Oolon Colluphid

Hi Chicken Girl
Excellent reasons, with which all reasonable persons should not disagree.
True, and a good enough reason in principle. I would just point out that this is mostly a result of modern farming methods. Wild meat, eg buffalo, rabbit, venison and boar, are not so full of saturated fat. Saturated fat is mainly laid down when an animal is sedentary: its energy is not so easily released, it’s an energy store, and animals in the wild generally do not have a cushy enough lifestyle for that to happen.
What, morally (since this is a value judgement), is the cause of this preferential treatment of one group of life over another? IOW, it’s a good enough reason if you feel that way. Just as long as you realise it is not entirely rational. (And note that the implication from this is that you would eat, say, humanely killed wild rabbit.)

It’s also worth noting that I agree, maltreating animals is morally repugnant to me too. I’d much rather eat something that has lived more naturally and had whatever passes for a fulfilling life to it. However, the caveat is that farmed animals wouldn’t be alive at all if it weren’t for us wanting to eat them. Nevertheless I feel that if we are to manipulate nature in such a way (ie being alive ourselves and eating stuff), we should at least treat our food organisms with some respect.

Since we are acting as ‘god’, deciding what lives and dies, it behoves us to do somewhat better than the alleged ‘real’ god and look after what we have made. (Which tends to happen anyway: the best meat comes from healthy, well-nourished, parasite-free animals.)
Fine. Your choice and all that. My concern is that, because carrots don’t exhibit what we humans interpret as suffering, vegetarians have no qualms about chopping them up. I’m not saying that they are suffering of course . Simply that vegetarians treat one group preferentially over another.
I certainly wouldn’t say that. Your vegetarianism doesn’t ‘interfere’ with anything. My quarrel is not with the sensible vegetarians like yourself, but rather the ones who attempt to score moral points, by coming on all sanctimonious about how much better they are as people because they don’t like harming living things. Nasssty meat-eaterses! We hates them! They eats the preciousss animalses! These people are racists, and don’t even realise it.

Cheers, DT

Oxymoron

This is going to sound so lame, but I guess I deserve it! I am not veggie, though my wife has been for over 20 years. I would really like to be veggie, and the vast majority of meals we eat are, but... I just can't bring myself to give up chicken. I freely admit that the case for being veggie from dietary and moral arguments is near-overwhelming. Unfortunately Mother Nature just made chickens too damn tasty

And that is the most salient point of all: all the dietary argument pro carnivore (well, omnivore at least) are red herrings (mmm... herring). We eat meat not because we must, but because we can and we like it. Every other argument is a strawman or just pure bullshit. I therefore sit uncomfortably with my meat-eating, like a school bully with a conscience. I shudder to think of the vast production-line systems we have constructed with the express purpose of needlessly killing our fellow sentient beings because we "feel like it". Ugh.

Feather

I eat eggs and drink milk products (milk, cheese, and so forth).

Not out of any concern for the environment or morality, mind you. I mentioned it on another veghead thread. The reason boils down to the fact that I was getting progressively more intolerant to eating animal flesh (i.e. I'd start becoming nauseated to the point where I'd vomit, I'd get diarrhea, and so forth after any meal wherein I consumed flesh). So I stopped eating meat one day and have been perfectly fine ever since.

Somebody mentioned they weight lift and were concerned about protein intake: I use protein supplements (e.g. protein 95 shake powder, protein bars &c.) but honestly with all the fake meat products out there it's hardly necessary.

Oolon Colluphid

Hi integral domain
No, what you mean is, it is more reasonable to draw a line between them, because of other factors.
So because they are more obviously sensate, they get preferential treatment? How much ‘sense of being alive’ has an earthworm, or a sponge, or a mussel? Please don’t go quasi-mystical on us here. You do realise that plants respond to stimuli too, yeah? They lack a nervous system, and so have to do it mainly by growth rather than muscle contraction, but they have hormones, and react to many of the same things that simple animals do: light, gravity, pH and so on.

And perhaps you could point out where the dividing line actually is between animals and plants?

