14 ms·

Earthlings

56 points by grobmeier 13y ago

notjosh 13y ago
Just a heads up: there's a lot of confronting and graphic imagery in that movie. It's not something you can easily unsee. I'd still recommend watching it. Knowledge is power, of course, but in a safe state before tuning into it.
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation? I'd attack a water buffalo with a fork and eat his brains out raw if I were starving enough, but I don't know if I'd want to keep videos of it around on YouTube. Thanks for the heads-up. I love emotionally-powerful messages, just not simple-minded manipulative ones. Sounds like it might be a good flick.
  - notjosh 13y ago
    > Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation? Elements of both, sure. There's a lot of truth in there, but there's also a number of events that occur in the minority but presented as common. (Not to say it's not uncommon, but not necessarily common either). As in: I'm Australian, but the movie is very US American-centric. Not all of it applies 1:1 to my life, but there's a lot that comes close and hits far too close to home. So even with that, I had a lot of hard questions to ask myself after seeing it. (Spoiler: I've been vegan pretty much since then.) I'd say for all of the movies out there in this niche, it's probably the best of them, but ymmv.
    - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
      My personal feelings are that mankind needs to evolve a new common morality of how to deal with animals. But -- and this is a big caveat -- that might take 20-80 years. We'll at least need to be able to generate laboratory animal protein first, and many questions involving animals will only have compromises for answers. Unfortunately for many who remain upset about animal welfare, humans are an intricate part of the ecosystem of Earth. As much as we would like to live in a vacuum, we're at the top of the food chain and the rest of the planet exists to feed and sustain us (at least in a functional sense) There's also a tendency with artists to confuse "things I can get really upset about" with art. So, frankly, we have a lot of stupid and shallow-minded folks who self-stimulate by getting upset over all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of people making a really good living staying in a state of outrage -- and they tend to want to bring the rest of us along with them. Not healthy for a media consumer. By no means am I implying that this film or these film-makers fit that pattern. I haven't watched it. I'm simply stating the nature of modern art as I currently understand it. Ranting, emotional manipulation, and groupthink wins out over thoughtful reflection every time. And, also frankly, as much as we like to be self-centered about these things, there's really nothing much to say that man is all that special in the big scheme of things. Having us treat the rest of the animal kingdom poorly, burn lots of fossil fuels, change the acidity of the ocean, and pollute the air? It may be no more unnatural across the universe than a lion eating a gazelle. In fact, to a civilization advanced just a few thousand years ahead of us, none of this would even be a blip on the radar of things they'd be concerned about. It'd be like trying to lecture a cow not to eat grass. We tend to be very narrow-minded, even when we're trying explicitly not to be.
      - mcantelon 13y ago
        I don't think it takes a complex morality to figure out that animals shouldn't be subjected to concentration camp-like conditions. Eating meat is natural and will never stop, unless resources are so scarce that it has to, but that doesn't mean that meat has to be cultivated with careless cruelty, which is more or less what's currently going on. And yes, we are a cosmic blip destined to become extinct, but that doesn't morally absolve us from trying to minimize suffering through reasonable measures.
  - cburgas 13y ago
    I've seen it some months ago and I would lean to the manipulation side. There are a lot of heavy-handed comparisons (e.g. to the holocaust) and things like that just to get their point across. I agree that the imagery is powerful and will most likely haunt a lot of people for days or weeks, but the narration bothered me at a number of points during the documentary
    - itistoday2 13y ago
      How are the comparisons to the Holocaust incorrect or unjustified?
  - repseki 13y ago
    Try to kill a water buffalo with your bare hands, then lets discuss our omnivorous diet.
    - Oletros 13y ago
      You're just joking, don't you?
PavlovsCat 13y ago
I saw this a few years ago.. it turned my stomach, but I'm glad I saw it. Maybe I should watch it again. The disconnect between things we buy/do and what goes into them can be so huge, and it's so easy to get lulled back to sleep. I have no idea what this is doing on HN, but if you can stand it, do watch it. You might be sad/angry after you did, or have nightmares, or become veg(etari)an. It is not pleasant and will not leave you cold. If you already are depressed because of the season or something, bookmark it for later maybe.
kayoone 13y ago
Species kill and eat other species in order to survive, but the way we have automated the killing so that we have a total disconnect from the awareness of what we are actually eating is very distressing.
- code_duck 13y ago
