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Animals
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Of course they will. I'm sure that I also would've reverted to cannibalism if I would have been involved in the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. But considering normal circumstances: what's the point of killing animals when you don't need to?
That's great, but the question still remains. Why kill any animal at all when you don't need to? Unlike the cat in the comic, you've got a choice.
So you do it because you like it. A cow needs to be killed because you want taste pleasure?
I want to chime in on what @NumbersCanBeFun said.
Yes, an animal has to die because I want meat. That's how it works for now. We are still omnivores, we are able to eat both plants and meat and both taste good to us. If we wouldn't be able to process meat we wouldn't eat it. Koalas can sustain themselves on eucalyptus, we can't. Which brings up another important topic when it comes to meat.
Most Farm animals are an intermediate step between inedible plants and us. We can't eat gras or weeds even though they are plenty, require minimum care and grow mostly everywhere. Grasing animals can, so we let them turn inedible gras into edible meat or drinkable milk. Pigs and chickens go even further. They eat basically anything we would consider inedible food waste. End stems, roots, seeds, shells, peels everything we would usually throw out into compost, pigs or chickens can and will eat. So animals and therefore meat are a way to get the most nutrition out of you environmental flora and fauna.
This, I am totally fine with. But once we started growing crops specifically to feed livestock to capitalize on cheap meat is where I disagree with the morality of eating said meat. If you want meat, buy the expensive gourmet stuff from the butcher not the packaged meat from the freezer. Also vegetarian or vegan alternatives like "Beyond Meat" are getting pretty close in taste, texture and price to regular ground meat.
Thanks for being reasonable and presenting coherent arguments.
Yes, we are able to process meat and are omnivores. However to the best of scientific knowledge you can thrive on a well planned vegan diet throughout all stages of life, including pregnancy (my vegan wife is currently pregnant), childhood and old age. This is not a matter of debate, but a scientific question and it has been thoroughly answered. All the major health institutes in the world say this: American Dietitians and Nutritionists Associations, NHS, etc. You can look it up yourself, I am on mobile.
So just because we can eat meat, does it make it right when we don't have to in order to be healthy and happy? Animals posses a consciousness according to science as well. You can look up the cambridge declaration of consciousness.
You make a fair point about animals eating plants that we can't digest. From a climate perspective I agree with you. IF it were better for the environment than that would be an argument in favor of eating animals, if you are willing to completely disregard the sentience and right to life of these animals. However the current statistics don't lie. Again this is a scientific question. A vegan diet emits almost half the green house gasses than the omnivore diet. Even the so-called sustainable meats don't outperform a vegan diet: https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
As it stands eating meat is bad for the animals, bad for the environment and unnecessary to anyone who has the means and ability to eat a well planned vegan diet. Would you agree?
I partialy agree. And I want to preface this by saying I'm in full support of a heavily reduced meat consumption in out daily lives, even to the extend of vegeterianism, for the sake of animals and the enviroment. The negative consequences of our current rate of consumption are clearly evident in scientific data from mutlple sources, some of which you already presented. Empirically this is also evident in our daily lives through disgustingly low discounter meat prices and summer heat hot enough to melt ashpalt. I won't dare to argue about consciousness either.
I myself consume only about 20% of my national average meat intake per capita which is still roughly 300-400g per week away from zero. Not because of my effort to consume less, but because I can't phantom how a normal person could have thatuch more meat in their diet. But I'm by no means a saint, my diet still heavily relies on diary products, honey and eggs (which each deserve a discussion of their own). The meat that I still consume is mostly heavily processed like salami, jerky or smoked bacon. Basically things which taste can not be replicated by a meat alternative.
The discussion about eating meat is an ever more prevalent topic in my personal life. And since it's already proven that meat isn't an absolute nutritional necessity, I would never argue on that point and condemn everyone who does. While excessive meat consumption (meat in every meal for example) is an open and shut case, regulated meat consumption is a lot harder to debate. I've been on both sides of the argument and have come across a few points that are very hard to argue against. I would really like to hear some opinions from somebody who is probably more well read on this topic than I am.
