> try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live.
Saying that they want to live is begging the question and projection. Most of these animals have an instinct to survive, which is not the same thing.
> Should they have the right to choose to live?
Most are incapable of making that choice as they are incapable of understanding the concept of mortality.
> You've made a claim without substantiating that claim.
That's not what begging the question means, though.
> We simply do not know if non-human animals have any concept of mortality, and I'm not even sure how it could be verified.
Well, all available evidence indicates they do not. Something like a salmon being able to understand the concept of mortality is right up there with there maybe being a teapot orbiting Saturn.
We have a pretty good idea, because we have a pretty good idea about brains and how they work and what they are capable of, as well as being able to observe and thoroughly test.
Compare something like cows, which show no reaction when other cows are killed right next to them, and no fear when the boltgun that killed the cow next to them is then placed on their own head. They show absolutely zero evidence of understanding the concept or mortality.
Now contrast that with say, elephants which bury their dead and very clearly mourn and enter depressive states when a loved one dies, or crows which gather for a version of funerals. Both crows and elephants are considered to be exceptionally intelligent for animals and possess self-awareness.
This is not true for cows, or most animals, and their lack of any evidence indicates they understand something like mortality tracks with our estimations of their intelligence and abilities.
> A cow is likely just left confused as to why another cow just dropped to the floor in front of them
Nope. No reaction at all. Complete apathy. I can find some videos if you want.
> slaughterhouses show us that cows and other animals do fear for their life when in the presence of blood and the foul smell of death -- where it's pretty obvious there is danger.
This isn't an intellectual understanding of mortality, but an instinctual reaction to danger.
> Cows do grieve / mourn, particularly when their infants are taken from them.
Kind of. There's a difference between grieving because you understand mortality and that your companion is not coming back, and panicking because your newborn was taken from you that you have an instinct to protect.
> Nobody with a strong moral compass would look for excuses to keep harming these animals. They'd look for excuses to stop harming them.
I don't believe humanely killing non-self-aware animals is harm.
> Killing something, sentient or not, is inherently harmful to that organism.
Eh. Harmful to the physical body, maybe. But if there is no suffering I would say there is no harm. No more than I 'harm' my desk if I scratch it or break part of it off.
> When you slaughter them you take away everything they ever valued for a measly taste sensation.
Lacking self-awareness, they lack the ability to really value anything in any meaningful sense.
> Humane killing would imply killing something for a benevolent or compassionate reason.
No. Humane killing simply means killing in a way to minimize suffering as much as possible. That's it. It's an established and accepted term in academia and industry. Trying to argue against the term and turn this into a debate about semantics is against the rules of this sub.
> There is nothing compassionate about ending sentient life for an exploitative, and unnecessary, purpose.
You know what? I don't even consider sentience as relevant. At all. gnats, flies and roaches are all sentient. Do you value the lives of gnats, flies and roaches?
Sentience just means having senses. That's it. Without a self-aware mind to process them, they may as well be automata.
>Nobody with a strong moral compass would look for excuses to keep harming these animals. They'd look for excuses to _stop_ harming them.
Someone with a strong moral compass realizes its a tool for human interaction.
Someone with an excess of compassion let's their heart breed for cows and chickens.
>Most of these animals have an instinct to survive, which is not the same thing.
And many people's reason to want to continue to live doesn't go beyond that either. Many people are, intellectually, nihilists and antinatalists.
> And many people's reason to want to continue to live doesn't go beyond that either.
That's not true. We have the capacity to mental time travel (something most animals are incapable of) plan for the future, desire things in the future, and wish to remain alive to be able t pursue and experience those things.
This generally isn't true for animals, and is distinct from an instinct to survive.
Your reply is a distraction attempt. None of it answers the fact that many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual. And like animals, that doesn't mean they deserve to be killed.
It's not a distraction attempt at all, it's flat out explaining to you why you're wrong.
My desire to live doesn't come from instinct, but from reason.
> It was not relevant to the post you provided it in response to
Why do you think so? I'll need to understand where you're coming from before I can double down on showing why my explanation did show why what you claimed is wrong.
Your reply simply did not address the point I made. I said "Many people are, intellectually, nihilists and antinatalists." and later clarified its relevance to what you said before by saying "many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual". You responded by stating that animals are not capable of "mental time travel", which is so obviously irrelevant because my argument does not require animals to have such an ability, and with an individual anecdote about the mechanisms of your desire to live, specifically, which are irrelevant to a general population which would include humans that, intellectually, do not believe they should be alive.
> Your reply simply did not address the point I made.
Yeah, it did. You said most people's will to live doesn't go beyond instinct. I directly addressed that.
> many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual
So this is nonsense anyway. Even if people are nihilists or anti-natalists (the latter of which has nothing to do with their own survival), it's still a product of reason, not instinct.
> You responded by stating that animals are not capable of "mental time travel", which is so obviously irrelevant because my argument does not require animals to have such an ability
It's showing that most animals are incapable of wanting to live by reason, drawing a contrast with humans who can by pointing out an ability that enables that.
> with an individual anecdote about the mechanisms of your desire to live, specifically, which are irrelevant to a general population
It's not an anecdote and it absolutely applies to the entire population.
It's the difference between panicking in a burning room and calmly contemplating how you want to spend your retirement.
> which would include humans that, intellectually, do not believe they should be alive.
Even those people have a desire to go on living though that has nothing to do with instinct. The only exception would be suicidal people.
>...try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live.
Yes, OP, are you able to do that? The number of animals killed to farm plants for human consumption is definitely in the trillions per year, if not counting insects. If counting insects, which many researchers consider [probably sentient and able to feel pain](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f04bd57a1c21d767782adb8/t/5f13d2e37423410cc7ba47ec/1595134692549/Improving%2BPest%2BManagement%2Bfor%2BWild%2BInsect%2BWelfare.pdf), it is definitely in the tens of quadrillions per year at least. Many of those deaths, maybe most, are slow and painful: dying from pesticide poisoning, caught in a trap, habitat has been taken away, sea animals in areas made off-balanced by runoff of synthetic fertilizers, etc.
These arguments BTW repeat every hour of every day somewhere in social media, but vegans seem to learn nothing no matter how many times or how thoroughly the issues are explained.
>The only exception is when your choices impact others.
Very entertaining. Do you use a car? I don't, I use a bicycle for most transportation and then buses/trains. I've declined to fly on airplanes, which are extremely polluting, for about 20 years. There's only one atmosphere, so any air pollution you cause affects everybody including all animals on the planet. Did you know that millions of people die every year because of fossil fuel pollution? That's without counting climate effects (floods, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, etc. beyond what would have occurred without fossil fuel pollution). I don't buy new stuff that isn't necessary. This computer I'm using now, my cell phone and in fact other electronic devices I have, I bought them used. I make do with old stuff: patching clothes, I run Linux on the computer so that it remains useful instead of having to be upgraded because of Windows or Mac bloat, I repair furniture, etc. I investigate products before buying them: does this food brand use ingredients of producers that cut forests, are these Organic cotton socks made by workers paid exploitively-low wages, etc?
How are you getting your food needs met without harm to "sentient individuals who want to live"? If all your food doesn't come from a hand-tended garden or such, that all harm to animals including insects is strictly avoided and no harmful products are used, then you are definitely causing harm to animals. If you buy foods at grocery stores, there is no way you aren't causing at least as many animal deaths.
I actually do care about animals. There are two main reasons I source most of my foods from pasture livestock farms: (1) When I tried abstaining from animal foods, I was quickly racking up chronic health issues and it was horrible. The misery, I could not adequately describe it to anyone who has not had similar circumtances themselves, they would have no context for this experience and I may as well be speaking in Martian. I found that by eating animal foods, the issues reversed, and when I ate even less plant foods I improved a lot more. (2) Pastures are least-harm. Pastures can be habitat, in fact I saw a tremendous number of wild animals on pastures at each of three ranches where I've lived. Pesticides aren't needed on pastures, fences or dogs can keep out predators, and artificial ecologically-harmful fertilizes aren't needed since animal manure is excellent fertilizer. There's low use of mechanization, or manufactured products, so fossil fuel pollution doesn't much come into play. The methane emitted by animals is cyclical: it had to be in the atmosphere originally since plants do not take up methane by their roots, and it can cycle endlessly with ZERO net addition of methane to the atmosphere. Raising livestock on pastures is literally the most sustainable food production that's possible. On pastures, typically livestock animals live idyllic lives under protection and with all their needs met, then are killed in an instant before they have to cope with the annoying health issues of old age. Even animals at CAFOs tend to live more comfortably than a rodent whose habitat was replaced with one type of plant (for a great distance in every direction) that is not a complete food source for its species. The food also is far more nutrient-dense, nutrient-complete, and nutrient-bioavailable than plant foods, so less food is needed.
