Becoming a vegetarian (or eating meat)

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's worth stating that I'm against hunting animals for sport and hunting wild animals for food, which is partly why I'm reticent to eat game meat, but in terms of pastoral farming I don't have a problem.

Hunting animals for sport is cruel, and on the second point it's very difficult to hunt for food in a humane way. I'd do it if I had to, but seeing as we've moved beyond that, I couldn't really justify eating game meat unless I was over at someone's house and didn't really have a say in the matter.

(Being a massive carnivore I'd obviously love to tear into the juicy delicious meat)

[Marvin]

But eating game meat (which is not wild) is surely far more ethical than eating intensively-farmed meat?

[Emma Raducanu]

Game, like dear are usually reared on an estate where they're essentially wild but then shot for food, 90% of which ends up being exported because of it's lack of popularity in this country. Venison doesn't like sea travel, it would much rather be eaten in England.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

But eating game meat (which is not wild) is surely far more ethical than eating intensively-farmed meat?

Intensively-farmed meat is not all of the same quality, nor reared in the same way, nor killed in the same way.

It's the method of killing that seems more unpredictable, stressful and cruel to the animal.

On balance I'd far rather eat an animal that was slaughtered in a controlled and humane way as possible than one that wasn't, and I'd prioritise that over the general welfare of the animal (though I am not saying I don't care about that, believe me, I just think it is possible to undertake pastoral farming in an ethical way and that is happening, and the produce of that farming is widely available)

Plus I don't like finding lead pellets in my food. That's just the way it is!

[rudi]

[ed] Duh, didn't notice there was a whole new page. Sheesh...


You could be right; I don't know enough about farming even though I spend a reasonable chunk of my life on farms. It was weird visiting a couple yesterday as they were still completely covered in ice. I'd almost forgotten about the hilarious falling overness of the past couple of weeks.

[Christs Cock and Balls]

Hunting animals for sport is cruel, and on the second point it's very difficult to hunt for food in a humane way. I'd do it if I had to, but seeing as we've moved beyond that, I couldn't really justify eating game meat unless I was over at someone's house and didn't really have a say in the matter.

Thanks for replying. I don't mean to carry this on if it's getting dull, however I really can't see this point of view. To me, a very small percentage of animals are killed in hunting for sport, but you feel thats cruel. Large numbers are killed for food every hour, but thats OK...

If you like eating meat, isn't that a form of enjoyment? Whats the difference in enjoying the sensation of eating it to actually killing it?

Anyway, we shall probably always disagree. So as you were...

[Shaun]

The usual argument is we NEED food, so it's okay. That seems to also legitimise clubbing baby seals for fur coats though, since we also need clothing. In both cases there are ways to fill those needs without mistreating animals.

[Christs Cock and Balls]

You could be right; I don't know enough about farming even though I spend a reasonable chunk of my life on farms. It was weird visiting a couple yesterday as they were still completely covered in ice. I'd almost forgotten about the hilarious falling overness of the past couple of weeks.

I have farmers in the family, so I really can only comment on what I learn from their experiences. It does seem though that your organic, cattle naming micro-dairy lot aren't the mainstream.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Thanks for replying. I don't mean to carry this on if it's getting dull, however I really can't see this point of view. To me, a very small percentage of animals are killed in hunting for sport, but you feel thats cruel. Large numbers are killed for food every hour, but thats OK...

If you like eating meat, isn't that a form of enjoyment? Whats the difference in enjoying the sensation of eating it to actually killing it?

Anyway, we shall probably always disagree. So as you were

Well the meat I'm chewing into isn't still on the body of a living animal (usually), so the sensation of eating it is similar to other sorts of food. It has a flavour, texture and it usually goes down very nicely. That seems quite different from the sensation of chasing after an animal to kill it, when we don't need to do that to animals, they're within easy reach, standing around looking a bit bored in fields.

I have no qualms whatsoever tearing into dead animal meat, I don't equate that to cruelty whatsoever, but chasing after it with a gun/stick/hard-on....

[rudi]

So it's OK to work in an abbatoir as ling as you don't enjoy your job? ;-)

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Conveniently, not enjoying the job is one of the main perks of working in an abbatoir.

[Christs Cock and Balls]

I don't get your logic at all. Still, thank you for clarifying the point I asked for.

