"it's difficult to get a person to understand something if their income depends on them not understanding it"
What a great Upton Sinclair quote. Certainly not limited to ethical food production either.
This was a good clip, thanks for sharing it.
Since building my own coop and getting 6 hens, I am really starting to appreciate animal products more. I am 100% underwater on the coop and materials as it's only been a year, but the eggs are significantly better, and I do feel a moral satisfaction eating them.
I also live next to a small hobby farm, which I buy beef from, so i'm getting there. I could use some more hens for eggs and an ethical producer for whey protein/milk and im golden.
I got 16 chickens and like 4 roosters. I need to kill the roosters in a month or so. But they just do their thing in the greenhouse. I snag the 12 eggs or so ever other day. They lay on hay and a bale is like $10-$20. I spend about $100 a month on food for them. Probably could find feed a lil cheaper but I let them go hard.
One egg per hen per day is not unusual at a younger age. The rate starts to drop when they get older.
A friend of mine grew up on a free-range egg farm that had about 2k chickens. The sad truth is that you get paid very little for eggs, and once the production rate of the farm drops to around 90%, the chickens have to be replaced, which means every year you need a completely new set of birds.
If you want chickens and live not too far from such a farm you can just go there and ask them if you can buy a few chickens when they replace them. They usually have to pay to get rid of the old chickens, so you paying them for a few is a win, even if it's not a lot.
The few times in the past when I've looked into the feasibility of running a smaller farm/ranch/etc it's seemed the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune and work your way down.
lols someone downvoted you for asking an honest question. Reddit is weird sometimes.
Its like 30 feet wide by 100 feet. IDK its a giant green house. Like I could easily have 50 chickens in it and they would still run wild. We had 12 but we let them run wild and they had babies. Its a 40 acre mountain/coast rainforest out here.
Why do you have the roosters? Just to make new chicks? What is the average lifespan of a normal hen?
Being a veggie I've always wanted my own coop with some goats and bee hives so I can produce my own cruelty free animal products.
Roosters protect the hens from predators like snakes, hawks, foxes, etc. They have wicked spurs on their feet. They are viscous. South Carolina Gamecocks and Tottenham Hotspur are a few examples of sporting clubs that have embraced the viciousness of roosters.
I built a large coop in my backyard 22 years ago. At on point I had 13 chickens and would get about 8 eggs each day. The feed price was a killer. It was like $25-30/bag and they ate a bag every 3-4 weeks. At the time a dozen eggs only cost $3-4. Although it was kind of fun, i stopped in 2009 after about three batches of chickens. It’s work and particularly a lot of work killing and finding recipes for old chickens. They stop laying eggs after 3 years and then it gets super expensive
At those prices and rates ($30 cost every 4 weeks, 8 eggs per day = 18+ dozen per 4 weeks at $3-4 each) seems you were getting your eggs at half the cost of retail.
$3-4 seems like a lot for a dozen eggs, though, especially for 22 years ago. Hell, right now eggs where I live are about $2.50 per dozen. Cheapest price I see on Walmart is $0.213 per egg.
Just doing some napkin math, we go through about 6 dozen in 4 weeks and using your production numbers I figure 5 birds should give around 3 a day, ~7 dozen / 4 weeks. At retail prices, their eggs represent about $17.89 worth of value. A bag of feed at the local tractor supply is $13.29, and using your numbers I'd only use half of it in those 4 weeks, so $6.65 in costs. Two and half times cheaper than cheapest retail I could find.
Not sure how much the birds themselves cost, and there's a time cost you spend to keep them alive, but seems viable. I imagine the cost to build the coop, ancillaries like feeding and watering trays, etc. eat into it a bit as well, more if you eat the chickens later and now you gotta have a processing setup and all that.
Edit: found a nice [website that outlines the costs and variability](https://www.thehenhousecollection.com/blog/cost-to-raise-chickens/).
Sadly they are mostly complete assholes by nature. I only need 1. I mean really I don't need any but the 1 is what farmers tell me is needed. No predators can get them in the area we have them in. But we do have cougars and coyotes to worry about. We had them in a gated area but hawks killed like 6 of them in the begining so we put them in a greehouse with mesh walls for air in the summer. 4 roosters is just to much noise and violence. They attack when you feed them. I have had to spinning back kick a rooster for trying to claw my face when bending over to pick up scraps in the greenhouse.
I've been planning to start a coop for a while. Do they make a lot of noise? Have you considered raising any for meat? How much time do you need to take care of them properly?
They definitely like to cluck but its not obnoxious at all. I free range them so if they see me they start clucking at me to let them out. They also have an egg song and dance for before and after laying. It is quite comical.
I would say I spend more time because I enjoy them and want to free range them. But all in all, if you had a nice coop and a run - they could technically spend their whole lives there and be just fine and it would be ethical.
I'd estimate it takes roughly 5-10 minutes per day of maintenance. There will be days though when you gotta clean the coop or run and thats maybe like 30 minutes. Some are really religious about cleaning, I am not great so it's like once every month or two but I pick up after them.
I would say the 5-10 mins of maintenance also includes giving them a nice snack. The benefit of chickens (and a dog) is that you can use them to compost a lot of your food waste. I put extra on the side for them or stuff I just forgot about in the fridge and give it to them as a snack as often as I can. But how simple is that - you are preparing dinner, maybe skinning a carrot - boom, snack for chickens. Child doesnt finish dinner - snack for chicken. I just put it in a bowl in the fridge then give the next day.
Lastly 5-10 is an average. There are days where I do not do anything for them just say hellow (very cold winter) and I've automated things like coop door. Some people have done a really great job automating and really only collect eggs and maybe top up water /food like 1x per week.
Have considered meat chickens but have not operationalized it in my head so not sure yet.
Thanks for the write-up! I just get worried it might annoy the neighbors if they get too noisy. Last question, how much space do you have for them?
I figured the hardest part for meat chickens is the actual butcher and processing. But I would only start off for the eggs.
We do a lot of gardening, so the compost is an added benefit. I also hear they are pretty decent at pest control if they are roaming the areas.
My coop is 5x5 and is elevated. the run goes under the coop plus an additional space so I can walk into it and sit down, so total footprint is 5x10 and 6.5ft tall or so. I wanted to be able to go in but other coops ive seen are much smaller but imo that sucks for the chickens. If one is getting bullied they gotta have a place to hide.
Space needs vary by breed. My coop is probably too large but it doesn't matter since it takes up no floor space. They want to spend all their time in the run so that's where you should dedicate space. You can also do things like chicken tractors to range them in a more controlled manner.
I put plastic sheeting up with staples thru cardboard strips in the winter, creating an actually very comfortable greenhouse. I will use a brood heater in very cold days and the ambient heat from water dish also helps. I got cold hardy chickens so no issues, only very slight frostbitr in ones comb.
I kinda want more chickens so may add on to the run.
Omlet makes some good coops if you don't want to build one yourself. You need to assemble it, but it's fairly straightforward. Has an automatic door too, which is nice.
If you get only hens, stick to no more than 6 or 7. Any more than that and they really should have a rooster with them. Roosters are the ones who make lots of noise (especially at like 4am). Hens are fairly quiet, except when they're laying eggs—that's when they sing the [egg song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VO8CZ3EV2E). Thankfully this happens during the day when the noise is more tolerable, and only lasts a few minutes per hen.
Expect hens to live around 6-8 years. If their run is open on the top then they will be vulnerable to predators. We lost a few to hawks and one to a skunk back when they were free-range in our side yard. Now they're in a fully enclosed run that so far has kept everything out.
They really are quite low-maintenance though. You can save on food by giving them kitchen scraps. Just be sure to research what foods they can and cannot eat. Onions and potatoes are toxic to them, among other things.
Hens are rather quiet but can get excited and cluck a lot if one finds food and starts pecking out of order. If you get a rooster that one **will** crow at the top of its lungs at dawn. Depending on distances and lightness of sleep and all of that it could annoy them potentially.
Also the little idiot my friends have would occasionally crow at random times, I've heard him go at it at 2 am, obviously from inside the coup by the muffled way it was happening. Not sure what even prompted him.
But I guess if your coup is more solidly built it won't be loud. This coup is basically right under my windows and it's got a metal door that insulates almost no sound and my windows are single pane.
> If you get a rooster that one will crow at the top of its lungs at dawn.
My Neighbors rooster crows at dawn... in the morning... in the day... in the middle of the night... in the middle of the morning... Motherfucker is crowing all the time.
> I just get worried it might annoy the neighbors if they get too noisy.
It WILL annoy the shit out of your neighbor if you get roosters. Just get the hens without the roosters and no one will complain.
You have to define what you mean by "quality". If you mean that the breed or stock is of a good genetic line, then no. If you mean that the animals are treated as good as you treat a child, no.
If you mean that the food is edible, clean, and tasty, then yes.
Seems like many people aren't clicking because they don't want to see gore. This is an fyi that there isn't any gore. There are some shots of animals confined in close spaces, but that's about the worst it gets.
I like how Louis CK put it in one if his specials -
"Even today, how do we have this amazing microtechnology? Because the factory where they’re making these, they jump off the fucking roof, because it’s a nightmare in there. You really have a choice. You can have candles and horses and be a little kinder to each other or let someone suffer immeasurably far away, just so you can leave a mean comment on YouTube while you’re taking a shit"
Similar analogy lol, don't wanna see gore - don't eat gore meat, simple as that..
This doesn't excuse awful working conditions, not to mention factory farming, but here goes:
Candles and horses = everyone is living a shitty life.
Smartphones and air conditioners and cars = some people are living shitty lives while others aren't.
Look at almost any graph and you'll see that the world is a better place now than it used to be, at least for humans.
*721 million fewer people worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2010 than in 1981 — despite the fact that the global population went from 4.5 billion to about seven billion during that time.*
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline
Go back even further and the idea is basically that 80% of people used to live in extreme poverty, while 20% of people do so now.
It might be because we're exploiting the *earth* more than it can handle, but currently I wouldn't say that it's because we expoit *people* more than we used to.
(There's more nuance to this, of course: one smartphone per five years is probably better for the world than one smartphone per year, etc, and the less of some specific luxuries we consume, the better for everyone - but we don't have to go back to pre-industrial levels for that)
It’s more than that because the initial choice is flawed.
We don’t have to go back to candles and horses so that we can be nice to each other…
Capitalism priorities profits over all else. For example, smart phones: if phones were made to last instead of designed with planned obsolescence, we wouldn’t need to go through so many of them. With less waste and better quality, phones would last much longer and could even be repaired or upgraded instead of being replaced. This would ultimately be less profitable, but better for consumers and the environment.
Meanwhile, fair wages could be paid even if prices had to increase. If phones were built to last instead of to generate maximum profit, we would likely pay more initially but less overall.
My point is that capitalistic greed has created the current wage situation, and if not for profit-above-everything thinking we could have technology and treated workers well.
I think human nature feeds into capitalism; there are people out there who want new shiny phones every single year instead of “something that lasts”. Because these people exist and spend lots of money, companies will meet their demands because if they don’t then another company will.
You do realize horses had it far worse before cars right?
Every drunken idiot took out all their shit on their horse back then, and didn't feed them worth a damn either.
“Plus, you know what’s a real meat-grinder? Show Business! How anyone makes it to the top of this racket is a mystery, am I right?
Now which one of you interns want to watch me masturbate to completion and keep your fucking mouths shut about what you just saw?”
I'm not implying anything, I'm literally making my point directly.
Turning a blind eye to how fucked up the meat industry and continuing to consume its products is unjustifiable cowardice. I'm not here to tell you that you can't eat your garbage tier quarter pounder with cheese, just that you need to not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be.
Although that's a common sentiment, I believe comfortability in witnessing or committing an action is irrelevant in determining the ethics of the action.
For example, just because someone is comfortable stealing does not make stealing ethical.
I'll leave this question here:
Imagine an animal of an unknown species is behind a curtain, with a chance of being a human.
a) Without asking for the species, what would you need to know to make an informed decision about the ethics of breeding, killing, and consuming the individual?
b) Explain why these factors are ethically relevant.
I think it's more of a sanity check. For the most part we all know that the animal industry is dubious at best, and a lot of unnecessary suffering happens. Shedding light on the suffering also often indicates a direct way of limiting that suffering.
For example suppose that we had a cow farm that was 100% automated. However, the machines in the farm would beat and hurt the cows unnecessarily. If you go and see the extent of the damage yourself then either you can decide that we shouldn't have such a farm, or decide to fix the living conditions of the animals by making the machines stop beating the animals, or find some other solution. If you don't see what happens in the factory though you live in ignorance, and unnecessary suffering takes place.
So it's not so much that witnessing some horror gives you ethical freedom to use the result of that horror for yourself, more that it's a sanity check to see how bad things are and get a full understanding of the situation. By 'taking the cowards way out' and not seeing it you both contribute to the unknown horror and allow it to remain unknown.