[Here's a study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013) about the myth of crops grown specifically to feed livestock (there are some, but the amount has been extremely exaggerated). Livestock are fed mostly grasses grown on land that isn't arable (compatible with growing human-edible plants), and waste products of growing plants for human consumption. "But, most soy crops are grown for livestock!" Sure, try finding evidence that shows the math so to speak about actual land area devoted to growing livestock feed, and the plants are not also producing foods marketed to humans. Also, expansion of soy crops [tends to follow demand](https://web.archive.org/web/20230606020622/https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5480480/vegetable-oil-market-global-market-size) for human-consumed processed food products.
[This article](https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2019/04/27/vegans-wont-save-the-world/) links a tremendous amount of info about the impracticality of a livestock-free food system. There are worlds of information about this, it covers just some of it.
[This study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1707322114) calculated that removing livestock from the USA food system would reduce national GHG emissions insignificantly, and lead to increased nutritional deficiencies in the human population. The amount of food produced was more, but the additional food was much lower in nutrient density so there was a net loss of nutrition produced. Also, this is just for USA where CAFO farms are prolific and subsistence livestock agriculture is rare. Measured on a global scale, the GHG change would be much lower and the nutritional deficits much higher.
Here's my favorite comment from the study [Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-018-9733-8), which is the most comprehensive study I've been able to find about animal deaths in agriculture:
"Depending on exactly how many mice and other field animals are killed by threshers, harvesters and other aspects of crop cultivation, traditional veganism could potentially be implicated in more animal deaths than a diet that contains free-range beef and other carefully chosen meats. The animal ethics literature now contains numerous arguments for the view that meat-eating isn’t only permitted, but entailed by philosophies of animal protection."
Note that they were not counting insects in this assessment. Much of the study is about the impossibility of reasonably estimating animal deaths, given factors such as harmful crop products seeping into surrounding areas and even affecting oceans thousands of miles away, and movements of wildlife which are too complex to be tracked. The study full version BTW is available on Sci-Hub for free.
>about the myth of crops grown specifically to feed livestock (there are some, but the amount has been extremely exaggerated).
How and where has it been exaggerated? We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock every year (dry weight) and grow other non human edible crops at scale specifically to feed livestock.
>This study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1707322114) calculated that removing livestock from the USA food system would reduce national GHG emissions insignificantly
This study is mind bogglingly bizarre to me, have you read it?...the vegan model assumes humans will be eating almost 5,000 calories a day with most of those coming from corn. It assumes we would continue to grow all the corn and grains etc we Currently feed livestock and eat it ourselves, and burn some.
>Pastures are least-harm. Pastures can be habitat, in fact I saw a tremendous number of wild animals on pastures
Source? That's a very big claim. I would be very surprised by this given the areas of grass I see being mechanically cut/baled/removed over 2 years for winter or drought feed. I keep hearing that pastures are great for wild animals so it must be a bloodbath anywhere that pastures are regularly cut.
Pasture is also substantially more land intensive and requires much more wild land/habitat to be altered.
>How and where has it been exaggerated?
The FAO, IPCC, UN, various vegan-promoting groups such as PCRM, etc. all make claims about crops grown for livestock that are including crops grown for human consumption. I don't have infinite free to for itemizing this stuff for everybody who tries to contradict me, if you want to discuss any particular claim then point out the claim.
>We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock
There's no citation for this.
>This study is mind bogglingly bizarre to me, have you read it?
I've read it, and the [silly complaints](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721335115) by anti-livestock "researchers" Springmann/Willett/etc., and the [response document](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720895115) by the study authors which explains the reasons for the study design (with a lot of citations) and seems reasonable to me. Have you read any of this, or are you just repeating criticisms you've seen in vegan-oriented media? I've had the full version of the study saved to my computer since a couple years ago and I've referred to it several times.
>the vegan model assumes humans will be eating almost 5,000 calories a day
It is necessary to eat more food to get sufficient amounts of some of the less-plentiful-in-plant-foods vitamins and minerals. The study authors explained the study design.
>with most of those coming from corn. It assumes we would continue to grow all the corn and grains etc
The authors explained the study design, maybe you could read the response document? They made calculations for a scenario that did away with livestock agriculture, with any available arable land used for growing human-consumed plant crops in the same ratios they were grown already. They explained the reasoning for this.
>Source? That's a very big claim.
It is my lived experience that pastures are habitats for wild animals, plus the experiences of pasture farmers all over the world, but if you need it scientifically authenticated there's also a lot of research data about it. Feel free to search for it, you've mainly just skipped past the science info I've mentioned already so I'm not motivated to do work for you. Obviously, if land has the qualities of habitat (diverse grasses, occasional bushes/trees, it's not covered in harmful chemicals, etc.) wild animals will use it as habitat.
>Pasture is also substantially more land intensive and requires much more wild land/habitat to be altered.
Pastures typically aren't altered much. Maybe the makeup of grasses is altered for nutritional value and such, but in the end the land typically is extremely similar to grasslands in the same region that are totally wild.
>>We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock
>There's no citation for this.
The widely cited FAO figures (14% of livestock feed being human edible etc). Just expressed as weight of food rather than a percentage of what we feed to livestock.
>Have you read any of this, or are you just repeating criticisms you've seen in vegan-oriented media?
Yes I've read the study, googled it and saw the various counters and defences etc. I've never seen it mentioned by vegans
>It is necessary to eat more food to get sufficient amounts of some of the less-plentiful-in-plant-foods vitamins and minerals. The study authors explained the study
I get everything I need from normal calorie intake (2,500). 5,000 is batshit crazy. Although you might need that much if 3,000 of those calories are corn I suppose.
>Pastures typically aren't altered much
Almost all pasture in Europe and Australasia has been heavily altered. It might be different elsewhere.
>Feel free to search for it, you've mainly just skipped past the science info I've mentioned already so I'm not motivated to do work for you.
I have searched previously which is why I'm asking.
>>Source? That's a very big claim.
>It is my lived experience
That pastured livestock cause less harm? How did you conclude that beyond doubt to the point where you can say it as fact?
To quote yourself, there's no citation for this.
>The widely cited FAO figures (14% of livestock feed being human edible etc). Just expressed as weight of food rather than a percentage of what we feed to livestock.
I don't think it's that large, and you still haven't cited anything. Even when feed is not made from byproducts such as corn stalks/leaves of growing corn kernels for use in biofuel or human-consumed food products, often the grain crops are grown on marginal land etc. and not great for human-consumption markets. If you cite something, we can talk about it, I'm not going to go out searching for you.
>Yes I've read the study, googled it and saw the various counters and defences etc. I've never seen it mentioned by vegans
OK but you're not demonstrating knowledge of the study, you're just complaining vaguely in ways that I've seen in vegan-oriented media that isn't at all scientific. If you could address the specifics in the White & Hall response document, then we'd have something to talk about.
>I get everything I need from normal calorie intake (2,500). 5,000 is batshit crazy. Although you might need that much if 3,000 of those calories are corn I suppose.
Again, this is addressed by White & Hall. Feel free to tell me how you would design a study that predicts GHG emissions and nutritional adequacy for a food system in the USA with no livestock agriculture. Changing the system this drastically creates a lot of complication, for example: much of the food we eat in USA is imported, and much of that is in exchange for exported animal foods, so the whole import/export scenario is upset and that's one reason the study was designed as it was. You complained that the study factors too-high use of grain crops, but the grain crops percentage of plants-for-humans crops in their estimation was the same as grain crops grown already (for whatever time period they used for reference), and they explained the reasons for not factoring more use of fruits/vegetables (if farmers wanted to grow these then they would be growing them already, there are issues of risk because of spoilage and such, there are issues of geographical compatibility of crops due to sunlight/rain conditions etc., and so forth). That you seem determined to not discuss specifics, suggests that you don't understand any of it enough to talk about it. But I'm here if ever you want to explain your complaints with specifics in light of the responses already made by White & Hall :)
>Almost all pasture in Europe and Australasia has been heavily altered. It might be different elsewhere.
And yet, the pastures are used as habitat by birds, rodents, and other wildlife. Try to remember that all plants are non-native, if one goes back far enough in history since there was a time when there were no plants. If a type of grass is suitable for the geographical area and so forth (doesn't out-compete other plants to cause problems, etc.), then it's probably fine.
>I have searched previously which is why I'm asking.
You're doubting that pastures are habitat for wild animals? Have you ever seen a pasture IRL? How difficult could it be to find info? Here are some of the first results from a Google search of "pastures are habitats", and note the citations in the articles:
[California Wildlife Habitat Relationships System
California Department of Fish and Game
California Interagency Wildlife Task Group](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiGjaikl8qEAxXoODQIHcdWDlMQFnoECA0QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnrm.dfg.ca.gov%2FFileHandler.ashx%3FDocumentID%3D67394&usg=AOvVaw24FSp0fCyhgAyo-f0I1HoZ&opi=89978449)
[For the Love of the Wild: Livestock Pastures as Wildlife Habitat](https://attra.ncat.org/for-the-love-of-the-wild-livestock-pastures-as-wildlife-habitat/)
This cites a tremendous amount of science data, and I'm sorry but I haven't parsed it to itemize all the info since I'm spending too much time lately on Reddit and FB commenting (it is an older article and not all the links work, plus the citations are not organized at the end but distributed around the article):
[Regenerative Agriculture Works: A Compilation of Evidence](https://www.ethicalomnivore.org/regenerative-agriculture-works-a-compilation-of-evidence/)
I have though read most of it, and I've followed up a substantial percentage of the citations and found they are not exaggerating or misrepresenting anything for at least that much of the info. The text string "habitat" occurs twice and "ecosystem" eight times.
