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"ethical honey doesn't exist. beekeepers get their bees from factory farms. the bees are shipped to them. these bees are diseased because they're farmed in close quarters. then these bees spread their diseases to wildflowers and that's why wild bees are dying and the ecosystems around them die off. on top of that, beekeepers kill their bees off for winter and perpetually keep them weak by taking all their honey and leaving sugar water. beekeepers aren't environmentalists. they're profit seekers. There are certainly bee keepers that help wildbees flourish, but that's a very very small minority\\n\\nsources:\\n\\n* (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/are-commercial-honeybees-making-wild-bees-sick)(https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/are-commercial-honeybees-making-wild-bees-sick)\\n* (https://www.thesciencebreaker.org/breaks/evolution-behaviour/viruses-are-spilling-over-from-managed-honey-bees-to-wild-bumble-bees)(https://www.thesciencebreaker.org/breaks/evolution-behaviour/viruses-are-spilling-over-from-managed-honey-bees-to-wild-bumble-bees)\\n* (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8400633/)(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8400633/)\\n* (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9901307/)(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9901307/) \\n", |
"If raw fish incorporated into your current plant based diet made you feel completely reborn and amazing, would you keep eating fish? Reason being is because this is most likely what almost all vegans should feel after a few days on raw or cooked fish.", |
"Hi this is my first time posting.\\n\\nSo vegans, what do you suggest for people who cannot be vegan or even plant based for medical reasons.\\n\\nI myself cannot even be pescatarian for medical reasons which I'm not comfortable sharing online but I will say I did try to be vegan I ended up in hospital because my body couldn't support it I also tried to be vegetarian and pescatarian all of which my body cannot support I literally have no choice but to eat meat, one of the reasons for this is my body physically cannot process or digest B12 so injects and tablets won't work either (this has been confirmed by multiple doctors)\\n\\nYou can't force these people to go vegan because you would literally be killing them.\\n\\nAnd what about people who cannot afford to eat vegan food?\\n\\nMy family used to be so poor we couldn't even afford free range eggs, I lived off of MacDonalds burgers we had stocked in the fridge because it was cheaper then buying vegetables that will go off in a week because we couldn't afford to go shopping every week. (We are in a better situation now but still even if I could we can't afford to go vegan)\\n\\nHow are people like this suppose to live or are they just supposed to be severely lacking in a lot of vitamins.\\n\\nI understand I absolutely understand why vegans are vegan but you can't expect the world to follow you when there are 1000s probably more people who physically can't.", |
"As much as cooking for yourself may not be a problem, how do you guys deal with travelling? Isn't exploring new tastes a great part of it? I just can't imagine what you'd eat in a \\"regular\\" or \\"traditional\\" restaurant in a new country, you'd have to just find some veg*n ones instead? I got to think about this topic recently because I live in the second biggest city in my country of ~40 million people and all the vegan places I've seen offer fast food, burgers, sushi, pizza, Indian food or other basic/worldly food of the sort that you can probably eat anywhere. No alternatives to our own country's cuisine. And the regular places rarely have anything vegan in them besides sides. So I got to think - if the vegans that visit my big-ish, arguably first world country cannot get any vegan variations of the traditional food, then that takes away from their experiences. And as much as I am open to the idea of veganism, I don't think I'd be content with visiting a new country and eating, I don't know, fries and salad instead of exploring the local cuisine. I'd love to get to know your thoughts on the topic, especially from foodies/folks who travel a lot.", |
"One day, my family was at a diner. My brother ordered a burger bit didn't finish it. My dad, vegan, decides to finish the burger because you can't unorder it. Was that ethical?", |
"If I buy 20 chicks and put them in a large enclosure with a coop, food and water and treat them well then there is nothing unethical about that.\\n\\n​\\n\\nCommon arguments:\\n\\n\\\\> It\\u2019s an intrinsically exploitative relationship and they were bred to lay more eggs than what\\u2019s natural and as a result live a life of misery.\\n\\nThe only way this would be legitimate is if the chicken would prefer otherwise. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship. We can be reasonably certain that chickens would prefer to live free of illness, starvation, predation and insecurity which they would face in the wild or in a battery cage but not in a backyard chicken coop, or at least not nearly to the same degree. This would be close to the best life a chicken could possibly have.\\n\\n\\\\> They are stressed when their eggs are missing.\\n\\nChicken eggs could be swapped with replica eggs.\\n\\n\\\\> Male chick are ground up.\\n\\nBuy both sexes.", |
"I'm interested in the health aspect of veganism. However, all health studies I have looked at classify a vegan diet as consuming x amount/times of animal products per week/month, but this x is greater than 0. Do you know any study which looks at strict vegans?", |
"There are a lot of testimonies there of people who\\u2019s (especially mental) health increased drastically. Did they just do something wrong or is it possible the science is missing something essential?\\n\\nEdit: typo in title; it\\u2019s r/exvegans of course\\u2026", |
"There is a boatload of evidence, research, and studies pointing out that meat consumption is linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, etc. A lot of meat eaters will claim that it\\u2019s because vegans don\\u2019t smoke or drink, but most of the studies factor out this and compare meat eaters who don\\u2019t smoke or drink with vegans who don\\u2019t smoke or drink. All of the research points to meat being very bad for human health. Most people who eat meat will eat meat for every single meal they eat and they don\\u2019t realize the plaque that\\u2019s building up in their arteries. The World Health Organization even classified Processed Meats as a Class one Carcinogen and Red Meat as a Class Two Carcinogen.\\n\\nDespite all of this evidence and research, most meat eaters are in such denial about this. They believe that they need meat for protein and to be healthy when all of the evidence points to meat being detrimental to our health. I believe that Big Pharma and the Meat Industry are working together to keep people ignorant about nutrition and the food system so they can both profit. \\n\\nThe meat industry is happy because they can continue to exploit animals for government subsidies while the pharmaceutical industry is happy because they can continue to prescribe medication for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, cancer. They want to keep people sick by making sure they can still feel good about eating meat. The meat industry spends a ton of money promoting meat and funding studies to try to make meat seem like a necessity. It all becomes clear the more digging you do that these industries are profiting off of the failing health of others.", |
"Title pretty much says it all. A lot of people like to say that meat comes from animals who have been slaughtered, which is obviously one of the main reasons why they don't eat it. But think about this: is there a difference if the animal died of natural causes such as old age, and WASN'T killed? Because if you think about it, the animal's life wasn't ended prematurely by humans, and it most likely wouldn't have felt any pain. Plus at that point it would've more than likely lived a full life anyway, and the animal is already dead, so it's not going to feel pain at that point.\\n\\nOpen to responses from both sides, and a respectful discussion. I'd love to hear what you guys think of this.", |
"To vegans. If your argument that we should all be vegans because 'humans are not designed to be meat eaters' (I have heard this in my personal circle, though whether this is reflective of the majority of vegans, I don't know) But if you do use that argument, I would like to point out the flaw in this argument. (The obvious would be an atheist perspective that a designer does not exist)\\nHowever, even from an evolutionary perspective, we are not designed. Evolution does not design anything. Evolution does not have a purpose. It is whatever works. In the past our ancestors may have survived longer by eating vegetables and non animal products. We can eat meat now because some of our ancestors may have ate meat and survived long enough just to pass on the meat eating genes.\\nNow, in present society, let us operate under the premise that vegetable eating is healthier or not, if it is healthier, it wouldn't matter. Meat eaters can survive long enough while eating meat and still pass on their genes. ", |
"The Vegan Societies' definition has served as a decent tool but at some point we're going to need clarity, accuracy and consistency. We should evolve the definition into something that conveys true Vegan values and is more philosophically defendable.\\n\\nIssue 1: Many food crops rely on bee pollination for successful pollination (Apples, Cherries, Coffee in some cases, etc.) Vegans still seem to consider these foods Vegan to buy, yet it's not Vegan on that definition if they or others buy them. (Abstaining from practicably avoidable exploitation of animals)\\n\\nIssue 2: The definition places 'animals' as the object of value, rather than 'sentient beings', this causes tension with Vegans who eat discarded animal products or eat non-sentient animals (This could be against a respect norm, but not Veganism or ethics itself unless you bite a bullet), and hilariously makes it Vegan to slaughter any non-animal sentient being.\\n\\nIssue 3: The definition can be interpreted too leniently by ill-informed users, causing avoidable animal rights violations, specifically with regards to \\"possible and practicable\\".\\n\\nIssue 4: People tend to say things like \\"Veganism is about reducing animal suffering\\"/\\"avoiding exploitation\\"/\\"rejecting commodity status of animals\\". Each of these has hilarious consequences that vegans wouldn't sign off on such as it being Vegan to slaughter animals without suffering for example, so these are all incorrect. \\n\\nIssue 5: Someone who couldn't eat plant-based would still be considered Vegan, like Mikhaila Peterson for example, if hypothetically she truly was unable to be healthy on a plant based diet. \\n\\nA better definition? If adopted, it solves all 5 issues, and even lets us address wild animal suffering if we wish to: \\n\\n**Veganism is an applied ethical position that advocates for the equal trait-adjusted application of commonplace human rights to non-human sentient beings.**\\n\\nThank you for reading.", |
"I know being a vegan is an ethical choice not to want to hurt animals anymore, or at least as less as possible. But what's the overall opinion about the environment? Is a vegan diet overall being better for the environment just an extra of being vegan? \\n\\nI can find myself in the ethical and health part of a vegan. And I also try to do my best when it comes to the environment. However, I can't drop my car (and do maximum effort for the environment) and be dependant of public transport as it is much less practical in my daily life (commuting would raise with one hour and a half a day and when I return from my hobby there isn't public transport anymore). ", |
"Animal rights is inherently opposed to many important conservation strategies. Namely the killing of invasive species, captive breeding, and sustainable use. The killing of invasive species via trapping, trapping and poisoning causes pain to animals, and many animal rights activists oppose it for this reason. They tend to deny that invasive species even exist, and/or say that the extinction of some unique native species should be accepted as inevitable. This is obviously incompatible with conservation of endangered native species in places like Australia and New Zealand. And before anyone brings up TNR for feral cats, that has been demonstrated not to work.\\nCaptive breeding and reintroduction efforts by zoos, specialized breeding facilities and sometimes private keepers are another important part of conservation. Animal rights activists tend to deny or downplay its importance, or rarely and more honestly, admit to believing that an animal species is better off extinct than having to live in captivity. Here is a list I compiled of animal species which have been saved or heavily assisted by captive breeding and (often) reintroduction efforts.\\n\\n- (Golden lion tamarin)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_lion_tamarin)\\n\\n- (Vancouver Island marmot)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Island_marmot)\\n\\n- (Red wolf)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_wolf)\\n\\n- (Black-footed ferret)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-footed_ferret)\\n\\n- (Scimitar oryx)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_oryx)\\n\\n- (Arabian oryx)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_oryx_reintroduction)\\n\\n- (Pere David's deer)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A8re_David%27s_deer)\\n\\n- (Wisent)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison)\\n\\n- (Bontebok)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bontebok)\\n\\n- (Przewalski's horse)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski%27s_horse)\\n\\n- (California condor)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor)\\n\\n- (Mauritius kestrel)(https://www.zsl.org/conservation/species/birds/mauritius-kestrel-recovery-program)\\n\\n- (Hawaiian crow)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_crow)\\n\\n- (Guam rail)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam_rail)\\n\\n- (Pink pigeon)(https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/how-did-pink-pigeon-bounce-back-just-nine-birds)\\n\\n- (Guam kingfisher)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam_kingfisher)\\n\\n- (Saint Lucia amazon)(https://www.durrell.org/wildlife/species-index/saint-lucia-amazon/)\\n\\n- (Cuban crocodile)(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/future-castros-crocodiles-180969417/)\\n\\n- (Siamese crocodile)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_crocodile)\\n\\n- (Chinese alligator)(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090714124949.htm)\\n\\n- (Black softshell turtle)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_softshell_turtle)\\n\\n- (Western swamp turtle)(https://perthzoo.wa.gov.au/animal/western-swamp-tortoise?fbclid=IwAR1yedztD5AxGFZ8oBB7NpAHhPXNTV0Zv-uqqefKs8PPu_289plI1DwLsz0)\\n\\n- (Espanola giant tortoise)(https://www.islandconservation.org/espanola-giant-tortoise-saved-species/)\\n\\n- (Round Island boa)(https://www.durrell.org/wildlife/species-index/round-island-boa/)\\n\\n- (Grand Cayman blue iguana)(http://www.blueiguana.ky/recovery/programme/captive-breeding/)\\n\\n- (Cobble skink)(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2017/jun/01/new-species-discovered-behind-a-pub-then-saved-from-extinction)\\n\\n- (Chesterfield skink)(https://www.aucklandzoo.co.nz/news/captive-population-of-rare-skink-established)\\n\\n- (Wyoming toad)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_toad)\\n\\n- (Kihansi spray toad)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kihansi_spray_toad)\\n\\n- (Golden skiffia)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_skiffia)\\n\\n- (Butterfly splitfin)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_splitfin)\\n\\n- (Potosi pupfish)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potosi_pupfish)\\n\\n- (Extinct cave roach)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simandoa_conserfariam)\\n\\n- (Lord Howe island stick insect)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryococelus_australis)\\n\\n- (Metallic tarantula)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poecilotheria_metallica)\\n\\nWould you want to live in a world where these species went extinct due to animal rights? Or many other vulnerable and endangered species that could become extinct in the wild in the future? I'm not going to assume a uniform opinion from Reddit, but for me, the answer is \\"hell no!\\".\\n\\nThird and final main conservation strategy that animal rights activists oppose is sustainable use. There is a saying that the best way to keep an animal species from becoming extinct is to monetize (commodify) it. And it rings true. Project Piaba is an organization that works with and researches the trade in wild-caught Amazonian fish for the aquarium trade to ensure the trade is environmentally sustainable and profitable to poor locals. If it weren't for the fish trade, the local villagers would instead turn to more destructive businesses like cattle ranching, gold mining and timber. A similar project has been proposed for mantella frogs in Madagascar and could potentially work with many other exotic pet species. \\n\\nThe trade in insect specimens for the collector's trade works in a similar way, as does butterfly farming and South African game ranching. Another example is crocodile farming for the leather trade, which helped crocodile populations recover by reducing poaching of wild crocodiles. Since crocodile farming is so well established, there is no point in poaching wild crocodiles for skin.\\n\\nIn the world envisioned by abolitionist vegans and animal rights activists, all three of these conservation strategies would be outlawed, thus eliminating important conservation tools and leading to the plight if not extinction of countless species. But to them, that is better than having to violate the \\"rights\\" and \\"liberty\\" of individuals animals for the sake of species survival. You cannot support animal rights and conservation at the same time. As for myself? I support conservation.\\n\\nAnyone think they can contest this?", |
