You also cause way less suffering in the world, which is something I believe is very much worth striving for.
But seriously, I come from a family of farmers, and I know that the things that farmers do to animals is way worse than anything you've described here.
(Of course that means that the calf will take most -but not all- of the milk during that time. But then it is stated that the cost for the vet goes down a lot in exchange.)
Another option I found is to give several calves to one cow for 6 months, which has advantages and disadvantages compared to the first way. (Longer time with milk and natural suckling behaviour but calves without their mother and the smaller ones might get less milk.)
edit: Here is a list with places in Germany that do that:
https://welttierschutz.org/hofliste-mit-mutter-oder-ammengeb...
I'm not sure how to translate the key words for english googling.
- rodents die in wheat field during harvest
- recently there was an article on HN of olive harvests killing hundreds of birds
- entire forests are destroyed with wildlife by burning to grow palms for palm oil
Not nearly as many, of course, and the same products are eaten by meat eaters as well, and most plants are grown for animal feeding, but yes, it's impossible to live a regular human life and not indirectly hurt animals, humans or the environment. You can try to minimize it, though.
Let's concentrate of the suffering of our fellow human beings...
If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.
"We should because we can"? There are many things that we "can" do that we better not do. There's no automatic logical deduction from "we can" to "so we should".
Killing animals for their meat is not like torturing animals for no reason (which indeed would be unnecessary).
And how steep would the slope be? E.g. what about killing rodents and house pests?
Yes, we're omnivores. Or it's complicated [1].
> and lions don't have grocery stores.
Sucks to be them.
But we have been eating meat for millennia, naturally, before we ever concerned ourselves about reading/writing and math, so there's that.
>If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.
That would have mattered only if the same conditions applied (e.g. extinction threat otherwise), which they don't. So it's looks more like a way to force the argument against eating meat based on a strong association with something obviously negative ("think of the children" style argument).
[1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Are_humans_omnivores_or_herb...
Exactly the point I'm making. Humans don't face extinction if we stop eating animal products, so comparing us to lions is not a valid argument for why we should eat meat.
Just not for throwing the whole eating animals thing altogether.
Whether something is “natural” has no bearing on its goodness. And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.
“If carnivore animals has the same concerns and turned to tofu, they’d be dead.”
We’re not obligate carnivores so this is a non-sequitor.
“Let’s concentrate on the suffering of our fellow human beings...”
This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.
Well, goodness also is not a logical argument. Good according to what, some arbitrary morals? Other people find it perfectly good to eat burgers.
>And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.
Only in the contrived sense, that we are part of nature as a species.
But we have long made the distinction that our more advanced developments concerning invention, historical developments, innovation, etc, are part of "civilization", and it's the behaviors that we already had before we developed those that are our "natural" part.
And we did ate meat before we had writing, and mobile phones.
>This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.
Isn't not meant to be a logical deduction from something said earlier, it's meant to be about prioritization.
Rape, murder, and infanticide are all natural human behaviors by this definition, and they’ve become less common as we’ve become more divorced from nature. Also natural: having about half of your children die what are now preventable deaths. Life in nature is complete shit.
And I was assuming here a basically utilitarian definition of the good, because of your concern with suffering. Of course it’s debatable.