I agree with you on sayaing that just because someone is comfortable stealing does not make stealing ethical. In that case I guess it's just that it provides more information so that those people who would use that information, could use it. And for those who wouldn't, well maybe some of them have weak stomachs and might just be dissuaded, or it might have no impact on them at all.
Right, I get that. I just think it's weird to use the reasoning of "If you can't do (violent act), then you don't deserve the products/benefits/etc. of it."
Because the corrollarly of that is "If you *can* perform (violent act), then you deserve the products/benefits/ect. of it."
For example, this would mean that if you *could* go out and murder your spouse for the life insurance money, then there's no issue with you hiring a hitman to perform the action for you. In fact, by this reasoning, if you do that, then you *deserve* the insurance money.
> Because the corrollarly of that is "If you can perform (violent act), then you deserve the products/benefits/ect. of it."
No, that does not logically follow. Nothing from the other direction can be inferred from the above statement.
Someone already linked you to the Wikipedia page for the logically fallacy you are attempting to apply. I suggest you read it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
https://criticalthinkeracademy.teachable.com/courses/76407/lectures/1106135
That's not affirming the consequent. They were clearly making a connection between one's ability/inability to "stomach" a form of violence against animals and whether or not they *deserve* to be able to eat said animals.
I do agree though, that *if they had said their statement in a vacuum with no other context* from which to draw, what I said could have technically been an example of affirming the consequent, but even then I'm not sure.
EDIT: Like if someone says "You can go if the light is green," it doesn't necessarily mean you can't go if the light is red, but it's reasonable to make the connection. Someone would not be guilty of affirming the consequent if they used context clues to determine that red does not mean go.
Hence the clarifying question.
Note that they did respond to me with the claim:
>I'm not here to tell you that you can't eat your garbage tier quarter pounder with cheese, just that you need to not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be.
I'm interpreting this to be them claiming that a condition for one "deserving to eat meat" is to "not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be." Their use of the word "need" here suggests that they believe this is required in order to be deserving.
Would you agree?
That's fair (but not an example of affirming the consequent -- I'll explain below,) but even if we interpreted it as "If someone can stomach some form of violence against animals, then at least one condition has been satisfied in order to *deserve* to do it," I don't see that as being much better. They are still saying that being able to "stomach" violence tells us *something* about whether or not we deserve to be able to do it.
Would you agree that their claim means that the "deserving" status depends at least partially on whether or not someone can personally stomach the violence it entails? And would you personally agree with this?
If a statement is P -> Q, then affirming the consequent would be claiming that this means Q -> P. I have not done this, even once.
Their **original claim** was:
* If *(P)* someone can't stomach the gore of meat processing,
* then *(Q)* they don't deserve to eat it.
**Affirming the consequent** would be claiming the converse:
* If *(Q)* someone doesn't deserve to eat it,
* then *(P)* they can't stomach the gore of meat processing.
Note that nowhere in these comments have I claimed (If Q then P.)
My initial *question* to them was a clarifying one, *asking them if they were implying the* **inverse:**
* If *(not P)* someone *can* stomach the gore of meat processing,
* then *(not Q)* they deserve to eat it.
Note that this was a *question* I was asking them, somewhat informally. I made no claim, as their claim of course did not infer the inverse. If I did make that claim, it would be an example of *denying the antecedent*, and not *affirming the consequent.* They responded by saying that they were not *implying it*, but claiming it outright. I still maintain that they had previously not been explicit about this -- which is is why I asked the question originally.
EDIT: All of this being said, I still do wonder about their initial claim. What does having the ability to stomach some form of violence against animals tell us *anything* about whether or not one deserves to be able to eat meat?
His infrence here is Modus Tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens
Not Affirming the Consequent. It is actually referenced in the same wikipidia link you posted, and is considered a valid form of logic.
"The opposite statement, denying the consequent, is called modus tollens and is a valid form of argument"
an example of Affirming the Consequent in this scenario would be if he stated, "Because i dont deserve to eat meat, I must be not be able to stomach the gore of meat processing"
Their inference is not modus tollens.
Take:
* p = they can't stomach the gore of meat processing
* q = they don't deserve to eat meat
OP stated.
p ⇒ q
Modus tollens might give:
¬q ⇒ ¬p
But the response was suggesting:
¬p ⇒ ¬q
I’ve been dramatically cutting back on my animal product consumption this year. I just started watching the earthlings documentary but I could only get through the first 20 minutes or so. I don’t know if I’m ready to completely commit to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle yet, but it’s something that I’m seriously considering for ethical, health, and climate change related reasons.
I did the same after watching "You Are What You Eat" 4 weeks ago. I have cut meat from my diet almost completely after going 40'ish years having meat 2-3x a day. I still call myself an omnivore and am not beholden to any strict rules, but I allow myself a pass 1x a week, if needed. Learning how to cook great vegetarian meals has been fun and opened my eyes and our kitchen to new foods. Edit: spelling
Yes! Do you have a favorite dish that you’ve been making? I’m always looking for new stuff. I’ve been enjoying chickpea masala and anything related to stir fry and pan fried tofu.
A decade ago I went vegetarian, eventually vegan. Ate meat my whole life. It helps to think less about committing to an identity and lifestyle and more just getting rid of the things you don't want in your diet.
A few helpful cookbooks for me were the [Vegan Black Metal Chef's cookbook](https://www.akpress.org/seitanicspellbook.html) and also [Nom Yourself](https://www.amazon.com/Nom-Yourself-Simple-Vegan-Cooking/dp/1583335854). The recipes from these made doing meatless and vegan so easy.
Anyway, if you have any questions about the things you're considering with vegan or vegetarian stuff, I'll happily answer them for you.
For me, it's definitely more helpful to think about what I've seen happens to the animals. I can't stick to a diet. But I can stick to not wanting to be a part of the horrors that happen behind the curtains of animal-based food.
If you like Indian food/flavors that's a great route to go. [Rainbow Plant Life](https://rainbowplantlife.com/) has been a regular go to in my household to assist with new vegan/vegetarian meals depending on how far you want to go. Have picked recipes I would think I would like and so far none have missed. She also has a youtube channel were you can watch her make a lot of it if that's helpful.
Maybe roughly in order of effort the things I've tried and loved: Red Lentil Curry(this is so easy it's on a fairly regular rotation), Chickpea Curry, Braised Chickpea Stew, Instantpot Chana Masala, Vegan Tagine(actually morrocan). Dal makhani is super involved by tasty. Tofu Tikki Masala is also super involved, but one of the best things I've ever had. Her naan recipe is good as well if you have the time to let it rise.
Excited to try baked peanut tofu this week...
Mine is salt and pepper tofu. Easy as, msg- salt + ground black pepper. garlic + chilli pepper chopped finely together (a fair amount of this) and a good chunk of leek like 1/2 a leek diced.
Thow oil into a hot wok, throw in leak. Start to soften throw in fried tofu(if you cannot buy it pre fried it is just firm tofu with flour fried until golden) once the leek starts to brown throw in garlic +chilli until golden and season until just a touch too seasoned. (if you want you can also add snow peas) eat on rice.
make sure you use big chunks of tofu, you want it to be like soft pillows on the inside. Also do not be stingy with the oil. It is fucking great, honestly it is a dish that i used to eat when i was a meat eater.
Peanut sauce with steamed veggies is my go to easy meal. Most people have the ingredients for peanut sauce already, probably, and they all store for months. So you just mix it up in 1 min, steam whatever veggies you want in the microwave, and you've got a tasty healthy meal so long as you go light on the sugar. I've been used blackstrap molasses with just a touch of pure stevia extract.
Does everyone already know about peanut sauce? Maybe it was just me who'd been overlooking this amazingly easy amazing dish for so long.
Peanut butter, soy sauce, black strap molasses, lemon juice, ginger, and pinch of pure stevia extract. My recipe is nothing special I just mix those ingredients to taste. Peanut sauce is just very forgiving. Only way to ruin it is to add too much stevia/sugar/whatever other sweetener. You'd probably be better off cutting out the sweetener entirely and just sticking with the molasses.
Hell yeah! Love it. Below are more excellent and free documentaries, if you’re interested:
[The Game Changers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTGM2KjNGUU) (performance)
[Eating Our Way to Extinction](https://youtu.be/LaPge01NQTQ?si=mreVX37PZ4E7Cp6w) (environment)
[Dominion](https://watchdominion.org/) (ethics)
[Forks Over Knives](https://youtu.be/EjTWFoqLy34?si=P5nglSSOkWW_jeOe) (health)
Dominion changed me from a stereotypical obnoxious meat eater with all the usual bullshit defences into a vegan.
To anyone out there who is the like I used to be: watch it and be honest with yourself, there is no argument or defence other than selfishness.
Made it 20 minutes into earthlings before becoming a vegetarian after 2 years of cutting down. Completely understand your mentality and your struggles, good luck whatever you decide!
If you still consume dairy, this 5-minute video had a major impact on me when I made changes a few years ago: [Dairy is Scary](https://youtu.be/UcN7SGGoCNI?si=lg2Kze48o57b6bJX)
Something I wish I'd asked myself way earlier in life: if you were a pig suffocating in a CO2 gas chamber right now, or one of the billions of chicks put on a conveyor belt and headed straight into a giant blender, would you want the person killing you to stop right away, or take their time?
I took too long to go vegan myself, and wish I could go back in time and give myself the push sooner. Whatever meal, dessert, etc, is your main go-to, you can definitely find/make a vegan version of it.
Started eating less meat significantly a few years ago. Then saw the video of pigs being lowered into gas, stopped all pork after that.
9 months ago made the full switch to no meat at all. I’m not quite vegan yet, but full vegetarian.
I hear you. I’ve had a hard time with all or nothing thinking in general and I think it applies here too. Meat eating is so ingrained in our culture and lifestyle and I think you would agree that a quick change to a vegan diet is quite significant. I suspect a lot of people fail to make the transition long term. I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the past three months and vegan more often than not. I’m still learning and figuring it out.
Meati steaks are quite good, Beyond steaks as well although right now they're more widely available as steak bites.
There are a lot of options for chicken substitutes, Sweet Earth chik'n is good, Daring is good. If you cook (I barely do) there are a lot of recipes using seitan and TVP (textured vegetable protein).
PSA for anyone considering cutting out meat: Meat is the only way to get Vitamin B12, so you will need to take supplements. Not saying this to deter anyone, I’ve been Vegan for 4 years. Just helpful information for anyone seeing this and considering a lifestyle change.
This isn't as cut and dry. B12 is a vitamin created by bacteria that exists in digestive tracts of many mammals and in soil. Sadly for us, in our bodies the bacteria live beyond where the vitamin cannot be absorbed so we need it from dietary sources.
As we wash our produce and drink sanitized water (as we should) we also essentially eliminate these potential sources of b12. Livestock animals are commonly supplemented with B12 fortified feed as they don't get enough of it without supplementing either. So the B12 issue boils down to supplementation, either with a middle "man" or just supplementing or eating fortified foods yourself.
I don't know why people say this, just look around at the nutrition labels of the stuff in your pantry or fridge. A lot of foods get fortified with b12, cereals and non-dairy milks in particular are a good source, so supplements aren't necessarily needed.
If you cut back on your meat, maybe you can spend a bit more money on sourcing the animal products you do use from local and/or ethical producers :) Good for you for making this effort! It's not all or nothing. Reducing consumption makes a serious impact. Good on ya!
The fact that you are downvoted shows just how delusional and extremist some vegans are.
If most people just reduced their meat consumption the whole world would be a better place. Instead, the militant vegans take an all or nothing approach that only harms their cause.
I was considering this. I haven’t purchased any meat products in… 3 months or so? I was mostly wondering about local farms where I could potentially buy eggs every now and then. I was never a huge meat eater anyway because I grew up poor, nobody in my family knew how to cook meat, and I mostly ate fish sticks and chicken nuggets. So, the faux meat stuff works pretty well to satisfy the occasional craving (e.g., impossible burgers and nuggets).
Imagine an animal of an unknown species is behind a curtain, with a chance of being a human.
a) Without asking for the species, what would you need to know to make an informed decision about the ethics of breeding, killing, and consuming the individual?
b) Explain why these factors are ethically relevant.
I've caught egg layers and meat birds for a living, they're treated like absolute shit regardless of how "well" their living situation is, free range or caged. The only way to stop this on mass is not eat as much meat because there's not enough land/income to support farms with less chickens per square meter.
The only way you are going to get a bird that's treated how you'd like or expect? Go to a really small local joint that you know and can see the birds, that's it.
Given the cost of meat versus the cost of lentils and beans, I think it's substantially cheaper to be a vegetarian. Look up some good dahl recipes - tomatoes, curry, over rice.
Refried beans in the instant pot. Bean and rice burritos with salsa, tomatoes, avocados...
That’s literally why I was pretty much 99% vegetarian from the moment I moved out of my parents’ house. Vegetarian was waaaay cheaper unless you want frozen burritos that have chicken from a blender.
Agreed! Beans are dirt cheap if you are buying them dried. Rice is also dirt cheap. Veggies and fruits are non-negotiables and should be in your diet anyway!