1. Entitlement
This is more of an ethical or philosophical issue. We as humans are, according to us, the intellectually dominant species on earth. As for hunting, one of us with a sharpened stick is already a force to be reckoned with. Put a couple of us in a group and nothing but the biggest apex predators or extremophiles are safe from us. We are just that damn good at it. The argument here is that, by rules of nature, we are entitled to hunt and consume our preferred prey as predators with disregard of our preys feeling or opinion of us. Furthermore, we are in general very good to animals, even if they are a threat to us. If a cat starts hissing at us or a goose spreads its wings and tries to bite or ankles most people turn away and try to deascalate, even though we have the physical strength to twist their head of. Since we've been good to most animals we should be excussed from the cruelty to the few. Some argue that this is an excuse to consume meat because (and this is a direct quote I've heard) "If animals don't want to be eaten then they should've grown thumbs and done something about it.".
My personal opinion on that is, that it might apply in the wilderness if you are stranded in the woods or desert, but not if your meat comes prekilled, presliced and prepackaged from the supermarket. Sure you have the rights to your kill, but how many of us would actually like to directly kill for food?
2. Culture
Some cultures are meat centric. You have grill fests or BBQs as family events, most national recipes revolve around meat, or you are regarded as less attractive if you refrain from eating meat. Some see the the non-appreciative stance toward meet as a direct attack because (another direct quote) "Do you know how much this meat costs?". Meat becomes a status symbol and a form of belonging. And while veganism might be the right thing to do, it is hard to take the high road quietly. Food is integral to our sense of community and belonging. Some people are not ready to face those changes and therefore will not refrain from eating meat.
Personally I think that veganism has become mainstream enough over the past 2 decades to the point where this is not a good excuse aside from individuals with the most ironclad hold on their outdated opinions
3. Eating disorders
If you are able to change your diet to be fully plant based you should. But it requires a big adjustment, planning and dedication. Some people struggle with putting food I their mouth no matter whether it's meat or not. If just the thought of eating gives you a mental breakdown, telling that person that they have to put in even more mental work into something that's already draining is not an argument in good faith. For them the research data of the nutritional importance of meat doesn't apply. It just do happens to be that fatty meat is extremely energy dense and nutritious, so less is more in this case.
I'd argue that this is a fringe case and those people are truly not responsible for the problems we are facing. Also veganism or vegetarianism might be the first step towards taking back control from their disorder, because it requires research and an understanding of nutrition.
4. Taste
"There's no accounting for taste" is a vers true saying. There's nothing short of trauma that has to happen to a person to change their taste. While a good caesars salat with a balsamico dressing, bruschetta or pasta with basil pesto and tomato's sound very good. There's also something very good about a medium rare steak, spare ribs drenched in BBQ sauce, hot wings or bratwurst. Becoming vegan is basically locking yourself out of 50% of the available pallet. To make another direct quote: "If god didn't want us to eat beef, he wouldn't have made cows so damn delicious.".
I got nothing on that one. It's the reason why I'm still eating meat. Some meats just taste so good that my monkey brain can forget about all the cruelty done to all the animals. Personal preference and in extend personal freedom is the hardest to argue against. I know it's hypocritical and irrational, but I would never harm an animal but I would definetly eat their meat.
Once again thanks for a coherent stream of thoughts. It seems we're not that far apart.
What you call entitlement has also been called "might makes right". This is similar to saying "history is written by the victors". Yes, we are the ultimate apex predator on this planet, but we should be careful not to view everything we invented as right by default. So many people fall in that trap and this is also the reason why there is an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance around this topic.
People think of themselves as inherently good and can not fathom the idea that they might be doing something bad (are we the baddies?). Being confronted with evidence to the contrary some people get angry, others will come up with all kinds of lame excuses (cough plants feel pain cough). Take for example the @NumbersCanBeFun, the guy you picked up this thread from, he just called me an asshole. Why? Sorry, for pointing out the fact that you pay for the murder of animals for taste pleasure, I guess?
