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A Vegan No More

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Re: A Vegan No More

#231

Post by wiredfool »

gcheong wrote: post #116
wiredfool wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals. e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eggs come from the back yard. We've gotten pork from another local person who raises a few pigs on the side. FWIW, poultry seems to be the hardest to source for us, and maybe that's because the margins are so damn slim for the factory birds.

Humanely killed from whose perspective, ours or the animals'? I'm guessing if we could ask, most animals would prefer to live regardless of how painless their death would be or how enjoyable their lives were up until that point. I eat meat so I don't have a problem with killing animals for consumption, I'm just trying to understand the whole "humane killing" idea.

Both, really. Ideally, the animal would be having a happy life until it suddenly wasn't, and didn't exist anymore. Practically, that can mean that they're kept in their normal surroundings until the last moment, and then they're killed as quickly and painlessly as possible.

For example, the farm around the corner has a mobile slaughterhouse come to their pasture. The cows to be killed are put in one pasture, separate from the others. They're killed with a gunshot to the head, then taken away. There's no chance for the cows to stress in transport and know that the day is any different from any other, until the very last second. I'd call that humane.

Re: A Vegan No More

#232

Post by alaithea »

jamesbritt wrote: post #63
dasil003 wrote: post #13

I'm all for radicalism since radicals are the main force questioning conventional wisdom. But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity. Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan. It's ridiculous from the outset and completely ignores our existence within the earth's ecosystem. I mean industrialized animal farming is fairly horrific, but the way to stop that is by advocating and paying…

"Opting out of meat entirely does nothing to change the industry, because most people will always eat some meat if they can afford it." FWIW, my opting out of meat entirely has motivated at least a few others to do the same. On a larger scale, I've seen an increase over the last 10 years in the number of vegetarian restaurants and vegetarian offerings in general-menu restaurants. I'd say there has been some change in…

I've known vegans who would admit to eating nothing but Doritos/Skittles/Coca-Cola on roadtrips rather than feed themselves some halfway decent, but non-vegan, nutrition available on the road.

Re: A Vegan No More

#233

Post by Xodarap »

stonemetal wrote: post #179
UkiahSmith wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best line in the whole post: "I now no longer lie to myself about the fact that life requires death." I never understood the "Meat is murder" slogan. It's factual. They should have used "Meat is torture". I think it's more accurate with their line of thinking.

I wonder what they think about plant death. You do quite literally kill plants when you rip them out of the ground and take a bite out of them. Even if you only ate nuts or beans you are still killing off their unborn child plants.

There are very strong reasons for thinking that vertebrates feel pain in a way very similar to humans (see e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...).

There is absolutely no evidence that plants feel anything.

Re: A Vegan No More

#234

Post by autarch »

burgerbrain wrote: post #137
autarch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheesh, you really love your conspiracy theories. Ginny's post is primarily about debunking the ridiculous health claims in the original post. She's "suspicious" of the claims because they're ridiculous, and the amount of fervor that Tasha shows suggests that there's something going on besides nutrition.

It's a conspiracy theory to suggest that others are seeing conspiracies where there are none? Man you people are nuts.

You're saying that Ginny is suggesting a conspiracy, when she isn't. That's all I'm saying.

Re: A Vegan No More

#235

Post by abeppu »

ckuehne wrote: post #153
abeppu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm following, your reasoning is that because (a) it's effectively impossible to live in the modern world without benefiting from the deaths of animals that (b) any attempt to limit the number of animals we kill to support our daily lives, or the kind of animals, or how they lived or died, must be pointless. I find that jump from (a) to (b) is unfounded. There's a qualitative difference between (i) a mouse killed…

Not arguing for or against it because the whole thing seems way too muddled for me. But have you ever considered that the difference between your arguments (i) to (v) (with exception of (iii) maybe) is the intention of the humans involved not the suffering or the dead of the respective animals? This kind of moral reasoning is human and can be seen in other areas as well. For example, we care a lot more about the comp…

I think human intentions do matter, at a qualitative level. And at a quantitative level, I hope we can agree that we're likely to kill fewer animals if we only kill them inadvertently than if we kill them both intentionally and inadvertently.