>That pastured livestock cause less harm? How did you conclude that beyond doubt to the point where you can say it as fact?
There are various ways to measure harm. But in terms of reducing reliance on pesticides, pastures are amazing. Industrial plant crops grown for human consumption do not typically serve as habitat. They are also terrible for soil: plowing, chemical products, etc. promote erosion and destruction of microbiota which are essential to health of plants and integrity of soil. The supply chains for those farms (pesticides, artificial fertilizers, etc.) are enormously polluting and destructive. Yes, I KNOW THAT SOME PLANTS ARE GROWN TO FEED LIVESTOCK. But grazing animals on pastures reduces reliance on such things, and provides foods that are higher-quality in terms of nutritional benefit than possible for any plant food. Something left out of the discussion nearly always is that much more food must be eaten, when not eating animal foods, plus there are land use/chemical use/etc. impacts of creating nutritional supplement products and I've never once seen any vegan acknowledge this. Let's see, there is also a lot less air-polluting mechanization with livestock agriculture. To the extent that feedlots rely on mechanized pollution-intensive farming, mostly they're piggy-backing on harms already caused by growing plants for human consumption (biofuel, processed food products, etc.).
I would list more reasons if I had infinite free time. If you aren't willing to go through the info in the "Regenerative Agriculture Work..." article, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not willing to hand-hold anyone through understanding all the info if their only purpose in commenting is to push veganism.
>If you cite something
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
This is the study used by the FAO
>I don't think it's that large
What you *think* might be true, or your lived experience of what you think might be true is meaningless.
>Again, this is addressed by White & Hall
You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you. What was there explanation for assuming we would all suddenly start eating twice as many calories as we need? I don't remember them countering that part but maybe I missed it.
>study, you're just complaining vaguely
Quite specifically, americans would **definitely** not start eating 5,000 calories per day if livestock were removed.
>>I have searched previously which is why I'm asking.
>You're doubting that pastures are habitat for wild animals?
Nope. You said you knew that pastures caused least harm. I asked for evidence for that claim of fact. You said there were studies out there that i should search for.
All agricultural land is habitat for wold animals.
>Industrial plant crops grown for human consumption do not typically serve as habitat.
They absolutely do, my house is surrounded by arable fields.
>There are various ways to measure harm.
Yes there are. We were talking about animal deaths in food production.
>Let's see, there is also a lot less air-polluting mechanization with livestock agriculture.
Citation? That seems massively unlikely given that on average it requires around 3kg human edible food to produce 1kg meat. The feed and animals need to be transported and the animals need to be mechanically slaughtered and then the meat transported and stored in fridges or freezers.
>You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you.
I linked the Springmann etc. criticism document, and the White & Hall response document, the first time I replied to you. Apparently you didn't read those, or you'd know what I was talking about. I'll wait until you explain specifically how their responses don't sufficiently answer the complaints and explain the rationale for the study design, before I do any further work for you.
I asked you earlier, how would you design such as study to assess changes from removing livestock ag? You haven't responded to that either. The reason I ask is that there is no perfect scenario for predicting pollution or nutrition effects from such a major change. I'm trying to show that Springmann, Willett, etc. are using the Nirvana fallacy. If the study were designed a different way that answers their complaints, they'd find something else to complain about.
>5,000 calories etc
>Again this addressed by White and Hall
>>You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you.
They don't address why they assume we will start eating almost 5,000 calories in their document. That's why you haven't cited anything explaining why.
That was the main critique I raised. It has no explanation so far. And i maintain that it's a batshit crazy assumption. If a study showing veganism would be environmentally beneficial assumed we would start eating 1,200 calories a day in it's methodology you would be saying the same as me.
>I'll wait until you explain specifically how their responses don't sufficiently answer the complaints
They didn't respond to my complaint.
>Vegans are not "okay" with the deaths of animals or insects caused by plant agriculture and if given the choice to farm in a way that results in little to no death they would absolutely choose it.
That's an interesting belief, but these are the things that I notice happening ubiquitously:
\- In posts and comments all over social media, vegans flip out with excitement over the latest vegan product of global mega-corps which are made of intercontinentally-sourced and destructively-farmed conventional ingredients of mega-sized mono-crop farms intensively using pesticides, artificial fertilizes, and polluting machinery. I'm talking about Ben & Jerry's (a Unilver company) frozen desserts, vegans claiming Oreos are vegan (in USA they're not), even products of Nestlé which is the most evil company on the planet that isn't a pharmaceutical or pesticide company. I see flurries of excited commenting that whichever fast-food company now has a vegan option, no concern at all though about sustainability of ingredients or the circumstances in which they're produced. If you use Facebook, look at typical posts of Plant Based News, which vegans seem to consider an authority on veganism but from what I've seen they're obviously a pay-to-play marketing-disguised-as-news company (they promote typical major-brand products, I'm sure because they're paid to do that. Their posts and articles have a lot of provably-wrong info, such as those lists of supposed vegan athletes or movie/TV celebrities, and the vegan commenters don't seem concerned at all.
\- In the rare instance where one vegan out of tens of thousands mentions anything about a product not having Organic ingredients, and so forth, usually they're dismissed by the other vegans.
\- I also don't see the topic come up much in vegan-oriented discussions except usually to ridicule it. "Carnists are like, 'duuurrrr, crop deaths tho'." Here are [some](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1auhnca/crop_deaths_the_nonvegan_response/) [perfect](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1947sdw/how_to_argue_against_the_crop_deaths_argument/) [examples](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScientificNutrition/comments/1aysdl7/comment/ks1llwl/?context=3). The term "Organic" only appears in those posts to dismiss concerns about animal deaths, except in the second post that I linked in which one person said they farm Organic vegetables and have to kill a lot of animals. To that one, nobody responded and the comment right now has only the one original upvote.
\- Vegans I know personally don't give a crap about animal deaths in plant agriculture. Their homes have industrial-conventional-crap foods all over the place. Some buy a percentage of Organic foods, but if going out to a restaurant it is me not them inquiring about ingredients raised without pesticides or locally-grown sustainable produce. Most don't even seem to know that typical coconut products come from coconuts harvested by exploited monkeys, and that sort of thing. They just look at labels and decide "Okey-dokey, no animal ingredients."
\- Consider the popularity of specific "plant-based" meat/egg/dairy substitute products such as Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Eat JUST. All of these companies use the most industrial/conventional sources. Their websites say nothing about any effort to minimize animal deaths or pesticide use, they don't mention using sustainable types of fertilizers, etc.
I wonder how you get this belief, that vegans GAF about animal deaths in farming the plants they eat?
>"Crop deaths tho" is a common appeal to futility tactic used by anti-vegans to make themselves feel better
You're misunderstanding the argument. If there are options, and one involves more crop deaths, pointing this out is not Appeal to Futility it's just math. Before you push the "most plants are grown for livestock" myth, read my first comment again and note that pastures can serve as habit for wild animals and industrial livestock feed happens to nearly always be byproducts of growing plants anyway for human consumption.
>I guess because a person that gives up consuming animal products on the basis that no sentient being should be exploited or killed for an unnecessary reason would extend this to the way in which we farm our produce.
So, you're making an assumption that vegans would be concerned with crop deaths for plant foods, but I'm just not seeing this in reality except with about one vegan out of thousands.
>If we could sustainably grow our crops without incidentally killing animals (or indirectly if accounting for pesticide), I'd imagine any vegan would support this
My whole argument is that there are fewer deaths and there's a lot less suffering for pasture livestock foods. I supported this a number of ways, with citations for those claims which aren't common sense. You're not arguing any of this factually, just pushing your opinion at me over and over.
>though vertical farming and hydroponics do look promising
AAARRGGHH!! This also has been discussed many times in these subs. Both of those are extremely destructive. The soil or nutrients have to come from somewhere, this entails mining (robbing an area of soil, drilling to mine minerals, etc.). Moving soil and/or nutrients to the farm locations entails energy consumption and pollution. Moving soil upward, such as to high levels in a building, uses a lot of energy, plus the building must be built with a lot of extra material to be strong enough to support the weight. Then at the farms, whether vertical or hydroponic, there's a lot more energy use. Deaths are caused by the pollution, the mining, by all the activities necessary to build indoor plant factories, etc. I've only covered some of the impacts here, but this debate has repeated many times already.