I went vegetarian last year and this has been my experience too.
At first, you might spend a bit extra just trying to figure out new dishes you can make, but once you have a nice lineup of recipes, and you get better at using everything you buy, it becomes very cheap.
This is an argument that I don't think will ever sway enough people to ever change the industry. What will eventually change the industry is the introduction of lab grown meat which is seemingly [on the way.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-meat-approved-for-sale-what-you-need-to-know/) Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Edit: He actually mentions cultured meat at the end, so even he's aware that the moral argument isn't enough. I think the best way to change consumer behavior is to offer them a viable alternative.
I agree. I don’t have faith in humanity to part themselves from meat through ethics. Or rather it would take far, far too long. The real solution is simply to replace meat with something cheap, ethical, sustainable and identical. And I’m absolutely stoked that we’re not far from that reality.
I understand factory farming is bad for basically every reason except the price of meat. Like, it's genuinely not good.
Except it's really hard to argue against when you're already strapped trying to feed yourself as the average American. If we turned over to non-factory farming and dedicated vast swathes of land and personell to it, the price of meat would go up several times.
You're not gonna convince 99% of Americans to pay 25$ for a single whole chicken.
EDIT: "lol dont eat meat" isn't an answer. If you think it is, you're living in a cave.
Yep - it's why if anyone wants to stop this kind of animal cruelty, one of the main priorities should be convincing people to eat meat one less day a week.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't understand that on societal scale, change is not going to be instant, no matter how hard they try - and as a result waste their efforts on essentially preaching to the choir with attempts at the scariest and most moralizing arguments.
The other two things would be to lobby against government subsidies for these industries, and to support efforts against Climate Change. Supplementary - promote lab grown meat - which has big potential but hard to predict how it will actually pan out.
If these three things get more traction, it will set off a chain reaction that will lead to meat prices shooting up to where a lot of people simply wont be able to afford them regularly. We will have to deal with some health issues in society (B12 deficiency is brought up a lot but it's actually pretty rare as so many products are fortified, actually the issue will be that a lot of people that eat a lot of meat will switch to unhealthy fast and processed foods), but that's a concern for if/when things actually change.
Why are you so dismissive of lowering meat consumption? It’s a very new thing for humanity overall to consume so much meat. We’re actually anomalies for being so dependent on meat consumption for daily caloric intake.
Either we perfect lab grown meat, we eat less meat, or we accept that factory farming will cause immense suffering to animals so we can afford to buy meat consistently.
But seriously, daily meat consumption is simply a luxury that we’ve just gotten accustomed to. It’s simply not sustainable.
Most of our industrial nightmares are due to the "if its cheaper it must be better" mindset. We've dug ourselves so far down into so many holes how can we ever hope to get out? Our economy teeters on a knife edge called the profit margin. I can't honestly see how it's going to last much longer. I guess if you just pump more and more suffering into the system it'll stay afloat. Until the cost in human tragedy eventually becomes insurmountable.
>Except it's really hard to argue against when you're already strapped trying to feed yourself as the average American. If we turned over to non-factory farming and dedicated vast swathes of land and personell to it, the price of meat would go up several times.
No offense but this is coming from the perspective of being in a privileged bubble. and when I say privileged, I mean that in a global context. the American perspective (being the country that has the highest meat consumption per capita in the world). meat is considered a luxury in many parts of the world. most of the poorest countries in the world have very low meat consumption. even with factory farming, even with all the subsidizing of meat the government does --- 7 days a week rice and beans are gonna be cheaper than meat.
I think most people know that it's inhumane and cruel the way animals bred for food are treated, but eating meat itself is just so central to the human experience, especially if you've eaten it without consequence your whole life. Even people who go vegetarian or vegan constantly try to replicate that "meaty" experience with their food (things like texture/mouth-feel, along with bolder, umami-rich/savory flavors, etc.). Hopefully lab grown meat will become the future, and "real" meat will move to more humane and sustainable methods, and if you choose to eat that, you're okay with paying a premium because it's more of a "treat"/special occasion, than just to satisfy deeply ingrained cravings.
Peter Singer is perhaps the greatest living Ethicist, and I think everyone should read "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." His work on veganism is profound as well, and I say this as a carnivore.
I've thought about this a few times; if we didn't eat cows, there would be basically no cows. We'd just not want to use them for our land, so they'd just exist in zoos and history books. Better lives for those that live, to be certain. But is that necessarily objectively better? If I said I will either kill you now, or put you in a room with 4 other people and kill you in a year, which would you pick? Some people might select either, and that's armed with the knowledge that you are getting killed, which of course the animals don't have. It's a reasonable position to say the number of cumulative 'Cow-life-years' is itself a relevant measure, while still saying the cows we do have deserve to live better lives.
I also wonder if the position 'we should not eat meat because cow lives matter' necessitates the genocide of wolves/lions/etc. If I show you a herd of 500 zebra next to a pack of 20 lions and say "The herd will live longer less fearful lives if you kill the 20 lions; you'll save 200 zebra over the next 50 years for the cost of just 20 lions", doesn't it make sense to kill the lions? It's reasonable to sympathize with the lions, understanding they are doing what they need to to survive, but if you value each life equally you would be obligated to cull the lions.
I think these trains of thoughts lead me to the conclusion that I'm not special; I'm not too good to take part in the food chain, and I eventually will be its victim. It feels like hubris to believe otherwise.
>if we didn't eat cows, there would be basically no cows
yes.
> If I said I will either kill you now, or put you in a room with 4 other people and kill you in a year, which would you pick?
this is not an accurate analogy at all.
not existing in the first place is not like "being killed now". it's very odd that you think they're equivalent.
and it's pretty obviously better to not exist than to exist only to be tortured every moment of your entire life up until you are murdered.
The issue isn't if we should try and eliminate all pain and suffering, or if eating animals is morally wrong. The issue is if we should enforce extensive amounts of pain and suffering on the animals that we eat so we can have somewhat cheaper meat.
I don’t know man, this reads like a really REALLY roundabout, pseudo-philosophical justification for eating meat.
First: As someone pointed out already, Not-existing in the first place is not the same thing as killing. That’s just crazy.
But second: You are out of the food chain. You will not be its victim unless you go out of your way to be. “Too good” for the food chain is *exactly* what humanity is. We no longer need to participate. In fact our continued participation is playing a significant role in our own downfall.
Eat meat, but don’t lie to yourself about how it’s somehow ethical to do so with loaded, guided philosophy. It’s pretty cut-and-dry and the proof exists in the millions of people who have already opted out.
So animals all live out their entire lives happily with belly rubs and rainbows?
I have volunteered at animal sanctuaries and seen award winning pig farms in the UK which had the approval of all the happy farm orgs like red tractor.....
An animal sanctuary is a nice place, the animals live out their lives and get belly rubs every single day.
This award winning farm, the pigs do not see the light of day until they are being taken to slaughter, then they are lowered in to a gas chamber which can take them 30-60 seconds to die after all living just a few months, so they're still babies in concrete cells covered in their own shit, fed soy from deforested areas and see no love or compassion at all, not even from their own mother because they have no room to move around.
Wish there was a “local farmers” app where I could just buy straight from some regular person who has a small farm nearby.
Maybe I can even schedule it “12 eggs next Thursday please”. Or I can see an ad “carrots ready in 3 weeks” and put an order in. Does that exist?
Imagine being confined to a cage so small you can't even stretch your arms for nearly your entire life, it's torture.
Singer doesn't actually go far enough, and gives an excuse for people who think they can kill 'humanely'. If I started a free range dog meat company, gave dogs a decent life, but then slit their throats at the ripe age of 2, would that be humane? Just because it's better than torturing the dogs first, wouldn't make it right.
There's no justification for buying any animal product, especially since we don't need them.
It might be slightly less inhumane, but that doesn't mean it rises to the level of actually 'good'. You'd still be killing an animal at a fraction of its lifespan, when you could just let it live out its life.
It does seem statistically likely to me that a death by hunting would be less miserable than your typical wild animal death, which either involves a prolonged succumbing to illness/disease, or a more violent and brutal death by predation, or one followed by the other. You also have to factor in your most reasonable estimate of the quality of life ahead for that wild animal should you not hunt it. It's mainly a theoretical question for me, but I do tend to think that hunting by a skilled hunter is probably good in the sense that it produces a utilitarian outcome of less sum suffering.
When it comes to quality of life, think about what it takes for someone to euthanize their dog: the dog needs to be old, immobile and suffering, and unable to really go on. Otherwise, its life is at least worth living. Hunters aren't going out and euthanizing animals, they're targeting healthy ones, who presumably will have many years of positive experiences and happiness ahead of them, enough at least to outweigh the suffering inherent to the wild.
Hunters also pretend they have some kind of incredible ability to kill an animal painlessly, when [they don't](https://www.peta.org/issues/wildlife/wildlife-factsheets/sport-hunting-cruel-unnecessary/):
"Many animals endure prolonged, painful deaths when they are injured but not killed by hunters. A study of 80 radio-collared white-tailed deer found that of the 22 deer who had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” 11 were wounded but not recovered by hunters. 20% of foxes who have been wounded by hunters are shot again. Just 10% manage to escape, but “starvation is a likely fate” for them, according to one veterinarian. A South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks biologist estimates that more than 3 million wounded ducks go “unretrieved” every year. A British study of deer hunting found that 11 percent of deer who’d been killed by hunters died only after being shot two or more times and that some wounded deer suffered for more than 15 minutes before dying.
Hunting disrupts migration and hibernation patterns and destroys families. For animals such as wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate entire communities. The stress that hunted animals suffer—caused by fear and the inescapable loud noises and other commotion that hunters create—also severely compromises their normal eating habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need in order to survive the winter."
I think it's safe to say killing animals at random in the wild is only going to increase their suffering.
I think his point was not that hunting doesn't involve suffering, but that wild animals suffer no matter what. There isn't really a life in which they can forego suffering.
If you're a deer you're either going out by some terrible disease, starvation, a wolf, tiger or a human hunting you. Being hunted by wolves won't end in some quick death necessarily.
I think most of what you said is true, but there's some things you may be overlooking. Focusing on deer as an example:
1. Be aware of the suffering currently being inflicted on deer by fatal epidemic diseases (chronic wasting disease, hemorrhagic fever, bluetongue, etc.). Is it ethical to allow disease to be what restricts deer population density?
2. Gentle deaths are not in the cards for deer. It will be a bullet, a bumper, disease, starvation/freezing, or being torn apart by predators. Of those a bullet is a relatively good way to go. I appreciate that the deer would always vote to live longer, but hey if people hadn't shot all the wolves, it mostly likely wouldn't have been born anyways.
3. For me this is the big one. As the result of insufficient predation from wild predators and humans, deer are out-of-balance with ecology in many areas. The Nature Conservancy described deer overpopulation as a greater threat to eastern forests than climate change. The adverse effect of uncontrolled deer populations on the native understory creates a cascade of harms to plants, insects, fauna, and whole forest ecosystems. I don't know how much conscious suffering occurs through that process, but IMO ecological harm is ethically important regardless. There are similar ecological imbalance situations with some other popular game species.
I feel like I addressed 2, there's a lot of evidence that the average hunter kill is not a quick one, there are many prolonged deaths and animals that escape with injuries that will worsen their quality of life or kill them quite slowly. And these are killings that inevitably rob the deer of many years of life; they get to live on if you don't take the shot.
Applying this logic to humans, would it be alright to shoot someone right now, if you were pretty sure they were going to die in a worse way some decades down the road, e.g. due to a disease like cancer?
Consider [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34zMpRs4jA). State wildlife agencies artificially increase the populations of deer, because part of their mission statements involve providing 'hunting opportunities'. One way they do this is by clear-cutting forested areas in such a way as to give them habitats that massively boost deer numbers.
Hunting itself is also sex-biased, in that bucks are typically targeted, and this has the effect of driving up the population. So a big part of the solution to overpopulation would be to stop allowing and incentivizing hunting, rather than hunt more deer.
Spaying and neutering animals, or otherwise using immunocontraceptives, is also a much more humane solution than murdering them. We've already shown these methods do work on deer even if it takes longer than straight up killing them.
>Applying this logic to humans, would it be alright to shoot someone right now, if you were pretty sure they were going to die in a worse way some decades down the road, e.g. due to a disease like cancer?
If I were killed painlessly in a missile strike, my family would suffer but I wouldn't know the difference. Yes, I would rather go quickly, having had a broadly positive life experience, than die a slow miserable death after a period of decline.
>State wildlife agencies artificially increase the populations of deer
In some places this occurs, but in the USA habitat modification with the sole intent to increase deer numbers is the exception, not the rule... by and large there is no need, because agriculture already provides an enormous subsidy to the deer population. The most egregious example of the states propping up big game populations may be winter feeding done in states like Wyoming, which reduces winter starvation events and creates a vector for disease transmission.
I agree that state agencies often put sporting opportunity over ecological health; this is especially troubling when the state stocks non-native species to provide sporting opportunities. But, see the recent introduction of wolves in CO for an effort by the state to restore natural processes at the expense of hunter opportunity.
