Forums > Social Discussion > Vegetarianism.... Plants have feelings too

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PsyriSILVER Member
artisan
1,576 posts
Location: Berkshire, UK


Posted:
I would just like to mention out of general irritation that some veggie friends give me. They always ask how can I have a clean conscience because I eat meat? Uusally giving me a long lasting lecture also about how much healthier it is. I have no rpoblem with the healthy part. But I would like to inform you that plants have feelings too. If you have come across kirlian photography (aura photography) you can see strands coming from them. Well we know plants are alive of course but what about other tests that have been undergone? Plants react to the atmosphere around them eg music, smells, people talking.

Albeit they are a different form of life I just wish some veggies would stop taking the moral highground because I like meat.

All I can say is I appreciate every morsel of food that passes through my lips and I wonder where it came from and how that piece of food lived.

Views people?

Heres some linkage to show I aint a complete raving loony

linky link

Oh and if there are any fruitarians about who can give me a kick up the bum then go ahead.... I respect that you try not to harm anything to get your grub.

_Aimée_SILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
4,172 posts
Location: Hastings, United Kingdom


Posted:
To be perfectly honest I don't like it when people forward the 'plants have feelings' argumant put to me by meat eaters, as generally its said to be antagonistic.

I respect what other people choose to eat, and dont lecture them on it, so I expect the same amount of respect for my own choices.

Yes they are a life form, but the pain felt by animals it hardly on par with the 'pain' a flower feels when its picked.

jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
I'm going to have to call you a complete raving loony, sorry. wink

The kirlian stuff is considered dubious for a number of scientific reasons, but I'll stick to the simpler philosphical points about this to avoid anouther blazing row.

As I've mention before, there is absolutely no way anyone can ever know what the internal subjective state of a thing is. Mabey plants think and feel, mabey they don't, mabey rocks can. You simply can't ever truely know definitively.

Even if they did feel, you cannot know the details of it's senstations. Mabey sticking a fork into a brussel sprout gives it a veg-gasm, you simply cannot even know.

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: 87wt2gxq7


 Written by: jeff(fake)

As I've mention before, there is absolutely no way anyone can ever know what the internal subjective state of a thing is. Mabey plants think and feel, mabey they don't, mabey rocks can. You simply can't ever truely know definitively.



Yeah sure, but you can make informed guesses based on past observation and inference, especially when you contextualise it in a self-consistent theory.

And c'mon, if you're going to say you can't ever know the subjective state of something, some smart-asre is going to turn around and say aha, but what can you know about anything exept your own subjective state? Descarte's demon and all that.


From a philosophical point of view that's correct. We infer feelings and thoughts on humans because we are human and think and feel and so it's a logical deduction, but one we can never prove. Likewise we might infer similar feelings on dogs or chimps or dolphins because of their similarities. But once you get to plants or fungi (why does noone care about fungi feelings? frown), extending that branch of reasoning becomes absurd.

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


MynciBRONZE Member
Macaque of all trades
8,738 posts
Location: wombling free..., United Kingdom


Posted:
I'm not even gonna start about vegatarianism, Yes it's viable, but the importance of meat is how we got to where we are today, appart from the dietary benefits to meat the socail structure of humans was also built around the hunt.
Humans don't NEED to eat meat, but then again neither do a lot of carnivourous creatures, I watched ray mears track, kill, dress, gut and eat his own deer the other night and there were a lot of interesting social motives behind the hunt.
Plants are "alive" the act of eating it "kills" the plant the argument is all about awareness, so tranquelize the animals before butchering and the argument is moot

A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
I think the best comment I've ever heard on the topic of plant awareness was in repsonse to the question:

"If tree could scream, would we cut them down?"

"Well...if they did it all the time, I think we all would"

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
Did someone say something about smartarses and philosophy...

ok... go on then wink

 Written by: Jeff

we might infer similar feelings on dogs or chimps or dolphins because of their similarities. But once you get to plants or fungi (why does noone care about fungi feelings? ), extending that branch of reasoning becomes absurd.