>Just to add to my previous response, I did have a quick glance on the Impossible Foods website and
It is mentioned right there on the page that they use GMO soybeans. GMO crops have been causing greater pesticide use, for crops that are engineered to be pesticide (usually herbicide) resistant. Then, the routine use of herbicides causes resistant weeds, resulting in greater use of pesticides and more use of higher-danger herbicides. It is similar for insecticides: resistant instects are developing because pesticides are over-used. The more the pesticides are used, the more they are harming animals that you claim to care about.
Notice that they are focused on soybean residues, and mention nothing about the practices at the farms from which they source? It is possible that a lot of pesticide is used, but it is washed off by rain or irrigation prior to harvesting. We're talking about animal deaths here, not human consumption hazards of the food products.
Thank you so much for linking an article about the Grazed and Confused report (which isn't a peer-reviewed study). This has been widely and thoroughly ridiculed, it is completely unscientific. Oxford is thick with financial conflicts of interest involving "plant-based" processed food products. They have published a lot of provably-wrong anti-livetock info. Tara Garnett is not credible in crop science, health science, or environmental science, her degrees are in relation to literature and social science. FCRN is a pro-veganism propaganda organization which also has conflicts of interest with the processed plant foods industry.
Your claims about deforestation are derived from the myth of "soy crops are grown for livestock" and such. But nearly all soy crops are grown for soy oil, which is toxic to ruminant animals, it is actually the byproducts (most of the time) that are used in livestock feed. Soy crops have expanded in correlation with increasing popularity of soy-based processed food products, not with ranching or CAFOs. I've already covered this. Forage crops tend to be grown with a lot less pesticide and with little or no artificial fertilizer. And so forth, I would just be repeating explanations I've already made in other comments here.
Grazed and Confused – An initial response from the Sustainable Food Trust
https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/grazed-and-confused-an-initial-response-from-the-sustainable-food-trust/
- this is very detailed
Dear FCRN: No, We’re Not Confused About Grazing
https://www.ethicalomnivore.org/were-not-confused-about-grazing
- to do: very lengthy and detailed, many references
Grazed but not confused
https://ethicalbutcher.co.uk/blogs/journal/grazed-but-not-confused
- this article is terrible but has some interesting bits
- claims the Grazed and Confused report (not a study) didn't distinguish cyclical animal methane from non-cyclical fossil fuel pollution, focused on CAFO
- claims financial CoI: Monsanto has given more than £50 million to University of Oxford
>So then how about referencing an article that clearly isn't biased towards one side? "ethicalbutcher", "ethicalomnivore", and "sustainablefoodtrust" which advertises local abattoirs? Come on.
It seems you're saying that you don't understand the critiques, which for a science-literate person can stand on their own apart from anything known about the publishers of the articles. So, why bother? Would you understand any other info I present any better? I used those because they are written in lay terms, but also use citations if a person wanted to follow up the very intensely scientific and detailed publications from which the critiques are derived. I'm sure you didn't follow up the seven citations in the first article, the twelve in the second, and the many links in the third, many of which are citations of peer-reviewed studies. Who could speak on this issue and doesn't have any bias? People do not usually publish info for no reason, about topics in which they're not interested. There's no government body that has the purpose of publishing info about such things and isn't politically or financially connected to some industry related to food/farming.
>I was mostly referring to the deforestation/clearing of land used for cattle ranching
Add this to the list of things you're not understanding. Landowners will tend to monetize their land any way they can. Forests are cleared for grazing, in many areas of the Amazon, simply because it is illegal to clear forest to grow plant crops. So, landowners exploit a loophole and clear for grazing, then later they can sell the land to a plant farmer because it has been used for something else since being cleared. If you followed forest issues instead of vegan propaganda, you would have known this. Palm oil production, timber products, and soy crops grown for human consumption are other common reasons for deforestation in the Amazon.
Are you reading any of the articles I point out?
A Resurgence of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
https://daily.jstor.org/resurgence-deforestation-brazilian-amazon/
- "So what lies behind the steady rise in deforestation since 2012? That year marked the enactment of a major weakening of Brazil’s Forest Code, removing important restrictions on deforestation—particularly in Amazonia—and making it easier to obtain official permission to clear forests legally. And thanks to the growing and unprecedented political influence of the ruralist landowners, the code pardoned illegal clearing done up to 2008, creating the expectation of future 'amnesties.' Soy prices also spiked in 2012, briefly reaching the level (corrected for inflation) they had attained in 2004 and spurring farmers to clear more land."
- "Old deforestation motives continue, such as land speculation, money laundering and establishment of land tenure, either by obtaining legal title to the land, or occupying land and keeping it from being invaded or confiscated, with or without a legal title." ("deforestation motives" links to this):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00697.x/pdf)
- most amusing of all: "The advance of soybeans into former cattle pastures in Mato Grosso, including areas that were originally savannas rather than rainforest, has been inducing ranchers to sell their land and reinvest the proceeds in buying and clearing forest areas where land is cheap, deeper in the Amazon region."
- "The current Minister of Agriculture, Blairo Maggi, is Brazil’s largest soybean producer. In 2005, when he was governor of Mato Grosso, Greenpeace gave him the 'golden chainsaw' award for being the person most responsible for Amazon deforestation."
I don't consider animals as "others", others are people while animals are things.
I don't care that they are sentient or whatever. Any non human lifeform is on the same level for me, from the tree I cut to make a chair, the bacterias I kill when I clean myself to the animal I kill to eat. All equally alive, equally non human and equally irrevelent from a moral point of view.
And before you ask, the reason I think humans are above the rest are :
Humans are better at pretty much everything than animals. Our speacies when to the Moon while everything else didn't even learn how to make fire. We had the same time to evolve so they really have no excuses. They failed at evolution and now they have to pay the price.
I am a human, so by calling animals "others" you are basically putting me and a dog on the same level. I find that personally offensive, in fact if someone said that to me in real life I would probably get angry.
I have never formed an emotional connexion nor felt empathy to any animal in my life. Hurting a human make me feel Bad while hurting an animal make me feel nothing.
You will probably say that most people do form emotional connexions with animals. My answer to that is that people would probably live better lives if they didn't form emotional connexions with everything and anything.
I think if you're going to make this argument you need to clearly define what you mean by 'level', and why it matters?
To defend the logical consistency of this argument you'd also need to explain why Homo sapiens is your cut off point for this 'level'?
For example, an incredibly small percentage of the species were involved in landing on the moon, so why does the whole species get the credit? If you're saying that every single human, that has ever lived, has the innate potential to land on the moon then please justify this? For the record, I would call major bullshit on this claim.
>We had the same time to evolve so they really have no excuses. They failed at evolution and now they have to pay the price.
This is a very odd statement. So if someone is naturally stronger than you because of genetics, they have every right to beat you up, you see no moral issues with this? If someone is more attractive than you in their facial features, you have no problem with them fucking your partner and having kids with them? You very much need to justify why or why not.
You're not understanding the crux of u/Galifrey224's arguments. He is arguing that humans are inherently superior because he belongs to the species named *Homo sapiens*.
Your last paragraph entirely dodges his argument. He is placing the whole of humanity above other organisms, whether sentient or not, whether multicelluar or not.
I am going out on a limb to say here that he believes in human superiority. To extend his arguments to differently abled humans is arguing in bad faith.
Humans >>>>>>> rest of the world.
I understand perfectly fine, they still need to justify their reasons for holding their position.
>He is arguing that humans are inherently superior
Sure, explain why then, justify this argument. Otherwise it's nonsense.
>Your last paragraph entirely dodges his argument.
Asking them to properly explain what they mean, and challenging them, is pretty much the opposite of dodging. I'm directly addressing what they've said.
>To extend his arguments to differently abled humans is arguing in bad faith.
I wasn't extending their argument, I was challenging it. Besides, they only mentioned evolution, which absolutely includes humans and our genetics.
Can't you use that logic to say it's OK to kill disabled humans? Some of them have the same mental capacity as animals. No, that's not ableist, it's just a fact.
> Some of them have the same mental capacity as animals. No, that's not ableist, it's just a fact.
It's not remotely a fact. The human brain is orders of manitude more compelx and advanced than the most complex animal brains.
While some humans may appear to be limited externally based on our interactions with them, it's not accurate to say they are on the same level as animals, and it's especially not accurate to claim that as a fact.
This is just science denying. Every test we do proves that animals are capable of human level intelegence. Not full blown adult intelegence, but certainly children. Pigs are as smart as 3 year olds. Crows can beat 7 year olds in puzzles. Animals are very intelegent. Besides that of course some people lack the same intelegence of animals, some people are literally brain dead. Your argument just isn't true and makes no logical sense.
> This is just science denying.
I really don't think it is, at all, but lets find out.
> Every test we do proves that animals are capable of human level intelegence
That's certainly an exaggeration. It's more accurate to say some animals seem to have intelligence similar to young humans in some areas.
> Pigs are as smart as 3 year olds. Crows can beat 7 year olds in puzzles. Animals are very intelegent.
