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Remotely relevant story from The Guardian this week: Do you care about animals? Then you really shouldn't eat octopus - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre
by prawn 10y ago
Remotely relevant story from The Guardian this week:
Do you care about animals? Then you really shouldn't eat octopus - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/26/do-you-care-about-animals-then-you-really-shouldnt-eat-octopus http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/26/do-you-...
- tremon 10y agoWe should only care about animals if they're smart?
- GavinMcG 10y agoWho said anything about "only"? The article says: > No one who considers themselves interested in the inner lives of animals, the wonders and mysteries of the natural world, can eat cephalopods in good conscience. The article never says other animals are less deserving of care. The author is just particularly interested in octopus, and is appealing to the trait of intelligence.
- paride5745 10y agoI care about plants, therefore I do not eat them.
- headShrinker 10y agoMany plants prefer you eat them as a method of seed propagation. If you care about plants eat their seeds and crap them on the forest floor...
- prawn 10y agoMaybe it beats "because they're cute"? (FWIW, I eat meat and think squid are delicious. Just posting a related link to see what discussion comes of it.)
- wiz21c 10y agoI actually kill lobsters with a knife before eating them. Argh. Horror.
- delecti 10y agoThat's honestly my criteria. Cephalopods, birds, and mammals are smart enough that I have personal moral issues with killing them for food, so I exclude them from my diet.
- shanev 10y agoSo what do you eat? Because grain and vegetable farming destroys ecosystems which causes the death of many of these animals too.
- Houshalter 10y agoWhere do you think animal feed comes from? It takes the times more farmland to raise a cow vs making bread.
- nitrogen 10y agoHow much protein do you get from bread, though? A calorie is not a calorie.
- delecti 10y agoFrom 100 g of soybeans you get 36 g of protein, vs 30 g of protein from 100 g of beef. Barring strange niche medical concerns that don't affect the vast majority of the population, humans can live healthily without any meat products. Whether or not you personally choose to is not my concern, but the root of your argument doesn't really hold water.
- shanev 10y agoYes, but farming soybeans destroys land and is dependent on pesticides and chemicals from companies like Monsanto. Pasture-raised grass-fed beef instead revitalizes land, provides natural fertilizer for plant growth, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Not all meat is the same.
- 12238293 10y agoThe females of the species have a most unfortunate habit: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150223-mysteries-of-cannibal-octopus-sex http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150223-mysteries-of-canniba... The males are kind of accustomed to being eaten.
- Roboprog 10y ago"They're not just tentacles, they're genticles!" With apologies to Futurama.
- pvaldes 10y agoI'll suggest just ignoring this type of moral based statements structured as: 1- if A is true (meaning are you a good citizen or not?) 2- then do B Hiding the fact that A is a emotional statement and can fit in lots of opposite cases and circumstances because is ambiguous and moral based, and "moral" is an elusive and unmeasurable concept. Thus, A and B are presented as dependent variables without any proof of this, and in fact in most of the cases are unrelated. "Do you care about animals (preyed by nasty tentacular predators)? then you really should eat octopus", works perfectly also.
- nitrogen 10y agoA more useful conditional might be, "Do you avoid eating more intelligent animals? If so, you should avoid eating octopus."