How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify eating meat? We don't need to eat animals anymore to survive and nowadays we only eat meat for pleasure (ie because it's tasty) so we are now killing animals unnecessarily
How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify eating meat?
How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify eating plants? We don't need to eat plants anymore to survive and nowadays we only eat plants for pleasure (ie because it's tasty) so we are now killing plants unnecessarily.
Plants are not sentient and do not have a CNS. Furthermore raising animals for slaughter will lead to more plants dying anyways since we need to feed them crops as well - in fact somewhere around 40% of the calories produced by the world's crops are being used for animal feed and livestock as well as the systems to sustain them occupy over 80% of agricultural land around the world
This is why real life philosophies that argue plants can feel pain and suffering (ie Jainist) are still vegan. Because the alternative objectively leads to more plants dying in the long run anyways
But since you think plants and animals are morally equivalent, does that mean if someone put a gun to your head, and asked you to curbstomp a flower or puppy, you'd treat them the same?
>Plants are not sentient and do not have a CNS.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25534012-800-the-radical-new-experiments-that-hint-at-plant-consciousness/
I'm calling it now, in 20 years we will have solid, undeniable proof that plants have sentience. Hell, trees already communicate through mycelium networks under the soil. As for raising animals for slaughter killing more plants, raising certain kinds of plants also winds up killing more plants, or in some cases leaves ecosystems with indigenous plants all across the planet to be destroyed in order to feed people. And that's not even including the humans who get exploited and often times enslaved or killed to produce plants for us in developing nations.
The only "moral" choice is to eat as locally as possible. Farmer's markets, foraging, hunting, fishing, growing your own food.
Aren't plants actually more helpless than animals?
Even by the fact that they can't move on their own (with some exceptions)?
I hear some vegans make a big deal out of the fact that eating plants is eating "living food" while eating animals product is eating "dead food"
But why is eating a creature alive something good?
Fruit are obviously made to be eaten by animals and humans, that is the part of a plant actually designed for being eaten, but eating something like carrots or potatoes involves literally uprooting a plant, also eating leaves means eating the organs that the plant needs to feed itself.
Also what said
growing plants also kills or harms other plants as well as animals and humans.
Plants do not have phenomenal conscious states. There is no state that corresponds to what it's like to be a plant anymore than there is a state that corresponds to what it's like to be a rock.
Just because you are conscious doesn't mean you have morals. Animals live off instinct alone. They have no morals.
I personally do not consider moral agency a prerequisite to being morally relevant, but I understand why some people do.
>we need to treat animals like humans for their benefit
Animals deserve no rights if they cannot even quantify what they are. They are hear specifically for humans to use to our benefit.
Unrelated question. Say everyone stops eating meat. Is it still wrong to use a cow or horse to pull my plow? Why or why not?
I think are views are too paradigmatically different regarding the first part of your comment, so there's probably not much point in talking about it. As for the second part, I personally don't see much of a problem with it as long as you treat the animals well, but I know I'm in the minority among people who consider themselves vegan or vegan-adjacent.
>treat the animals well
What specifically is "well". Am I not allowed to use the light whip?
It's not about what you're allowed to do, and I don't see the issue as black and white either. If you can make do without using the whip, I don't think you should use it. On the other hand, a situation where you're growing your own food and eating little to no meat would probably be a situation where you're contributing far less to animal suffering than the average person, so that's good.
Plants are living beings. Rocks are not. Not to long ago, people wouldve said the same about animals, thats its fine to kill or abuse them because they don't have "souls" or consciousness.
I don't see how the quality of being a living being is morally relevant.
vegan troons btfo
i find it interesting that people who declaim the existence of a hierarchy of being among animals will only redefine that hierarchy to revolve around degrees of sentience and consciousness to justify their own consumption of specific other forms of life.
the only moral choice is to eat so called people, for two reasons - capacity for calculated malice and capacity to fight back. so called people are the only ones who can deserve to be eaten and the only ones who can reasonably be expected to stop you and eat you if you try and eat them
if you want to be really moral about it then you only eat people you kill yourself and the fruit of plants but not their roots, stems, etc.
nobody can demonstrate to me that feeding on the helpless is ever more moral, more justifiable or more admirable than only eating through a vaguely equal contest of skill with a vaguely equal opponent.
We already went over this. Even if it turns out that plants are magically sentient, that still is a point in favor for veganism, because you have to grow more plants to feed livestock that are being raised for meat consumption.
The arguments in favor for plant sentience are spurious, and can be used to argue that scratching your arm is equivalent to murder or applying bactericide is akin to genocide.
Furthermore, it’s a bad faith argument ie no one genuinely believes this. If someone held a gun to your head, and asked you to either stomp on a plant, or stomp on a puppy you would obviously pick the plant. If you figured out that someone was stepping on grass, which is legal, no one on the planet would consider that being morally equivalent to abusing a dog, which actually is illegal. You’re espousing views that literally no one on the planet actually believes in, and even if they were true, you still can’t justify it because meat consumption objectively leads to more plant consumption anyways
Its bad faith to assume everyone eats meat for pleasure too, OP.