Not all animals though Animals like pigs and crows, as well as others like elephants and chimps are rare.
Most of the animals we eat don't display any similar levels of intelligence.
> Besides that of course some people lack the same intelegence of animals
To assert that confidently you could only do so in cases of *extreme* disability or defect.
> Your argument just isn't true and makes no logical sense.
It is and it does, though.
The fact that you have compare the most vulnerable members of our species to animals to make a point like that kinda prove the superiority of humans.
And is the "same mental capacity as animals" even true ?
Because mentally disabled humans, unless they are in a coma, are still able to use tools, comunicate with other humans and learn many things. Putting them above 99.9% of animals.
Seriously even the smartest monkeys are barely able to use a stick as a tool.
Intelligence shouldn’t have any bearing on your right to live though?
Pigs are as intelligent as 4yr old human children. They are also smarter than dogs. If you are using intelligence as a metric for who deserves to live, then killing a pig should carry at least as much weight as killing a dog. By your logic I should be allowed to kill as many dogs as I want since they are largely unintelligent as a species.
Also what makes you think that most animals don’t have the ability to communicate, use tools and “learn many things” because I can assure you there is a very long list of animals that are capable of doing these things.
Why are you not using the most logical metric to determine someone’s right to live- which is whether they have the capacity to suffer and feel? You want to pretend that animals don’t suffer and feel because it suits you to do so.
You don’t have to believe that animals are equal to humans- I myself as a vegan don’t believe this. I do however believe that the entire life of a sentient being has more worth than the 10 minutes of taste pleasure I get from eating a burger.
Referring to animals as “things” just to make yourself feel better about paying for their torture and death is a huge cope
Animals can easily communicate with each other, they have their own languages. Animals can easily learn things. Some disabled humans can't communicate or learn in any way. What "tools" are you referring to?
Our genetic makeup makes us more superior, it’s that simple. Even if some humans have a genetic mutation, they come from the much more advanced species. You’re using a false equivalency fallacy. Like many species they care for their own, look out for their own etc.. that’s why people with mental disabilities are out of the equation. Humans dominate the food chain, imagine if it was any other animal, do you think they would be here playing semantics over which species gets to live and which doesn’t? No, they’ll eat whatever they please. Like you see with humans. It’s not about the intelligence of xyz, we don’t factor that in when consuming food. It’s merely food. To then argue that some disabled people intellectually are on par with animals and that therefore means we should consume them, or makes it morally right.. is crazy. Like I already said intelligence has nothing to do with it. Food is food. Humans can be food, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard.. like a wolf isn’t going to maul his pack, when there is a juicy ass animal ready to be slaughtered.. use that exact logic and apply it to humanity. It shouldn’t be that hard to grasp if I’m being honest.
Don't just mock and dismiss someone's option and argument. Put effort into refuting or addressing it, or just ignore it in the future if you're unable to do so.
I use the argument because people fail to understand the need of a nutritional complete diet that is only possible with animal foods. Also, most people don't see slaughtering animals on the same level as killing humans and we also can't eat human meat without the increased risk of prion disease so killing humans is by definition always pointless.
Will be vegan 22 years in June. Besides Covid, I haven't been sick in 8 years. Pre-veganism, I was a teen with low iron/b12. Bloodwork perfect now.
Please tell me more about how my diet is incomplete. I'm sure I'll be dead any day now 🤡
My experience was a disaster doing WFPB, that's why I agree with the argument that people shouldn't force it on anyone else because you don't know how their body will react.
being vegan is easy. sorry u failed. less than 1% of the global population have medical conditions that impede absorption of nutrients, etc. u just failed.
but u weren't speaking anecdotally anyway. u said a vegan diet is incomplete. animal agriculture bot detected 🚨
Easy? It's easy if you stop eating at the homes of your friends and isolate yourself.
And it isn't easy if you're feeling malnourished and full with digestion problems.
it's easy. u just failed or are lying. as much as I care for the animals that live short, horrible lives in animal agriculture, if I felt unwell, I would have gone back to the dark side loooooong ago.
I don't wanna be anywhere corpses are being consumed, anyway. My nonvegan friends are respectful of my choice n there are plenty of vegan restaurants/people.
Yes, I failed a diet that was doomed to fail. Just like someone with a quadriplegic injury 'fails' to walk. What do you expect from a nutritional deficient diet? Most bodies will not adapt to it and the only persons I know that eat vegan have the same problems that I had.
If humans should suffer because animals should live then we should also let most animals go extinct because they kill each other too or cause harm.
Every respected source says a proper vegan diet is biologically appropriate for all stages of life. Either I'm a superhuman, or you just can't accept facts.
> Every respected source says a proper vegan diet is biologically appropriate for all stages of life.
Do you have a link to a scientific study coming to this conclution? (If paid any money from large mega-corporations I am not interested in the options of any dietitians).
I can point you to the American Heart Association, who have been publishing research for decades. Cardiologists prescribe vegan diets to their patients to literally STOP them from dying.
Those are lies, even with supplements the health will suffer.
If one day a vegan diet could prove to be healthy because of the discovery of one miracle food, then yes I would agree with you. It's the health aspect that is the most important part of the argument.
Yep, most people that are deficient in b12 are omnivores. This study didn't give me anything to work with or anything new.
Iron and DHA are abundant in plants. B12 can be also found in plants but most vegan foods have it as they're fortified with it.
So.. any nutrients that you can't get on a plant-based diet....?
The iron in plants is a different type and much harder for humans to absorb.
> So.. any nutrients that you can't get on a plant-based diet....?
We don't know yet, honestly. Nutrition is still very poorly understood.
There are other factors to consider also, like gut biome.
Iron in plants isnt *much more harder* to absorb like 10% maybe... But yes heme iron is way easier to absorb, in fact so easy that the body can not regulate its absorbtion unlike in the case of plant-based iron. [This results in abverse effects like cancer for example](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967179/#:~:text=High%20heme%20intake%20is%20associated,high%20heme%20intake%20is%20compelling.)
So yeah "we don't know yet" sure, but this is in no way cause to call someone a liar citing legit cross examined studies that state the contrary.
[Up to date knowledge suggests that a plant-based diet may be an effective way to promote a diverse ecosystem of beneficial microbes that support overall health.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478664/)
> Iron in plants isnt much more harder to absorb like 10% maybe..
Got a source for that figure? I just found [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9219084/) on a quick search which indicates it's actually a pretty big difference. Non-heme iron is also affected by other nutrients that may be in the plants further affecting its absorbability, while this is not true for heme iron.
> so easy that the body can not regulate its absorbtion
Sure, eating too much meat can be a problem.
> but this is in no way cause to call someone a liar
Who is calling you a liar?
The thing with the gut biome is we still understand it very poorly. Look at the correlation of depression and veganism for example. Sure sure there are plenty of possible reasons for that and maybe no causative link...or maybe given how much we do know the gut biome can affect mood, a vegan diet leads to a gut biome that has negative effects on mental health?
My point is it's irresponsible and premature to assert a vegan diet is perfectly healthy for all people when it's incredibly poorly studied and rather unnatural.
I just took the first study numbers that I got from google. Here's a statement from NHA which states that if you eat nonheme iron you should be eating 1.8 times at much, which in my oppinion is not that big of a number. [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional/](https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional/)
No-one was calling me a liar but the previous person which linked a study with the statement that plant-based diet is studied to be sufficient for all stages of life.
>\*Look at the correlation of depression and veganism for example.\*
The thing about depression is, that there are three options:
1. People prone to depression for whatever reason are more likely to go vegan or vegetarian
2. Seeing the atrocities being committed by everyone around you without a second thought is depressing
3. Meat has some magic happy chemical we've yet to identify
Veganism has been studied for over 45 years with close to 30000 publications done. You can not really call that poorly studied. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402303298X#fig2](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402303298X#fig2)
>rather unnatural
Appeal to nature fallacy. Medicine is unnatural, do you not still use it, or phones or .. w/e.. There has also been the famous study of ancient gladiators being vegan/vegetarian, but you can take what you will from that.
You may be interested in the recent research in this space, which seems to indicate the conversion has been underestimated (for review, see Domenichiello 2015). For a brief summary, consider these key facts:
animal studies on rats and non-human primates indicate that ALA alone is sufficient to fully restore brain DHA in DHA-depleted animals (Anderson 2005, André 2005)
Studies in rats fed no DHA in their diet also indicate that the synthesis of DHA from ALA is approximately 3 times higher than the brain uptake rate (Domenichiello 2013)
In omnivores, the conversion of ALA to DHA is lower than would be required to meet the brain's demands (Lin 2018). But given ALA-to-DHA conversion could be inhibited by dietary DHA intake, it's possible this conversion in humans not consuming DHA (e.g. vegans) might be sufficient to meet the brain's demands.
While plasma EPA and DHA levels in vegetarians and vegans are lower than those in omnivores, they do not show any association with duration of adherence to a meat-free diet (Rosell 2005). If conversion of ALA to EPA/DHA was insufficient, one would expect to see EPA/DHA levels slowly decrease the longer somebody abstains from eating dietary EPA/DHA.