You say that in general we are good to animals, but this holds only true on the very surface level of things. Look behind the curtains of the food industry and you'll see that we're causing the world wide death of 80 billion land animals each year. That is 10 times the amount of people we have on the planet. Each year. And then I've not even counted the 200 million of tons of fish killed each year. We act like we care about animals and get all outraged if a dog goes wild in the park and bites a swan, but we see trucks of animals being shipped to the slaughterhouse without blinking an eye. Perhaps we need to be a bit more honest and have a good impartial look at our own actions instead of just acting out our entitlement.
The animals that we abuse are innocent and vulnerable. In all other walks of life we tend to want to be extra caring and protective of the innocent and vulnerable, but because of the way we evolved we now find ourselves in the positions of monsters. If that does not resonate with you than I recommend you watch the documentary Dominion and have a deep dive in what we do to animals.
You are very right that in the jungle the rules are different though. I'd kill a pig if my survival depends on it for sure, but I want to be able to justify what I do in my current circumstances and those are extremely far removed from a survival situation.
On culture I just agree with what you said, but culture changes over time and veganism hasn't been a show stopper for any major cultural events I know of except for the ones that are specifically about hurting or killing animals. I've organised quite a few vegan BBQ's; it's delicious and just as much fun.
On eating disorders I'd just like to quote the official definition of veganism by the vegan society: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose". By that definition one could be vegan and still include animal products in their diet if for whatever reason that is as far as is possible and practicable for that person. I know of some vegan activists who need certain medications that include animal products or were tested on animals. They don't like it, but they've got a pretty good reason to not seek to exclude these medications. Same goes for people with eating disorders and people who are still learning to adopt a healthy vegan diet, which does indeed take some time and effort.
Yes, one can't argue taste, but to say that veganism locks you out of 50% of the available pallet is seriously overestimating the taste of animal products. I remember that when I went vegan I also thought I was giving up 50%, but I was very happy to discover it was really only a small percentage. Once you go vegan you discover that most things you love are because of the herbs, spices, sugar, salt, texture, smokiness, umami, fat, etc. This is reported nearly universally amongst vegans, but you've got to give it a fair try before you can discover the truth (or falsehood) of what I say. It takes a little while before you know all the tricks that are available to satisfy all your taste desires without animal products.
This shows a lot of honesty and I applaud you for it. Yes, it is indeed hypocritical, but it takes courage to be able to admit that. I was a hypocrite too, but I didn't want to be, so I changed my ways. All I can say is that I wish I had done it earlier.
It is hard to become vegan if you're only thinking of yourself and what you sacrifice, but it is easy to become vegan if you're thinking of the victims involved in your food choices. For those who have rid themselves of society's carnist brainwash and actually see a steak for what it is, the flesh of a cow that was murdered in cold blood, these foods start to lose their appeal. Usually that happens after people become vegan and have properly dealt with their meat addiction. You may feel some of that disgust after you've watched Dominion though.
Dominion is what completely turned me off of chicken. I was always on the fence about chicken meat. I never saw the appeal in chicken fillet anyway. Even the best I've ever tasted was barely OK. Its just not worth the way we treat those animals, and especially the way we "process" them. Allthough I miss the time our neighbors had a couple of chickens and we got fresh surplus eggs from them for free.
The reason why I overestimated the importance of meat flavor is probably due to my upbringing. When I was a kid a meal was mostly something - with meat on the side. So meat was basically half the meal. Now I've gotten a lot better with balancing my diet, this is also partially due to vegan friends that showed me recepies I haven't tried before.
I think that is a fairly healthy approach to reducing your meat intake. Every new vegan meal I find that I also enjoy reduces the relative prevalence of meat in my diet. I'm at a point were I sometimes go a full week with no meat without noticing. Besides salmon trout which my dad catches on his fishing trips as a hobby, I don't eat any fish. Its just to much work to get the bones out of smaller fish, and bigger foshbdoesnt fit on the freezer. And again the taste is "meh" at best. I can't really speak on this topic from personal experience because I live in a country that has no access to larger bodies of water and has therefore no real fish cuisine.