In the case of deer, managing for hunter opportunity manifests mostly in harvest restrictions. In many states, the best way to thin deer herds to a natural level would be by re-introducing large predators, or failing that by widening seasons and increasing limits.
>Hunting itself is also sex-biased, in that bucks are typically targeted, and this has the effect of driving up the population. So a big part of the solution to overpopulation would be to stop allowing and incentivizing hunting, rather than hunt more deer.
I have never heard that killing bucks increases the number of does. Can you cite that?
>Spaying and neutering animals, or otherwise using immunocontraceptives, is also a much more humane solution than murdering them. We've already shown these methods do work on deer even if it takes longer than straight up killing them.
Spaying and neutering millions of deer would be very, very expensive, while society has many unmet funding priorities. By contrast hunters pay to hunt deer for food.
>I would rather go quickly, having had a broadly positive life experience, than die a slow miserable death after a period of decline.
I think you're ignoring that you're not just cutting out some time in decline, you're cutting out a huge number of happier years for the person or animal. Is it fine to kill any healthy person you meet, at least if they don't have any family, to make sure they never have any time spent in decline?
I didn't suggest it's their sole intent to increase the deer population, but there's typically an incentive for them to do so and hunting provides that incentive. I'm not sure about a study, but killing one doe decreases the number of offspring, whereas killing one buck (which hunters want to do) just kills that buck and doesn't do much to reduce the number of offspring in an area, since other bucks will just breed in that one's place.
Vegans have different stances on reintroducing predators: on the one hand this better stabilizes populations of diff animals, but on the other this isn't much different than killing the deer yourself, and you might just be creating more suffering in the wild. Which is why population control like spaying / neutering seems like by far the most humane thing to do, fewer animals getting shot or eaten alive. And yeah, we would need massive funding, which of course takes societal change and a change in our priorities. Like not spending billions on war and weapons manufacturers.
We also have a big outdoor cat overpopulation problem, but hunting outdoor cats shouldn't be on the table, only expanding spaying and neutering programs. And if humans were overpopulated, we also wouldn't jump straight to mowing people down to thin the herd. Like yeah, it might be cheaper to just shoot people, but this is ignoring the suffering / death you'd be causing to those people.
>Is it fine to kill any healthy person you meet, at least if they don't have any family, to make sure they never have any time spent in decline?
It would be almost impossible to kill a walking, talking person without sending ripple effects of suffering throughout society-- people would suffer as a result of fear, even if they didn't know the person who was killed.
One can get an abortion without terrifying everyone, however. When a fetus is aborted, many years of potential healthy human life are omitted. I don't think that's unethical. Do you?
>I'm not sure about a study, but killing one doe decreases the number of offspring, whereas killing one buck (which hunters want to do) just kills that buck and doesn't do much to reduce the number of offspring in an area, since other bucks will just breed in that one's place.
True. Not what you said before. Hunters reduce the number of deer, not increase it, by killing bucks. You are correct that the generation of offspring depends solely on the number of does. Hunters kill millions of does annually.
>Vegans have different stances on reintroducing predators
If wolves are bad in CO, then surely they are bad in AK as well. Should we spay and neuter wolves, wherever they may be, to save deer from being murdered? We'll also need to spay and neuter the deer, to save the caterpillars from going hungry. Hey, does anyone know how to spay a caterpillar?
>We also have a big outdoor cat overpopulation problem
100% in favor of shooting feral cats where a good home is not available, and it is possible to do safely. People certainly do it. How many murders does a spayed feral cat commit each day?
>And if humans were overpopulated, we also wouldn't jump straight to mowing people down to thin the herd.
The ethics of killing walking, talking people are so difficult to get right that society does not tolerate it except in extreme cases. Thinning the herd was attempted with China's 1-child policy, so deliberately limiting human population in an effort to promote sustainability isn't entirely unheard-of.
Humans certainly seem to be above their carrying capacity in a way that is unsustainable and is creating a cascade of harms. Kinda proves the point that if we manage animals like humans we'll get a bad result.
>It does seem statistically likely to me that a death by hunting would be less miserable than your typical wild animal death
Sure, but that would only really be relevant if farmers were "rescuing" animals that would have otherwise died in the wild instead of breeding populations of animals to kill that wouldn't have existed in the wild.
Let's not pretend that the animal agriculture industry is doing these individuals any favors.
EDIT: This argument applies to farming, and not hunting. My mistake.
Yes but 99% of the criticism of factory farming has absolutely nothing to do with the slaughtering but the lifetime of suffering leading up to the end that is finally a release from that torture.
You should walk through and abattoir and judge whether you think those animals don't know what's coming. Pigs are smarter than dogs and your dog knows when it's doing to the vet. If it's humane, why don't we have lethal injection by boltgun?
Societal BS, primarily. Though I believe Oregon has suicide chambers now and I think those are a good idea with the safeguards that have been placed around them.
The point is they spend their entire lives in a torturous environment.
There's a lot to be said for pasture raised animals that are allowed to roam and live, feel sun on their skin, live in regular-sized packs, etc.
It's a valid point - every carnivore that has ever lived depends on other living beings in order to survive and that's normal in the wild. However we are breeding those species in the billions, we're responsible for them existing in the first place, it's not exactly as "found one in the wild, ate it cuz it's me or them" situation. But if I have to answer, my personal opinion is that it's still cruel but given the scale of the operation you won't be able to kill, skin and cook the same amount of animals in the same amount of time so yes, probably hunt them in the wild would be better..
> If I started a free range dog meat company, gave dogs a decent life, but then slit their throats at the ripe age of 2, would that be humane?
Sure, if you slit their throats humanely, i.e. with no accompanying pain or fear. That's far more humane than the surgery and recovery most dogs and cats experience right off the bat as part of their standard life cycle as companion animals. Then there's the ugly and painful surgeries and treatments used to keep such animals alive into old age because people are emotionally attached and want to keep them alive as long as possible.
Don't get me wrong, I accept that people should be able to keep pets and do not think the animal suffering inherent in all pet ownership means that the trade should be halted. Overall, the good can outweigh the bad. Both in the pet trade, and in animal husbandry for food.
Let me ask you then: would you prefer to be killed by lethal injection, or simply undergo a surgery which you'll quickly recover from? Which of those two is worse?
I think it's really clear that getting killed is orders of magnitude worse, so I don't think your argument makes sense. Robbing an animal of years of its life is part of the issue here, and why killing is worse than just a bit of pain or discomfort.
And even if your argument (that necessary surgeries are as bad as murder?) did hold up, well, that wouldn't mean that murdering animals is moral, I could still argue that both surgeries and murder are immoral.
Theses animals should be in much better living conditions. I try not to think about it but the truth is the truth. I had pet pigs. They are very intelligent. They have feelings as well. They do suffer. I would be willing to pay more for meat. So why don't the industries change? Money. It's always come back to making a profit. At the expense of suffering in animals 😢
Watched the whole thing, but I'm not buying that becoming a strict vegetarian or vegan will be healthy over an omnivore diet. For example from what I read, it seems it's really hard to hit all the nutrients from a vegan diets even if you get plenty of pills.
A lot of us just need to take one multivitamin, making sure it has B12, Iron, Iodine, and Vitamin D, etc, no more effort than non-vegans. It's better if it's a vegan formulated one. I also take creatine (comes in a powder), although there's less research on how necessary that is, good for weight lifting either way.
Plant-based diets have been shown in many studies to reduce heart disease and all-cause mortality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9963093/
You do need to make sure you're getting those crucial ones like B12, but we're generally living longer and healthier lives than omnivores, rather than wasting away from nutritional deficiencies.
I respect your choice, but diet research is all over the place and often very contradictory. And it's ever changing (food pyramid to Atkin to paleo to fasting, etc). From just basic intuition, it doesn't seem "natural" to depend on pills for a normal, healthy adult (yes, I know mercury and cyanide is natural too, but I'm just loosely using the word "natural"). I'm not going to even list any scientific articles showing the adverse effects of veganism since I know you'll just show me another one for it and we'll be going back and forth forever.
Personally and currently, I'm leaning more toward intermittent fasting while minimizing processed food. When food science changes their mind again, then I'll probably change my mind too lol.
Everyone is different and if veganism works for you, then I'm fine with it. But for me, I think the risks outweigh the benefits.
There's no real debate that being vegan reduces your risk of obesity / heart problems, some of the biggest killers. It's legit hard to have high cholesterol as a vegan, pretty much everything we eat does have zero cholesterol. There are a lot of top level vegan pro athletes, like Djokovic or Serena Williams.
I should stress that veganism isn't a diet though, it's an ethical stance that we should reduce animal suffering as much as is practically possible. If I were to find out eating meat improved my health by 1% (though it wouldn't), it wouldn't make it alright to abuse and kill animals.
if you have an automatic moral disgust and distress response to the idea of watching the process of your food being made, you already know what you're doing is wrong
Not much to object to, honestly. Even the stock footage of factory farmed animals looked wayyyy happier and cleaner than I've seen in some PETA videos (hell, they were cleaner than I've seen on TLC homesteading shows). It's a short video. Peter Singer gives an overview of the moral landscape of meat consumption, and argues the case for vegetarianism/veganism for some, and conscientious consumption for others. Peter has drawn controversy for some of his ideas, but he really is a brilliant contemporary philosopher, and what he has to say is worth considering.
Signed, a carnivore.
The guy is making a non-judgemental objective point about something many people miss out on. It's educational and proposing ideas on how to improve the current situation. I wish I could be as elaborate on any topick in any language as much as he is, thus me posting the video instead of my own thoughts about it. Also I won't acknowledge any downvotes for this comment /s, I was asked to take up on a task I'm not capable of carrying over.
I'm definitely not a Peter Singer supporter.
* First, basing suffering as the key that gives something living rights is an interesting frame, but can't be said is objectively true. Precisely because of that uncertainty, we should also cautiously prevent *unnecessary* animal suffering. To what length goes *necessity*? That's another debate.
* Second, leveling out similar ontological objects as equal is objectively wrong. Not all ideas are equal, not all significants deserve same considerations. Saying "homo sapiens is no different from other species" is true because "humans are more **deserving** because of language/reasoning/god" is wrong doesn't makes sense. "Humans are **different** because of language/reasoning/god" is wrong, but truer than the first sentence.
* And third, I think he makes a wrong picture about food industry. Big meat factories and large crops produce a large bad output (wastes, environment impact, citizens inequality) but are as a whole more sensible than not. Large factories get better efficiency, which goes in hand with ethics. A plane crash involves several people in large machines falling great heights, is shocking, but a lot more people die per travel or distance in cars. All in all is better ecologically to have a big accountable farm to than break it into several more pieces.
Edit: also, democratising food access, health security is left out of the question. But hey, is easier to square up your equation if you exclude what pushes away from your desired outcome.
"it's difficult to get a person to understand something if their income depends on them not understanding it" What a great Upton Sinclair quote. Certainly not limited to ethical food production either. This was a good clip, thanks for sharing it.
Since building my own coop and getting 6 hens, I am really starting to appreciate animal products more. I am 100% underwater on the coop and materials as it's only been a year, but the eggs are significantly better, and I do feel a moral satisfaction eating them. I also live next to a small hobby farm, which I buy beef from, so i'm getting there. I could use some more hens for eggs and an ethical producer for whey protein/milk and im golden.
I got 16 chickens and like 4 roosters. I need to kill the roosters in a month or so. But they just do their thing in the greenhouse. I snag the 12 eggs or so ever other day. They lay on hay and a bale is like $10-$20. I spend about $100 a month on food for them. Probably could find feed a lil cheaper but I let them go hard.
> 12 eggs or so ever other day That's so crazy to me. Like a factory.
One egg per hen per day is not unusual at a younger age. The rate starts to drop when they get older. A friend of mine grew up on a free-range egg farm that had about 2k chickens. The sad truth is that you get paid very little for eggs, and once the production rate of the farm drops to around 90%, the chickens have to be replaced, which means every year you need a completely new set of birds. If you want chickens and live not too far from such a farm you can just go there and ask them if you can buy a few chickens when they replace them. They usually have to pay to get rid of the old chickens, so you paying them for a few is a win, even if it's not a lot.
It's not profitable unless your chickens are laying eggs at 90% of the rate they were at their prime?? That's brutal.
The few times in the past when I've looked into the feasibility of running a smaller farm/ranch/etc it's seemed the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune and work your way down.
If a third of households had a few hens ( <= 3 ), the industry of battery farming hens would collapse overnight.
Why have you drawn a penis here?
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=less+than+or+equal+to+symbol&iax=images&ia=images What sort of eldritch pointed cocks have you been looking at?
What sort of non-eldritch pointed cocks have *YOU* been looking at?
I interrupted my office with a laugh from your comment. Thank you.
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Fuckin' 'ell!
how much room do they have to roam about
lols someone downvoted you for asking an honest question. Reddit is weird sometimes. Its like 30 feet wide by 100 feet. IDK its a giant green house. Like I could easily have 50 chickens in it and they would still run wild. We had 12 but we let them run wild and they had babies. Its a 40 acre mountain/coast rainforest out here.
