[HN Gopher] How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World
___________________________________________________________________
How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World
Author : jseliger
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-07-02 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (literaryreview.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (literaryreview.co.uk)
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Regarding 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.
| ssijak wrote:
| So the slaves would not exist and would not be born if not for
| the slavers. Sounds legit.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Farmed animals are bred in extreme quantities over
| uncountable generations. There is obviously an argument for
| the original ancestor generations of farmed animals as to
| whether their lives would have been better if we did not farm
| them (and another, different argument for the current
| generation, if we decide to stop farming and have the choice
| of slaughtering them as normal or freeing them), but as we
| produced their descendants, that quickly became morally
| irrelevant as an argument for either side. E.g. it doesn't
| make sense to defend the concept of animal farming by saying
| that they are better off on a farm than in the wild if the
| _ratio of the farmed population_ that would have been born
| otherwise is close to zero. So the question the cited person
| should have been thinking about is instead: Is it better to
| be farmed or to not exist? Since your sarcasm indicates a
| combative emotion, I 'll let you know that I think the answer
| is obviously "to not exist" in the case of factory farms, but
| my moral opinion on the topic isn't what I was writing about.
| mssundaram wrote:
| The "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 wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| The argument is that pasture raised cows is better than
| factory farmed cows. I am saying that in both cases the
| cows die.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Can 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?
| mssundaram wrote:
| "crop deaths tho" is not a stable argument. Eating meat
| _requires_ death. But there are ways to avoid killing
| animals when harvesting grains etc. And in any case, it 's
| a very inflated view - you're still killing more animals by
| eating meat than you are by not.
| iratewizard wrote:
| > you're still killing more animals by eating meat than
| you are by not
|
| Pure conjecture. All numbers I've seen show a higher
| quantity of deaths from crop farming per calorie.
| Falling3 wrote:
| I've seen this thoroughly debunked several times. What
| "numbers" are you alluding to? The most commonly cited
| number I've seen from a 2003 study is 7.3 billion crop
| deaths per year, which experts seem to agree is likely a
| large overestimate. Even if that were the case, that puts
| crop deaths at an order of magnitude smaller than the
| number of _land_ animals slaughtered every year; that
| number is further dwarfed if we included aquatic animals.
|
| Additionally, the crops where some of the highest number
| of field deaths are encountered (such as soy and corn)
| are also primarily as animal feed.
|
| So no. Vegans do not kill more animals.
| mssundaram wrote:
| Furthermore, most meat eaters additionally eat plants
| too, _and_ the animals they eat also usually are eating
| industrially farmed plants, which really makes the crop
| deaths argument silly.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| What you bring up is an interesting topic, and you should
| try to increase the explicit information and reduce the
| hostility.
| dotsam wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| JustVestedSeeYa wrote:
| All the otherwise smart people on this website who still defend
| meat is priceless.
| aszantu wrote:
| best 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 wrote:
| But 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I've just hit my 16 year veganniversary...
|
| Number of times I have been to the doctor for protein
| deficiency... zero.
|
| I have found that the biggest problem with being vegan is
| depression, depression because you have no friends. You
| basically go through this very traumatic learning experience to
| learn the truth about where food comes from and then you are
| isolated. Friends make jokes about you, and become not so good
| friends anymore. Then you become depressed because of the
| isolation and then _some_ think it is because of the diet,
| which it could be, but likely isn't. And it is because of the
| isolation. (watch the film Happy)
|
| The evidence based book Eat to Live will guide anyone
| interested in a vegan or plant-based diet to nutritional
| excellence, so they aren't missing any nutrients etc.
|
| However, it won't get you friends and help others be more
| compassionate and open minded, it is quite miserable. So, I
| suggest that priority #1 if anyone goes vegan is to move. Yes,
| move to a city where there is a vegan community, along with
| that comes more compassionate individuals. We did that and
| moved to Portland, Oregon and now I have a TON of friends (I
| did work hard at it, meeting people in real life on FB groups)
| and I encourage more to come to Portland as well! There are
| over 40 vegan-only restaurants, 40 more that are vegan and
| vegetarian and over 80 more that have vegan menu items. This
| means there is quite the population already here, so move here,
| make it better, get in a good supportive bubble!
|
| If you move here for the vegan community, hit me up and I'll
| introduce you to others!
|
| elijah@elijahlynn.net
| bradlys wrote:
| Maybe this was a thing 15+ years ago but I don't think this
| is really a thing anymore??? People go vegan and no one gives
| a shit.
|
| I have many friends/acquaintances who are vegan and none of
| them are like - "I am such a victim, no one will eat with me!
| All my friends left me for meat!"
|
| Hell - people are much more judgmental these days to people
| who are just picky eaters! If you're vegan - no one cares.
| Picky eater though? You ain't getting married, buddy.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Entirely a function of where you live. Here in the midwest
| I live in a very liberal city and there are still plenty of
| places where someone looks at you like you have two heads
| if it comes up that you don't eat meat. I can't imagine how
| bad it must be for anyone living in a more rural
| environment who tries to become vegetarian or vegan.
| akiselev wrote:
| I think it's a regional thing. Veganism spread out from a
| few "cultural centers" [1] where there was already a
| critical density of restaurants and shops catering to vegan
| diets. In places that just got their first local vegan
| option when fast food adopted Beyond/Impossible, it's still
| a joke. Other places that are getting their third vegan
| restaurant have normalized it and veganism has lost any
| comedic novelty. Chain and family restaurant empires spread
| out geographically to make use of economies of scale in
| logistics so there's a natural rate at which this
| transformation happens.
|
| [1] not culture in general but places that already had lots
| of vegans
| soyftware wrote:
| Congrats on the 16 years veganniversary!
|
| > You basically go through this very traumatic learning
| experience to learn the truth about where food comes from and
| then you are isolated.
|
| Definitely feels isolating, a special kind. Luckily there are
| subreddits to retreat to. The learning experience is not an
| easy one. Can't imagine not living in a big city. Happy cow
| plans my destinations now.
| [deleted]
| Zababa wrote:
| > Friends make jokes about you, and become not so good
| friends anymore.
|
| It sounds like they weren't good people in the first place.
| I've been on the other side, having a friend that became
| vegan, and it's not that hard to plan a bit more ahead or ask
| if he's okay with eating something different.
