome to the thread, btw!

 

[physicsisphirst]

To make the question useful, it has to be grounded in reality. And to ground it in reality, you have to make the connection between eating the meat and what had to happen in order for you to eat it. That means the intense suffering of factory farming, transportation, and slaughter.

this is the real point of course.
it is simple to ask the question "should we eat meat?", but in order to answer it properly, one does need to understand the reality of what is involved in eating meat in our society.
the 'eat meat' part involves the horrendous treatment of animals both before and during slaughter. it is a matter that cannot simply be argued away through attempted 'logical constructs'; rather it does determine to what extent we can consider ourselves to be ethical.

 

[sheepdog]

what had to happen

To make the question useful, it has to be grounded in reality. And to ground it in reality, you have to make the connection between eating the meat and what had to happen in order for you to eat it. That means the intense suffering of factory farming, transportation, and slaughter.

Yes, that's true. Reality is the reference, all of it, as you say. And I understand the focus on the horrendous, outrageous conditions in factory farming which must be stopped.

But I would like to raise another warning: be careful what you wish for. Yes, the Europeans are doing better than we in ending factory farming. But this may also have the unfortunate side effect of making meat eating even more acceptable.

Suppose that instead of the current factory farms and "free-range" farms, they were replaced with plants in which the animals at the moment of birth were decerebrated and then raised on life support systems without neurological function above the brainstem. This isn't entirely preposterous. It could be very economical to produce meat in this way. Certainly there would no longer be any suffering because there would be no brain function to suffer. Suppose also that the production is perfectly clean, without pollution. Would this meat be acceptable to eat since there was no suffering?

And further suppose that these practices became so widespread that they replaced all other food animal practices. And suppose that all animals were systematically eliminated, in a humane way, from the planet, because they were deemed "unnecessary" and a source of contention with animal rights people. Would this be acceptable since there was now no suffering, since no animals?

My point is that it isn't enough to say that we must reduce suffering, although it is true that we must do that. But if we reduce suffering by eliminating all that may suffer then we have made a mistake as severe as is indifference to the suffering. Clearly we must act against suffering and at the same time we must preserve the potential to suffer. You see?

One insidious method of eliminating suffering is by changing the nature of the animal so that it no longer experiences life in its original way. Its ability to suffer as it did is removed from its character. Animals are bred and domesticated to tolerate confinement and utilitarianism. Even if kept in conditions in which they do not suffer when so bred the meat they provide comes at too high a price in another vital sense.

If you only argue that suffering must be decreased it is easy for the stupid to think that if the sufferer is eliminated then you will be satisfied. Do not allow them that impression. It should be clearly understood that addressing suffering is necessary but far from sufficient by itself. This is true for environmental considerations as well. And for health considerations, and so on. For each criteria the potential is unlimited for humans to devise clever artificial fixes for each one individually. Every clever artificial solution continues on the path that has lead to factory farms and can only lead to more of the same. We do not fix mistakes by repeating them.

Vegetarianism is a manifest rejection of all such clever artificial solutions. It is a determined end to otherwise endless repetition of our prior mistakes. This is why we will always frustrate those who seek the "what if we do this ..." solutions. They would have us continue the status quo with minor adjustments. The vegetarian seeks the end of the status quo. It is a revolution.

 

[JonahHex]

Yup, an evangelical revolution. To summarize: "I'm right. You're wrong. I'm going to enforce my righteousness upon you by making you suffer financially (fines) and and physically (imprisonment). If you resist my righteousness, I will send people with guns. You will soon see the light and understand that it is wrong for anyone, or anything, except you, to suffer."

 

[sheepdog]

Yup, an evangelical revolution. To summarize: "I'm right. You're wrong. I'm going to enforce my righteousness upon you by making you suffer financially (fines) and and physically (imprisonment). If you resist my righteousness, I will send people with guns. You will soon see the light and understand that it is wrong for anyone, or anything, except you, to suffer."

A good example of the fact that the paranoid fear most what is most to be feared about themselves.

 

[JonahHex]

LMFAO

Yep, you're right, I'm wrong.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean you're not out to get me.

