Why would a cat of all animals be confused about which ones to eat? They are obligate carnivores.
Yeah, they totally get it. We’d eat them if we were hungry enough, same as they’d eat us. This doesn’t conflict with our feelings of love and companionship. We’re all animals here
We’d eat them if we were hungry enough
They’d eat us if we were small enough.
And the house cat has such a strong prey drive they’d likely do it for fun. I suspect when Mr. Rorschach bites on my hand he’s testing the flavor.
There has been cases in the past of cats eating their owners after the owner died and nobody fed them. They do what they need to survive and I would not begrudge any animal for that. Sure it may be horrendous to see, but I’m dead so what do I care.
Do also note that dogs have been known to do the same. Cats have a lower threshold for that and are more likely to do it in general, but they do tend to wait until they’re literally starving before eating a friend.
Another fun fact about cats is that they are more likely to go feral because they have not been domesticated as long as dogs. Dogs and cats basically domesticated themselves to get food, but cats only began domestication 12k years ago which is not long considering the history of humans.
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I sure would eat my cat if I am hungry enough, but I am never hungry enough so I don’t eat my cat nor any other animal. There are plenty of other things to eat that don’t involve killing animals.
We need to test this, can you not eat anything for 3 days?
Test away :) To answer: yes. I’ve once done a 5 day fast. Your point?
but they don’t taste as good as bbq
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Housecats and chickens both solidly occupy the same slot in my mind:
Things I would be terrified of if they were my size but love cuz they smol.
There have been cases where cats have started to eat their deceased owners and several places around the world where cats are eaten.
People are up in arms about people eating cats… Which seems kinda ironic.
To paraphrase the Coen Brothers:
It is a fool that looks for logic in the comics of the preachy vegans
How do you get “go vegan” out of this?!
It lines up exactly with other vegan talking points like that “Where do you draw the line” billboard so pretty good chance that’s what they’re going for.
Pretty much only vegans make that kinda of complaint, of “hypocrisy” by only eating “some” animals
Wow you seem to posses very low comprehensive faculties.
They literally kill for no other reason than amusement.
Cats are prey to some larger animals, and considering that many humans have portable machines that can instantly kill almost any living mammal, their concern about our diet is probably valid
Cats are pretty famous for “not giving a fuck”, just in general. Also, beyond being obligate carnivores, cats will hunt and kill out of instinct… Not even hunger or necessity.
Like, a pet mouse or something? Gerbil? Actually a guinea pig would be a great choice for the comic since they ARE food in some cultures.
as a cat owner, I can promise you that cats wouldn’t be the confused ones
I mean, cats would certainly eat us, given the opportunity.
Yes, and they also affectionate and care about their group in some weird way. I wish people would learn from cats!
Doesn’t seem too arbitrary at all.
Eh, horse meat isn’t that bad
Neither is rabbit.
Rabbit is actually really testy when prepared well.
Rabbit is more food than horse because you can’t ride a rabbit.
Dogmeat tried to kill The Master and failed
Rabbit should be right of horse. Goat and sheep the most right; there is no culture nor religion that bans their consumption. They are that important to human survival.
Yeah, horses are definitely pets and not food in most of the modern world. Rabbits are hard to place. They just don’t come up very often anymore as either food or pets.
If needed I would eat every single one of them and not feel at all bad about it… Also why is the rabbit there? Rabbit stew is good.
if needed
It literally took your first two words to make your entire perspective on the matter worthless.
And some cultures eat dog, and others worship cows.
Why is your culture correct?
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Sure, so what’s the excuse for 2023?
Who said anything about being correct? That’s just where his culture draws that line.
…so it’s arbitrary
No, there’s usually cultural and/or historic reasons for why the line is drawn where it is
And that makes it not arbitrary…how?
And we don’t live in those times anymore. Why should we do what a culture tells us to do? Just because it’s culture and/or tradition? That’s a pretty dark path to traverse.
You know, you are right. I may start eating dog just right now. Thank you
Honestly, I really don’t consider eating dog to be any worse than eating pig. The only reason we usually do is because we are culturally attached to dogs.
I know you are trying to get a reaction out of me. But I don’t consider that to be more immoral than eating other animals. After all, pigs and cows are roughly as intelligent as dogs, with similar capacities for suffering. At least you would be consistent.
Well I’m glad you’ve given up on making bad faith arguments and realized you don’t have any good ones. At least everyone who reads this can see how foolish you look.