My main gripe is the unnecessary cruelty at industrial farmers and butchers. I think If we could all drastically reduce our meat demands, there wouldn't be any necessity for the cruelty in meat production. I live in a rural area with a lot of farmers. Some of them (or more precisely their sons and daughters) I even know personally. I've seen how well the animals are treated. Farmers usually don't like parting with their animals as much as we don't like to part with our pets. Thats why butchers are a profession of their own. That meat is also expensive, 40-50€ a kilo, as opposed to the 10-20€ at the supermarket. That in my opinion is OK. The animals live a fulfilled life past their prime, have top of the line medical care and are protected from all predetors and natural threats. They also have a grassing area multiple times the size of the town. Meat should be a benefit of rural areas and be priced higher or be straight up unavailable in bigger cities. That is basically how it was before industrial refrigerators and mobile refrigerators became a thing. Now you can get a burger for cheap in a city that hasn't seen a living cow in a century.
We're breeding these animals into existence purely for economical reasons and deciding for them what a good life is and when they've had a "fulfilled life" and "past their prime" just so we can send them to the slaughterhouse? How is that not entitlement? I mean put yourself in the position of the victim. How would you feel if I controlled your entire existence then told you that've "you have a fulfilled life" and send you off to the slaughterhouse. Would you think I am being compassionate? Common man, can't you see how fucked up that is? Even if we would do this to our pets, people would be outraged: "oh yeah, my dog is getting a few gray hairs and is not able to run so fast anymore as he used to. He is past his prime, let's just put him down and get a new one." People would be outraged! When we do put pets down at the vet it is because we know that the rest of their life would be miserable, not because they're "past their prime".
And then you tend to forget that when you're talking about cows, that we're also stealing their babies from them constantly. Where are all the bulls roaming around? Male calfs reach their prime at the ripe old age of 6 to 9 months and their mothers reach their prime at the ripe old age of 5 to 7 years. Cows can live up to 25 years! If you're not going to eat chicken, you should definitely not eat beef.
And what about pigs? Where do you still see pigs roam around at all? They're all in big barns. Pigs usually reach their prime in less than a year and never even see daylight properly.
Farmers may not hate their animals and even may delude themselves that they really care about their animals, but this all within the constraints of the economical system that they feel is immutable and the natural order of things. If you love an animal and that animal is still healthy and wants to live, you're not going to send it to the slaughterhouse. Can you come up with a counter argument to that statement? If not, then you've got to conclude: farmers do not really love their animals. Farmers are part of an economical system in which animals are the products and producers. Farmers are mainly looking out for their investments.
And then another thing. Don't step into the trap of comparing these farm animals to wild animals (you didn't, but I want to preempt this argument). They are not. First of all, there are waay too many of these farm animals. I mean, we're killing 80 billion a year, so go figure how much artificial insemination farmers are doing. Second of all, these animals are total frankenstein monsters. You've got chickens who lay 300+ eggs a year (which is nearly 30 times what they used to lay). You've got cows that produce 10.000 liters of milk a year. Broilers chickens that can nearly not support their own weight after 50 days. Pigs that grow to 150kg in 6 months. These animals are not part of nature's order and nature would wipe them from the face of the planet in a second if all cages would be opened. It's an abomination.
You know, I get a little frustrated with this conversation, because at least you're willing to be honest and present coherent arguments, but then you still don't see how fucked up our human supremacy over animals is and want to paint rosy pictures about animals who are well cared for by farmers. Have you ever visited a pig slaughterhouse? I challenge you to it. In most places you can hear the pigs screaming even when you stand outside the gate. The pigs that are shipped there are terrified out of their mind, you can see it in their eyes. You look at a few cows in a pasture on a sunny day and think: oh, they've got a good life, but you're not there when their babies are taking away from them or when they stand in the stables for 6 months during the winter time. You're also not thinking of all the cows that never even get to be in a pasture. Did you know that 99% of animals in the US are factory famed? Maybe you should do some actual research into what you're actually contributing to when you order that pizza pepperoni. It's not a rosy picture. (By the way, processed meats are also classed a group one carcinogen by the WHO, which means the level of evidence that it is carcinogenic is as strong as the level of evidence that we have for asbestos, plutonium and tobacco).