"Should we eat meat?" Who's "we?" Do you have a rat in your pocket?

Should I eat meat? Yes. Should you eat meat? Who cares? Eat whatever you want. In the meantime, keep your rat in your pocket along with your revolution.

 

[Dissident Dan]

Jonah,

I wonder what you hope to accomplish by posting in this thread. You do not seem interested in honest debate about the subject. It appears that you just came to satisfy the egotistic urge to to dismiss the thread without even reading through it, guided by your prejudices.

 

[Loren Booda]

What if we were able to synthesize exactly dead animals from vegetable protein, lipids and minerals, just as we would have the ability to create animal life from scratch? Is taking of life the sin, or is it disrespecting the dead?

 

[sheepdog]

the artificial cannibal

What if we were able to synthesize exactly dead animals from vegetable protein, lipids and minerals, just as we would have the ability to create animal life from scratch? Is taking of life the sin, or is it disrespecting the dead?

Even better, what if we were able to synthesis dead people from vegetable protein, lipids and minerals? Is it meat for the eating?

Yes, we have the potential for creating a future as bizarre as can be imagined, leaving Nature as we know it, and certainly as ourforebearers knew it, a distant memory never to be seen again. But is it the future in which you would want to live?

Vegetarianism is not just about not eating meat. It is about respecting Nature in every way.

 

[Monique]

"Should we eat meat?" Who's "we?" Do you have a rat in your pocket?

Should I eat meat? Yes. Should you eat meat? Who cares? Eat whatever you want. In the meantime, keep your rat in your pocket along with your revolution.

How would you answer the question "Should we recycle plastic bottles" It's a question that relates to everybody and ultimately comes back to you.

 

[Dissident Dan]

Vegetarianism is not just about not eating meat. It is about respecting Nature in every way.

Well, I would disagree with you on that.

What if we were able to synthesize exactly dead animals from vegetable protein, lipids and minerals, just as we would have the ability to create animal life from scratch? Is taking of life the sin, or is it disrespecting the dead?

Well, one could still consider the healthiness of consuming the "animals" an ethical issue, as well as the probable resource inefficiency, but other than that, I wouldn't care.

My whole ethical outlook revolves around maximizing pleasure and minimizing displeasure, for all those who can experience. There would never be any conscious creature in the first place in the given scenario, so it wouldn't even be an issue. As I already stated, feel free to have some roadkill (as long as the desire to eat him/her didn't lead to his/her death!).

I didn't realize that many people actually thought that this might be an issue of contention.

 

[BoulderHead]

I didn't realize that many people actually thought that this might be an issue of contention.

Me neither, I mean all you have to do is cut away the bruised part and road kill is just as tasty as anything from the slaughterhouse.

 

[sheepdog]

sentient vs non-sentient

My whole ethical outlook revolves around maximizing pleasure and minimizing displeasure, for all those who can experience.

Where did this come from? How did you arrive at this point? I'm new to the thread so maybe I missed some posts where you described your journey from a person without a position to one with this position?

I ask, DD, because it just looks like something you decided was right. And we have seen that anybody can decide anything they like is right or wrong. I admit that I have espoused a similar position in the past. Though it has merits it simply isn't complete by itself.

The principle difficulty I have with this position is that it assumes that we know what suffering is. And so, from this position, it is possible to hold that it is not right to destroy or injure something that you know experiences and therefore can suffer, but it is alright to injure or destroy something that you do not know can experience and therefore suffer. So it divides everything into 2 separate camps that can be treated very differently.

But there are no camps. I cannot injure or destroy anything, whether sentient or not, without effecting something else, sooner or later. Further I cannot have perfect knowledge of what suffers and what does not. So I see that any injury or destruction, even if only to non-sentients, is transmitted widely and must ultimately negatively impact sentients.

Hence the only complete policy is to respect all of Nature. Though I will admit it may be debatable, eating synthetic human flesh does not pass muster in my book because it is an injury to us, destructive of our place in the world, just as eating synthetic animals or synthetic anything is, to one extent or another.