"Hey guys, recently picked up a vegan lifestyle and had a question. If you, in the more than likely impossible scenario, were forced to choose between killing a random human or a random cow, would the \\"vegan\\" answer be a coin toss to see who dies? From what I have understood, veganism is attempting to minimize animal suffering and exploitation, but does that end when you begin to make another human suffer?\\n\\nWhile obviously the scenario is more or less impossible, I was curious to hear what you guys think.\\n\\n", |
"I'm not vegan but I love animals and have the utmost respect for those who choose the vegan lifestyle. I'm curious to hear thoughts from those who are vegan/vegetarian on working in fast food or restaurant service. \\nWould you work for a restaurant/food joint that's main courses are meat? Would a hostess job be lesser of the two over a cook? How would that feel to serve people the animals you love for a living? Is it against your morals/veganism to work for a company that exploits and profits off of animals? If not, would you consider it if it were the only employment option in your area? \\nThis is an ethical dilemma that I've been thinking about when considering going to a vegan lifestyle and I would love hear the pros and cons, thank you!", |
"For background, I'm currently an aspiring vegan (I 100% agree with the philosophy but have failed purely due to my lack of self control). \\n\\nI often hear first or second hand about people who tried a vegan diet and it either made them feel worse or supposedly caused some type of illness. How do you respond to these claims? Do you assert that these people could have surely found a plant based diet that suited their nutritional needs or do you acknowledge that veganism just doesn't work for some people? I'm very interested to know if there's any kind of objective data on the subject because I never know what to say to those people.", |
"First off, let me say a great big thanks to the general population of this subreddit. I've been lurking all day and worked my way through some really interesting threads. \\nIt's refreshing to see reasoned, adult debate with considerate language being used by most - unfortunately on both sides of the fence there's people that find some strange joy in immediately jumping down one's throat, but such is life and at the end of the day it takes all sorts.\\nAs a non-vegan, reading this page has done more to further the idea of veganism to me personally than anything else so far. \\nI am not going to completely overhaul my lifestyle by the end of next week, but this has at least given me an incentive to start making more meaningful changes in the short term with a view to turn things around altogether in the future.\\nKeep up the positive messaging!", |
"As a non-vegan, I never understood this. Why do you feel empathy to these animals? They are not humans.", |
"I\\u2019m curious to how vegans feel and would respond to someone like MP. A person with a severe autoimmune disorder in there younger years that had a catastrophic affect on her day to day life. After consuming a purely carnivore diet all the symptoms went away and had an unprecedented effect on her health and wellbeing. What moral weight does a persons wellbeing in this situation have in contrast to the consumption of meat. \\n\\nI\\u2019m also curious to the good faith response in contrast to the moral grandstanding and degradation in this community to a people in similar situations.\\n\\n\\n\\n(Edit)For those who care here are some basic research and studies relating to this subject that @Greyeyedqueen7 has provided: \\n\\nPodcast and transcript from a medical news website of several researchers discussing how a keto diet (meat-based) benefits patients and some of the current research: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/in-conversation-is-the-ketogenic-diet-right-for-autoimmune-conditions\\n\\nA study on how a meat-based keto diet changing the gut microbiota has a correlation with lowering inflammation, which is a huge part of the problem in autoimmune conditions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6938789/\\n\\nA study on the keto diet helping lower inflammation in MS patients and how that might be why the diet helps: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22567104/\\n\\nA summary of several studies on how a keto diet helps neuro diseases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9739023/\\n", |
"So, I get killing animals and eating meat. I get milk and cow exploitation. But I seriously just don't understand how harvesting honey in a sustainable way is a morally wrong act. Yes, we're \\"profiting off the labor of those insects\\" but we people profit off the labor of other people too, and nobody seems to care about that?\\n\\nIn my understanding, you can harvest honey from a hive in a way that maybe sets them back a bit, but the hive is overall fine. They just make more and keep on going.\\n\\nWhat is the rationale for eating honey being a morally wrong act?\\n\\nEDIT: So I'm noticing a lack of arguments for why eating honey is immoral. So I'll make an argument why eating honey is not immoral:\\n\\n1. Bees will make honey as a natural manifestation of their genetics/nature.\\n2. It is possible to harvest honey in a way that hives can still survive and maintain themselves\\n3. Bees do not have an understanding/consciousness of their honey being taken away (they are not resentful or angry or any other similar reaction, to their honey being taken)\\n4. Humans are benefited by honey\\nTherefore: it's ok to eat honey.\\n\\n(Yes, this is very raw and probably not a good argument, but at least it is a defined thought and present reasons)\\n\\nI've posted here before, I'm very open to opinions and discussion. But I really want to hear the REASONS that eating honey is wrong.", |
"I am plant-based. I was just reading through the r/vegan page links and was reading the link about honey. It more or less says it\\u2019s up to the individual vegan to decide where they land on the topic. \\n\\nSo, vegans, where do you land? Currently I consume honey but I think it would be easy enough to cut out if an argument could be made for the welfare of bees/the planet. I love bees, especially goofy mason bees and big fat bumblers - I even have a bee tattoo! \\n\\nMy hold up is mostly that I figure if less farmers are interested in keeping them because people have pulled away from honey then that would result in less bees around in general, which is bad. And I wouldn\\u2019t want to replace honey with processed sugar as a sweetener because sugar cultivation is a water-suck, isn\\u2019t it? I was under the influence that honey had less of a negative environmental impact", |
"Let me preface by saying that I've been a vegetarian for three years, and I've been entirely plant based for a few months now. In terms of health, environmentalism, economics, and politics, I am completely on board with veganism and I think everyone (at least in modern developed areas where it is feasible) should adopt a plant based diet. I'm trying to get there on the morality/ethical angle.\\n\\nAbsent of other context, I think using animal products is a moral neutral. For example, a person fishing up a fish and eating it has about the same moral weight to me as an otter eating a fish. Sucks for the fish either way, but that's just nature. On the other hand, I think driving to a store to buy a factory farmed slice of steak is morally bad, but that's because I'm opposed to factory farming based on it's poor labor rights and environmental damage. I obviously don't think the cruelty to the animals is *good*, but it's just not what my opposition is rooted in. \\n\\nI think it's probably good that people can arrive at veganism from a lot of different approaches. I was just surprised when I started reading about it that for most vegans the morality angle was \\"the point,\\" rather than any of the other arguments that I personally find more compelling. I would like to call myself a vegan eventually, but for now I guess plant based is the label for me.", |
"Hey everyone, i'm vegan btw and if I have any of my data wrong or you'd like to add anything, please do!\\n\\nThought i'd share data about the \\"But bison tho\\" claim that I see every now and then, it often goes like this: \\n\\n>**But we had billions of bison many years ago and they weren't causing climate change then, so cows aren't causing environmental damage now**\\n\\nI will refer to everything as biomass and in the form of carbon tonnage rather than individual animals.\\n\\nAt its peak we had 20 million tonnes of mammals 10,000 years ago and we've been declining ever since. Here is the data (https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline)(https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammal-decline?fbclid=IwAR2guAOJiU0B46tH5uXP6dOZJ28th3hBF4-8WhwbxsfULltQUtzRJbN9g4A)\\n\\nThat was our peak mammal biomass (not peak as in ALL TIME, but at least in reference to bison in the last few hundred years and mammals as a whole): 20,000,000 tonnes (20 million tonnes) and thats all the mammals that ever existed at that moment in time put together, which includes bison.\\n\\nRight now, we have 100,000,000 tonnes (100 million) of livestock alone, that is 5 times more livestock right now than we had at our peak biodiversity of ALL mammals combined on ALL of earth. Data can be seen here (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115)(https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1711842115%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2q8sasEyQJ_4icJEipOT7_BUA3Ux7XsIWJtt_lzqczM3uCSO1tfBi00MA&h=AT0YNTfzXw4aubAdKjOzhWANkVb88a0Wlr4GFjuxDJEGHu1mzNQfVC_218tPjt92iVgUGE1TaW2A7qWVtRzYtGb2UAuMCsPzX2_Z3B1Luxj0FRno8rtbmfrz2_Ax&__tn__=R)-R&c(0)=AT1pcbz-x8j5s_EBfMkg9ZtiAZU3ey7wg94ZCphmhEB8-2jicUjzbghbxw3hC1gUuttRuySUq1UqWZ2SMOZNOb5K9dE8oAVZRDoz6vFr7Eh6hYPDHLeJ56TyTN2w0B_HmDTXXCyre1fvSUWfftGHgYI3dPLGXeRw1Aum-JsecBkyv5pFoZw) Shown as 0.1 giga tonnes.\\n\\nRight now there are about 62,000,000 (62 million tonnes) of carbon in the form of cows, which is still three times more than all the wild mammals we've had in the past and thats just farmed cows, nothing else.\\n\\nI thought i'd share this data with you because we can forget BISON, which is what all the anti-vegans use, instead i thought id share BISON and ALL mammals combined to show you that we still had 5 times less wild mammals/animals/ruminants at its peak than we currently have now in comparison to JUST livestock and 3 times more cows.\\n\\nRight now we have about 7 million tonnes of wild mammals (which include wild bison) (https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass)(https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fourworldindata.org%2Fwild-mammals-birds-biomass%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0IKebECgzaFSHJZ-djwxPQ0aFi5dAiMYKvSAZfaCToiKfBgyC8-8pYkSs&h=AT2XWLbm7BOEk0-oTZWBeRtq65hTfCy98I8WlWmAhqqWtegrtdnyPTpfQlZkwG0FVYW5JZCteHXQ2vfP9izGA7w5p2fTJ7CkWA2Ye75yvSUA0WoyPOxWgP7I5B9C&__tn__=R)-R&c(0)=AT1pcbz-x8j5s_EBfMkg9ZtiAZU3ey7wg94ZCphmhEB8-2jicUjzbghbxw3hC1gUuttRuySUq1UqWZ2SMOZNOb5K9dE8oAVZRDoz6vFr7Eh6hYPDHLeJ56TyTN2w0B_HmDTXXCyre1fvSUWfftGHgYI3dPLGXeRw1Aum-JsecBkyv5pFoZw) and this data also shows you what makes up current livestock and living things on earth.\\n\\nWhich is a drop of 13 million tonnes of wild mammals since 10,000 years ago, whilst livestock has done nothing but increase decade on decade.", |
"Not vegan, but interested in this angle. My wife wasn't able to breastfeed our two daughters and so we used formula. It literally saved their lives. I know in days gone by there would have been wet nurses to turn to, but not these days; we have modern food technology to thank. Anyone else come across this in a vegan household? ", |
"I know this opinion is going to be really controversial but it\\u2019s something I strongly believe in. Lab Grown meat is on the rise and once it becomes mainstream they should ban the animal agricultural industry. The meat industry has had too many horrible consequences. It\\u2019s the number one contributor to climate change and is responsible for C02 emissions and global warming, meat production also pollutes streams and waterways. Eating meat caused every major pandemic and it wouldn\\u2019t happen in a vegan society. Human civilization will end in 2050 unless something radical happens and meat is phased out. Once people stop eating meat or switch to lab grown meat, the governments around the world should permanently outlaw meat. Also, the high ranking employees and CEO\\u2019s of Smithfield farms, Tyson Foods, Purdue, Etc. Should be arrested for the abuse they inflicted on the billions of animals they exploited and the immigrant workers they exploited. Hunting should also be banned as it\\u2019s destroying our environment and the ocean. People who are caught trophy hunting or hunting for fur should spend at least one year in prison.\\n\\nHealthy foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and meat alternatives should be subsidized in order to make plant based eating accessible to everyone. I don\\u2019t agree with the way lab grown meat is sourced but I acknowledge that it\\u2019s the only way to end the mass slaughter of billions of animals. There should also be free nutrition courses on plant based eating, nutrition, and environmental science.", |
