Vegans and the Replicator
- Thread starter Vanyel
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My pleasure is more important to me than some pig, cow, horse, chicken, deer, rabbit, ostrich, fish, shark or whatever I like to eat that I never met before. I don't want animals to suffer more than necessary, but I really don't give a rat's ass about them dying so that I have meat on my plate. I love fruits, I love vegetables, but I also love meat and I will not stop eating it just because some holier than thou hippies expect me to whip out a knife and stab a poor rabbit before I have the right to eat him.
Do you even realize that the animals' situation would be worse if everyone who wants to eat meat has to do the killing himself? Most people including me would get over their squeamishness pretty fast if they had to choose between vegetarianism and slaughtering in the backyard or the apartment bathtub.
And what if one guy kills a pig? Is he allowed to share it with the rest of the family or do they all have to stab it at least one time while it's still alive? What if little Timmy wants a pork sausage but is too little to kill a pig? Can he hack a chicken's head off and get killing points that he trades for a sausage?
Great comparison, you convinced me, buying meat is the same thing as being part of the friggin mafia and ordering hits on people.
Industrial meat production implies far worse living conditions for animals than subsistence meat production.
It is indeed a great comparison, you just did not get it . Animals are of course not humans but the structure is identical, you have somebody else do the killing which enables you to pretend to not be responsible. Sorry to bring you the harsh truth but you are.
Either you want to kill and eat them or you don't. You can't have your cake and eat it, care for their suffering with one part of your brain and pretend to not be responsible while enjoying the juicy supermarket meat with your other part.
By the way, this fetishist split, "I know very well that animals die but while I shop in the supermarket I don't have to endure the actual slaughtering" occurs pretty often and is not restricted to animal ethics.
I have no problem with carnivores, I only have problems with hypocrisy.
It is indeed a great comparison, you just did not get it . Animals are of course not humans but the structure is identical, you have somebody else do the killing which enables you to pretend to not be responsible. Sorry to bring you the harsh truth but you are.
Either you want to kill and eat them or you don't. You can't have your cake and eat it, care for their suffering with one part of your brain and pretend to not be responsible while enjoying the juicy supermarket meat with your other part.
By the way, this fetishist split, "I know very well that animals die but while I shop in the supermarket I don't have to endure the actual slaughtering" occurs pretty often and is not restricted to animal ethics.
I have no problem with carnivores, I only have problems with hypocrisy.
Well, at least you admit that your eating meat is only for pleasure and not necessary for your health or survival. You do not appear to have much in the way of empathy.
If you cannot feel anything for animals, how about fellow humans ? It takes over 15 kilos of grain or vegetable matter to produce 1 kilo of meat. If we did not waste so much of it feeding meat producing animals we would have much more to support those currently starving and be able to feed the huge population growth coming in the next 100 years.
And did you know that livestock produce around 20% (maybe more) of the global warming causing greenhouse gasses ?
With that I will climb down off my soap-box...
Nothing was 'meant' to be eaten - that suggests there is some sort of plan and permission to do so. It's just a result of evolution that creatures eat each other.
We don't need to eat meat (many animals do) so we shouldn't. Unless you think inflicting suffering is OK.
As I have said, I really do like meat. It's just not morally defensible to hurt animals, especially as we view ourselves as being civilised and superior.
That's why I'm in favour of replicated meat !
I think it's OK to kill animal for food...at least the animals is put to good use. Would you object killing invasive species and hunting deers because of its population overruning the space due to the decline of their natural predators? I think it's OK if you have a good reason for it. Eating them is a good enuogh reason for me. We humans have evolved to eat meat. WE are what they called a true omnivores, which means we eat both animals and plants.
I find killing for population control or control of invasive species unfortunate but there's probably no alternative. There is obviously an alternative to (and a need for us to reduce) meat eating.
With regard to being able to eat meat - just because we can doesn't mean we should...
so you can kill animal you said if it's population control. But what is the difference between killing for food and population control? There is no difference. We are talking about animals not human beings or other intelligent life form like us. In the beginning people were hunter and gatherer. We hunt, kill and eat other animals. That's nature. There's nothing wrong with that; we are not talking about killing people.
You don't hunt animals, you buy meat in the supermarket. There is a difference between nature and culture. It might be natural to hunt deer, kill sheeps in your small tribe and let your dogs eat the leftovers ... but there is nothing natural about buying meet and food for your dog in the same market, about treating one mammal like a semi-god and the other like a piece of sh*t. That's human culture, open for ridicule and change
Mammals are sentient and intelligent. What if some aliens arrived here one day and treated us like we treat pigs and cows, castrate us without decent medical treatment, force us to sleep in our own excrements, provide virtually no living space for us and only feed us in order to slaughter us one day?
Let's hope these aliens either stay at home or have other ethics than human carnivores.
Mammals are sentient and intelligent. What if some aliens arrived here one day and treated us like we treat pigs and cows, castrate us without decent medical treatment, force us to sleep in our own excrements, provide virtually no living space for us and only feed us in order to slaughter us one day?
Let's hope these aliens either stay at home or have other ethics than human carnivores.
so what? Killing is killing, right? Whether you kill for population control, for food or someone did it for you so you can buy the meat at the supermarket...it makes no difference. Why? Because animals are not santient beings like we do. That's just crap that PETA and other animal organizations would like you to believe.