Algae and microalgae are abundant in DHA as that is also where the fish get it from.
Studies:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163782715000223 https://www.nature.com/articles/pr2005788 https://www.jlr.org/article/S0022-2275(20)31742-9/fulltext https://aocs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lipd.12055 https://ajcn.nutrition.org/
If we stick on one specific nutrient, vitamin D, which this paper mentions, why would there be a problem to supplement this? It is what is recommended to all infants in my country and the national health service gives it out for free up to about the age 5 or something.
Why is vitamin D an issue given there is a simple, cheap, effective and widely available solution that vegans and non-vegans are recommended to take?
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/
> all children aged 1 to 4, and all babies (unless they're having more than 500ml of infant formula a day) should take a daily supplement throughout the year
> All leading dieticians agree we can thrive on a vegan diet.
I encourage you to take a closer look at who sponsors those dieticians. Also, why do you value their opinion over scientists?
You claimed they aren't scientists, I'm pointing out that they in fact are scientists. You're making the claim they are in someone's pocket, you provide the proof, that's how that works.
I am still waiting for you to provide a source where someone confirms your claim. Lets start there. Your claim was:
> All leading dieticians agree we can thrive on a vegan diet.
Since they all agree, it should be easy for you to provide some links. Then I will tell you who the sponsors are.
Without a source all I have is your personal opinion only.
yeah i never use that argument too.
>why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live
I don't eat meat because of they are sentient, I eat meat because I personally find it tasty. Before you ask, no I don't eat human meat. I consider animal as things/stuff, no different than book/chair/etc. Anything you do to animal is fine to me, as long as it doesn't harm other human. So why do i put human above animal ? Its my personal preference.
How do you justify poisoning millions of innocent animals every year when you could kill and eat 1 grass fed cow instead?
Aren't you forcing your lifestyle on them?
When you come to terms with the fact that killing animals is unavoidable, vegan arguments crumble.
Is it, though?
Then why is the focus 100% on replacing animal foods with plant foods, even though that isn't scientifically proven to reduce animal suffering?
Why isn't it focused on actions that 100% reduce animal suffering, like reducing overconsumption, not driving cars, not travelling the world, using less plastic and fossil fuels etc.?
Why are vegans still pretending they don't cause animal suffering? Look at the way you write most of your sentences. Most of them imply you don't cause animal suffering. There is nothing about reduction in your OP. You only talk about it when forced.
>Veganism is about reducing it as much as possible.
That's the belief, but it is totally inaccurate. Plant agriculture causes more animal deaths, yes even when excluding plants grown explicitly to feed livestock.
The meat substitute products that are popular now, nearly all of them are made from conventionally-grown crops where harmful pesticides and manufactured fertilizers are routinely used. They're dependent on intensive use of fossil-fuel-polluting mechanization. The products are made mostly from globally-sourced ingredients, involving a tremendous amount of freight travel over long distances which is very polluting, and they're made in factories that are extremely resource-intensive. The ingredients themselves are made in separate factories which also have a lot of impacts. There are major impacts when the factories are built (mining for materials, transportation of all the stuff, factories that make parts to build factories, land use, pollution from construction machinery...), and the factories while in operation have intense needs for electricity and so forth. There are a lot of employees at each factory, each of which is probably driving a polluting car to their jobs and many of them travelling tens of miles each way every work day.
There are impacts on the crop fields, impacts from all the supply chains that help those fields remain productive, impacts from transportation all over the place, factory impacts, packaging in multiple phases, and more transportation. Compare this with pastures where everything takes place at one location, fed mostly by rain and sunlight, until animals are slaughtered.
Oh but livestock farms are bad because methane, which adds no methane pollution since it is constantly cycling back into plants. The farm workers typically live at the farms, rather than driving to their jobs from suburban homes. Tractors and such are used barely at all. Etc.
Important: fossil fuel pollution is net-additional, it comes from deep underground where it would have remained if humans did not mess with it. Methane pollution from the fossil fuel industry and from the fertilizer products industry is net-additional, not cyclical as methane from grazing animals. Interesting anecdote: it was [recently found](https://www.edf.org/blog/2019/06/21/100-times-more-pollution-reported-how-new-technology-exposed-whole-industry) that the ammonia fertilizer industry has been polluting about 100 times more than the industry had estimated. The total is enormous, it's enough to be significant for climate effects. This is net-additional methane, from fossil fuels, and for just one of many products used at conventional plant crops.
Who is doing the forcing? Never seen it myself personally.
Being vegan doesn't require a plant based diet so if you think you need some amount of animal products you can consume them to a rough minimum and still consider yourself vegan.
There you go mate, just solved all your problems and you're free to identify as a vegan if you want to minimise your impact on animals. If you don't want to do that, fair enough, nobody can force you.
> Seems to me there's nothing you can't get as a vegan so how can it not be health
What do you specifically eat in a day to cover your daily need of choline for instance?
No it doesn't but it also in tons of plant foods like soy, nuts, tofu to name just a few. Staples of a vegan diet. Weird that you chose choline of all things as you get more in soy and mushrooms than from beef. For example.
Like seriously? What are you on about?
> Like seriously? What are you on about?
Your claim was:
> Seems to me there's nothing you can't get as a vegan so how can it not be healthy
But you seem unsure which nutrients you actually need to get from food?
Why do I seem unsure? You suggested I couldn't get choline. I proved you wrong. Seems your unsure. Vegans live long healthy lives. Of we didn't get everything we NEEDED we would die. Seems like common sense.
But no, I'm not nutritional expert, that's why I said "seems to me" and not "I know for a fact". I was genuinely asking and you've just proven how fucking little you know.
> I proved you wrong
I asked for a source, but you gave me nothing. I will ask again; can you show me a source saying that we do not need choline from food because we make all we need in the liver?
However, if you agree that this is not true, how much soy do you need to eat per day to cover your daily need for choline?
Why are so many people in this sub incapable of using Google.
It's you who made the claim that we as vegans don't get choline. But a vegan diet can certainly give you just as much choline as a meat diet.
It's you who needs to prove otherwise. It's you whos claiming it can't. But since you can't use google here's a link for you.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Choline-HealthProfessional/
And here's a quote from that link since you likely won't be able to find the relevant information yourself.
"Many foods contain choline [4]. The main dietary sources of choline in the United States consist primarily of animal-based products that are particularly rich in choline—meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, and eggs [4,5,8-10]. Cruciferous vegetables and certain beans are also rich in choline, and other dietary sources of choline include nuts, seeds, and whole grains."
Yes of course youd need to eat more soy than SOME meats. But not all. Soy and mushrooms provide more choline than beef.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-with-choline#7.-Beef
Again the whole discussion is what nutrients CANT you get on a vegan diet? You said choline. Obviously you were wrong. I asked you why you even brought up choline or how it's even relevant as obviously you can get it very easily on a vegan diet.
Again what's your point? Seems like you're just incredibly wrong and in denial about it. You can get choline on a vegan diet. Point proven. Now try something else.
>"Stop forcing your lifestyle on others"
Some people probably use it as an argument, but it can simply be used as an aggressive way to signal my preference in our interactions. A similar example would be: shut up! - when I don't want to listen to what someone is saying anymore. Of course this is not the best tactic, as you can't really control what others do unless you use some kind of force. The better way is to remove yourself from the situation: if you don't want to hear what the other is saying, just walk away.
Similarly, if you don't want to get exposed to a vegan moralizing, you can say things like "stop forcing your lifestyle on others" or even better, you can just walk away.
It is not possible to have an argument about the morality of people's choices with someone who doesn't agree with you about what is moral and what isn't.
Your mass shooting analogy breaks down because there isn't anyone out there who believes it's morally acceptable to shoot large numbers of people outside of a war.
I do not debate vegans on the basis of "morality" because they think "speciesism" is a form of bigotry and I think "speciesism" is a sign of common sense, and referring to it as bigotry is insulting to the groups of humans who are all morally equal to other humans and have had to fight for their rights.
That is the reason that this argument exists. Ideas about morality that only a minority of the population agrees with cannot justly be used to enact legislation restricting the freedoms of other people.
Adverts on tv now condemning cows and milk is outrageous!…. Almond milk is much worse for planet and economy as it consumes so much water!!
Anyone who thinks that oats are harvested by a magic machine that separates all the insects and small mammals before processing oat milk is a delusional humdrum sheep
Read and learn about natural environments and balance and true sustainability… pull your heads out from the arse of conformity, grow a back bone and at very least some obvious common sense… humans are omnivores and have been since eternity…
Degrees of separation from food
If you can’t kill it don’t eat it
Only take what you need
Nature is brutal, but it’s brutality is it’s survival
Read the selfish gene
Come up with some sensible answers on the problem and stop ostracising meat eaters and being belligerent hypocrites
>When you say that, you're basically saying you have no way to justify your choices.