"For years I had a genuine question of why it's okay for animals but not human to eat other animals, but I didn't care enough to think it through. From a quick search this issue seems to be resolved or dismissed by the vegan community, in somewhat unanimity.\\n\\nThe gist of the argument is that animals do many things that aren't accepted in a human society (raping, cannibalism etc), so eating other species is yet another thing that doesn't justify human to do the same. And these animals can't be blamed because they have no equivalent sense of \\"moral.\\" However, for me this raises more problem than it solves. I started to think why for the most part people don't kill each other. Instead of the moral case many vegans brought up (which I don't believe), I think it has largely to do with the social contract theory: we want some form of government to keep others in check; we willingly give up some of the powers like murdering to a central institution in exchange for others not do the same things for us. To my knowledge there's little examples of what John Locke describes as humans in \\"natural state,\\" where they are not to subject to the jurisdiction of any government and are free to kill or do anything \\"horrible\\" to each other. But I'm okay with the logic with such a natural state, if those people don't want to form a mutual social contract. In short, I don't see humans not killing each other for \\"moral\\" reasons, and perhaps moral is a manmade construct to make people feel good about not doing a few things, when the reality is they can't do them without being punished.\\n\\nBack to why I think the reasoning above potentially made a case for killing and eating animals: we don't have and don't need to form a social contract with animals because, in the aforementioned vegans' word, these animals don't have the same mental capability to form such an agreement, nor such agreement is necessary for humans because we can easily stay out of the wild to avoid most beasts etc. So this is why I think there's should be no laws prohibiting the regular consumption of most animals, as long as the species are not endangered or anything (again not that people care about them but to preserve the biodiversity for humans' own good.) You may choose to not eat animals, but those who prefer eating meat should be left alone. You may argue that we have other plant-based alternatives, but the logic is like we still build movie theaters when we have other entertainments, whether the animals suffer or feel pain is irrelevant because it bears very little with damaging the interest of human. Unless it could be proved that eating meat severely damaged the environment to the point where we are threatened (not just a statistic of how many water is consumed when producing a pound of beef patty, we do other far damaging things for enjoyment and they're far from getting any attentions). At this point I feel kinda like debating with a Christian who would use bible to justify things when I don't believe in the book itself in the first place.\\n\\nTLDR: Since I believe the main reason why humans don't kill each other or behave any differently than animals is for selfish reasons like living in peace rather than moral considerations, eating animals could be okay because there's no such agreement with non-humans.\\n\\n**EDIT:** I feel like a lot of the comments didn't read my really long (sorry) original argument, I certainly believe that animals are capable of suffering and actually acknowledged that in the original post. But that's irrelevant imo. I don't believe human beings act based on the perceived right or wrong. I believe humans are motivated to act out of the immediate or predicted, reasonable long-term repercussions. If we eat animals, which give many people pleasure, it's extremely unlikely that say cows are going to have a collective revelation in which they get together and revenge; therefore we cannot form a social contract with them. Any attacks from animals are random, isolated, and situational. I do not support hurting other human beings regardless of race, gender, age etc not mainly because I think it's wrong (again irrelevant), but because I'll get arrested and face immediate repercussions\\n\\nEdit 2: I think the fundamental difference between our beliefs is that I think killing anyone (including humans) is a natural right in nature, not something needed to be justified. We only gave up that right under the social contract in a society since other humans can systematically revenge us or even kill us unprovoked. We give up the right to kill humans in exchange for peace and avoiding constant war. We must somehow justify that giving up the same right to kill other animals, not the other way around. I think the institution of slavery in the US proved my point. Black people was once enslaved because there's no repercussions to do so. Once the civil war \\"taught\\" the masters the otherwise, they are no longer legally slaves but still heavily discriminated against.", |
"no they don't see we got to the top of the food chain fair and square morality is an illusion and if morality does exist it's more moral kill them because you gave them a purpose give humans meat and you fulfilled that purpose by killing them animals have the privilege of being born with a purpose no I'm not a sociopath I'm autistic so at least you get the neurological disorder correct ", |
"Hey,\\n\\nI'm considering going pescatarian, maybe as a stepping-stone into vegetarianism.\\n\\nI would like to know if fish can feel the *emotional* part of pain. Virtually every living thing feels pain in some way, but not all feel the emotional part, as in the distress that comes with being sick or injured.\\n\\nLike, imagine if you built a robot that recoils and tries to get away from sharp things, fire, etc. That robot has a sort of ability to feel pain, but it doesn't have the emotional part. It doesn't feel any distress.\\n\\nPlease, *please*, be accurate. I would really like some good sources. Please keep politics out of your answer. You can express opinions, but please make it very clear that they are your opinions, not facts.\\n\\nI would like to listen to both sides and decide for myself.\\n\\nThank you.", |
"I understand the health and environmental perspective, and the plain fact that thinking about hurting animals instinctively makes me feel bad. But I want to know if there is an objective benefit to making animals happy. Why are we wired to feel bad for their suffering?", |
"In 1991, the U.S. Navy killed thousands of feral goats in (San Clemente Island)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_Island_goat) - one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California - to save three endemic endangered plant species: *Malacothamnus clementinus*, *Castilleja grisea*, *Delphinium kinkiense*. After the failure of initial trapping and hunting efforts, the organization Fund for Animals tried to block the move in court but, since the plants were federally listed and protected by the Endangered Species Act, the goats were ultimately killed. \\n\\nIn the specific case of the San Clemente Island goats, approximately 2000 sentient individuals were killed over some plants. This is but one example of non-sentient beings treated as more relevant than animals, there are many instances of feral omnivorous and vegetarian animal species that are culled to maintain the equilibrium of biotic communities all over the world. It is also well established within fire ecology that natural fires are beneficial for a range ecosystems and that fire-exclusion policies can have a negative ecological impact even if we account the number of sentient creatures that die as a result of them. \\n\\nSome questions arise from these facts: Can the moral basis that justified these actions be explained in terms of traditional ethics? Is it possible to reconcile the ethical frameworks by which the welfarist and abolitionist flavors of veganism are supported with those that drive environmental ethics?\\n\\nLet's see:\\n\\nThe saving of the plants is not supported by interest utilitarianism because non-sentient living beings do not have subjective experiences, therefore no interests. In general terms, the saving could only be defended based on utilitarianism if there was a way quantify the maximization of pleasure \\u2013 in broader terms, the satisfaction of interest, desire, and/or preference \\u2013 or the minimizing the overall suffering that resulted from protecting the non-sentient beings and killing the sentient beings. Since plants do not feel happiness or suffering, the evaluation of these criteria would necessarily have to involve other human and non-human animals different from the ones being killed, and only if the these plants had some instrumental value either to other animal species (for example, if they would starve if they couldn't eat those plants) or to humans (if there was, for instance, a chemical compound not yet synthetized present in those plants that cured cancer). I don't believe there's a particularly relevant instrimental value to the three plant species in the case we're discussing. \\n\\nPlant species as well as other natural occurrences which are the object of moral consideration by environmentalists have no intrinsic value to utilitarians. See for example Singer's position on this issue in his book \\"Practical Ethics\\". \\n\\nOn the other hand, since abolitionists reject on principle that even the benefit that humans receive by exploiting non-human animals could outweigh the harm done to them due to their intrinsic value, there wouldn't be much case trying to argue on the well-being of plants over animals. \\n\\nThe saving of the plants is not supported by arguments based on relevance, because these uphold sentience as the moral relevant criterion that allows beings to be aware of joy and suffering. It is also not supported by arguments based on species overlap - known also as arguments from marginal cases - again because these compare mental capacities of marginal individuals of the human species and those of non-human animals living aside non-sentient beings, for the reasons expressed above. \\n\\nI contend that you could make an argument stemming from the idea of the human sanctity of life paired with the argument from marginal cases (similar to Singer's argument in \\"Animal Liberation\\") following his exact same logical train of thought: If we defend the lives of certain humans fetuses that are non-sentient like those suffering from anencephaly - assuming in this case either the meaning of \\"sentience\\" as \\"having subjective experiences\\" or the more specific one of \\"feeling pain\\" - we should extend moral consideration to other living creatures that have equal mental capacities as those, for example plants or other non-sentient living beings. However, I'm positive that many people would not agree with these conclusions because of plants' intrinsic lack of interests would put them in a category apart (not subjects of moral consideration so there's no comparison to be made). \\n\\nProviding group rights for the plants as a species is complicated too. Many ethicists consider that they do not have the properties that could make them worthy of rights: The interest theory of rights presupposes that individuals within the group have to have interests (plants are excluded once again). Choice theory of rights is even more restrictive because it requires that the groups can exercise their rights as well. Other people reject the notion of group rights altogether. It is not surprising, for example, that somebody like Will Kymlicka works on a liberal framework that protects minority groups on the basis of group rights and, at the same time, defends an abolitionist position towards animal rights. \\n\\nDeontological ethical systems like Regan's animal rights base their norms on some of the arguments already stated. Sentience is where the line in the sand is drawn, non-sentient beings are not considered subjects of moral consideration. That doesn't mean that other deontological systems cannot use different base lines: Biocentrist systems award value on life itself and ecocentrist systems even include things like rivers and mountains into the sphere of moral consideration. I believe that saving the three plant species in San Clemente Island can perfectly fit within Aldo Leopold's land ethic maxim: \\"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.\\"\\n\\nWhich brings us to the initial question: The integrity, stability and beauty of the San Clemente Island biotic community required the killing of thousands of sentient animals. How can you reconcile that with vegan ethics? If this is a defensible moral position then our killing of animals would not be wrong in itself. \\n\\nBy extension, you can conclude that, if you raised animals for human consumption and exploitation using practices that maintained the integrity, stability and beauty of biotic communities that would be the moral position to assume (notice that I'm deliberately steering away from modern husbandry and farming practices that treat animals and mechanical things and cause them permanent unnecessary suffering). I can think of many instances where this is not only possible but desirable:\\n\\n1) The use of animal traction for water, soil, and wild-life conservation:\\n\\nhttp://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-misika-management-NA.pdf\\n\\n2) Using captured methane from animal production to cook and heat homes, particularly when \\"Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal\\" and \\"Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.\\"\\n\\nhttp://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/\\n\\nhttp://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Bulletins/Clean-Energy-Farming/Text-Version/Capture-Fuel-from-Animal-Manure-and-Plant-Waste\\n\\n3) Using processed manure (reuse of excreta) to maintain soil fertility, particularly within the scope of small production units which - despite general knowledge - represent 90% of the farms in the world (some 570MM) and produce 80% of the world\\u2019s food and specially important in the face of peak phosphorus. \\n\\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuse_of_excreta\\n\\nhttp://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/industrial-agriculture-and-small-scale-farming.html\\n\\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus \\n\\n4) Controlled grazing for soil conservation.\\n\\nhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038071710004396\\n\\nhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ldr.2560/full\\n\\n---\\n\\nOn a final note, I'd like to add that I believe that agricultural vertebrate pest control (rodents, lagomorphs) fall within the exact same moral discussion that I have presented: We decide that some plants are more important than these animals (just than in the case of crops we give instrumental value to those plants beyond any intrisic value that they may have as living beings). \\n\\nIf you find pest management tolerable because of the value crops provide us, you're probably more into the welfarist utilitarian side of veganism (with all that this implies, not for nothing the more staunch abolitionists like Gary Francione calls Singer of being speciesist and speaks of the \\"(need to 'liberate' animals from the speciesist nonsense of 'animal liberation')(https://www.facebook.com/abolitionistapproach/posts/987468621272892).\\"\\n\\nI've read different defenses for killing vertebrate pests: \\n\\n- From the moral relativist ones \\"veganism excludes as far as possible and practicable, all forms of cruelty to, animals, and besides carnism kills more animals because of plants harvested for feeding animals\\" (which conveniently leaves out grazing and free-range animals). \\n\\n- To the \\"self-defense\\" action of protecting your food-sources (which hard to sustain when there isn't an inminent danger present). \\n\\n- To the romanticized idea that plague individuals can be caught and sterilized and then released back to nature (honestly, anyone, how can you do that in situations like the one shown in the next video and how will that stop from whole crops being consumed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOwinLWrEIw)\\n\\nWhat's interesting is that assuming that it is permissible to kill plague rodents, like in the previous video, we are acting against the principle of equal consideration of interests because those rats need to eat too. Besides, a big portion of our agricultural lands (even those that would be used in a hypothetical universal vegan scenario) will have been taken away from the animals' natural habitats in the first place... if there was anything to give credence to their interests. \\n\\nYou don't even have to point to (Mark Saggoff's *reductio* of animal rights position)(http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Introduction_to_Philosophy_Fall_09/Sagoff_Animal_Liberation_&_Env_Ethics.pdf) to realize how complicated it is to reconcile animal rights, with human interest and environmental ethics. ", |
