Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

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> There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle.

You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer:

> ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1]

There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/

> You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle.

Why should explain why something is NOT bad ? It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad, and the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.

There is a good argument to be made that in the West we should eat less meat, but that doesn't mean removing it completely: it is harder to make a balanced vegan diet, so for most people that would mean a less healthy outcome that just eating a moderate amount of meat.

> Why should explain why something is NOT bad?

Because they're the one who made the claim without evidence or argument.

> It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad

Yes, that's what I did.

> the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.

That wasn't my argument.

> There is a good argument to be made that in the West we should eat less meat, but that doesn't mean removing it completely: it is harder to make a balanced vegan diet, so for most people that would mean a less healthy outcome that just eating a moderate amount of meat.

You're making something of a jump there - not eating meat equates to a vegetarian diet, not a vegan diet. One can argue about the merits of a vegan diet over a vegetarian one, but a vegetarian, non-vegan diet is already a big step up over a meat-heavy one, and a vegetarian diet including eggs and dairy doesn't really have any challenges in being balanced/healthy compared to a moderate-meat diet.

There is nothing wrong or unethical with eating meat. It is a natural behaviour, which we are evolved for, and in fact a necessary animal behaviour within the environment at large.

If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.

> I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.

I'm curious what you mean by "impose their views" with respect to meat-eating. Has a vegan ever tried to stop you from eating meat for example through physical force, threatening your livelihood, making meat illegal in their state, etc?

Don't get me wrong, I also dislike when strangers impose their moral, ethical, racial, political, or religious views on me.

But of all the groups that concern me, vegans are low on my list as their weapons mostly seem to be uncomfortably strong arguments on the internet and the occasional preachy Netflix documentary.

We are omnivores and we have plentiful sources of plant nutrition. Eating meat is mot necessary for either health or happiness, and any appeal to it being “natural”, even if true (primitive human diets varied enormously) is irrelevant.

One could argue that meat eating is necessary for taking part on some people’s culture, which is true, but also shifting. And spreading the idea of vegetarianism is helpful in making that shift happen.

Vegetarians also have higher levels of depression. [1]

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...

It's obviously that they became vegetarian due to this personality trait rather than the other way around. Your study doesn't indicate otherwise. Vegetarians and vegans become so precisely because they are depressed about the state of affairs in animal welfare, human health, and the environment.

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