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I don't get the feel that you're having a go, no worries :) I think there are two parts to this: we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _als

I don't get the feel that you're having a go, no worries :) I think there are two parts to this: we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals, so from my perspective it seems that we can apply most or all points about the negatives of cropping to the cropping that is done to support animal agriculture. So if cropping is bad, it's still bad when we do it for the animals we intend to eat. Secondly, and this is argument I don't make often because its _really_ not popular (but you seem like a great person so I'm happy to share!), I just don't think animals exist to provide or serve us. They are their own beings, and we are ours. Personally, I don't care if someone treats their animals like absolute royalty. If we kill them, or we forcibly impregnate them and remove their children so we can have their milk, it's wrong to me. But again, this is not an argument many people are swayed by, so I don't generally mention it.

masonic 5y ago
we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals But... we can raise food and dairy animals on a combination of natural range grazing and agricultural byproducts that otherwise need to be disposed of (e.g. cotton seeds, almond hulls, distillers' and brewers' spent grains, etc.)
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.
  - gwd 5y ago
    Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2. The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes vegetarian? Are people going to keep them as pets? No -- they're simply not going to exist. Isn't it better to have free-range chicken and cattle, which have happy little animal lives, and then are quickly and painlessly killed, than to have (almost) no chicken and cattle at all?
    - tommit 5y ago
      Uhm ... I would personally say yes. First of all, the "painlessly killed" part is pretty wishful thinking/rationalization on your behalf. In many cases, the killing is not at all painful. Of course the other part makes for a pretty good ethical debate. Is it better to live a miserable life and die and early and unnatural death than it is to never be born at all? There is no right answer, but I myself feel like I wouldn't wish that kind of life on ANY conscious being. Is that a life you would want to life? Last, none of the think-of-the-animals vegans, as you so nicely put it, would kid themselves about what were to happen to the already existing farm animals, should be stop/greatly reduce our collective meat intake. They are already doomed. They were doomed the second they were given birth to, which brings us back to the original part. Most of us think-of-the-animals vegans would prefer if we could stop doing that going forward. I'm sorry to shake up your picture of happy little animal-life living chicken and cattle, frolicking on a green meadow, until one day they drop dead and become happy little meals. That is among the most delusional view of modern farming I can think of. Don't buy into the pictures companies put on their products. And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue.
      - gwd 5y ago
        > And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue. Right, but this goes back to my first paragraph. I would argue that most people do not have the moral effort to entirely give up meat voluntarily. There is some subset of people who are willing to make inconvenient life choices out of consideration of the lives of animals. You can convince these people to become vegans; or you can convince these people to only buy ecologically sound and minimum-suffering animal products. (For the sake of argument, let's call these "ethical" animal products, even though I know you may not agree with that label.) The more people you convince to become vegans, the fewer people are buying "ethical" animal products. The smaller the market for "ethical" animal products, the less incentive there is for people selling animal products to try to do so "ethically". > Is that a life you would want to life? Imagine a future where some hyper-intelligent alien species has taken over basically most habitable places in the galaxy, including the most habitable places on earth. We are unable to