>How were you supposed to know?
It's safe to assume all animal products are unethical.
It's safe to assume all animal products are unethical.
We are invasive species. What we should aim is low impact farming. To extract the most food with the least possible amount of suffering caused and resources expended.
This is one of those questions that drink a lot of beer and lead to violence among friends late in the evenings. With no good answer.
It seems like your friends are conflating genetics and utilitarian ethics. There's a way of explaining genetics in terms of preferences, but genes don't really have preferences. Species, by extension, don't have preferences. Cows as a species want nothing. Individual cows do.
So personally, as a vegan, I wouldn't see the death of the last cow on earth as a huge loss, as long as the cow was safe, happy, and comfortable.
Humans do the same thing and it's "invasive".
I take the view that humans are as natural as any other animal on the planet. We obviously have a goal to sustain the ecosystems we value, but we're just as much a part of the ecosystem as any other animal.
For what it's worth, the beaver that forces out native species by flooding a habitat is both natural and invasive. Beavers are considered, by humans, to be a fairly invasive species, especially when introduced to areas they are not native to.
It isn't a double-standard that we're applying, it's just a little uncomfortable when the same standard is applied to us.
We fit our definition for the term. Like I said before though, I don't see anything unnatural about it myself.
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1mdqbr/if_the_wo...
The short story is that it takes up more land to feed and house livestock than it does to farm plants. "More than two-thirds of all agricultural land is devoted to growing feed for livestock, while only 8 percent is used to grow food for direct human consumption."
Not to mention the amount of water livestock and its feed consumes.
I think this is roughly what you meant, right? There are lots of exceptions to the totally blanket assertion, although I think the underlying sentiment (as carefully caveatted above) is basically correct.
According to that statement, the ethical value of any animal product is a function of some huge number of variables, and the upper bound on that value is the minimum of that set.
So, it's safe to assume that all animal products you encounter as a human are unethical. Regardless of where you buy them, or what their advertising is, you should assume they are unethical and be very, very difficult to persuade. Anything else is just unsafe.
This is why animal welfare-ists exist, and why people think that there is such a thing as "happy meat."
edit: The point I am trying to make is that not all of our food comes from unethical industrial factory farms. There are a lot of farmers who use ethical and sustainable methods. It is not too difficult to do research and find out how your food is produced.
One hectare of outdoor range for every 2500 hens (equivalent to 4m^2 per hen; at least 2.5 m^2 per hen must be available at any one time if rotation of the outdoor range is practiced)
From the wikipedia page you linked. That's not too bad, is it?
Yes, what is happening to the civets is appalling. But it's really no worse than what is standard CAFO treatment. It's not entirely your fault that you don't know this because the food industry tries very hard to keep this from you, including pushing for laws that make exposing these facts acts of terrorism.
What I was trying to get at in my question is that there is nothing "safe" about the assumption that ALL animal products are unethical. It's just a blanket generalization that discourages learning more about the subject.
Furthermore, because the agricultural system and all of the regulations support large-scale farming, small-scale family farms have to work within the system. (eg, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2009-02-05/more-on-the-s...).
The trend is toward more factory farming, not less, since small scale farms are less profitable, often not covering costs. The difficulty of making small farms sustainable is generally attributed to the regulations, infrastructure, and economic realities increasingly favoring large scale factory farming.
If you doubt any of what I've said here, the USDA and others have plenty of reports available: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-r...
I don't know if you can empathize with an animals plight at the discomfort of repeated pregnancies, births, and forced separations from their offspring - or the even grimmer likely outcome of the calf itself, but for me this is not justified by own fleeting enjoyment of a slice of cheese that is completely not necessary for my physical well being.
These anthropomorphic arguments tend to be the result of emotional immaturity, something you find in small children.
Oh, the irony in this sentence!
It's anthropomorphic to think that dairy cows would choose to bear their immense suffering for the sake of the perpetuation of their species (EDIT: because they're not aware of such a concept; survival instinct is all about the individual being pain-averse in an immediate sense), and it's immature to resort to name-calling in an argument.
He did mention that people who take good care of their chickens and cows during their whole life are a different story.
Some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_pr...
Another thing people find unethical about it are adding literally tons of needless antibiotics to the environment which can have human medical impact.
But guess what. Well into the 90s percent of people don't do that. Probably high 90s percent. And they never could either, because as soon as they tried, you'd see it can't scale up. The only thing that can scale up is the rotten situation we currently have--the one that produces that 90s percentage of the eggs and milk (and meat, which you didn't mention, but it's likewise a parallel here for people who believe in "humane" meat).
Obviously you appreciate the value of research. It's amazing that people will research the purchase of a new phone more than what they eat?
Depends on how you define "a lot". The vast majority of eggs and milk produced in the United States are not in any way ethically produced.