They’re usually shredded alive almost immediately because they’re seen as “waste” since they don’t lay eggs
For some more context:
They’re usually shredded alive almost immediately because they’re seen as “waste” since they don’t lay eggs
For some more context:
This is emphatically untrue. If you eat a few hundred fewer animals over the course of your life, that’s a few hundred animals saved (even if supply and demand aren’t perfectly elastic, the expected utility is 1-to-1). The fact that billions will still die is irrelevant.
Would you refuse to save a child from poverty on the grounds that billions will continue living in poverty?
Yes, it’s not my responsibility to save that child from poverty. I would also be terrible at it. I would much rather financially support organizations than will assist in saving children from poverty in a more meaningful way, as well as supporting politicians that align with my values as far as lifting not just children, but everyone, out of poverty.
You can, and should, give money to animal charities and support politicians in favor of better animal welfare (if you can find one) and I will commend you for that. But that does not negate the harm you do by paying for animals to be killed. Just as giving to a women’s shelter does not then mean that it becomes excusable for you to beat your wife.
And I apologize for that analogy, I don’t think you’re a bad person. But I do think it’s an appropriate analogy and I think we live in a culture that normalizes and encourages normal people to participate in terrible atrocities. The reality is that you have nothing to lose from going vegan and, after a little research and preparation, it doesn’t take any extra effort, time, or money.
That analogy goes so far above what’s happening, at least for the average person.
Do you buy jeans or any clothing produced outside of the US? BAM, you’re as bad as the people in the factories abusing local communities and child labor.
Should one attempt to find clothing that is ethical where possible? Then absolutely, and buying a pair of Levi’s doesn’t make you complicit in enabling child endangerment.
Same with most things, I try my best to already only buy from brands that don’t: support genocide through funding or messaging, discriminate based on sex/race/gender, engage in union busting or union restrictive activities, employ under the table for children or for tax/benefit reductions. So many people try to argue from a place of Absolute Moral Supremacy, and the world is just too grey for that.
Reduce the meat you eat, yes, that’s a good plan and it’s good for the budget and it’s good for the planet. But humans HAVE been eating animals for longer than we’ve walked upright, so going entirely non-consumption just isn’t going to happen.
You can make stances as to why it’s a good thing, why it might assist you in the long run, but to conflate it with enabling violence towards spouses? That’s the kind of rhetoric that gets vegans shouted down and laughed at anytime the name is brought up. If you want to make long lasting change, changing hearts and minds will do that, and your tone/style won’t win hearts and minds.
First off, I have a tendency to be an asshole in online discussions so I want you to call me out if I’m being unproductive. I also really struggle with tone so please try to interpret what I say generously. This is why I generally only discuss veganism irl. This is a throwaway account I created just because I saw some anti vegan rhetoric and my emotions got the better of me. I’m going to abandon it as soon as we’re done talking. Here it goes:
As for you last point, I want you to consider things a vegan’s perspective for a second. You’re often forced to either package your ideas so meekly and inoffensively that they’re easily ignored or express them forcefully and then be called an extremist and mocked.
We slit the throats of 90 billion land animals each year. That’s billions of chickens who get theirs beaks cut off without anesthetic and get ammonia burns from living in their own shit. Billions of bulls that are branded, ear tagged, and have their testicles ripped off without anesthetic. Trillions of fish that suffocate to death or freeze to death in ice water.
And the absurdity of it all is that it’s easy, cheap, and healthy to simply eat plants. Most people can wash their hands of this entirely any time they want. The idea that none of this is ethical or necessary is an idea that deserves to be presented forcefully. The idea that animals are not property to be owned and exploited is no different from the idea that human beings cannot be property of their masters or their husbands and deserves to be expressed with the same vigor. So is it really that people hate us because we’re presenting our message wrong, or do people just hate us because our message is hard to hear?
I agree with most of your other points. Capitalism does force us all to be complicit in terrible things to a degree and I’m sure I absolutely could and should do more to avoid exploitative products. In fact, if you have a list of products that you avoid or a source you consult, I’d like know what it is. And if you’re willing to do research on the least explorative brand of jeans, then you really should go vegan. This is an easy win and I guarantee you it’s cheaper.
As for the “humans have eaten meat forever” argument. Humans have had slaves forever yet you are clearly against slavery. If you go vegan and prevent a dozen cows from being raised and killed for meat, that’s worthwhile regardless of what everyone else does.
which farms raised fewer cattle last year?
This is actually a very smart point and held me back from going vegan for a while. Peter Singer has the best counterargument. Suppose a farm hatches chickens in multiples of 1000 each month. So, if the demand for chicken drops by 1/mo nothing will change, but if it drops by 1000/mo then they will hatch 1000 fewer chickens next month. Well, then if a thousand people go vegan, one will be the straw that broke the camel’s back and they will have saved 1000 chickens. So, in other words, you have a 1 in 1000 chance of saving a 1000 chickens. Which means that each vegan saves one chicken on average. So, for all intents and purposes, you can consider yourself to have spared all of the animals you don’t eat.
thats a lot of words for “no fewer chickens were raised any year than the year before since we started tracking it.”
That’s a really embarrassing way to admit you don’t understand basic statistics. Please never buy stocks.