  Humans did kill and eat other species to survive. At this point, Americans eat far more animals than needed solely for survival - often so much as to be unhealthy - and it is quite possible to survive and thrive without consuming animals.
  - jaibot 13y ago
    No idea why this comment is being downvoted. Although s/Americans/most-of-the-first-world.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    >> At this point, Americans eat far more animals than needed solely for survival They eat far more plants than needed as well. Animals has nothing to do with it.
    - mcantelon 13y ago
      The ratio of meat to vegetables in the Western diet is high.
    - shawnc 13y ago
      Animals has a lot to do with it - Animals are sentient, thinking, feelings beings. A calf has the same personality and emotions as a puppy.
      - repseki 13y ago
        And a pig has the IQ of a 3 year old human.
- bane 13y ago
lgierth 13y ago
Oh come on, really? Contrasting caged animals with jews in concentration camps? Meat consumption equals holocaust? People feeding on meat equal Hitler? I can see the point animal rights activists are tring to make, but the hypocrisy of this movie was already making me sick when I watched it the first time a couple years back.
- fasouto 13y ago
  >>> Meat consumption equals holocaust? People feeding on meat equal Hitler? There's no such affirmations in the documentary. Not even close.
  - lgierth 13y ago
    First Colonialism and Hitler scenes starting at 3:08. What do these two have to do with the consumption of animals? The intention is obviously "hey look it's the basically same".
    - fasouto 13y ago
      They compare the way we treat animals in the farm with the concentration camps. No with meat consumption, meat consumption is not bad at all. Animals can be treated in a good way.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Have you seen "Baraka"? When it shows people living like sardines, and chicken being put on conveyor belts having their beaks singed off.. how equal do things have to be so they can be compared? Yes, the Nazis were clearly different in their hatred and their torture. Yet when I see chicken in darkness and tiny cages, I do get a similar vibe, that is, some of what appals me about concentration camps, is also present there. Sentient beings suffering in cages for the supposed benefit of others. One is apathic, the other hateful, one is towards animals, the other towards humans ( = the animal we most closely identify with), but otherwise..? Take this statement for example: "[..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did." -- Erich Fromm ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s ) Do you find this offensive too, or do you agree he has a point? I think the key concept here and elsewhere is "in principle".
bane 13y ago
I love meat, it's an important and delicious part of the human omnivorous diet. That being said, I wouldn't object to the periods wasted on home economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms, food processors, factories, sausage-makers and slaughterhouses. It should be on par with "sex education" in terms of parental consent, but should be a necessary and important part of every child's education. It should include information on nutrition, vitamin and mineral sources, discussions on food chain contamination and concentrations of heavy metals and contaminants in the upper ends of the food chain and what that means (and why we as a species tend not to eat animals like apex hunters). Oddball foods that kids wouldn't normally eat at home like yeast paste, soy products and seaweed/kelp/sea vegetables should be included. I grew up pretty rural in my teens so a class like this would have been a bit superfluous -- there's a cattle farm not 10 minutes from my parent's house. Growing up around farms, you get to know the birth-to-dinner plate process for food stock animals pretty quick. Many of my neighbors were too poor to buy meat, but filled a couple chest freezers every year with meat during deer season. It's not unusual to see a deer being processed in somebody's yard where I grew up. Deer are very good eating. But before that I was a city kid (until my parents fled to the boondocks), and had I finished growing up in the city, would have needed an education like this to understand better what I'm eating and why. I wouldn't even object to two films being shown as part of the curriculum, industry standard humane practices for food stock animal handling, and PETA style shock videos of unethical and deplorable conditions...leaving it open for the students to reach their own conclusions about what it means and what to do about it.
- delinka 13y ago
  This is a class on agriculture in our local high schools. They teach exactly what you list. But it's elective. It was very instructive for my daughter and she gave up hotdogs as a result. (She gave them up because of the "random junk" ingredients.)
- belorn 13y ago
  > economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms As someone who grown up on farms, I would be quite worried in how such trips would work. The difference between a small farm (< 50 animals), is day and night. I could also easy see how kids without good guidance could imagine a sterile environment to be a "good farm", while a well kept farm to be "bad" because it has stray of hay laying on the floor. To take a more specific example, a chicken population of 6, 30, and 300 is each radical different in design.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