understand nearly any of these aliens' motivations or thought processes, much less their technology, and unable to offer them anything of value in terms of economic production: there is nothing we can do that they, or their machines, can't do better. There are a few "reserves" for humans on earth where we're allowed to live "wild", but these are overcrowded and have no natural resources other than sunlight and (relatively poor) soil: all the minerals of value are extracted by the aliens. But, there is one thing we can offer them: we ourselves are a delicacy, and some of the aliens at least are willing to pay a high price for the chance of consuming (whatever that means -- nobody's quite sure if it's eating or something else) a healthy 30-year-old human. These aliens aren't ethical enough to let us spread throughout the galaxy on our own terms; but they are ethical enough not to do anything we haven't consented to. So there's always an open offer, available between the ages of 12 and 18, to any human: to stay in one of the "human reserves", or enter the "cattle" program. If you're on the cattle program, you have freedom of movement through many places in the galaxy. Your health is taken care of, and there are lots of opportunities to socialize with other humans, to learn from them, to express art or music or whatever; but, the vast majority of you will, at the age of 30, be quickly killed and consumed by the aliens. Particularly healthy men may be allowed to live longer for "captive breeding" programs (if they consent to do so); and many women will have the option to enter a "captive breeding" program as well, in which they bear children every two or three years until they're 40. Children raised in the captive breeding program are also given the option, between 12 and 18, of going to the "human reserve" to live out their life there as well as they can. So, here's the question: You're about to turn 18. Life in a human reserve is little better than stone age, since there are no natural resources upon which to build technology. Do you live out your 50 or 60 years (average life expectancy without advanced health care) in the freedom of a stone age society? Or do you travel the galaxy, having advanced technology and medical care, until you're 30? Of course some people would chose to live in freedom; but I'm pretty sure there would be a pretty big uptake for being eaten. I'm pretty sure cows, if they could be made to understand the proposition would be the same way. A handful would prefer to live in the wild, getting their own food, having no health care or shelter or protection from predators; but most would probably choose the life of free-range cattle, ending in death.
  - necovek 5y ago
    You can "trivially" solve that by increasing the cost of the meat: if "non-humane" animal raising was forbidden, as a mental exercise, what would happen other than prices going up? Before the expansion of animal farming (60-100 years ago), meat was usually Sunday-lunch material in most of the world.
tomcam 5y ago
I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right?
- vinni2 5y ago
  Good point except we are the woke moral and intelligent beings?
  - tomcam 5y ago
    That’s a pretty compelling argument of course.
- atweiden 5y ago
  > I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right? Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you, and would generally never harm you unless provoked. Breeding intelligent lifeforms in a bespoke way to murder them for cash — whatever the reason or creature involved — is diabolically evil. If you do this for a living, you’re a merchant of death in my book.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Cows are opportunistic omnivorous and will eat meat if its small enough to be swallowed whole. They don't have much of an instinct to hunt, they not have the teeth to cut large animals into parts, nor do they have the stomach acid or immune system to eat partially rotten meat. There is nothing however to stop them from eating small amount of fresh meat, such as the very young of other animals and insects.
  - tomcam 5y ago
    Well... look up things like “cow eating chicken” or “deer eating bird” on YouTube. Not saying it’s common, but “never” is perhaps too strong a word. And of course I really meant it in a larger sense, not the direct ruminant/person relationship.