Get into the conciousness debate by all means if you wish. It is a separate issue from one organism’s relative evolutionary status to another. All living things are equal in the sight of natural selection.
‘Feel pain’ is a very emotive phrase. We do not know this. What animals are capable of is sensing harmful / damaging stimuli, and behaving accordingly. To feel pain, one has to be ‘aware’ -- presumably, self-aware. While this is a fertile area of research, most (if not all, which I’m inclined to think may be the case) animal behaviour does not require such awareness, merely an appropriate response to the stimulus. Programming by genes and learning is sufficient to explain most behaviour. There is a good chance that it is we concious humans who overlay our own very real perceptions of pain and suffering onto organisms that ‘feel’ no such thing, and are just acting in ways that look to us like they are feeling. We can recognise these ‘symptoms’ because they are the origins of our own. It does not mean that they perceive it in the same way -- that they perceive anything at all. Coming over all anthropomorphic is no argument against eating animals. Is a slug ‘in pain’ if I put salt on it? Is a half-swatted fly ‘suffering’? (And hey, how many vegetarians do no more than go ‘shoo!’ at flies, or are bothered about the bacteria they kill with their toothpase?)

But let’s leave that moot. Since we do not know what animals feel, it would be safest to avoid unnecessary (possible) suffering. But all your reasoning actually argues for is keeping food animals in healthy, well-nourished and as far as possible stress-free conditions, and killing them humanely before eating them. I agree with all those.
Value judgements. Fine, if that’s what you believe. As long as you realise that they are not based on any certain rational empirical basis, that this is biased against huge swathes of living things, and you do not try to impose this view on others.
Bingo! My point exactly. But it is speciesist to judge one as a morally superior choice.
Hmmm. Yeah right. Most of the time? No carrots or potatoes for you then. We are simply taking advantage of plants’ ‘vegetative’ propagation properties. So we could -- humanely -- cut off salamander legs for food, since they can grow another one? Fine with me. I expect they taste of chicken.
But with only one exception I know of, everything is going to die. We are, by your reasoning, okay to eat elderly animals. Well fair enough, it happens all the time in Nature. You are still playing god with what lives or dies, and when.
I thought I had made it clear. To repeat: it is because everything that is alive today has been equally successful at getting to be here, and all living things are related. It is just a matter of degree of relationship, and as with all drawing of lines on sliding scales, saying this can be killed but that may not is a value call on the part of humans, not a fact of nature.
Come on in to E/C some time...
Oh, ho ho. That whistling sound was my point flying right over your head. The point is the exact opposite. It is that everything is closely related -- on a cosmic scale in fact, very closely related.

I’m intrigued as to how you think evolutionary theory has anything to do with justifications for rape and slavery. Evolution is not a justification for anything. It is the way the world is.

My evolution-based conclusion is this: deciding what may or may not be eaten is drawing an artificial line on nature. The ‘standard’ position of the not-edible line is around humans. ‘Moral vegetarians’ draw the line further out, around (some -- it varies of course) animals. I simply say that, in light of evolutionary knowledge, it is not rational to exclude fish, or ‘shellfish’, or even plants from this protection. The dividing line is illusory, one of our own making. If the dictum is ‘do not kill or severely harm living things for food’, then there is no rational reason not to extend this same courtesy to plants. Conversely, because we do in fact have no choice but to kill for food, there is no rational reason why this might not include animals. The proviso is that animals may require more care to do it nicely.

Those arguing from the ‘it’s immoral’ standpoint are speciesist, they just do not realise it. The problem I have with this is the moral high ground that is often taken by such people: the ‘I’m a better person than you because I don’t eat animals’ attitude. They are still killers, maiming and dismembering, boiling, frying and baking their way through countless other living organisms (emotive language used advisedly), exploiting them for their own benefit. And the justification is... what? Simply that these things are ‘sufficiently different’ from us. It is the logic of ‘moral vegetarians’ that would justify slavery, not mine.

All this death for our benefit is, of course, how it has to be. But there is no moral high ground to be taken by drawing a line here rather than there.

Cheers, DT

Oxymoron

Wake me up when there are any new arguments to further this debate

Oolon Colluphid

Hi Oxymoron
And the reason we like it is because we have been designed over millions of years by natural selection to like it. The fact that we can get by without meat -- though still by exploiting other living things -- is a tribute to our versatility.