At what exact point does this become absurd?

This raises a massive problem when you cannot prove anything but have to rely entirely on a series of educated guesses.

A dog may remind you of yourself, so you prescribe it similar feelings and emotions to you - but can you say the same thing about a prawn, an oyster or a grasshopper.

Anthropological studies have shown even homogenizing human feelings and emotions is deeply problematic, they often differ greatly according to the results of specific cultural practices.

Resultantly drawing absolute lines upon blurred boundaries is very difficult.

A second philosophical bone of contention would be: why should resemblance to humanity be the logic applied to a creatures capacity to feel? Because we are the pinnacle of Gods creation? While this was used as a philosophical argument until the 20th Century it tends to hold less weight now.


On a side note... The best argument for not eating meat that I know of is the amount of productive land it takes to rear cattle, and the extent to which old growth forests are being cleared to support the west's love of cheap imported meat. Nothing to do with subjective arguments about the respective feelings of oysters and olives, everything to do with demonstrable facts.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


_Clare_BRONZE Member
Still wiggling
5,967 posts
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK)


Posted:
**** smile ********
EDITED_BY: _Clare_ (1170258949)

Getting to the other side smile


The Tea FairySILVER Member
old hand
853 posts
Location: Behind you...


Posted:
What about the really simple organisms with simple, or absent, nervous systems? (shrimps, insects, crabs etc)

I understand where Dream is coming from, where do we draw the line? (yay for anthropology!! biggrin )

Idolized by Aurinoko

Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind....

Bob Dylan


The Tea FairySILVER Member
old hand
853 posts
Location: Behind you...


Posted:
And what about coral? Isn't coral somewhere in between a plant and an animal?

Idolized by Aurinoko

Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind....

Bob Dylan


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: The Tea Fairy



What about the really simple organisms with simple, or absent, nervous systems? (shrimps, insects, crabs etc)



Actually, all those things have a fairly complex nervous system, but I see where you're going.



 Written by: The tea fairy

where do we draw the line?



An immortal question. People generally have a great deal of trouble with spectrums. When does a foetus become entitled to human rights? When does a person with a brain damage lose them? The answer can only ever be based on value judgements, and not objective measures, which makes many people uncomfortable and provokes irrational reasoning. But just because there is no point where you can say a foetus becomes a person, doesn't mean that a fertilised egg is a person.



Likewise it's clear that humans can experience pain, and likely that many other vertebrates can exerience it in a meaningful way as well. We suspect cephalopods can too, so they are sometimes afforded a limited degree of protection from cruelty. At what stage can we say that something is too dim to meaningfully experience pain? It's essentially arbitrary, but that doesn't mean that everything can experience pain.



And, of course, what we call animals or plants is essentially just an arbitrary label to particular clades of the tree of life.

 Written by: The tea fairy

And what about coral? Isn't coral somewhere in between a plant and an animal?



Go go gadget zoology knowledge!



Coral is an animal, a member of the Cnidarian phylumm, like jelly fish. I think it has nerves, but no centralised brain.

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: 87wt2gxq7


IFAIK no animal is without some kind of nervous system.


*cough*

Just being a jerk now. ubbangel

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


BirgitBRONZE Member
had her carpal tunnel surgery already thanks v much
4,145 posts
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland (UK)


Posted:
sponges are cool. You can take 2 of different colours and pass them through sieves, and they will reassemble with sponge bits of their own colour!

completely off-topic, sorry...

I read about a vegan couple eating roadkill a while ago... so I suppose to them it was not "can it experience pain?", but "does it suffer pain because of us wanting to eat it", and since it didn't, they ate it.