|
| Edit: something that I should add is that we both respected
| each other's boundaries. I didn't question his choice to not
| consume animal products, and he didn't question mine to
| consume them. I can understand that if you believe that
| animals are a really important cause you have to push other
| people to follow you, but I think that if I was constantly
| questionned we wouldn't have remained good friends. On the
| other hand, I also understand that some people wouldn't want
| to associate with people that consume animal products because
| their values aren't the same.
| johnkpaul wrote:
| In case it makes you feel better, either from misery-loves-
| company or from the similar-situation-on-other-side
| perspective, I feel very similar to you in terms of social
| isolation and I'm almost entirely carnivore with basically 0
| plant consumption.
|
| Sadly I think part of this is human nature. Doing anything so
| different from status-quo-of-your-social-circle is very very
| very isolating. Don't get me started on trying to plant
| flowers instead of a lawn. :D
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Agreed that different people have different synapses based on
| how they grow up. I didn't drink a lot of milk and never had
| cheese for most of my life. We used coconut milk for the creamy
| base. But I grew up eating, limited but regular, meat. I was
| ready to give up dairy before I could give up my lamb chops. I
| grew What I crave is seafood. So I go to a local fisherman for
| that. I'm vegan in all other aspects and I don't give an F
| about some people preaching me.
|
| The vegan cheeses (Miyako in particular), Oat Milk (the barista
| kind) and Just Egg are great substitutes btw. Impossible tastes
| just like meat to me now.
| JohnSilwon wrote:
| If you're digusted by the thought of eating animal flesh, you
| should really see how milk is made.
|
| And also, miss me with this bull. Either go vegan or shut the
| fuck up. Vegetarians are the worst.
| chrispine wrote:
| I know this wasn't your main point, but IMHO it's not helpful
| to think in binary terms: "strict vegan" or "not at all". In
| terms of animal welfare, or in terms of environmental impact,
| or whatever impels one to consider a plant-based diet, why not
| just view it as a spectrum?
|
| I don't want you (or anyone) to feel tortured or self-
| flagellated about their diet.
| fumar wrote:
| For what its worth the increase in plant-based foods has made
| veganism an easier lifestyle choice. I've been vegan, a health
| decision advised by a doctor, for a year now and its made a
| positive impact to my overall health proven by routine full lab
| work, pre and post. I wasn't overweight and my weight has only
| decreased by a few pounds. It is changed how I view food too.
| We truly are what we eat. We should know that intuitively - our
| fuel is food.
|
| I generalize that for many people less meat and meat products
| may lead to positive health outcomes, but I am no scientist.
|
| Finding new vegan restaurants, recipes, or food staples has
| given my sense of culinary adventure. There are times when the
| food is not good or my expectations were too high, but there
| are plenty times when my taste buds are elated and my body
| fully satiated. ymmv
| Zababa wrote:
| > I generalize that for many people less meat and meat
| products may lead to positive health outcomes, but I am no
| scientist.
|
| And you fail to take into account the healthy user bias.
| Plenty of people become vegan because it's advertised as
| healthier, which means it filters people that don't want to
| be healthy more than some other diets. Also, vegans are very
| aware that they diet may lack X or Y so they pay more
| attention to nutrition. For example, lack of B12 was a meme
| against vegans at some point, which means now most of them
| are aware of B12. I can't say the same for the rest of the
| population.
| borski wrote:
| Counterpoint: I've been Keto, also advised by a doctor, and
| have eaten basically nothing but free-farmed meat and cheese,
| along with lots of veggies, and my overall health has gone
| from "OK" to roughly "great." (labwork, etc.)
|
| I've since transitioned to low-carb rather than proper keto,
| but the increase in keto foods (things made with healthy
| fats, allulose rather than table sugar, etc.) has made it
| much easier to do proper keto.
|
| As parent said: YMMV, and we all have different bodies,
| needs, etc.
| parksy wrote:
| Corollary - I did keto for just over a year while on a
| vegetarian diet with the main goal being weight loss.
| During that time I felt extremely energised and healthier.
| While not strictly vegan, my diet was basically the low-
| carb nuts, legumes, mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, eggs and
| cheeses. I did have to add a few supplements, otherwise I'd
| feel like utter shit, magnesium and electrolytes mainly had
| a significant effect on my mood. But otherwise it's the
| healthiest and most alert I've felt since I was a teenager.
|
| People I mention this to assume the toughest challenge is
| variety but as I love to cook it wasn't too hard to make it
| interesting each day. The toughest challenge was
| convenience, you grab a coffee or a lunch with friends and
| there's very few places that cater for all. The second most
| challenging aspect was cooking meals for the family, as I
| am the main cook for my wife and kids who did not at all
| buy into a vegetarian diet let alone keto, but that again
| wasn't too bad since I could just cook a normal meal,
| scrape out the bits I can have and whip something up for me
| afterwards.
|
| After about a year on that diet I ran a sub-1hr 12km
| charity race which isn't exactly a world record, but not
| bad for a 40-something always-recovering alcoholic with
| weight and mental health problems. I'd definitely recommend
| keto (with proper medical supervision) but... maybe not at
| the same time as trying to eat less meat.
| wyager wrote:
| > We truly are what we eat.
|
| Well, I'm not trying to be a vegetable.
| sweetheart wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| 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.
| sweetheart wrote:
| That article starts with:
|
| "Vegan and vegetarian diets are both very healthy ways of
| eating. They've been linked to multiple health benefits and
| a lower risk of excess weight, heart disease, and even some
| types of cancer."
|
| Which was an interesting choice for you, I think. Also
| there are some seriously misleading facts in the article:
|
| B12 doesn't from from meat, and meat only has B12 today
| because animals are supplemented with it.
|
| DHA comes from algae, so again, the animals you eat have it
| as a result of having eaten plants.
|
| Creatine, carnosine, and taurine are considered
| nonessential, in the very article.
|
| And with regard to iron: "However, iron deficiency is easy
| to avoid on a well-planned vegan diet", according to the
| article.
|
| But this is kind of irrelevant, because even if these
| things _were_ hard to get for vegans and supplements were
| needed, it still makes veganism a moral imperative, because
| the small price to pay of taking a pill to save billions of
| sentient animals every year is a no brainer.
| verall wrote:
| If people stop eating meat, who is paying for the well
| being of those billions of animals?
|
| I'm not trying to be glib. If humans did not ever eat
| meat, we would not have ever domesticated cattle, but we
| did. So if everyone stops eating meat, what happens to
| all of cattle?
|
| We can set them free, but we have bred out most of their
| ability to compete in nature on their own, we would be
| leaving most for death. Or we can continue to farm
| historically domesticated animals benevolently.