Let's consider another scenario. Suppose that neurosciences progressed so that scientists learned that through genetic engineering they could breed sheep that had their pain/pleasure centers reversed. Conditions that previously caused sheep to suffer would now cause them exquisite pleasure. There is no theoretical obstacle to such a re-engineering of the nervous system of sheep. Would you now also reverse your position and insist that lambs be raised in factory farms? Would this be an acceptable solution to you?

We have the power to created as twisted a caricature of Nature as we please to satisfy any arbitrary position we may choose. That is exactly the danger we face by taking such arbitrary positions in my view.

 

[physicsisphirst]

Suppose that instead of the current factory farms and "free-range" farms, they were replaced with plants in which the animals at the moment of birth were decerebrated and then raised on life support systems without neurological function above the brainstem.
...
Let's consider another scenario. Suppose that neurosciences progressed so that scientists learned that through genetic engineering they could breed sheep that had their pain/pleasure centers reversed.

these are indeed fascinating ideas you present. (strangely enough there are some people who will actually like to argue that the animals want to be tortured and slaughtered, but that's just another of those exceptional bizarrities.) your thoughts here go to the heart of bioethics - what does manipulation of our environment do to us as humans?

Vegetarianism is a manifest rejection of all such clever artificial solutions. It is a determined end to otherwise endless repetition of our prior mistakes. This is why we will always frustrate those who seek the "what if we do this ..." solutions. They would have us continue the status quo with minor adjustments. The vegetarian seeks the end of the status quo. It is a revolution.

this is beautifully put! what is sought isn't a 'fix' (even though that may be of benefit initially) - but 'right' action (oh oh - i can hear the endless burblings in the background to the tune of "what is right?" LOL). one can 'fix' the problem of child labour, by making it legal - but it may not be the best way for us to develop as a species.

Clearly we must act against suffering and at the same time we must preserve the potential to suffer. You see?

absolutely! it is the existence of potential for suffering and the refusal to participate in the infliction of that suffering which is that wonderful paradigm shift you keep speaking of. it is that benefit that we are always at liberty to do for ourselves and our species.

as the buddha said,

O men! you can take life easily but, remember, none of you can give life! So, have mercy, have compassion! And, never forget, that compassion makes the world noble and beautiful.

karuna ...

 

[sheepdog]

appreciated

this is beautifully put! what is sought isn't a 'fix' (even though that may be of benefit initially) - but 'right' action

Thank you very much for understanding so clearly exactly what I was trying to say.

 

[susanest]

i think this is a bad idea, it could disrupt the food chain if everyone on Earth stopped eating meat.

How do you imagine that disruption of the food chain would be a bad thing? Isn't the "food chain" just a way of describing what we see as our current situation?

Personally, I think there is much room for improvement... and eating meat appears to be a terribly bad habit in so many ways. I recommend you read The Food Revolution by John Robbins.

John Robbins, who was an heir to the Baskins-Robbins fortune but rejected all that, points out that our "knowledge" of such matters is primarily what the meat and dairy industries have been promoting through their multi-billion dollar advertising campaigns and their close personal relationship with our "government".

The eating of animal products is associated with heart disease, cancers and other deadly health problems. Also it's an extremely inefficient way of feeding the population. We are feeding cows, for example, with resources that could be helping to alleviate malnutrition suffered by millions of humans on this planet.

 

[learningphysics]

Where did this come from? How did you arrive at this point? I'm new to the thread so maybe I missed some posts where you described your journey from a person without a position to one with this position?

I ask, DD, because it just looks like something you decided was right. And we have seen that anybody can decide anything they like is right or wrong. I admit that I have espoused a similar position in the past. Though it has merits it simply isn't complete by itself.

The principle difficulty I have with this position is that it assumes that we know what suffering is. And so, from this position, it is possible to hold that it is not right to destroy or injure something that you know experiences and therefore can suffer, but it is alright to injure or destroy something that you do not know can experience and therefore suffer. So it divides everything into 2 separate camps that can be treated very differently.

But there are no camps. I cannot injure or destroy anything, whether sentient or not, without effecting something else, sooner or later. Further I cannot have perfect knowledge of what suffers and what does not. So I see that any injury or destruction, even if only to non-sentients, is transmitted widely and must ultimately negatively impact sentients.