"vices are like genitals - most are ugly to behold, and yet we find that our own are dear to us."
(G.W. Dahlquist)

Owner of Dragosani's left half


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
I've been waiting for the correct thread to appear to post this song in. I was originally going to do a video to it but...meh. shrug

It is by a rapper called Immortal Technique and contains naughty words. Its on my website: Clicky clicky

StoutBRONZE Member
Pooh-Bah
1,872 posts
Location: Canada


Posted:
That's one thing I love about Hop, I usually learn something every time I come here. For instance, I'd never heard of a fruitarian before, so I went a-googling and came up with This lovely website that appears to be telling me that I'm somehow compromised in my role as a human being by not following their lifestyle. Maybe they're right, maybe my urge to punch the author of that website does come from my carnivorous diet, maybe I should have an imported, out of season apple and just chill out.

but in the theme of upsetting plants by eating them, do fruitarians eat only local ( fresh and preserved ) fruit and save the seeds for re planting later ? The reason I'm asking is I'm curious as to how the trees that produced that fruit in the first place might react to the thoughts that their " babies" might be denied a chance of living a full, rooted life as they fulfill their destiny to grow just that much closer to the sun and Mother Nature.

Don't seeds deserve life too ? Somebody has to speak up for the unborn generation of future trees, especially in this day and age of impending disaster due to global warming, frutarians might just be murdering our future saviours.

Frutarians would do well to get off their soapboxes ( fruitboxes? ) and convert to the only true "moral" diet, which is scavenging for things already dead. In the fall, the leaves from apple trees make an excellent salad, and might be supplemented with some of the kelp that's washed up on the beach in the last storm and there's another dead sea lion, about 500 pounds worth, rotting down there too..that's meat though, and may make the person who consumes it spiritually/intellectually inept, like the website says.

Remember, every time you spit a seed into the compost, somewhere, a tree weeps with anguish. frown

Hummm..for some reason, the Google toolbar spellchecker doesn't recognize the word fruitarian, and offers the word fruiterers as an option

jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: 87wt2gxq7


 Written by: jeff(fake)


*cough*




Oh yeah, forgot about them. Who chows down on delicious sponge then?



*cough*

I've crossed the line from jerk to asshat.

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
 Written by: The Tea Fairy


What about the really simple organisms with simple, or absent, nervous systems? (shrimps, insects, crabs etc)

I understand where Dream is coming from, where do we draw the line? (yay for anthropology!! biggrin )



It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants smile

Futhermore, even if plants were capable of suffering in anything the way an animal is, vegetarianism would still be more compassionate than meat eating because-

animal production requires plant deaths (for animal feed) and, the amount of plants that have to die to feed a human on meat is considerably (around x 10 I believe) more than the number of plants that have to die to feed the human in a vegatarian way.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


BirgitBRONZE Member
had her carpal tunnel surgery already thanks v much
4,145 posts
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland (UK)


Posted:
 Written by: 87wt2gxq7


Wait a minute... did my housemate tell you that?!




Nah, it was my zoology prof. Though he would've been a nice source for useless knowledge. He knew a lot about pissing off bees, too.

And for stout:

https://www.living-foods.com/articles/ethical.html

 Written by: that website there


Conventional ethical vegan, code name HX, notes that eating vegetables seems to be 'violent' as it requires killing innocent vegetables. HX thinks that eating fruit does not involve killing, hence is preferable. Thus HX thinks that fruitarianism is the ultimate diet.

(...)

Further, by questioning consumption of vegetables, HX appears to be considering fruitarianism in its most extreme form - 100% fruit, no veggies, and presumably no seeds either, as they are life forms as well.

"vices are like genitals - most are ugly to behold, and yet we find that our own are dear to us."
(G.W. Dahlquist)

Owner of Dragosani's left half


StoutBRONZE Member
Pooh-Bah
1,872 posts
Location: Canada


Posted:
Well you' can't say that the website I posted isn't lacking in dramatic appeal, however the living-foods website does have a more real world outlook. I especially like the part about modern fruits being, well,,,freaks



I'm heavily influenced by Mother Nature, if she sees fit to kill her creations on a whim, (hurricanes, forest fires), I can't see a problem with me doing the same, only I actually eat what I kill.