| sweetheart wrote:
| You're totally right, we can't just set them all free, as
| it would ruin ecosystems. What we can do is taper our
| meat consumption down so the animals that are alive now
| will be killed and used, but we would stop adding new
| ones to the system.
|
| That way we ween off of livestock, their suffering ends,
| and we avoid an ecological disaster. Farms will have top
| adapt, because we don't want all the folks in animal
| agriculture to be out of a job all of a sudden, so it'd
| take some time. But we can do it, for sure.
|
| But asking those kinds of questions is really important,
| so thank you for posing it.
| summm wrote:
| Livestock only lives for some months before slaughtering.
| Just keep slaughtering while not breeding new ones, and
| after a few months there will be no livestock left.
| Zababa wrote:
| > yet I've never been able to find any research on anything
| that comes from animal products that prevents health issues
|
| From what I've heard from carnivore people, it's usually the
| opposite. It's not that eating meat prevent health issues,
| it's that eating some vegetables causes them. Carnivore is a
| form of elimination diet, which can help some people. For
| example, if you are gluten intolerant, being carnivore will
| make you feel better. If you are sensitive to nightshades
| (some people claim to be and I don't want to dismiss their
| experience), carnivore will work too. Veganism can work the
| same way for some people (lactose intolerant people for
| example, people that get allergic to mammal meat due to
| Lyme's).
|
| I personally think that we tend to underestimate the
| variations from individual to individual, and that studies
| don't help with that as nutritional studies are usually self
| reported and not really solid, and don't take into account
| confounding factors. For example, vegans and carnivore both
| have a huge healthy user bias compared to the standard
| american diet. I think everyone should try different diets
| and use what's best for them.
|
| One big difference between carnivore (or even keto) and
| veganism however is that veganism is also a diet based on
| moral and values. As such, it's hard to see vegans as less
| biased than keto followers or carnivore followers.
| sweetheart wrote:
| This doesn't really address what I was saying. Anecdotal
| stories of people feeling better only eating meat aren't
| useful for the discussion.
|
| Besides, even if we accept your premise that nutritional
| data are unhelpful in understanding the effectiveness of
| any diet, this can said of both plant-based and carnist
| diets, meaning we can't say one or the other is better, or
| worse, or more or less nutritious.
|
| In that case, I think we should then choose the diet which
| we definitively know causes the least suffering.
|
| I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone feeling
| good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based diet is
| anything other than not knowing how to have a balanced
| plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed with the
| knowledge.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Anecdotal stories of people feeling better only eating
| meat aren't useful for the discussion.
|
| That's where we disagree. I think they are because I
| think we underestimate the differences between people.
|
| > Besides, even if we accept your premise that
| nutritional data are unhelpful in understanding the
| effectiveness of any diet, this can said of both plant-
| based and carnist diets, meaning we can't say one or the
| other is better, or worse, or more or less nutritious.
|
| Again I disagree. My conclusion is that everyone should
| experiment with different kinds of diet and see what
| works. We may not know at the humanity level, but we can
| learn more at the individual level.
|
| > In that case, I think we should then choose the diet
| which we definitively know causes the least suffering.
|
| I don't agree with your premise (or maybe put individual
| suffering of humans at a higher level than animals), but
| I do agree with your conclusions. I don't know if you
| count climate impact in "suffering" in general but that's
| a good argument for veganism too.
|
| > I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone
| feeling good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based
| diet is anything other than not knowing how to have a
| balanced plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed
| with the knowledge.
|
| I think that's shortsighted of you for two reasons.
| First, as I said, I think you underestimate the
| individual variations between people. Second, considering
| how many people suffer from obesity in America, I don't
| agree that having a balanced diet, be it plant based or
| anything else, is easy.
| ssijak wrote:
| If you are sensitive to nightshades, removing nightshades
| from the diet would do the trick, people dont have to go
| full blast carnivore
| Zababa wrote:
| The same would apply to people sensitive to gluten and
| going vegan, people don't have to go full blast vegan.
| But many vegan may be benefiting from it and think it's
| the vegan diet. Unless you remove everything and
| reintroduce everything one by one it's hard to know
| exactly what makes you react or not.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| I was a Vegan for 12 years between the ages of 18 and 30. I was
| literally the worst advert for a Vegan diet imaginable
| primarily because I was so angry all the time.
|
| I'm much less angry now I'm a Vegetarian.
| JohnSilwon wrote:
| Found the titty sucking cheese lover!
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree, but this does raise one question for me. If we are to
| eat mindfully, should we not have pets at all? This seems to be
| a population, resource, and global warming constraint.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Unpopular opinion, but I would completely outlaw any pet
| ownership or animal husbandry on the simple basis that it's
| impossible for animals to consent to being owned.
| snug wrote:
| Neither did a child being born
| giantg2 wrote:
| Nor do any of us have the real option to consent or
| withdraw consent to living in the society we are born
| into (assuming emmigration is not an option, or that the
| alternatives are no better)
| chacha2 wrote:
| They didn't consent to nature either.
| Falling3 wrote:
| And that's why we don't use "but Nature did it first" as
| a justification in moral discussions.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think that's too simplistic.
|
| Here's an animal. The options are: - Owned/managed by a
| human - Living in nature - Not existing
|
| The animal has consented to exactly none of those. But
| living in nature is not a bed of roses. Is it moral to
| subject an animal to that?
|
| In that analysis, human ownership (if humane) seems like
| the _most_ moral option. And "nature did it first" has
| nothing to do with the analysis.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even humane ownership generally implies reproductive
| restrictions. I don't see how that could be considered
| the most moral option.
| Falling3 wrote:
| I disagree it's too simplistic. It's a logical fallacy
| that we wouldn't be advocating for in any other context
| than our treatment of non-human animals.
|
| It's also just a disingenuous argument. If our actual
| concern were the welfare and lives of animals in the
| wild, we would be capturing and caring for those
| individuals - not breeding new ones into existence.
| LikelyClueless wrote:
| What do you think about cooperative hunting between humans
| and dogs? Not the same as modern domestication, but some
| have theorized dogs may have domesticated themselves by
| eating scraps and/or leaving scraps progressing into
| sharing, hunting and training with humans. These
| relationships could have slowly progressed to human
| ownership of dogs. If we gloss over the hunting ethics,
| where would you draw the line for when this ethical
| cooperation between unequal partners turns unethical? Or do
| you reject the premise?