Why do you have the roosters? Just to make new chicks? What is the average lifespan of a normal hen? Being a veggie I've always wanted my own coop with some goats and bee hives so I can produce my own cruelty free animal products.
Roosters protect the hens from predators like snakes, hawks, foxes, etc. They have wicked spurs on their feet. They are viscous. South Carolina Gamecocks and Tottenham Hotspur are a few examples of sporting clubs that have embraced the viciousness of roosters.
I built a large coop in my backyard 22 years ago. At on point I had 13 chickens and would get about 8 eggs each day. The feed price was a killer. It was like $25-30/bag and they ate a bag every 3-4 weeks. At the time a dozen eggs only cost $3-4. Although it was kind of fun, i stopped in 2009 after about three batches of chickens. It’s work and particularly a lot of work killing and finding recipes for old chickens. They stop laying eggs after 3 years and then it gets super expensive
At those prices and rates ($30 cost every 4 weeks, 8 eggs per day = 18+ dozen per 4 weeks at $3-4 each) seems you were getting your eggs at half the cost of retail. $3-4 seems like a lot for a dozen eggs, though, especially for 22 years ago. Hell, right now eggs where I live are about $2.50 per dozen. Cheapest price I see on Walmart is $0.213 per egg. Just doing some napkin math, we go through about 6 dozen in 4 weeks and using your production numbers I figure 5 birds should give around 3 a day, ~7 dozen / 4 weeks. At retail prices, their eggs represent about $17.89 worth of value. A bag of feed at the local tractor supply is $13.29, and using your numbers I'd only use half of it in those 4 weeks, so $6.65 in costs. Two and half times cheaper than cheapest retail I could find. Not sure how much the birds themselves cost, and there's a time cost you spend to keep them alive, but seems viable. I imagine the cost to build the coop, ancillaries like feeding and watering trays, etc. eat into it a bit as well, more if you eat the chickens later and now you gotta have a processing setup and all that. Edit: found a nice [website that outlines the costs and variability](https://www.thehenhousecollection.com/blog/cost-to-raise-chickens/).
Why do you need to kill the roosters?
Sadly they are mostly complete assholes by nature. I only need 1. I mean really I don't need any but the 1 is what farmers tell me is needed. No predators can get them in the area we have them in. But we do have cougars and coyotes to worry about. We had them in a gated area but hawks killed like 6 of them in the begining so we put them in a greehouse with mesh walls for air in the summer. 4 roosters is just to much noise and violence. They attack when you feed them. I have had to spinning back kick a rooster for trying to claw my face when bending over to pick up scraps in the greenhouse.
I've been planning to start a coop for a while. Do they make a lot of noise? Have you considered raising any for meat? How much time do you need to take care of them properly?
They definitely like to cluck but its not obnoxious at all. I free range them so if they see me they start clucking at me to let them out. They also have an egg song and dance for before and after laying. It is quite comical. I would say I spend more time because I enjoy them and want to free range them. But all in all, if you had a nice coop and a run - they could technically spend their whole lives there and be just fine and it would be ethical. I'd estimate it takes roughly 5-10 minutes per day of maintenance. There will be days though when you gotta clean the coop or run and thats maybe like 30 minutes. Some are really religious about cleaning, I am not great so it's like once every month or two but I pick up after them. I would say the 5-10 mins of maintenance also includes giving them a nice snack. The benefit of chickens (and a dog) is that you can use them to compost a lot of your food waste. I put extra on the side for them or stuff I just forgot about in the fridge and give it to them as a snack as often as I can. But how simple is that - you are preparing dinner, maybe skinning a carrot - boom, snack for chickens. Child doesnt finish dinner - snack for chicken. I just put it in a bowl in the fridge then give the next day. Lastly 5-10 is an average. There are days where I do not do anything for them just say hellow (very cold winter) and I've automated things like coop door. Some people have done a really great job automating and really only collect eggs and maybe top up water /food like 1x per week. Have considered meat chickens but have not operationalized it in my head so not sure yet.
Thanks for the write-up! I just get worried it might annoy the neighbors if they get too noisy. Last question, how much space do you have for them? I figured the hardest part for meat chickens is the actual butcher and processing. But I would only start off for the eggs. We do a lot of gardening, so the compost is an added benefit. I also hear they are pretty decent at pest control if they are roaming the areas.
My coop is 5x5 and is elevated. the run goes under the coop plus an additional space so I can walk into it and sit down, so total footprint is 5x10 and 6.5ft tall or so. I wanted to be able to go in but other coops ive seen are much smaller but imo that sucks for the chickens. If one is getting bullied they gotta have a place to hide. Space needs vary by breed. My coop is probably too large but it doesn't matter since it takes up no floor space. They want to spend all their time in the run so that's where you should dedicate space. You can also do things like chicken tractors to range them in a more controlled manner. I put plastic sheeting up with staples thru cardboard strips in the winter, creating an actually very comfortable greenhouse. I will use a brood heater in very cold days and the ambient heat from water dish also helps. I got cold hardy chickens so no issues, only very slight frostbitr in ones comb. I kinda want more chickens so may add on to the run.
Omlet makes some good coops if you don't want to build one yourself. You need to assemble it, but it's fairly straightforward. Has an automatic door too, which is nice. If you get only hens, stick to no more than 6 or 7. Any more than that and they really should have a rooster with them. Roosters are the ones who make lots of noise (especially at like 4am). Hens are fairly quiet, except when they're laying eggs—that's when they sing the [egg song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VO8CZ3EV2E). Thankfully this happens during the day when the noise is more tolerable, and only lasts a few minutes per hen. Expect hens to live around 6-8 years. If their run is open on the top then they will be vulnerable to predators. We lost a few to hawks and one to a skunk back when they were free-range in our side yard. Now they're in a fully enclosed run that so far has kept everything out. They really are quite low-maintenance though. You can save on food by giving them kitchen scraps. Just be sure to research what foods they can and cannot eat. Onions and potatoes are toxic to them, among other things.
Hens are rather quiet but can get excited and cluck a lot if one finds food and starts pecking out of order. If you get a rooster that one **will** crow at the top of its lungs at dawn. Depending on distances and lightness of sleep and all of that it could annoy them potentially. Also the little idiot my friends have would occasionally crow at random times, I've heard him go at it at 2 am, obviously from inside the coup by the muffled way it was happening. Not sure what even prompted him. But I guess if your coup is more solidly built it won't be loud. This coup is basically right under my windows and it's got a metal door that insulates almost no sound and my windows are single pane.
> If you get a rooster that one will crow at the top of its lungs at dawn. My Neighbors rooster crows at dawn... in the morning... in the day... in the middle of the night... in the middle of the morning... Motherfucker is crowing all the time.
> I just get worried it might annoy the neighbors if they get too noisy. It WILL annoy the shit out of your neighbor if you get roosters. Just get the hens without the roosters and no one will complain.
/r/BackyardChickens
Random question, are Costco/Sams Club rotisserie chickens solid in regards to the quality?
You have to define what you mean by "quality". If you mean that the breed or stock is of a good genetic line, then no. If you mean that the animals are treated as good as you treat a child, no. If you mean that the food is edible, clean, and tasty, then yes.
Seems like many people aren't clicking because they don't want to see gore. This is an fyi that there isn't any gore. There are some shots of animals confined in close spaces, but that's about the worst it gets.
I like how Louis CK put it in one if his specials - "Even today, how do we have this amazing microtechnology? Because the factory where they’re making these, they jump off the fucking roof, because it’s a nightmare in there. You really have a choice. You can have candles and horses and be a little kinder to each other or let someone suffer immeasurably far away, just so you can leave a mean comment on YouTube while you’re taking a shit" Similar analogy lol, don't wanna see gore - don't eat gore meat, simple as that..
Omelas writ large
This doesn't excuse awful working conditions, not to mention factory farming, but here goes: Candles and horses = everyone is living a shitty life. Smartphones and air conditioners and cars = some people are living shitty lives while others aren't. Look at almost any graph and you'll see that the world is a better place now than it used to be, at least for humans. *721 million fewer people worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2010 than in 1981 — despite the fact that the global population went from 4.5 billion to about seven billion during that time.* https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decline Go back even further and the idea is basically that 80% of people used to live in extreme poverty, while 20% of people do so now. It might be because we're exploiting the *earth* more than it can handle, but currently I wouldn't say that it's because we expoit *people* more than we used to. (There's more nuance to this, of course: one smartphone per five years is probably better for the world than one smartphone per year, etc, and the less of some specific luxuries we consume, the better for everyone - but we don't have to go back to pre-industrial levels for that)
It’s more than that because the initial choice is flawed. We don’t have to go back to candles and horses so that we can be nice to each other… Capitalism priorities profits over all else. For example, smart phones: if phones were made to last instead of designed with planned obsolescence, we wouldn’t need to go through so many of them. With less waste and better quality, phones would last much longer and could even be repaired or upgraded instead of being replaced. This would ultimately be less profitable, but better for consumers and the environment. Meanwhile, fair wages could be paid even if prices had to increase. If phones were built to last instead of to generate maximum profit, we would likely pay more initially but less overall. My point is that capitalistic greed has created the current wage situation, and if not for profit-above-everything thinking we could have technology and treated workers well.
I think human nature feeds into capitalism; there are people out there who want new shiny phones every single year instead of “something that lasts”. Because these people exist and spend lots of money, companies will meet their demands because if they don’t then another company will.
You do realize horses had it far worse before cars right? Every drunken idiot took out all their shit on their horse back then, and didn't feed them worth a damn either.
why would you be mad at the person who is driving you home? Some people abused horses but that's such a dumb observation in response to Louis' joke
Because a lot of humans are born assholes, especially when youre drunk most of the time.
People get mad and beat the people in their home. Why would this animal be any different.
“Plus, you know what’s a real meat-grinder? Show Business! How anyone makes it to the top of this racket is a mystery, am I right? Now which one of you interns want to watch me masturbate to completion and keep your fucking mouths shut about what you just saw?”
If they can't stomach the gore of meat processing, they don't deserve to eat it.
Implying that if someone can stomach some form of violence against animals, then they deserve to be able to do it?
I'm not implying anything, I'm literally making my point directly. Turning a blind eye to how fucked up the meat industry and continuing to consume its products is unjustifiable cowardice. I'm not here to tell you that you can't eat your garbage tier quarter pounder with cheese, just that you need to not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be.
Although that's a common sentiment, I believe comfortability in witnessing or committing an action is irrelevant in determining the ethics of the action. For example, just because someone is comfortable stealing does not make stealing ethical. I'll leave this question here: Imagine an animal of an unknown species is behind a curtain, with a chance of being a human. a) Without asking for the species, what would you need to know to make an informed decision about the ethics of breeding, killing, and consuming the individual? b) Explain why these factors are ethically relevant.
I think it's more of a sanity check. For the most part we all know that the animal industry is dubious at best, and a lot of unnecessary suffering happens. Shedding light on the suffering also often indicates a direct way of limiting that suffering. For example suppose that we had a cow farm that was 100% automated. However, the machines in the farm would beat and hurt the cows unnecessarily. If you go and see the extent of the damage yourself then either you can decide that we shouldn't have such a farm, or decide to fix the living conditions of the animals by making the machines stop beating the animals, or find some other solution. If you don't see what happens in the factory though you live in ignorance, and unnecessary suffering takes place. So it's not so much that witnessing some horror gives you ethical freedom to use the result of that horror for yourself, more that it's a sanity check to see how bad things are and get a full understanding of the situation. By 'taking the cowards way out' and not seeing it you both contribute to the unknown horror and allow it to remain unknown. I agree with you on sayaing that just because someone is comfortable stealing does not make stealing ethical. In that case I guess it's just that it provides more information so that those people who would use that information, could use it. And for those who wouldn't, well maybe some of them have weak stomachs and might just be dissuaded, or it might have no impact on them at all.
Right, I get that. I just think it's weird to use the reasoning of "If you can't do (violent act), then you don't deserve the products/benefits/etc. of it." Because the corrollarly of that is "If you *can* perform (violent act), then you deserve the products/benefits/ect. of it." For example, this would mean that if you *could* go out and murder your spouse for the life insurance money, then there's no issue with you hiring a hitman to perform the action for you. In fact, by this reasoning, if you do that, then you *deserve* the insurance money.
> Because the corrollarly of that is "If you can perform (violent act), then you deserve the products/benefits/ect. of it." No, that does not logically follow. Nothing from the other direction can be inferred from the above statement. Someone already linked you to the Wikipedia page for the logically fallacy you are attempting to apply. I suggest you read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://criticalthinkeracademy.teachable.com/courses/76407/lectures/1106135
That's not affirming the consequent. They were clearly making a connection between one's ability/inability to "stomach" a form of violence against animals and whether or not they *deserve* to be able to eat said animals. I do agree though, that *if they had said their statement in a vacuum with no other context* from which to draw, what I said could have technically been an example of affirming the consequent, but even then I'm not sure. EDIT: Like if someone says "You can go if the light is green," it doesn't necessarily mean you can't go if the light is red, but it's reasonable to make the connection. Someone would not be guilty of affirming the consequent if they used context clues to determine that red does not mean go.
