Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad
max@feddit.nl 1 year agoEven if plants were sentient, and I’m not saying they are, but if. Would you rather “kill” orders of magnitude more plants to feed them to animals, then kill the animals and eat them, or would you kill the plants and eat them directly? One of them causes a lot less harm (if any at all), and it’s not eating the animals.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
well, first, animals are mostly fed plants or parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat, so the scale of the difference you described is orders of magnitude less than you are suggesting.
but, more importantly, why should sentience matter?
finally, whether i buy food from a shelf or not, the creature (flora or fauna) it came from is already harmed, and my purchase causes no more harm to it, so eating it has exactly no impact.
max@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Those plants still have to be cultivated. If there are no animals to feed those plants to (for instance, low quality corn or low quality soy), the lane can be used for cultivating food for humans or in the case of low quality soy, the rain forest doesn’t have to be mowed down for it. Sentience matters because ideally, one should strive to reduce harm as much as possible. Especially unnecessary harm. There is a reason why I don’t torture cats and dogs for fun, and it’s the same reason I don’t eat killed and tortured cows, pigs, chickens, etc. just because I like the flavour of them. And of course your purchasing behaviour has impact on the amount of harm caused. Maybe not instantaneously, because it is indeed on the shelves already, but just like with voting in elections, if you don’t buy products that cause harm, demand drops ever so slightly. Then when more people inevitably follow, demand drops further in a big enough quantity to matter. That’s why you see a lot more vegetarian or vegan options in your supermarket today: because people buy them.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
how do you know what is necessary for other people?
max@feddit.nl 1 year ago
I don’t. But I do know that the human body can survive, even thrive, perfectly fine without the consumption of animal products. That’s nutrients, not taste preferences, of course. I also like to think that the vast majority of people don’t like harming animals, at least not consciously. I hope I’m not wrong in thinking that.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
there are more vegetarian options and even more meat is produced now than ever before. the production hasn’t dropped.
max@feddit.nl 1 year ago
That’s rather unfortunate…
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
why should reducing harm be a goal? suggesting that eating meat is equivalent to torturing animals for fun is totally specious: almost everyone eats meat, almost no one tortures animals.
max@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Meat doesn’t grow on trees, let’s be honest here. There’s plenty of articles, videos, and other evidence online and offline that livestock aren’t exactly treated well. Maybe they’re nice at some farms, but they still get herded into cramped trucks, then disgracefully manhandled in slaughterhouses. Personally, I don’t like to cause people and other living things harm, simply because I feel like being nice is the better option. I believe that doesn’t have to stop at humans and pets.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
the soy fed to livestock is almost entirely the industrial waste from making soybean oil.
max@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Fair enough, it seems like it is waste from soybean oil most of the time. However, it does make me wonder why such an enormous amount of soy is cultivated. >75% is used for animal feed (and oil, indeed). (source). I wonder if it’s a similar situation as with corn in the US and the resulting use of HFCS.