3 ms·

Consuming meat and factory farming are not directly related things. Meat can just as well be produced by better farming methods or processes like hunting. Doesn

Consuming meat and factory farming are not directly related things. Meat can just as well be produced by better farming methods or processes like hunting. Doesn't mean that's how people end up getting their meet, but mostly people don't generate the chain of logistics they end up using, and it's not directly related to the product itself. This chain of thought also doesn't go anywhere, unless you want to end up a hermit of some sort, because pretty much every logistic chain is contaminated. > There are other equally ethical considerations: global warming, land use, energy/water use, etc. I feel that any one of these should give most people pause. Hmm. I'd say global warming et. al. is not even in the same universe ethics-wise compared to animal farming.

latch 8y ago
Is this a valid argument? You're right, consuming meat doesn't have to be related to factory farming. But consuming 220 pounds of meat, as far as I know, does.
- wott 8y ago
  Why? People have been raising or fattening a pig in their yard for ages. One or two pigs a year, add a couple of chickens on top of that, and here we go.
  - rabidrat 8y ago
    For ages there have not been billions of people. Now every year there are ~100m more people on the planet.
bspammer 8y ago
While it's true that it's pretty much impossible to be completely ethical as a consumer, surely the meat industry (more specifically, factory farming) causes orders of magnitude more suffering than pretty much anything else. Arguing that consumers aren't responsible for the method of production seems bizarre to me. Would you knowingly take cartel money as payment without any moral qualms?
- projektir 8y ago
  > Arguing that consumers aren't responsible for the method of production seems bizarre to me. It seems more bizarre to hold specifically consumers responsible to me. They're generally many levels removed from the source, and, in addition to that, a lot of consumers have very low power. Nor have I heard of many successful boycotts. I didn't get the impression that consumers are terribly influential on the logistics chains they use, they're just a convenient scapegoat so we don't have to actually blame the actual creators of those chains. There are plenty of ranges of products I've never used. They still exist. Not using certain products would have a negative influence on me, which is OK, if I felt like this also had a negative influence on the logistic chain. But it didn't, and won't. The scale is just all wrong. Politicians and businessmen are who actually have influence, or sometimes sociological effects, and one can't trivially choose to be a part of a sociological effect, and most of them are not ethics driven. The thing that will make a difference is things like regulations. > Would you knowingly take cartel money as payment without any moral qualms? I'm not familiar with situations where one would take cartel money in the first place, and I'm not comfortable saying that something I bought at some point didn't, somehow, involve cartel money. But I imagine there are groups of people who buy something of the sort, drugs, maybe, and the logistical chain is, again, not caused by them, and they should worry about other things. Like not being addicted to drugs.

latch 8y ago

Is this a valid argument? You're right, consuming meat doesn't have to be related to factory farming. But consuming 220 pounds of meat, as far as I know, does.

wott 8y ago
Why? People have been raising or fattening a pig in their yard for ages. One or two pigs a year, add a couple of chickens on top of that, and here we go.
- rabidrat 8y ago
  For ages there have not been billions of people. Now every year there are ~100m more people on the planet.

bspammer 8y ago

While it's true that it's pretty much impossible to be completely ethical as a consumer, surely the meat industry (more specifically, factory farming) causes orders of magnitude more suffering than pretty much anything else. Arguing that consumers aren't responsible for the method of production seems bizarre to me. Would you knowingly take cartel money as payment without any moral qualms?

projektir 8y ago
> Arguing that consumers aren't responsible for the method of production seems bizarre to me. It seems more bizarre to hold specifically consumers responsible to me. They're generally many levels removed from the source, and, in addition to that, a lot of consumers have very low power. Nor have I heard of many successful boycotts. I didn't get the impression that consumers are terribly influential on the logistics chains they use, they're just a convenient scapegoat so we don't have to actually blame the actual creators of those chains. There are plenty of ranges of products I've never used. They still exist. Not using certain products would have a negative influence on me, which is OK, if I felt like this also had a negative influence on the logistic chain. But it didn't, and won't. The scale is just all wrong. Politicians and businessmen are who actually have influence, or sometimes sociological effects, and one can't trivially choose to be a part of a sociological effect, and most of them are not ethics driven. The thing that will make a difference is things like regulations. > Would you knowingly take cartel money as payment without any moral qualms? I'm not familiar with situations where one would take cartel money in the first place, and I'm not comfortable saying that something I bought at some point didn't, somehow, involve cartel money. But I imagine there are groups of people who buy something of the sort, drugs, maybe, and the logistical chain is, again, not caused by them, and they should worry about other things. Like not being addicted to drugs.