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> 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? H

> 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.
- King-Aaron 5y ago
  I've seen a cow eating the carcass of another cow before. Kind of fascinating and morbid at the same time.
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    Why morbid? Even cute and fluffy little critters like rabbits will happily go specifically after flowers with bugs in them if given the chance. The circle of life is far more complicated than herbivores/carnivores and many animals will happily grab a meaty snack if opportunity arises.
    - King-Aaron 5y ago
      Oh because it was in the middle of a drought, and it was pretty clear that the only reason that it was eating meat was due to a severe lacking of anything else to eat
      - fogihujy 5y ago
        Droughts are horrifying. Animals will simply do what they need to in order to stay alive. The scary part is that droughts are getting more common.
- atweiden 5y ago
  In the past, I’ve dabbled with ento-vegetarianism — i.e. eating insects — but still walked away from it feeling disgusted with the idea people breed these insects only to put them to death inside gas chambers. I would object to farming alligators on the same grounds. Even if the thing is effectively a living dinosaur guaranteed to eat you alive in the wild, there’s something diabolically evil about “growing” them for systematic murder on a commercial scale. It’s death dealing.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    This is such an untenable moral ground... The death we offer animals is orders of magnitude better than nature subjects them to, almost without exception. If we could offer them a better life as well, as we once did, I would have 0 moral qualms about our meat eating.
    - fredophile 5y ago
      I don't necessarily agree with the earlier poster but how we slaughter the animals isn't really the issue they have. If aliens came and promised to provide for you for your whole life but on your 30th birthday they would kill you painlessly would you take that deal? What gives us the right to impose that kind of deal on other living beings?
- birksherty 5y ago
  Those are exceptions, should not change view based on that. No animal can harm humans like we do others.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    There are animals that harm humans (and other animals) in much worse ways, most notably parasites.
jb_gericke 5y ago
I've been feeling more conflicted about consuming meat lately, but it's blanket assertions like this that trigger my inner libertarian hard, and I come out swinging. There is considerable evidence suggesting meat consumption contributed significantly to our cerebral expansion (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mobileUi=0&journalCode=ca https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mob...). Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development. Humans are alpha predators, more so than any other animal in the world. We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival. Eat solely plants without supplementation and you will become deficient in B12 and iron (amongst other things, contributing to early age mortality). I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health. So call me evil, I see myself as a pragmatist, more in touch with nature than you are. I recognize the alpha predator in myself. I lift weights, consume lean, well sourced and organic meat. I've hunted and eaten what I've killed as my forebears. I'm resilient and healthy. If that makes me diabolical I'll take it.
- atweiden 5y ago
  Human evolution is poorly understood, and the assumption that any choice $X supposedly made by early humans led to our forefathers’ anamolously rapid brain development is flatly speculative. > Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development. Complete and utter speculation. > We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival. Subsistence hunting amongst early human tribes is not comparable to modern day factory farming in any conceivable way. B12 doesn’t come from eating plants OR animals: it comes from bacteria, and ironically that bacteria is in such short supply on factory farms that the animals need to be injected with synthetic B12. > I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health. I eat raw soybeans, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds. I’d recommend watching the documentary Forks Over Knives [1] if you care about your personal health, and the documentary Dominion [2], if you’d like to see what really happens on factory farms. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
dev_tty01 5y ago
I absolutely respect your choices and your opinion, but I don't understand them. Is the wolf diabolically evil? No cash involved of course. Is that the issue? What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin? Is the hunter morally superior to the farmer who raises a steer, providing clean water, well grassed pasture, and then kills in a humane manner for personal consumption? Is that diabolically evil? What about the middle man who makes some cash bringing the meat product to someone else who can use it. Is that where the evilness enters the picture? I am asking the fundamental question. I will agree completely that large scale food production has some real problems with animal treatment. I'm not defending or commenting on that. I'm just trying to understand the moral judgements associated with consuming another animal, as is done at just about all levels of the food chain in the natural world. Our digestive systems, our teeth, our nutritional requirements are all tuned to omnivorous consumption. Why is it wrong to exercise our natural nutritional choices, plant and animal, that have resulted from millions of years of evolution?
- warent 5y ago
  > Is the wolf diabolically evil? ... What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin? As much as I respect the intelligence of those animals, what a remarkably low bar to measure ourselves against. May as well justify manslaughter and rape as while we're at it. Drawing a line that arbitrarily suits certain primal desires and justifying it by pointing at animals is how we move backward, not forward.
  - tommit 5y ago
    This is such a good point to make. Us humans should definitely strive to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that. Also, it's a hell of a difference between the wolf, who has to kill in order to survive, and the man, who just has to choose something else to eat in the supermarket or restaurant. Justifying ones choice by comparing oneself to a wolf is incredibly flawed. No one here would bat an eye if, for whatever reason, people have to hunt and kill in order to sustain themselves, like some tribes probably still do. We wouldn't call them evil for it. What can be called evil on the other hand, is the systematic raising, torturing, and killing of billions of animals every year. Because it's needless. We could easily survive without it, but we choose not to, because bacon. I get it, it's delicious. But at some point it becomes very questionable, and I'm even setting aside the sustainability aspect.
kenneth 5y ago
This comment is a fantastic example demonstrating why everyone hates vegans[1]. I'm all for everyone being more aware of where and how their food is made. If you come out of it choosing not to consume certain categories, that's fantastic. But the moment you start demonizing others for not making the same choices as you, you become an anti-social and dislikable person, and one that's not conducive to building a better society that moves forward positively. (This applies to politics and the woke movement too) [1]: generalizing obviously
- darkwater 5y ago
  The dislikable and anti-social part is, in the end, just because they make feel the rest of us guilty. Very few people would say with a straight face "Yeah, I like that humans farm and kill animals so I can enjoy a juicier dish". All of us omnivores do that, but only few ones will face that reality happily. The rest of us will just blame the messenger.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    On the contrary, a lot of people are fine with it. That's why most people don't think about it much.
    - darkwater 5y ago
      I don't have any real data to prove my point but I think that many people would not like to watch how a cow is killed and transformed into steak. But nobody has problem watching as someone picks apples from a tree, or how a press creates olive oil.
      - Bancakes 5y ago
        As long as it's not one of those halal killings, I don't see a problem. Bullet to the head, done. I've rotated spit roast as a child and didn't find it creepy.
        5y ago
bavell 5y ago
Farmers raising livestock are diabolically evil merchants of death? I usually reserve that level of vitriol for the military industrial complex, global arms dealers, etc... not a family with some cows...
fooker 5y ago
> Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you You can find YouTube videos of cows eating chickens.