Do you think we should stop speaking out language? Because that is both cultural and tradition. Just because something is based on tradition does not mean it’s a bad thing.
That also doesn’t mean that it isn’t arbitrary, though.
Because I live in it.
There’s another one like this where there’s a line to the right of the duck and the text indicates it’s " when I want to nail that hot vegan"
Priorities!
I would also like to address how horrifyingly close the golden retriever is to the line… Someone really likes cats is my take away.
yeah…golden retrievers are eaten in some parts of China
Hi, China here.
not including horses
Haha. The answer to the billboard’s question is “Yes. Right there. That’s right. Glad we resolved that.”
Nah, I’ve eaten lots of rabbit, and I’ve eaten horse, though I wouldn’t do it again, it really wasn’t good.
Two to the left. I grew up very much enjoying cacciatore. Hunting rabbit and hare is a good time, too.
Cats and dogs both eat meat
Wild animals hunt and herbivores occasionally eat meat
So no animals wouldn’t think this as they eat meat the same as us and wouldn’t care at all about eating meat
So I don’t get what this is trying to say at all
Edit: also forgot to add that some animals are cannibals for example chickens
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I’d like to add that domesticated animals that are taboo to eat typically had a use beyond just eating them.
Dogs guard your property, cats kill pests, horses do work and transportation. You’d only eat those if you were desperate.
Chickens, pigs, and cows? Not so much. The only one of those I could think with an alternate use would be a truffle pig, which wouldn’t be eaten.
I don’t know that that’s true, there can be other cultural reasons.
In Hindu-based cultures you wouldn’t eat cow, as in largely Muslim ones you wouldn’t eat pork.
Eating horse is common in a lot of countries despite falling into your “useful enough not to kill” category. Sheep are useful for wool production but people still eat lamb.
Rat is easy to domesticate and they are frankly useless at drawing a plough but eating them is still taboo in many places. A couple of billion people eat insects daily, but there are still many other countries where it is very rare to eat them at all despite the ease of farming.
I have a friend like this and he’s goddamn annoying about it.
Yeah I understand what that would feel like after having encountered similar types on reddit and in this posts comment section
Cats and dogs have no metacognition. They can barely recognize themselves in the mirror. We do. We have the ability to think about our actions, assign them moral value and better ourselves. That ability is completely wasted if you hold yourself to the same standard as a dog or cat. Is it ok to sniff random people’s buttholes because dogs do it? To eat your own children because some wild animals do it?
Human beings evolved to eat plants and meat and no you can’t get everything from plants as some nutrients in plants are not digestible and don’t get absorbed compared to nutrients from meat
Look if you want to be personally vеgаn indent mind and don’t have anything against you for it but when you or other vеgаns attack people who choose to not be vеgаn or have a vegetarian diet then that becomes a problem because you step into the territory of bullying and harassment of others
Vegan diets have been confirmed to be as good as omnivore diets, even better in some aspects, multiple and multiple times by research, so this point is moot.
We are not attacking you, though your defensiveness speaks volumes. We simply want a better world where billions of animals aren’t tortured and killed every year for a diet that is unnecessary, for the profit of shady corporations and that is contributing to our unsustainable lifestyle.
Yeah you’re gonna need to cite your sources when you make claims like that.
- https://www.nmcd-journal.com/article/S0939-4753(17)30260-0/fulltext
- https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/how-to-eat-a-balanced-diet/the-vegan-diet/
- https://www.jandonline.org/article/S0002-8223%2803%2900294-3/fulltext
- https://web.archive.org/web/20190708160222/https://www.eatrightpro.org/~/media/eatrightpro%20files/practice/position%20and%20practice%20papers/position%20papers/vegetarian-diet.ashx
And many more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Positions_of_dietetic_and_government_associations
But you’re probably not going to read any of that and were just hoping for some gotcha moment
i don’t know about all of their references, but i do know the canadian paper you linked is dated TWENTY YEARS AGO and the ARCHIVED position paper you linked from the AND is expired: it is not the current position of the AND. the australian government’s position is based entirely on that expired position paper.
and, of course, the NHS regularlyly recommends that people eat dairy and seafood. even if a vegan diet can be made to work, it is not recommended by most dietetic associations (none that i know of) for most people.
edit: apparently the only paper with which i had no familiarity was the italian position, but the lead in for that details that you need to take special care to ensure you get enough of certain nutrients.
i’m not a dietitian nor a nutritionist, but even if i were i’m not YOUR dietition or nutritionist, just as you’re not the dietician or nutritionist for anyone on this network. further, veganism is linked with depressive conditions like vystopia, so it’s clear that nutrients aren’t all that is required to be healthy.