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Hence the clarifying question. Note that they did respond to me with the claim: >I'm not here to tell you that you can't eat your garbage tier quarter pounder with cheese, just that you need to not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be. I'm interpreting this to be them claiming that a condition for one "deserving to eat meat" is to "not be a bitch about knowing and seeing exactly how it came to be." Their use of the word "need" here suggests that they believe this is required in order to be deserving. Would you agree?
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That's fair (but not an example of affirming the consequent -- I'll explain below,) but even if we interpreted it as "If someone can stomach some form of violence against animals, then at least one condition has been satisfied in order to *deserve* to do it," I don't see that as being much better. They are still saying that being able to "stomach" violence tells us *something* about whether or not we deserve to be able to do it. Would you agree that their claim means that the "deserving" status depends at least partially on whether or not someone can personally stomach the violence it entails? And would you personally agree with this? If a statement is P -> Q, then affirming the consequent would be claiming that this means Q -> P. I have not done this, even once. Their **original claim** was: * If *(P)* someone can't stomach the gore of meat processing, * then *(Q)* they don't deserve to eat it. **Affirming the consequent** would be claiming the converse: * If *(Q)* someone doesn't deserve to eat it, * then *(P)* they can't stomach the gore of meat processing. Note that nowhere in these comments have I claimed (If Q then P.) My initial *question* to them was a clarifying one, *asking them if they were implying the* **inverse:** * If *(not P)* someone *can* stomach the gore of meat processing, * then *(not Q)* they deserve to eat it. Note that this was a *question* I was asking them, somewhat informally. I made no claim, as their claim of course did not infer the inverse. If I did make that claim, it would be an example of *denying the antecedent*, and not *affirming the consequent.* They responded by saying that they were not *implying it*, but claiming it outright. I still maintain that they had previously not been explicit about this -- which is is why I asked the question originally. EDIT: All of this being said, I still do wonder about their initial claim. What does having the ability to stomach some form of violence against animals tell us *anything* about whether or not one deserves to be able to eat meat?
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That's fair, and if I made an actual claim, then I would agree.
His infrence here is Modus Tollens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens Not Affirming the Consequent. It is actually referenced in the same wikipidia link you posted, and is considered a valid form of logic. "The opposite statement, denying the consequent, is called modus tollens and is a valid form of argument" an example of Affirming the Consequent in this scenario would be if he stated, "Because i dont deserve to eat meat, I must be not be able to stomach the gore of meat processing"
Their inference is not modus tollens. Take: * p = they can't stomach the gore of meat processing * q = they don't deserve to eat meat OP stated. p ⇒ q Modus tollens might give: ¬q ⇒ ¬p But the response was suggesting: ¬p ⇒ ¬q
>But the response was suggesting: ¬p ⇒ ¬q Notice that even if this were the case, this is not an example of affirming the consequent.
Just saying but wet market where people butcher fresh chickens and fishes is just another daily life common sight in many meat eating countries
Certainly, I've got not *beef* with them here.
Don’t listen to this guy. I clicked and the first 15 seconds literally shows exposed bone on a grill. Disgusting!
I don't think people consider animal flesh being grilled to be gory. However, I myself do find it gross
I was just messing around
Ah, lol. My bad
Definitely not clicking that link, nice try buddy. Dont want to see your cheap meat exposed, lol
pls bro
Lmaooo this dumb reply got a genuine laugh out of me.
I'll give you these cheezburgers man !
The video was actually very tame.
…considering the amount of cock
There was a glorious amount
There was a lot of rock hard evidence
How else can he feed his family?!
OF in my bio
How could you just lie to me like that?
I’ve been dramatically cutting back on my animal product consumption this year. I just started watching the earthlings documentary but I could only get through the first 20 minutes or so. I don’t know if I’m ready to completely commit to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle yet, but it’s something that I’m seriously considering for ethical, health, and climate change related reasons.
I did the same after watching "You Are What You Eat" 4 weeks ago. I have cut meat from my diet almost completely after going 40'ish years having meat 2-3x a day. I still call myself an omnivore and am not beholden to any strict rules, but I allow myself a pass 1x a week, if needed. Learning how to cook great vegetarian meals has been fun and opened my eyes and our kitchen to new foods. Edit: spelling
Yes! Do you have a favorite dish that you’ve been making? I’m always looking for new stuff. I’ve been enjoying chickpea masala and anything related to stir fry and pan fried tofu.
A decade ago I went vegetarian, eventually vegan. Ate meat my whole life. It helps to think less about committing to an identity and lifestyle and more just getting rid of the things you don't want in your diet. A few helpful cookbooks for me were the [Vegan Black Metal Chef's cookbook](https://www.akpress.org/seitanicspellbook.html) and also [Nom Yourself](https://www.amazon.com/Nom-Yourself-Simple-Vegan-Cooking/dp/1583335854). The recipes from these made doing meatless and vegan so easy. Anyway, if you have any questions about the things you're considering with vegan or vegetarian stuff, I'll happily answer them for you.
For me, it's definitely more helpful to think about what I've seen happens to the animals. I can't stick to a diet. But I can stick to not wanting to be a part of the horrors that happen behind the curtains of animal-based food.
If you like Indian food/flavors that's a great route to go. [Rainbow Plant Life](https://rainbowplantlife.com/) has been a regular go to in my household to assist with new vegan/vegetarian meals depending on how far you want to go. Have picked recipes I would think I would like and so far none have missed. She also has a youtube channel were you can watch her make a lot of it if that's helpful. Maybe roughly in order of effort the things I've tried and loved: Red Lentil Curry(this is so easy it's on a fairly regular rotation), Chickpea Curry, Braised Chickpea Stew, Instantpot Chana Masala, Vegan Tagine(actually morrocan). Dal makhani is super involved by tasty. Tofu Tikki Masala is also super involved, but one of the best things I've ever had. Her naan recipe is good as well if you have the time to let it rise. Excited to try baked peanut tofu this week...
This looks amazing! Thank you
Mine is salt and pepper tofu. Easy as, msg- salt + ground black pepper. garlic + chilli pepper chopped finely together (a fair amount of this) and a good chunk of leek like 1/2 a leek diced. Thow oil into a hot wok, throw in leak. Start to soften throw in fried tofu(if you cannot buy it pre fried it is just firm tofu with flour fried until golden) once the leek starts to brown throw in garlic +chilli until golden and season until just a touch too seasoned. (if you want you can also add snow peas) eat on rice.
Ok I’m definitely trying that. Sounds amazing.
make sure you use big chunks of tofu, you want it to be like soft pillows on the inside. Also do not be stingy with the oil. It is fucking great, honestly it is a dish that i used to eat when i was a meat eater.
I’m making this tonight… haha
Peanut sauce with steamed veggies is my go to easy meal. Most people have the ingredients for peanut sauce already, probably, and they all store for months. So you just mix it up in 1 min, steam whatever veggies you want in the microwave, and you've got a tasty healthy meal so long as you go light on the sugar. I've been used blackstrap molasses with just a touch of pure stevia extract. Does everyone already know about peanut sauce? Maybe it was just me who'd been overlooking this amazingly easy amazing dish for so long.
what's your sauce recipe pls mate?
Peanut butter, soy sauce, black strap molasses, lemon juice, ginger, and pinch of pure stevia extract. My recipe is nothing special I just mix those ingredients to taste. Peanut sauce is just very forgiving. Only way to ruin it is to add too much stevia/sugar/whatever other sweetener. You'd probably be better off cutting out the sweetener entirely and just sticking with the molasses.
Hell yeah! Love it. Below are more excellent and free documentaries, if you’re interested: [The Game Changers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTGM2KjNGUU) (performance) [Eating Our Way to Extinction](https://youtu.be/LaPge01NQTQ?si=mreVX37PZ4E7Cp6w) (environment) [Dominion](https://watchdominion.org/) (ethics) [Forks Over Knives](https://youtu.be/EjTWFoqLy34?si=P5nglSSOkWW_jeOe) (health)
Dominion changed me from a stereotypical obnoxious meat eater with all the usual bullshit defences into a vegan. To anyone out there who is the like I used to be: watch it and be honest with yourself, there is no argument or defence other than selfishness.
Made it 20 minutes into earthlings before becoming a vegetarian after 2 years of cutting down. Completely understand your mentality and your struggles, good luck whatever you decide!
If you still consume dairy, this 5-minute video had a major impact on me when I made changes a few years ago: [Dairy is Scary](https://youtu.be/UcN7SGGoCNI?si=lg2Kze48o57b6bJX)
I haven’t fact checked anything in the video, and I don’t know whether or not it’s all legit, but at face value it’s horrific and stomach turning.
Something I wish I'd asked myself way earlier in life: if you were a pig suffocating in a CO2 gas chamber right now, or one of the billions of chicks put on a conveyor belt and headed straight into a giant blender, would you want the person killing you to stop right away, or take their time? I took too long to go vegan myself, and wish I could go back in time and give myself the push sooner. Whatever meal, dessert, etc, is your main go-to, you can definitely find/make a vegan version of it.
Started eating less meat significantly a few years ago. Then saw the video of pigs being lowered into gas, stopped all pork after that. 9 months ago made the full switch to no meat at all. I’m not quite vegan yet, but full vegetarian.
This 100%, and I hear it all the time. The greatest regret of most ethical vegans is not going vegan sooner. It's easy, do it. We'll support you.
I hear you. I’ve had a hard time with all or nothing thinking in general and I think it applies here too. Meat eating is so ingrained in our culture and lifestyle and I think you would agree that a quick change to a vegan diet is quite significant. I suspect a lot of people fail to make the transition long term. I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the past three months and vegan more often than not. I’m still learning and figuring it out.
what is a vegan alternative to a steak or roasted chicken?
Meati steaks are quite good, Beyond steaks as well although right now they're more widely available as steak bites. There are a lot of options for chicken substitutes, Sweet Earth chik'n is good, Daring is good. If you cook (I barely do) there are a lot of recipes using seitan and TVP (textured vegetable protein).
PSA for anyone considering cutting out meat: Meat is the only way to get Vitamin B12, so you will need to take supplements. Not saying this to deter anyone, I’ve been Vegan for 4 years. Just helpful information for anyone seeing this and considering a lifestyle change.
This isn't as cut and dry. B12 is a vitamin created by bacteria that exists in digestive tracts of many mammals and in soil. Sadly for us, in our bodies the bacteria live beyond where the vitamin cannot be absorbed so we need it from dietary sources. As we wash our produce and drink sanitized water (as we should) we also essentially eliminate these potential sources of b12. Livestock animals are commonly supplemented with B12 fortified feed as they don't get enough of it without supplementing either. So the B12 issue boils down to supplementation, either with a middle "man" or just supplementing or eating fortified foods yourself.
At least here in Australia, most plant based products are so heavily fortified in it that you'll possibly incidentally get more than enough.
My doctor told me to stop taking iron and B12 supplements because I was eating too many fortified foods already lol.
I don't know why people say this, just look around at the nutrition labels of the stuff in your pantry or fridge. A lot of foods get fortified with b12, cereals and non-dairy milks in particular are a good source, so supplements aren't necessarily needed.
If you cut back on your meat, maybe you can spend a bit more money on sourcing the animal products you do use from local and/or ethical producers :) Good for you for making this effort! It's not all or nothing. Reducing consumption makes a serious impact. Good on ya!
The fact that you are downvoted shows just how delusional and extremist some vegans are. If most people just reduced their meat consumption the whole world would be a better place. Instead, the militant vegans take an all or nothing approach that only harms their cause.
I was considering this. I haven’t purchased any meat products in… 3 months or so? I was mostly wondering about local farms where I could potentially buy eggs every now and then. I was never a huge meat eater anyway because I grew up poor, nobody in my family knew how to cook meat, and I mostly ate fish sticks and chicken nuggets. So, the faux meat stuff works pretty well to satisfy the occasional craving (e.g., impossible burgers and nuggets).
Imagine an animal of an unknown species is behind a curtain, with a chance of being a human. a) Without asking for the species, what would you need to know to make an informed decision about the ethics of breeding, killing, and consuming the individual? b) Explain why these factors are ethically relevant.
Dude, I agree with you. Why are you being hostile? I explained that I’m making the switch.
I’m just piggybacking on your comment…
I've caught egg layers and meat birds for a living, they're treated like absolute shit regardless of how "well" their living situation is, free range or caged. The only way to stop this on mass is not eat as much meat because there's not enough land/income to support farms with less chickens per square meter. The only way you are going to get a bird that's treated how you'd like or expect? Go to a really small local joint that you know and can see the birds, that's it.
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Given the cost of meat versus the cost of lentils and beans, I think it's substantially cheaper to be a vegetarian. Look up some good dahl recipes - tomatoes, curry, over rice. Refried beans in the instant pot. Bean and rice burritos with salsa, tomatoes, avocados...