So it's 1:30 pm and a beautiful day, so I'm going to grab the fly rod and head out to the wilderness and harvest a few tasty trout, just the way nature intended. Too bad about the suffering and death that may occur, but foraging for berries just doesn't provide the spiritual experience that I crave. ( yay for anthropology )



Edit: no luck fishing, not even a nibble. In the natural world, this would have been a problem as it would have meant no food. Good thing there's the organic fruit and veggie market.



Evolution is based on things eating other things, literally, for a living, and as products of that evolution, I see it as only natural that we kill and eat other things. i understand the want to not be cruel to animals, most of us can relate to them as warm feeling creatures that are capable of displaying emotions we are familiar with..fair enough.



But plants?? no way, plants evolved to be food, millions of species rely on destroying plants for their survival humans included. So what about the plants "emotional state" and not wanting to be "cruel" to it by killing and eating it, why worry about it ? other than to explore the upper echelons of flakiness I can't see fruitism ( or speciesism ) as even remotely useful philosophies to help chart the course of your life.



Do bacteria scream in agony when their cell walls are ripped apart, and they're literally eviscerated alive only to be flushed to a dark smelly grave when you flush your toilet after cleaning it? Does that mould have a right to exist in your carpet?



This is way different from loving your plants in a gardening sense this is really up there on the flakey scale, this is uberflakey !!
EDITED_BY: Stout (1170296911)

dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
 Written by: owd

It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants



My point is that the line is arbitrary as we don't know what it 'feels like' to be either a cow or a tree. Lines are drawn on this issue in many different places by many different people.

Drawing a single line, and saying that cows/pigs chickens are on the sufficiently similar to human to not eat side would suggest that you cast moral aspersions at tribal herdsmen and hunters.

 Written by:

even if plants were capable of suffering in anything the way an animal is, vegetarianism would still be more compassionate than meat eating because-

animal production requires plant deaths (for animal feed) and, the amount of plants that have to die to feed a human on meat is considerably (around x 10 I believe) more than the number of plants that have to die to feed the human in a vegatarian way.



How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?

Furthermore - there are areas of land where the soil is unsuitable for arable crops, but will sustain patchy grasses with which humans can feed animals but not themselves.

Making universal assertions on these matters is fairly muddy... While many ideas apply well to the UK, abstract them to a global level and they have problems.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


jo_rhymesSILVER Member
Momma Bear
4,525 posts
Location: Telford, Shrops, United Kingdom


Posted:
Sy, you should be prime minister.

Hoppers are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: dream


 Written by: owd

It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants



My point is that the line is arbitrary as we don't know what it 'feels like' to be either a cow or a tree. Lines are drawn on this issue in many different places by many different people.

Drawing a single line, and saying that cows/pigs chickens are on the sufficiently similar to human to not eat side would suggest that you cast moral aspersions at tribal herdsmen and hunters.


Logicians should note the argument from final consequences logical falacy. What we label tribal hunter is irrelevent to the issue of whether eating cows and pigs is moral.

 Written by: dream


 Written by: OWD

even if plants were capable of suffering in anything the way an animal is, vegetarianism would still be more compassionate than meat eating because-

animal production requires plant deaths (for animal feed) and, the amount of plants that have to die to feed a human on meat is considerably (around x 10 I believe) more than the number of plants that have to die to feed the human in a vegatarian way.



How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?

Furthermore - there are areas of land where the soil is unsuitable for arable crops, but will sustain patchy grasses with which humans can feed animals but not themselves.

Making universal assertions on these matters is fairly muddy... While many ideas apply well to the UK, abstract them to a global level and they have problems.


It would take a very large number of plants to feed an oyster, as the food it requires required plankton whilst alive. Basic ecology.

