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Comment by amalag | Hacker News Reader

I have to agree with both of these points. Modern society is so insulated to the ethical costs and environmental costs of meat eating. We have no problem taking our children to go strawberry picking to get their food, but how about taking them to a slaughterhouse to get their McNuggets? And then environmental costs of using 10x-50x the amount of water to produce 1lb of meat compared to 1lb of grains is staggering.

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  > ethical costs

That's manufactured problem. And I'd say extremely stupid. Cannot wait till activists will go on a mission to stop other animals from eating meat. We are humans. We eat meat. How complicated is that?

And yes, I had an opportunity to witness how pig becomes bacon and tasty sausages when I was kid.

"Manufactured problem" is exactly the right phrase, but not in the way you mean it.

Other animals hunt other animals, and the ecosystem ends up in a sustainable equilibrium. Humans, however, get most of their meat from industrial agriculture, which is an extractive system that drains water tables and pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

That's very definitely an ethical problem that we have manufactured.

Yeah, so is farming. Most arable land has had its effectiveness severely reduced by salination from hundreds of years of farming. Perhaps we should stop eating farmed goods altogether?

This is not some simple ethical equation with a Pollyanna answer.

Actually it is simple: eat less meat. Meat production is vastly more wasteful than vegetable production calorie-for-calorie.

And that double-espresso fair bean organic latte is vastly more wasteful than a glass of water.

And your sharp looking clothes are far more wasteful than a peasant shirt and plain shorts.

And your smart phone is far more wasteful than a basic phone.

And a house with a yard is vastly more wasteful than a 150 sqft per person apartment.

And do you know how much wastage occurred to make that movie you watched? Or that TV show you like?

Everything can be considered wasteful by comparison. It comes down to balancing your needs/wants with energy requirements, and choosing which causes to bring up when preaching your moral superiority.

Agreed, we have a lot of things which are wasteful compared to spartan requirements. Definitely a sliding scale of luxury. So what are the real costs of meat eating? 10-50x more water for a meat diet, is that moral or practical superiority?

Nice. I saw your edit to change it from "10x" to "10-50x". Moving goalposts are of course much harder to hit.

But regardless, this is what I mean by choosing which causes to bring up when preaching your moral superiority.

None of those things cause as much greenhouse gas emissions as a high meat diet.

The level of meat consumption in rich countries is unjustifiable.

I'm not sure I agree with the "it's in our nature" argument. The thing about being human is that we're able to act according to a code of ethics and not just our base desires/traditions.

Your point about activists makes no sense. Would you accuse someone campaigning against sexual assault of going on a mission to stop male geese from raping females?

Just because we used to do it doesn't mean it's right or ehtical to continue doing so now that we can avoid it.

Then again, bacon is yummy.

Sure the taking of another creature's life to satisfy one's palate is acceptable to some, however it is unnecessary and I would argue, unethical.

I don't think the government should use my tax dollars to directly and indirectly subsidize meat eating.

Human's eat meat, is that the slogan like 'beef, it's whats for dinner'. Hardly a convincing statement.

It's not the ethical cost of eating meat, it's the ethical cost of eating industrially farmed meat. Every year, tens of billions of animals suffer for their entire lives before slaughter because we want to eat lots of cheap meat.

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