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.

King-Aaron 5y ago
I've seen a cow eating the carcass of another cow before. Kind of fascinating and morbid at the same time.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Why morbid? Even cute and fluffy little critters like rabbits will happily go specifically after flowers with bugs in them if given the chance. The circle of life is far more complicated than herbivores/carnivores and many animals will happily grab a meaty snack if opportunity arises.
  - King-Aaron 5y ago
    Oh because it was in the middle of a drought, and it was pretty clear that the only reason that it was eating meat was due to a severe lacking of anything else to eat
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      Droughts are horrifying. Animals will simply do what they need to in order to stay alive. The scary part is that droughts are getting more common.
atweiden 5y ago
In the past, I’ve dabbled with ento-vegetarianism — i.e. eating insects — but still walked away from it feeling disgusted with the idea people breed these insects only to put them to death inside gas chambers. I would object to farming alligators on the same grounds. Even if the thing is effectively a living dinosaur guaranteed to eat you alive in the wild, there’s something diabolically evil about “growing” them for systematic murder on a commercial scale. It’s death dealing.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  This is such an untenable moral ground... The death we offer animals is orders of magnitude better than nature subjects them to, almost without exception. If we could offer them a better life as well, as we once did, I would have 0 moral qualms about our meat eating.
  - fredophile 5y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with the earlier poster but how we slaughter the animals isn't really the issue they have. If aliens came and promised to provide for you for your whole life but on your 30th birthday they would kill you painlessly would you take that deal? What gives us the right to impose that kind of deal on other living beings?
birksherty 5y ago
Those are exceptions, should not change view based on that. No animal can harm humans like we do others.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  There are animals that harm humans (and other animals) in much worse ways, most notably parasites.

jb_gericke 5y ago

I've been feeling more conflicted about consuming meat lately, but it's blanket assertions like this that trigger my inner libertarian hard, and I come out swinging. There is considerable evidence suggesting meat consumption contributed significantly to our cerebral expansion (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mobileUi=0&journalCode=ca https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mob...). Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development. Humans are alpha predators, more so than any other animal in the world. We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival. Eat solely plants without supplementation and you will become deficient in B12 and iron (amongst other things, contributing to early age mortality). I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health. So call me evil, I see myself as a pragmatist, more in touch with nature than you are. I recognize the alpha predator in myself. I lift weights, consume lean, well sourced and organic meat. I've hunted and eaten what I've killed as my forebears. I'm resilient and healthy. If that makes me diabolical I'll take it.

