Are Vegans the new Christians?

I personally don't think that the ethical argument for veganism is consistent with responsible stewardship of the environment, which sometimes involves filling the apex predator role (e.g., culling deer population so they don't eat all the vegetation and begin to starve), stemming the tide of invasive species, and protecting endangered ones. You can't really do that if you think all animal lives are of equal moral worth to each other (including human lives as part of the category of "all animals"). The philosophy of animal rights tends to operate on the level of the individual rather than putting value on the health of the overall ecosystem or the perpetuation of any given species because it rejects species-based privileging of some animals over others.

Naw, you got the environmental arguments all wrong. The problem is that every trophic level takes about 10 times more energy to produce the same mass of food: a kilogram of chickpeas will provide about as much protein as a kilogram of steak, but take 1/10 the resources. And we go through resources at a horrific rate.

Between that, and factory farming, and health benefits, I really should be a vegan. But I'm morally weak. I grew up in Texas and all rational arguments melt in the face of BBQ.

I agree that there are strong environmental arguments to be made for vegetarianism and/or veganism but there's also arguments from the animal liberation perspective, which is what I'm not so sure about.

{{When I was a kid and helped out in the summer at my local farm, Ardanadam, I once asked the shepherd as we waited on the van to come and take some lambs to slaughter about it. He just pointed out all the fields, and all sheep in them and made the point that if humans didnt eat sheep it is true that those sheep out there would not be slaughtered before their time, but nor would they exist in the first place.
Sheep and cows are domestic animals, we have breed them to be useful for meat and milk, but pretty much useless at surviving without us any more (a female dairy cows udders are a bit dodgy thanks to all the breeding, if you stop milking them they can drip for a long time, days sometimes more than a week, and are prone to infection the whole time). If you liberated all the cows and sheep most would be dead in a month, or more likely have wandered back to where they were liberated from.
No humans, no sheep and cows as we know them. And if they were still like they were before we got to them- like the huge dangerous cattle of the past- we'd have wiped them out long ago with the mammoths and the sabre tooths and the giant sloth.

The very lives anti-meat folk would like to save would simply not even exist to be saved if humans didn't eat meat and drink milk.
In the end is it better to live and get between 6 months and about 10 years before being instantly killed, or not to have existed at all?}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{In the end is it better to live and get between 6 months and about 10 years before being instantly killed, or not to have existed at all?}}

I'd say the answer to that question depends on the quality of life. Personally I'd probably prefer "not at all" to solitary confinement and force feeding.

{{{Well in this case he was talking about the sort of sheep he raised on the hill farm- so you are taking 'free' animals in that they had very large fields covering whole hillsides and were naturally grass fed (supplemented in winter of course with feed but never force feed). As life as a sheep goes it wasn't bad- plenty company, looked after in winter when it got too cold and snowed, never short of food and once a year you even get to take part in sheep trials for a nice day out.}}}

I am sure Babe would have something to say about those arguments.

{{{{ Babe would not exist if we didn't eat pig meat. Closest he would be would be some sort of wild boar- assuming they hadn't gone extinct by  now. Pigs, cows and sheep as we know them simply would never have come into existence without humans breeding them for food. }}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{{Well in this case he was talking about the sort of sheep he raised on the hill farm- so you are taking 'free' animals in that they had very large fields covering whole hillsides and were naturally grass fed (supplemented in winter of course with feed but never force feed). As life as a sheep goes it wasn't bad- plenty company, looked after in winter when it got too cold and snowed, never short of food and once a year you even get to take part in sheep trials for a nice day out.}}}

I agree. In a well run farm I think a farm animal can actually have a better life than many people do. I think I've said this before, but the way I was taught there's an unwritten contract: you give the animals several years of comfortable trouble-free life, and in the end they give you food. If done right it's a good bargain all around.

The trouble is the ag scientists have taught people how to make more money by cheating on that ethical contract. It turns out, just like anything (schools, prisons, healthcare etc.) you can make a lot more money by putting your ethics on the shelf.

{{{ Less than a quarter of the flock went for meat in general- sheep over a lifetime are worth more in wool and you have to look after them for good quality wool. In nature there ain't no health care, no protection from parasites and no one to give you haircut in summer (natures method is for the fleece to fall off over over a period of days in sort of straggling clumps). And the lambs that went off to become chops were the ones we (that's us kids that hung about the farm in summer) had hand reared because either the mother had died in birth (rare) or rejected the lamb outright (more common) or there was some other issue, such a problem with the lambs jaw so it needed bottle-fed. Had they been left to nature they'd have been dead already, and if we didn't send them to the slaughter they would not survive on their own anyway.
Plus I really like lamb chops }}}

The ethics of meat-eating is as difficult as the ethics of abortion. Anybody who says these issues are simple are tone-deaf.

Well in the Holy Bible it says that the weak dont eat meat It says whatever you are persuaded in your heart , do
That is why it is so important to kill the animal swiftly and with mercy so it does not feel it  But before the flood meat was not eaten It was because of sin that we do until He comes again and does away with it, then it will not be tolerated.
Just as long as there is something better than turkey bacon and grass fed beef Im good.

{{Yeah but it also says 1 man fed 5000 with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread so not sure its the most reliable cookbook available! }}}

There's a young film maker here who likes to look at the sources of food. In one segment she was following around an ethical slaughterer/butcher who cared very much about the lives led by the animals he took in. She made the brave decision to show the act of slaughtering, emphasizing the point that if you eat meat you have to be comfortable with every step. So a cow walked down the aisle, the guy affectionately scratched it behind the ear, put a pistol to its head and shot it. Both treating it as a living being with respect and a hunk of meat. It's an unsettling dichotomy when put in rapid succession.

I saw this with a neighbor a few weeks ago. I sometimes put my horse in his pasture. He's an old timer who used to have a small herd of 10-20 beef cattle, but several years ago he got out of the business, and sold all but two cows that he left pretty much to themselves in a large pasture. Last winter one of them died. I'm guessing he did the calculation that the  remaining cow wouldn't make it through next winter, so one day a truck showed up, and the farmer walked out to the cow with an apple and a rifle. He took a couple minutes cutting up the apple and feeding it to her before he did the deed. Then he helped load her into the truck and walked back to the house.

You can never talk to a man like that about feelings, but the apple tells the story.