14 ms·
How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World
- KitDuncan 5y agoAgree with Mence, not the author. He comes over as arrogant. For example countering one of the stats Mence cited (Cows needing 20 times more farmland, which is true) with an argument that isn't necessarily relevant to the discussion. Mences argument is to massively reduce the amount of farmland, not make use of farmland that couldn't otherwise be used for growing crops!
- TOGoS 5y agoAgree, though I give the article author credit for, while thinking Mence overstated his case, not extrapolating his perception of overstatement into "therefore vegans are dumb and I'm going to go get a factory farmed burger right now ha ha", which I still see all too often. > Mance may overstate his case, but he is spot on to make us confront the horrible truth that the vast majority of us are supporting animal suffering every time we shop
- r0b05 5y agoOkay so I can go vegan but how to reconcile the pet dilemma? Surely my dog or cat cannot live on cauliflower and broccoli.
- poidos 5y agoIt would be a cruelty to your dog to force them to be meatless; from what I understand of vegan ethics, your dog's consumption of meat is ethical.
- sweetheart 5y agoDogs at least can easily live happy, healthy lives on a plant-based diet. It isn't cruel at all, as long as you're feeding your pet all the vitamins and minerals they need.
- henryaj 5y ago> your dog's consumption of meat is ethical If eating meat is wrong, why does it matter whether it's a human or a dog doing it?
- sweetheart 5y agoDepends on if one needs to do it to survive. This is why vegans try to hold humans accountable, but not lions. The "who" has very significant moral implications.
- kitkat_new 5y agodogs don't need meat to survive (and neither do they need to be hold captive by humans)
- sweetheart 5y agoOh I know, I agree with you :) I'm vegan. I was speaking more generally about how the idea of needing to eat animals to survive is what makes it ethical, but that is VERY rarely ever the case
- JustVestedSeeYa 5y agoHaving a pet isn’t vegan.
- kitkat_new 5y agoset him free - who gives you the right to enslave "your" dog?
- OzyM 5y agoIs this sarcasm? I fail to understand how taking a dog from a loving household into scrounging on the streets is at all an ethical solution.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- moralestapia 5y agoWould you agree to be locked at some place even if "they treat you real good"?
- OzyM 5y agoI agree it's not an ideal situation, but I honestly think it's better than the alternative. In your example of me personally, this is kind of the tradeoff most small humans (including myself) made for the first ten years of life. Supervision, lack of freedom, etc. in exchange for food, shelter, and hopefully companionship. As it's not ideal, I could agree with you on reducing breeding so we don't have to make this choice in the future. But currently, for domesticated animals who can't be released into the wild without high chance of extreme pain to themselves (dogs) or major ecological damage (cats), it seems like our kindest option is to put as many of them in loving & protective situations as possible.
- summm 5y agoI feel this is a false dichotomy. If we really stop breeding pets, and do this consequently and with an honest effort, this will become a non-issue in, like, 10 years.
- borski 5y agoYou are making unstated assumptions: we have no idea if dogs, by this point, have been bred to seek human companionship, which we believe generally to be the case. If left alone, lacking companionship (since most pet owners don't tend to be abusive, though it can happen), I would argue the animal would potentially be much less happy on the street. That has nothing to do with me wanting to own a pet, and everything to do with there being plenty of pets available who I would rather get loved by someone than, well, die on the street.
- mikestew 5y agoI'm the vegan in this house, not the dogs. Just this morning on my daily pre-WFH walk I was reminded that many non-humans eat other animals (crows aren't quick about it, either) and that they do not share my ethics, nor should be expected to. Enjoy the canned rabbit, Rover.
- happytoexplain 5y agoI'm not sure your animal's will simply existing is a reasonable argument for allowing their will to be enacted, which sounds like what you're implying. And even if you're implicitly restricting this to food choice, your dog would not put animals in poor farming conditions of his own volition. But this is only a critique of your statement. I feed my animals farmed pet food.
- borski 5y agoNo, their dog would chase down and kill animals wherever they are, poor farming conditions or not, of their own volition. Animals are interested in eating meat, full stop. How that meat is raised is consequently of no interest to them, though it may be of interest to you. Technically, if we weren't blocking dogs from leaving the house, they would be out there and eating anything they could get their paws on; they would be enacting their will, on other pets, rodents, etc.