[Blaaah]

Apologies for the delayed nature of this reply; I do hope you'll consider it worth waiting for on some level.

The foetus thing is a completely dishonest analogy.

It wasn't an analogy; it was a recollection of another instance of the same tactic. The tactic is dishonest. Show people shocking images, and their revulsion proves your argument is correct. But it doesn't.

Your use of the word 'anthropomorphism' implies something is only worth sympathy if it is human. A creature with a body as capable as pain as a human doesn't resemble a human when it's writhing in pain, dying, yet the images are still shocking.

If I told you I found them startling rather than shocking, that would disqualify me from the discussion, of course. You must see how your own tools work.

I can hardly imagine the pain of being dehorned or debeaked, but anyone would wince at those images.

Because they're imagining the pain. Or are you using 'wince' to mean recoiling in general?

Your stereotype of the middle class vegetarian is a pathetic smear, frankly. As ridiculous as people who call Affirmative Action racist. No yer the ism.

I love that here, you're using the exact same sleight-of-mind as the notion of Speciesism requires, but with none of the mechanism cloaked by the word. It doesn't work.

You confuse an issue about issue about defending individuals' rights with an issue about defending the right to exploit. Fair does if you thought the dramatic images had no logical argument beneath them, but then you come out with this shocking Godwin:

The two parts of that second sentence aren't connected; you just fancied using the expression 'Godwin'. Never mind, I forgive you.

No, not at all. Just noting the importance of Hitler's vegetarianism-or-not to vegetarians. It has been claimed in the teeth of the facts that he wasn't one. It matters to vegetarians, and so it must matter to an observer of vegetarians. Why does it matter to them? How much or how little does it prove? To plenty of vegetarians, it proves something, or the matter wouldn't be surrounded with such concerted efforts at obfuscation.

No, I haven't justified meat-eating, just explored why vegetarianism-on moral-grounds is specious.

Those who define themselves as vegetarian are overwhelmingly white. They are also overwhelming middle-class. There are lots of people who avoid meat for spiritual reasons who aren't vegetarian. Vegetarianism is the creed that produces video nasties and tofu. It's hopelessly white, it's manifestly middle-class.

Believers in animal rights are 'implicitly' racist?

Believers in the notion of Speciesism, which is what I was discussing, are clearly racist. All the analogies used are with what white people did to non-white people – the 'us', the 'we', hasn't changed, the listener is inscribed in the address as a middle-class white person; a person who feels the guilt of a slave-owner's descendant. Surely this is self-evident?

Vegetarians 'like' cute animals more than humans? I think I'll leave this one, although I sincerely hope you don't believe this is because your rationale is so impenetrable.

You've left all of them, actually. I'm glad you surround the 'like' with quotation marks; you see how absurd is a notion of liking that could comfortably accommodate both relationships with other humans and relationships with animals. But that absurdity is daily indulged in by thousands of people.

The word 'speciesism' describes a philosophy which has existed BEFORE the word itself was invented.

Noooooooooo, no and no again. That never happens. A word reifies a certain concept for the benefit of its creator(s), there are no ready-reified meanings waiting to be put into words.

You dislike being called a speciesist because you don't like the suffix, but there's no need to dwell on this. It was literally a footnote in my OP and you've spent the longest of any topic discussing it.

Don't you get it? The term is intrinsically specious. I dwell on the word because it's the most important one you used.

Stop trying to make the issue so complicated that you can dismiss it as woo.

I'm not making the issue complicated, I'm just discussing it. You eat meat, but you ascribed some moral insight to vegetarianism. I decided to try and help you out of the hole.

My own sympathy towards vegetarians comes from my interest in biology, and our common and recent ancestry. There's nothing I hate more than new age hocus pocus.

I hate mass-murder more. Injustice. Lies, above all perhaps. It is probably better to do as you do; to hate things that don't matter. Modish things, things that really amount to a constellation of consumer choices. Skinny jeans. White-guy dreadlocks. Hating a thing like deception is a full-time occupation, and I don't recommend it. Trying to hold it back will lick you hollow. Eventually, you give up.

Bold part - unpleasantness ignored - I find it curious that you consider the idea that a human 'creates' and owns the animal (because he put it between four walls) so clearly self-evident that explanation is unnecessary.

sirhenry has explicated this.