The fact that the landing page immediately suggests going vegan is a turn-off for me. I'm all for the humane treatment of animals, and I'll gladly pay several times more for my meat and eat considerably less off it. In fact I think most of the mass meat production methods should be completely outlawed. However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing. Without knowing what that entails, that is super easy and kinda meaningless to say though.
- nawitus 13y ago
  >However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. Yes, the billion dollar tofu-industry has created this propaganda film. >I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing. Is your argument that you don't want to watch a movie because you don't agree with it before hand? I recommend you to reconsider the function of documentary films.
- asdasf 13y ago
  >manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby You seem to have a real emotional problem with the idea of vegans existing. Why does that cause you so much distress that you make up bizarre nonsense like a "anti-meat lobby"?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- contextual 13y ago
  Do you have a problem with animals suffering?
fasouto 13y ago
This is an excellent documentary but I'm surprised on how many people simply don't get the point. This documentary is not about being vegan, is about give the animals a decent live and improve the way we treat them. Also talks about speciesism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism comparing it to racism. The documentary shows crude images, but this is how it is. Closing the eyes to the reality won't make it better.
- nawitus 13y ago
  In my opinion realizing that speciesism is wrong directly leads to veganism. I do think that it's import that point out that veganism is a mere side-product of anti-speciesism.
  - rangibaby 13y ago
    How is it specisist to eat things that an omnivore naturally eats in Nature?
    - nawitus 13y ago
      According to Wikipedia: "Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership." A non-speciesist who kills other animals to eat them would be a priori okay with killing humans to eating them.
      - Nursie 13y ago
        So a non-speciesist also considers every act of animal-on-animal violence in the natural world to be tantamount to murder and cannibalism?
      - belorn 13y ago
        In what way is Speciesism connected with canibalism by any species? But regardless, eating humans is unhealthy and thus contrary to evolution. Its the same reason why animals that live for a long time (~100) rarely have many enemies, especially if they are omnivores. Evolutionary, it is better to eat meat that do not had years to build up on heavy metals and toxins. So to put it to a simple point, regardless of the morality with cannibalism, humans would still not eat other humans. There is no -ism needed to explain why we do not eat sulfur, or drink mercury.
bluedino 13y ago
Why don't more people post videos and articles about the mistreatment of migrant farm workers in America? http://www.economist.com/node/17722932 http://www.economist.com/node/17722932 My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate. It's basically slave labor in many cases. Low pay, terrible working conditions, long hours. Imagine crawling through the dirt on your knees for 10 hours a day in the California sun, filling buckets of vegetables for $0.80 a bucket, and if you screw up your boss reports you to immigration? I have family members who were migrant workers just a single generation ago so it hits a little closer to home than some people. But those vegetables don't make it to the store without any suffering, just like pork chops don't.
- kayoone 13y ago
  I dont know how it is in the USA but in europe we have multiple organizations that make sure Food (Animals or not) is processed in a sustainable way. They offer a signet (?) and when producers want it on their food they have to play by the rules. Ever heard of FairTrade ? All vegans i know hardly buy any food without a signet like that, knowing that its more expensive. But the race to the bottom in food prices is one of the worst developments that leads to so much misery for animals and humans producing food. I eat meat maybe about once a week and pay 3 times as much as i would have to, but i am not willing to support this development any further.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  I agree that the lives of farm workers is a more pressing issue than animals. But America's general scorn for vegans is not helping either of those situations, and strikes me as self-conscious more than anything.
- grandalf 13y ago
  It's not necessary to choose. I'd add that conditions in prisons are horrible, as are conditions in countries the US applies bombs and sanctions to, and the nations the US supports dictators in. The point is to rethink your assumptions. Chances are if you tolerate any of these abuses it's b/c you have a blind spot in your otherwise rational view of the world.
locusm 13y ago
I found the doco Blackfish to be pretty thought provoking, its about the keeping of animals in captivity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfish_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfish_(film)
grandalf 13y ago
This is one of the most profound, consciousness-altering films I've seen. I'm not vegan. It's one of those films that anyone who aspires to be truly rational ought to watch.