Hence the only complete policy is to respect all of Nature. Though I will admit it may be debatable, eating synthetic human flesh does not pass muster in my book because it is an injury to us, destructive of our place in the world, just as eating synthetic animals or synthetic anything is, to one extent or another.

How exactly is it destructive to eat synthetic dead beings?

Let's consider another scenario. Suppose that neurosciences progressed so that scientists learned that through genetic engineering they could breed sheep that had their pain/pleasure centers reversed. Conditions that previously caused sheep to suffer would now cause them exquisite pleasure. There is no theoretical obstacle to such a re-engineering of the nervous system of sheep. Would you now also reverse your position and insist that lambs be raised in factory farms? Would this be an acceptable solution to you?

We have the power to created as twisted a caricature of Nature as we please to satisfy any arbitrary position we may choose. That is exactly the danger we face by taking such arbitrary positions in my view.

How is it an arbitrary position? The goodness of pleasure, and the badness of pain seems to me the most basic intuition.

I might be misunderstanding what you're saying. Are you saying that the way things are done in nature (among non-humans), is the best way, and the way that minimizes pain and maximizes pleasure?

 

[loseyourname]

so my point still remains that you don't need any fancy ethical theories here - just a simple understanding that you will not kill unless you have a need to.

I need a system if I'm to claim that what I'm doing is the right thing to do.

the benefit to you presumably is that you consider killing without sufficient reason to be cruel or immoral or something like that and by not killing unnecessarily you benefit yourself by not being cruel or immoral or something like that. are we in agreement with this?

No, we are not. I don't not kill because it is of benefit for me not to kill. I simply don't do anything, at all, unless there is a good reason to do it. Okay, maybe I'll make weird facial jestures or break into song, but that's about it. This isn't about being cruel or immoral, which I thought I specified by saying that I don't even kill non-sentient beings unless I have a good reason to do so.

However, I'd like to state that you are pretty obviously trying to make this about me and what I do. That is not what is being argued here. The question is "Should we eat meat?" Not "Does Adam eat meat?" Why don't we put aside the posters personal actions and stick to what should be done and why it should be done.

if you want to consider what i have just written an ethical system, go ahead. if you don't, it doesn't matter to me, because i think you have stated your criteria fairly clearly - you will not kill unless you have a sufficient reason to (like those bugs destroying your garden or those people attacking you etc). once again, is this sufficient for us to agree on, without insisting on some formal and complex ethical system?

No, it isn't. This is sufficient for explaining my personal actions in most cases, but that's about it. It has nothing to do with the morality of the actions. I pretty explicitly stated my criteria for when I will consider killing to be wrong and when I will consider it to not be wrong in an earlier post.

i think to some extent you do. you are willing to kill bugs that destroy your garden. i think you are killing those bugs not so much for the benefit of your garden (and its "right to life"), but because you want to keep your garden.

Again, you are confusing my personal actions with what should be done. A lot of times my actions are in accordance with my personal system of ethics. Sometimes they aren't. But this is what you get when you make this a personal issue of how I do or don't behave, which is not what this should be about.

Ridding my garden of pests is not an ethical matter to me; it's a pragmatic matter. The action is amoral - it has no moral worth of any kind, either good or bad.

yes we know that you have these ingenious ways of killing humanely and you hopefully want to do away with factory farming to remove both the suffering and the ecodamage. but if we didn't eat meat we wouldn't have these problems caused by the industries in the first place, right?

Have I ever disputed this? You've presented one solution to a limited problem. You have not presented the only solution, nor have you presented your reasons this should be done, ethically speaking. Perhaps you think you have presented the best solution. Why is that?

well i don't really see why you think I'm not accepting these alternate solutions. if you want to eat meat, do as suggested by that guy in my earlier post. wait till the animal dies, then eat. make sure that there are only a few animals on small farms and you'll do the ecosystem a favor too.

At what point do you suggest we stop the ecosystem destruction? How much must we give up? Building a city disrupts an ecosystem more than any farm. Should we abandon our cities as well?