I'm not sure you've understood OWD's point, although I would correct him that he's thinking about trophic energy levels rather than numbers. The sheep would eat the grass themselves, resulting in a morally inefficent system compared to a hypothetical strictly aggrigultural one, which would be OWD's point. The fact that arable crops can't live every where is pretty much irrelevent to his argument since you could grow enough in different regions.

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
hug
Jo



 Written by: Jeff

It would take a very large number of plants to feed an oyster, as the food it requires required plankton whilst alive. Basic ecology.



Indeed Jeff. Basic Ecology. Unfortunately unless bacteria are now classified as plants you're wrong. Perhaps you were misled by the taxon phytoplankton - from Greek: plankton meaning wanderer and phyton meaning plant.

 Written by: wiki

phytoplankton encompass all autotrophic microorganisms in aquatic foodwebs. They serve as the base of the marine food chain, providing an essential ecological function for all aquatic life. However, unlike the situation on land, where most autotrophs are plants, phytoplankton are a diverse group, incorporating protistan eukaryotes and both eubacterial and archaebacterial prokaryotes.

In terms of numbers, the most important groups of phytoplankton include the diatoms, cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates, although many other groups of algae are represented. One group, the coccolithophorids, is responsible (in part) for the release of significant amounts of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere. DMS is converted to sulfate and these sulfate molecules act as cloud condensation nuclei, increasing general cloud cover. In oligotrophic oceanic regions such as the Sargasso Sea or the South Pacific, phytoplankton is dominated by the small sized cells, called picoplankton, mostly composed of cyanobacteria (Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus) and picoeucaryotes such as Micromonas




 Written by: Jeff

The sheep would eat the grass themselves, resulting in a morally inefficent system compared to a hypothetical strictly aggrigultural one, which would be OWD's point. The fact that arable crops can't live every where is pretty much irrelevent to his argument since you could grow enough in different regions



No you seem to have misunderstood me. Claiming that you could hypothetically feed everyone arable crops if there existed a universal global transportation system (to get the food to people where arable crops cannot grow) is well and good but makes little difference to the situation of a Mongolian nomadic herdsmen. A universal set of morals which looks down on said herdsman for not living in your fantasy world seems a touch unfair on him. You become a morally superior person to him because you live in an affluent country.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


_Clare_BRONZE Member
Still wiggling
5,967 posts
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK)


Posted:
 Written by: jo_rhymes



Sy, you should be prime minister.





ubblol





Yep... too true



And because I sent you a present today, I reckon I should get some cushty job when you do...



Cash/presents for honours et al....



smile

Getting to the other side smile


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
 Written by: dream


 Written by: Jeff

It would take a very large number of plants to feed an oyster, as the food it requires required plankton whilst alive. Basic ecology.



Indeed Jeff. Basic Ecology. Unfortunately unless bacteria are now classified as plants you're wrong. Perhaps you were misled by the taxon phytoplankton - from Greek: plankton meaning wanderer and phyton meaning plant.


A significant part of the diet of oysters is detritus composed of, or originally fed by green algae, a member of the plant kingdom, and a constitutive part of plankton.

Go go gadget zoology and botanical knoweldge
 Written by: dream


 Written by: Jeff

The sheep would eat the grass themselves, resulting in a morally inefficent system compared to a hypothetical strictly aggrigultural one, which would be OWD's point. The fact that arable crops can't live every where is pretty much irrelevent to his argument since you could grow enough in different regions



No you seem to have misunderstood me. Claiming that you could hypothetically feed everyone arable crops if there existed a universal global transportation system (to get the food to people where arable crops cannot grow) is well and good but makes little difference to the situation of a Mongolian nomadic herdsmen. A universal set of morals which looks down on said herdsman for not living in your fantasy world seems a touch unfair on him. You become a morally superior person to him because you live in an affluent country.


Note again : argument from final consequences fallacy. That a moral code seems "unfair" for being easier to apply in affluent contries is irrelevent to it's validity

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
hug
Clare

bounce bounce2 bounce bounce2

and thank you for the present... I look forwards to my post arriving tomorrow.

kiss

And redface

for the Prime Ministerial recommendations...

unfortunately were I somehow to become pm, I would have to set as my first task...