The AND paper from 2016 doesn’t seem expired, just removed from some site redesign: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/ The fact that the position hasn’t changed in more than 13 years should be an indication that it still holds. You don’t need to prove that water is wet every few years to make sure it’s still a valid stance.
The NHS respects your life choices, and makes recommendations for nutrients based on those choices.
Any talk about nutrition will be prefaced about getting certain nutrients. If omnivore diets had no risk of deficiencies we wouldn’t need dietitians. Any talk about an omnivore diet will be prefaced with fiber, which is easier to be lacking in that diet.
I never claimed to be a nutritionist. I was just challenging the outdated notion that you NEED to be an omnivore to have a healthy diet.
Vystopia is just a side effect. If I had a cent for every depressing thing in life I would be a millionaire. Dealing with depressing shit is just part of life. Suggesting that someone shouldn’t become vegan because they might get depressed is ridiculous. The same could be said about politics, gay rights, abortion rights etc, etc. Just live in a monastery, don’t care about anything worldly and you won’t be depressed. And veganism isn’t just about being depressed. There is a complementary effect of happiness from feeling connected to and respecting every living being in the world.
Ah yes, my cat is so confused she brings me her recommendations to my step door.
Help stepdoor, I am stuck.
Sorry, I’m not a native speaker and that somehow made sense in my head. I will let it stay as i wrote it cause now i found it super funny.
It made sense just fine. The Internet is just being weird.
You’re not my real door.
I’m pretty sure it’s only common to not eat cats and dogs and small birds for no other reason than because they taste bad/don’t provide much food while also providing other services we find more valuable than they would have as food. Even if that service is companionship. Cats curb pests. Dogs help do all sorts of things. Even birds have uses other than simply pets.
Carnivores generally aren’t good to eat. That definitely plays a part.
Bear meat is awful - greasy and gamey.
You need a spring bear that fed on berries.
Usually though bear meat is put into sausage meat at like 20% with the remainder being beef and/or pork. It’s not much good on its own.
The Chinese and Korean disagree with you. Look up the Yulin festival.
I love my basil plant and take care of it, but one day I’ll come along and definitely eat it
Plants are not sentient
Just because there is no indication of their suffering doesn’t mean they don’t suffer.
Dude common, really?
Plants don’t have a central nervous system. Pain and suffering is not in any way an evolutionary need for plants. We have a CNS and get the impulses, because we have the ability to do something about. Hold your hand above a flame and the pain will make you retract your hand. Hold a flame under a leaf and it’ll just burn.
Furthermore your claim is currently infalsifiable. We can’t proof that you’re suffer even if you tell me that you’re suffering.
Indeed. Many plants even bear fruit that is intended to be eaten. I don’t think any animals intend to be eaten. Fruit is specifically supposed to look and taste good, so that animals eat it and crap out the seeds elsewhere. Even edible leaves are beneficial, as the animals leave fertiliser (more shit).
Though, to say the plant wants to be eaten would be a stretch. There’s no evidence of a thought process, it’s entirely developed just from evolutionary gain. Animals, however, do think.
Have you considered that certain parts of a plant wouldn’t feel pain if plants can feel pain just like we don’t feel pain when cutting our hair for example even though our hair is a part of us
Just because they don’t have a central nervous system doesn’t mean they don’t feel. Perhaps there is a different mechanism for pain that we simply haven’t discovered yet.
Just because the moon doesn’t have a central nervous system doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel pain. Perhaps there is a different mechanism for moon pain that we simply havent’t discovered.
Ever heard of unfalsifiability? If yes, go join any religion you want, because they’ll be really receptive to you.
Prior to about 15 years ago we also thought plants couldn’t communicate. Then we discovered a new mechanism through which they do actually communicate.
Ever heard of discovery? Apparently not, and I think any science group you might want to join will be unreceptive to your close-mindedness.
There are exactly zero good scientific reasons to believe plants feel pain my dude. I’m not being close minded nor open minded, I am just being sensible. Being “open minded” about anything without any solid justification isn’t being open minded, it is being naive. Are you going to call me close minded for not believing purple swans exist? We didn’t use to know that black swans existed, so maybe purple swans exist? I believe just as much in that plants feel pain as I believe in that santa exists, which is effectively nil.