- moralestapia 5y ago>and that they do not share my ethics, nor should be expected to What would your reasoning be if your dog decides to bite a neighbor's leg? Edit: No reply, a classic :^)
- borski 5y agoThat the dog was doing what a dog is instinctually likely to do, depending on their temperament. This would be a failing of human training, because human training is intended to replace some instincts with learned behaviors, since dogs have such a 'people pleasing' mindset when trained with compassion and positive reinforcement. I'm not sure what your point was. Their dog doesn't share their ethics, nor should they be expected to. I would not expect a dog to 'de-escalate' a situation with another very angry dog, despite expecting humans to try and do that when faced with another very angry human.
- tomweingarten 5y agoHi! I'm not a veterinary nutritionist, but I did used to teach metabolic biochemistry, and I spoke to a few veterinary nutritionists before putting my own dog on a vegan diet. Dogs are omnivores, so there are many vegan diet options dogs can live on healthily and happily. We like to think of dogs as friendly wolves, but they evolved a significantly different metabolism to co-exist with humans. I use a combination of Wild Earth and Bramble. Cats are obligate carnivores, so they require some chemicals (most notably Taurine) that don't naturally occur in plants. But there's no strong scientific barrier to us creating vegan cat diets through supplementation in the near future.
- OzyM 5y agoI don't really understand why you're being downvoted, this was my understanding as well. There are plenty of vegan dog foods that seem to have a history of success and meet all AAFCO standards. I think as far as vegan cat food, I'm not sure it will be healthy or feasible at scale until/unless there's something like Wild Earth's mouse-meat kibble based on cultured cells (under development, but no time frame given for expected completion). I'd love to hear the opposing perspective, though.
- verall 5y agoIt is very difficult to imagine a vegan diet for cats that has enough plant-sourced protein while remaining palatable. Most commercial cat food is far too high in carbohydrates and is usually high in fat. This increases the palatability and lowers costs but is not healthy for the cats. Cats are picky eaters, and they can refuse foods even when starving.
- wyager 5y ago> Dogs are omnivores It may be technically true that animals like dogs and humans with meat-optimized digestive systems can survive off plant material alone, but that doesn’t mean it’s advisable. Neither of us can metabolize cellulose, both of us run into metabolic diseases with excessive carbohydrate consumption (e.g. diabetes), etc.
- OzyM 5y ago
- encloser 5y agoI thought this was a very interesting pod cast about pet food. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/v4h9wo5/pet-food-how-fancy-should-they-feast https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/v4h9wo5/pet-food-ho... TL;DL: Feeding pets the animal byproducts of our own food production is not only a good symbiotic relationship, but also contains more of the nutrients the pets need (as opposed to grain-free or other specialty diets). But, the specifics for your pet will vary based on their own needs and allergies.
- parksy 5y agoI haven't met a vegan who argues dogs should never eat meat. I have heard about it on nightly news from time to time, but I would think that's a very fringe, very uninformed niche of people who got the memo but didn't read it. The vegan perspective is less "meat is bad" and closer to "compassion for a creature and its rights to exist freely within its own context". A killer whale should be able to nom as many seals as it wants, a dog can have some raw meat to chew on.
- OzyM 5y agoI think the dog problem has more to do with you killing animals to feed to your dog. As far as I can tell, vegans don't oppose animals in the wild hunting to survive (i.e. a killer whale). However, paying for animals to be killed to feed your dog instead of buying vegan dog food seems like it falls under the same umbrella as buying meat for yourself. [Not really sure how to address obligate carnivores, like cats. Could see a vegan feeding their cat they had meat foods until they died naturally, but getting a cat with the intention of buying meat for it over its lifetime seems non-vegan.] Would welcome correction if I'm misguided, though.
- parksy 5y agoYour second paragraph is basically why I will never own a pet. I can't ethically feed my pet, therefore owning a pet is unethical. I love dogs, clumsy waggy little fuckers, but I won't subject another being to my fuckery just because I can. edit: And yes, I teeter-totter on the ol' "you should adopt an abandoned pet" vs "feeding it for the rest of its life means other animals will die" vs "but you eat meat too you sanctimonious fuck" every time I think about the subject. At the end of the day, easier just to say "no pets" and move on with life for me.
- OzyM 5y agoIf feeding was the only thing keeping you from caring for an animal, you could either adopt an herbivorous pet (most small mammals, maybe?) or adopt an omnivore capable of eating a plant-based diet (dogs?). In either case it seems like a moral net positive to me. ...though I also understand the "no pets" and moving on attitude from a more personal angle. I've accidentally killed enough houseplants to scare me away from the "caring for a dependent living being" plan for now Edit: just wanted to note that "people who got the memo but didn't read it" is now one of my favorite phrases. I've never heard it before, but something about it delights me
- ElijahLynn 5y agoYou can try not "owning" another animal. Problem solved. Make friends with the squirrels.