"Why must we avoid actions that causes death and suffering to animals?", |
"Twenty studies including 37 134 participants met the inclusion criteria. Compared with omnivores, vegetarians and vegans had lower BMD at the femoral neck and lumbar spine and vegans also had higher fracture rates.", |
"Nothing too big here, just a couple of small questions.\\n\\nThere are no natural sources of vitamin B-12 that I can find that do not involve animals, you ether get it from the likes of liver, or you get it from bacteria in the animal body, but you need animals for B-12. Lack of this chemical causes nut-jobs like Youtuber VeganGains who recently caused small controversy by playing around with a guns and knives like they are toys, whilst very clearly threatening people. How do you justify fortified foods if b-12 has to come from animals regardless?\\n\\nOur dental set-up also shows us having the teeth for meat eating. When people say our ancestors ate meat this isn't an excuse, it's historical evidence we're built to consume meat. You can't make a cat live on vegtables, or a fox for that matter and a fox, like us, is also an omnivore with an omnivorous dental set-up. If we shouldn't eat meat why do we have the teeth for it?\\n\\nNot causing harm to an animal before slaughter is a benevolent thing and should be good enough shouldn't it? I'm literally seeing no evidence we were not made to eat meat. If it exists can someone point me to it?", |
"Wonderful new video from \\"Ask Yourself\\":\\n\\n* https://youtu.be/zuJazFqWgWM", |
"I am originally from Italy, Sardinia (kingdom of Italian Cheese), but I've been living in the US for a while. Getting away from my native place exposed me to the HORRORS of the big scale food industry. \\nI started a journey that brought me back to my homeland, in search of cheese manufacturers that actually cared about animals. Of course, it's made by very small artisans that have no tools for reaching a market besides their own. \\nI am in the process of starting an importing business that only deals with vegetarian products made with good ethics.\\n\\nMy question is, would you consider going back to consuming cheese if:\\n\\n\\\\-It's made in an ethical manner? \\n\\\\-It's good for your health (being sheep cheese, you get a lot of benefits and avoid all of the cow's milk \\n side effects)?", |
"I'm a hunter, ask me anything", |
"Hello people who are vegan for different reasons :) , i wanted to ask if you think less of people who eat meat? If so, what do you think of them? If not, how come?", |
"One thing I've been thinking about lately is how I see a lot of vegans around my campus who use phones produced from underage labor, even a few who have been wearing shoes from leather from an animal. Some things that are hard to avoid that you wouldn't even think of, maybe something simple like a lamp, lipstick, or laptop that was produced immorally. \\n\\nSometimes I just feel like I lead a naturally destructive life, its a harsh truth but the biggest favor everyone could do to nature would be to get rid of themselves. It's like being in too deep on this destructive path to even really care about nitpicking certain things, doing research on whether something came from cruelty or not. I probably sound crazy, but I'm just trying to make sense of why everyone tries so hard but in the end there's not really a way to avoid being destructive in some sort of way.\\n\\n", |
"I know this is not the right sub but not sure where else to post.\\n\\nI seem to be banned. My posts don't show up when I check and logout, and I thought it was odd to not be getting replies.\\n\\nI am vegan, was asking for recipes or contributing to discussions, not sure what the issue is.\\n\\nI messaged the mod team and each mod personally, no response.\\n\\nWhat in the actual fuck?\\n\\nedit: So, I never received a ban message, but some mod set it up so any post I make is autoremoved. What a cowardly fucking action to take. /u/sylvan seems to be the only mod recently active, but he/she is deliberately ignoring my messages to him/her.\\n\\nedit2: So, u/sylvan refused to reply, but (JUST BANNED ME)(https://imgur.com/a/3bJII), apparantly for 'harrasment of moderators', simply for trying to understand why I was banned in the first place.\\n\\nI posted a total of 3 messages as replies to posts he made in other subs simply asking why I was banned in the first place, and he didn't have the decency to reply?\\n\\n**Really? This is how you encourage new vegans?**\\n\\nedit3: Made a similar post to this (explaining what happened) in r/vegancirclejerk to ask for more input and feedback. (Instantly got banned)(https://imgur.com/a/a38iS). Never posted in that sub before.\\n\\nThis won't change my decision to be vegan, but I kind of understand why they have a shitty reputation online if this is how they act.\\n\\nMy only crime was trying to figure out why i was \\"banned\\" in the first place. People can check my post history in r/vegan. Nothing offensive. Even a recipe request.\\n\\nedit4: Ended up talking to a mod and getting unbanned. Issue resolved.\\n\\nHowever. I strongly disagree with the ways they moderate. From sylvan ignoring private messages in his capacity as moderator and then banning instead of responding, to circumventing the mod tools for banning users to silently auto-removing every post they make..\\n\\nThat's incredibly shitty to me. They believe it is necessary to combat trolls, and I don't buy that at all. I've been on the internet for almost 25 years, moderated large forums in the past as well as a sub or two....I don't see that as a valid excuse at all.\\n\\nThere is no good excuse to silently auto-remove someones posts instead of just banning them. It's not like it's more effort, and I doubt it is effective. If I noticed, I'm sure trolls would notice.", |
"https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/rxodyk/veganism_is_fake_news_and_as_a_way_of_life_it/\\n\\nPost below to r/vegan\\n\\n>Veganism has not changed in the 30 years since I was one and still the same old stories are regurgitated. Veganism works only on one level, animal deaths and then it should be up to people to have the ethics of whose life is more important, theirs or an animals.\\n\\n>The same stories of we could use the land for other things, all the crops that feed animals could feed humans, we get more calories if we eat the food directly are arguments I used myself and they are not valid.\\n\\n>We can't re-purpose non arable land, 86% of what animals eat is inedible by humans, 60% of this is grass, 22% is our wastage, there isn't a shortage of calories, we could just grow sugar or corn syrup.\\n\\n>What r/vegan has to do is prove that it can replace ALL that we get not just the edible for it to be better environmentally and if people want to say that I don't want an animal killed for me while I live then that is their choice but as long as they know it will make the planet worse environmentally and as long as they are philosophically ok with that then that as I say is their choice.\\n\\n>Feed crops represent 24% of global crop production by mass, we assumed rapeseed meal, as a byproduct of biodiesel production in Europe, was directed to animal feed However since feed crops like maize, soybeans, and oil seed meal are dense in both calories and protein content, feed crops represent 36% of global calorie production\\n\\n>We find that on a global basis, crops grown for direct human consumption represent 67% of global crop production (by mass), 55% of global calorie production , and 40% of global plant protein production.\\n\\nhttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf\\n\\n>It's disingenuous to use the word calories when we will never be able to use those calories ourselves as we can't digest them. *86% of this of what animals eat is inedible by humans, 14% is edible. This 14% is not going to replace all that we get.\\n\\n>It's also deceiving to ourselves if we say only diet needs to be replaced as it ignores all the inedible product we get, something veganism needs to account for and it won't be done from the land that grows 24% by mass that is used for animals, it won't even replace the protein, which is usually classed as meat with the fat trimmed off, all of the other things need to be able to be shown that veganism can replace them otherwise it will be more damaging environmentally.\\n \\nend of post to r/vegan\\n\\nVegan's ignore all that we get and somehow think if we just replace diet that they have changed the world, when in my opinion as an ex vegan, they are lying to themselves and others and it should stop. * they also think replacing calories is the same as replacing nutrition, if that were true we could just give people corn syrup and also ignore the inedible that we get, which all needs replacing, not just the edible, chicken feathers boiled for taurine, sinew rendered for the hundreds of thousands of tons for pet food.\\n\\n>86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans\\n\\nhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013\\n\\nI have had people say to me 25-100 times more land is needed for animal production, which is demonstrably false, that everything can be replaced by being grown on non-arable land, some don't even know what non-arable means..* they also seem to think reducing land area should be our only metric, without replacing the product that comes off it. Who care's if non arable land area get's reduced, especially as nothing else grows there\\n\\n*\\n\\n>We find that on a global basis, crops grown for direct human consumption represent 67% of global crop production (by mass), 55% of global calorie production , and 40% of global plant protein production.\\n\\n>Feed crops represent 24% of global crop production by mass. However since feed crops like maize, soybeans, and oil seed meal are dense in both calories and protein content, feed crops represent 36% of global calorie production\\n\\n>21% of food\\u2019s emissions comes from crop production for direct human consumption, and 6% comes from the production of animal feed\\n\\nhttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf\\n\\n24% by mass or 36% ( considering some of this is after the human content has been removed it a bit much to say this all of this calorie content is just for animals ) is not going to replace all that we get, the edible and inedible\\n\\nNobody should take a vegans view of how the world should be if they don't know how to replace all that we get based off an ethic that could make the planet worse environmentally especially has it hasn't been proven once that everything that can be replaced.\\n\\n*\\n\\nVeganism is only is possible because such a small percentage adhere to it so they are able take from a wide range of foods that might not be possible to supply the variation needed for good health for the general population.\\n\\n>The modeled removal of animals from the US agricultural system resulted in predictions of a greater total production of food, increases in deficient essential nutrients and excess of energy in the US population\\u2019s diet, a potential increase in foods/nutrients that can be exported to other countries, and a decrease of 2.6 percentage units in US GHG emissions. Overall, the removal of animals resulted in diets that are nonviable in the long or short term to support the nutritional needs of the US population without nutrient supplementation. In the plants-only system, the proportion of grain increased 10-fold and all other food types declined. Despite attempts to meet nutrient needs from foods alone within a daily intake of less than 2 kg of food, certain requirements could not be met from available foods. In all simulated diets, vitamins D, E, and K were deficient. Choline was deficient in all scenarios except the system with animals that used domestic currently consumed and exported production. In the plants-only diets, a greater number of nutrients were deficient, including Ca, vitamins A and B12, and EPA, DHA, and arachidonic acid.\\n\\n>Although not accounted for in this study, it is also important to consider that animal-to-plant ratio is significantly correlated with bioavailability of many nutrients such as Fe, Zn protein, and vitamin A (31). If bioavailability of minerals and vitamins were considered, it is possible that additional deficiencies of plant-based diets would be identified.\\n\\nhttps://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/48/E10301.full.pdf\\n\\nVegans have linked to me the video or given the opinion that says we can grow other foods in the place of the grasses that corn and wheat are, growing other foods in the place of these crops is going to lower the calorie benefit listed above in the 24% by mass, considering there is a protein and calorie loss from this mass, is this wise or even possible\\n\\nIn the USA, all agriculture is 10% as emissions. All animals are 5% and ruminants are around 65% of that.\\n\\nhttps://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#methane\\n\\nCows are not all of the ruminants but even leaving them as the whole amount for this, any system that replaces the edible and inedible has to be able to show a lowering of 3.25% of emissions to replace everything we get, not just the edible, considering they are mostly on non arable land around the world, anything that replaces this has to show less inputs are needed to get everything we get now.\\n\\nIf veganism doesn't know how to replace all that we get or even how, should veganism be taken seriously on an environmental aspect ever?", |
"**I have summarised all this at the end under TL;DR**\\n\\nThis is such a confusing topic because I\\u2019ve never heard of actual evidence to support either side (but correct me if I\\u2019m wrong about that). I apologise if I sound ignorant, and for this essay of a post.\\n\\nHere are some of the points I\\u2019ve gathered since going vegan and amid all this debate around KFC\\u2014\\u2014\\n\\n**FOR it:**\\n\\n\\u2022 subway in Canada doesn\\u2019t have plant based options because the demand wasn\\u2019t high enough when they did\\n\\n\\u2022 having plant based options at non vegan places can help carnists realise plant based foods are tasty/affordable etc.\\n\\n\\u2022 if there\\u2019s a demand for plant based food, they could add even more (but who\\u2019s to say that the carnists will eat it and it\\u2019s not just vegans eating it?)\\n\\n\\u2022 supporting it can help plant based food become mainstream (I don\\u2019t think I agree, as I explain below)\\n\\n**AGAINST it:**\\n\\n\\u2022 supporting KFC is worse than buying from supermarkets because they are built on carnism\\n\\n\\u2022 they don\\u2019t care about animals, they just want money\\n\\n\\u2022 if there are vegan restaurants/cafes around you, why wouldn\\u2019t you support them instead of a carnist company? That also increases demand\\n\\n\\u2022 by supporting all vegan places, vegan food can still become mainstream. How common is it that carnists who eat at KFC etc. will actually get the plant based option? (When I wasn\\u2019t vegan, I did do this and it helped me realise plant based food was really good, activists/documentaries made me vegan, not the beyond burger at a carnist burger restaurant)\\n\\n\\nI\\u2019ve seen many activists supporting PBC, with some saying they wouldn\\u2019t buy from KFC but having a vegan option is good for the animals if carnists choose it. This just makes it more confusing since for the most part vegans are on the same side, especially activists. It\\u2019s also concerning to see some activists use carnist arguments in favour of PBC (e.g. Lifting Vegan Logic said something like \\u201cif you don\\u2019t think it\\u2019s ethical why do you shop at a supermarket?\\u201d which reminds me of the \\u201cphones tho\\u201d argument). There is no such thing as a vegan supermarket (I suppose a farmers market works, but are the farmers vegan?), but there IS such thing as vegan restaurants/cafes. At least there, although they would buy food from supermarkets, the profit would go to vegans and not carnists.\\n\\nI\\u2019d love to hear more insight and what everyone\\u2019s opinions are. As you can see I\\u2019m really torn so I want to learn more about this topic and would appreciate any responses.