Vegetarian or No?

Hi Cynic-Al, has it really been a year since we spoke here? How time flies! Good to see you still lurking though. I know you pointed your question at Decius, I hope he reads and answers it, but I'd like to address your observations if I may?

At the end of your last post, you say; "In short not having animals would increase the farmers costs, and mean that a quarter of his land was wasted every year" and I'd like to address this first.

I'm not sure I agree with your assumption that you have to graze animals on arable land once every four years. I take your good word for it that this happens, but not out of necessity, I'd suppose, but out of opportunity. If one is already keeping the animals in the first place it would be quite astute to capitalise on the fact. I just question it is the best way of managing arable land? Surely it would be an unnecessary excess and not the only way of doing such a task? I'd continue to argue that there must surely be even better ways, simpler and more efficient ways, of making the land fertile without the use of any animals at all? I've lived where I live all my life and there's arable land near me (growing oil-seed rape) and in my life I've never seen a grazing animal on it ever. So in that particular case, I can testify that it isn't necessary.

"Their keeping is economically viable because their meat and eggs fetch a higher price than the grain they eat. I'm not talking morality just thinking on the purely capitalist business sense."

I agree with your business reasoning from this particular perspective, and what you describe illustrates the way the economy functions at presenty. I'll question the efficiency of keeping animals in the first place later but to make a separate point right now; In my fanciful world where my heartfelt and sincere opinion is a majority one, then demand for such products would not exist in the first place and farmers would have to work around these issues, which I believe they would do, easily. Such is the free-flowing market economy of supply and demand.

" Though if we wander into the realms of morality and humans not being higher up the pecking order --"

No, that's good, that's an important place to go, honestly, go there. Elaborate, please.

"The other idea for you to consider is what would happen to those species if humans stopped eating them"

This defence is often made to me whenever I debate this subject and I find it a very curious bit of reasoning. I can safely say that cows, pigs, etc. would not go extinct if we stopped farming them, but to favour the intent of your argument I will freely admit that we would go from billions of captive creatures to just thousands at least. Yet I find it odd that people who are responsible for billions of animal deaths annually suddenly become so caring for their artificial existence when the suggestion is made that the practice should cease and the numbers vanish? Very odd indeed. I'm also almost certain that this is not the reason omnivores take pleasure in animal flesh and animal products anyway, I doubt that most even think about it. I am very fortunate to be in such good company among omnivores that do and are thinking about it.

Let's just suppose for a second that these creatures would indeed be extinct if we did stop farming them. It would truly be a sad day I agree, but as you so rightly observe, these creatures are not wild creatures anymore anyway. If we patted them between the horns, apologised and put them back into the wild I doubt they'd even survive? Those that did would probably cause unpredictable effects to the existing wildlife and that's not fair on them. So maybe extinction would be for the best in the bigger picture? I wouldn't like it, I would (and do) feel responsible for my fellow man's crimes and I'd repay those crimes in some microscopic way by taking an animal in and nurturing it to the end ensuring a happy life as my way of saying sorry. Big softie aren't I? (I hope Chiron reads this!)

"I would agree with you that in its current state the third world has little reason to keep meat as a food source, as it is a waste of what little they have trying to keep an animal alive and well enough fed to make it worth eating in the end."

Now here, you see, if you agree with this statement I feel compelled to point out the obvious step in logic; If it is uneconomic to filter your resources via an animal before it is 'worth' eating then why not cut out the 'middle man' and take your nutrients at the source anyway? When you need to get from A to B, why bother traversing C,D & E? This is one of the other less publicised rationales of veganism.

" --and any land they could possibly inhabit would be cultivated for crops instead"

Turning the land we currently use to keep animals alive on into arable land would be a more efficient use of that land. Fact. Approximately twelve vegetarians or twenty vegans can live off the same area of land it took to feed one single omnivore (I've recently researched and updated this statistic) This surely sheds new light on how daft things are now just from the economical perspective.

"I remain a meat eater and have no intention of changing that unless I develop an allergy, or meat ceases to be readily available."

Is that really true? These are the only set of circumstances that would change you? You wouldn't change even if some miracle occurred and you agreed with my logical points? Even then you would still continue to eat meet and use animal products? I doubt it and doubt that you're really that close-minded and credit you with much more smarts than that.

"I still see biological design as enough reason to remain an omnivore, and see little real room for the "relative morality" of being an omnivore. "

I'm fine with that, I have to be. Heck, I'm lying, I suppose I'm not really fine with that, but I'll pretend to be out of respect for you. But this statement leaves you open to an obvious argument; If your biological design is enough reason to stay omnivore then what of your biological design to forcibly spread your seed and your biological design to violently protect your territory (I could go on!)? Why is one acceptable and the others not? Stimulating I think you'll agree, but will it all be worth it if the logic takes you to a place that might ask a little change of you?