To quote the website I found (doplantsfeelpain.com):
“We consider the likelihood that plants, with their relative organizational simplicity and lack of neurons and brains, have consciousness to be effectively nil”. That is not entirely zero, but for all intents and purposes zero.
This is not only based on non-extrapolation, but also based on our knowledge of consciousness, feelings and pain.
I recently found this website and I was reminded of you:
Have a look: doplantsfeelpain.com
🤡🤡🤡
Since you think it’s possible plants suffer, you should go vegan, since more plants are consumed to provide an omnivorous diet than a vegan one. All those cows/pigs/chickens/etc need to be fed before you get to eat them. So your comment is actual an argument for going vegan.
I don’t know whether plants can suffer or not. I just think it’s silly for someone to use it as a reason not to eat meat when there is not strong evidence that plants don’t suffer.
If plants don’t suffer, then a plant based diet has less suffering. If plants do suffer, than a plant based diet has less suffering.
Only if you assume the suffering of a plant to be less important than the suffering of an animal.
It takes more plants for an omni diet than it does for a vegan diet. So even if plants suffering is worse, a vegan diet is still better.
This post isn’t about the ability to feel pain or sentence, it’s about the paradox of people eating something they claim to feel compassion for. I can feel compassion for both animals and plants but will still eat them
Yes, it is simply a fact that people can be hypocrites.
That depends on how you define sentience, how you intepret the definition of sentience and the fact that science could change the definition
They aren’t but they’re not far off… Trees communicate with each other through fungus in their roots, if one is being attacked it let’s the others know, I can’t remember what evasive action the others take but still…
So what? Traffic lights communicate with each other as well. That doesn’t mean we should grant them moral worth. The ability to suffer and be conscious does.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t venture to eat a traffic light.
I doubt that we stop at plants not because they’re worth less than animals and it’s somehow morally alright. We stop there because we may not be able to survive without eating some kind of living thing: directly or not. I don’t know if there is a diet that doesn’t involve either plants or animals.
Perhaps. It all depends on how you look at it. Personally I don’t think of plants as moral agents, because they don’t have a capacity to consciously suffer. At least that is according to my definitions.
But perhaps for some definition of consciousness and some definition of suffering even a plant can suffer. Perhaps according to those definitions even a traffic light can suffer. Sounds crazy, but it all depends on the definition. If something responding to stimuli to serve some goal is consciousness then a traffic light has consciousness. There is no universally accepted defintions.
Yet then the difference between a pig and a traffic light is so extreme that a cut off point seems reasonable. I certainly also don’t consider mosquitoes as important as pigs. Then we can assign certain moral weight to anything within some range of intelligence and capacity to suffer. At some point we might even have to consider sufficiently powerful AI moral agents. Perhaps the neuron count would be part of that scoring equation.
The least amount of harm that we can inflict on other living creatures weighted by this set of scores while maximizing our own happiness, yet not over estimating our own worth, should be the goal.
Under those conditions eating plants is still better than eating animals, because animals eat plants and thus you indirectly cause more plant death by eating animals.
We would then have some suffering index and could calculate that by going vegan you lower your suffering index by a factor 10, similar to how we know it reduces your carbon footprint by a factor 2 or so.
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Read an account of a guy lost at sea, after a while fish eyes and liver were delicacies where mere weeks before he was repulsed by the idea… When the brain decides “ok I’m taking over to keep us alive” you will not only eat things that you normally wouldn’t - you’ll enjoy doing it too.
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Of course they will. I’m sure that I also would’ve reverted to cannibalism if I would have been involved in the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. But considering normal circumstances: what’s the point of killing animals when you don’t need to?
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That’s great, but the question still remains. Why kill any animal at all when you don’t need to? Unlike the cat in the comic, you’ve got a choice.
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So you do it because you like it. A cow needs to be killed because you want taste pleasure?
I want to chime in on what @NumbersCanBeFun said.
Yes, an animal has to die because I want meat. That’s how it works for now. We are still omnivores, we are able to eat both plants and meat and both taste good to us. If we wouldn’t be able to process meat we wouldn’t eat it. Koalas can sustain themselves on eucalyptus, we can’t. Which brings up another important topic when it comes to meat.