| ssijak wrote:
| Adopt stray animals, dont buy.
| summm wrote:
| And do not show them off, in order not to entice others to
| buy.
| danboarder wrote:
| If people separate themselves from nature and do not have
| personal friendship and daily interaction with animals, I
| think it is more difficult to care about them generally,
| based on the social rule of "statistical numbing" where
| studies have shown that we care more about individual
| creatures that we know something about than groups that we
| don't (1,2).
|
| (1) https://bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/statistical-
| num...
|
| (2) https://www.ibtimes.com/why-we-care-more-about-death-
| lion-th...
| summm wrote:
| This is a fake argument. Owners of carnivores happily feed
| meat of numerous chicken, pigs and cows to their pets.
| Keepers of free-roaming cats accept that each of those
| kills 100 birds and rodents per year.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But then the better solution is to have the people interact
| with useful animals, like service animals or agricultural
| animals. Pets would be superfluous when there are other
| animals that could provide interactions _and_ another
| useful purpose. This would be a more efficient use of
| resources and more climate friendly.
| warent wrote:
| I'm not sure how you got this conclusion, it seems like
| the exact opposite of what they're saying.
|
| Placing animals in buckets of "useful" and "useless" is
| not empathy; that's back to the point of treating them
| like tools or exploitable resources.
|
| Love and empathy is not intended to be conditional on
| what value you can reap from it. At best that's a
| business relationship, and at worst it's something very
| dark.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "...treating them like tools or exploitable resources."
|
| Everything is a resource regardless of whether it is
| exploited. The person saying empathy comes from having
| exposure to pets is in essence saying pets are a resource
| to cultivate empathy and should be exploited as such. The
| issue is resource constraints. Pets consume a lot of
| argicultural and pharmaceutical resources.
|
| You talk of love and empathy being unconditional, but
| when you live in a resource constrained world, should we
| spend money creating, housing, and feeding pets? Or
| should we care for the vulnerable humans? Should we stop
| keeping pets so that we don't need the agriculture that
| is required to support them, thus feeding people or
| allowing the land to return to the natural world and it's
| native animals?
|
| Resources are a part of the equation. It seems many
| people ignore the n-order impacts. It's the same as
| people buying their processed food or meat without ever
| seeing the source and process. Probably even more so with
| kibble since it doesn't look like food to us.
| warent wrote:
| Utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy
| is a form of exploitation in the same way that being kind
| and generous to people in order to feel good about
| oneself is a form of selfishness. The Dalai Lama refers
| to this as "wise selfishness."
|
| As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then
| utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy
| is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the
| world a better place. You could say it's a symbiotic
| relationship of wise exploitation.
|
| (EDIT: To clarify, the difference here is that challenges
| which arise in such relationships serve to grow and
| enhance empathy and love. Whereas with a work animal /
| tool, challenges in the relationship means discarding the
| beast and replacing it with something more useful)
|
| As far as the hypothetical situations go, it's a red
| herring that I don't have the time to dive into.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You are ignoring the n-order impacts like resource
| allocation. You are clearly not generating empathy for
| the animals that your pet is consuming. It also seems any
| positive impact is negligible give the current status
| quo.
|
| "As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then
| utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy
| is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior _which makes
| the world a better place._ " emphasis mine
|
| This is a highly speculative opinion that provides no
| cost benefit analysis.
| summm wrote:
| Yet practically all pet owners use and exploit their pets
| emotionally. The term "pet loves you unconditionally"
| used as an argument for pets is revealing: They are
| mostly kept to give the owner a feeling of being loved,
| which is much harder to get from other human beings.
| Ideally suited for increasingly narcissist population.
| Second, they are used to virtue signal, to increase
| social capital. The saying goes, if you cared for pets,
| you would be a good person, and in reverse, if you did
| not like pets, you would be a bad person. This is
| obviously wholly unsubstantiated, and there are numerous
| counterexamples. This is true even more for "rescues",
| which makes the owners feel like saviors. And as usual,
| because many people have incorporated the meme of pet
| ownership so deeply into their identity, they cannot
| argue about this rationally.
| wyager wrote:
| It is so obscenely hard, if even possible, to get sufficient
| nutrition on a vegan diet. 95% of vegans don't do a good job
| and are visibly malnourished.
|
| Otoh, it's trivial to get a complete nutritional intake on an
| animal diet. You're made out of mammal parts, so it's pretty
| much guaranteed you can get what you need by eating animal
| parts. Compare a serving of pate to literally any plant.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| It really isn't that hard. All protein on the planet comes
| from plants and photosynthesis. Dietary supplemental vitamins
| are needed on both a vegan and non-vegan diet. Human teeth
| cannot eat raw animal skin/meet, they don't cut it. Watch
| "The Game Changers".
|
| Read the book Eat to Live. It is evidence based, written by
| an M.D. and has nearly 1,000 references/studies. I've been
| doing the ETL lifestyle now for 16 years now, and feel great
| on it!
| wyager wrote:
| > It really isn't that hard
|
| Then why is almost every vegan so malnourished?
|
| > It is evidence based
|
| I doubt it. Nutrition "science" right now has abysmally low
| evidentiary standards. We don't have a scientific (i.e.
| experimental) basis for making strong low-level nutritional
| predictions beyond "if you don't get any of this you will
| die eventually". Basically the only thing you can do right
| now is make sweeping observations ("what is the apparent
| health of populations on this diet?") and a-priori
| reasoning ("what is my prior on the evolutionary
| optimization criteria affecting my metabolic system?").
|
| > I've been doing the ETL lifestyle now for 16 years now,
| and feel great on it!
|
| I've been eating keto/carnivore for two years now and I
| feel great (so not looking to improve on that front). I
| also don't have any health problems associated with
| nutritional deficiency (in fact I am in perfect health, and
| I wasn't when I ate the S.A.D.), and I don't have to put in
| any special effort to maintain that state of affairs.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| They aren't. Do you look at all the obese people and say,
| man, that non-vegan diet you are on looks really
| malnourishing?
| wyager wrote:
| > Watch The Game Changers and read Eat to Live.
|
| The Game Changers was manifestly stupid propaganda. If
| you fell for it, this is a really bad sign wrt your
| ability to filter out dietary-pseudoscientific nonsense.
