7 ms·

You don't need to be a vegetarian or vegan. Just eating less meat helps significantly with the things you mentioned. For example if everyone ate say 50% less me

by azakai 4y ago

You don't need to be a vegetarian or vegan. Just eating less meat helps significantly with the things you mentioned. For example if everyone ate say 50% less meat we'd make a noticeable impact on climate change. I am a vegan myself, but of course everyone can find the right tradeoff for themselves. I do think it's clear though that reducing meat consumption by some amount is just better overall for the planet, to avoid animal suffering, and for our health.

cies 4y ago
> You don't need to be [...] vegan And that from a vegan! I personally find what humans do to animals so heartless and disgusting (totally destroying animal lives to have a little pleasure in the mouth; while it is not necessary), that I regularly compare those indulging in animal food to peadosexuals: they destroy someones life over some short sensual pleasure. I'm on the contrary: veganism should be a moral baseline.
- cdelsolar 4y ago
  Lol
- vt85 4y ago
- samatman 4y ago
  That's fine. Just understand that I consider you a law-abiding terrorist.
  - myshpa 4y ago
- mirror_neuron 4y ago
  Serious question: how is the destruction of animal life for sustenance different from the destruction of plant life? I'll give you my answer, and hopefully you can share your thoughts (or other answers entirely) to help clarify my thinking. I conclude that we draw a line between animals and other kinds of life because we are more like animals than other kinds of life. And "likeness with ourselves" seems like an arbitrary way of dividing life. Extrapolating in the other direction: why don't we practice cannibalism, as other animals do? Perhaps we find cannibalism dangerous and impractical, but also that the typical human carries social instincts that make the behavior distasteful (which in turn leads to taboos in many -- but not all -- of our cultures). One of my favorite expressions is that "there are no boundaries in nature". That is to say: all dividing lines between categories are invented, regardless of how useful those lines may be. And human constructs change with time and culture. The line between "destroying a someone" and "harvesting a resource" may depend very much on time and place. I'm not trying to criticize your position, only trying to clarify my own. I would appreciate your thoughts (or links to the thoughts of others).
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Of course we value more the life of beings more closely related to us than the life of beings more distantly related to us. However, there are more differences between the domestic plants and the domestic animals than that. The life of most animals that are eaten by humans can really be said to be destructed from the day when they are born until the day when they are killed, because they are forced to live in a way different from the life for which their body is made for and that they obviously do not enjoy. On the other hand, there is no significant difference between the life of the wild plants and that of the cultivated plants. From the plants that are perennial, we take some parts, e.g. fruits or seeds, which would have been discarded anyway. The annual plants like wheat are killed during the harvest, but they would have died anyway after spreading their seeds, and until the harvest they have lived in the same way as a wild plant. Before the last century, the lives of the domestic animals were usually much better than now and they frequently could be said to live as well as similar wild animals. For example, the chickens grown by my grandparents were certainly happy during all their life. They had a very large space where they could wander all day and eat whatever plants or insects they liked besides the corn that supplemented their diet. They raised their young and did everything else that wild chickens would do, until the day when they were caught and killed. As a small child, I have played a lot with those chickens. So, unlike the cultivated plants, most of them had their lives shortened, but, except for duration, their lives were not altered in other ways. Unfortunately such animal raising methods cannot be scaled to feed billions of humans.
    - mirror_neuron 4y ago
      I like this. These are good points. I think it's worth noting that your position is not the same as GP's, however. One small objection: I assume you lead with "of course" in your first sentence because that value is intuitive to you. It's intuitive to me, too, but I don't have an argument for why it's moral.
- the_af 4y ago