In the first instance, yes it is true hitler was a veggie - but for health reasons - he was advised to cut meat out of his diet by his doctor.

Making him not the whole hog? By all accounts he banged on about it enough for a true believer.

As for the 'but we would never have evolved thus far with out eating meat' line of defense, this is true, but the exact same could be said for civilisation + slavery - do we want to start defending the enslavement of humans now too?

I'm not sure which part of my post this is in response to.

In regards to speciesism, im really not sure you understand its social history as a term - it's less political as it is philosophical, and largely grew from philosophy departments that werent particular concerned with taking some kind of uppity stance towards the bourgeoisie (or whatever it was that you were getting at).

If you're being that cursory about the question of what I'm getting at, how do you know that bit of half-enunciated information is relevant? This sentence seems intended to imply I'm a Tory, which I'm not. As I've said before, I'd define myself politically as a libertarian socialist, and any philosophers who don't take as their central (civic) concern the end of capitalism hold little interest for me.

The misanthropy smear in this instance is equally indefensible since the term 'specism' is more often than not attributed to Peter Singer, who when he's not campaigning for animal rights, is campaiging for human rights, and giving up the vast majority of his income to african aid charities.

The behaviour of the man who coined the word has nothing to do with the character of the notion the word denotes. If he only donated 65%, would it make my statement more defensible? Half?

Just checking up on him now, I'm amused to discover that on his website FAQ, in response to the question of whether he'd save a human or a mouse from a fire if he had to choose, Singer the humanist writes a three-hundred-and-sixty-six-word reply. Apparently it's something to do with cognitive functions. If the human was brain-damaged, he'd probably plump for the mouse. Good to know.

I mention this not because I'm interested in a discussion about Peter Singer's imponderable decency, but because his ghoulishness is funny.

None of this is or indeed should be particularly surprising i think. The idea that caring about humans on one side, and animals on the other is a binary choice that will put you slap bang in the centre of either camp, is the worst example of 'black & white' thinking in this entire thread.

It's a good thing no-one was doing that.

As for the 'humans must live by the suffering of other creatures' well, that's demonstrably not true is it?

Any human being lives in part by the suffering of other beings, and that includes other human beings. If you live under capitalism, for instance, it's true no matter how hard you work to make it untrue. This isn't the same as saying there's no point in working to make it untrue, it's just remembering Adorno's dictum that 'wrong life cannot be lived rightly'.

So im not really sure why youre so ready to cling onto such a doom-mongering view of existence, when it isnt even an extensive reality for a sizable proportion of the human race.

It's not doom-mongering.

Maybe that's because humans ARE animals. We have certain characteristics that no other animals have, but I don't know if any of them justify elevating ourselves above them to the point of complete disregard.

Then you truly are a natural misanthrope.

Are you saying causing any amount of pain to other animals for any reason is morally acceptible?

Well, it's not really a matter of what I'd accept, but no. It wouldn't be right to cause pain to animals for pleasure, because of what it does to the human. Psychopathic killers start with animals, but they imagine a human experience of pain while they're doing it – they anthropomorphise the animals. Getting used to carrying out sadistic impulses is worse than rehearsing them in games.

What specifically is it that grants humans moral status that other animals apparently don't have?

There we are, the will to suicide in one rhetorical question.

[Friendly_Milk]

Those who define themselves as vegetarian in the UK are overwhelmingly white. They are also overwhelming middle-class. There are lots of people who avoid meat for spiritual reasons who aren't vegetarian. Vegetarianism is the creed that produces video nasties and tofu. It's hopelessly white, it's manifestly middle-class.

Fixed.  In places like India, things differ.

[rudi]

I'm off to tell the 10 million Jainists in India they're white and middle class. I imagine they'll be overjoyed.

[madhair60]

I'm off to tell the 10 million Jainists in India they're white and middle class. I imagine they'll be overjoyed.

There are lots of people who avoid meat for spiritual reasons who aren't vegetarian.

[Johnny Yesno]

The two parts of that second sentence aren't connected; you just fancied using the expression 'Godwin'. Never mind, I forgive you.

No, not at all. Just noting the importance of Hitler's vegetarianism-or-not to vegetarians. It has been claimed in the teeth of the facts that he wasn't one. It matters to vegetarians, and so it must matter to an observer of vegetarians. Why does it matter to them? How much or how little does it prove? To plenty of vegetarians, it proves something, or the matter wouldn't be surrounded with such concerted efforts at obfuscation.