A more democratic method of government to be immediately elected to replace me. Sod having leaders.




...Jeff you seem to have misunderstood me again.

 Written by: my last post

, unlike the situation on land, where most autotrophs are plants, phytoplankton are a diverse group



 Written by: Jeff

A significant part of the diet of oysters is detritus composed of, or originally fed by green algae, a member of the plant kingdom, and a constitutive part of plankton



These two quotes say a similar thing. Some phytoplankton are plants some are not. Some of an oysters food (or the source of its food's food) will be plant based. Some will not. So to return to my question

How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?

The answer is a number between zero and many. The amount is indeterminable unless you either monitor the entire oyster's life (and its food life, and its food's food's life etc etc) or get an honest answer from it (I have failed at this, maybe you've had more success, what's the secret technique I've been missing).

The point is that it is generally unwise to draw a definite, fixed and universal line based on indeterminate and unprovable evidence. Doing so just ends up leading to sillyness such as contemplating the indeterminable amount of suffering caused by eating an oyster.


 Written by: jeff

That a moral code seems "unfair" for being easier to apply in affluent contries is irrelevent to it's validity



This is a point of metaphysical contention regarding the possibility of a set of universal, transcendental and objective morals. You contend that morals exist outside of context - as religious doctrines have done with great popularity throughout history. I contend that morals are products of a specific historical evolutionary process, and have been conditioned by a myriad of factors throughout the course of said history. To me, morals are not a set of abstract and universal concepts - especially if those concepts confer a lower level of morality upon the global poor - but should be practical means of ethical living which will vary from person to person, and from community to community.

Ultimately neither argument can ultimately be proven right or wrong. Its a matter of opinion. It's perfectly acceptable to disagree about metaphysics.

Chill

smile

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
 Written by: dream



 Written by: owd

It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants





My point is that the line is arbitrary as we don't know what it 'feels like' to be either a cow or a tree. Lines are drawn on this issue in many different places by many different people.



Drawing a single line, and saying that cows/pigs chickens are on the sufficiently similar to human to not eat side would suggest that you cast moral aspersions at tribal herdsmen and hunters.







I don't want to cast moral aspersions on tribal herdsmen and hunters- as you point out some (not all) require meat as a matter of survival due to the environment they live in being insufficient in edible vegetation.



Others don't need meat, but due to tradtition, coulture and convenience, eat it anyway.



I've no more moral objection to that, than I have towards a lion or other predator that kills and eats other animals.



If people in our culture wish to eat meat, despite the fact that it is medically proven to be (in the majority of cases), totally unnecessary to health/nomal functioning and despite the fact that modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild- then so be it.



Despite all that knowledge, we also live in a culture where inflicting suffering on animals and using them as food, is accepted and normal.



So, personally, I don't even have moral objections to meat eating in our culture.



What I do resist however, are misunderstandings and untruths that are trundled out by those who feel the need to justify meat eating.



One of these is the 'where do you draw the line.... etc'.



The line is easily drawn between those things that are capable of experiencing pain,suffering, loss etc i.e. humans and animals; and those which aren't i.e. stones and plants.



 Written by:





How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?









In the context I was referring to, oysters are of little concern to me.



I was refering to the animals who suffer in their millions as part of western societies everyday food items- cows, pigs, other food mammals and hens etc.



Clearly these are capable of suffering and they do suffer.



They also eat a lot of plants and I accept that, in the case of a primitive tribes person in a vegetable-free homeland, his/her goats provide an essential means of converting otherwise inedible grass to useful human food.



The fact remains that, where the majority of us in the modern west are concerned, meat production is an inneficient waste of land that could be better used to grow human-edible crops directly, cutting out the inefficient 'middle-man' (cow, pig etc).

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
Dave, while I agree with most of what you say there a couple of bits I'm not sure about...

