Depends on your morals.
Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or dairy, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).
So you believe plants or fungi don’t suffer when you eat them?
There is indeed a very small scientific community that has some (very preliminary) research done on a “nervous system” in plants. The wood-wide-web is part of those hypothesis. It is very intriguing, but reading the interviews with these scientists and their publications didn’t leave me with the impression that plants feel emotions, or that they think, are cognitive or learn from pain. Do you have scientific data to proof otherwise?
Of course not. But nobody has evidence that cows think or have emotions beyond physical sensations either.
How can anyone be so data blind? These things are studied by actual biologists.
Don’t engage with them. It’s a troll account.
Hush, so am I.
Have you ever actually seen a cow in person townie?
If it’s possible and you’re capable to do it, then I think it’s a moral choice.
If it’s a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don’t think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.
Is it morally wrong to ask a bait question on a public forum?
It’s bait if it makes me angry
I guess you’re not going to bait stickly into examining the consequences their choices have on others who are powerless to protect themselves from those consequences. He’s too clever for that kind of bait.
I don’t understand wht you mean.
But I’m not baiting anyone. I wanted to see people’s personal opinions and get some insight from their arguments.
Depends on who you ask and the background of your question.
Yes
It is undeniable in current day the horrors industrial farming creates and inflicts on millions of sentient beings to sustain a business that was originally fomented in order to supply food for a post-war world where several countries were rendered with little or no usable land for farming.
The traditional model of farming, where animals were an integral part of a production chain that kept the land itself alive and reduced waste to a minimum was destroyed to give place to a highly destructive model where lowest cost, hight profit margins and speed of production is absolute.
In this process, thousands, if not millions, of landrace animals, along with heirloom seed varieties, went extinct and were lost. Petroleum products and by-products entered the daily life, from food, to clothing, to essentially anything imaginable. Not because those were better but because it was cheaper and protected interests.
Knowing this and still leaning heavily on an animal protein based diet with no concern for its toll on our collective ecosystem and the suffering it creates is nothing short of regrettable.
No
Meat is cheap. Artificially cheap but still. Processed foods cheaper; with meat in it, even more.
Many people throughout the world do not have access to the means to have a fully exclusive or at least heavily based vegetable diet, either because of the environment they live in or simply because they lack the means to afford it. Many people in developing countries still depend on cattle to provide food and raw materials, if not on hunting, trapping and fishing. Even more people, in rich, developed countries, don’t have the money to afford a proper diet, even less a vegetable based one.
These people are as worthy of living as any other. It can not be taken against them wanting to survive.
Maybe
Some people aren’t aware how much their personal decision can have a meaningful impact.
Others don’t have the time or hability to extract from vegetables meals that can truly satisfy them and don’t want to resort to ultraprocessed foods. Others are simply too deep into a cultural mindset that blocks them from experimenting.
It is just another type of barrier. There is a degree of lack of interest and effort in this stage but we can’t (shouldn’t) hold against people their personal circumstances, which adds poorly when it comes to changing minds, habits and cultures.
Take your pick.
I generally agree with you, however your argument does add some subjectivity to the maybe and no sections. I’d add that while not every situation can accommodate a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, in 2026 the vast majority of people have the capability to change to a non-meat diet without any detriment to their health or lifestyle besides social ostracism of unaccepting peers depending on where they live.
My entire argument is subjective, like any other, as it stems from my personal views, thoughts and experiences.
Yeah I think so probably. The animal product industry seems pretty messed up. Very un-cool what we do to them. Inefficient too but that’s another argument.
Is it not morally wrong to drink the milk of an animal that was forcibly impregnated and whose child was murdered for said milk? Why stop at vegetarianism?
artifical insemination doesnt need to happen for milk production
It’s not clear here if you think that is the only problem with rape, child theft, torture, and murder. It’s not even clear whether you understand that a child has to be created, neglected, and abused for a mother’s milk to be sold.
- how is it rape
- how is it torture
- child theft?
- murder?
You cannot even accept “torture”? Really. Well then that clarifies your original comment.
they should be killed swiftly and painlessly
non sequitur
you’re clearly speaking from a place of ignorance, about what you want to be true. you should learn more about where your food actually comes from and what externalities are being paid by others because of your choices. right now you’re just brainwashing yourself so that you don’t have to emotionally cope with your cruelty and violence.
He thinks cows are people.