I don't ask this in jest, either. I think this is a serious question that is not being addressed by anyone in here. It seems to be implicit that vegetarianism is necessary because of the ecological benefits, but if things are necessary simply because they are of ecological benefit, should we not then do all things that fit this criterion? This would include not only giving up meat, but also giving up telecommunication, mass transit, synthetic fibers. Furthermore, it really says nothing about the eating of meat. It only speaks to factory farming that is harmful to the environment. Humans ate meat for thousands of years without doing any harm to the environment. Do you think this was the wrong thing to do? If so, then harm to the environment must not be your reason.

There is a tradeoff between conservation and human industry, necessarily. At what point is ecological integrity preserved? If I eat only one steak per week? Per month? If I eat only fish? If I investigate the operational habits of every seller that I buy from to be certain that they are doing all they can to conserve?

do you arrive at this conclusion through a process of elimination or wishful thinking?

I pretty explicitly stated the process by which I arrived at my conclusion. I do this with all of my conclusions as a matter of courtesy in posts to the philosophy forums. That is how a proper philosophical discussion is carried out.

well you haven't exactly solved the problem, you have only suggested some solutions along the lines of the killing (you really haven't dealt with the eco-issue, at least not in these recent exchanges). i have also offered a solution by which both the eco-problem and the suffering will be terminated. are your arguments against my solution essentially:
1) there are other solutions
2) there is a secret agenda to stop all killing

Did I ever say I solved the problem? Again, this is not about me and what I have or have not done. This is about what is the right thing to do and why it is the right thing to do. Perhaps in context in which I live, giving up all or at least most meat would be the right thing for me to do. But is this what you are arguing? Or are you arguing that the eating of any meat is always wrong in any context? You seem to waver back and forth from one position to the other.

i don't think you understand that we are not talking about charlotte's web here. we are talking about factory farms. if you would actually research some of this rather than spin 'logical arguments', you would see that your not having 'seen any mistreatment' is hardly something to base an opinion on.

the problem we have here is that you won't look, therefore you can avoid the reality.

I think you don't understand that this doesn't matter to this discussion. All of these links might provide perfectly fine reasons why I shouldn't be eating meat from these sources. It isn't a reason to say that eating meat itself is wrong, or even that eating meat that has been killed by humans is wrong. For all you know, I still live on a farm and only eat meat that my own family raised.

yes, yes that's fine. however, this at least answers the question i was asking - you at least grant them the "their right to be treated humanely and not be made to suffer needlessly". now, exactly on what basis do you feel that animals have a "right to be treated humanely and not be made to suffer needlessly".

Pretty much the same basis as Dan. When I suffer, it feels awfully bad to me and so I extrapolate to the conclusion that suffering in general is a bad thing and is to be avoided unless absolutely necessary (for instance, in military training or childbirth). On that basis, I will grant the right of all sentient beings to not suffer unless absolutely necessary. Of course, there is some question as to which organisms are sentient and which are not. The minimum qualifications are probably at least the structural portions of the brain identified with pain perception in humans. This qualification is met by all mammals and birds and most reptiles.

 

[russ_watters]

(strangely enough there are some people who will actually like to argue that the animals want to be tortured and slaughtered, but that's just another of those exceptional bizarrities.)

I must admit to not having read every post in this thread, but I can't recall ever hearing anyone say any such thing. It seems rather absurd, in fact. Do you know offhand of a post you can cite?

what is sought isn't a 'fix' (even though that may be of benefit initially) - but 'right' action (oh oh - i can hear the endless burblings in the background to the tune of "what is right?" LOL).

Well, it is quite strange to hear someone who has argued against the very concept of morality argue that something can be "right."

Vegetarianism is not just about not eating meat. It is about respecting Nature in every way.

This is something I've long suspected, but now I know (yes, DD, I realize not every veggie shares this position). I can feel the hairs rising up on the back of my neck.

How is it an arbitrary position? The goodness of pleasure, and the badness of pain seems to me the most basic intuition.

Sure, but is it as simple as that? Ie, more pain is automatically bad, more pleasure automatically good? A strict mathematical relationship? Certainly, you can see the potential complications that things like love and drugs can add to the question of pleasure vs pain, right? Heck, a large fraction of all art is based on the difficulty in reconciling the two.