Let me be clear: eat meat if you want, don’t if you don’t. But it is perfectly natural for humans to like it, and it is only ‘immoral’ to those who are overly anthropomorphic (‘ahh, cute little piggy-wiggies, how can you eat them?!’) and underly (? ) cognisant of the nature of living things -- those who arbitrarily decide where their morals start and finish without realising that they are being arbitrary.
Depends on what you call ‘needlessly’. Food is food, and it all involves killing and maiming other organisms. But I agree that animals should be well cared for, because their inability to suffer is less certain than with plants. The meat will be better for it too.
That, as I’ve said, is rather debatable. But anyway, beware of feeling disproportionate affection for one group of organisms over another, just because they are more like us than others. Spare a thought for a cabbage? Perhaps we should. A field of cabbages has just as much ‘right’ to continue living as a field of beef cattle. They are both alive because we want them to be; they die when we say so for food. We are related to both, and the difference is a matter of degree.

I suspect that lurking beneath this line of vegetarian thinking is something like the creationist insistence on ‘kinds’. When we were separately created, everything else was (literally) fair game. Now that evolution is (mostly -- see the E/C forum ) accepted, though largely not understood, we feel more kinship towards other animals. Yet plants are somehow still a ‘different kind’. They are not ‘us’, they are ‘different’... and so can be treated however we like.

The point is that it is the vegetarians who want to extend the thou-shalt-not-be-eaten ruling to other organisms. But where they do draw the subsequent line is no more rational -- no more ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’ to other living things -- than where it was before.
So if you don’t feel like it, don’t eat it. It’s entirely up to each individual. I simply will have no truck with anthropomorphic sentimentality or sanctimonious moralising. (Not that I’m accusing anyone here of that. It’s the supercilious prostelytisers I can’t stand.)

Cheers, DT

Oolon Colluphid

Horseshit, old pal. I freely admit that those are most of the reasons. You are clearly not understanding my point. I thought it was quite simple; clearly not simple enough.

My argument in fact is that we ought to be just as concerned about plants as animals. The very reason that they are nutritious is that they are related to us, and that relationship is merely a matter of degree. There is no sensible distinction to draw -- for it is drawing a line on a sliding scale -- whereby one group should be protected and the other not. If we care for animals, we ought to care for plants too. What’s with this ludicrous kingdomism?

Yet, we have to eat. Okay then: on what moral grounds do you feel justified in eating plants?

Oh, I do apologise for being so unoriginal. I’d not realised that my own freshly minted (like lamb ) thoughts were some old roasted chesnut (that’s an embryonic tree, btw). Since my attempt to wake you up to the realities of the living world has failed, pray continue in your supercilious anthropomorphic slumber.

TTFN, DT

Oxymoron

Howdy.

Maybe there is some evolutionary advantage to sentimentality? Young animals look cute because they pull some of the tricks that make opposite sexes attract (big eyes in proportion to their body, for example) to reduce their chances of being eaten. So I wouldn't be so quick to write people off for being sentimental, it's just as legitimate on an evolutionary canvas as carnivorism.

Moralisers... well, as long as they aren't the sort of hypocrites that would lob a petrol bomb, I think it is important that some kind of a "control valve" exists - an opposite point of view - that stops society getting too far up its own meat-eating ass. The 24/7/52 needless mass slaughter of billions of sentient beings is something worth getting upset about (as opposed to, oh, insisting you sell groceries in pounds and ounces). Especially when the animals (and so indirectly the consumer) are treated appalingly, by and large.

Oolon Colluphid

Can’t say as I disagree with you on these points (and apologise for returning in kind what I perceived to be the tone of your previous post). I’ve stated repeatedly why I think the line between what we should and shouldn’t eat is arbitrary, and its positioning in one place no more rational than in any other, so I won’t rehash it again . I’m all for diversity of opinions... provided they are rational opinions, not swayed by emotional appeals (ie the sentimentality I referred to).

Cheers, DT

The AntiChris

Hi DT
Are you really suggesting that empathic feelings for sentient animals is an indication of ignorance of evolution?

Chris