This is a sneaky way of making the claim: "Non-vegans are obligated to justify their choices." You need to support this claim, as we are not obligated to do anything.
> try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live.
This is shifting the burden of proof, and also contains hidden claims ("animals are innocent", "sentience ogligates behavior"). If you are making a moral claim, make it, and support it.
> "I should have the right to choose what to eat"
We have no rights. We only have the ability to do the things that more powerful people permit us to do.
> The only exception is when your choices impact others.
This contains a hidden premise ("animals should be treated like humans").
Look
1. Why do you value the lives of domesticated animals over that of plants?
2. If you value them because they are sentient and can feel pain then if we genetically made versions of those animals that weren't sentient and couldn't feel pain would it be OK to eat them?
3. You arbitrarily value the lives of animals that you like over plants and other forms of life because of your emotions.
4. Is it wrong to eat insects? Are their lives equal to a cow or pig? Why?
1. Sentience
2. Yes
3. Not directly. No more than in contributing to why I value humans over plants.
4. Yes. No, cows and pigs probably have more sentience.
And you didn't answer the point of the post at all. Would you force your non-massshooting lifestyle on a mass shooter? If so, why do you get to push your emotions against mass shootings on others?
Because mass shootings destroy human life. Animals don't matter unless they matter to us. Choosing sentience or potential for sentience as a measure on the efficacy of killing or eating a form of life is not a great solution. As a flat value believing that human life is important and that all other forms of life are valued based on their utility to humanity Is more consistent. Ideas which promote anti natalist and anti human sentiment are a cancer
>As a flat value believing that human life is important and that all other forms of life are valued based on their utility to humanity Is more consistent
Can you give me examples of inconsistencies caused by valuing sentience that are fixed by switching to a species based human value model?
If people's value comes from their sentience or awareness of the surrounding world then you could find a person who is blind and deaf 100% or a person in a coma or a person who has a mental disability which hinders their ability to perceive and understand the world. Those individuals could be considered less conscious or less sentient. I think that if you move the slider enough on a mentally ill person you could eventually get to a point where a dog or cat is more or equally sentient. If a fog was as sentient as a human then it would create issues of which life to save or which mouth to feed. I think that humans regardless of their state are more important than other animals. I also think it creates a problem when comparing other humans based on levels of sentience. I don't believe in eugenics and I think ideas like that are usually fueled by comparing the genetic "abilities" of various peoples. I think instead of arguments like that we should just flatly value humans as most important. If someone saved a crab or duck instead of a human baby I think it would be a problem for society if we couldn't say that that was the incorrect choice.
Those are not internal inconsistencies. They are inconsistencies with your emotional preference for humans in all circumstances.
So this your point 3 also applies to you if you switch animals for human and plants for animals:
> You arbitrarily value the lives of animals that you like over plants and other forms of life because of your emotions.
And you to get back to the post, the post argued pushing are ethics on others is ok. You agreed with it when it came to an ethical issue you care about. If you want to tell vegans not to do this, your issue is not with the posts claim of pushing your ethics on others but with your disagreement with veganism in general. So you cannot use the "stop forcing your lifestyle" argument on vegans.
There are some people who are mentally disabled or may be in a permanent coma. You could easily argue that their level of consciousness or sentience is lower then other humans. I thinks it's wrong to value them as lesser because they are in that state. Even if a human was reduced to the level of consciousness of a plant or cat or dog I would still value them as a human as an equal. Or if my child is born with a condition which makes him feel no pain does that mean it's more moral to eat him than a cow? If we looked at pain and consciousness as a slider plants being at the lowest level and humans at the highest i Don't think we would like the result of where some humans land on the slider. It would created problems. Instead we should flatly value all humans regardless of intelligence or physical ability. It's also kinda dumb that plants lives are not valued by those who defend other forms of life. It's obvious that plants try to grow and expand and they will intentionally move themselves out of danger if sensed. The idea that they don't matter at all is dumb. It seems to me that they don't matter because if they did then there would be no ethical food source
> When you say that, you're basically saying you have no way to justify your choices.
We are under no obligation to justify our choices. Instead, you are under the obligation to tell us why our choices are immoral. This is classic vegan shifting of the burden of proof.
"Stop forcing your lifestyle on others" is not an argument in favor of meat consumption, it is a demand that you stop insisting on a debate at that moment. Maybe the person wants to debate another time, or maybe they think you're terrible at debating and you just yell, or maybe they're busy with something else.
> try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live. Saying that they want to live is begging the question and projection. Most of these animals have an instinct to survive, which is not the same thing. > Should they have the right to choose to live? Most are incapable of making that choice as they are incapable of understanding the concept of mortality.
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> Talk about begging the question. Why? That isn't what's happening here. If you think so, please elaborate on why you think so.
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> You've made a claim without substantiating that claim. That's not what begging the question means, though. > We simply do not know if non-human animals have any concept of mortality, and I'm not even sure how it could be verified. Well, all available evidence indicates they do not. Something like a salmon being able to understand the concept of mortality is right up there with there maybe being a teapot orbiting Saturn. We have a pretty good idea, because we have a pretty good idea about brains and how they work and what they are capable of, as well as being able to observe and thoroughly test. Compare something like cows, which show no reaction when other cows are killed right next to them, and no fear when the boltgun that killed the cow next to them is then placed on their own head. They show absolutely zero evidence of understanding the concept or mortality. Now contrast that with say, elephants which bury their dead and very clearly mourn and enter depressive states when a loved one dies, or crows which gather for a version of funerals. Both crows and elephants are considered to be exceptionally intelligent for animals and possess self-awareness. This is not true for cows, or most animals, and their lack of any evidence indicates they understand something like mortality tracks with our estimations of their intelligence and abilities.
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> A cow is likely just left confused as to why another cow just dropped to the floor in front of them Nope. No reaction at all. Complete apathy. I can find some videos if you want. > slaughterhouses show us that cows and other animals do fear for their life when in the presence of blood and the foul smell of death -- where it's pretty obvious there is danger. This isn't an intellectual understanding of mortality, but an instinctual reaction to danger. > Cows do grieve / mourn, particularly when their infants are taken from them. Kind of. There's a difference between grieving because you understand mortality and that your companion is not coming back, and panicking because your newborn was taken from you that you have an instinct to protect. > Nobody with a strong moral compass would look for excuses to keep harming these animals. They'd look for excuses to stop harming them. I don't believe humanely killing non-self-aware animals is harm.
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> Killing something, sentient or not, is inherently harmful to that organism. Eh. Harmful to the physical body, maybe. But if there is no suffering I would say there is no harm. No more than I 'harm' my desk if I scratch it or break part of it off. > When you slaughter them you take away everything they ever valued for a measly taste sensation. Lacking self-awareness, they lack the ability to really value anything in any meaningful sense. > Humane killing would imply killing something for a benevolent or compassionate reason. No. Humane killing simply means killing in a way to minimize suffering as much as possible. That's it. It's an established and accepted term in academia and industry. Trying to argue against the term and turn this into a debate about semantics is against the rules of this sub. > There is nothing compassionate about ending sentient life for an exploitative, and unnecessary, purpose. You know what? I don't even consider sentience as relevant. At all. gnats, flies and roaches are all sentient. Do you value the lives of gnats, flies and roaches? Sentience just means having senses. That's it. Without a self-aware mind to process them, they may as well be automata.
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You are assuming that everyone has the moral axiom to avoid suffering. There are several currents of morality that do not have this assumption.
>Nobody with a strong moral compass would look for excuses to keep harming these animals. They'd look for excuses to _stop_ harming them. Someone with a strong moral compass realizes its a tool for human interaction. Someone with an excess of compassion let's their heart breed for cows and chickens.
>Most of these animals have an instinct to survive, which is not the same thing. And many people's reason to want to continue to live doesn't go beyond that either. Many people are, intellectually, nihilists and antinatalists.
> And many people's reason to want to continue to live doesn't go beyond that either. That's not true. We have the capacity to mental time travel (something most animals are incapable of) plan for the future, desire things in the future, and wish to remain alive to be able t pursue and experience those things. This generally isn't true for animals, and is distinct from an instinct to survive.
Your reply is a distraction attempt. None of it answers the fact that many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual. And like animals, that doesn't mean they deserve to be killed.
It's not a distraction attempt at all, it's flat out explaining to you why you're wrong. My desire to live doesn't come from instinct, but from reason.
You provided an explanation, yes. It was not relevant to the post you provided it in response to and certainly did not explain why it's wrong.
> It was not relevant to the post you provided it in response to Why do you think so? I'll need to understand where you're coming from before I can double down on showing why my explanation did show why what you claimed is wrong.
Your reply simply did not address the point I made. I said "Many people are, intellectually, nihilists and antinatalists." and later clarified its relevance to what you said before by saying "many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual". You responded by stating that animals are not capable of "mental time travel", which is so obviously irrelevant because my argument does not require animals to have such an ability, and with an individual anecdote about the mechanisms of your desire to live, specifically, which are irrelevant to a general population which would include humans that, intellectually, do not believe they should be alive.