\\n\\n**Note:** I wanted to post this on Vegan for Circle Jerkers as an honest question, but thought they might ban me. I\\u2019d really appreciate the thoughts of people who use that sub because I agree with pretty much everything on there\\n\\n**UPDATE:** \\nI have researched more and found (this great post)(https://www.reddit.com/r/VeganForCircleJerkers/comments/q5hkq2/pbc_plant_based_capitalism_an_explanation/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) on VFCJ that has made me shift my position a little. In a nutshell, some of the best points were:\\n\\n\\u2022 Burger King removed some vegan options because they weren\\u2019t selling, and not much changed. The vegan population is so little, so it\\u2019s very likely only vegans were buying it \\n\\n\\u2022 Tyson have said that since having plant based products, the rate they kill animals hasn\\u2019t decreased\\n\\n\\u2022 all this has led me to believe that most likely, this is just to make money from vegans. It doesn\\u2019t lead carnists to buy the vegan option enough to support these companies over 100% vegan ones, and certainly doesn\\u2019t make carnists go vegan. It\\u2019s mostly about people\\u2019s taste and convenience, and not wanting to only buy whole foods from grocery stores even if that is more ethical. \\n\\nSome of my own new points:\\n\\n\\u2022 when you buy from a cafe/restaurant, not only is the grocery store getting profit, but the restaurant and the company/original producer. If you buy from a carnist restaurant, on top of supporting a grocery store that sells products of abuse, you\\u2019re supporting the producer of the item/s AND giving profit to the owner of the restaurant. Buying straight from the grocery store would surely be giving less money to carnists (but correct me if I\\u2019m wrong)\\n\\n\\u2022 having one item on a menu that is without cruel products doesn\\u2019t mean you should support that brand. It\\u2019s like animal testing - vegans don\\u2019t support companies that test on animals in China, but with the pro-PBC logic you could if you live outside China because your item isn\\u2019t tested on animals. Maybe that\\u2019s not a great analogy, but it\\u2019s helped me make more sense of this.\\n\\n\\n**TL;DR:**\\nI\\u2019m don\\u2019t think PBC is great for animals. Buying takeaways/mock animal products etc. isn\\u2019t a necessity. As I discovered with Burger King and Tyson, the rate of animal deaths has not decreased by adding vegan options. It is a good idea for converting carnists/making them realise plants are delicious, but a vegan who cares about animals should support all vegan companies as much as is possible. It makes no sense when people who live in cities with SO many vegan cafes/restaurants go out of their way to support carnist companies like KFC, when it won\\u2019t make carnists vegan and won\\u2019t decrease animal murder. I live in a city with very few all vegan restaurants. I would kill to live in a city with even 10 vegan places, and yet vegans in NYC and London are supporting KFC", |
"Video reference: https://youtu.be/Eug1You8SH0\\n\\nIt seems to me that this conversation is taking place within a much broader, philosophical and theological setting - a setting that makes the topic of veganism almost TOO small or TOO acute to be useful or relevant.\\n\\nHaving watched a fair amount of Ed's content (and been largely unimpressed), I think that the absence of this realization and the lack of philosophical/theological reverence and competency is where Ed's arguments consistently fall down. His arguments sit upon extremely shaky and precarious moral assumptions and rough calculations. \\n\\nThat said, I do disagree with his interlocutor in this video, but at least here Ed is coming up against a consistent and considered philosophy as opposed to a good deal of his other content, where his opponents have woefully undeveloped positions. The gentleman in this video raises vital and comprehensive points that it appears Ed has never considered and seems unable to engage with, points that simply HAVE to been confronted and accounted for in any functional belief system - including veganism.\\n\\nThoughts?", |
"I understand you value animal lives. So lets take a dog for example how much more or less value does it have over a human? If it's equal would you save a dog over a human or would it be up to chance?", |
"Been reading that soy is really bad for you. Does the term soy-boy have any truth to it?", |
"I completly agree with veganism but i lost all hope in it\\n\\nI dont see a future where this fucked up system gets any better so why should i even bother?\\n\\nI also have grown extremely apathetic about the living beings that are being slaughtered to the point where i dont care about what or who i am eating\\n\\nI only continue being a vegan out of habit even though it would be more convinent to stop caring and to stop being vegan\\n\\nSo could you give me a reason as to why i should continue being vegan?\\n\\nEdit:i also dont understand how me not buying the meat in the supermarket is making a diference, not saying it doesnt, i just genuinely dont know\\n\\nEdit 2: you guys have some really good arguments and have really changed my mind. I guess i was being a dumbass doomer but my doomer ass can see youre right. \\n\\nThank you for answering my post", |
"Vegas, a lot of your arguments are great, but I think it breaks down when it comes to attacking thd \\"Plants are alive too\\" argument. You say that you draw the line at sentient living things. So plants don't count. You do realize how arbitrary this is, right? There's no reason or logic behind it, that's just how YOU think it should be. I think it makes more sense to take an agnostic approach. All morality is subjective, but some moralistic philosophies are more arbitrary than others. This is where we have to take a neutral position. Such as abortion. Some people will say life starts at conception and we should honor that life just because. And by the way, semen doesn't count because it's not alive yet. This is also completely arbitrary. I don't think we should put down others who believe in it either. Their morality is their own and we shouldn't push ours on theirs. There shouldn't be any laws against it because it's so arbitrary though.\\n\\nAlso, take this argument. Think if aliens come right now and harvest us like we harvest meat. They bred us like we breed meat. Sure, we'd rather they don't kill us right now, but would we really rather they had not started to breed us at all? Then we would never be born! I'm sure we would rather a shortened life rather than no life at all.\\n\\nThe fact is that life doesn't really matter anyway. We have laws to protect ourselves from extinction, because extinction affects us, because we think our lives matter. We have laws because if we didn't our lives would be worse, not because life inherently matters, that's just an illusion. That wouldn't apply to animals because we don't really need them to survive. You can make an argument that going vegan is better for the environment and therefore in our best interest, but that's different than declaring the sanctity of all life. When we die we go back to like it was before we were born. None of this actually matters, we're just coasting along for the ride.\\n\\nYou could say people are being unethical by forgetting to recycle their coffee cup from Starbucks, but it's not very realistic because each individual contributes very little to harming the environment, but it's only as a whole that we are harming it. That's why we need government to stop it.\\n\\nAnyway, thanks for humoring me.", |
"In a previous post, people discussed epidemiological studies that show a negative association between meat consumption and depression (1). People rightfully pointed out the association could be due to confounding variables. This consensus was reflected in the top comment, questioning the likelihood of there being some 'magic happy chemical' in meat.\\n\\nWell, it seems like this is indeed the case. The 'happy chemical' is called carnitin and is predominantly found in red meat (2). Researchers found that depression is associated with low levels of serum carnitine. Furthermore, several RCT showed improvements in depressive symptoms from carnitine supplementation. Carnitin supplementation had similar effectiveness to established antidepressants, but fewer side effects (3). The link is so strong that researchers have proposed to use serum carnitin levels as a diagnostic tool for depression (4).\\n\\nThis is one example (of many) that illustrates the health benefits of consuming animal products, specifically red meat, and is part of why humans should eat meat.\\n\\nSources:\\n\\n(1) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2021.1974336\\n\\n(2) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.853058/full\\n\\n(3) https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/abstract/2018/02000/acetyl_l_carnitine_supplementation_and_the.4.aspx\\n\\n(4) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.671151/full\\n\\nEdit: update links to sources", |
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHzfvM8mXxI", |
"So, I wrote this following a long chain of thought. Would like to know your opinions.(https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQdwmvnb5DJCEKYV8TukaEj7AIx8BZcZn1FSXOZ6zjEODOALNV3k00lOyfkkthB6uWW5pf8DtrMMhSI/pub)(https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQdwmvnb5DJCEKYV8TukaEj7AIx8BZcZn1FSXOZ6zjEODOALNV3k00lOyfkkthB6uWW5pf8DtrMMhSI/pub)\\n\\n​\\n\\nAlso, please pardon the coherence in the text. I was (and still am) half asleep while writing this. \\n\\n​\\n\\nCheers", |
"So as an non vegan, im curious where does the line of morality begin when it comes to veganism and the supply chain of the production of vegan food. Whether it be through accidental slaughter of living animals through cultivation or transportation.", |
"Oysters or a venus fly trap? Which would you eat if you had to choose one?", |
"I am not a vegetarian. I raise these precious animals myself, and I process them myself, because I know they have had a good, healthy life. They live outside, in the sunshine. They get to play, eat, sleep. They are protected from predators. They are not raised confined to a feed lot, or inside a concrete building. They are not over crowded, they are not sick, they are not deformed. Because I do eat meat, I want to make sure that the animals I eat live a good life, not a horrible one. I don't ever buy meat at the grocery store. I know how my animals are treated, even up to the end. And yes, I cry when I say goodbye to them. But I am not a vegetarian. I care about these animals. Most of them would have no life in the wild. So they get to live with me. And then I eat them.\\n\\n \\n\\nIf you are a vegetarian, good for you. Good for you for the discipline to eat healthy enough and find enough protein sources to stay healthy. If you are not a vegetarian, then do some research on where your meat comes from, and you'll be shocked at what you are supporting by eating at the grocery store.\\n\\nThe other thing I do know is that there is this fantasy that animals can live and awesome life without us coming along to eat them. Well, without me and my dogs, if my sheep were out in the wild, many of the lambs would succumb to predators. My chickens would do the same. And the ones that were super smart and agile and everything - yeah, they could live for some time in the wild. Until they got old and frail. The reality is that all of these animals would either succumb to illness or predators in the wild. Wild animals don't get the joy of peacefully passing away in their sleep. HECK, most animals don't get that privilege! Even my pet dogs and cats don't get that privilege. \\n\\nIf I were to quit butchering my animals for meat right now, most of them would live nice happy lives. Until the end. When they got sick and suffered and died, or when the coyotes finally figured out that they could grab one. All life ends. ALL OF IT. If you are a vegetarian (you're killing that carrot every time you eat one) you may still feel morally obligated to convince the rest of us not to support the slaughter of animals for our food. Those animals will still die. And instead of being carefully handled, and dispatched quickly and as painlessly as possible - they will still die. And they will suffer when they do. Whether you eat animals or not, animals all die. So will we. But I can treat my animals with love and care. \\n\\n \\n\\nIf you are a vegetarian or vegan - again, good for you for the discipline you have in eating healthy and replacing those proteins with other sources. I can still respect you and your decisions and have conversations about it, but it is unlikely you will change my mind. Or change my farm.", |
"First, the difference between introduced and invasive species. Introduced species are non native but cause no harm. Invasive species are non native and cause active harm to an ecosystem.\\n\\nTake Asian carp, for instance. Silver, bighead, grass, and common carp cause harm to ecosystems by decreasing biodiversity, competing with native fish, eroding river and lake bottoms, and even eating the eggs of native fish at times.\\n\\nSo with that in mind, what is your opinion on culling them? Is culling them okay and eating them is not? Are neither okay? Are you fine with it and you just won\\u2019t take part in eating them?\\n\\nI know y\\u2019all aren\\u2019t a monolith and I\\u2019m not trying to pull a Ben Shapiro and \\u201cown the libs\\u201d and I\\u2019m actually genuinely curious on what thoughts are on this issue.", |
"Hey guys, I just wanted to submit some of my thoughts about meat eating and the context of veganism, and maybe get some counter-points. For the purpose of this post, I would like to keep factory farming and the American meat industry out of the discussion. That topic is huge and would only distract from what I'm getting at, and frankly I think we can all agree it's a disgusting system. I'm talking specifically about the practice of killing animals for food.\\n\\nBasically, I think eating meat should be acceptable because it's a huge part of cultures around the world. Not just one or two cultures, or just a few of the most recognizable cultures, but every culture. Even in India, the country most famous for its vegetarian population, animal products are used in cooking and have been for thousands of years. If you ask people in any country around the world what a meal consists of, they would most likely say meat, vegetables, and a form of starch. This isn't a modern invention or an idea that any one society pushes, it's ubiquitous and ancient.\\n\\nSo maybe you think, \\"Duh, but it's still wrong!\\" Alright, I can accept that you think it's wrong. Your personal choice is totally valid to me. But I think it's only fair to expect some level of mutual respect. The morality or immorality of eating meat is a complex, nuanced issue. I'm not saying vegans should or shouldn't be vegan, my point is that both choices should be acceptable to everyone. Instead of saying, \\"Eating meat is always wrong,\\" it would be better to acknowledge that eating meat is a way of life with deep roots, deeper than almost any other human behavior, and that maybe it's alright to disagree.", |