Most Farm animals are an intermediate step between inedible plants and us. We can’t eat gras or weeds even though they are plenty, require minimum care and grow mostly everywhere. Grasing animals can, so we let them turn inedible gras into edible meat or drinkable milk. Pigs and chickens go even further. They eat basically anything we would consider inedible food waste. End stems, roots, seeds, shells, peels everything we would usually throw out into compost, pigs or chickens can and will eat. So animals and therefore meat are a way to get the most nutrition out of you environmental flora and fauna.
This, I am totally fine with. But once we started growing crops specifically to feed livestock to capitalize on cheap meat is where I disagree with the morality of eating said meat. If you want meat, buy the expensive gourmet stuff from the butcher not the packaged meat from the freezer. Also vegetarian or vegan alternatives like “Beyond Meat” are getting pretty close in taste, texture and price to regular ground meat.
Thanks for being reasonable and presenting coherent arguments.
Yes, we are able to process meat and are omnivores. However to the best of scientific knowledge you can thrive on a well planned vegan diet throughout all stages of life, including pregnancy (my vegan wife is currently pregnant), childhood and old age. This is not a matter of debate, but a scientific question and it has been thoroughly answered. All the major health institutes in the world say this: American Dietitians and Nutritionists Associations, NHS, etc. You can look it up yourself, I am on mobile.
So just because we can eat meat, does it make it right when we don’t have to in order to be healthy and happy? Animals posses a consciousness according to science as well. You can look up the cambridge declaration of consciousness.
You make a fair point about animals eating plants that we can’t digest. From a climate perspective I agree with you. IF it were better for the environment than that would be an argument in favor of eating animals, if you are willing to completely disregard the sentience and right to life of these animals. However the current statistics don’t lie. Again this is a scientific question. A vegan diet emits almost half the green house gasses than the omnivore diet. Even the so-called sustainable meats don’t outperform a vegan diet: https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
As it stands eating meat is bad for the animals, bad for the environment and unnecessary to anyone who has the means and ability to eat a well planned vegan diet. Would you agree?
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Why so defensive? I was politely asking questions. Perhaps you don’t feel too comfortable with your answers?
Sure, we all die, but that cow got a bolt gun too the head at approximately one fifth its lifespan. That’s an important difference, I would say.
I don’t want to control you. If you are fine with killing animals for your taste pleasure than that’s your choice. I don’t think that shows a lot of empathy, but that’s my opinion and there’s no logical argument against it. We’re not all the same.
Simple. If you name it, you don’t eat it. Also, most carnivores taste terrible so we avoid eating those.
We name 🐮 They’re really super affectionate, smart and playful. Our cow used to watch for my dad around the time he would come back.
We bought a 4H pig at the county fair once. The kid named her Barbie. It was one hell of a BarbieQ.
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How the hell is that cruel you?
How is it not cruel to you to buy and kill a living breathing conscious being? Pigs are intelligent creatures. Don’t they deserve an ounce of respect? They’re not inanimate objects you know.
How would you feel if it was a dog? “We bought a 4H dog at the county fair once. The kid named her Barbie. It was one hell of a BarbieQ.”
How would you feel if it was a slave? “We bought a 4H slave at the county fair once. The kid named her Barbie. It was one hell of a BarbieQ.”
Why does it all of a sudden become bad if it is a dog or a human? Don’t we share the same capacity to suffer? Sure, there is a huge difference between a pig and a human, no doubt, but both are living breathing beings who feel pain and pleasure, have friends and family and have a desire to live freely and till old age.
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Oh man, I like cats, but they really are the worst when it comes to this subject…
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All humans are of equal value.
Not all animals are of equal value. A cow is not of the same value as a fly and a fly is not the same value as a human.
Would you deem someone who swats a fly equal to a murderer? Probably not. Because the value of flies, if any, is irrelevant.
All humans, including vegans, deem animals as of lesser value.
You will never protect a fly to the same level that you protect a human.
There’s a distinction to be made, and to deem only humans to be of value, is one such distinction.
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Everyone can choose their own moral values.
In my morale (and in the morale of many others) all humans are of equal value. I won’t claim to always act 100% morally. But the morale thing would always be to deem all humans equal.
That is the basis on why discrimination is considered bad. All humans are equal, simple as that.
Do you know why it is not the same for animals? Because animals are not all equal. You just confirmed, you don’t care about flies. You don’t deem flies equal. You don’t deem all animals equal.
