Looking forward to seeing how the technology develops, but yeah. It hasn't changed my habits yet.
I'm having a hard time following this... are you saying that you don't think about the reality of killing animals for food because of some biological mechanism outside of your control?
Or, said another way: if animals being killed to be eaten is inherently bad, should we not be trying to replace the diet of all lions on earth with BeyondMeat too?
I also find it a frustrating American-centric/urban-centric point of view that 'killing animals is bad', when I (among others) have grown up in areas where it's a basic part of life to farm/hunt meat for survival.
This isn't really even an American centric view. It might be a silicon valley centric view or Upper class suburbs of America centric view. But the fact of the matter in most of America, the working class areas, the rural areas, etc. There are absolutely no moral qualms about hunting, or killing animals or eating meat.
Also part of the point is that in this culture it’s not for survival. If you need it to survive that’s a different story and not what most people dislike. However US consumers have a choice, so why not make the best of it. Choose meat from sustainable farms or just avoid it.
Anyways, I dislike the utilitarian/primitist argument because you can justify any number of cruelties with an appeal to nature. Cats play with their food all the time so why can't we torture animals for fun?
Humans should ponder the morality of killing animals because we have the will and ability to do so.
But just to comment on your first point, we would never let an animal suffer like that when we grew up. A quick shot to the temple to switch it off immediately, and then cut and hang the meat to bleed out worked just as well for us.
Don't get me wrong, we were always taught to minimise any suffering and to give our livestock the best/healthiest/least stressful lives possible, and to treat them with dignity when you needed them for food.
Note that in my story I did eat the meat - I may have understated how delicious it tasted. Freshly butchered pork made this way is unlike anything I've had in North America. Is killing for sustenance more moral than killing for sport, or for taste?
I don't pass judgement on people who hunt or slaughter animals this way, but I don't buy the idea that killing animals is simply a part of life and above moral consideration - or for that matter GP's argument, that it's perfectly moral to kill animals for food because it's as nature intended.
I don’t believe that animals eating animals in an abstract sense is wrong. The problem for me is necessity and scale. We don’t need animal protein to survive and the scale of the death and environmental harm is too much to ignore.
Environmental concerns I think should be excluded from this offshoot of the conversation, which is spawned from ethical concerns about killing animals, not environmental concerns.
The difference is that humans can process plant materials into what is needed whereas lions cannot. The humans/lions analogy breaks down because most of us do not live in the Serengeti fighting for survival.
The ethical dilemma is: are you eating to live or living to eat?
In the past we needed to eat animals to survive, so there was a purpose for animal farming. Now that we don't need animal sourced proteins we are consuming mainly for ignorance or human pleasure.
As we improve the technology and the fidelity of plant based and/or synthetic products improve it will be more clear that we don't need to keep killing animals to satisfy our taste buds.
There are large vegetarian human populations such as people in parts of India.
>Most humans, although not in the Serengeti as you put it, are in fact, fighting for survival.
Humans fighting for survival cannot choose things freely. I am going to go out on a limb and claim that the majority of the HN audience can make choices.
> Most humans choose meat, because it's nutritionally dense and depending on how it was raised, provides a 'full protein' unlike plants.
You can’t have it both ways the humans fighting for survival cannot afford “well raised” meat.
There are plant sources that provide complete proteins by themselves and others can be combined easily to provide complete proteins.
> Nevermind the obvious health issues involved with eating "process'ed plant materials"
You do realize that beef is essentially processed plant materials? Meat is not magic. We can adopt better alternatives, but we choose not to do so.
This is a common fallacy. There are at least a couple of studies that show the negative health effects of "vegetarian" Indians after they moved to the US. They were very surprised to find that despite eating the same things as they would in India, their blood work would come back with nutritional deficiencies and contribute to poor overall health. Why? Because they were never vegetarians. In India, food production was very much local for these people, and they were often or always eating vegetables that were picked the same day, in or near the same place they lived, the vegetable plots were not sprayed with pesticides (like they would be in the US), and so they consumed a fairly large amount of animal (insect) flesh as a result. Secondly, a very small minority of the total human population is vegetarian, and for very good reason. If you listen closely, your body will tell you what you need to ingest. We were made to eat everything around us...we should continue to eat everything around us.
>Humans fighting for survival cannot choose things freely.
As someone who's struggled for survival most of my life (and continues to do so), I assure you, I've had plenty of choices. Maybe we're talking about a different type of survival or struggle though.
>You can’t have it both ways the humans fighting for survival cannot afford “well raised” meat.
I grew up in Eastern Europe during the "dark days". We were fighting for survival. We raised pork, chicken, turkey, duck, rabbit in the heart of the city, as did most of our neighboors. Was it "well raised"? Hmmm, probably not by your standards, but it kept us alive when the stores were literally empty. We certainly couldn't afford the nice cuts, we sold those to the professional class (the type you find in this HN thread it seems).
>There are plant sources that provide complete proteins by themselves
I read a lot about nutrition and studies on proteins, microproteins, short and long fibers, etc. I have yet to find a study claiming a plant source can provide the amino acid range necessary to create a complete protein. In fact, I've not read a serious study ever claiming that a plant protein, is at all the same as an animal protein. Same goes for fiber, probably a much more important aspect for mammalian health. A calorie is not a calorie. A protein is not a protein. Anyways, we're getting off track. Meat contains fats in amounts that are critical for human development. Some plants can contain some fats, but once again...a plant fat is not an animal fat. They're not interchangeable.
>You do realize that beef is essentially processed plant materials?
Not sure why all this talk of beef? I brought up meat, and meat seems to equal beef only in the American mind set. Most of my red meat consumption is goat and pork. I raise and grow about 90% of my and my family's food (some years 100%), and am intimately aware of what meat, fungus, plants, microbes are and are not. Let me assure you, meat is not essentially "processed plant materials". If you believe there's something in likeness between a cut of goat meat that's been raised on forest browse and pasture, and American white bread or breakfast cereal, I believe you're mistaken. That's a very reductionist view, and one that is not supported by any scientific research I've read.
I'm hearing a lot of arguments here brought up that seem very similar to the arguments made 50-70 years ago by stock farmers who claimed that cows and pigs can't possibly feel or think anything. Now its my vegan friends claiming that plants can't possibly feel or think anything. I wonder what fallacy humans will come up with in 50 years time.
> the vegetable plots were not sprayed with pesticides (like they would be in the US), and so they consumed a fairly large amount of animal (insect) flesh as a result
This doesn’t make any sense. When you eat/cook vegetables, you don’t leave insects on it. You actually wash the vegetable. What you are suggesting is gross and so u healthy.
What do you mean by this? Some things that will give someone a stroke is sitting in front of a computer screen all day, eating highly processed carbs and other "food-like products".
No, my family and I eat everything. Most often right out of the ground without washing. Nobody in my family is on any prescriptions, and no chronic illnesses. Bugs are your friends. Microbes are not the enemy.
Pretty much everyone needs to kill things to live, even vegetarians (thousands of baby plants were killed to make every loaf of bread). Theoretically there are fruitarians who don't, but my understanding is that is not a sustainable diet and many famous frutarians regularly cheated.
Doesn’t bother me either.
Side note: This is beyond the convo of the merit in how we do this today. Whole different convo.