And one more thing. How come it is okay for your dad to go into the wild and actually kill salmons when he totally doesn't need to do that? What kind of a hobby is that? Fish are way more intelligent than we think and, yes damnit, they feel pain. Killing animals for sport is the summum of human entitlement.
Sorry, I would have answered sooner but my Lemmy instance was down and I took some time to look into the things you've mentioned.
Regarding cows and cattle. I have to admit I was wrong in my conception of a cattle cows lifespan. The cattle I was familiar with are dairy cows with the longest productive lifespan of roughly 5-6 years. Most other cattle for meat production are being culled at thr age of 2-3 (Bulls) or <1 (Calves). Which compared to their avarege natural life expectancy of 20-25 years is a lot lower. Here's a nice Article, detailing the reasons for said culling age as well as implications of higher or lower culling age. An interesting factor is that an increase in culling age of dairy cows suggest an increase in offspring and therefore the surplus of cows being used for meat purposes and therefore being culled younger.
In an effort to find out the averege lifespan of wild cows (to make a comparison between forced culling and natural death causes like predetors and disease) I've stubbled oppon the fact that there are no more wild cows left in Europe. The reason being that the orignial european wild cows called Aurochs have gone extinct a couple of centuries ago. The main reason being our own expansion into their habitant and hunting. We cut down forests that they used for shelter to get wood and claimed their grassing land for our own domesticated animals and farms. Domestication efforts of Aurochs in Europe, Africa and Asia began somewhere around 9000BC and let to the cattle that we have now.
But this still didn't answer my question about a wild cows averege life span. So I looked into a place were killing cows is considered illegal - India. Turns out their cattle is treated just as badly as you would expect from a third world country. Just as in Europe or the US, dairy cattle in India becomes unprofitable beyond 5 - 6 years of age. Afterwards they are either illegally slaughtered in secrecy or driven to slaughter houses outside of India. An Article (which I dont fully trust because it doesn't provide any sources) mentioned the inability of cattle to survive outside of farms in the modern world, due to extensive energy requirements that simple grasing can't provide.
All this hints at the fact that grasing animals are not compatible with inevidable human expansion outside of domestication and farming. If we were to release all our cattle it would either die due to inability to sustain itself or would become a threat to our other agricultural branches. So its either cattle at farms or no cattle at all. You said it yourself, nature would wipe those freaks out in a second.
As for Pigs, I have the same stance as with chickens. We selectively bread them to produce as much meat as possible in the shortest amount of time and the consequence is that the meat tastes horrible. Industrial pigs meat has the highest water to meat ratio to the point where its basically an inexcusable financial scam on top of an ethical atrocity. Compared to flavor rich and dense wild boar meat (which are hunted because they mutliply like bunnies, are highly invasive/territorial and an actual threat to hikers and other wildlife in europe), its sad to think that people are OK with the billions of pigs beings being inhumanly held and slaughtered to ditch out some subpar watery meat. But on the filp side, I can understand why some find it a lot harder to sympathise with pigs, because, while they are still innocent animals and the cruelty in our treatment is unjustified, a pig would gladly eat you or your family without thinking twice if given the chance. I've found numerous sources that suggest that animals like Pigs have consciousness and feel pain, but none that they have a simple sense of morality - which some animals actually do.
I would like to hear your opinion on the possibility of lab grown meat. Basically just muscle and fat tissue with no consciousness or nervous system.
As for fish, I think fishing as a hobby is absolutely fine, as long as you don't do it because you simply want to kill fish for sport. Mostly it encourages a healthier lifestyle and enviromental awareness. 99% of fishing as a hobby is research, preparation and patience, not the killing part. Here is a beautiful poetic take on that topic by somebody who is far better versed than I am.
