Vegan
- Thread starter Woebot
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Woebot
Well-known member
just finished bronowski's ascent of man. more and more of the opinion that meat is indispensable.
This turned up in my twitter feed yesterday, he makes some good points
http://roguehealthandfitness.com/vegan-bad-idea/
I've never even considered going vegan, not even for a microsecond, what with being a member of a species that evolved with meat-eating mind, teeth and claws, but there's some biochemistry to back it up.
P D Mangan has some interesting ideas about how high Iron levels might be killing us all, he alludes to them in the vegan post. I think they bear consideration, so much so that I'm off to donate an armful of blood tomorrow for the first time.
Also, this news broke over the weekend Vegan climber dies on Everest during mission to prove vegans can climb highest peaks
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is this why people in developed countries are in general living longer than ever?
you
Well-known member
I'm going to ask: Is the ethicalness of veganism founded on an arbitrary distinction?
To expand: if one does not eat meat on the basis of animal suffering or pain (or some Carol J Adam's equation of dominance and power) then why is this principal not extended to plants? Why recognise the value of life in one kind but not another?
I've got other questions about veganism and identity politics but I'd like to hear thoughts on this question first...
To expand: if one does not eat meat on the basis of animal suffering or pain (or some Carol J Adam's equation of dominance and power) then why is this principal not extended to plants? Why recognise the value of life in one kind but not another?
I've got other questions about veganism and identity politics but I'd like to hear thoughts on this question first...
john eden
male pale and stale
I'm with you on this but there is clearly a sliding scale of consciousness and there is a bit of a grey area when you get to insects and prawns and all that.
Another Dan we are familiar with has written this recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...lennials-health-climate-change-animal-welfare
you
Well-known member
Well, yes. But isn't 'pain' a human idea of an organism's awareness of damage inflicted upon it (too hot, cold, limbs or branches ripped off etc). So to say 'hard to prove a leek feels pain' is quite anthropocentric - what you're saying is that it is difficult to prove that a leek feels pain like 'us animals'. But surely a plant, whilst not having the any system like a mammal's nervous system, still moves too and from stimuli that do not benefit its life (they move towards light when they need it etc).
So, to base an ethical division on the basis of what we humans identify as 'pain' is not far from the myopic empathy of a racist who cannot understand suffering in those who appear different to his/her reflection in the mirror.
I'd be interested in the difference between a complex plant and a simple animal in terms of pleasure and pain - but really isn't the distinction arbitrary? This is my point...
you
Well-known member
This sliding scale of consciousness.... to double-down on my previous point: Isn't the question of consciousness a loaded human premise? Just because a human and a daisy exist in the world with differing levels of biological reaction does not grant an ethical double standard does it? If you were to follow this line you'd veer towards a horrid position of ethics - rights based on observable reactions that match one's own - i.e. 'If they cannot write and orate in the same way as I they shouldn't have the same rights like I.'
I realise I'm flipping from thin to thick ends the wedge. But it's only to illustrate the question I'm posing.
firefinga
Well-known member
It actually goes even further. BC the vast majority of animals that end up getting eaten wouldn't even exist without the meat industry in the first place.
But I agree, that's indeed the ethical blind spot of veganism - plants clearly are living things and got a right to live as any other biological entity that "lives". So the "suffering" or "pain" aspect doesn't hold much weight. What about wild animals then + hunting?
Strongest ethical point veganism has is the fact it's the least probelmatic way of nutrition regarding environmental concerns
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you
Well-known member
Gonna pounce on this. Why something is alive shouldn't have a bearing on the ethics of eating it. Surely?
you
Well-known member
Wild or not I don't see the import of the distinction. Hunting however is different. I suppose if one wishes to limit suffering in an organism that will be eaten then hunting is wrong. Though, if you're going to kill and eat something then concerns about the quality of it's soon to be extinguished life's quality seems like a moot point in the shadow of it's death. I've always found the 'happy chickens' argument to hold a certain ethical dissonance in this respect.
Hunting is bad because it is an archaic method and utterly inefficient.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
You might think so (and lots of people do), but in fact full veganism is not the most environmentally sustainable way to eat. (Although that's based on land use rather than other environmental concerns such as GHG emissions - then again, the argument against meat is very often framed in terms of environmental opposition to cattle farming, which ignores the fact that there are meats other than beef and that they have wildly varying environmental impacts.)
Now this I don't understand at all. Surely any wild animal has a far superior quality of life to any farmed animal, even one on a relatively 'ethical' farm? And isn't the relentless drive for efficiency the root cause of the cruelty of factory farming? It is after all far more efficient to keep hens in tiny cages than it is to keep them in a large open-air space.
I don't know if it's meaningful to talk about the happiness of chickens as such, but it's surely reasonable to assume that chickens than can move around, interact with other chickens and see daylight are at least less miserable than chickens confined in spaces so small they can't even turn around.
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you
Well-known member
I took hunting to imply a stressful demise for an animal. So, in that regard, I thought hunting would be worse than 'humanely slaughtered' (which for some reason makes me think of respectable alcohol stupors lol) animals.
Re. efficiency - I'm not sure it is the root cause. That seems too simple. I'm wary of accepting that greater efficiency automatically means greater suffering. Hunting (let's think about venison farming as an example) takes a lot of 'man' power - which needs to be fed. So, surely avoiding the heavy labour of trad-hunting is preferable in terms of the panorama of killing and eating.
Thirdly, and this isn't a counter argument, just an observation - just because an animal's life in the wild is the way that species existed for millennia previously doesn't automatically mean it is the most pleasurable existence. It makes it natural, but nature is brutal and unforgiving. Of course, this is not a defence for zoos or farming methods - we are not smart enough to provide ourselves with non-damaging environments for our minds and bodies, let alone other species we cannot communicate with or understand.
firefinga
Well-known member
Iam from Austria and here hunting is possibly very different from the UK, I don't know how hunting is being done there. But here, you need to go to a sort-of school to finish a course, take a test and pass it to get a hunting-licence. And hunting here is done in a way that seems in fact not stressful to the animal at all, meaning usually animals, for instnace wild boars, are being killed by hunters using precision hunting guns from a distance. Which brings me to the next point: industrialized agriculture has distorted "nature" to the extent it "produces" wild animals, like said wild boars via extensive corn farming, those wild boars become a danger to both the corn and sometimes people like hikers. In such cases, hunting even has "positive" environmental effects.