The debate so far is very fulfilling for me, I thank you for it!

MG

Energy
When everything is said and done (wheat, water, soil used to feed and graze animals), for every calorie of fossil fuel used to create the most efficient meat, range-land beef, 1/3 of a calorie of food is created.

For the same one calorie of fossil fuel, 2.5 calories of food are created in oats, the most efficient grain.

An optimal vegetarian diet uses natural resources over 5 times more efficiently than a meat eating diet does. In other words, for every omnivorous meal you eat, if you were vegetarian you could have eaten five meals instead. Decadency?

Water
The water required to yield a pound of meat is approximately fifty times the water required to yield a pound of wheat. That's clean freshwater. The kind that Australia is running out of. The kind that they say you should save. As Newsweek put it, "The water that goes into a 1000 pound steer would float a destroyer."

Shit
These walking talking shitting animals create (in the US alone) 2 Billion Tons of manure a year. This is ten times more than all the shit created by the entire world population of humans. This shit destroys land, and further reduces water supply by pollution. Since these animals are fed the worst food imaginable, their shit does not return to the land and actually pollutes it, destroying viable cropland and grazing land.

Land Use
One acre of land used to create plant protein creates approximately ten times more protein than the same acre used to create cattle protein (cattle being more efficient than pigs or chickens).

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Indeed, it has been pointed out that if Americans alone reduced their consumption of meat by half, they would free enough food to make up the world's calorie deficit four times over. In a world where people are starving to death by the tens of millions, suffering from malnutrition at even greater numbers, and driven to farming practices that desert their land in order to eke out a subsistence, America's meat consumption not only wastes land, but wastes desperately needed food.

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"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

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Be warned, I'm not an obedient student

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Piece of piss. I can work it out, yes, I just don't choose to use it as I know I tend to write reams and reams of text and the spacing makes it seem longer. I've really only been trying to make my points as readable as possible

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@ "the beast": maybe I am being entirely closed minded about the issue, but I still stand by what I say. I agree that there is logic in being a vegetarian (and possibly vegan, though fruitarians I would still consider as more than a little strange). As for biological design to eat meat or beat people up who come onto you territory, there is a difference in the fact that I'm talking teeth and stomach design rather than primal instinct. As for being unable to grow crops on a field every year, this is without the use of fertilisers (either chemical, or also commonly biomass from someone else's animals).

@ Decius: I would still have some disagreement over the actual logic in the economic arguments presented. to start with may I enquire as to exactly how your petrol powered cows work? I have yet to see fossil fuels power a cow, there is some needed in their transport obviously (but the same with the grain) and maybe to produce the food for them to eat in the winter, but consider the other produce made by the cow, all the meat, plus any other materials that could be used from them (once again economy not morality here). You are also failing to consider that ending the meat industry would put several hundred thousand people (probably more) out of work, as well as putting an end to all household dogs and cats (as they cannot healthily eat a vegetarian diet). There is also the economic (or I suppose more capitalist) point of view of the farmers, which is that they make more profit from selling meat than crops, if meat was no longer required, many farms would go under because they were no longer financially viable enterprises.

As for the water (and other necessities of the animals life) "wasted" unless as I previously suggested these animals became extinct they would still be there to need them we just wouldn't get the food from them that we currently do. The moral repugnance of suggesting destroying large portions of several species to allow water to be wasted by the swimming pools and jacuzzis of the western world instead of drunk by animals astounds me. Australia lacks clean freshwater but the majority of households have a swimming pool, I know where I'd be looking to make cuts.

I worry about what you feed your cows that makes their shit pollutant. if fed on grass and normal crops then they provide a perfectly healthy manure for growing other crops (or as use as biofuel)

As for cutting the meat intake by half to feed the third world, it probably would also us to produce enough food to meet the needs of the third world. The only problem remaining would then be the fact that it would rot along with the rest of our stockpile as we waited for them to buy it off us. And even we could be persuaded to hand over the necessary food, we only need to cut our intake of meat by an 8th to solve the problem, not a strong argument for giving it up completely. Your arguments are (mostly) logical but their morality is misplaced.

If you want to talk about the decadence of eating meat then find someone who lives close to you so that you don't waste energy over the internet or powering the server that hosts this site, ride a bike or walk instead of a car or public transport, grow produce in your back garden so no fuel is needed to mass produce it, then come back and tell me that meat is a sinful decadence (or rather wait for me to be decadent and fly over to America then tell me).

In my view after what I've said in return to your points, that would leave us with only an argument about the relative morality of actually eating the animals. You have said that we are no better than them, but then if we are no better than the other animals that live off meat, and do you expect other carnivorous or omnivorous animals to become vegetarian? Any answer other than yes is hypocritical, if we are no higher than these animals then acting like we are is acting above our station. The other question (I will admit to this being a bit of a ridiculous argument but you feel that this entire post is, so I'm sure you'll forgive me this one) is what is the fundamental difference between a plant and an animal, both have life?