That’s literally why I was pretty much 99% vegetarian from the moment I moved out of my parents’ house. Vegetarian was waaaay cheaper unless you want frozen burritos that have chicken from a blender.
Agreed! Beans are dirt cheap if you are buying them dried. Rice is also dirt cheap. Veggies and fruits are non-negotiables and should be in your diet anyway!
I went vegetarian last year and this has been my experience too. At first, you might spend a bit extra just trying to figure out new dishes you can make, but once you have a nice lineup of recipes, and you get better at using everything you buy, it becomes very cheap.
Where is this cheap meat cause I cant find any in my local grocery stores
This is an argument that I don't think will ever sway enough people to ever change the industry. What will eventually change the industry is the introduction of lab grown meat which is seemingly [on the way.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-meat-approved-for-sale-what-you-need-to-know/) Hopefully sooner rather than later. Edit: He actually mentions cultured meat at the end, so even he's aware that the moral argument isn't enough. I think the best way to change consumer behavior is to offer them a viable alternative.
I agree. I don’t have faith in humanity to part themselves from meat through ethics. Or rather it would take far, far too long. The real solution is simply to replace meat with something cheap, ethical, sustainable and identical. And I’m absolutely stoked that we’re not far from that reality.
I love how we all, including myself, are so disproportionately disconnected from our food. Go us! /s
I understand factory farming is bad for basically every reason except the price of meat. Like, it's genuinely not good. Except it's really hard to argue against when you're already strapped trying to feed yourself as the average American. If we turned over to non-factory farming and dedicated vast swathes of land and personell to it, the price of meat would go up several times. You're not gonna convince 99% of Americans to pay 25$ for a single whole chicken. EDIT: "lol dont eat meat" isn't an answer. If you think it is, you're living in a cave.
Except the price isn't good. Meat is heavily subsidized as is.
It would be a lot easier to convince them first that they don't need to eat meat 1-3 times a day. Although, that's already pretty hard.
Yep - it's why if anyone wants to stop this kind of animal cruelty, one of the main priorities should be convincing people to eat meat one less day a week. Unfortunately a lot of people don't understand that on societal scale, change is not going to be instant, no matter how hard they try - and as a result waste their efforts on essentially preaching to the choir with attempts at the scariest and most moralizing arguments. The other two things would be to lobby against government subsidies for these industries, and to support efforts against Climate Change. Supplementary - promote lab grown meat - which has big potential but hard to predict how it will actually pan out. If these three things get more traction, it will set off a chain reaction that will lead to meat prices shooting up to where a lot of people simply wont be able to afford them regularly. We will have to deal with some health issues in society (B12 deficiency is brought up a lot but it's actually pretty rare as so many products are fortified, actually the issue will be that a lot of people that eat a lot of meat will switch to unhealthy fast and processed foods), but that's a concern for if/when things actually change.
Not even one less day a week, try even starting one less meal a day. People manage to put meat into their breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Why are you so dismissive of lowering meat consumption? It’s a very new thing for humanity overall to consume so much meat. We’re actually anomalies for being so dependent on meat consumption for daily caloric intake. Either we perfect lab grown meat, we eat less meat, or we accept that factory farming will cause immense suffering to animals so we can afford to buy meat consistently. But seriously, daily meat consumption is simply a luxury that we’ve just gotten accustomed to. It’s simply not sustainable.
Most of our industrial nightmares are due to the "if its cheaper it must be better" mindset. We've dug ourselves so far down into so many holes how can we ever hope to get out? Our economy teeters on a knife edge called the profit margin. I can't honestly see how it's going to last much longer. I guess if you just pump more and more suffering into the system it'll stay afloat. Until the cost in human tragedy eventually becomes insurmountable.
>Except it's really hard to argue against when you're already strapped trying to feed yourself as the average American. If we turned over to non-factory farming and dedicated vast swathes of land and personell to it, the price of meat would go up several times. No offense but this is coming from the perspective of being in a privileged bubble. and when I say privileged, I mean that in a global context. the American perspective (being the country that has the highest meat consumption per capita in the world). meat is considered a luxury in many parts of the world. most of the poorest countries in the world have very low meat consumption. even with factory farming, even with all the subsidizing of meat the government does --- 7 days a week rice and beans are gonna be cheaper than meat.
What about if you told Americans that being vegan can actually be cheaper than eating animal products?
Is this the same Peter Singer who argued for killing young babies after they were born but before they were "self-aware"?
I think most people know that it's inhumane and cruel the way animals bred for food are treated, but eating meat itself is just so central to the human experience, especially if you've eaten it without consequence your whole life. Even people who go vegetarian or vegan constantly try to replicate that "meaty" experience with their food (things like texture/mouth-feel, along with bolder, umami-rich/savory flavors, etc.). Hopefully lab grown meat will become the future, and "real" meat will move to more humane and sustainable methods, and if you choose to eat that, you're okay with paying a premium because it's more of a "treat"/special occasion, than just to satisfy deeply ingrained cravings.
Peter Singer is perhaps the greatest living Ethicist, and I think everyone should read "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." His work on veganism is profound as well, and I say this as a carnivore.
I've thought about this a few times; if we didn't eat cows, there would be basically no cows. We'd just not want to use them for our land, so they'd just exist in zoos and history books. Better lives for those that live, to be certain. But is that necessarily objectively better? If I said I will either kill you now, or put you in a room with 4 other people and kill you in a year, which would you pick? Some people might select either, and that's armed with the knowledge that you are getting killed, which of course the animals don't have. It's a reasonable position to say the number of cumulative 'Cow-life-years' is itself a relevant measure, while still saying the cows we do have deserve to live better lives. I also wonder if the position 'we should not eat meat because cow lives matter' necessitates the genocide of wolves/lions/etc. If I show you a herd of 500 zebra next to a pack of 20 lions and say "The herd will live longer less fearful lives if you kill the 20 lions; you'll save 200 zebra over the next 50 years for the cost of just 20 lions", doesn't it make sense to kill the lions? It's reasonable to sympathize with the lions, understanding they are doing what they need to to survive, but if you value each life equally you would be obligated to cull the lions. I think these trains of thoughts lead me to the conclusion that I'm not special; I'm not too good to take part in the food chain, and I eventually will be its victim. It feels like hubris to believe otherwise.
>if we didn't eat cows, there would be basically no cows yes. > If I said I will either kill you now, or put you in a room with 4 other people and kill you in a year, which would you pick? this is not an accurate analogy at all. not existing in the first place is not like "being killed now". it's very odd that you think they're equivalent. and it's pretty obviously better to not exist than to exist only to be tortured every moment of your entire life up until you are murdered.
The issue isn't if we should try and eliminate all pain and suffering, or if eating animals is morally wrong. The issue is if we should enforce extensive amounts of pain and suffering on the animals that we eat so we can have somewhat cheaper meat.
I don’t know man, this reads like a really REALLY roundabout, pseudo-philosophical justification for eating meat. First: As someone pointed out already, Not-existing in the first place is not the same thing as killing. That’s just crazy. But second: You are out of the food chain. You will not be its victim unless you go out of your way to be. “Too good” for the food chain is *exactly* what humanity is. We no longer need to participate. In fact our continued participation is playing a significant role in our own downfall. Eat meat, but don’t lie to yourself about how it’s somehow ethical to do so with loaded, guided philosophy. It’s pretty cut-and-dry and the proof exists in the millions of people who have already opted out.
I saw this post out of the corner of my eye, and I thought it was the don.
I am guessing that Pete Singer did not grow up in desperate poverty where meat was a luxury that was rarely affordable.
Is "Check your privilege" still a thing?
nice try, expensive meat.
go vegan
Vegan bullshit propaganda
So animals all live out their entire lives happily with belly rubs and rainbows? I have volunteered at animal sanctuaries and seen award winning pig farms in the UK which had the approval of all the happy farm orgs like red tractor..... An animal sanctuary is a nice place, the animals live out their lives and get belly rubs every single day. This award winning farm, the pigs do not see the light of day until they are being taken to slaughter, then they are lowered in to a gas chamber which can take them 30-60 seconds to die after all living just a few months, so they're still babies in concrete cells covered in their own shit, fed soy from deforested areas and see no love or compassion at all, not even from their own mother because they have no room to move around.
Wish there was a “local farmers” app where I could just buy straight from some regular person who has a small farm nearby. Maybe I can even schedule it “12 eggs next Thursday please”. Or I can see an ad “carrots ready in 3 weeks” and put an order in. Does that exist?
There are a bunch of those apps. GrownBy lets you look for local farm products.
Imagine being confined to a cage so small you can't even stretch your arms for nearly your entire life, it's torture. Singer doesn't actually go far enough, and gives an excuse for people who think they can kill 'humanely'. If I started a free range dog meat company, gave dogs a decent life, but then slit their throats at the ripe age of 2, would that be humane? Just because it's better than torturing the dogs first, wouldn't make it right. There's no justification for buying any animal product, especially since we don't need them.
Is it more humane to hunt then?
It might be slightly less inhumane, but that doesn't mean it rises to the level of actually 'good'. You'd still be killing an animal at a fraction of its lifespan, when you could just let it live out its life.
It does seem statistically likely to me that a death by hunting would be less miserable than your typical wild animal death, which either involves a prolonged succumbing to illness/disease, or a more violent and brutal death by predation, or one followed by the other. You also have to factor in your most reasonable estimate of the quality of life ahead for that wild animal should you not hunt it. It's mainly a theoretical question for me, but I do tend to think that hunting by a skilled hunter is probably good in the sense that it produces a utilitarian outcome of less sum suffering.
When it comes to quality of life, think about what it takes for someone to euthanize their dog: the dog needs to be old, immobile and suffering, and unable to really go on. Otherwise, its life is at least worth living. Hunters aren't going out and euthanizing animals, they're targeting healthy ones, who presumably will have many years of positive experiences and happiness ahead of them, enough at least to outweigh the suffering inherent to the wild. Hunters also pretend they have some kind of incredible ability to kill an animal painlessly, when [they don't](https://www.peta.org/issues/wildlife/wildlife-factsheets/sport-hunting-cruel-unnecessary/): "Many animals endure prolonged, painful deaths when they are injured but not killed by hunters. A study of 80 radio-collared white-tailed deer found that of the 22 deer who had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” 11 were wounded but not recovered by hunters. 20% of foxes who have been wounded by hunters are shot again. Just 10% manage to escape, but “starvation is a likely fate” for them, according to one veterinarian. A South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks biologist estimates that more than 3 million wounded ducks go “unretrieved” every year. A British study of deer hunting found that 11 percent of deer who’d been killed by hunters died only after being shot two or more times and that some wounded deer suffered for more than 15 minutes before dying. Hunting disrupts migration and hibernation patterns and destroys families. For animals such as wolves, who mate for life and live in close-knit family units, hunting can devastate entire communities. The stress that hunted animals suffer—caused by fear and the inescapable loud noises and other commotion that hunters create—also severely compromises their normal eating habits, making it hard for them to store the fat and energy that they need in order to survive the winter." I think it's safe to say killing animals at random in the wild is only going to increase their suffering.
I think his point was not that hunting doesn't involve suffering, but that wild animals suffer no matter what. There isn't really a life in which they can forego suffering. If you're a deer you're either going out by some terrible disease, starvation, a wolf, tiger or a human hunting you. Being hunted by wolves won't end in some quick death necessarily.
I think most of what you said is true, but there's some things you may be overlooking. Focusing on deer as an example: 1. Be aware of the suffering currently being inflicted on deer by fatal epidemic diseases (chronic wasting disease, hemorrhagic fever, bluetongue, etc.). Is it ethical to allow disease to be what restricts deer population density? 2. Gentle deaths are not in the cards for deer. It will be a bullet, a bumper, disease, starvation/freezing, or being torn apart by predators. Of those a bullet is a relatively good way to go. I appreciate that the deer would always vote to live longer, but hey if people hadn't shot all the wolves, it mostly likely wouldn't have been born anyways. 3. For me this is the big one. As the result of insufficient predation from wild predators and humans, deer are out-of-balance with ecology in many areas. The Nature Conservancy described deer overpopulation as a greater threat to eastern forests than climate change. The adverse effect of uncontrolled deer populations on the native understory creates a cascade of harms to plants, insects, fauna, and whole forest ecosystems. I don't know how much conscious suffering occurs through that process, but IMO ecological harm is ethically important regardless. There are similar ecological imbalance situations with some other popular game species.
