I think that fundamentally this is just a sign of people realizing that the meat industry can't ever be ethical. I'm expecting society to become maybe 50% vegetarian/vegan in the next couple of decades.
The 'typical USA' diet of lots of meat for all three meals of the day doesn't seem sustainable to me. If we all cut back at least some, that will greatly reduce the environmental impact.
This TED talk from Dr. Melanie Joy is a good introduction to Carnism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg
There is no going back when you realise how fucked up this industry is. HN fellows, we are willing to make the world a better place, right? How about not taking part in one of the worst crimes in history?
In other words, it won't work until you give people a reasonable alternative (lab-grown meat, anyone?).
Honestly, and not to just be a smart-ass, but what are the acceptable life forms to eat? We've drawn the arbitrary line that "humans aren't ok to eat," but that's really about the only nearly-unanimous thing we can agree upon.
If we move the line further, to say, "no intelligent animals," then we're stuck defining what "intelligent" means, or how complex a nervous system needs to be before we classify it as intelligent.
Ok, we could say "no animals," but why do, say, sponges deserve protection that we don't extend to algae?
Don't get me wrong: I'm fully in favor of re-examining our modern diet and how other living organisms are included in that. It's just an interesting discussion when we move the line further than "no humans".
Intelligence is not a justifiable metric, e.g. some individual humans are less intelligent than some animal species. Yet, we don't use those humans for our own interests.
AFAIK for certain groups of animals (one that comes to mind is sharks) it's very unlikely they feel anything approximating what we would call pain. Still, I imagine few advocates would say that eating shark meat is ethical behavior.
Certain animals could barely be said to do anything approximating feeling pain besides responding to external stimuli, which plants do as well.
It's a fascinating, complex topic though.
Why do you prefer spinach to collard greens? Why do you like Van Gogh more than Matisse? Why do you eat fries more often than onion rings?
I can advance dozens of rationalizations as to why other people should share my opinion that human life is worth more than nonhuman animal life, but most of them will not find traction in any person not already at least slightly predisposed towards that opinion. The value of nonhuman animal life is very much like a religious belief.
If we deconstructed the differing opinions down to their foundations and really examined them, we would likely recoil away in existential horror. The truth is that life has no inherent, objective value at all. The universe is very large, and collides a lot of random atoms and molecules together, and will be entirely unaffected on a large scale whenever some of those random reaction products develop some self-reinforcing complexity.
The only value life has is that which we subjectively impart onto it. And summing up the opinions of 7 billion humans, I generally find that we tend to have a rather higher opinion of ourselves than of any other animal, and the other animals are ranked by some combination of cuteness, cleverness, market price, and deliciousness. But since that's all just subjective anyway, I could still tell the rest of the world to get bent, and just go by my own preferences.
Don't deal in absolutes. They don't have to be equally valuable for both of them to be valuable.
> why do you think that human life is worth more than animal life
which was asking whether value(human life) > value(animal life), not whether value(animal life) = 0.
Your line of thought is the basis for most human atrocities ever committed; you see your own group (species, race, gender, class, nationality, etc.) as more valuable, so you dismiss their own interests in favour of your own.
The point is that many humans have evolved to or desire to becoming more compassionate and inclusive over time, and this, the species difference, is one more barrier to cross. Instead of arguing about what will happen or what will never happen, humans will always continue to look at improving things. That's why even though we still have wars after thousands of years of civilization, we still want those to reduce and stop, and take actions that will help. It will take time to manifest changes in different spheres of discrimination and oppression, but as a species this is an inherent quality that takes us all forward.
You could certainly make the argument that non-existence is preferable to the life of a present-day factory-farmed animal. I wouldn't contest that. But perhaps there is some value of ethical treatment for which "a few years of peaceful farm life followed by a painless death" is preferable to non-existence.
The thing is that the planet can't handle that many beings. You realize that farm animals are a worse contributor to global warming than all cars right?
> But perhaps there is some value of ethical treatment for which "a few years of peaceful farm life followed by a painless death" is preferable to non-existence.
Sure. Would you find this ethical if you replaced pigs with humans? Furthermore you are describing this idyllic, farm life which only a very small fraction of animals get to live. For the most part it's industrial farming. Do you know why? Farms can't scale. Industrial processes on the other hand, oh boy do they scale.
Non sequitur, food isn't synonymous with killing animals
>Almost all life consumes other life for survival
Appeal to popularity, almost all life does all sorts of things that we don't condone or have decided is suboptimal.
>There is nothing more natural than eating.
Non sequitur and naturalistic fallacy. Eating is natural but that doesn't imply killing and eating animals is natural. Even if both are, that isn't in and of itself a valid justification for that behaviour.
I presuppose the need to justify just about everything actually. Your surprise at this approach kind of explains the gaping logical holes in your previous comments. Please though, continue with your "specific" statements, I'm enjoying this.
EDIT: mixed you up with the other commenter, disregard the last 3 sentences, sorry.
If we were a society that was capable of doing this at scale, there would certainly be far less of a reason to be vegan, but I hesitate to say there would be no reason at all.