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Of course none of this matters. The world is going to shit. Vegetarianism and the absolutely clarity of how stupid it is to be a meat eater is a no-brainer. There is no question, whatsoever, about its validity. But there is no question about lots of things nowadays that mentally deficient Americans choose to ignore.

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"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"
[  Edited by Cynic-Al at   ]

Cynic, you speak from such an un-educated mind-set that it baffles me I haven't spotted your ignorance before. I say this with harshness because you present your points with some degree of certainty (in even stating that there are holes in my case) whereas if we were in person I would have you licked in about five minutes.

Regardless. We're not communicating in the same language, so there's no point communicating. I'm talking from an open minded and logical point of view. You're crazy (crazy being the most appropriate description i can allocate to someone who actually thinks preserving the life of creatures bred to be tortured then slaughtered for food is a worthy moral cause while still completely overlooking the fact that they are, in actuality, tortured and slaughtered).

Go do some research. Watch the Simpsons episode on Lisa becomming a vegetarian. Read, for the love of God. Educate yourself, then come back with more than a set of opinions that can be refuted by my dog.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

Gentlemen, please!

Decius, I like the way that Cynic-Al questions everything put before him. Obviously I side with you with regard to the points you made (they were all new to me!), but his perspective unearths little treasures that stimulate my perspective. He's not crazy, he's got a different view and I'm sure that he's open to researching these facts (I know I am, can you cite your sources?) and I'm pretty sure that he'll review his opinion if he finds them to be true? Not the actions of a crazy person really. It's a shame to see the discussion take an ugly turn.

To continue regardless...

The argument from economics, the argument from biology, the argument from evolution etc. are all fascinating diversions from the real subject at hand -- the argument from morality. My opinions differ greatly from all the animal rights crowd and most of the other veggies I know. To be clear, here is what I deduce:

Animals, including the human animal, are not equal. They are blatantly different across species and within species. We should respect and celebrate these differences. Any argument proclaiming equality, I feel falls at the first hurdle (and is why the "V movement", if I can call it that, is not taken seriously). Humans have a fabulous difference in that they (currently) have the greatest cognitive ability that can make them, if they so choose, (and they do) to be at the top of a naturally occurring 'pecking order' system. Our cognitive abilities enable us to live outside and beyond the boundaries of the 'pecking order' system. We have an ideal of something better, "civility". Every single human barring the incapable or the insane aspires to live in a civilised world. Infractions caused by people acting from the old pecking order book, are frowned upon (shall I understate) depending on the violation in question. All I ask is that we choose to read from the one book wherever possible. Being civilised and not exploiting our animal cohabitant friends will make us good, non-hypocritical custodians of our planet and not the self-serving tyrants of it. And again, I temper all of this with my usual caveat of being civilised wherever possible, but when you have no choice, in the face of true survival, do what you have to do.

As much as some might fear it, or fear the change, being vegetarian really wont kill you, honest! In fact, there's an awful lot of good evidence that it will really do us all an awful lot of good. What's the problem with that?

The Beast
MG

p.s. Does anyone else have a problem with my 'quote thing'? I'll reformat my posts in future if Chiron is not the only one.

Metal Giant: You approach the subject of Cynic's desire to ascertain truth from a naive perspective - the moment I presented statistics anyone with an open mind would have gone and researched it themselves to ensure its correctness, or prove its falsehood. Blindly responding with completely illogical opinion in itself tells us a lack of desire to face the facts. Hence, you do everyone a disservice by trying to incorrectly describe this behaviour as somehow being genuine. It is lazy, and it is argumentative.

Yes, it's quite difficult to see where you quoted things. And yes, humans and animals are quite different.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

So decius would you say that there is no humane way to kill the animal for food as from what little you bothered to refute any point I made that is all you have actually said? My opinions of how the animals are treated come from my experience helping on the farm that my uncles run. The cows there are treated humanely. Their life is spent in a field eating grass, or in a barn eating turnips and grain. Sheep probably undergo the most suffering being shorn, yet I doubt you would complain as much about a woollen jumper as my dinner. Animals are also unconscious while killed (unless halal meat, which I would agree is a barbaric way of killing an animal) so what torture they undergo I am unsure, it is just sedation and then death, they feel nothing more than if they were put down like an injured pet.

All animals like that were bred to be slaughtered by nature, your only point is that we formalised the process. We are also the most humane of their predators, if you thinking being packed into a lorry, then stunned is inhumane imagine being chased and hamstrung by a pack of dogs that then proceed to eat you without bothering to make sure that you are fully dead.