So why do you deem the adult pig equal to the three years old child? Because of its mental capacity?
My (and many others’) morale does not make someone’s value dependant on their mental capacities.
A human with higher mental capacity is not of more value than a human with lower mental capacity.
I will repeat myself again: All humans are equal.
By making this distinction, you apparently deem a human with less mental capacity as of lesser value.
That is horrible. Your morale is horrible.
All humans are equal. Not all animals are.
Do you honestly believe that a perfectly moral person would have a hard time deciding whether to give an donated heart to a sick 90 year old or to an otherwise healthy 30 year old? Doctors have to make decisions like these all the time.
If you think this somehow doesn’t count as a valid counterexample, please explain why.
I’d assign value in order of sentience, consciousness, comprehension of the world, others and self. How intense do they experience the world? Can they feel pain and suffer? How social are they? Is it really like something to be that animal / does it have a subjective experience? Does it want to live?
Would you generally agree?
How intense do they experience the world?
Hard to say for any animal.
Can they feel pain and suffer?
Yes, we know every animal, even insects, feels pain and fear.
How social are they?
That depends a lot. Most felines and reptiles are not social, neither are sharks or hummingbirds. Canines, equines, bovines, chicken, ants, termites and bees are very social
Is it really like something to be that animal / does it have a subjective experience?
This question didn’t make much sense. Are you supposed to compare, say, how a jellyfish experiences life with an octopus?
Does it want to live?
Pretty much everything in this earth “wants” to live, including microbes. This “want” is not a right, however. No animals, not even humans, has any sort of “right” to live. Rights are a human invention.
Of those questions, seems only one actually leads to different answers (how social it is), and whatever comes out of the subjective experience one.
I don’t think anybody called pigs or cows morally inferior?
Our farming practices were arrived at mostly through utilitarianism. What was easy to raise, what tasted good, what animals had food readily available for them nearby, what would sell, etc.
I don’t think anybody called pigs or cows morally inferior?
Many, many people say or think “they’re just animals, so it’s not wrong to kill them”, which is the same argument.
Our farming practices were arrived at mostly through utilitarianism.
Maybe you meant pragmatically? Utilitarianism would include the suffering of the victim, but 99% of meat eaters I met (also my former self) buy meat from supermarkets and restaurants with no regard or even thought of the living conditions that the animals had to endure.
Our farming practices were arrived at by the free market. Farmers have to continually lower production costs to stay cost-competetive, because most customers buy the cheapest products available. If two restaurants had the same meal, one at 12$ and the other 10$, almost everyone will choose the cheaper option of course, no questions asked.
Cost reduction had been the main driving factor for our farming practices in the last few decades. Suffering is irrelevant for capitalism.
Many, many people say or think “they’re just animals, so it’s not wrong to kill them”, which is the same argument.
Morally inferior would be “they have a differing belief structure that is lesser than mine”. Like how most religions on the planet see each other, for example. To speak broadly, animals do not have morals because they do not have beliefs unless you broaden the word heavily.
Maybe you meant pragmatically?
No, farmers / people who raised their own livestock all across the world independently did what was convenient for them at the time and most arrived at similar practices. To look at your examples, you may be meaning post-industrialization. I was meaning the most of the rest of human history. Although after industrialization, I could argue they were both both pragmatic and utilitarian. Suffering does not factor into either of those things. It’s a byproduct, not a goal.
Morally inferior would be “they have a differing belief structure that is lesser than mine”.
Oh, that’s the misunderstanding. I meant morally inferior in terms of their moral value (how much their lives are worth to us).
To speak broadly, animals do not have morals because they do not have beliefs unless you broaden the word heavily.
I agree that they don’t have moral systems. When we save people from burning buildings or oppose murder, thats because we see them as having moral value, their beliefs have nothing to do with that.
To look at your examples, you may be meaning post-industrialization.
Yes, our farming practices changed a lot after the industrialization, and current practices are what’s relevant now. In the past people just scrambled not to starve or be malnourished in the winter, which fortunately isn’t a concern in most societies anymore. Almost everyone has access to supermarkets and can live a healthy life without meat, which wasn’t possible in the past.
If some people have to steal food to survive, that doesn’t justify stealing when it’s not a necessity anymore. So talking about historic situations is besides the point here.
Although after industrialization, I could argue they were both both pragmatic and utilitarian. Suffering does not factor into either of those things.