Not to rehash this piece of the discussion unless necessary, but it is my opinion (DD mentioned his) that humans' (relatively) uniqe ability to understand the conflict between pleasure and pain is one of the main reasons we have the right to life and other species don't.

 

[sheepdog]

alternatives

How exactly is it destructive to eat synthetic dead beings?

An excellent question! Without meaning to be flippant at all, my answer is, "It is destructive in the same way anything that is destructive is destructive." That is, there is only one kind of destructive. It isn't that this is destructive this way and that is destructive that way.

It's much easier to answer this question if one focuses on the contrary, "What can I be absolutely certain is not destructive?" If you answer that question then what is destructive becomes obvious.

How is it an arbitrary position? The goodness of pleasure, and the badness of pain seems to me the most basic intuition. I might be misunderstanding what you're saying. Are you saying that the way things are done in nature (among non-humans), is the best way, and the way that minimizes pain and maximizes pleasure?

I hear ya' and I'm very sympathetic to what you are saying. But I would ask you again, if scientists reversed the pain/pleasure centers of sheep, would you be then as vehement about putting lambs into factory farms as you are now about getting them out? I think if you consider seriously how you would feel about that situation you will see my point, which is that there isn't a single quality or character that can be used to define all problems and all solutions. The problems are problems of the whole and must be considered in their complete contexts.

You ask if I think the way things are done in Nature are the best way? But we are as much a part of Nature as are non-humans. So I cannot say we should do as the non-humans. We are humans. What we do we must do as humans.

But what should humans do? Do we just choose whatever we want? With reasons or without, it doesn't matter. If you choose to do something without reason, you choose -- it is your choice. If you choose to do something with reason, you choose the reason -- it is still your choice. Acting this way one may do anything. Is doing anything what humans should do? Whatever you please, with or without reason, without limit, anything goes, have at it?

That is one alternative. That we may have anything we want -- anything. But there is another alternative. That alternative takes into account that there is an order to the world and seeks to respond to that order. In this alternative you may not choose. The choices are made for you.

 

[learningphysics]

But I would ask you again, if scientists reversed the pain/pleasure centers of sheep, would you be then as vehement about putting lambs into factory farms as you are now about getting them out? I think if you consider seriously how you would feel about that situation you will see my point, which is that there isn't a single quality or character that can be used to define all problems and all solutions. The problems are problems of the whole and must be considered in their complete contexts.

If they did reverse pain pleasure centers (and let's say generally, happiness suffering centers) then I'd have no problem with factory farms. However, if scientists were able to perform such a feat, then I believe the ethical thing might be to eliminate pain centers altogether.

Yes, I agree problems of the whole need to be considered... but exactly is a problem? When is something a problem? It seems to me only when something/someone is hurt (in some way... long term short term...)

I believe pain/pleasure, happiness/suffering and perhaps life/death (not sure about these two), are the only things of inherent value or disvalue.

Can you describe this order you mentioned that humans can respond to?

A more basic question. When is something good, and when is something bad?

 

[Seafang]

Well this thread has strayed well from the original "should we eat meat?".
Some see it as a moral issue which it isn't. Others see it as a question of anatomical structure, which it isn't.
Some see it as a health issue; that evil meat rots in your digestive system. Just what do you suppose the digestive process is, if it isn't to cause the degeneration of the material into its basic compounds from which the required energy and nutrition can be absorbed.

If YOUR gut is filled with dangerous organisms that will make you sick, that is a separate problem in itself. Mine isn't, so I don't have to worry about my food poisoning me. There's a whole industry built around the silly notion that our insides are filthy. They aren't; they are a thriving community of symbiotic organisms that all co-operate in the total system of our survival and their own.

Eating meat (of herbivores) gives us access to the energy and materials of plants which we can't digest and they can. But we typically don't eat predators except for the fishy kind.

For me eating beans is a no-no because it gives me gas; mostly methane, so I already know it is an inefficient food for me because that is a waste of chemical energy.