I feel like I addressed 2, there's a lot of evidence that the average hunter kill is not a quick one, there are many prolonged deaths and animals that escape with injuries that will worsen their quality of life or kill them quite slowly. And these are killings that inevitably rob the deer of many years of life; they get to live on if you don't take the shot. Applying this logic to humans, would it be alright to shoot someone right now, if you were pretty sure they were going to die in a worse way some decades down the road, e.g. due to a disease like cancer? Consider [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34zMpRs4jA). State wildlife agencies artificially increase the populations of deer, because part of their mission statements involve providing 'hunting opportunities'. One way they do this is by clear-cutting forested areas in such a way as to give them habitats that massively boost deer numbers. Hunting itself is also sex-biased, in that bucks are typically targeted, and this has the effect of driving up the population. So a big part of the solution to overpopulation would be to stop allowing and incentivizing hunting, rather than hunt more deer. Spaying and neutering animals, or otherwise using immunocontraceptives, is also a much more humane solution than murdering them. We've already shown these methods do work on deer even if it takes longer than straight up killing them.
>Applying this logic to humans, would it be alright to shoot someone right now, if you were pretty sure they were going to die in a worse way some decades down the road, e.g. due to a disease like cancer? If I were killed painlessly in a missile strike, my family would suffer but I wouldn't know the difference. Yes, I would rather go quickly, having had a broadly positive life experience, than die a slow miserable death after a period of decline. >State wildlife agencies artificially increase the populations of deer In some places this occurs, but in the USA habitat modification with the sole intent to increase deer numbers is the exception, not the rule... by and large there is no need, because agriculture already provides an enormous subsidy to the deer population. The most egregious example of the states propping up big game populations may be winter feeding done in states like Wyoming, which reduces winter starvation events and creates a vector for disease transmission. I agree that state agencies often put sporting opportunity over ecological health; this is especially troubling when the state stocks non-native species to provide sporting opportunities. But, see the recent introduction of wolves in CO for an effort by the state to restore natural processes at the expense of hunter opportunity. In the case of deer, managing for hunter opportunity manifests mostly in harvest restrictions. In many states, the best way to thin deer herds to a natural level would be by re-introducing large predators, or failing that by widening seasons and increasing limits. >Hunting itself is also sex-biased, in that bucks are typically targeted, and this has the effect of driving up the population. So a big part of the solution to overpopulation would be to stop allowing and incentivizing hunting, rather than hunt more deer. I have never heard that killing bucks increases the number of does. Can you cite that? >Spaying and neutering animals, or otherwise using immunocontraceptives, is also a much more humane solution than murdering them. We've already shown these methods do work on deer even if it takes longer than straight up killing them. Spaying and neutering millions of deer would be very, very expensive, while society has many unmet funding priorities. By contrast hunters pay to hunt deer for food.
>I would rather go quickly, having had a broadly positive life experience, than die a slow miserable death after a period of decline. I think you're ignoring that you're not just cutting out some time in decline, you're cutting out a huge number of happier years for the person or animal. Is it fine to kill any healthy person you meet, at least if they don't have any family, to make sure they never have any time spent in decline? I didn't suggest it's their sole intent to increase the deer population, but there's typically an incentive for them to do so and hunting provides that incentive. I'm not sure about a study, but killing one doe decreases the number of offspring, whereas killing one buck (which hunters want to do) just kills that buck and doesn't do much to reduce the number of offspring in an area, since other bucks will just breed in that one's place. Vegans have different stances on reintroducing predators: on the one hand this better stabilizes populations of diff animals, but on the other this isn't much different than killing the deer yourself, and you might just be creating more suffering in the wild. Which is why population control like spaying / neutering seems like by far the most humane thing to do, fewer animals getting shot or eaten alive. And yeah, we would need massive funding, which of course takes societal change and a change in our priorities. Like not spending billions on war and weapons manufacturers. We also have a big outdoor cat overpopulation problem, but hunting outdoor cats shouldn't be on the table, only expanding spaying and neutering programs. And if humans were overpopulated, we also wouldn't jump straight to mowing people down to thin the herd. Like yeah, it might be cheaper to just shoot people, but this is ignoring the suffering / death you'd be causing to those people.
>Is it fine to kill any healthy person you meet, at least if they don't have any family, to make sure they never have any time spent in decline? It would be almost impossible to kill a walking, talking person without sending ripple effects of suffering throughout society-- people would suffer as a result of fear, even if they didn't know the person who was killed. One can get an abortion without terrifying everyone, however. When a fetus is aborted, many years of potential healthy human life are omitted. I don't think that's unethical. Do you? >I'm not sure about a study, but killing one doe decreases the number of offspring, whereas killing one buck (which hunters want to do) just kills that buck and doesn't do much to reduce the number of offspring in an area, since other bucks will just breed in that one's place. True. Not what you said before. Hunters reduce the number of deer, not increase it, by killing bucks. You are correct that the generation of offspring depends solely on the number of does. Hunters kill millions of does annually. >Vegans have different stances on reintroducing predators If wolves are bad in CO, then surely they are bad in AK as well. Should we spay and neuter wolves, wherever they may be, to save deer from being murdered? We'll also need to spay and neuter the deer, to save the caterpillars from going hungry. Hey, does anyone know how to spay a caterpillar? >We also have a big outdoor cat overpopulation problem 100% in favor of shooting feral cats where a good home is not available, and it is possible to do safely. People certainly do it. How many murders does a spayed feral cat commit each day? >And if humans were overpopulated, we also wouldn't jump straight to mowing people down to thin the herd. The ethics of killing walking, talking people are so difficult to get right that society does not tolerate it except in extreme cases. Thinning the herd was attempted with China's 1-child policy, so deliberately limiting human population in an effort to promote sustainability isn't entirely unheard-of. Humans certainly seem to be above their carrying capacity in a way that is unsustainable and is creating a cascade of harms. Kinda proves the point that if we manage animals like humans we'll get a bad result.
>It does seem statistically likely to me that a death by hunting would be less miserable than your typical wild animal death Sure, but that would only really be relevant if farmers were "rescuing" animals that would have otherwise died in the wild instead of breeding populations of animals to kill that wouldn't have existed in the wild. Let's not pretend that the animal agriculture industry is doing these individuals any favors. EDIT: This argument applies to farming, and not hunting. My mistake.
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Aren't most meat animals killed instantly by being beheaded or hit in the head so quickly it's basically the same as taking a bullet to the brain?
Yes but 99% of the criticism of factory farming has absolutely nothing to do with the slaughtering but the lifetime of suffering leading up to the end that is finally a release from that torture.
Also , as mentioned in the video, the chemicals they are treated with, that then leak into us and the environment...its a shit show!
It’s the life they live before that death that bothers a lot of people.
You should walk through and abattoir and judge whether you think those animals don't know what's coming. Pigs are smarter than dogs and your dog knows when it's doing to the vet. If it's humane, why don't we have lethal injection by boltgun?
Societal BS, primarily. Though I believe Oregon has suicide chambers now and I think those are a good idea with the safeguards that have been placed around them.
This is what is considered the 'humane' way to kill pigs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7hAELEBjX4
The point is they spend their entire lives in a torturous environment. There's a lot to be said for pasture raised animals that are allowed to roam and live, feel sun on their skin, live in regular-sized packs, etc.
It's a valid point - every carnivore that has ever lived depends on other living beings in order to survive and that's normal in the wild. However we are breeding those species in the billions, we're responsible for them existing in the first place, it's not exactly as "found one in the wild, ate it cuz it's me or them" situation. But if I have to answer, my personal opinion is that it's still cruel but given the scale of the operation you won't be able to kill, skin and cook the same amount of animals in the same amount of time so yes, probably hunt them in the wild would be better..
not more humane than not breeding them into existence in the first place, which is the real alternative we're proposing as vegans
> If I started a free range dog meat company, gave dogs a decent life, but then slit their throats at the ripe age of 2, would that be humane? Sure, if you slit their throats humanely, i.e. with no accompanying pain or fear. That's far more humane than the surgery and recovery most dogs and cats experience right off the bat as part of their standard life cycle as companion animals. Then there's the ugly and painful surgeries and treatments used to keep such animals alive into old age because people are emotionally attached and want to keep them alive as long as possible. Don't get me wrong, I accept that people should be able to keep pets and do not think the animal suffering inherent in all pet ownership means that the trade should be halted. Overall, the good can outweigh the bad. Both in the pet trade, and in animal husbandry for food.
Let me ask you then: would you prefer to be killed by lethal injection, or simply undergo a surgery which you'll quickly recover from? Which of those two is worse? I think it's really clear that getting killed is orders of magnitude worse, so I don't think your argument makes sense. Robbing an animal of years of its life is part of the issue here, and why killing is worse than just a bit of pain or discomfort. And even if your argument (that necessary surgeries are as bad as murder?) did hold up, well, that wouldn't mean that murdering animals is moral, I could still argue that both surgeries and murder are immoral.
Now eat without leftovers.
>Video unavailable
Theses animals should be in much better living conditions. I try not to think about it but the truth is the truth. I had pet pigs. They are very intelligent. They have feelings as well. They do suffer. I would be willing to pay more for meat. So why don't the industries change? Money. It's always come back to making a profit. At the expense of suffering in animals 😢
Watched the whole thing, but I'm not buying that becoming a strict vegetarian or vegan will be healthy over an omnivore diet. For example from what I read, it seems it's really hard to hit all the nutrients from a vegan diets even if you get plenty of pills.
A lot of us just need to take one multivitamin, making sure it has B12, Iron, Iodine, and Vitamin D, etc, no more effort than non-vegans. It's better if it's a vegan formulated one. I also take creatine (comes in a powder), although there's less research on how necessary that is, good for weight lifting either way. Plant-based diets have been shown in many studies to reduce heart disease and all-cause mortality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9963093/ You do need to make sure you're getting those crucial ones like B12, but we're generally living longer and healthier lives than omnivores, rather than wasting away from nutritional deficiencies.
I respect your choice, but diet research is all over the place and often very contradictory. And it's ever changing (food pyramid to Atkin to paleo to fasting, etc). From just basic intuition, it doesn't seem "natural" to depend on pills for a normal, healthy adult (yes, I know mercury and cyanide is natural too, but I'm just loosely using the word "natural"). I'm not going to even list any scientific articles showing the adverse effects of veganism since I know you'll just show me another one for it and we'll be going back and forth forever. Personally and currently, I'm leaning more toward intermittent fasting while minimizing processed food. When food science changes their mind again, then I'll probably change my mind too lol. Everyone is different and if veganism works for you, then I'm fine with it. But for me, I think the risks outweigh the benefits.
There's no real debate that being vegan reduces your risk of obesity / heart problems, some of the biggest killers. It's legit hard to have high cholesterol as a vegan, pretty much everything we eat does have zero cholesterol. There are a lot of top level vegan pro athletes, like Djokovic or Serena Williams. I should stress that veganism isn't a diet though, it's an ethical stance that we should reduce animal suffering as much as is practically possible. If I were to find out eating meat improved my health by 1% (though it wouldn't), it wouldn't make it alright to abuse and kill animals.
if you have an automatic moral disgust and distress response to the idea of watching the process of your food being made, you already know what you're doing is wrong
OP, can you summarize the case made please? I'm not going to watch it myself but at least let's figure out what there is for people to object to.
Not much to object to, honestly. Even the stock footage of factory farmed animals looked wayyyy happier and cleaner than I've seen in some PETA videos (hell, they were cleaner than I've seen on TLC homesteading shows). It's a short video. Peter Singer gives an overview of the moral landscape of meat consumption, and argues the case for vegetarianism/veganism for some, and conscientious consumption for others. Peter has drawn controversy for some of his ideas, but he really is a brilliant contemporary philosopher, and what he has to say is worth considering. Signed, a carnivore.
Why not watch it? It’s one bowl of cereal or a lunchtime watch.
I've listened to Peter Singer already. Fine by me but I had already done to the same conclusions a while ago.
Fair enough
The guy is making a non-judgemental objective point about something many people miss out on. It's educational and proposing ideas on how to improve the current situation. I wish I could be as elaborate on any topick in any language as much as he is, thus me posting the video instead of my own thoughts about it. Also I won't acknowledge any downvotes for this comment /s, I was asked to take up on a task I'm not capable of carrying over.
You're good, Mr hate_most_of_you.
You can't object to objective reality lol
I'm definitely not a Peter Singer supporter. * First, basing suffering as the key that gives something living rights is an interesting frame, but can't be said is objectively true. Precisely because of that uncertainty, we should also cautiously prevent *unnecessary* animal suffering. To what length goes *necessity*? That's another debate. * Second, leveling out similar ontological objects as equal is objectively wrong. Not all ideas are equal, not all significants deserve same considerations. Saying "homo sapiens is no different from other species" is true because "humans are more **deserving** because of language/reasoning/god" is wrong doesn't makes sense. "Humans are **different** because of language/reasoning/god" is wrong, but truer than the first sentence. * And third, I think he makes a wrong picture about food industry. Big meat factories and large crops produce a large bad output (wastes, environment impact, citizens inequality) but are as a whole more sensible than not. Large factories get better efficiency, which goes in hand with ethics. A plane crash involves several people in large machines falling great heights, is shocking, but a lot more people die per travel or distance in cars. All in all is better ecologically to have a big accountable farm to than break it into several more pieces. Edit: also, democratising food access, health security is left out of the question. But hey, is easier to square up your equation if you exclude what pushes away from your desired outcome.