  > [...] I regularly compare those indulging in animal food to peadosexuals: they destroy someones life over some short sensual pleasure. If you regularly do this, you're shutting down conversation in such an extremist way that it is counterproductive. There's a campaign in my country run by some extremist animals rights group with signs that read (translation mine) "yuck! Meat is nauseating!". Their campaign gains little traction because it's both extremist and demonstrably false; most people eating an asado concur meat is delicious, not nauseating. That line of extremist argumentation -- just like comparing eating animals to pedophilia -- is going to lead you nowhere.
  - drekk 4y ago
    Meat is nauseating if you aren't raised on it to eat it every day. Vegetables don't do that to you. Your body isn't gonna forget how to digest a tomato because you stop eating them for a few years. Most digestion of meat is done by bacteria since the cells are too similar to our own for other processes. Those bacteria die out if you don't feed them meat. Eating an animal means killing a sapient being for your own pleasure. You don't need it for sustenance. It's objectively worse for that end both on an efficiency scale (trophic levels from sun -> plant -> herbivore -> you) and health scale. People might get offended by the comparison but it's not my job to hold the hands of people offended by rhetoric. I thought facts don't care about feelings? Extreme is subjective. I view daily murder as pretty extreme but we consider that fine as long as the life being taken is non-human. Want to go wring a chicken's neck in your backyard and eat it? Totally normal and rustic. Tell people that is gross? Extremist demonstrably false vegan agenda
    - the_af 4y ago
      > Vegetables don't do that to you Apples give me nausea, almost always. No other fruit does this to me, though. My mother-in-law finds the sweet smell of bananas nauseating as well, it makes her want to puke. > Tell people that is gross? Extremist demonstrably false vegan agenda It is demonstrably false that meat is disgusting. It's also counterproductive propaganda. Over here most people enjoy asado. It is delicious. Tell them "meat is nauseating" and they will contrast it with their experience, see it's false, and write you off. If the goal with the extremist slogan was to advance a cause, congratulations -- you've failed. It doesn't work because it's both extremist and false. There are other ways of making the vegan point. Comparing eating animals to pedophilia is... unwise.
eimrine 4y ago
> For example if everyone ate say 50% less meat we'd make a noticeable impact on climate change. In cold climate there are no vegetarians for a reason. Less meat consumption during cold weather means less work and more eating sessions. All that ends up in less quality of life and desire to move to warmer places. > to avoid animal suffering. Any researches about animal suffering? How does it measure? Maybe there are some ways to decrease animal suffering without decreasing meat consumption?
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > In cold climate there are no vegetarians for a reason. Less meat consumption during cold weather means less work and more eating sessions. All that ends up in less quality of life and desire to move to warmer places. I'm not sure how this tracks. We're not chopping wood or hunting and foraging every day anymore. Why is high caloric density important if you work in an office (or even from home) in Anchorage, AK?
  - eimrine 4y ago
    > Why is high caloric density important if you work in an office Because I do not work in an office :-) And sometimes I use to chop woods for heating myself.
    - pwpw 4y ago
      I chop wood and don’t eat meat. When I’m playing tennis, I consume lots of calories to provide the energy to compete. I don’t see how your conclusion that eating lots of meat every day is necessary when you sometimes don’t work in an office and sometimes chop wood logically follows.
      - eimrine 4y ago
        This is just my anecdotal evidence. I can not feel good at that times when I do not work in the office (my non-office job is welding which is sometimes better to perform not in building to prevent breathing with chemicals). I tried a lot of really strange things like consume more than 1kg of sugar per day or to drink a sunflower oil to get rid of hunger quickly, but nothing can replace meat for me, especially in cold part of year, which in my home has already started. Either I eat meat at least 2 times per day or I feel hungry and perform a poor quantity of results.
hinkley 4y ago
Restoration Agriculture requires animals, and those animals need to be culled or aged out of the farm. A holistic approach to land management could easily in the neighborhood of about 10% as much meat, and some larger proportion of eggs, to what we currently produce. If you specifically had some agenda for not feeding any of this meat to humans, I could offer a few suggestions, but those would still net you a surplus of chicken and/or pork, because closed cycles have substantial pathogen problems.