Meat itself can't comete with junk food and sugar, for pleasure at least.
And?
>Plants are not sentient and do not have a CNS.
a convenient arbitrary stance, innit?
PLANTS RIGHTS NOW! RESPECT GREEN FEELINGS! STOP VEGETABLE GENOCIDE!
Humans are superior and special beings than all other creatures of earth
So what if someone just tortured a puppy for fun, or murdered a bunch of stray cats. Is that okay? After all humans are superior
No, needless cruelty is bad.
Im not sure if theres a name for this, but this autistic midwit need to find some sort of final truth to obvious things is annoying and pedantic and a waste of time.
So there’s no defense to eating meat. We don’t need to eat animals to survive so it’s needless cruelty.
Bivalves are very unlikely to be sentient and farming them is eco-friendly. They also have a great nutritional profile and aren't expensive. They can completely eliminate the need for supplements in otherwise vegan diets, and many would in fact consider them to be a vegan food source.
Bivalves ie oysters are fine. However most meatfags do not exclusively eat oysters
>How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify eating meat?
why anyone would need to ?
>we only eat meat for pleasure
no
>so we are now killing animals unnecessarily
and ?
>We don't need to eat animals anymore to survive
yes, we need
>moral justification
I don't need one. Come at me and I will kill you like the dog you are.
>b-b-but you're EVIL
Mere words, the barking of a dog in the wjnd.
Not a real justification
I need chicken to help me gain muscle.
I don't morally justify it but I'm a hypocrite
>morally justify
I don't need to
I eat anything. Yes that includes humans who act out.
>We don't need to eat animals anymore to survive
not true actually
It is true, virtually all nutrition in meat can be substituted from a non-meant source
Morallity only deals with creatures that have morals. A cow or pig even a dog is worth less than a human. Hell they are litteraly sub-human. Animals simply live on this earth because we let them.
>torture
I always love how youbbeing this up as some sort of "gotcha". Torture is wrong because it is bad for the Morallity for humans. It is bad for a humans mental state. Not because an animal is getting hurt. Eating isn't torture. It is a necessity for survival. It is necessary for caloric intake. You crying about a bird dying for humans is hypocritical since you also aren't advocating for lions to stop eating the zebra.
>Torture is wrong because it is bad for the Morallity for humans. It is bad for a humans mental state
By this logic psychopaths have no obligation to morality as it does not harm their mental state to torture someone
>it is bad for human mental state
What if I gain pleasure from torturing animals? Also how does this apply to people working in meat processing factories becoming increasingly desensitized to violence? Isn’t killing most living things whether they’re dogs or humans bad for your mental state?
>gain pleasure
Hedonism. Which is also bad for mental states
>psychopaths
Unhuman since they lack humanity
>humanity
Define this word, please.
The state of being human and showing compassion/empathy. Since psychopaths have no empathy they aren't fully human.
So when was the last time you have seen a dog or lion show empathy or compassion? You ever see a lion attack a zebra and then just let him go because they felt sorry for it?
>What if I gain pleasure from torturing animals
Not a real thing
The animals wouldn't have been alive if not for providing meat for me, they should be thankful
Sacrifice them to God with dignity and eat them with respect.
Why would it be amoral to kill animals i.e. none humans, just because one person got weepy and said it was? There's nothing anyone has to justify.
Also herbivores exist to be killed and curbed by carnivores, thats how their populations remain strong by shearing off the old, injured, weak and sick, and it is beneficial to making sure the environment isnt overrun and driven barren by another species that isnt us.
Veganism will eventually take over both socially and legally and thinking otherwise is low IQ cope
>How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify not killing themselves? We don't need to live anymore for humans to survive and nowadays we only live for pleasure (ie because it's nice) so we are now living unnecessarily
Your retort my darling retard?
Nothing you said involves killing anyone. When eating meat, you have to kill the animal. However this is all unnecessary, because we do not need to eat animals to survive anymore, we can supplement the nutritional benefits of meat from other sources. Therefore we are killing animals and causing them to suffer unnecessarily
>we can supplement the nutritional benefits of meat from other sources.
I doubt it has the same effect as the real thing.
Even with farming you can't make that many clams
True, but production can still be scaled up and has the potential to reduce the amount of animal suffering caused by agriculture.
Human behavior is economics
Beef has a higher minmax of pleasure received to value spent
Humans like pleasure
If pigs could fight back like naggers people might end farming
If naggers never complained about being slaves slavery would still exist
Morals are pretension
They dont exist
For that matter, drinking milk?
That stuff is meant for the baby calf.
Good thing we adjust it to make it drinkable for humans.