But even if you take a wholly consequentialist or utilitarian view (where the utility of animals gets some limited consideration), I would argue that eliminating (iii) through (v) is beneficial because it allows us to greatly reduce the animal suffering we cause, with minimal impact to our own wellbeing. In the modern age, pretty much no one needs fur, and certainly no one needs stuffed gorilla heads, and most people probably don't need meat. Steaks and mink coats are wasteful luxuries we can do without. However, getting rid of cases like (i) would require a great deal of effort, and getting rid of (ii) could block the path of medical advances which might significantly reduce human suffering from disease.

Re: A Vegan No More

#236

Post by autarch »

jacquesm wrote: post #109
autarch wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Ginny's missing that at all. In fact, I think that's her main point, that Tasha's entire post is a post-facto attempt to rationalize a decision made for non-rational reasons.

Yes, but my point is that Ginny was not going after her when she was still rooting for 'her' team, probably for all the wrong reasons as well. Ginny's post comes off as a very effective smear job against a 'former believer'.

Ginny is pretty consistent about promoting good science and criticizing the bad. For example, in a blog post on "7 Ways to Encourage and Support New Vegans" (http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/08/7-ways-to-encourage-and-su...), she says:

    Be honest about nutrition. It’s pretty unlikely that a vegan diet is the only healthy way to eat and we will always get backed into a corner if we say that it is. Likewise, some nutrients are harder to come by on a vegan diet. If we dismiss nutrition issues, we run the risk that some vegans won’t thrive, which is bad for them and bad for veganism
I don't think she has time to address every blog post by every uninformed person (vegan or anti-vegan) on the web, unfortunately.

Re: A Vegan No More

#237

Post by xenophanes »

cjbprime wrote: post #61
xenophanes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't really call those arguments. They assume that animals can suffer without giving an argument that animals can suffer. Whether animals can suffer is the core issue which should be addressed, and is not addressed by these statements. I believe suffering is caused by, roughly, difference between one's preferences and reality. But animals do not have preferences (this is controversial. will you agree that if th…

> I wouldn't really call those arguments. They assume that animals can suffer without giving an argument that animals can suffer. Whether animals can suffer is the core issue which should be addressed, and is not addressed by these statements. No, you're decades out of date. It is established fact, on all sides of the animal rights argument, that animals suffer and feel pain. I'd be shocked if you could find a single…

I have read the research and it's wrong. If you think otherwise you have not given an argument, you just appealed to authority.

Re: A Vegan No More

#238

Post by cjbprime »

elblanco wrote: post #196
Yaggo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life cycle of farm animals is very short (from few weeks to couple of years), much shorter than the "enlightening" process would take. We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that.

> We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that. This brings up the second question, whenever I hear "we just" or "simply" or some other similar keywords, it often involves a wholesale change in the mindset of all of humanity to accomplish whatever is being posited. (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhum…

> (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral)

Hey, did you know that pretty much all commercial turkeys can't have sex anymore? We bred their breasts to be too big, so they can't physically penetrate any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White

You'll be finding this inhumane and immoral and refusing to eat turkey now, right? Oh, guess not. Weird how that works.

Re: A Vegan No More

#239

Post by [deleted] »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #227
wiredfool wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals. e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eggs come from the back yard. We've gotten pork from another local person who raises a few pigs on the side. FWIW, poultry seems to be the hardest to source for us, and maybe that's because the margins are so damn slim for the factory birds.

Does that scale? If everyone did it, would it work?

[deleted]

Re: A Vegan No More

#240

Post by wiredfool »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #227
wiredfool wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals. e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eggs come from the back yard. We've gotten pork from another local person who raises a few pigs on the side. FWIW, poultry seems to be the hardest to source for us, and maybe that's because the margins are so damn slim for the factory birds.

Does that scale? If everyone did it, would it work?

Probably not, at least in the quantities that people eat meat in the US. Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing.
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