masonic 5y ago

we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals But... we can raise food and dairy animals on a combination of natural range grazing and agricultural byproducts that otherwise need to be disposed of (e.g. cotton seeds, almond hulls, distillers' and brewers' spent grains, etc.)

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.
- gwd 5y ago
  Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2. The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes vegetarian? Are people going to keep them as pets? No -- they're simply not going to exist. Isn't it better to have free-range chicken and cattle, which have happy little animal lives, and then are quickly and painlessly killed, than to have (almost) no chicken and cattle at all?
  - tommit 5y ago
    Uhm ... I would personally say yes. First of all, the "painlessly killed" part is pretty wishful thinking/rationalization on your behalf. In many cases, the killing is not at all painful. Of course the other part makes for a pretty good ethical debate. Is it better to live a miserable life and die and early and unnatural death than it is to never be born at all? There is no right answer, but I myself feel like I wouldn't wish that kind of life on ANY conscious being. Is that a life you would want to life? Last, none of the think-of-the-animals vegans, as you so nicely put it, would kid themselves about what were to happen to the already existing farm animals, should be stop/greatly reduce our collective meat intake. They are already doomed. They were doomed the second they were given birth to, which brings us back to the original part. Most of us think-of-the-animals vegans would prefer if we could stop doing that going forward. I'm sorry to shake up your picture of happy little animal-life living chicken and cattle, frolicking on a green meadow, until one day they drop dead and become happy little meals. That is among the most delusional view of modern farming I can think of. Don't buy into the pictures companies put on their products. And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue.
    - gwd 5y ago
      > And if you say "well but I buy my meat from my local butcher..." ok cool. Most people still don't, and won't, and that's the real issue. Right, but this goes back to my first paragraph. I would argue that most people do not have the moral effort to entirely give up meat voluntarily. There is some subset of people who are willing to make inconvenient life choices out of consideration of the lives of animals. You can convince these people to become vegans; or you can convince these people to only buy ecologically sound and minimum-suffering animal products. (For the sake of argument, let's call these "ethical" animal products, even though I know you may not agree with that label.) The more people you convince to become vegans, the fewer people are buying "ethical" animal products. The smaller the market for "ethical" animal products, the less incentive there is for people selling animal products to try to do so "ethically". > Is that a life you would want to life? Imagine a future where some hyper-intelligent alien species has taken over basically most habitable places in the galaxy, including the most habitable places on earth. We are unable to understand nearly any of these aliens' motivations or thought processes, much less their technology, and unable to offer them anything of value in terms of economic production: there is nothing we can do that they, or their machines, can't do better. There are a few "reserves" for humans on earth where we're allowed to live "wild", but these are overcrowded and have no natural resources other than sunlight and (relatively poor) soil: all the minerals of value are extracted by the aliens. But, there is one thing we can offer them: we ourselves are a delicacy, and some of the aliens at least are willing to pay a high price for the chance of consuming (whatever that means -- nobody's quite sure if it's eating or something else) a healthy 30-year-old human. These aliens aren't ethical enough to let us spread throughout the galaxy on our own terms; but they are ethical enough not to do anything we haven't consented to. So there's always an open offer, available between the ages of 12 and 18, to any human: to stay in one of the "human reserves", or enter the "cattle" program. If you're on the cattle program, you have freedom of movement through many places in the galaxy. Your health is taken care of, and there are lots of opportunities to socialize with other humans, to learn from them, to express art or music or whatever; but, the vast majority of you will, at the age of 30, be quickly killed and consumed by the aliens. Particularly healthy men may be allowed to live longer for "captive breeding" programs (if they consent to do so); and many women will have the option to enter a "captive breeding" program as well, in which they bear children every two or three years until they're 40. Children raised in the captive breeding program are also given the option, between 12 and 18, of going to the "human reserve" to live out their life there as well as they can. So, here's the question: You're about to turn 18. Life in a human reserve is little better than stone age, since there are no natural resources upon which to build technology. Do you live out your 50 or 60 years (average life expectancy without advanced health care) in the freedom of a stone age society? Or do you travel the galaxy, having advanced technology and medical care, until you're 30? Of course some people would chose to live in freedom; but I'm pretty sure there would be a pretty big uptake for being eaten. I'm pretty sure cows, if they could be made to understand the proposition would be the same way. A handful would prefer to live in the wild, getting their own food, having no health care or shelter or protection from predators; but most would probably choose the life of free-range cattle, ending in death.
- necovek 5y ago
  You can "trivially" solve that by increasing the cost of the meat: if "non-humane" animal raising was forbidden, as a mental exercise, what would happen other than prices going up? Before the expansion of animal farming (60-100 years ago), meat was usually Sunday-lunch material in most of the world.

tomcam 5y ago

I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right?

vinni2 5y ago
Good point except we are the woke moral and intelligent beings?
- tomcam 5y ago
  That’s a pretty compelling argument of course.
atweiden 5y ago
> I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right? Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you, and would generally never harm you unless provoked. Breeding intelligent lifeforms in a bespoke way to murder them for cash — whatever the reason or creature involved — is diabolically evil. If you do this for a living, you’re a merchant of death in my book.
- belorn 5y ago
  Cows are opportunistic omnivorous and will eat meat if its small enough to be swallowed whole. They don't have much of an instinct to hunt, they not have the teeth to cut large animals into parts, nor do they have the stomach acid or immune system to eat partially rotten meat. There is nothing however to stop them from eating small amount of fresh meat, such as the very young of other animals and insects.
- tomcam 5y ago
  Well... look up things like “cow eating chicken” or “deer eating bird” on YouTube. Not saying it’s common, but “never” is perhaps too strong a word. And of course I really meant it in a larger sense, not the direct ruminant/person relationship.