56 points by grobmeier 13y ago

Just a heads up: there's a lot of confronting and graphic imagery in that movie. It's not something you can easily unsee. I'd still recommend watching it. Knowledge is power, of course, but in a safe state before tuning into it.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation? I'd attack a water buffalo with a fork and eat his brains out raw if I were starving enough, but I don't know if I'd want to keep videos of it around on YouTube. Thanks for the heads-up. I love emotionally-powerful messages, just not simple-minded manipulative ones. Sounds like it might be a good flick.
- notjosh 13y ago
  > Is there knowledge here, or heavy-handed emotional manipulation? Elements of both, sure. There's a lot of truth in there, but there's also a number of events that occur in the minority but presented as common. (Not to say it's not uncommon, but not necessarily common either). As in: I'm Australian, but the movie is very US American-centric. Not all of it applies 1:1 to my life, but there's a lot that comes close and hits far too close to home. So even with that, I had a lot of hard questions to ask myself after seeing it. (Spoiler: I've been vegan pretty much since then.) I'd say for all of the movies out there in this niche, it's probably the best of them, but ymmv.
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    My personal feelings are that mankind needs to evolve a new common morality of how to deal with animals. But -- and this is a big caveat -- that might take 20-80 years. We'll at least need to be able to generate laboratory animal protein first, and many questions involving animals will only have compromises for answers. Unfortunately for many who remain upset about animal welfare, humans are an intricate part of the ecosystem of Earth. As much as we would like to live in a vacuum, we're at the top of the food chain and the rest of the planet exists to feed and sustain us (at least in a functional sense) There's also a tendency with artists to confuse "things I can get really upset about" with art. So, frankly, we have a lot of stupid and shallow-minded folks who self-stimulate by getting upset over all kinds of stuff. There are a lot of people making a really good living staying in a state of outrage -- and they tend to want to bring the rest of us along with them. Not healthy for a media consumer. By no means am I implying that this film or these film-makers fit that pattern. I haven't watched it. I'm simply stating the nature of modern art as I currently understand it. Ranting, emotional manipulation, and groupthink wins out over thoughtful reflection every time. And, also frankly, as much as we like to be self-centered about these things, there's really nothing much to say that man is all that special in the big scheme of things. Having us treat the rest of the animal kingdom poorly, burn lots of fossil fuels, change the acidity of the ocean, and pollute the air? It may be no more unnatural across the universe than a lion eating a gazelle. In fact, to a civilization advanced just a few thousand years ahead of us, none of this would even be a blip on the radar of things they'd be concerned about. It'd be like trying to lecture a cow not to eat grass. We tend to be very narrow-minded, even when we're trying explicitly not to be.
    - mcantelon 13y ago
      I don't think it takes a complex morality to figure out that animals shouldn't be subjected to concentration camp-like conditions. Eating meat is natural and will never stop, unless resources are so scarce that it has to, but that doesn't mean that meat has to be cultivated with careless cruelty, which is more or less what's currently going on. And yes, we are a cosmic blip destined to become extinct, but that doesn't morally absolve us from trying to minimize suffering through reasonable measures.
- cburgas 13y ago
  I've seen it some months ago and I would lean to the manipulation side. There are a lot of heavy-handed comparisons (e.g. to the holocaust) and things like that just to get their point across. I agree that the imagery is powerful and will most likely haunt a lot of people for days or weeks, but the narration bothered me at a number of points during the documentary
  - itistoday2 13y ago
    How are the comparisons to the Holocaust incorrect or unjustified?
- repseki 13y ago
  Try to kill a water buffalo with your bare hands, then lets discuss our omnivorous diet.
  - Oletros 13y ago
    You're just joking, don't you?

PavlovsCat 13y ago

I saw this a few years ago.. it turned my stomach, but I'm glad I saw it. Maybe I should watch it again. The disconnect between things we buy/do and what goes into them can be so huge, and it's so easy to get lulled back to sleep. I have no idea what this is doing on HN, but if you can stand it, do watch it. You might be sad/angry after you did, or have nightmares, or become veg(etari)an. It is not pleasant and will not leave you cold. If you already are depressed because of the season or something, bookmark it for later maybe.

kayoone 13y ago

Species kill and eat other species in order to survive, but the way we have automated the killing so that we have a total disconnect from the awareness of what we are actually eating is very distressing.