- globular-toast 5y agoDogs can. Cats can't. Cats are obligate carnivores.
- summm 5y agoOne reason more to not keep cats as pets. Stop breeding them, an the problem will solve itself within some years
- happytoexplain 5y agoRegarding the comment in the article about the relative quality of life in the wild vs life in various farming conditions: Surely that's irrelevant, as farmed animals would not exist - in the wild or elsewhere - if they were not farmed. Edit: Note that this is not an opinion about farming, since some farms offer arguably better lives than in the wild, while others offer arguably worse lives.
- mssundaram 5y agoThe "humane" argument is flawed because in the end - factory or pasture - the animal is killed. Live a happy life and be slaughtered or a miserable life and be slaughtered.
- happytoexplain 5y agoWhat is the argument you're referring to, and how is it flawed due to the fact that factory-raised and pasture-raised animals are both killed, regardless of the nature of their killing and the nature of their lives?
- mssundaram 5y agoThe argument is that pasture raised cows is better than factory farmed cows. I am saying that in both cases the cows die.
- iratewizard 5y agoCan you stomach eating fruits and vegetables from an industrialized farm knowing that more animals died to make your salad compared to my steak? Or are certain animals lives worth more than others?
- happytoexplain 5y agoWhat you bring up is an interesting topic, and you should try to increase the explicit information and reduce the hostility.
- JustVestedSeeYa 5y agoAll the otherwise smart people on this website who still defend meat is priceless.
- aszantu 5y agobest case for humane animal farms are those for health. When it can roam and forage, the meat quality is much higher. I find factory pork tastes weird.... A lot of illness comes from vitamin D deficiency. When the animal had a lot of sun, the vitamin D from the animal ends up in the fat. And lastly, if everyone had a pig, we wouldn't throw away so much food. Instead we would add it to the pigs diet and convert waste back to good protein.
- sweetheart 5y agoBut this is complicated by the fact that we don't need to have _any_ animals for food at all, so there are still ethical problems with even raising animals lovingly in wide open pastures for years before killing them. For example, we still see it as wrong to kill a dog if we get bored with it after loving it for years and giving it an incredible life. The developed world has entered a phase of civilization where we can get everything we need to live without farming animals for meat, so we have a moral obligation (in my opinion) to do so, as it means we don't have to kill _any_ pigs that don't want to die
- warent 5y agoI tried doing a strict vegan diet for about a year and found it was endless misery for me. I could never get adjusted to it. There was a constant feeling of torture and self-flagellation. Staying vegetarian is easy enough because it didn't take long before the concept of consuming animal flesh started to repulse me. Even after about 6 years I still feel occasional impulses, probably because I grew up on southern BBQ, but it's really small and easy to pass. So here's what I will say about this. Not everyone's dietary choices are rooted in ignorance. Everyone has different bodies; different hormones and chemistry; different synapses. All we can ask is for everyone to try eating mindfully at minimum. That alone is a great start and will make a huge impact. As for how we feed our pets, I agree with this article, and I'll add pets have such short lifespans, and very few needs, the least we can do is try to give them the highest quality version of the few needs they have. For better or for worse, my cat is a spoiled princess because of this.
- sweetheart 5y agoIt's true that our bodies are all different, but this is a very common point made by carnists (folks who use animal products, basically the opposite of vegans), yet I've never been able to find any research on anything that comes from animal products that prevents health issues. I'm genuinely curious if someone could point me in the direction of some material which talks about what it is in animal products that prevents these ailments from occurring. I wonder if it's almost always the case of folks making a dietary switch and not making sure they know how to get everything they need in a balanced diet from non-animal sources, which is actually not hard. EDIT: I may have misread your comment and interpreted your misery as being due to the diet itself, not the psychological toll of the veganism, so apologies if that's the case! Still interested in any research for what I asked about though, if anyone has it handy!
- spacephysics 5y agohttps://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-get-from-plants#2.-Creatine https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-ge... Further, many nutrients are far more bio-available than their plant based counterparts. Supplementing for them also isn’t the best substitute. There’s still a demonization of saturated fats despite the heart claims being largely falsified by the sugar industry, and claims of unprocessed meats causing colon cancer being exaggerated substantially (even for processed meats, there’s an increase, but as I recall it’s minimal. Larger chance of lung cancer from city living than colon cancer from occasional processed meat) Each person I believe (key word) has ancestral lineage that describes what foods they can handle best. Hence why we see some people thrive on plant based, and others (like myself) was completely miserable despite taking all the necessary steps. Going the opposite (carnivore) was better in blood markers and we’ll-being for me.