Sure it does. But eating is not one of those things. And you're going to have to do a lot better than that to convince people that eating shouldn't be condoned or is suboptimal.
"Non sequitur and naturalistic fallacy."
No.
"Eating is natural but that doesn't imply killing and eating animals is natural."
No, but the fact that it naturally happens in nature does.
"Even if both are, that isn't in and of itself a valid justification for that behaviour."
You haven't given valid justification for why it's not justified.
The idea that eating meat is natural is one of the four main reasons people give (the 4n's: natural, nice, normal, necessary).
A few counters: It is also natural for animals to kill their own. We as humans have decided to rise above this "natural" existence. It is natural for animals to eat other animals. A balanced predator prey system is a healthy ecosystem. This is not what we humans are doing. We are raising a handful of species simply because meat tastes good. Sure there are some cases where humans must still hunt for survival and I take no issue there. But most of us have the resources to eat a plant based diet. Which is healthier for us and the environment.
Granted maybe less death, but you are still obviously valuing the animals as lesser than humans, as you're saying it's ok if a few field mice or rabbits die so a human can eat a tofu sandwich.
Side note, if you truly believe carnivorous diets are barbaric, than you'd probably also have to kill all the carnivorous animals (especially considering many of them torture their prey, rather than quickly killing it).
> If you value them as the same,
They don't have to be the same value for one to still be valuable.
> a few field mice or rabbits die so a human can eat a tofu sandwich.
This argument is silly. How many of these do you think die from grain production? How many animals in the world are slaughtered every year? Also the ethics are also fundamentally different.
> Side note, if you truly believe carnivorous diets are barbaric, than you'd probably also have to kill all the carnivorous animals
I thought that we as humans accepted the fact that we have something called 'morals' and therefore things like killing and rape are bad. I cannot impose human morals on animals but I can impose human morals on humans.
I replied from a standpoint of assuming you believe a human and an animal have the same value.
Thusly, one can only assume that you if you are against eating meat because the cow and a few field mice will die, you must also be against eating grain because a few field mice will die (and maybe a bird or two).
You certainly can (and we do) impose human morals on animals. We put down dangerous animals (rabies, mountain lions venturing into civilization). We even put down pets if they're deemed dangerous (pit bull bit the neighbor). We neuter our pets, even the "animal lovers" encourage this. We also taken it upon ourselves to kill wolves if there's too many of them and they're about to exterminate the deer.
So, to re-ask your question, what makes you more valuable than the dozens of field mice and birds that die so you can have your soybean sandwich?
I don't understand your logic. If we can't stop all suffering in the world, we should participate and financially support it?
I assume you are against rape, and for this reason, you are not a rapist. The fact that some species mainly use rape as a reproductive strategy will convince you that raping is somehow ethical?
Regarding animals being accidentally killed in the harvesting of plant foods, do some research on veganic farming. We are moving in the right direction, your "all or nothing" argument is not very productive.
They'll defend it in a very ad-hoc fashion, but almost no one's moral axioms coincide with the belief that eating other individuals is morally acceptable.
Do you believe it's ethical to unnecessarily kill another sentient individual?
That's an argument against the current capabilities of the technology, not against the concept itself. Given that I raised the possibility of eating your own cultured meat right after that, I think it's fairly obvious I'm not limiting the discussion to current technology (also since it's not economically feasible at the moment). But given cultured meat grown in a synthetic medium, are there ethical questions that I'm not accounting for? I can't think of any, so this may be a counter to the argument in the GP statement that "the meat industry can't ever be ethical."
You must not be paying attention to how little we care about human fetuses.
>After slaughter and bleeding of the cow at an abattoir, the mother's uterus containing the calf fetus is removed during the evisceration process (removal of the mother's internal organs) and transferred to the blood collection room. (3). A needle is then inserted between the fetus's ribs directly into its heart and the blood is vacuumed into a sterile collection bag. This process is aimed at minimizing the risk of contamination of the serum with micro-organisms from the fetus and its environment. Only fetuses over the age of three months are used otherwise the heart is considered too small to puncture. (4)
>Once collected, the blood is allowed to clot at room temperature and the serum separated through a process known as refrigerated centrifugation.
>It remains questionable as to whether or not fetuses have already died from anoxia (deprivation of oxygen) prior to serum collection. Nevertheless, no anesthesia is given, despite their possible ability to experience pain and discomfort.
Gestation period for a cow is around 7 months. Drawing an analogy to studies of human sentience (I am not an expert though), this is proprtionally well past the 1st trimester point where foetuses can feel pain. To speak in your language, FCS and FBS are essentially sourced from blood sucked out of the hearts of late-stage unanaesthetized 2nd-3rd trimester abortions. In this light it is not very difficult to see why vegans such as myself still have reservations about cultured meat.
There's no way you're going to have a productive conversation if you're going to be a condescending ass like that.
There needs to be more work on such methods even if there are failures or if the initial costs seem higher.
[1]: http://supermeat.com