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Plants Really Do 'Scream'. We've Simply Never Heard Them Until Now
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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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Vegans: .. uh.. now what?
Vegans consume fewer plants than anyone else. It takes a LOT of plants to raise a cow, pig, or chicken. From an economic point of view, meat is a way of refining mountains of cheap, plentiful, safe plant products into a scarce, harmful and addictive luxury product. This comes up a lot, you'd be amazed how many plants rights activists your average vegan runs into.
Vegans: we'll have only a little vegetable cruelty, as a treat.
Whatever keeps the high horse fed.
You're going to have to unpack this a bit more for me.
Edit: Ohhhh, you're another one of those plant rights activists. Buddy, I eat plants for breakfast. You know what? Now I'm going to eat twice as many plants, just because it upsets you.
Lol your reading comprehension.
Oh no, you're not better than anyone! Tragic.
Assholes like wiping shit off. Which is what the block button does to you.
Dumbest person on the internet today award goes to….. YOU!!! Congratulations 🎉🏆🎉
Unless you count grass and non-human consumables and non-potable water...sure...until then that's bullshit.
How is that bullshit? I am not vegan, but that's just a scientific consensus and a major reason why plant diet is way lower carbon than a meat diet. If you need to grow plant food for your animal food, eventually you have to grow way more plant food.
Most animals raised for meat consumption are fed with crops, notably soy, not wild grass.
Thinking animals raised for meat only consume resources (land (first cause of biodiversity loss), plants, water, energy) that would not be useful to humans anyway is undoubtedly wrong.
Researchers Poore and Nemecek are a great source of meta-analysis information about those subjects. Check this summary here for example: http://environmath.org/2018/06/17/paper-of-the-day-poore-nemecek-2018-reducing-foods-environmental-impacts/
Let me know if I misunderstood your point.
It's less important that such arguments be factually accurate than that they are superficially convincing enough to distract the person giving the argument from thoughts and feelings they are unwilling to process.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/50901500/px-based_v3.2/educ-matrls/pdfs/HO_what-cows-eat.pdf
We do not feed them food we can eat, it would be such a waste to do so. We literally feed them shit we cannot consume. Feeds are made from roots/stalks/inedible plants.
The vegan industry doesn't like this, so they say well that land could be used for other things, when in reality it's already being used for the food that we eat.
They are also fed grains and soy in varying percentage depending on regions and countries.
There is also still the use of land, energy, fresh water and the methane emissions typical of cows.
This is another break down of the above-mentioned study: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
You can see that indeed, the USA does better than other countries on not dedicating crops to animal feed, but it is still about 14%, while the world average is around 40%. Isn't that a lot that could be earned back?
Yes, but inefficiently.
What figures are you basing your ignorance off of? The majority of the plants humans grow through crop-based agriculture are fed to non-human animals. Animal ag is one of the largest consumers of fresh (ie "potable") water. There are ten animals living in human possession for every human on Earth. Without intensive plant agriculture, we could not possibly feed them all. Grass and run-off is not what is producing your food.
And since we are specifically discussing the hypothetical suffering of plants, why wouldn't you count grass? You're triggered.
Are you saying grass aren't plants? Why would it matter if the plant is consumable by humans if vegans are trying to minimize suffering?
Because they're not about minimizing suffering, it's about being morally superior to meat eaters and letting everyone know about it. The post I replied to, literally made that a point.
…addictive?
Addictive like water and air are addictive.
I challenge you to make an appetizing meal out of the plants (and specific cultivars!) used as animal feed.
Not a vegan: remember we raise a lot of these plants just as feed. If the reason to feed disappeared, so would the vast quantity of “not tasty” plants.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/50901500/px-based_v3.2/educ-matrls/pdfs/HO_what-cows-eat.pdf
No we do not...this is bullshit propagated by vegans. You cannot eat the shit cattle do.
Yes, but I can grow human food on the same plots of land.
Okay.
If you think pigs, chickens and cows have the same level of awareness and perception as broccoli, tomatoes or potatoes than you're the potato.
Humans have to eat and with the exception of a few minerals like salt, everything edible to humans is alive on some level. Vegansisn is making an ethical choice about reducing what causes the most pain fear and suffering in another. If I were to develop cancer, a tape worm or a virus should I also allow those living things to thrive as well or does "Uh, now what?" also apply to antibiotics?
How about I just get to eat meat because I consider it far more humane to be more efficient about proteins? And eggs and cheeses are more efficient with all sorts of aminos.
As much as I respect vegans I also don't agree with their approach. I am of the opinion (as is most biologists) that we are omnivores.
No vegans dispute this. In fact that is a large reason we point that meat is not a necessity to a healthy diet like many claim.
But fundamentally I'm not here to talk about veganism. You are entitled to your own beliefs, I only wanted to provide a complete answer to the "hypocritical vegans" comment that appears in every thread paints feeling pain. While I personally think deciding that things are most "humane" when they are "efficient" for you regardless of the effect it has on others is selfish and motivated reasoning, thus unethical. But this thread nor community is a place to discuss ethics, I clearly illuminated why equating plant rights and animal rights is silly, so frankly I would just like to end the discussion there. Thanks.
Well I do think getting protein from many sources makes more sense and easier to obtain. Are there other options? Absolutely. But how available are they at all times and how much do I need to eat to get the same amount? I hear what you are saying by selfishness but we kind of have to be. It's what fuels this giant meat puppet I move around daily.
You think vegans just eat blocks of tofu all day? My diet has never been more varied and flavorful than when I went vegan. Every single environmental impact study says animal agriculture is a bane to our continued existence, and it goes so far beyond that. Our lands and crops are swallowed up by this ever-rotating machine of suffering and murder that affects the lives of billions of land animals every year, which die terrified and in pain. No "varied protein" myth is worth so much suffering.
What? The entire point of veganism is that it is an entire order of magnitude more efficient than eating meat. Turns out all the land we use to feed animals we can just grow soybeans on instead. Speaking of which, you want amino acids? Wanna take a guess what has all the amino acids you need? That's right, tofu! It's widely recognized as the healthiest source of protein possible. That sets it apart from red or processed meat, which actively gives you heart disease and cancer.
Look, I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. If you want to eat meat despite the facts indicating you shouldn't, that's fine. Same as you can decide to smoke cigarettes and drive a Hummer. Just be aware that it's worse for both you and the entire planet.
Excessive soy beans has side effects as well. Most nutritionists (like doctors) agree that plant based with diversity of meats is the healthier option.
You don’t need those animal products for nothing. As most doctors are carnists and do not fully understand nutrition because they have not studied the topic much in their training.
Source
Eat people because they're potatoes, got it!
Or wait, it's "than"? Hmm...no, I can't think of how to turn it into a joke with a punchline of "than" being there instead of "then", lol
Haha as always, you do what you can
Won't someone think of the plants feelings?!?
What? The fact that plants physically react to being cut has absolutely no bearing on whether they have conscious experience.
Well, not in any way that we can relate to anyway. But that was the same with animals much earlier.
Maybe hundreds of years from now we can synthesize nutrients without involving any living cells. At that point, it could be seen as unethical to enslave, murder and eat billions of microbial cells. For the time being, our life still depends on other living things, so better get comfortable with having mixed feelings about survival.