- debacle 5y agoI have decided to eat less meat because I can't afford to consistently purchase cuts from pastured animals, and I don't have the capacity currently to hunt or raise animals myself. I just can't afford to eat chicken that is pastured in the same way that I would eat the tasteless breasts and thighs that are 1.99 a pound. I haven't eat beef more than a few times since COVID. We eat less pork now, more for supply issues than cost issues. Fish is a delicacy. Most people will not make these decisions. I still don't eat eggs from pastured hens, again because of logistical issues more than anything else. None of the cheese I eat comes from responsibly managed cows (maybe it is, but how would I know?). The solution to these things is pragmatic regulations that are not ideological in nature. The level of care and respect we show for animals reflects a level of care and respect we have for ourselves. But it's facetious to talk about this in the current US context. Because of the commerce clause, and the continually eroding protections at the national level, not only are we lowering the standards (for animal welfare, product quality, and safety) in the US, we are also exporting our already low standards to other countries.
- sweetheart 5y agoWhy the opposition to ideologically inclined regulations? Genuinely wondering. Is it just because it tends to make the issue so heated? I think there are a lot of good reasons to continually regulate animal agriculture so as to be less pervasive because of the environmental impact alone, but the most important reason in my opinion is because it's just wrong to enslave sentient non-human animals. Is it wrong to use that justification as the basis for change in the industry? Curious what you think.
- debacle 5y agoWe have been omnivores for tens of thousands of years. Part of the reason we were so successful at colonizing the planet was due to our omnivorous nature. People with a vegan ideology (not just a vegan diet) have an exceptionally narrow comprehension of the nature of food as culture, as it relates to cost and convenience, and the true ecological impacts of any sort of agriculture. Ideas like this: > it's just wrong to enslave sentient non-human animals Are so unfathomably ignorant in the context of the global human condition, both historically and in the current era.
- moralestapia 5y agoI am a meat consumer/lover and still thought this was an interesting read. I agree with the author's pov that Mance's arguments are a bit naive and unaccurate.
- ElijahLynn 5y ago> It is bizarre that in a supposedly animal-loving country, where half of all households have a pet, so many feed them on other animals that have lived miserable lives in factory farms. > Henry Mance, describes as ‘the meat paradox’: a state of affairs where ‘people who care about animals manage not to care about farm animals’.
- jeffnv 5y agoHardly bizarre, _most_ of the comforts we enjoy are subsidized with extensive human exploitation. I think it's completely consistent with the rest of our habits.
- ElijahLynn 5y agoAnd POW.. this just got removed from the front page. Someone has bias...
- ElijahLynn 5y agoAnd... it just got unflagged and is back on the front page. Thank you!
- ElijahLynn 5y agoThere is a popular saying in the vegan community: "Why love one but not the other?"
- dotsam 5y agoI am pleased to see this shared. > Mance may overstate his case, but he is spot on to make us confront the horrible truth that the vast majority of us are supporting animal suffering every time we shop It took me a long time to understand that there was a link in the actual world between the delicious food I was enjoying and horrible animal suffering that went in to producing it. I used to make fun of vegans and never for a moment took their position seriously. I couldn't imagine how anyone could voluntarily give up cheese. Now I see that something as seemingly benign as cheese isn't made in an ethical vacuum. It's very often the product of a system that creates animal suffering. I would encourage anyone who was in my position to confront the realities of what goes in to producing what you eat and consider trying a vegan diet and advocating for animal welfare.
- globular-toast 5y ago> I used to make fun of vegans and never for a moment took their position seriously. I couldn't imagine how anyone could voluntarily give up cheese. Curious. Did you never question why they gave up cheese?
- dotsam 5y agoI am ashamed to say that initially I didn't engage seriously with their reasons, perhaps because I knew it would require behavioural change on my part, which at that time I was unwilling to consider making.
- clipradiowallet 5y agoDo house cats regularly dine on beef or fish? Is your 5lb tabby used to hunching over a stream and catching a 15lb salmon in their claws? Does it regularly stalk and kill a 1 ton cow for beef? This is a bit ridiculous for my taste... if you want to feed your pet foods that are not, and never have been, in their diet - whilst being "humane" - why not purchase the food, sourced the way you prefer, and give it to them? Why the emphasis on buying your beef/fish/whatever as "pet food"? tldr; humane/free-range/good-vibes sourced food and humane/free-range/good-vibes sourced "pet food" are two different things. If you just feed them "food"(not "pet food"), then the good-vibe-ish food gets a larger overall marketshare, and conditions improve for those animals slaughtered.
- globular-toast 5y agoHow does the author justify owning a cat? A pet is an animal purely for your own pleasure and cats kill birds for no reason all the time.