code_duck 13y ago
Humans did kill and eat other species to survive. At this point, Americans eat far more animals than needed solely for survival - often so much as to be unhealthy - and it is quite possible to survive and thrive without consuming animals.
- jaibot 13y ago
  No idea why this comment is being downvoted. Although s/Americans/most-of-the-first-world.
- bluedino 13y ago
  >> At this point, Americans eat far more animals than needed solely for survival They eat far more plants than needed as well. Animals has nothing to do with it.
  - mcantelon 13y ago
    The ratio of meat to vegetables in the Western diet is high.
  - shawnc 13y ago
    Animals has a lot to do with it - Animals are sentient, thinking, feelings beings. A calf has the same personality and emotions as a puppy.
    - repseki 13y ago
      And a pig has the IQ of a 3 year old human.
bane 13y ago

lgierth 13y ago

Oh come on, really? Contrasting caged animals with jews in concentration camps? Meat consumption equals holocaust? People feeding on meat equal Hitler? I can see the point animal rights activists are tring to make, but the hypocrisy of this movie was already making me sick when I watched it the first time a couple years back.

fasouto 13y ago
>>> Meat consumption equals holocaust? People feeding on meat equal Hitler? There's no such affirmations in the documentary. Not even close.
- lgierth 13y ago
  First Colonialism and Hitler scenes starting at 3:08. What do these two have to do with the consumption of animals? The intention is obviously "hey look it's the basically same".
  - fasouto 13y ago
    They compare the way we treat animals in the farm with the concentration camps. No with meat consumption, meat consumption is not bad at all. Animals can be treated in a good way.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Have you seen "Baraka"? When it shows people living like sardines, and chicken being put on conveyor belts having their beaks singed off.. how equal do things have to be so they can be compared? Yes, the Nazis were clearly different in their hatred and their torture. Yet when I see chicken in darkness and tiny cages, I do get a similar vibe, that is, some of what appals me about concentration camps, is also present there. Sentient beings suffering in cages for the supposed benefit of others. One is apathic, the other hateful, one is towards animals, the other towards humans ( = the animal we most closely identify with), but otherwise..? Take this statement for example: "[..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did." -- Erich Fromm ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psVNR51ctdc&t=33m28s ) Do you find this offensive too, or do you agree he has a point? I think the key concept here and elsewhere is "in principle".

bane 13y ago

I love meat, it's an important and delicious part of the human omnivorous diet. That being said, I wouldn't object to the periods wasted on home economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms, food processors, factories, sausage-makers and slaughterhouses. It should be on par with "sex education" in terms of parental consent, but should be a necessary and important part of every child's education. It should include information on nutrition, vitamin and mineral sources, discussions on food chain contamination and concentrations of heavy metals and contaminants in the upper ends of the food chain and what that means (and why we as a species tend not to eat animals like apex hunters). Oddball foods that kids wouldn't normally eat at home like yeast paste, soy products and seaweed/kelp/sea vegetables should be included. I grew up pretty rural in my teens so a class like this would have been a bit superfluous -- there's a cattle farm not 10 minutes from my parent's house. Growing up around farms, you get to know the birth-to-dinner plate process for food stock animals pretty quick. Many of my neighbors were too poor to buy meat, but filled a couple chest freezers every year with meat during deer season. It's not unusual to see a deer being processed in somebody's yard where I grew up. Deer are very good eating. But before that I was a city kid (until my parents fled to the boondocks), and had I finished growing up in the city, would have needed an education like this to understand better what I'm eating and why. I wouldn't even object to two films being shown as part of the curriculum, industry standard humane practices for food stock animal handling, and PETA style shock videos of unethical and deplorable conditions...leaving it open for the students to reach their own conclusions about what it means and what to do about it.

delinka 13y ago
This is a class on agriculture in our local high schools. They teach exactly what you list. But it's elective. It was very instructive for my daughter and she gave up hotdogs as a result. (She gave them up because of the "random junk" ingredients.)
belorn 13y ago
> economics in middle school being turned into a "sources of food" education class that included trips to farms As someone who grown up on farms, I would be quite worried in how such trips would work. The difference between a small farm (< 50 animals), is day and night. I could also easy see how kids without good guidance could imagine a sterile environment to be a "good farm", while a well kept farm to be "bad" because it has stray of hay laying on the floor. To take a more specific example, a chicken population of 6, 30, and 300 is each radical different in design.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

