211–220 of 311 posts
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I love plants. The fact that I eat them too does not change that at all.
It's a bit silly to compare killing a plant to killing something with a central nervous system. Plants don't think or feel. Birds and mammals certainly do.
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Thank you for calling me out on this (admitted) bit of bullshit in me. ;) I guess I am comfortable with my cognitive dissonance in this area. FOR NOW. (But seemingly no other areas. I memorized just about all the informal fallacies mostly so I can Correct People's Bad Thinking On The Internet, sigh...) I'm also waiting for companies like https://impossiblefoods.com/ to do their thing. I tried their impossible burger,…
Humane painless animal death after living a full life? How can you humanely kill something which does not want to die? No matter how painless, if you killed me and I had not asked you to, it would not be humane.
Using your reasoning, we should happily eat any animal (possibly including human, but animals also commit suicide sometimes) that suicided...
I think death is an inherently ugly thing no matter how you approach it, and given the existence of carnivores and omnivores who are not vultures waiting for food to die before consuming it, I don't think killing in nature for food is avoidable. Pain avoidance is much easier to reason about, however.
Like it or not, we are part of the natural world and its strange rules of engagement. Having just watched a hyena eat a wildebeest alive (someone in the comments here posted it), I have to wonder if humans are not the most "humane" killers-for-sustenance on the planet. The most ethical thing we can do (other than creating meat in a lab such as what Impossible Foods is doing... I'm a fan), IMHO, other than go vegan, is to be as humane as possible about the killing bit, give animals as full a life as we can, even if we intend to eat them towards the end of their lives.
I believe that one day (possibly in the far future), every human will be vegan. I can't say that it's reasonable to expect everyone to be vegan now, though. The French love their cheese, the Germans love their liverwurst and bratwurst, the Italians love their pizza, and the Japanese love their sushi. I am a huge fan of grilled chicken, eggs and sushi (and the VERY occasional burger or bratwurst... I'm ethnically German, btw) and the wide variety of cheeses out there... these things would be extremely hard for me to give up, so my fallback position, for now, is to obtain these things in as humane a way as is possible for me right now.
I commend your veganism, regardless. It is admirable and it is an ideal you have attained in this time and it should be emulated.
> It's technically illegal to have a wild animal as a pet in Brazil, as officials want to ensure vulnerable creatures don't get separated from their families and that they can be reintroduced into the wild after injury. Same where I am. I've wondered, though. What constitutes a pet? For example, I give peanuts to the wild squirrels around my house. This is not illegal where I live. It is illegal, however, to keep a w…
I'm going to say something that people probably won't want to hear, but I hope to justify it and convince others of it as well. Don't feed wild animals. The difference between a pet, and a wild animal is that a pet owner takes responsibility for the wellbeing and actions of a pet. Feeding wild animals is detrimental to their wellbeing. They become accustomed to people, and not all people are nice to animals. You won'…
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I don't think people are necessarily that ignorant. But the dirty business of slaughtering animals has been hidden away from public eye extremely well. There's a certain "out of sight out of mind" aspect to it. If, to eat meat, people had to kill the animal themselves, what proportion of meat eaters do you think would continue the practice? I obviously don't know the answer, but I suspect it would be far less than 10…
If the urban dwellers like me suddenly had to kill their own prey, I agree we'd see a surge of vegans. But on the other hand, I think that's also because that disconnect allows people to think about cows as "cute". The people I know who grew up raising and killing their own animals have a much more utilitarian view of the matter. It could be that the alienation brought by modern slaughter is the keystone in bringing…
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Not what I was saying. Eating meat is natural, it's been for cosmic ages, and to an extent I have no issue with that. The mass globalized consumption does bother me. I reduce my consumption. I might try vegan but I'll surely miss all the meat based products. Maybe I'll find a middle point by breeding, killing producing it myself so at least I did it on my own, think what you want, there's a form of respect in that. I…
Agreed. I'm vegan but I would definitely not turn down eating animals caught in the wild, especially if I was part of the hunt. But I would also never hunt just for the sport. It's the mass production of intelligent beings* in horrible conditions that bothers me the most. Fishing is another dilemma. Technically as per above definition eating fish (unless bred) would be fine, but then again we've destroyed so much of…
Nothing detests me more than killing a free creature. I absolutely loathe hunting and fishing, and I wish it was either made completely illegal, or the hunting of the hunters legalized (I heard comments that they do it for the thrill, so having another hunter on your back should be even more exciting!).
I do eat pieces of farmed meat from time to time, though.
When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…
Did he happen to show it to you on April 1st? xD
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What if someone else is doing the killing and I'm doing the eating? Not being facetious, I struggle with this and I don't fully buy into the "guilt by association" angle. If I stopped eating meat today, animals would still be killed at exactly the same scale as before. So what would have I accomplished besides depriving myself of nutrients? If we could all do it together I'd be on board. Maybe we can start with "meat…
If you stopped eating meat and replaced it with a balanced vegan diet you wouldn't be depriving yourself of anything other than heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. You'd be the winner. Also, you'd be doing your part in reducing the demand for all those animals to be raised and slaughtered. If everyone had the opinion of "well what's the point unless everyone does it" no good change would ever happen.
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Pigeons hardly need protecting. They are nuisance animals in most areas.
They become a nuisance when people try to domesticate that. Which is why there are laws against doing so.
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It shouldn't be difficult to imagine how taming could lead to domestication. That said, I personally don't believe there to be anything wrong with having a fully domesticated line of squirrels and other animals. My personal favourite would be a domesticated line of Tasmanian Devils. I'll even go as far as to say that if habitat loss continues unabated then domestication of more and more species may become necessary .
Domesticated echidnas would be great. They could help keep ant populations in check. I had a 3 month battle trying to keep meat (protein eating) ants out of my house last year. I eventually caved and had a professional pest controller spray a barrier around the perimeter of my house. 6 months later and the first signs of ant repopulation are starting to appear. I dislike having to use strong poisons as they are indis…
Echidnas and the platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes. The average lifespan of an echidna in the wild is estimated around 14–16 years. When fully grown, a female can weigh up to 4.5 kilograms (9.9 lb) and a male can weigh up to 6 kilograms (13 lb).[8] The echidnas' sex can be inferred from their size, as males are 25% larger than females on average. The reproductive organs also differ, but both sexes have a single opening called a cloaca, which they use to urinate, release their faeces and to mate.[1]
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Not what I was saying. Eating meat is natural, it's been for cosmic ages, and to an extent I have no issue with that. The mass globalized consumption does bother me. I reduce my consumption. I might try vegan but I'll surely miss all the meat based products. Maybe I'll find a middle point by breeding, killing producing it myself so at least I did it on my own, think what you want, there's a form of respect in that. I…
>Eating meat is natural Relieving yourself outdoors is natural, and we've been doing it for ages. Killing intraspecies rivals/competitors is natural, and we've been doing it for ages. Dying of a preventable disease is natural, and we've been doing it for ages. I don't think we should base our behavior off naturalistic fallacies. Is eating meat better for your health than abstaining? Usually not. Is eating meat better…
I‘m all for reducing meat consumption. We don’t need meat every day, and maybe not even every week. Everybody except meat processing companies would be better off.
My personal view is that complete meat avoidance will lead to long term health challenges, 5-10y down the road. There‘s too much valid-sounding criticism of the china study to just believe its conclusions. Some low-mercury seafood every now and then does loads for your health.