 Written by: OWD

modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild



Intensive factory farming... Almost definitely yes. Modern methods of organic farming... Not convinced. I think an argument can be made for animals which are reared outdoors, have a plentiful supply of organic food (not bits of reconstituted dead animal)and clean water, and have any illness/injuries treated could be said to suffer less than a creature in the wild who has a short supply of food/water, can pick up painful ailments/injuries from which it can suffer for years and is not protected from attack by predators.

But then most meat consumption in the West is factory farmed. For example Organic products make up 1.4% of red meat sales in the UK...

But organic farming is a less efficient method of meat production... If everyone ate organic meant, people in the west would (on average) have to eat a lot less meat - or cut down every tree on the planet to create more farmland.

The current trend towards cutting down old growth forests to create arable land in the third world with which to farm animals for sale in the first world is something I find pressing as a reason to avoid eating imported meat. The food miles can be an issue too - but then it takes more energy to grow tomatoes out of season in a heated greenhouse in the UK then it does to import them from Spain. This is one of those places where attempts to be ethical can get confusing.


 Written by: OWD

The line is easily drawn between those things that are capable of experiencing pain,suffering, loss etc i.e. humans and animals; and those which aren't i.e. stones and plants.



Which side of the line do sponges, oysters, shrimp, coral, fish etc live on? If an oyster is feeling loss, how do you tell? How do you know you're not simply projecting your own emotions onto it?



 Written by: OWD

where the majority of us in the modern west are concerned, meat production is an inneficient waste of land that could be better used to grow human-edible crops directly, cutting out the inefficient 'middle-man' (cow, pig etc)



The problem as far as feeding people is not so much about a lack of food (there is still a global grain surplus - for example UK farmers currently produce 3.5million tonnes more grain than they can sell annually) as a lack of political will and the logistical problems of getting food to the most remote areas.

Depending on developments with biofuels, this could change. There's a concern shared by many that if biofuels take off as an alternative car fuel to petrol there could be competition for land use between feeding poor people and feeding rich people's cars. Based on the respective economic wealth of these two groups, given a free market the land is likely to fuel people's cars.

Either way, while fish stock depletion is another problem with industrial methods of business practice, eating fish, prawns and oysters uses no arable land. If (as seems likely) climate change means that food becomes scarcer, eating fish seems quite sensible to me.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
 Written by: dream



Dave, while I agree with most of what you say there a couple of bits I'm not sure about...



 Written by: OWD

modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild







Intensive factory farming... Almost definitely yes. Modern methods of organic farming... Not convinced. I think an argument can be made for animals which are reared outdoors, have a plentiful supply of organic food (not bits of reconstituted dead animal)and clean water, and have any illness/injuries treated could be said to suffer less than a creature in the wild who has a short supply of food/water, can pick up painful ailments/injuries from which it can suffer for years and is not protected from attack by predators.



But then most meat consumption in the West is factory farmed...



But organic farming is a less efficient method of meat production... If everyone ate organic meant, people in the west would (on average) have to eat a lot less meat







As you say, the vast majority of meat is raised non-organically.



As I'm being practical here, it is that method of production that I'm pointing out involves huge amounts of suffering.



The question of what would happen if most meat was raised organically is somewhat hypothetical- however, precedent shows that if it were to be the case, then organic does not necessarily=non-suffering.



In the UK for example 'free range' is generally took to mean that the hens aren't maltreated (I'm talking about genuine 'free-range' here, not the supermarkets dodgy marketing version).



Yet, de-beaking (cutting off the beak) is,in the UK, more common in 'free-range' than battery farming.



My opinion is that, when it comes to animal use, then large scale production=abuse.

 Written by:



 Written by: OWD

The line is easily drawn between those things that are capable of experiencing pain,suffering, loss etc i.e. humans and animals; and those which aren't i.e. stones and plants.