The fact that the landing page immediately suggests going vegan is a turn-off for me. I'm all for the humane treatment of animals, and I'll gladly pay several times more for my meat and eat considerably less off it. In fact I think most of the mass meat production methods should be completely outlawed. However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
> I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing. Without knowing what that entails, that is super easy and kinda meaningless to say though.
nawitus 13y ago
>However, I'm not going to sit through another manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby. Yes, the billion dollar tofu-industry has created this propaganda film. >I'm happy being an omnivore, thankyouverymuch, and I have no problem with animals being killed for food or clothing. Is your argument that you don't want to watch a movie because you don't agree with it before hand? I recommend you to reconsider the function of documentary films.
asdasf 13y ago
>manipulative propaganda film from the anti-meat lobby You seem to have a real emotional problem with the idea of vegans existing. Why does that cause you so much distress that you make up bizarre nonsense like a "anti-meat lobby"?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
contextual 13y ago
Do you have a problem with animals suffering?

fasouto 13y ago

This is an excellent documentary but I'm surprised on how many people simply don't get the point. This documentary is not about being vegan, is about give the animals a decent live and improve the way we treat them. Also talks about speciesism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism comparing it to racism. The documentary shows crude images, but this is how it is. Closing the eyes to the reality won't make it better.

nawitus 13y ago
In my opinion realizing that speciesism is wrong directly leads to veganism. I do think that it's import that point out that veganism is a mere side-product of anti-speciesism.
- rangibaby 13y ago
  How is it specisist to eat things that an omnivore naturally eats in Nature?
  - nawitus 13y ago
    According to Wikipedia: "Speciesism involves the assignment of different values, rights, or special consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership." A non-speciesist who kills other animals to eat them would be a priori okay with killing humans to eating them.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      So a non-speciesist also considers every act of animal-on-animal violence in the natural world to be tantamount to murder and cannibalism?
    - belorn 13y ago
      In what way is Speciesism connected with canibalism by any species? But regardless, eating humans is unhealthy and thus contrary to evolution. Its the same reason why animals that live for a long time (~100) rarely have many enemies, especially if they are omnivores. Evolutionary, it is better to eat meat that do not had years to build up on heavy metals and toxins. So to put it to a simple point, regardless of the morality with cannibalism, humans would still not eat other humans. There is no -ism needed to explain why we do not eat sulfur, or drink mercury.

bluedino 13y ago

Why don't more people post videos and articles about the mistreatment of migrant farm workers in America? http://www.economist.com/node/17722932 http://www.economist.com/node/17722932 My ex was a vegan. She always complained about the mistreatment of animals used for food but never thought twice about how the people were treated who picked all the vegetables she ate. It's basically slave labor in many cases. Low pay, terrible working conditions, long hours. Imagine crawling through the dirt on your knees for 10 hours a day in the California sun, filling buckets of vegetables for $0.80 a bucket, and if you screw up your boss reports you to immigration? I have family members who were migrant workers just a single generation ago so it hits a little closer to home than some people. But those vegetables don't make it to the store without any suffering, just like pork chops don't.

kayoone 13y ago
I dont know how it is in the USA but in europe we have multiple organizations that make sure Food (Animals or not) is processed in a sustainable way. They offer a signet (?) and when producers want it on their food they have to play by the rules. Ever heard of FairTrade ? All vegans i know hardly buy any food without a signet like that, knowing that its more expensive. But the race to the bottom in food prices is one of the worst developments that leads to so much misery for animals and humans producing food. I eat meat maybe about once a week and pay 3 times as much as i would have to, but i am not willing to support this development any further.
badman_ting 13y ago
I agree that the lives of farm workers is a more pressing issue than animals. But America's general scorn for vegans is not helping either of those situations, and strikes me as self-conscious more than anything.
grandalf 13y ago
It's not necessary to choose. I'd add that conditions in prisons are horrible, as are conditions in countries the US applies bombs and sanctions to, and the nations the US supports dictators in. The point is to rethink your assumptions. Chances are if you tolerate any of these abuses it's b/c you have a blind spot in your otherwise rational view of the world.

locusm 13y ago

I found the doco Blackfish to be pretty thought provoking, its about the keeping of animals in captivity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfish_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfish_(film)

grandalf 13y ago

This is one of the most profound, consciousness-altering films I've seen. I'm not vegan. It's one of those films that anyone who aspires to be truly rational ought to watch.