Non-survival is about as immoral as it can get; particularly when the means of survival exist all around us to be used. If some of it is meat so be it.

If we stopped eating meat, it would not be good for the animals. Most of the large animals on Earth would become extinct; because they only exist because we eat them and raise them for food.

I grew up in a country that has 20 domestic farm animals for every single man woman and child in the country; the most of any place on earth, and it is also one of the healthiest countries on earth; people don't die from rotting flesh in their gut.

 

[Dooga Blackrazor]

I saw something on being pro-choice. You can be pro-choice and still justifiably vegetarian. A fetus hasn't been integrated into society and is not in a position to contribute to society; what is not part of society has no value to society. Furthermore, pro-choice isn't necessarily the support of abortion, since some people are pro-choice out of respect for the women's rights over those of an unborn child.

 

[Dissident Dan]

Well this thread has strayed well from the original "should we eat meat?".
Some see it as a moral issue which it isn't. Others see it as a question of anatomical structure, which it isn't.
Some see it as a health issue; that evil meat rots in your digestive system. Just what do you suppose the digestive process is, if it isn't to cause the degeneration of the material into its basic compounds from which the required energy and nutrition can be absorbed.

There are plenty of studies which show a correlation between meat consumption and colorectal cancer. Study after study has shown vegetarians to have better circulatory systems and less cancer.

Eating meat (of herbivores) gives us access to the energy and materials of plants which we can't digest and they can. But we typically don't eat predators except for the fishy kind.

For me eating beans is a no-no because it gives me gas; mostly methane, so I already know it is an inefficient food for me because that is a waste of chemical energy.

Non-survival is about as immoral as it can get; particularly when the means of survival exist all around us to be used. If some of it is meat so be it.

Non-survival? From a societal survival point-of-view (as well as from a personal survival point-of-view), eating meat is ridiculous because it is ridiculously inefficient. You speak of the animals giving access to energy and materials we can't digest. The fact is that we grow plants to feed to animals. This is terribly inefficient. We could just use all those resources to grow plants to directly feed ourselves.

If we stopped eating meat, it would not be good for the animals. Most of the large animals on Earth would become extinct; because they only exist because we eat them and raise them for food.

I doubt that they would become extinct, as some people would still keep a few of them. Even if they do, why would that be a bad thing? Why would they need to be kept around? To suffer?

 

[loseyourname]

There are plenty of studies which show a correlation between meat consumption and colorectal cancer. Study after study has shown vegetarians to have better circulatory systems and less cancer.

There are reasons for that have nothing to do with meat itself. The correlation with colon cancer has a lot to do with the quality of the meat, such as hormones that have been added to it and such. The negative correlation with the vegetarian diet has a lot to do with antioxidants in the vegetables being eaten, as well as with dietary supplementation. Vegetarians in general are more careful about their diet because, if they aren't, there can be serious consequences from eating a strictly vegetarian diet. This same positive effect can simply be achieved by eating more vegetables and better supplements while still eating meat.

Non-survival? From a societal survival point-of-view (as well as from a personal survival point-of-view), eating meat is ridiculous because it is ridiculously inefficient. You speak of the animals giving access to energy and materials we can't digest. The fact is that we grow plants to feed to animals. This is terribly inefficient. We could just use all those resources to grow plants to directly feed ourselves.

Eating meat isn't necessarily an inefficient use of energy. Many of the forms of meat farming used are, but the act of eating meat itself needn't be. For instance, eating beef that is corn-fed, although it is generally of higher quality, is wasteful because of more corn needs to be grown to support the cattle than would be needed to feed the people eating the cattle. However, if we just eat cattle that grazes on natural pastures, there is no real inefficiency as the cattle are in effect a natural resource themselves, plus not a lot of effort is needed to maintain a pasture. The same thing goes with eating fish. If the fish are farm-raised, we have an inefficiency. If, however, we simply eat fish that have been caught at sea (and don't overdo it), we really aren't harming anything.

Still, this is the one argument for vegetarianism I am actually sympathetic to. I do make an effort to eat mostly seafood that is caught at sea for this very reason. That and the evidence for experiential capacity in most fishes is scant.