I think cattle are moral individuals that have the capacity to be wronged. That is all. That doesn’t require that they are human-like people with full human-like capacities and rights. Just because a human is worth more than a cow doesn’t mean a cow is worthless and you can do whatever you want to her, doesn’t mean that a cow cannot suffer every bit as harshly as you can.
Giving different words to the crimes we commit against animals is a way of insulating yourself from the crimes you commit, like how calling cow flesh “beef” insulates you from the horror and cruelty you commit.
Coming in quite hot and using a lot of assumptions, my friend
Is there a serious problem with the standard agricultural practices of large dairy farms of systematic forced pregnancy, either destruction of the calf or adding to the birth cycle once old enough, and other layers of mistreatment that should neither be condoned or continued? Absolutely and we should all strive to get the whole process abolished.
That said, most cow breeds overproduce milk for their calfs needs and it is unhealthy for them to stay full at all times. Milking them is a kindness and until we can undo eons of selective breeding, needs must.
I have an endless list of problems with the agricultural world and its practices but the reality is if we all went pure vegan right now, more animals would suffer in preventable ways. Tapering off the demands for the products of big agriculture, especially by forcing the market towards small farms treating the animals with kindness, and working towards reversing the changes we’ve caused in the breeds that make them more product than animal is the best route to end exploitation of animals.
If you care about animals, shaming people does fuck all. Educating them without assuming malice goes a whole lot farther towards your point of view. Also recognizing that literal millennia of selective breeding will not be undone in a single generation and the process of reversing is slow and fraught with its own challenges that need to be addressed.
Tldr: educate yourself beyond the rhetoric and hanlons razor. Idealism is great for concept but will fail on the reality when put into practice
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No.
Yeah, the most ethical diet is plant based.
Why do you ask it?
explain how you developed this idea it is more ethical. based on what exactly?
Depends on your morals. For mine it is.
Morals are subjective, I don’t consider myself the arbiter of truth and I also reject theistic positive claims stating otherwise such as objective morals or free will. Personally I know I can survive without eating animals, so I’d rather not be indirectly involved in the killing of other animals where it is reasonably possible and I don’t consider humans more important/superior to any other animals, generally.
I think you could get a lot of people to even admit to valuing very old trees over a lot of people too so even some plants are worth leaving alone, according to some of us. Like Red Wood giants in Cali, for example. All the land cleared of wildlife to grow food for billions of humans is disturbing stuff at least to me as well. The planet is actually kinda… small. I’ve come to realise. I fully reject humanity’s unearned superiority complex.
I acknowledge it’s hard/impossible to be absolute in the vegetarian ideal given all the ramifications of industrial overpopulation and just casually participating in the society I was born into. Best I can do on this suffering planet, that I never consented to being born to live temporarily upon pointlessly, is to minimize (elimination is unrealistic) the suffering my life inflicts on others.
In other words, I don’t owe anyone jack shit, not even Mommy Dearest. Yet I still stand by this moral position. Although I’d argue this is just who I am and always was. The justications put into words and labels applied came later. You’ll notice I didn’t condemn meat eating in this comment and that’s quite deliberate. You are not me. I just explain my position when asked and it’s up to others to adopt it or not.
We are social animals. We all owe each other our entire survival.
Anything that offends you gets the thought terminating edgy label applied, I see you bud. Username checks out.
“I don’t owe anyone jack shit, not even Mommy Dearest,” is a decidedly edgelord thing to say. Other parts of what you were saying are not trying to be edgy, and I think I get that you were trying to create some kind of rhetorical contrast, but that’s just objectively an edgelord comment. I edited my comment to tone it down, but not before you saw it, so I guess I have to stand by that.
Yes
Being vegetarian or omnivorous isn’t very different, morally, as producing milk still requires killing calves. I think the better comparison would be with veganism
producing milk still requires killing calves
It certainly is not a requirement. They don’t have to use the males born to make veal.
Yes, it is an economic requirement. They can’t compete with beef cattle for meat production, keeping them alive just makes the milk more expensive than the farmer down the road who murders his calves can sell it for.
Sell them to beef ranchers. Make even more money and meat. 🤦♂️
It’s a difficult question, so I hope some people who have interesting things to say about it will turn up here. All I can contribute is this link: Ancient Arguments For Vegetarianism
“eels that come when called”?
No.
Sincerely, A lifelong vegetarian.
Vegetarians are the worst kind of carnist. Would take so little, still don’t give a shit.
