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I'm pretty sure most people would disagree with you. People who choose vegetarianism for conscientious reasons don't do it because we've distanced ourselves fr

by sebular 11y ago

I'm pretty sure most people would disagree with you. People who choose vegetarianism for conscientious reasons don't do it because we've distanced ourselves from our sources of meat, they do it because we slaughter and torture an unthinkably large number of living beings in order to get a chicken bacon sandwich. Some people lament what you're talking about, and they do it equally for raising livestock as well as growing and harvesting our own fruits and vegetables. That growing distance between us and our food production is certainly an issue, but it's the infinitely lesser one compared to the violence of meat consumption. Given that humans crave the types of food they crave, I don't see lab-grown meat as anything but a pure win for science, humanity, and all living beings. In my mind, it's an achievement on par with fire, the wheel, electricity, antibiotics/sterilization, and the internet.

pcmaffey 11y ago
I certainly understand this POV, as I once held it, until living and working on an off-grid farm. My point is that the abhorrence towards animal slaughter has more to do with the industrialized process, and the poor treatment of animals because of mass market demands, then the fact that animals are killed. Animals can be raised and killed in a humane way, and doing so teaches us about the natural cycle of life, a reminder of our mortality. We can certainly choose to abstain from that cycle. But as you say, humans crave the foods they crave. I will venture a guess and say that lab-grown meat will not satisfy that craving. Like GMO tomatoes, it may appear all the same, but beneath the shiny appearance of a solution will be a vacuous gap in substance. We can erode our "food pyramid" with cheap, artificial solutions, or we can do the real work of (1) creating sustainable, humane food systems, and (2) educating people about healthy diets and thus curbing the global craving for flesh. Lastly, what will happen to all the chickens, pigs, cows, etc of the world? Like horses, they will become domestic novelties. People like me will raise them and give them a good life, while their world population shrinks to negligence, until eventually, they are forgotten to extinction, but for the symbolic names of their imitation meat. "Chicken" will be a brand, an algorithm that only slightly differs from the "Steak" algorithm.
pvaldes 11y ago
they do it because they think that we slaughter and torture an unthinkably large number of living beings in order to get a chicken bacon sandwich. And this is a point of view that other people do not share, or that is not a problem for most people, and that often lead to the search for twisted, ilogical and even surrealist shorcuts to circunvent the problem. ... soy and lattices are living beings also (as the hundred of thousands of species of plants, fungi and insects that lived in the meadows that are now sterile soy plant highways and that we poisoned in order to get a tofu sandwich).

by sebular 11y ago

pcmaffey 11y ago

I certainly understand this POV, as I once held it, until living and working on an off-grid farm. My point is that the abhorrence towards animal slaughter has more to do with the industrialized process, and the poor treatment of animals because of mass market demands, then the fact that animals are killed. Animals can be raised and killed in a humane way, and doing so teaches us about the natural cycle of life, a reminder of our mortality. We can certainly choose to abstain from that cycle. But as you say, humans crave the foods they crave. I will venture a guess and say that lab-grown meat will not satisfy that craving. Like GMO tomatoes, it may appear all the same, but beneath the shiny appearance of a solution will be a vacuous gap in substance. We can erode our "food pyramid" with cheap, artificial solutions, or we can do the real work of (1) creating sustainable, humane food systems, and (2) educating people about healthy diets and thus curbing the global craving for flesh. Lastly, what will happen to all the chickens, pigs, cows, etc of the world? Like horses, they will become domestic novelties. People like me will raise them and give them a good life, while their world population shrinks to negligence, until eventually, they are forgotten to extinction, but for the symbolic names of their imitation meat. "Chicken" will be a brand, an algorithm that only slightly differs from the "Steak" algorithm.

pvaldes 11y ago

they do it because they think that we slaughter and torture an unthinkably large number of living beings in order to get a chicken bacon sandwich. And this is a point of view that other people do not share, or that is not a problem for most people, and that often lead to the search for twisted, ilogical and even surrealist shorcuts to circunvent the problem. ... soy and lattices are living beings also (as the hundred of thousands of species of plants, fungi and insects that lived in the meadows that are now sterile soy plant highways and that we poisoned in order to get a tofu sandwich).