I don’t refute that there’s far too much callous cruelty in the production of meat products. I hope there’s a greater push to, at the very least, reduce the suffering to as minimal as possible for the duration of the animals’ lives. I worked on farms growing up, but never factory farms or anything larger than 20-30 cows and flecks of sheep or a barn of egg-laying hens, but the cruelty of factory farms and the shit stained floors and the breeding cages and the systemic abuse, it’s all on another level far above what I’d consider humane.
Unfortunately, I grew up and had to work on farms, both parents worked separate shifts to have no babysitters best they can, and whatever was cheapest or easiest to shove in our guts is what we were fed. I will attest to the ‘brain washing’ element through the everyday normalcy of buying the cheapest frozen bag of gigantic chicken breasts, but that’s also all my mother and father could afford to feed us, and we didn’t live in a location that had many options for grocery stores (a ‘local owned’ kroger/owens, and a Walmart if you drove another 15-20 minutes the other way). I definitely think, if they had had the training or information or the time and cash, they’d have fed us better meals (I don’t think either of my parents know a single vegan friendly dish).
All of that to say, myself and many other people were living in conditions incongruous with the forethought and planning necessary to even attempt veganism. The few vegan locations I was able to find when I went to college were terrible, the food wasn’t good, or at least I didn’t like any of it. I’ve had good vegan dishes, but I have to make them, every single one, or I stomach food I don’t enjoy. I can live on apples for lunches, I’ve gone many a day eating throw-together salads, I meal prep grains and veggies each week so that a majority of my meals are already set. But I want meat dishes sometimes. And until there’s a more affordable way to get lab grown meat, the only way I can dive deep into a MASSIVE section of the culinary arts, is through engaging in capitalism that supports a horrific industry.
In fact, I can’t eat my bananas without inadvertently funding the violent private militias enlisted to put down dissent among the local farmers. My wife has to buy all of her beans through a local seller who supposedly employs previously indentured coffee bean pickers and gives them a fair rate, but surely she can’t only drink coffee she’s made from home, so we’ll try local places (boycotting Starbucks still, options very limited) and not all of those places buy from that bean seller so it’s not all confirmed ethical. The list is exhaustive, and so my minor attribution to the slaughter or those animals is, to me, the same contribution I make to the military juntas who ensured I could buy a banana, and the same as the polluting of the rivers for any manufacturing process or project. Although not worthless, I do value human life above animal life, and so dealing with those internal struggles and questions and navigating where best to purchase fabrics because of the indigo staining children’s hands who wash jeans, to me, are all above the suffering of animals, the sheer number of those animals (the 90 billion figure) does not hold any weight, to me, when comparing the two. So I am just as culpable, to myself, for engaging in those other acts of violence through capitalism, as I am for engaging in eating meat.
So, I try to buy less bananas and less fruits out of season that aren’t grown locally wherever possible, but I will eat at dairy queen and order a banana split. I reduce the total red meat in my diet because I want to impact the problem where I can, but I do like the taste and I don’t believe that consumption of another animal is wrong, so a dozen cows over my lifetime will bother me morally as much as driving my gas car (I’d do electric, but I couldn’t afford it the 8 or so years ago I bought the car), which is to say, I don’t love it, but I won’t lose sleep over it.
well stop doing that.
almost no one does that.
Buying meat is paying for animals to be killed. Just like buying flour is paying for wheat to be grown.
no, it’s not. there are people who kill animals, and there are people who pay them, and most people are neither.
So you pay the guy who pays the guy who kills the animals and that makes it fine? That’s the rule? There needs to be 2 degrees of separation? The animal is being killed because you created the demand. The guy wouldn’t have paid the guy if you weren’t going to pay him.
Edit: oh you’re a troll. And a reasonably funny troll to tbh. Edit Edit: I’m not correcting “to tbh” because it’s really funny
i have no agreement to purchase meat in the future. most people don’t.
But you will. And they know that. And they base their decisions on that.
calling me names doesn’t change the truth of what i said
I don’t mean it as an ad hominem. I just thought that argument was so silly you must be joking. Your argument makes hiring hitmen permissible so long as there’s at least one middle man. Unless I’ve misinterpreted you.
most people don’t do that, either. meat packers will get it from the abattoirs, who will then sell it to suppliers, and there might be two or three suppliers before anyone sells it to a grocer or restaurant.
the animal isn’t killed because i create demand, except for meanings of “cause” that don’t require a causal relationship.
The cost of killing is tied to that package of minced meat whether you accept it or not.
buying meat today can’t have caused an animal in the past to be killed, since an event in the future cannot cause an event in the past.
Carnist mental gymnastics at its finest.
So hypothetically - if everyone in the world stopped buying and eating meat tomorrow you are of the opinion that the animal ag industry will continue killing animals well into the future without any income or incentive to do so?
An event in the present (purchasing animal products) will financially support and incentivise people to kill animals in the future.
Do you seriously not understand this?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Well, difficult.
Veganism isn’t difficult. And yeah my tofu exploits people in the third world, but the beef I used to eat was fed soy anyways. You’re just removing a one really horrible and unnecessary step from the food supply chain.
this is a terrible analogy because at the end of one, you can point to the person being saved. no animals are saved by eating plants.
Good point. I don’t think it changes my argument though. If anything, allowing a creature to come into existence just so that it can be slaughtered is way more fucked up than exploiting an existing person.
you’ll forgive me if, in turn, i think your values are “fucked up.”