atweiden 5y ago
Human evolution is poorly understood, and the assumption that any choice $X supposedly made by early humans led to our forefathers’ anamolously rapid brain development is flatly speculative. > Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development. Complete and utter speculation. > We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival. Subsistence hunting amongst early human tribes is not comparable to modern day factory farming in any conceivable way. B12 doesn’t come from eating plants OR animals: it comes from bacteria, and ironically that bacteria is in such short supply on factory farms that the animals need to be injected with synthetic B12. > I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health. I eat raw soybeans, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds. I’d recommend watching the documentary Forks Over Knives [1] if you care about your personal health, and the documentary Dominion [2], if you’d like to see what really happens on factory farms. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

dev_tty01 5y ago

I absolutely respect your choices and your opinion, but I don't understand them. Is the wolf diabolically evil? No cash involved of course. Is that the issue? What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin? Is the hunter morally superior to the farmer who raises a steer, providing clean water, well grassed pasture, and then kills in a humane manner for personal consumption? Is that diabolically evil? What about the middle man who makes some cash bringing the meat product to someone else who can use it. Is that where the evilness enters the picture? I am asking the fundamental question. I will agree completely that large scale food production has some real problems with animal treatment. I'm not defending or commenting on that. I'm just trying to understand the moral judgements associated with consuming another animal, as is done at just about all levels of the food chain in the natural world. Our digestive systems, our teeth, our nutritional requirements are all tuned to omnivorous consumption. Why is it wrong to exercise our natural nutritional choices, plant and animal, that have resulted from millions of years of evolution?

warent 5y ago
> Is the wolf diabolically evil? ... What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin? As much as I respect the intelligence of those animals, what a remarkably low bar to measure ourselves against. May as well justify manslaughter and rape as while we're at it. Drawing a line that arbitrarily suits certain primal desires and justifying it by pointing at animals is how we move backward, not forward.
- tommit 5y ago
  This is such a good point to make. Us humans should definitely strive to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that. Also, it's a hell of a difference between the wolf, who has to kill in order to survive, and the man, who just has to choose something else to eat in the supermarket or restaurant. Justifying ones choice by comparing oneself to a wolf is incredibly flawed. No one here would bat an eye if, for whatever reason, people have to hunt and kill in order to sustain themselves, like some tribes probably still do. We wouldn't call them evil for it. What can be called evil on the other hand, is the systematic raising, torturing, and killing of billions of animals every year. Because it's needless. We could easily survive without it, but we choose not to, because bacon. I get it, it's delicious. But at some point it becomes very questionable, and I'm even setting aside the sustainability aspect.

kenneth 5y ago

This comment is a fantastic example demonstrating why everyone hates vegans[1]. I'm all for everyone being more aware of where and how their food is made. If you come out of it choosing not to consume certain categories, that's fantastic. But the moment you start demonizing others for not making the same choices as you, you become an anti-social and dislikable person, and one that's not conducive to building a better society that moves forward positively. (This applies to politics and the woke movement too) [1]: generalizing obviously

darkwater 5y ago
The dislikable and anti-social part is, in the end, just because they make feel the rest of us guilty. Very few people would say with a straight face "Yeah, I like that humans farm and kill animals so I can enjoy a juicier dish". All of us omnivores do that, but only few ones will face that reality happily. The rest of us will just blame the messenger.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  On the contrary, a lot of people are fine with it. That's why most people don't think about it much.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    I don't have any real data to prove my point but I think that many people would not like to watch how a cow is killed and transformed into steak. But nobody has problem watching as someone picks apples from a tree, or how a press creates olive oil.
    - Bancakes 5y ago
      As long as it's not one of those halal killings, I don't see a problem. Bullet to the head, done. I've rotated spit roast as a child and didn't find it creepy.
      - 5y ago

bavell 5y ago

Farmers raising livestock are diabolically evil merchants of death? I usually reserve that level of vitriol for the military industrial complex, global arms dealers, etc... not a family with some cows...

fooker 5y ago

> Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you You can find YouTube videos of cows eating chickens.