We also had to adjust. It's why lactose intolerance is a thing. They are descendants of the ones that couldn't drink milk but also survived the hardships that caused people to drink milk in the first place.
It also doesn't change the fact that it's meant for calfs. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
There is no such thing as "meant for" in nature. Humans have evolved lactose tolerance and now make use of cow milk, it's as meant for us as any other food source.
I don't agree with industrial-scale factory farming but humans very much need meat in order to survive. Like many omnivores we can "get by" without eating meat but why should we? No other omnivore has those sorts of reservations.
>How can anyone living in a developed country morally justify....
Easy. I don't.
>morally justify eating meat?
God said I can. Go out and subdue the animals.
Because hjmans are carnivorous primates, and out body is not designed to metabolize plants. Fiber is a bowel irritant for a reason, because when you eat a fruit (grains count too), the fiber is there to make sure you shit out the seed so the plant can grow.
The cecum of humans is small and nonfunctional(appendix) as such. We have a gallbladder for processing saturated fats directly. We have a very low stomache ph to kill bacteria found in carrion. We lack the gut biome of an herbivore.
The TRUE moral way for humans to eat is locally raised pastoralistic lifestyles. Eating the cows, chickens, and pigs that your community raised.
Big Agriculture is responsible for the pushing of UNHEALTHY and UNNATURAL plant foods.
I'm so sick of this moral argument. If you want to make the argument that meat is unhealthy, just start there. Just say we don't need meat and it makes us unhealthy. There is plenty of evidence to back it up that humans are meant to eat a primarily plant based diet. The moral argument which is based on your own subjective values is pointless waste of time. We never "needed" to eat meat.
>There is plenty of evidence to back it up that humans are meant to eat a primarily plant based diet.
Lmao
>There is plenty of evidence to back it up that humans are meant to eat a primarily plant based diet.
Then provide it.
But many more animals die to provide a vegetarian lifestyle. Killing one cow can feed a human for a year. So if we're talking about quantity of animals dying, carnivores are much more empathetic to the situations.
That doesn't follow.
What about vegetarianism has it that animals die?
>Killing one cow can feed a human for a year
So? There's 8 billion of us and we don't ration the meat. We mass produce production. Either going to grocery stores, restaurants, or fast food chains.
So if we're talking about quantity of animals dying, >carnivores are much more empathetic to the situations
Except they're not. Such a concept is inconceivable to them, let alone even something to be entertained as mattering.
Well unless you're just talking about having an outdoor garden, you're not feeding a productive civilization without mass farming production. And mass production requires things like tractors. Which kill probably more animals every day than the average person eats in their entire life. The pesticides alone killing hundreds of thousands and millions of animals in just very small farms.
The rest of your post just ignores this fact so I won't respond to that until you have responded to this point.
>And mass production requires things like tractors. Which kill probably more animals every day than the average person eats in their entire life
Well, in this case we are now vying for a resource. So, they either adapt and avoid farms or continue being thrashed by tractors.
It seems to me there's no real getting around killing animals.
Except for maybe the pesticide part. With going organic.
Now, if we're talking about the possibility of ensuring as many people can be kept fed as possible without having to resort to eating livestock, then GMOs are a viable option.
>metric
In evolution there is no real such thing as "success." An animal species being around is enough of a success.
In the end it's a matter of what's functional rather than how well things are done.
>With going organic
Actually, wait. That would require animals getting killed too (mostly insects).
This is another retarded meatfag argument. Do you realize how much land it requires to raise animals for slaughter? All of that land doesn’t appear out of nowhere, you have to clear it up, which will also kill small animals. And again, it worse under animal agriculture, because YOU NEED TO RAISE CROPS TO FEED THE ANIMALS YOU’RE SLAUGHTERING
There is nothing wrong with killing animals.
Also, if cows stopped being a resource humans go to for sustenance, their populations would become negligible compared to their current populations. The fact that we use them for food has been the greatest success for their species in the entirety of their history.
>The fact that we use them for food has been the greatest success for their species in the entirety of their history
That's rather glib.
What about it is a "success"?
They have to be dependent on us. Without us, they'd have try to readapt to how they were before or die trying.
The propagation of a species is a very blatant metric in a signing success. Because we use cows for food, they are one of the most successful species in history.
And flowers depend on bees, hermit crabs depend on sea snails, etc. That's how ecosystems work.
>you're being immoral!
I literally do not care
I will do what I want anyway
Because it's a mutually beneficial exchange. Cattle get to live on a range munching on grass, protected from predators, they live a comfortable life and get a humane death. I only eat meat that I've confirmed is ethically sourced.
>I only eat meat that I've confirmed is ethically sourced.
This is the best solution to this argument.
How did vegans conflate their particular brand of utopic moralhomosexualry as high iq?
Most irreligious people have some sort of internal inconsistency within their attitudes towards animals. That's an easy target.
Rise, Peter, kill and eat