I never overlooked the fact that the animals are slaughtered, but if you would be so kind as to tell me what torture they undergo?

I presume by presented statistics you mean the amount of fuel used to produce the meat, as only that and the amount of water they drink were statistics you quoted and I denied neither of them, I only attempted to question where the fuel went. As for the amount of water, I still stand by the fact that there are plenty of other less worthwhile uses of water than for a cow to drink. Your comments about the manure I would be interested to see the source for because everywhere I have found and all my experience has thrown up only that "fresh" chicken waste is bad for the soil, every other source is stated as a good fertiliser.

I have still yet to be given anything I would accept as your perfectly logical and open minded arguments, I have accepted what you say is true, your statistics I hold in high esteem. I agree that there is no reason not to be a vegetarian, but the moral argument for why to be is the only one that holds any close inspection, and it is purely a case of the fact that we kill to eat, and yes it is a decision whether or not to, but that is the same for many animals that are omnivorous, they can choose not to eat meat, but often it is a convenient source of food.

If you still totally disagree with me, instead of screaming about a lack of logic point it out, not just general statements, but actual specific points.

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"

Baffling. In less than a minute I used common sense to do a search on Google for "cost of meat production". I came up with lots of results. I'll post them here, since you can't do this yourself.

Read: http://www.epigram.org.uk/view.php?id=1338
Read: http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30610-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Read: http://www.hknet.org.nz/Cost-of-meat-page.htm
Read: http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/101.html
Read: http://nexusnovel.wordpress.com/2006/08/25/health-world-peace-and-the-veg
etarian-diet/
Read: http://www.planetaryrenewal.org/ipr/vegetarian.html
Read: http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp *Good Read
Read: http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142

Very few biases present themselves in pro-vegetarian articles.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

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Decius: Hence, you do everyone a disservice by trying to incorrectly describe this behaviour as somehow being genuine.

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Cynic-Al: I agree that there is no reason not to be a vegetarian, but the moral argument for why to be is the only one that holds any close inspection.

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Cynic-Al: but that is the same for many animals that are omnivorous, they can choose not to eat meat, but often it is a convenient source of food.

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You're a good man Metal Giant. I too would prefer to debate the moral aspect of it. But I think this cannot be accomplished until there is a clear understanding of REALITY. Enlightenment is nothing more than the grand view of many small truths. We can be enlightened about the concept of being a vegetarian if we first understand the basics of meat eating and vegetarian diets.

The moral issue is entertainment... gravy... it has little bearing on a calculated decision which so obviously favours one side of the argument.

But, to put forward what I deem to be the most just, fair, and logical perspective on the moral aspect:

The more intelligent a creature is, that is, the more it is capable of sustaining memory (therefore knowledge) and accessing this memory (therefore awareness) creating the ability to gauge the passing of time, the more this creature is able to sustain, explore, and in essence, feel emotion.

That is point number one.

In point number two, the more intelligent a creature is, the more capacity it has to be useful of its own free will or conditioning. The more intelligent it is, the more it is capable of training and conditioning and therefore being a useful, dynamic part of its environment.

That is point number two.

Both these points ignore almost completely racial biases and focus almost entirely on the creature's intelligence, which really, is the main thing besides base genetics that separates different inhabitants of this planet.

Since we do not know any better, humans seem to be the most intelligent, and therefore, most capable of sustaining emotion and altering their environment. Therefore, they are the most useful, and can feel the greatest pain.

As we tread down the line, we get to bacteria, or even smaller more un-evolved creatures that adapt and alter their environment very little, and to our knowledge, feel very little. Therefore, they are the most useless and can feel the least amount of pain.

Therefore, looking at the entirety of the universe as one grand composite of usefulness and pain, if we were to try to maximize usefulness and reduce pain, it would necessitate preserving as many life forms as possible, and if not possible to save them all, then save the most intelligent.

Therefore, since we must eat, and have no way of eating non-living creatures, we should choose the least intelligent. Which, at the current time, appears to be vegetation.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

Decius, I disagree with actually relatively little (except for the actual issue of eating meat) that you have said. We do eat too much meat, and it does cause problems, but it is not the sole cause of the problems you have quoted. There is very little actually new on any of the pages you gave me to read, the only thing I actually asked for your reading on was what made the waste poisonous (to which I think one source had a single line). But your conclusion from the facts is still too strong to be fully supported by the evidence provided.

From one of the sites you linked

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Even now, we are already producing enough food for everyone on the planet, but unfortunately it is being allocated inefficiently.

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While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories.

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"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"
[  Edited by Cynic-Al at   ]

Just a little light reasearch for all concerned:

http://www.peekvid.com/video/1195/17096/07x05---Lisa-the-Vegetarian.htm
l

MG