Did Sisko kill a turkey?

Out of interest, given that only 0.04% of people in countries like US, UK and Australia are vegan and even worldwide vegan populations are in between 3 - 4%, what leads you to believe the shift in the future?

 

I had an impossible burger and couldn’t tell the difference between that and a regular one. Is it as “healthy” as a regular (Burger King) one? I don’t know, but one step at a time.

The price to grow artificial meat in a lab (not like an Impossible Burger which is mostly oils) too is falling fast. That coupled with the cost and amount of land and resources necessary to produce red meat tells me that we’re heading toward non-kill meat in the real world. Whether it’s for health reasons or financial ones.

Once we hit the tipping point and we’re eating mostly non-kill meat, I think the religion around what’s “natural” and “it just isn’t the same” will dissipate by orders of magnitude.

Especially as I also think that in the coming years we’re going to get a better idea of how intelligent different animals are and how not so unrelatable their experience is.

I mean, let’s be real, food created by a replicator, which is accurate down to the molecule, should not be unable to fool your tongue any less than Burger King. This is a stupid bit of filler sci-fi to make the distant future more “relatable” like Starfleeters are eating Kraft Cheese Food Product from the supermarket and opining for “real” farm cheese like no one’s grandmother used to make.

I mean, the replicator could probably make Cheetos and ice cream healthier than the most pristine vegan diet today, infused with super-nutrients and removing every last molecule of superfluous malignancy.

 

The non animal rights movement towards veganism.

The numbers of people coming to the conclusion that killing purely for the enjoyment of meat is wrong in a non survival setting is growing. It is growing slowly and steadily but isn't exactly a rapid revolution.

That both the Extinction Rebellion climate awareness AND healthy living movements are finding common cause are, however, massive drivers.

I know loads of people cutting down their meat intake for these reasons, and it's made its way deep into the general consciousness. My near 90 year old parents have pretty much stripped red meat from their diets over the last decade or so, and they'll never make the mental adjustment regarding slaughter being wrong.

The younger generation more and more view the meat industry as a climate catastrophe.

Reducing meat intake for whatever reason starts to impact on the compartmentalized thinking required to separate 'these animals are pets and we love them' from 'these animals are meat and we eat them'. The desensitising starts to break down when you realise that you can easily live without killing for at least some of the time. It gives the lie to 'we need to do it'.

It's at this point that wider attitudes start to shift. Once that happens and globally we reach a point where living without meat is as easy as it is in the developed west, slaughter will start to be seen less and less as an ordinary, non problematic thing. From there on, it's just a matter of reaching the tipping point.

There's always going to be some people that want to kill for food. If the world changes, they'll kill stuff in their back yard. It will, however, at some point in the future, start to be seen as aberrant behaviour.

 

Thanks for your perspective.

 

You're welcome.

And to add a little 'colour' to it, I love meat. It's delicious.

I just don't eat it.

 

Also I've looked at some figures - U.K. vegans have more than quadrupled in the last four or five years, theres approaching 1 million now, and between 3.5 and 4 million vegetarians. Out of a population of under 70 million, that's a lot higher than 0.04%.

That, and the general population reducing meat consumption has led to a boom in mainstream supermarket vegan products. It's not just specialist shops any more.

 

I still think eating some meat is what our bodies were built for (in the order of a modest amount once a week or even a month)- just not the unwholesome daily amounts that have become the norm in the last century in Western countries.

And yes, I know that a lot of dedicated veggies would love to come up with 'scientific evidence' that shows we actually are built to be vegetarian. It's just that being a layman, I don't trust such arguments with an agenda a priori any more than, say, creationist 'science'. That is, I'd rather trust a scientist who comes forward with such a statement who has no such agenda, so preferably one who says: I hate to admit this, and personally I don't think I'll ever give up eating meat because I simply love it too much, but .... '

In that department I have some hopes founded on artificially grown meat. Most people currently still reject that as an unsavoury idea, I believe. However, I see no reason why, with the perfection of it in the coming decades, that 'unsavoury' association wouldn't shift to the process of making actual animals suffer. If, in addition to that, it turns out the process of growing meat is also a lot more efficient (read: environmentally friendly) than having to breed animals for the purpose, I think we'd have a winner when we combine it with the lowering of meat consumption of the first paragraph.

But, there probably always will be some people who simply refuse to give up eating 'real' meat (or lower their amount of intake), if left to their own choice. I even have heard of some people who will reject it based on religious grounds ...

 

Even organisations like The Vegan Society put the numbers at the 600,000 mark and they are by no means impartial studies. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. I don’t think this is the place to get too deeply into the topic.

 

Yes, I know, as I had read that quote carefully before you made a reference to it. The joke that I was trying to make was that the quote says yes it's "real meat", but it doesn't necessarily say it's animal meat- (those Scottish are barbarians, even in the 24th century). But in retrospect, it's not that funny, that's why I let it be.

 

Nah, we are where we are by eating meat. We're naturally omnivores. There's a couple of things (like B12) that used to be mainly meat sourced, and using meat protein was certainly a big part of getting enough nutrition to have enough leisure time to develop language, storytelling, culture and higher functions that led to civilisation.

Plus we're not the ponderous long gutted, slow digesting body type typical of herbivores. Anyone claiming we owe nothing to past meat consumption is deluded.

We're well past that point though.

The 600,000 is a bit out of date, and I suspect that vegans might also be included by the 3.5million vegetarian total, so I'm comfortable with 3.5m being a combined total. Still well over 0.04% from a pop of 70m-ish.

There are other threads about this stuff though. Coming back to Sisko killing a turkey, being written in the 90's - possibly. In TOS, women on the bridge was discomforting. They're of their time.

In the actual 24th century ? The turkey is safe...

 

Thanks for clarifying.