|
| > Do you look at all the obese people and say, man, that
| non-vegan diet you are on looks really malnourishing
|
| The average obese American is on a diet much closer to a
| vegan diet than a meat-based diet. They get most of their
| calories from bread, rice, peanut oil, soy products, corn
| syrup, canola oil, etc. etc.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| > The Game Changers was manifestly stupid propaganda. If
| you fell for it, this is a really bad sign wrt your
| ability to filter out dietary-pseudoscientific nonsense.
|
| How is watching olympic athletes, proving they are
| getting even better, propaganda?
|
| I feel like you didn't even watch the film.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| > The average obese American is on a diet much closer to
| a vegan diet than a meat-based diet. They get most of
| their calories from bread, rice, peanut oil, soy
| products, corn syrup, canola oil, etc. etc.
|
| And meat, cheese and eggs.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Watch The Game Changers and read Eat to Live.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Why do you believe that almost every vegan is
| malnourished? How do you know who is vegan, and how do
| you know who is malnourished? Are you basing this off of
| anecdotes you've read of people eating plant-based and
| then feeling unhealthy? If so, that's not very reliable
| info.
|
| On the other hand, here is every large nutrition
| institute around the world agreeing that veganism can be
| totally healthy for all stages of life:
| https://youaretheirvoice.com/pages/the-clear-consensus
| wyager wrote:
| > How do you know who is vegan
|
| They'll usually tell you pretty quickly.
|
| > here is every large nutrition institute around the
| world
|
| Why would you ever trust a "large nutrition institute"?
| Who is the kind of person who would come to power at a
| place like that? Certainly not someone who is
| dispassionately interested in promoting human health.
| It's mostly vegans, seventh day adventists, and other
| dietary-religious groups.
|
| When has a "large nutrition institute" ever released
| dietary advice that stood the test of time?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Most vegans I know do not tell anyone. The number of
| closet, covert vegans is significantly higher than the
| overt, "preachy" vegans.
| wyager wrote:
| If you go to a restaurant or eat with them in any context
| it becomes obvious very quickly.
| ssijak wrote:
| Read again what you just said..
| sweetheart wrote:
| If you're saying they are unreliable as source, the onus
| is on you to say why. You just posed some questions
| without actually stating anything, made an assumption
| with no evidence ("Certainly not someone who is
| dispassionately interested in promoting human health",
| "It's mostly vegans, seventh day adventists, and other
| dietary-religious groups.")
|
| So, do you actually have any sources on why we shouldn't
| trust them?
| wyager wrote:
| This is an HN comment thread, not a scientific paper.
| There's no "onus" on me to do anything, and if there
| were, it certainly wouldn't be up to you who got to make
| comments without fulfilling some evidentiary ritual. If
| you're actually interested, you could very easily google
| it, but I'll give you a starting point:
| https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/news/2020-dietary-
| guidelin...
| throwaway_egbs wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people lately making the "you're made out
| of animal parts, so eat animals" argument, which is
| reasonable on its face. But there's a pretty serious problem
| with it: those animals get everything they need from plants.
| And now we're in very murky territory, because now you have
| to prove--not just hypothesize, but _prove_ --that the human
| animal is different from other animals in some very specific
| ways, or you have to weaken the initial claim to the point
| where it doesn't really say anything at all.
| esyir wrote:
| Dental are actually a great way to show this. The diversity
| of teeth in our mouths are evidence that we evolved to eat
| an omnivorous diet.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| I love this response. Such a pleasure when a Registered
| Dietitian chimes in with an informed opinion based on data on
| the internet.
|
| If anyone want to get some high quality info from an actual
| registered dietitian, check out Simnett Nutrition
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpyhJZhJQWKDdJCR07jPY-Q
| wyager wrote:
| Ah yes, the registered dietitian, the pinnacle of
| scientific and deductive capacity, renowned for their
| field's history of uniformly correct recommendations.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| Since some experts get some things wrong some of the
| time, we should not trust any people who study things
| deeply. Anecdotal evidence is the only real truth.
| wyager wrote:
| If a field systematically makes wrong predictions (not
| "some experts some of the time"), you should not trust
| subsequent predictions from that field.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| As opposed to some random guy on the internet?
| JohnSilwon wrote:
| Yep, America is a pinnacle of health when you see how many
| people have access to abundant meat and milk ...
|
| Oh ... wait...
| sweetheart wrote:
| > 95% of vegans don't do a good job and are visibly
| malnourished
|
| Uh, is it even worth asking for a source for this?
| wyager wrote:
| When I say "visibly malnourished", I mean you can look at
| them and see they are malnourished. Why would you ask for a
| source? Just use your eyes.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >you can look at them
|
| All of them at once??
| wyager wrote:
| Thankfully, due to the principle of object permanence, it
| suffices to look at them one at a time.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| And you're able to look at all of them, one at a time?
| The plural of anecdote is not data.
| wyager wrote:
| The plural of datum is data, and when you look at
| something that produces a datum.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| The film The Game Changers has plenty of examples of
| thriving humans on a vegan diet, it is the opposite of
| what you claim.
|
| You are just showing a bias.
| wyager wrote:
| > The film The Game Changers has plenty of examples of
| thriving humans on a vegan diet... You are just showing a
| bias.
|
| I am showing a bias and the silly vegan propaganda movie
| isn't? OK.
|
| Btw, if you want some examples of veganism not working as
| advertised, look up the ongoing "vegans: the epitome of
| malnourishment" series on YouTube. It tracks various
| vegan influencers throughout the years.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Replace "vegan" with "stop cruelty". It's not a diet.
| It's a mindset not wanting to cause unnecessary
| suffering.
|
| Why would you want to continue funding a cruel and
| biosphere destroying industry (factory farming) if you
| don't need their products to survive. In our society
| eating animal flesh is mostly to experience culinary
| pleasures. If you look at it from a logical perspective,
| it doesn't make sense, all that waste and inefficiencies
| in that system - tech folks should appreciate that.
|
| Veganism doesn't mean you're automatically on a healthy
| diet. You can be vegan on Pringles and Coke.
|
| Game Changers just shows you can thrive at an athletic
| level on a plant based diet.
|
| We humans gave up other horrific practices from the past
| - so the future is vegan (reduced cruelty), but we don't
| have to wait - we can start now.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I tend to avoid the word "propaganda" where I think the
| term "one-sided" would qualitatively suffice, but those
| YouTube videos are fairly close to the definition of
| propaganda. The series is essentially one of the common
| hate-driven cherry-picking machines the internet is
| constructed out of. This is coming from me, a non-vegan
| who thinks that adequate nutrition is much more difficult
| for vegans, and therefore by the very laws of statistics,
| if that assumption is true, then vegans _are in fact on
| average less well-nourished_ compared to people with
| adequate access to food and no dietary restrictions.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Have you watched it?