It isn't important to any vegetarians I know. As I said before, it's usually brought up by triumphalist meat eaters. The irrelevance and factual error does deserve the mention of Godwin.

There are lots of people who avoid meat for spiritual reasons who aren't vegetarian.

That statement should have 'certain kinds of meat' substituted for 'meat' for clarity. Anyone who avoids all meat is a vegetarian, whatever their reasoning. rudi's suggestion of Jainists is one such example.

Vegetarianism is the creed that produces video nasties and tofu.

I didn't realise the Han Dynasty had VCRs. You learn something every day.

[sirhenry]

Just noting the importance of Hitler's vegetarianism-or-not to vegetarians.

In much the same way that issues like BSE, antibiotic overuse or rainforest destruction are important to meat eaters. Only ever brought up by the other side of an argument that's going nowhere.

[Johnny Yesno]

In much the same way that issues like BSE, antibiotic overuse or rainforest destruction are important to meat eaters. Only ever brought up by the other side of an argument that's going nowhere.

Those aren't comparable to the Hitler thing at all. Those issues may not bother some meat eaters but they are relevant to a discussion about vegetarianism. Whether Hitler was a vegetarian is irrelevant to either position in that discussion.

[Shaun]

Then you truly are a natural misanthrope.

How does that follow at all? You don't have to hate humans to not be totally uncaring towards all other species.

Well, it's not really a matter of what I'd accept, but no. It wouldn't be right to cause pain to animals for pleasure, because of what it does to the human. Psychopathic killers start with animals, but they imagine a human experience of pain while they're doing it – they anthropomorphise the animals. Getting used to carrying out sadistic impulses is worse than rehearsing them in games.

OK, but you're saying it would only be wrong because of how it affects the person doing it, rather than because of the feelings of other animals?

There we are, the will to suicide in one rhetorical question.

I don't really know what that means, since it wasn't a rhetorical question. I actually want to know what you think humans have that makes them worthy of moral consideration which no other animal has. Intelligence, ability to reciprocate, purely the fact they are the same species, or something else? Because the first two don't apply to all humans and the third is arbitrary and would seem to allow for enslaving another species similar to us in characteristics if one existed (which it might extra-terrestrially).

[sirhenry]

Those aren't comparable to the Hitler thing at all. Those issues may not bother some meat eaters but they are relevant to a discussion about vegetarianism. Whether Hitler was a vegetarian is irrelevant to either position in that discussion.

Very true, but they are used in the same way.

Not that it shows the ease with which vegetarians claim the moral high ground, of course.

*stocks bunker with enough fresh water and pulses to last the duration*

[Johnny Yesno]

I'm not making the issue complicated, I'm just discussing it. You eat meat, but you ascribed some moral insight to vegetarianism. I decided to try and help you out of the hole.

It sounds like you're making it complicated to me. Surely, the issue is whether you think animals experience pain or suffering, whether humans currently inflict pain or suffering on animals and, if so, whether this is justified by things like human survival and/or health benefits and the taste.

[Johnny Yesno]

Very true, but they are used in the same way.

Not that it shows the ease with which vegetarians claim the moral high ground, of course.

*stocks bunker with enough fresh water and pulses to last the duration*

I see your point that the issues you mentioned are not concerned with the ethics of the treatment of animals. Nevertheless, they are among the reasons that some people give up eating meat and those people are correct to cite them when challenged. Bringing up the eating habits of a well-known dictator is wrong whatever your views on meat consumption.

[Friendly_Milk]

I'm off to tell the 10 million Jainists in India they're white and middle class. I imagine they'll be overjoyed.
[/quote

My point was that not all veggies are white middle-class peoples.   I did not deny that others where not.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

if we're playing the race card, personally i cant see anything more offensive than to suggest that vegetarianism is merely the preserve of the white middle classes.

This bloke might have something to say for starters...

[Rommel-McDonald]

Check your teeth, the first twelve are for tearing/rending flesh.

  My personal opinion, informed by the looming food crisis:

If acorn fed pork is so tasty, and generally speaking carnivores taste nasty surely the best meat will be all these hordes of white, middle class long-pig?

Does a Vegetarian taste like Chicken? Now there is a question for the new decade.....