- ssijak 5y agoThat is also a thing that you learn when you start thinking about the way we interact with animals. I saved X number of dogs from the streets, some older, some just born who would 100% die in days. And they would grow to be your best friends, the same as that X000$ Pomerian. Point being, help the animal in need and don't fuel the cruel and unneeded industry. It is not for me to judge the nature of cat or a dog, and the morality of them eating a bird. But I can help them if I see they are suffering.
- summm 5y agoBy showing them publicly, in your neighbourhood, and in social media, and by defending pets you are normalizing and encouraging pet ownership, encouraging others to keep pets as well, and thus indeed fueling that cruel industry. It's all about higher order effects.
- Dolpahimide 5y agoHenry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to live alongside other species. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a farm to investigate the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas around hunting wild animals, over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos, saving wild spaces and owning pets. He meets the chefs, farmers, activists, philosophers, scientists and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. This is not a book about what animals can do for us, but what we can do for animals.
- rcpt 5y agoIf you're concerned about the pet dilemma I want to plug rabbits -- these bunnies are great! Cheap, zero smell, friendly and social. They're super easy to hide from your landlord and they won't terrorize/murder native birds if you let them play outside. If we had some more space I'd get a couple goats to. In many ways they're more suited for urban living than dogs but are often against zoning ordinances for some stupid reason.
- k__ 5y ago"The meat paradox" doesn't sound like a paradox to me at all. What is paradoxical about caring more about some people/animals and less about others?
- Falling3 5y agoNothing, but I don't believe that accurately reflects the situation. Almost everyone I've ever discussed animal ethics with is against unnecessarily harming animals - those we eat included. They're either left with trying to make the increasingly difficult and unsupported case that eating animals is necessary - or admit their own inconsistency.
- trey-jones 5y agoHere we go, I'm prepared to sacrifice all of my meager HN karma and die on this hill: I don't get it. I will never get it. I can't relate at all to the idea that the comfort and well-being of animals is an important thing to be concerned about. This doesn't mean that I'm an asshole to animals (opinion!). I'm not cruel to animals that I meet (meat?). Generally we get along fine. I don't have a problem with people being concerned about the welfare of animals. You do you, boo. The world (probably) needs somebody to do it. Just kinda leave me out of it OK? > What really threatens animals today is not cruelty, so much as thoughtlessness. I'm guilty of thoughtlessness where animals are concerned, and I don't care. It's not my fight. It's a bit like the blight of "Everyone needs to learn computer programming" of a few years back. Just because you're interested in something and it's important to you, doesn't mean you need to impose it upon other people! It seems obvious to me that not everything is for everybody, but there are an awful lot of people who don't feel that way.
- nickkell 5y agoYou really don't see anything wrong with the mistreatment of animals? Not even the animals people commonly have as pets?
- trey-jones 5y agoIt's not that I don't see anything wrong with it. It's just that it's not a priority for me. I see a lot more wrong with the way people treat people than the way people treat animals, and I don't have headspace for every problem. I guess it doesn't really affect me - out of sight, out of mind? I know people who treat their dogs like people. Sometimes those same people treat other people worse than dogs. I endeavor to treat people like people, even as I treat my dogs like dogs.
- Falling3 5y agoI get only having so much room on your plate for worrying about things... but it seems like you're trying to turn that into an Appeal to Relative Privation. Just because there are other issues you can rank higher in importance, doesn't mean this one ceases to be important.
- cherryturnover 5y agoThe main irony I find in many people that "love animals" and are vegetarian/vegan is these people tend to be just as likely to lock their pet up in a cage for 8-12 hours a day while at work. Then of course they also don't play with them. So the animals is essentially in a prison of boredom and minimal variety of food. It's like the Twighlight Zone episode where the guy goes to hell basically being trapped in a room for eternity.
- Falling3 5y agoI don't see how that kind of pet treatment has any link to whether someone is a vegan or not. And in my experience, the correlation is inverse if anything.
- cercatrova 5y agoI think lab grown meat is the most sane solution for the largest number of people as it becomes simultaneously cheaper and better than raising cattle for meat; imagine getting wagyu every day for cheaper than regular cuts now, simply because you don't have to grow an entire cow and massage it its entire life, you can just grow it on a Petri dish. Veganism on the other hand is not an economic solution but a moral one, which takes considerably more thought from the average eater than something like Impossible Foods or lab grown meat, simply because if it were cheaper than existing meat and tasted better, there is no reason to _not_ buy it (all else being equal). But until lab grown meat arrives, I'll continue eating my meat.