| nradov wrote:
| That movie is biased propaganda advocating a particular
| diet, not a proper scientific study. You can certainly
| cherry pick a few elite athletes who perform well on
| vegan diets, but the vast majority of elite athletes are
| omnivores. Ever some of the movie subjects ate certain
| animal products such as eggs.
|
| If you search around a bit you'll also find numerous
| anecdotal reports from elite athletes who tried vegan
| diets and found that they seemed to have more difficulty
| recovering from injuries. There seem to be some subtle
| nutritional deficiencies which aren't fully captured in
| the USRDA. This issue is difficult to study in a
| rigorous, controlled way due to individual differences so
| we'll probably never get conclusive data one way or the
| other.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| What I do is try to stay vegan/plant based as much as possible,
| which basically means everything I make in my house is plant
| based, but if I go to a restaurant that makes a really great X
| that's not vegan I might get it. Or if I choose to make
| something in my house that's not vegan, I'm going all out,
| getting the top ingredients I can get my hands on and making it
| a truly great version of that meal. I'm done having mediocre
| burgers at BBQs, smothered with cheap bacon and cheese. This
| food isn't good, but since we just cover it in tons of fat we
| convince ourselves otherwise, and along the way we ignore the
| massive amounts of animal suffering, deterrents to our health,
| and carbon costs we're inflicting because of these decisions.
|
| You don't have to go 100% vegan/plant based, just stop making
| meat/dairy/animal by products the only thing you eat. Once you
| start you begin to get repulsed at the lack of vegetable
| options available to you at most places. Why is it such a crazy
| view point to eat something actually nutritionally good for
| you.
| dorchadas wrote:
| This is how I do it. Anything I buy and cook for myself is
| vegetarian at a minimum, more often vegan (the occasional
| cheese dip and eggs for brownies slip through), but if I go
| out somewhere with friends and they don't have a good
| veggie/vegan option, I do eat meat. Likewise if I go to
| someone's house where they're cooking of preparing food. I've
| found this to be a really good compromise to it, and often
| only eat meat one or two meals a week.
| newman555 wrote:
| Really? For me switching process was long, but now that I'm
| vegan, I can't tell you how much I enjoy the food I eat. Also,
| there was never an easier time to switch, so many substitutes
| (if you need them), so many great vegan restaurants (at least
| where I live). Again, variety of food, options, the
| flavours..just have to discover new things.
|
| Btw, I was hardcore meat eater most of my life, but then things
| changed, I realized what I'm eating, what impact it has on my
| health, on the environment and it just started feeling wrong.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Can you please email me at elijah@elijahlynn.net? I would
| like to connect with you and other vegan tech folk (ideally a
| video chat). This is open to anyone on this thread.
|
| I've been nutritarian vegan (Eat to Live book) for 16 years,
| fwiw.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Hey, you should check out the Humane League, and consider
| becoming a Changemaker. I did it a couple months ago and
| now I have a large network of vegan folks around the
| country that have been a great support system. Many of us
| are in tech, too!
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check it out. I'd like to chat with you more
| about it. Can you email me at elijah@elijahlynn.net?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| And POW.. this just got removed from the front page. Someone has
| bias...
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| And... it just got unflagged and is back on the front page.
| Thank you!
| Dolpahimide wrote:
| Henry 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.
| debacle wrote:
| I 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.
| chrispine wrote:
| I really appreciate that you are not taking this issue as an
| ethical binary (100% vegan or "I could never do that"), but
| instead treating it as a spectrum on which our various
| competing values play out, with various costs and benefits. I
| wish our collective conversations about this took your tone
| more often.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Why 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.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| It's wrong to NOT domesticate non-human animals.
| debacle wrote:
| We 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.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| First of all - thanks for thinking about this critically
| and choosing to reduce your meat consumption.
|
| Humans evolve and we create new technology that allows us
| to live better than we did in the past. We have reached a
| point where a lot of humans on this planet don't need to
| kill (or pay others to kill) to survive anymore. It's
| mostly about taste and pleasure - not survival.
|
| Ethan Brown - founder of Beyond Meat - created his company
| because he knew you can't change culture overnight. But if
| you offer something that is like meat or better and cheaper
| then people would switch.
|
| If you live in nature and you need to hunt or raise animals
| to survive - sure you got to do what you need to survive.
| But a lot of us are not living under those conditions
| anymore.
|
| Factory farming is causing a lot of destruction and we need
| to find more sustainable ways to feed the world.
| chrispine wrote:
| Factory farming is not tens of thousands of years old.
| Equating that to hunting and fishing (which I _think_ you
| are doing, but maybe I 'm misreading you) would be
| "unfathomably ignorant" as well.
| sweetheart wrote:
| I agree we have eaten animals for thousands of years, and
| large parts of our culture revolve around eating animals.
| But its sort of a fallacy to use that to explain why we
| _should_ do it it, or why it's morally permissable. There
| are loads of things we did for a long time that we stopped
| doing because they were bad. Simply put, just because we've
| done it forever doesn't mean we should anymore, as things
| have changed.
|
| > so unfathomably ignorant in the context of the global
| human condition
|
| How so? I'm not saying there aren't other issues, I'm just
| saying that this is _also_ bad. I'm curious what you meant,
| because I think you and I actually probably agree on a lot
| of stuff.
| prteja11 wrote:
| That's a very broadly generalization. I have a vegan
| ideology and I understand the culture behind food. But I
| also know that culture is constantly changing. We are also
| very aware of ecological impacts of agriculture (may not be
| the "true" ecological impact as I'm not sure if there are
| any long term studies on that). What I know is there might
| be some communities/ countries that can't move away from
| animal based protein yet, but for a lot of people living in
| industrialized countries like USA/UK, eating animal
| bodies/products is not a necessity for survival (or a
| healthy life).
| moralestapia wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Hardly 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.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| Do 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.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Here 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.
| Falling3 wrote:
| > Just because you're interested in something and it's
| important to you, doesn't mean you need to impose it upon other
| people!
|
| We're talking about a moral issue though. If you want to argue
| against advocates on moral grounds, that's one thing - but how
| is "it's not important to me" a relevant argument?