That literally goes against the definition of utilitarianism:
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
If you take the negative effects on affected individuals out of the equation, that’s not utilitarianism, that’s egoism. Putting animals on miserable factory farms for their whole life to get a few minutes of taste pleasure doesn’t maximize utility, it minimizes utility. Not to speak of the resource cost and environmental destruction which is a huge negative for human society.
utilitarianism
It’s odd to me that definition is the primary one on Wikipedia as it doesn’t match with the definition I knew of. I have never seen the word “happiness” used in conjunction with the definition of that word in my entire literary history, but it seems to be a viable definition.
The definitions I knew of are: “Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes of actions and choices.”
Or to use the dictionary definition, “the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.”
To use the primary definition for the moment - for the farmer, raising the animals, slaughtering them in an efficient manner, and getting them to market is utilitarian. Doubly so if you don’t consider animals on the same level as the humans (which many, including the animals themselves due to a lack of broad thought, do not).
If you factor in that plants can also feel pain, you’re left with a real moral quandary if your primary reason to be vegan is to not harm living things.
Not understanding the pain or finding a way to measure the pain does not mean there is no pain.
plants can also feel pain
Seems like a baseless claim, we have a pretty good understanding of plant experience.
Even if plants could feel pain, we could reduce suffering by skipping the inefficient middleman that endures suffering and causes “suffering” to many more plants than what is needed for anyone’s sustenance.
Not baseless. There are many sources and studies claiming the opposite of yours, and as someone who worked in forestry (and lived on a non-corporate farm that produced mostly alfalfa), it’s somewhat more apparent once you’re there and present in that world.
To quote myself on another thread:
I trust you know how to use search, but: https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientists-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm You can find many more if you look. We’ve known for a while that trees do this, and fungi are absolutely notorious for this. Plants respond to warnings from their peers about dangers, brace for pain, and signal pain to others.
Do not make the mistake of ignoring the evidence because you don’t like the outcome. You not understanding the pain does not mean there is no pain. Life for some means death for others. Period. You can not avoid it on a micro or macro scale, all you can do is change WHAT you kill.
Yeah. I don’t eat bacon because pigs are racists. I eat it because I can, and I like it
bro animals eat animals, it’s kind of a thing if you haven’t noticed
Animals also rape other animals of its same species or kill their own children. Not sure we should take animals as inspiration for our own decisions
Of course not. Most people are happy to accept that humans are intellectually superior to animals but conveniently ignore that extra intellectual ability when it comes to applying empathy towards them.
There are even humans that eat other humans. Therefore eating humans is fine?
Animals also commit infanticide, so lets all kill some children I guess.
false equivalency dude, meat is a normal part of life and your absurd ass arguments aren’t gonna change that
Racists say racism is a normal part of life too. If you can’t argue why it’s a false equivalency that isn’t an argument at all.
appeal to nature fallacy
Using racism to attempt to promote your comment is disgusting because it flies in the face of awareness of the inequality and discrimination from racism itself
You are disgusting and I’d hope your behavior wouldn’t migrate over from reddit, yet here you are unfortunately
There is also the possibility that your comment is a bait comment
How so? If I were to compare racism and sexism to argue that sexism is bad, that doesn’t play down racism in any way, to the contrary. The same is true for comparing the ideological basis of racism and speciesism. Please explain why that’s disgusting.
I don’t think it’s arbitrary. I think people eat the ones that are tasty…
I think you haven’t had much cat.
I’ve heard enough about how greasy and gamy it it. Just haven’t had the opportunity. I will eat any meat put in front of me as long as it was prepared well.
Removed by mod
I always find it funny that vegans seem to completely ignore fish, they only ever have a pickle with mammals and some birds
Uh, Vegan here. Fish suffer. Fishing is depleting the ocean and creating loads of plastic pollution via fishing nets. Stop eating fish. Do you see how you’re like, totally wrong?
My point is that these preachy messages, such as the one in the comic in this post, never show fish, possibly because they’re not as “relatable” as other animals humans consume.
lol um, no?
So you find something funny that you completely made up in your head and applied to an entire global community to suit your own narrative? Good for you👍
Nope, I find it funny that vegans always like to point people having pets while eating other animals, but never make these preachy messages showing fish, they only ever show “cute” animals
That’s pescatarian
Vegans don’t eat fish.
For the record, I’d be down to eat both cats and dogs if given the opportunity, I just wouldn’t eat my own pets.