by azakai 4y ago

cies 4y ago

> You don't need to be [...] vegan And that from a vegan! I personally find what humans do to animals so heartless and disgusting (totally destroying animal lives to have a little pleasure in the mouth; while it is not necessary), that I regularly compare those indulging in animal food to peadosexuals: they destroy someones life over some short sensual pleasure. I'm on the contrary: veganism should be a moral baseline.

cdelsolar 4y ago
Lol
vt85 4y ago
samatman 4y ago
That's fine. Just understand that I consider you a law-abiding terrorist.
- myshpa 4y ago
mirror_neuron 4y ago
Serious question: how is the destruction of animal life for sustenance different from the destruction of plant life? I'll give you my answer, and hopefully you can share your thoughts (or other answers entirely) to help clarify my thinking. I conclude that we draw a line between animals and other kinds of life because we are more like animals than other kinds of life. And "likeness with ourselves" seems like an arbitrary way of dividing life. Extrapolating in the other direction: why don't we practice cannibalism, as other animals do? Perhaps we find cannibalism dangerous and impractical, but also that the typical human carries social instincts that make the behavior distasteful (which in turn leads to taboos in many -- but not all -- of our cultures). One of my favorite expressions is that "there are no boundaries in nature". That is to say: all dividing lines between categories are invented, regardless of how useful those lines may be. And human constructs change with time and culture. The line between "destroying a someone" and "harvesting a resource" may depend very much on time and place. I'm not trying to criticize your position, only trying to clarify my own. I would appreciate your thoughts (or links to the thoughts of others).
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Of course we value more the life of beings more closely related to us than the life of beings more distantly related to us. However, there are more differences between the domestic plants and the domestic animals than that. The life of most animals that are eaten by humans can really be said to be destructed from the day when they are born until the day when they are killed, because they are forced to live in a way different from the life for which their body is made for and that they obviously do not enjoy. On the other hand, there is no significant difference between the life of the wild plants and that of the cultivated plants. From the plants that are perennial, we take some parts, e.g. fruits or seeds, which would have been discarded anyway. The annual plants like wheat are killed during the harvest, but they would have died anyway after spreading their seeds, and until the harvest they have lived in the same way as a wild plant. Before the last century, the lives of the domestic animals were usually much better than now and they frequently could be said to live as well as similar wild animals. For example, the chickens grown by my grandparents were certainly happy during all their life. They had a very large space where they could wander all day and eat whatever plants or insects they liked besides the corn that supplemented their diet. They raised their young and did everything else that wild chickens would do, until the day when they were caught and killed. As a small child, I have played a lot with those chickens. So, unlike the cultivated plants, most of them had their lives shortened, but, except for duration, their lives were not altered in other ways. Unfortunately such animal raising methods cannot be scaled to feed billions of humans.
  - mirror_neuron 4y ago
    I like this. These are good points. I think it's worth noting that your position is not the same as GP's, however. One small objection: I assume you lead with "of course" in your first sentence because that value is intuitive to you. It's intuitive to me, too, but I don't have an argument for why it's moral.
the_af 4y ago
> [...] I regularly compare those indulging in animal food to peadosexuals: they destroy someones life over some short sensual pleasure. If you regularly do this, you're shutting down conversation in such an extremist way that it is counterproductive. There's a campaign in my country run by some extremist animals rights group with signs that read (translation mine) "yuck! Meat is nauseating!". Their campaign gains little traction because it's both extremist and demonstrably false; most people eating an asado concur meat is delicious, not nauseating. That line of extremist argumentation -- just like comparing eating animals to pedophilia -- is going to lead you nowhere.
- drekk 4y ago
  Meat is nauseating if you aren't raised on it to eat it every day. Vegetables don't do that to you. Your body isn't gonna forget how to digest a tomato because you stop eating them for a few years. Most digestion of meat is done by bacteria since the cells are too similar to our own for other processes. Those bacteria die out if you don't feed them meat. Eating an animal means killing a sapient being for your own pleasure. You don't need it for sustenance. It's objectively worse for that end both on an efficiency scale (trophic levels from sun -> plant -> herbivore -> you) and health scale. People might get offended by the comparison but it's not my job to hold the hands of people offended by rhetoric. I thought facts don't care about feelings? Extreme is subjective. I view daily murder as pretty extreme but we consider that fine as long as the life being taken is non-human. Want to go wring a chicken's neck in your backyard and eat it? Totally normal and rustic. Tell people that is gross? Extremist demonstrably false vegan agenda
  - the_af 4y ago
    > Vegetables don't do that to you Apples give me nausea, almost always. No other fruit does this to me, though. My mother-in-law finds the sweet smell of bananas nauseating as well, it makes her want to puke. > Tell people that is gross? Extremist demonstrably false vegan agenda It is demonstrably false that meat is disgusting. It's also counterproductive propaganda. Over here most people enjoy asado. It is delicious. Tell them "meat is nauseating" and they will contrast it with their experience, see it's false, and write you off. If the goal with the extremist slogan was to advance a cause, congratulations -- you've failed. It doesn't work because it's both extremist and false. There are other ways of making the vegan point. Comparing eating animals to pedophilia is... unwise.

eimrine 4y ago

> For example if everyone ate say 50% less meat we'd make a noticeable impact on climate change. In cold climate there are no vegetarians for a reason. Less meat consumption during cold weather means less work and more eating sessions. All that ends up in less quality of life and desire to move to warmer places. > to avoid animal suffering. Any researches about animal suffering? How does it measure? Maybe there are some ways to decrease animal suffering without decreasing meat consumption?

AlexandrB 4y ago
> In cold climate there are no vegetarians for a reason. Less meat consumption during cold weather means less work and more eating sessions. All that ends up in less quality of life and desire to move to warmer places. I'm not sure how this tracks. We're not chopping wood or hunting and foraging every day anymore. Why is high caloric density important if you work in an office (or even from home) in Anchorage, AK?
- eimrine 4y ago
  > Why is high caloric density important if you work in an office Because I do not work in an office :-) And sometimes I use to chop woods for heating myself.
  - pwpw 4y ago
    I chop wood and don’t eat meat. When I’m playing tennis, I consume lots of calories to provide the energy to compete. I don’t see how your conclusion that eating lots of meat every day is necessary when you sometimes don’t work in an office and sometimes chop wood logically follows.
    - eimrine 4y ago
      This is just my anecdotal evidence. I can not feel good at that times when I do not work in the office (my non-office job is welding which is sometimes better to perform not in building to prevent breathing with chemicals). I tried a lot of really strange things like consume more than 1kg of sugar per day or to drink a sunflower oil to get rid of hunger quickly, but nothing can replace meat for me, especially in cold part of year, which in my home has already started. Either I eat meat at least 2 times per day or I feel hungry and perform a poor quantity of results.

hinkley 4y ago

Restoration Agriculture requires animals, and those animals need to be culled or aged out of the farm. A holistic approach to land management could easily in the neighborhood of about 10% as much meat, and some larger proportion of eggs, to what we currently produce. If you specifically had some agenda for not feeding any of this meat to humans, I could offer a few suggestions, but those would still net you a surplus of chicken and/or pork, because closed cycles have substantial pathogen problems.