|
| If you don't donate to battered women's shelters, can you still
| refrain from domestic abuse? If you don't advocate for the
| protection of children, can you still treat them with respect
| personally?
|
| You don't have to take an interest in animals or veganism or
| farming or any of that to recognize a moral argument about
| them. If you think that argument is flawed, engage it at that
| level. Otherwise, I just don't see how your sentiment matters
| in this discussion. It wouldn't be mentioned in any other
| discussion about morals.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I'm not really here to argue about it.
|
| Do I think that perhaps too much energy is devoted to this
| issue when there are a lot of other things going badly that
| need attention? Yes. Do I condemn people who disagree and
| prioritize issues of animal suffering over issues that are
| important to me? No.
|
| I do think that the author of the article (and Mance,
| certainly) implies that I _should_ be concerned about this,
| and that 's where I take issue. I won't take issue with your
| calling this a moral issue either, although I think the
| argument could be made that it isn't.
| nickkell wrote:
| You really don't see anything wrong with the mistreatment of
| animals? Not even the animals people commonly have as pets?
| trey-jones wrote:
| It'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.
| nickkell wrote:
| You treat your people like people, your dogs like dogs, and
| your cattle like cattle
| Falling3 wrote:
| I 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.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| There is a popular saying in the vegan community:
|
| "Why love one but not the other?"
| rcpt wrote:
| If 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__ wrote:
| _" 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 wrote:
| Nothing, 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.
| KitDuncan wrote:
| Agree 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 wrote:
| Agree, 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
| cercatrova wrote:
| I 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.
| globular-toast wrote:
| How 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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| By 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.
| cherryturnover wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| r0b05 wrote:
| Okay so I can go vegan but how to reconcile the pet dilemma?
| Surely my dog or cat cannot live on cauliflower and broccoli.
| JustVestedSeeYa wrote:
| Having a pet isn't vegan.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| set him free - who gives you the right to enslave "your" dog?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| People believe what is convenient for them. It's not easy to
| accept that pets can't consent to being pets if you really
| want to have pets.
| OzyM wrote:
| Is 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]
| moralestapia wrote:
| Would you agree to be locked at some place even if "they
| treat you real good"?
| borski wrote:
| You 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.
| verall wrote:
| Are you a dog?
|
| This kind of personifying glib is what gives
| vegan/vegetarian ethics a bad name. It completely ignores
| domestication and how dogs evolved as human-following
| scavenger animals. Most dog breeds are not adapted to
| living without humans. Dogs in the wild live much shorter
| lives and get parasites.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Are you a dog?
|
| Yes, I am a sentient dog with an internet connection.
|
| >Dogs in the wild live much shorter lives and get
| parasites.
|
| This is true of humans as well. Honestly, I think a dog
| would outlast many of us in the wild. Your point is moot.
| verall wrote:
| It's not, my points are clear and well argued ;)
|
| You aren't a dog, so your preference for not living under
| the care of a human owner is not relevant. Dogs do not
| outlast us in the wild, because "the wild" is the real
| world we live in today. Stray dogs are invasive in most
| ecosystems, and are usually not well adapted to their
| environments.
|
| Dogs are intelligent enough to show preferences, and
| thanks to tens of thousands of years of selective
| breeding, they generally prefer people. Strays are a
| tragedy.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Ok, so I cannot comment on dogs since I am not a dog,
|
| But somehow _you_ , who are not a dog as well (I
| presume), just happen to _know_ that dogs prefer domestic
| life.
|
| Nice dissonance there, pal.
| OzyM wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Exactly! And I can't believe people are downvoting you. If we
| replace "dog" with "human" it would get upvoted. This is
| called "speciesism".
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >If we replace "dog" with "human" it would get upvoted.
| This is called "speciesism".
|
| To put it lightly, I don't think this idea holds water in
| the general case.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| You are demonstrating speciesism right now. One species
| is better than the other. Sexism = one sex is better than
| the other. Racism = one race is better than the other.
|
| The way we treat animals is wrong.
|
| COVID is largely suspected to have come from humans
| fucking with bats.
|
| source:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-
| lab.h...
| moralestapia wrote:
| 100% agree with you. Keeping a "pet" locked on your home for
| the purpose of vanity and keeping you entertained for a few
| mins/day is outrageous. Praising animal rights but choosing
| to ignore this is the ultimate hypocrisy.
| saiojd wrote:
| Have you ever owned a dog? I think you underestimate how
| much dogs have coevolved with/been bred to like humans.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Yes, and we control their reproductive needs by shaming
| them for wanted to hump a leg every now and then, or
| keeping an opposite sex companion away from them, keeping
| them in isolation, never giving them the ability to have
| sex, a natural part of their species. Or we perform surgery
| on them to not have babies.
|
| Or we let them breed, but we pick their partners and then
| take their babies. If we did this to humans there would be
| outrage right?
| verall wrote:
| It's fine to feel that animal husbandry is unethical, but
| considering that domestication occurred already, how do
| you propose the management of domesticated species?
|
| Just letting them free would be cruel, because the
| domesticated animals and surrounding ecosystem have not
| adapted to eachother. They will probably either hurt the
| ecosystem (cats and pigs) or die out after losing human
| care (cattle).
|
| It doesn't seem ethical at all to just pretend that
| domesticated animals are people and so need human rights.
| They need animal rights, which depending on the species
| may be completely different.
| summm wrote:
| No. We should just stop breeding pets altogether, and all
| these moral problems will just solve themselves in a few
| years.
| borski wrote:
| Your assumptions are showing. There are a thousand reasons
| people keep pets that have nothing to do with either vanity
| or entertainment.
|
| Pets offer an extremely potent form of emotional therapy,
| and that is a very personal connection that has nothing at
| all to do with vanity or entertainment. Both of the latter
| are typically secondary effects, not primary.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Your assumptions are showing.
|
| Well, of course, I didn't type my comment by accident!
|
| Regarding your point:
|
| Number of service dogs in the US: ~500,000 [1]
|
| Number of dogs kept as pets in the US: ~76 million [2]
|
| It's not even 1%. I understand the argument you bring but
| in practice is literally a rounding error. The
| overwhelming majority of pets serve a function of vanity
| and/or entertainment.
|
| 1: https://share.america.gov/service-dogs-save-lives/ 2:
| https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/reports-
| statistics/us-p...
| borski wrote:
| Again, you are making assumptions here that are invalid.
| You are talking about service dogs; I am not.
|
| Service dogs do save lives, and are immensely important,
| but that is explicitly not my point.