Which side of the line do sponges, oysters, shrimp, coral, fish etc live on? If an oyster is feeling loss, how do you tell? How do you know you're not simply projecting your own emotions onto it?









Like I previously said, to me it's irrelevant where 'grey-area' creatures fall on the line.



For the purposes of this discussion, all I need to know is that animals like cows.pigs and hens fall cleanly on one side and plants on the other.





 Written by:



 Written by: OWD

where the majority of us in the modern west are concerned, meat production is an inneficient waste of land that could be better used to grow human-edible crops directly, cutting out the inefficient 'middle-man' (cow, pig etc)





The problem as far as feeding people is not so much about a lack of food (there is still a global grain surplus - for example UK farmers currently produce 3.5million tonnes more grain than they can sell annually) as a lack of political will and the logistical problems of getting food to the most remote areas.









To me though, the fact that we in the west happily squander resources by insisting on unnecessarily gorging on animal flesh, whilst a large portion of humanity starve as families, in some way, contributes to the problem.



Without wanting to get overly esoteric, in most philosophies/spiritual systems of value, there is a principle that most have in common-



Whether it's the occult 'as above...so below', the common sense 'watch the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves' or the buddhist principles of sorting out your self before sorting out the world:



essentially, treating your immediate suroundings like rubbish, being greedy or unthoughtful in your own life, then don't be surprised if the wholeplanet is messed up too.



The west squanders it's resources, it doesn't care about others, greed is a foundation of its way of life.



To watch, as the west does, generations of peoples die, of starvation, over and over again, while we squander our resources through large scale meat production and then pass off responsibiltiy by pointing out that, after all-



 Written by:



"The problem as far as feeding people is not so much about a lack of food (there is still a global grain surplus - for example UK....."









pretty much sums up the Wests lack of appreciation of that basic principle.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


IcarusGOLD Member
member
165 posts
Location: Australia


Posted:
It had to happen that someone would take this personally. I try not to react with anger but i am angry.

"If people in our culture wish to eat meat, despite the fact that it is medically proven to be (in the majority of cases), totally unnecessary to health/normal functioning and despite the fact that modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild- then so be it. "
just about sums it up for me.

I agree that the suffering is increased when farmers 'produce meat' on a large scale and i do think that raising your own animals and eating them is the only way of guaranteeing they lived relatively cruelty free.
I hate that people can detach themselves so much from a situation just because they are not actually present when the cow/pig/chicken is sliced and diced, or because they don't have to see how those animals lived. I hate that and i am becoming increasingly intolerant of people who can detach themselves.

Just to make it a little harder to ignore (someone had to do it) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_pig_farming

https://vein.library.usyd.edu.au/links/Essays/2001/wimpole.html
(remembering that even perfect scores wouldn't eliminate the fear and pain they feel. Also take note of the last paragraph)

https://www.all-creatures.org/anex/chicken.html
(a little over the top - do you think they photoshoped?!)


I am angry that some people try to say that it is okay to eat meat because the practices are improving and it is not necessarily cruel. That is disgusting.
If you eat lamb korma or sweet and sour pork at a restaurant then this is where it came from.

If you raise your own animals and know they died with respect then fine. I would never trust you alone with my duck, but i respect your choice not to eat the s*** they feed us in woolworths and mcdonalds.

I am angry and upset that this has happened and continues to happen even when we know.

To put plants on the same level as that is bulls*it. If you need a more logical argument then see the philosophical banter above. I is toooo upset right now.

xox

... simplify ...


FireTomStargazer
6,650 posts

Posted:
Plants have feelings umm and everyone is starting to write an essay confused ...

May I topple that and include minerals, therefore you should reconsider your gemstone necklace? wink

But then, what is the result from that: live on water and photosythesis? umm In Europe/ England, where no sun is shining?

And what feelings would then the beloveth indica/ sativa plant have that all them loving hippies are just burning it? Let it grow I say footinmouth help *ducks from incoming earthen and quartz appliances* wink

the best smiles are the ones you lead to wink


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