Because recreational anglers are not doing it for profit, they also directly oppose the philosophy of industrial fisheries. There is no incentive to take more fish than you need, so every angler potetialy denies a whole family of people as customers of industrial fishieries. As far as my personal experience goes, nearly 100% of the fish caught has been consumed and none of it has gone to waste. The same can not be said about industrial fisheries.
Theres also a big diffence between fishing with a kilometer wide netting on a ship, or a hook and some bread. There's a big lid on the damage you can do to the fish population with a fishing rod. Fishing with a rod is a matter of chance, sometimes you fish for a whole day and nothing bites and thats fine. It just means you got unlucky or haven't fully understood your enviroment.
Furthemore, those are wild fish, they already have many predetors and humans are just one of them. This goes back to what I said earlier about us being "damn good hunters". Fish are literally far outside of our element, naturally we do not excell at fishing to the extend that adapted aquatic predetors are. I've seen caught fish that have clearly been recently attacked by other predetors and saw the bread on a hook as an easy snack. We also kill them way more humanly than nature does. They often get eaten alive and slowly suffocate in a bigger fishes stomach, or have chunks bitten out of them and succumb to the infection or loss of mobility (those are both cases I personal saw). Sure, the process of reeling a fish in by a hook in its mouth is pretty gruesome, but so is fighting a predator with razor sharp fins and teeth. And once we got them we just hit them with a stick and put their lights out. And yes, just like any other being with a nervous system we can expect the fish to feel pain. But we can also expect it to make it's own decision for survival. A lot of fish can swim by a lure and only the ones with bad instict will bite. Their natural predetors are not above using even crueler tactics.
Plus the fish has to be counted, weighed and payed for at a station. That way the population is being tracked and its ensured that the lake is not overfished. That is in my opinion by far the most humane way to get fish if you want one. I think at that point you are not asking somebody not to do something, but rather not to want something, and that's an entirely different story.
As mentioned before I am against any form of industrial mass slaughter of animals. If a farming animals life span and quality of life is solely dependent on it's profitability, then let meat and milk be as expensive as gold, even if it means that I never will be able to afford another steak again.
I am however not against private family owned farms and butchers. I'd rather have them take proper care of their animals all through the late stages of their life, than let yet another species go extinct, because we stopped supporting its existence. Right now the dail of meat production is turned all the way up to corporate and we have to turn it back to local to make eating meat moraly acceptable in my opinion.
I also just don't understand the moral duality of everything on the planet being allowed to kill each other in the most cruel and brutal ways imaginable, except us humans, who must stand above everything and have a zero tolerance policy. Yes we kill tens of billions of animals a year, but what is that compared to the trillions that kill each other? It's just biomass turnaround that has been going on for billions of years. The real issue is the loss of biodiversity in the oceans and on land. We have clear preferences of animals we want and don't want in our surroundings, regardless of the consequences of their vanishing.
The discussion about meat consumption is mostly an environmental one. As evidence shows its far easier for people to look past the cruelty of the subject, but ignoring rising prices and temperatures isn't. And this I believe, is what will eventually cause a global change in regard to our meat based diets. It is getting more difficult to provide food for our growing population due to climate extremes, and radical methods in animal handling are a product of that.
Isn't this the fight that advocates for veganism are actually fighting? It's not about getting every last person to never touch meat again, but rather to get corporations to dip into red numbers long enough to have them do a 180 on meat. The same thing is happening now with car manufacturers and electric vehicles. Before they were industrialized, combustion engines where a luxury item and once the industry moves on, they will become one once again. I hope that the same thing will happen to the meat industry. Thats where my full support lies.
Why so defensive? I was politely asking questions. Perhaps you don't feel too comfortable with your answers?
Sure, we all die, but that cow got a bolt gun too the head at approximately one fifth its lifespan. That's an important difference, I would say.
I don't want to control you. If you are fine with killing animals for your taste pleasure than that's your choice. I don't think that shows a lot of empathy, but that's my opinion and there's no logical argument against it. We're not all the same.