|
| I am talking about the fact that many pet-owners do gain
| _emotional_ value and support from animals. Emotional
| animal support can be extremely effective therapy for
| humans, but would not count as a service animal. However,
| I don 't think that anyone in their right mind would
| argue that situation is a function of vanity and/or
| entertainment.
|
| And before you go try and find data: no, there aren't a
| lot of registered 'therapy animals,' because that is a
| hot-topic political issue, and people don't differentiate
| them well from service animals. Not to mention that
| society continues to think 'mental health problems' are
| mostly either made-up or to be looked down upon.
|
| There not being a lot of registered ones does not mean
| that the emotional support and stability gained by having
| a pet does not do absolute wonders from a therapeutic
| perspective.
|
| It has been formalized a bit[1], but has been going on
| informally for centuries, since animals and humans do
| form close emotional bonds.
|
| [1] https://www.healthline.com/health/pet-therapy
| summm wrote:
| Oh, I do derive emotional value from eating meat. Since
| when is this an argument?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Do you have any concrete data that could challenge the
| argument that pets are mostly a vanity asset?
|
| Because, ...
|
| >you are making assumptions here that are invalid
|
| ... I would really like to know which side of the story
| is the most plausible one.
| mikestew wrote:
| I'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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| That 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.
| summm wrote:
| If a dog has a violent temperament, training is nice but
| eventually irrelevant. It should just never be kept in a
| neighborhood where humans live, or where it has any
| chance of coming close to any human. Instead it should be
| kept in a fenced area. And it should never breed. Or
| maybe even put down.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >I'm not sure what your point was.
|
| My point is that you DO have a part on what your dog is
| doing, you cannot just let a pet behave like a feral
| animal. Hence the argument of "this is what the dog feels
| like doing" is dull.
| jjj123 wrote:
| You're getting a lot of comments along the lines of "aren't
| you being inconsistent by letting your dog eat meat?" And I
| just want to add one point (not for you, OP, but for the
| group of replies). We don't have to be perfectly consistent
| beings, and it's often better that we are not.
|
| Being a vegan owner who has a carnivore dog is still better
| than being a carnivore owner with a carnivore dog. It's
| better to be inconsistently ethical than it is to be
| consistently unethical.
|
| I think we can get into logic traps here on HN that ignore
| the realities (and benefits!) of the messiness of human
| behavior.
| borski wrote:
| THANK YOU.
|
| Nobody is perfect, and it isn't hypocritical to be
| imperfect.
| mssundaram wrote:
| From a strict vegan perspective, you're supporting the
| killing of other animals in support of your pet. Isn't that
| inconsistent?
| mikestew wrote:
| Ah, I see the Hypocrisy Police are as responsive as ever.
| When the shelters are empty of animals, we will no longer
| have pets. Mull that over and you'll have your answer.
| summm wrote:
| There is this popular meme that pet ownership is
| inherently good and makes owners morally superior. Hint:
| That is factually wrong. But it leads people to deceive
| themselves. And as long as this holds, pets will be bred
| to meet the demand, pet owners will give them to shelters
| and shelters will never get emptier. Worse: Every pet you
| take from the shelter will increase market pressure to
| resupply. The only way to get less pets in shelters is to
| decrease the supply. That means decreasing pet ownership
| overall. Make pet ownership frowned upon like smoking.
| Prohibit breeding altogether.
| mssundaram wrote:
| If I understand correctly, then I would say it's your
| choice to perpetuate owning a pet, specifically a dog.
| And in fact, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread,
| with careful planning dogs can be plant based, and there
| are even synthesized amino acids available that normally
| only come from animals but can be grown from yeasts and
| mushrooms. So you can have your dog and not need to
| support killing other animals.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| No, 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.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| You can try not "owning" another animal. Problem solved. Make
| friends with the squirrels.
| encloser wrote:
| I thought this was a very interesting pod cast about pet food.
| 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.
| tomweingarten wrote:
| Hi! 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.
| wyager wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I mean, I think everyone agrees that way too much sugar or
| eating nondigestible plants is not a good idea.
|
| But a vegan diet has been approved for humans at all stages
| of life, and the vegan dog food I'm aware of meets all
| AAFCO standards (nutrients, digestibility, protein:carb:fat
| ratio) as well as passing tests for dog
| interest/palatability.
|
| There's a big difference between a well-rounded plant-based
| diet, and living off sugar or cellulose-heavy raw plants.
| wyager wrote:
| > eating nondigestible plants is not a good idea.
|
| Almost every plant is nondigestible.
|
| > But a vegan diet has been approved for humans at all
| stages of life
|
| Well if it's been "approved" then no need to worry! Who
| exactly "approved" it and why do I care what they say?
|
| > There's a big difference between a well-rounded plant-
| based diet, and living off sugar or cellulose-heavy raw
| plants.
|
| There are like 4 edible plants that don't provide 90% of
| their calories in the form of sugars (starches are a kind
| of sugar). There are also very few plants that don't have
| a huge cellulose content.
| verall wrote:
| It 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.
| OzyM wrote:
| I 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.
| parksy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Your 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 wrote:
| If 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
| parksy wrote:
| As a kid we didn't have a good run with pets so it's just
| easier to say "no" to owning animals and move on with a
| clear conscience.
|
| Having said that, I do find myself always playing devil's
| advocate with myself: "But how can your conscience be
| clear when millions of abandoned pets are being put to
| sleep in animal shelters? So it's everyone else's job to
| deal with that is it? You would deny your children the
| joy of owning a cute little doggo woggo?" and to that
| nascent neurofractal I say, get in line, the CBT will get
| to you eventually.
|
| So I dunno, I don't want to come across as being down on
| people who've made a decision to own pets, it's possible
| to overthink things and underthink things. I know many
| pet owners and the vast majority are kind and caring. I
| think it comes with the territory. Some have been more
| domineering and lord over their creatures like a ruthless
| dictator and I think that says a lot about a person, but
| I digress...
|
| I pretty much agree with everything you just said, and I
| pretty much kill every plant I touch as well. Brown thumb
| gang!
| globular-toast wrote:
| Dogs can. Cats can't. Cats are obligate carnivores.
| summm wrote:
| One reason more to not keep cats as pets. Stop breeding them,
| an the problem will solve itself within some years
| poidos wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Dogs 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Depends 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 wrote:
| dogs don't need meat to survive (and neither do they need
| to be hold captive by humans)
| sweetheart wrote:
| Oh 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
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