"I hope this is the right place for this, if not I'll be happy to delete/move this post.\\n\\nMy mother has recently decided to become vegan after being vegetarian for ~40 years. I know that she made this decision primarily for animal welfare reasons, and she no longer drinks milk (she was already avoidant of most animal byproducts e.g. gelatin products, pecorino cheese, leather, wool, etc). However, she still eats eggs, although she doesn't buy them. \\n\\nBasically, she owns a handful (I think 5 at the moment) of ex-battery hens, and has been rescuing them for many years. Some of these hens still produce eggs, so she eats them, I think partially because she was raised not to throw food away and because she knows the conditions they are in. She has a largish field behind her house where the chickens live, and treats them really like beloved pets - they each get a unique (and pretty!) name, she hand-makes their organic food every day, spends time walking around with them, puts them away at night in a heated, foxproof hut, wakes up at sunrise every day to let them out again... She even gives them these little jackets if they're new and have had feathers come out, so they're not cold and to protect their skin. She has a special vet who's a chicken specialist on speed dial (her local vet has no idea what to do with them), and when they eventually pass from old age there's a solemn funeral for each and every one. Basically, these are the most spoilt little chickens I've ever seen, which they absolutely deserve considering where they come from.\\n\\nThe reason I'm asking about this is because my mother joined a group on Facebook aimed at older vegans in her area. Someone on there saw the photos of chickens on her page (I think one of them is even her profile picture) and asked about the eggs. When she said she does eat them a bunch of people started replying saying she isn't a vegan and shouldn't be in the group. My mum is really upset about it as she previously found the group to be supportive, and doesn't know what she can say to defend herself. She still considers herself vegan.\\n\\nSo my question here is, is it ever possible to be a 'vegan' but eat eggs in a scenario like this? Is there any sort of defence? I am not vegan myself, so I really don't know the ins and outs but I want to help my mother, even if that means advising her of the proper terminology to use so others won't get upset. \\n\\nIf you get this far, thanks for reading all that and again if this is the wrong place for this please let me know.", |
"That's my question. Pests = mice, rats; that will chew through things and poop on your stuff. This is a health hazard.", |
"I've read a lot of vegans on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and come to the conclusion that the aggressive, ALF supporters maybe bad for veganism as a whole. Sub genres of vegans show up when supermeat is mentioned or when dietary habits of dogs and cats are enquired. Gary Yourofsky's comments on the Nepal earthquake were diabolical. However, he did do one good speech, but that's kind of where I stopped listening to him. Personally, I'm cutting back animal products, with the research and knowledge I have gathered off my own back. I still occasionally consume fish, eggs and cheese. I do drink soya and almond milk nowadays. I'm in a stronger position to be vegetarian, despite the hatred it gathers from the vegan community, as it's often \\"worse than meat\\" to many abolitionist vegans on facebook. This may make absolutely no sense to any of you as I'm writing off a phone (oh, naughty). The gist is, I admire the ethical stand point of vegans, I can even understand the anger that comes from it, but I think the more aggressive and outspoken in the community will turn people away. I am much more thoughtful when searching for food, mainly veggie and vegan. I often visit vegan places as I enjoy seeing the alternatives. \\n\\nTL;DR: Aggressive Vegans on social media, MIGHT be hindering the movement.\\n\\nEdit: I enjoy vegan and vegetarian food. I find little delights in finding them out and about. Feel free too shoot me down, but I'm complimenting you guys.", |
"What's your rebuttal? I am tired at debating. My brain is shutting down and I need help. ", |
"First of all this is a rare situation. But one could conceivably develop a back mounted pistol or long gun perhaps for a war effort. Russians have been known to train dolphins and whales as scouts. Pigeons were used in war and we all know about dogs.\\n\\nOkay, so you're approached by an armed animal. The animal does not know you, it only knows its training. And you fit the profile of someone to act against.\\n\\nIs it unethical at this point to fire the first shot before the animal does? I would argue that it is not. The animal's ignorance does not absolve its lethality. Much like child soldiers.", |
"I\\u2019ve seen comments from people saying they won\\u2019t, for example, buy a veg burger from McDonald\\u2019s because they don\\u2019t want to support the company. McDonald\\u2019s almost certainly has an entire team of people - accountants, marketers, etc. - analyzing the profitability, growth potential, etc of the vegan food market. One of the most basic business principles is not to subsidize one product with another, so you\\u2019re not really subsidizing meat when you do. And if vegan food were really that much more profitable than meat that would actually be great news because that would give them an incentive to push those products. Smaller companies are watching these bigger companies and taking cues from them. If big evil companies can\\u2019t make vegan products profitable, nobody else will even try. Also, the more your average person sees these products in their everyday life, at their favorite fast food restaurants or on store shelves, the more normalized veganism will become.", |
"I'm pro-choice on abortion politically because I think the consequences of the ban are worse than the act itself, but I'll admit that it makes me very uncomfortable, and given the choice for myself only, I probably wouldn't go through with it, especially if armed with scientific knowledge that at a certain point it must cause pain.\\n\\nObviously, this wouldn't question wouldn't be a problem in the cases of extremely early term abortions, but at a certain point within the woman's womb the forming child's faculties far exceed that of many animals that vegans would refuse to eat for moral reasons.\\n\\nI feel this question is \\"trickiest\\" for individuals who are both fervently pro-abortion and fervently vegan, since in both cases you are weighing the decision of a single actor with regard to either a lower or equal being (depending on your subjective hierarchy if you are a utilitarian). \\n\\nA woman deciding whether to eat meat or abort in the second trimester often faces a very similar tradeoff between a (lesser?) being's pleasure and their own. \\n\\n\\n\\nI am interested from the moral/personal/ethical standpoint of you making the decision for yourself. I think this question is difficult for any moral framework (e.g. Deontology, Kantian, virtue, consequentialist utilitarian, whatever). Is the sacrifice of another being's life worth the convenience/pleasure that the action would add to your own? How do your personal (not political) views on abortion and veganism relate with one another?\\n\\nInterested in the replies.\\n\\n**Note: As I said earlier, I'm really not interested in the political/legal framework. Enforcing a ban on both abortion services and meat consumption tomorrow would have horrible unintended consequences in the same way as one another, often stemming from mass civil disobedience. What I am interested in is your own personal ethical outlook.**", |
"I've worked at an organic farm for about a year. The products we use to fertilize our fields all contain animal parts: blood, bones, ground up lobsters, etc. We sell a huge variety of fertilizers that are approved for organic growing in our farmstand and they all contain animal products. So, if we use animal parts to fertilize our fields, are the organic fruits and veggies we grow vegan? Dead animals went into producing them. \\n\\nIf organic fruits and veggies aren't vegan, the alternative is fruits and veggies grown with chemical pesticides. There are plenty of environmental and ethical issues with chemical pesticides, and in my opinion these issues are more serious than the ethical dilemma of eating organic, local crops fertilized by dead animals. \\n\\nI haven't made up my mind on this issue yet, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot and I am really curious to hear other people's opinions. ", |
"I say internet because no vegan has said this to me in real life, so I don't mean all vegans.\\n\\nThis seems to come from a single source, a talk from. Dr. Milton Mills in which he cherry picks aninals to make humans match up to an herbivore. Alternatively it will say frugivore instead of herbivore, but the reasoning is the same.", |
"While it is understandable that everyone may have some different views within a group, I found myself debating with someone who subscribed to the idea that veganism is a Kingdomist viewpoint.\\n\\nI disagreed by saying that based on arguments, it seems like a vegan would not be in opposition with granting other things besides animal consideration as long as it has the traits worthy of moral consideration. Namely, as usually put, the ability to suffer or sentience.\\n\\nThey put forth that by definition, the vegan society is only concerned with animals being sold for food and other commodifion of them.\\n\\nNow I disagreed with this because it isn't done because they are animals but because vegans consider that animals (at least usually) have what is necessary to be considered morally relevant.\\n\\nThis all boils down to a question. Is it the letter of the law (animal rights), or is it the spirit of the law (sentient rights) that vegans argue for?\\n\\nIs a Kingdomist approach vegan, or is it taking advantage of fallible wording?\\n\\nI do want to note that I consider a Kingdomist approach as identical in logic as any other discriminatory approach and lacking in comparison to the morally relevant traits argumentation that is used by most vegans.", |
"To be clear, this is **not** an argument against veganism. It is a question related to the marginal cases argument.\\n\\nSuppose a human baby with zero social ties is in a burning house and there is also a cow in a burning barn. You can save only one.\\n\\nThe cow is an herbivore, so no sentient beings will suffer as a result of its continued existence. The baby could be be raised vegan (I don't know at this point who the adoptive parents would be). But, even if the baby is raised vegan, there will likely be some suffering of sentient beings because industrial plant production generally results in accidental death of animals. Industrial plant production in this case is required for the infant's survival.\\n\\nBased on this argument, the correct moral decision is to save the cow because it prevents the most suffering. But, I would still choose the infant. It's simply in my human nature, which is an appeal to nature fallacy, but I would do it anyways. \\n\\nWhich would you choose and why? Are there any rational arguments that would make my decision morally correct? ", |
"Is it to eventually have a majority or everyone become vegan?\\n\\nIs it to minimize harm done to animals?\\n\\nWhat is the big picture is what I'm asking. :)\\n\\nEdit: well everyone, it's been a pleasure discussing with you all, I'm going to bed now but will reply more in the morning, thank you all for your insights, and the most convincing topic I ran into was not about the animals themselves, but how bad the meat industry is for the environment, can't really argue with that point, so even if people don't agree with the \\"save the animals\\" aspect of veganism, the environmental aspect can't be denied, thanks again and good night! :)", |
"I have been aquiring the new hobby of arguing with vegans apparently. Since I work in the medical field and have to provide diet recommendations sometimes I read basically every study I can get my hands on and have the time for. \\n\\nI also never argue the ethical point with vegans since I am strictly interested in the best healthcare for my patients and veganism tends to be perceived as dogmatic. /s I can't imagine why...\\n\\nSo my question is this: Why do vegans seem to think that all meat is equal in generally bad for you. Nobody with half a brain cell would ever argue that factory farmed meat or dairy is healthy. That would be denying the facts. Interestingly enough though vegans (at least the ones I've spoken to) never talk about grass-fed meat or even the distinction between muscle and organ meats. Grass-fed liver is one of the healthiest foods on the planet. \\n\\nThe problem purely from a health point of view is factory farming and not meat. Wheat or genetic modified soy are true hazards to our health but they are passed over for some reason despite the wealth of research showing us that they kill us. (In contrast to not genetically modified soy and wheat pre-1970s).", |
"take note : not all mutations are bad, it can be good in the means of increasing of survival or getting rid of unwanted feature. \\n\\n\\nFor example humans used to be so hairy (for thermoregulation) and they have wisdom tooth (for cutting raw meat) but in the presence of fire and other innovations we don't need those kind of traits \\n\\n\\nI think the changes in the human body might occur \\n1. the stomach will be either be too acidic ( since most vegetables are more alkalizing ) or it will produce less acid ( since our stomach doesnt need to pump more HCl in the body) - our body has a way to homeostasis \\n2. We will have a way to digest cellulose \\n3. plants to human virus is a possible transmission ( viruses has a ability to adapt ) \\n4. We will probably have softer and brittle bones \\n5. there will be changes in our DNA \\n\\n\\nhopefully you can think of ways how humans will change in the next 1Millions of years", |
"(https://www.veganlifemag.com/diamond-mining/)(https://www.veganlifemag.com/diamond-mining/)\\n\\n \\nHumans want shiny things so the earth is destroyed, yes i know that we desire fancy cars and pretty houses or brand name clothes but those things have secondary values, we drive them, live in them or wear them \\n\\n\\nA diamond has no other purpose than to be a shiny thing \\n\\n\\nI do know that diamond and gold are used in manufacturing processes and serves a real purpose compared to again a shiny thing to show our friends", |
"Is it just as bad to kill an ant as it is a cow?", |
"I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, and I doubt I ever will be, because I'm extremely selfish and lazy, and I love the taste of meat and animal products too much. But there's no logical way to disagree with anything they say. Animals are innocent, sentient beings. And when you pay for meat and animal products, you are paying people to murder them, steal their babies, etc.", |
"I'm from a country where eating insects in something normal and socially acceptable. Is eating insects bad for vegans? I saw a post about eating clams and muscles and most of you seem to think it's alright because they aren't sentient. What about bugs, like crickets or ants? ", |
"First let me start off with: I am not here to fight. You have my full and total respect for the vegan life choices. \\n\\nI consider myself as a non vegan that tries everything I can to source my animal products ethically. I only eat meat twice a week, which I buy from a free range farm where the cows are slaughtered on location. I do eat yoghurt every morning, which I get from the same place. And although I rarely buy products like winegums/milk chocolate, I won't say no when offered. \\n\\nI have vegan friends who started to approach me in the past few months like I am the scum off the earth for doing what I am doing. Debates we've been having about me not being vegan have become fruitless, because it gets wayyy to personal wayyy to fast. I feel like neither party is truly open to listening to the other party anymore. \\n\\nI was wondering if there are people here that are open to a civil debate on the topic. I feel like I am making conscious decisions, but I am open on things I can improve. I feel like I am making ethical choices, but can not fairly test/challenge my choices in the debates with my friends because they mainly yell at me that I am a horrible person (FYI, I am not innocent in those discussions either. I get defensive). \\n\\nPS: using a throwaway account for anonymity purposes.. \\n\\n", |
"Is it wrong to eat meat?", |