Cattle are fed corn silage, which is the entire above ground corn plant. There is the corn itself, corn cob, corn stalk and the leaves too. Cows also consume hay, timothy, and alfalfa. Which Humans can not digest.
Two percent of the corn grown in American is Sweet Corn (it has a higher sugar content), this is what people eat.
The other ninety-eight percent of the corn grown in American is call field corn, which isn't primarily grown for Humans, this is what is fed to livestock. People can eat field corn only in a processed form like breakfast cereals, corn meal, hominy, grits, starch, oil, and artifical sweeteners.
Oh, and corn whiskey.
People and animals do not for the most part eat the same kind of corn. People eat vegetable corn, animals eat grain corn.
Methane ( CH4 ) from all sources world wide accounts for approximately 5% to 7% of green house gases. Cows are responsible for about 14% of that, or 0.5 % to 1% of green house gases.
Three years ago I shot a Black-tailed Deer in Washington State (bow hunting). Last year I shot the Merriams turkey (bow again) that my family ate for thankgiving that year, this year one of my bother-in-laws took the turkey, while I stood nearby, meaning I (not him) had to carry it back to the jeep. A few months ago I took a six point White-tailed Deer (rifle).
While a child living in a village in Brazil, I killed chickens and assisted in the slaughter (cutting up) of livestock animals. We ate vegetables too. Today most of my food comes from a store.
Would you classify me as a hypocrite?
So by your reasonings...you can kill people if there is a good reason for it. You said the difference is hunting and a cultural thing. Killing is killing. IF you want to say killing is wrong, then you don't make exception. That's why I find your reasoning flawed! And I hope you dont eat meat after telling me killing santient animals for food is wrong.
Why should I? You killed some of the animals you ate so you know the whole process. No fetishist split, no denial of responsibility, no hypocrisy.Three years ago I shot a Black-tailed Deer in Washington State (bow hunting). Last year I shot the Merriams turkey (bow again) that my family ate for thankgiving that year, this year one of my bother-in-laws took the turkey, while I stood nearby, meaning I (not him) had to carry it back to the jeep. A few months ago I took a six point White-tailed Deer (rifle).
While a child living in a village in Brazil, I killed chickens and assisted in the slaughter (cutting up) of livestock animals. We ate vegetables too. Today most of my food comes from a store.
Would you classify me as a hypocrite?
Where did I say anything about killing people? All I am saying is that mammals are sentient and that we should not treat them like sh*t. I am a vegeterian, I have no problem with 95% of people eating meat and the only thing I have an issue are the living conditions in industrial meat production and the associated fetishist split.
In addition to that the very land that has to be used to produce the meat could be used to maintain forests which convert carbondioxide into oxygen, to create living space for people, to maintain forests that are harvested for wood as fuel ... in other words, climate change and overpopulation converge at one point, land.
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Trees collect and store carbon from the atmosphere. Burning wood releases carbon (carbon dioxide) back into the atmosphere. The same amount as was originally absorbed, it's the same amount of release as allowing dead trees to decompose, but it happens in minutes and not years.
The US government EPA gave wood-chip and other biomass burners a exemption from greenhouse gas requirements, why would they do this if wood produced no such gases?
Sure, technically burning wood is carbon neutral. But as you pointed out the time horizon matters (it is better if CO2 is emitted later) and as I pointed out, maintaining forests instead of chopping them down more and more while fossil fuels become scarce is necessary to contain climate change. Actually not merely maintenance of existing forests but massive reforestation is necessary, the very opposite of what is currently happening worldwide.
In the media only "demand-side" measures, CO2 taxes or emission trading systems are talked out. But such measures can at best delay CO2 emissions (to simplify it to the extremest, the coal and oil are there, we'll extract and burn them sooner or later) and at worst, ignoring that oil is converted into stuff like plastic and so on, the intertemporal allocation doesn't change at all. When an item costs a today and b tomorrow your decision won't change if it costs (1+x)a today and (1+x)b tomorrow, x being the CO2 tax rate.
That's why "supply-side" measures, enforcing the build-up of CO2 absorbers aka reforestation is at least if not more important than CO2 taxes.
In the media only "demand-side" measures, CO2 taxes or emission trading systems are talked out. But such measures can at best delay CO2 emissions (to simplify it to the extremest, the coal and oil are there, we'll extract and burn them sooner or later) and at worst, ignoring that oil is converted into stuff like plastic and so on, the intertemporal allocation doesn't change at all. When an item costs a today and b tomorrow your decision won't change if it costs (1+x)a today and (1+x)b tomorrow, x being the CO2 tax rate.
That's why "supply-side" measures, enforcing the build-up of CO2 absorbers aka reforestation is at least if not more important than CO2 taxes.
Here in Washington State, the largest forestry company is called Weyerhaeuser. For every tree they cut down, they plant three, statistically one of those dies before maturity and two live, so they're doubling their future harvest. As you drive through the forests, there are signs telling you how many times that section has been cut and replanted, some have seen four cycles. Harvests are thirty years apart.
Who says corporations can't think ahead.
Canada is reportedly considering pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol treaty, rather than pay as much as $6.7 billion for carbon credits. Canada is the country furthest from meeting its commitment to cut carbon emissions under the treaty.
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