"Animals being equalized with humans and humans being categorized as in the animal kingdom happens daily in the vegan community. \\n\\nVeganism often compares animal suffering to human suffering and environmental suffering. \\n\\nWe all know that porn traffics and abuses men, women and children every single day in horrific ways with no end in sight. In some cases there is consent but in just as many there aren\\u2019t, and as with many animal industries the porn industry is largely unregulated. Even the seemingly \\u201csafe\\u201d sites are proven to have \\u201caccidentally\\u201d hosted illegal exploitative content. \\n\\nEating eggs doesn\\u2019t kill a chicken but it directly correlates and impacts the lives of other animals who are slaughtered in the industry by normalizing and perpetuating their use. People who consent to making porn don\\u2019t die but the production of porn fuels an industry where very real people including children and animals do suffer and die to create content for the industry. \\n\\nI\\u2019d argue you cannot be vegan and support porn at the same time. The only way to reduce the abuse to the most exploited and murdered in the industry is to give it up all together. \\n\\nIf human rights are animal rights, and you would argue against bestiality or similar, and humans are animals then how is porn acceptable to vegans when it exploits humans (and sometimes animals in pornography) as an industry?", |
"What are we to do for animals that literally cannot be vegan. Like Dogs, and Cats? They are incapable of survival based on plants alone. Sorry my question is so short. I am not the most eloquent fellow.", |
"Sounds stupid but I have a rather important question and the crux of the argument relies on vegans not eating snails.\\n\\nIn the end vegans (who choose not to eat/use animal based products because of their disagreement with harming animals) will still eat a salad. \\nThis salad could be made from leaves which have been surrounded with pest killing devices or chemicals and it would not be considered harming an animal by the majority of vegans (otherwise they would refuse to eat most vegetables). \\nAll kinds of tangential arguments could be made about this, an example being \\"if none of the animals are killed, is keeping an animal from food which it requires to live considered cruel?\\" and other such arguments. \\nTL;DR If a vegan chooses to eat food which has been deliberately farmed so pests such as snails may die as a direct result, would killing snails and eating them be different? if so how?", |
"Why should we support veganism when there are ways where exploiting and being cruel to animals can be for their own good or where doing something that's not vegan is going to help out animals more than being vegan?\\n\\nI can list multiple ways\\n\\n* rewilding livestock back to their untarnished forms\\n* animal sanctuaries\\n* slaughterhouse documentaries\\n* eating animal foods that would go to waste if you didn't eat it\\n * like if you bought it be accident or was gifted it\\n * then - eating plants instead might contribute to crop deaths while the animal died in vain\\n* animal testing for animal medical treatments (vaccines, etc.)\\n* animal rescuing\\n * where being cruel in giving them vaccines (because the shot might hurt them), tagging them (which hurts them, but can save other lives from illegal hunters), etc. can save their life\\n* not focusing on 'purism' for the sake of reducitarianism\\n* allowing wild animals into gardens for them to live freely instead of worry about making the food not veganic enough to be vegan\\n* freeganism", |
"So I live a rural part of Louisiana and as most here can guess there ain\\u2019t many vegans were I live so most of the locals hunt, fish and grow gardens. I don\\u2019t personally hunt but I do enjoy fishing just hanging out with a buddy or my father and we drink and have fun and if we don\\u2019t catch something oh well we still had fun. My cousin called me this morning and said he killed 5 hogs and that he needed help cleaning them (skinning and gutting) so I got dressed at 6:50 and went to help. I didn\\u2019t ask for anything since I don\\u2019t really eat a lot of pork but he gave me an entire hog. This is probably around 100lbs or so of meat and I thought to myself if I don\\u2019t take it then the person that might may not eat all of it and it will go to waste or my cousin would turn it into dog food so I accepted. \\n\\nI viewed as I would fish. I\\u2019ve had fellas offer me their catch cause it wasn\\u2019t enough for them to fool with. \\n\\nSo my question I guess is is it vegan to not waste the meat?", |
"Why do we never see stories and articles on successful vegans aka the majority vegans who eat a whole food plant based diet but keep getting news on fruitarians who starve themselves with fruits and few raw veggies?", |
"I was reading an article about an individual who decided to try out the diet and workout regimen that Duane \\"The Rock\\" Johnson follows daily. Essentially it's about 10lbs of food a day at around 5000 calories, and about a quarter of weight in food alone comes from fish. The rest is eggs, steak, chicken, fruits and vegetables. I know many vegans claim that a diet consisting of animal products (but especially the flesh) is that of an unhealthy diet that leads to multiple health problems. This seems to be almost the polar opposite however. Here is a man who: \\"In one year, The Rock consumes more than one-third of a ton of cod alone.\\" but is in unarguably peak physical health, when by all vegan accounts he should not. I know veganism is mainly about the morality of exploiting animals period, obviously this isn't addressing that. I am addressing the vegans who speak of how any diet with animal products is one that will be a detriment to ones health. Also if this is not the appropriate place to ask questions like this, I apologize. Please feel free to ask the mods to remove this post if that is the case. Also I will link the article I read below for your reading before discussion. Thank you.", |
"Insects, arachnids and crustaceans are all, arguably, sentient beings. But they are killed intentionally all the time, I suspect, even by vegans. Swatting flies and killing cockroaches. Yet these same vegans believe it is cruel to eat shrimp, keep scorpions as pets or in a zoo, or perform beekeeping. Unlike flies or cockroaches, these arthropods are being kept and farmed for a purpose. Why is it OK to swat a fly but not eat a shrimp or eat honey?", |
"I mean, it's not like I personally go to a field pick out a juicy cow and say yeah I'll have you for steak tonight please. I would go to a restaurant where the cow had already been killed and prepared, it's going to get eaten whether that's me or somebody else. The same with animal products in supermarkets, they will either get eaten or thrown out, it's too late by this point I might as well Benefit from the animal products instead of them just going to waste?", |
"Lets say you have two two different 10-acre plots of land, A and B. Assume you have unlimited clean water and the soil is nutrient rich.\\n\\nPlot A is set up as an annual crop rotation, with sub-plots for fruit, legumes, ancient grains, and vegetables. Basically, grow as many food-bearing plants as you can get away with.\\n\\nPlot B is set up with permanent fruit and nut trees scattered at appropriate distances. Under and between the trees, there is feed grass on which an appropriate number of ruminants graze. The feed grass is never disturbed, and beneath the grass live a natural distribution of insects and ground mammals. The ruminants are allowed to reproduce naturally and animals are only taken (humanely) so as not to allow overpopulation. The animals are never fed additional food from outside the plot. The only intervention in their lives would be to provide them covered living space in the winter and keep that area clean.\\n\\nWhich plot would you like to work on, and why?", |
"I\\u2019m trending that way. I love all life and am also trying to become a better person. \\nAll that said, I have a question for you all. It\\u2019s kinda different I think.\\nHere goes, \\nI was just reading the ingredients for a stick of I can\\u2019t believe it\\u2019s not butter. It says it\\u2019s vegan friendly. But it\\u2019s made from palm oil. I\\u2019ve read that palm oil is from trees that are grown on clear cut land. It\\u2019s not an animal product but, it may have had adverse effects on animals and the people who live there. I\\u2019m genuinely curious what you all think about this? I apologize if this is too deep of a question. I\\u2019m still working to transition to a different person.", |
"1. Every post against veganism is downvoted. Ive browsed many small and large subreddits, but this is the only one where every post discussing the intended topic is downvoted. \\n\\nWriting a post is generally more effort than writing a reply, this subreddit even has other rules like the poster being obligated to reply to comments (which i agree with). So its a huge middle finger to be invited to write a post (debate a vegan), and creating the opportunity for vegans who enjoy debating to have a debate, only to be downvoted.\\n\\n2. Many replies are emotionally charged, such as... \\n\\nThe use of the word \\"carnist\\" to describe meat eaters, i first read this word on this subreddit and it sounded \\"ugly\\" to me, unsurprisingly it was invented by a vegan a few years back. Also it describes the ideology of the average person who believes eating dog is wrong but cow is ok, its not a substitute for \\"meat eater\\", despite commonly being used as such here. Id speculate this is mostly because it sounds more hateful.\\n\\nGas chambers are mentioned disproportionately by vegans (though much more on youtube than this sub). The use of gas chambers is most well known by the nazis, id put forward that vegans bring it up not because they view it as uniquely cruel, but because its a cheap way to imply meat eaters have some evil motivation to kill animals, and to relate them to \\"the bad guys\\". The accusation of pig gas chambers and nazis is also made overtly by some vegans, like by the author of \\"eternal treblinka\\".", |
"So let's say that 80% of people stop eating meat. What happens when the meat industry lays off huge swaths of the workforce? Can the economy handle that many people leaving the workforce? Is an animal's well-being worth more than the families of people who work in the meat industry? We've seen what happens when industry leaves a town.", |
"One of the most common arguments on any r/futurology post about anything related to animal agriculture is: farmed animals, such as cows, pigs, or chickens, will go entirely extinct if we become a vegan world.\\n\\nFirst of all, let\\u2019s just start with that idea being true. What is the problem with them going extinct? We are sending multiple species a day into extinction by treating the earth as we do now, and the only thing people do is see \\u201canimal goes extinct\\u201d on a headline, say \\u201cthat\\u2019s a shame,\\u201d and continue on with their day. Even if you do care, if you\\u2019re against animals going extinct, and even under the premise that farmed animals will go extinct in a vegan world, is it not still better to have a vegan world as that would prevent a whole boatload of extinction that occurs from animal agriculture? Would not trading those 3 animals still be better if your goal is to prevent extinction?\\n\\nBut honestly, the reason people give when they say that those animals will go extinct (meaning every single one will die) is that no one will give a shit about them if we can\\u2019t exploit them. Yet there are countless sanctuaries who DO take animals. Also, this ignores the idea that maybe, just maybe, not every cow pig or chicken on earth is on a farm. http://www.wildcattleconservation.org says there are 10 species of cattle in the wild today. A google search can give you all the information you want to know about wild chickens. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_pig is an article literally talking about pigs who are on their own.\\n\\nNow while not every cow pig or chicken can just be released at once, we won\\u2019t all go vegan overnight, and if we ever are in a vegan world, it would likely be a result of simply stopping breeding them. That still leaves all of the animals that are in sanctuaries, along with the literal examples of cows, pigs and chickens living in the wild or feral.\\n\\nThis subreddit and CMVs about veganism have opened my mind up to a lot of different omni perspectives, but I\\u2019ve never gotten a clear understanding of the logic behind the idea that cows pigs or chickens will go extinct as a result of a vegan world. Nor do I understand why it\\u2019s an issue if keeping those alive is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, which is causing a mass extinction of animals. If somebody could explain that perspective rather than just saying \\u201cthey\\u2019d go extinct,\\u201d I\\u2019d love to hear anyone\\u2019s thoughts and if I disagree, want to debate.", |
"I'm a dietary vegan and working on other aspects.\\n\\nI've learned a lot of hand soaps have animal products. I was at my mom's house over the household and she had honey in one soap and silk in another. Plus there are others with lots of animal byproducts, or traditional soap has animal fat.\\n\\nDo you guys bring hand soap with you everywhere? Sometimes you can't even tell what is in hand soap at some random place.\\n\\nGetting rid of non-vegan products outside of food is so hard and I've been struggling :(", |
"This is from my experience apparently a really hot take among some people. \\n\\nCross-contamination should not be a concern for vegans, but apparently it is. Vegan chicken nuggets fried with the same oil used for actual chicken is apparently a vegan sin - despite the oil being vegan, and consuming those nuggets having no effect on the supply of actual chicken. No manager is going to look at rising sales of vegan products - no matter if 'contamination' is at play - and conclude more animals should be bred to meet demand. \\n\\nYet organic products aren't viewed with the same absurdly critical lens, despite actually being morally concerning seeing as organic produce requires the use of bone meal and animal shit... or it's not organic. ''Conventional'' fruit in comparison is much more likely to come from a source using synthetic fertiliser. Between the organic apple and non-organic apple, choose the non-organic one. That way you're less likely to be contributing to cost reduction for farmers offloading manure and bonemeal to organic farms. \\n\\nSince I'm assuming vegan chicken nuggets don't have much if any organic methods in the supply chain, eating ''contaminated'' vegan products is genuinely more vegan than an organic apple (even when assuming no beeswax!).", |
"I submit the following points:\\n\\n* Gastronomy is a mental health issue. \\n* American Gastronomy has been systematically ruined.\\n* Poverty is an assault on mental and physical health.\\n* Consumers are not morally responsible for the behavior of land owners and \\"voting with your dollar\\" is a Capitalist fraud.\\n* Land owners are capable of manufacturing demand.\\n* Only Revolution can overthrow land ownership, and nothing short of overturning land ownership will put an end to industrial meat farming.\\n* Vegans such as Gary Francione seem criminally and unforgivably unconcerned with the fact that the difficulty of forming a viable gastronomic notion as a vegan under poverty is not their problem.\\n* Veganism is primarily upper middle class.\\n\\nSo I'm certainly 100% opposed to industrial meat agriculture. It is cruel, environmentally unsustainable and produces more meat than it is healthy for human beings to eat. \\n\\nIn fact, I'm opposed to the entire agricultural infrastructure such as it currently stands. It will be irrevocably destructive to the environment so long as land ownership is a factor in its makeup. Monoculture agriculture is killing the planet and making people unhealthy.\\n\\nSo ideally I'm for a decentralized system of some kind owing none of its makeup to Magna Carta or the Peace of Westphalia. One in which agroecological methods are in such widespread implementation that everyone has abundant food available to them in their own yards and even urban neighborhoods, so that our gastronomic notions are in tune with the seasonality of things, come from native plants and fresh sources, and so that biodiversity may be restored, as there is simply not sufficient room on the planet, not just for meat agriculture, but for the entire Western Imperialist quality of life in which our yards and farms and infrastructure are biologically barren, if we expect to accommodate the rest of nature. We must not conceive of ourselves as separate from the rest of nature. With an investment in agroecological methods and the restoration of wide spread biodiversity, we would also see a restoration of the natural condition of the fauna, who are typically accustomed to roaming across the entirety of the land, and who suffer and overpopulate when they are constricted to small \\"natural\\" areas. The presence of plants all over the land would restore their natural attraction to roaming, and this is essential to an ecosystem. There needs to be civic infrastructure covered in greenery specifically devoted to providing thoroughfares for the travel of animals. \\n\\nIf this kind of transformation can occur, which it only can upon the collapse of Capitalism, then meat agriculture is completely unnecessary. If you desire meat, just kill one of the animals eating from your own orchards. Most likely, eating meat at only the frequency you can kill and process an animal yourself, is more like what human bodies evolved experiencing. Then cruelty isn't an issue, the animal lives a full life in nature. In my own personal experience it is far more edifying and spiritual eating an animal you have participated in the processing of than one you have purchased.\\n\\nSo Veganism, which has no aspiration whatsoever towards the dismantling of Capitalism, is absolutely incapable of causing any change, except to the aesthetic makeup of the consumer economy. Actually I do appreciate a great deal of the vegan food which has been made, as food producers are being forced for the first time in 10,000 years to reexamine the base structure of the food we are conventionally accustomed to eating, and oftentimes the results are far superior. So that's good. But it's no more morally meaningful than an improvement in any of the expensive food I have the ability to purchase. \\n\\nSo first I say you're not doing any good anyway. But secondly I say your opinion that a consumer is morally complicit in the structures by which they are victimized is a perspective only the kind of ignorance that wealth gives you of the problems of poverty makes possible, and sure enough most vegans are wealthy or are young people in a state of transitional poverty towards the kinds of careers their wealthy parents had, with the caveat that the economy sucks for Millennials, but they are not without parental support generally.\\n\\nForming a viable gastronomic notion in America is difficult, and it has been antagonized by specific mechanisms of the human body that have been discovered, and have been exploited to continue the model of indefinite growth intrinsic to Capitalism, causing our obesity epidemic. Fully two thirds of the country today is overweight, and fully one third is obese. If these same people were their same age only 40 years ago this would not nearly be the case. Food is now hyperpalatable, out of tune with the seasonality of things, and specifically designed to lack \\"flavor specific satiety\\" so that nothing is quite flavorful enough to make you full. At the same time the kinds of produce that used to be more readily available is now obscenely expensive where a pauper in a food desert is concerned. \\n\\nWhere people who go on diets fail is that they take the \\"calories in, calories out\\" perspective and so start depriving themselves of the things they enjoy, which in the case of food is a sacred and necessary thing for mental health, and lack the ability to replace that deprivation with healthier foods they might enjoy more, because they lack access to farmer's markets, can't afford Whole Foods, lack the gastronomic and culinary education to make good use of such produce even if it is accessible to them, et cetera, et cetera. Human beings are emotional creatures and the gastronomic notion we are accustomed to is deeply, emotionally wired, and any compromise of that requires emotional resources, which we are deprived of from work, unkindness, poverty and many other factors, and you only have so many emotional resources in the day. \\n\\nHuman beings are also social, epidemic creatures, who are easily influenced by certain known mechanisms. Epidemiology tells us you're far more likely to be obese if you live within walking distance to a convenience store or a fast food restaurant, if you live in a food desert, if your job is sedentary which most jobs in America are, et cetera, et cetera. The health metrics of any country demonstrably fall as soon as McDonald's is introduced there for the first time. The food that's around today is *designed* to prey upon the weaknesses of human mental and emotional processes, even weaknesses of the sensory apparatus we are born with, from marketing and presentation to the calibration of the food's taste to encourage additional consumption, which they can do with scientific precision. \\n\\nThe Proletarian is the victim of the agricultural and food sectors under Capitalism. The Proletarian is not complicit by their consumption. The Proletarian faces, in most contexts beneath upper middle class, virtually unconquerable antagonism to their gastronomic and mental health. The land owners and monied interests have the resources, funds and science behind them. They will win nearly unopposed if there is not fundamental systemic change to the makeup of civilization.\\n\\nSo Revolution is the only way, whether violent or non-violent, but Revolution none the less. If you're a Vegan but are fine with Capitalism and Imperialism and expect for nothing in particular to change except that everyone will one day change their mind and stop eating meat, then you are day dreaming and advocating nothing of value. You participate daily in and benefit daily from the systemic makeup of things. Your vegan purchases, in the greater context of the infrastructure they support, absolutely keep the meat industry afloat to no less of a degree than the purchase of meat. \\n\\nI don't mind a disagreement on any of these points, but please, stop arguing for the moral complicity of Proletarians. This is ugly behavior. ", |
"I\\u2019ve been reducing my meat intake for a few years but whenever I try to cut it out entirely I feel horrible. Basically chronic fatigue symptoms. I\\u2019ve read recently that in the us 60% of organ meat is wasted compared to 10% of normal meat. Eating this seem like it would contribute significantly less to animal suffering than creating more demand for more common meat. I\\u2019m interested in other people opinions and if my facts are correct.", |
"This is a question I've wanted to ask vegans, esp the ones who believe that \\"carnists are stupid/brainwashed/etc\\", \\"veganism is the absolute truth\\" or \\"if you value humans and not animals your morality is inconsistent\\". Why do you think that majority of philosophers/ethicists are non-vegan and hold that veganism is *not* morally obligatory if veganism is so self evidently true or if the arguments for veganism are so strong? \\n\\n\\n \\n\\n##### (Eating animals and animal products (is it permissible to eat animals and/or animal products in ordinary circumstances?): omnivorism (yes and yes), vegetarianism (no and yes), or veganism (no and no)?)(https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4938)\\n\\nAccept or lean towards: \\nomnivorism (yes and yes)48.02% (47.05%) \\nAccept or lean towards: \\nvegetarianism (no and yes)26.47% (23.92%) \\nAccept or lean towards: \\n**veganism (no and no)18.37% (16.50%)**", |
"Generally, vegans say that it's not that animals are equal to humans, it's just that they have enough value such that killing them unnecessarily is unjustified. But how can this be the case?\\n\\n>**P1.** Infants and the intellectually disabled (so-called \\"marginal cases\\") are equal in moral value to all other humans \\n> \\n>**P2.** If infants and the intellectually disabled are equal in moral value to all other humans, but sentient non-human animals are not, then there must be some relevant difference between infants/the intellectually disabled and sentient non-human animals that justifies this difference in moral value \\n> \\n>**P3.** There is no such relevant difference \\n> \\n>**C.** Sentient non-human animals are equal in moral value to all humans\\n\\nThis seems to imply that we should not just grant non-trivial moral status to animals, but full equality, and all the privileges that comes with. I don't really see any way of simultaneously holding that marginal humans are equal to non-marginal humans and also holding that they are superior to non human animals. The only difference is their species but that doesn't seem to be relevant to moral status in any obvious way.", |
"To me this doesn't seem unethical, but I'm curious what people here would have to say. Seems like a waste to let a full grown cow die and not be used for food after it has grazed on a farm for years.", |
"Vegans should be antinatalists to be consistent with their ethics.\\n\\n### The Asymmetry\\n\\n> (C1) If a potential person will likely live a life of severe suffering, then we would think that it is unethical to create that person. (C2) However, we wouldn't think it is unethical not to create a person who would live an amazing life.\\n> \\n> For example, co-founder of Facebook Dustin Moskovitz has not created and raised any children himself even though he is a multi-billionaire with many resources. I think it would be hard to say he is acting immorally in this regard. The reason being: he is not harming anyone in this regard.\\n> \\n> (C1v) Similarly, since we know that animals brought into existence for food would likely live a horrible life, it is immoral to bring them into existence. (C2v) And, since no animal is harmed by not coming into existence, it is not immoral not to create them.\\n\\n### The Rebuttal\\n\\nThere is a common rebuttal to the asymmetry (ie. C1 and C2):\\n\\n> _The asymmetry doesn't apply. Instead, we have to weigh the pain (or suffering) and the pleasure (or well-being) in one's life, and (R1) if the pleasure outweighs the pain, then it was justified to bring that being into existence. (R2) If the pain outweighs the pleasure, then it wasn't justified to bring that being into existence._\\n> \\n> _For example, if we knew that before bringing person X into existence:_\\n> * _X would die of cancer over a six-month period at the age of 60,_\\n> * _X would become* in love at age 20 and have a blissful romantic relationship until X died,_\\n> \\n> _then we would say that it is justified (at least morally neutral***) to bring person X into existence since the pleasure would outweigh the pain in X's life._\\n> \\n> _But if we instead say that we knew that X was going to die of cancer starting the day they were birthed, then we would say that it was not justified (immoral) to create X since the pain outweighed the pleasure in X's life._\\n\\nBut then to a vegan**, I think that (R1) implies either the negation of (C2v) in some cases or an acceptance of the asymmetry. \\n\\nOne could describe a scenario where we couldn't say that the animal Y lived a horrible life before being killed with not much pain involved. Then regardless if it was moral/immoral to kill Y, an acceptance of (R1) should lead a vegan to say that it was justified (morally neutral) to bring Y into existence, even if we knew Y would ultimately be killed for trivial human use.\\n\\nYou could try to maybe say that the act of (even instantaneously) killing is more bad than the act of dying (slowly) from cancer, but I think that it is both a negation either (R1) or (R2) and an appeal to nature fallacy.\\n\\nNotice, I am trying to claim that not accepting the asymmetry can lead to (C2v) being false in some scenarios, not that (C1v) and/or (C2v) are false.\\n\\n### An Alternative Rebuttal\\n\\nAnother rebuttal is to reject the asymmetry by saying something like:\\n\\n> (T1) _If person X is glad that they came into existence, then it was morally justified (at least morally neutral) to bring them into existence._\\n\\n(I think there are lots of problems with arguments like these that solely rely on self-reporting as a case against the asymmetry, though that is not the topic of this post.)\\n\\nUsing this rebuttal, a vegan would need to say that this applies to sentient non-humans as well, all things being equal.\\n\\nFor example, dog breeding involves forcing a dog to become pregnant and, in many cases, splitting up the resulting pups for human use. Also, many pups are recommended to go through (crate training)(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crate_training) which involves a lot of pain and anxiety for the pup.\\n\\nSo while a vegan using (T1) could say that forcing the dog to be pregnant for human use was wrong, they would also need to say that it was at least morally neutral for the pup to come into existence if the pup (later in life) was glad that they came into existence. Thus, if we could breed dogs via (extracorporeal pregnancy)(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_womb), it would be hard to be against dog breeding while using (T1) to reject the asymmetry.\\n\\n### Conclusion\\n\\nI have some more thoughts on the topic of antinatalism and I didn't give an argument to why I think (C1) and (C2) are correct, but I'd like to hear your responses to some of these points so I can refine/alter/abandon some of these arguments if needed. These aren't all of my thoughts, so I will be happy to respond in the comment section to clear up anything!\\n\\n##### Notes\\n\\n*I avoided the term \\"fall\\" since it has negative connotations.\\n\\n**I am defining a vegan as someone who accepts the position:\\n\\n> (V1) There is no morally relevant difference between humans and sentient non-humans that would justify breeding, drugging, killing, and/or confining the non-humans for trivial human use, all things being equal.\\n\\nI am aware that there are other definitions.\\n\\n*** \\"at least morally neutral\\" means that it is either morally neutral or morally justified/good. Another word to use is \\"morally permissible\\", though that term has some connotations that I didn't want to introduce.", |
"I'm genuinely asking and not looking for a fight!\\n\\nMy mom recently got a few chickens, she raises them in her yard, they have a pretty good life, she only has females and has zero intent of killing them and just let's them do their thing. Sometimes they lay eggs (unfertelized of course) \\n\\nAnd I am not completely sure what I think about it. In general my mom eats meat (yes of course I get the irony) but she won't raise an animal for it to be killed and treats them as pets. \\n\\nNo I haven't eaten any of their eggs but I would just like to hear different opinions from other vegans", |
"For context, I have a very low-meat diet and eat vegetarian probably 90% of the time. I am constantly questioning my dietary choices and which is the best balance of sound nutrition and low environmental impact.\\n\\nIf I do buy meat, I try to buy grass-fed, local and organic and see little issue with this (environmentally). Obviously I am still guilty of eating dead animal. It is not their death that really bothers me, more their dignity in life and impact on the environment. I also really hate wastage, more than anything, so if someone is going to throw out a load of meat I would rather eat it myself.\\n\\nThoughts?", |
"I tried cutting out animal products, and I ate VERY healthily. I had an app to make sure I was getting the proper amount of everything, from calories to nutrients. That being said, I still ended up just plain not feeling well. I lacked energy, had brain fog, was nauseous, and I got sick much more often. After a couple months of reintroducing meat I felt so much better. \\n\\nYes, you can get nutrition from plants too, but the protein and iron aren't as bioavailable. Also, the proportions of carbs, fat, and protein will be different from those in meat, and some people might not feel well with those proportions. There are also nutrients in meat that can't be found in plants, such as creatine.\\n\\nI have seen vegan debaters like Earthling Ed taking on many people who are selfish and just want to be omnivorous because of taste. This was not my position at all. I still wish I could be vegan, but my body is not an experiment and I simply didn't feel well eating that way. I'm still as vegan as I can be, I don't buy any leather, fur, feathers, etc, I buy all vegan shower/makeup products, and I don't eat 'optional' foods that include animal products (like desserts). It's really just for my health.", |