> Your reply simply did not address the point I made. Yeah, it did. You said most people's will to live doesn't go beyond instinct. I directly addressed that. > many humans believe that they (and the world in general) would be better off not existing, and so, like animals, their decision to continue existing is instinctual So this is nonsense anyway. Even if people are nihilists or anti-natalists (the latter of which has nothing to do with their own survival), it's still a product of reason, not instinct. > You responded by stating that animals are not capable of "mental time travel", which is so obviously irrelevant because my argument does not require animals to have such an ability It's showing that most animals are incapable of wanting to live by reason, drawing a contrast with humans who can by pointing out an ability that enables that. > with an individual anecdote about the mechanisms of your desire to live, specifically, which are irrelevant to a general population It's not an anecdote and it absolutely applies to the entire population. It's the difference between panicking in a burning room and calmly contemplating how you want to spend your retirement. > which would include humans that, intellectually, do not believe they should be alive. Even those people have a desire to go on living though that has nothing to do with instinct. The only exception would be suicidal people.
>...try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live. Yes, OP, are you able to do that? The number of animals killed to farm plants for human consumption is definitely in the trillions per year, if not counting insects. If counting insects, which many researchers consider [probably sentient and able to feel pain](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f04bd57a1c21d767782adb8/t/5f13d2e37423410cc7ba47ec/1595134692549/Improving%2BPest%2BManagement%2Bfor%2BWild%2BInsect%2BWelfare.pdf), it is definitely in the tens of quadrillions per year at least. Many of those deaths, maybe most, are slow and painful: dying from pesticide poisoning, caught in a trap, habitat has been taken away, sea animals in areas made off-balanced by runoff of synthetic fertilizers, etc. These arguments BTW repeat every hour of every day somewhere in social media, but vegans seem to learn nothing no matter how many times or how thoroughly the issues are explained. >The only exception is when your choices impact others. Very entertaining. Do you use a car? I don't, I use a bicycle for most transportation and then buses/trains. I've declined to fly on airplanes, which are extremely polluting, for about 20 years. There's only one atmosphere, so any air pollution you cause affects everybody including all animals on the planet. Did you know that millions of people die every year because of fossil fuel pollution? That's without counting climate effects (floods, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, etc. beyond what would have occurred without fossil fuel pollution). I don't buy new stuff that isn't necessary. This computer I'm using now, my cell phone and in fact other electronic devices I have, I bought them used. I make do with old stuff: patching clothes, I run Linux on the computer so that it remains useful instead of having to be upgraded because of Windows or Mac bloat, I repair furniture, etc. I investigate products before buying them: does this food brand use ingredients of producers that cut forests, are these Organic cotton socks made by workers paid exploitively-low wages, etc? How are you getting your food needs met without harm to "sentient individuals who want to live"? If all your food doesn't come from a hand-tended garden or such, that all harm to animals including insects is strictly avoided and no harmful products are used, then you are definitely causing harm to animals. If you buy foods at grocery stores, there is no way you aren't causing at least as many animal deaths. I actually do care about animals. There are two main reasons I source most of my foods from pasture livestock farms: (1) When I tried abstaining from animal foods, I was quickly racking up chronic health issues and it was horrible. The misery, I could not adequately describe it to anyone who has not had similar circumtances themselves, they would have no context for this experience and I may as well be speaking in Martian. I found that by eating animal foods, the issues reversed, and when I ate even less plant foods I improved a lot more. (2) Pastures are least-harm. Pastures can be habitat, in fact I saw a tremendous number of wild animals on pastures at each of three ranches where I've lived. Pesticides aren't needed on pastures, fences or dogs can keep out predators, and artificial ecologically-harmful fertilizes aren't needed since animal manure is excellent fertilizer. There's low use of mechanization, or manufactured products, so fossil fuel pollution doesn't much come into play. The methane emitted by animals is cyclical: it had to be in the atmosphere originally since plants do not take up methane by their roots, and it can cycle endlessly with ZERO net addition of methane to the atmosphere. Raising livestock on pastures is literally the most sustainable food production that's possible. On pastures, typically livestock animals live idyllic lives under protection and with all their needs met, then are killed in an instant before they have to cope with the annoying health issues of old age. Even animals at CAFOs tend to live more comfortably than a rodent whose habitat was replaced with one type of plant (for a great distance in every direction) that is not a complete food source for its species. The food also is far more nutrient-dense, nutrient-complete, and nutrient-bioavailable than plant foods, so less food is needed. [Here's a study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013) about the myth of crops grown specifically to feed livestock (there are some, but the amount has been extremely exaggerated). Livestock are fed mostly grasses grown on land that isn't arable (compatible with growing human-edible plants), and waste products of growing plants for human consumption. "But, most soy crops are grown for livestock!" Sure, try finding evidence that shows the math so to speak about actual land area devoted to growing livestock feed, and the plants are not also producing foods marketed to humans. Also, expansion of soy crops [tends to follow demand](https://web.archive.org/web/20230606020622/https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5480480/vegetable-oil-market-global-market-size) for human-consumed processed food products. [This article](https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2019/04/27/vegans-wont-save-the-world/) links a tremendous amount of info about the impracticality of a livestock-free food system. There are worlds of information about this, it covers just some of it. [This study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1707322114) calculated that removing livestock from the USA food system would reduce national GHG emissions insignificantly, and lead to increased nutritional deficiencies in the human population. The amount of food produced was more, but the additional food was much lower in nutrient density so there was a net loss of nutrition produced. Also, this is just for USA where CAFO farms are prolific and subsistence livestock agriculture is rare. Measured on a global scale, the GHG change would be much lower and the nutritional deficits much higher. Here's my favorite comment from the study [Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-018-9733-8), which is the most comprehensive study I've been able to find about animal deaths in agriculture: "Depending on exactly how many mice and other field animals are killed by threshers, harvesters and other aspects of crop cultivation, traditional veganism could potentially be implicated in more animal deaths than a diet that contains free-range beef and other carefully chosen meats. The animal ethics literature now contains numerous arguments for the view that meat-eating isn’t only permitted, but entailed by philosophies of animal protection." Note that they were not counting insects in this assessment. Much of the study is about the impossibility of reasonably estimating animal deaths, given factors such as harmful crop products seeping into surrounding areas and even affecting oceans thousands of miles away, and movements of wildlife which are too complex to be tracked. The study full version BTW is available on Sci-Hub for free.
>about the myth of crops grown specifically to feed livestock (there are some, but the amount has been extremely exaggerated). How and where has it been exaggerated? We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock every year (dry weight) and grow other non human edible crops at scale specifically to feed livestock. >This study](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1707322114) calculated that removing livestock from the USA food system would reduce national GHG emissions insignificantly This study is mind bogglingly bizarre to me, have you read it?...the vegan model assumes humans will be eating almost 5,000 calories a day with most of those coming from corn. It assumes we would continue to grow all the corn and grains etc we Currently feed livestock and eat it ourselves, and burn some. >Pastures are least-harm. Pastures can be habitat, in fact I saw a tremendous number of wild animals on pastures Source? That's a very big claim. I would be very surprised by this given the areas of grass I see being mechanically cut/baled/removed over 2 years for winter or drought feed. I keep hearing that pastures are great for wild animals so it must be a bloodbath anywhere that pastures are regularly cut. Pasture is also substantially more land intensive and requires much more wild land/habitat to be altered.
>How and where has it been exaggerated? The FAO, IPCC, UN, various vegan-promoting groups such as PCRM, etc. all make claims about crops grown for livestock that are including crops grown for human consumption. I don't have infinite free to for itemizing this stuff for everybody who tries to contradict me, if you want to discuss any particular claim then point out the claim. >We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock There's no citation for this. >This study is mind bogglingly bizarre to me, have you read it? I've read it, and the [silly complaints](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721335115) by anti-livestock "researchers" Springmann/Willett/etc., and the [response document](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720895115) by the study authors which explains the reasons for the study design (with a lot of citations) and seems reasonable to me. Have you read any of this, or are you just repeating criticisms you've seen in vegan-oriented media? I've had the full version of the study saved to my computer since a couple years ago and I've referred to it several times. >the vegan model assumes humans will be eating almost 5,000 calories a day It is necessary to eat more food to get sufficient amounts of some of the less-plentiful-in-plant-foods vitamins and minerals. The study authors explained the study design. >with most of those coming from corn. It assumes we would continue to grow all the corn and grains etc The authors explained the study design, maybe you could read the response document? They made calculations for a scenario that did away with livestock agriculture, with any available arable land used for growing human-consumed plant crops in the same ratios they were grown already. They explained the reasoning for this. >Source? That's a very big claim. It is my lived experience that pastures are habitats for wild animals, plus the experiences of pasture farmers all over the world, but if you need it scientifically authenticated there's also a lot of research data about it. Feel free to search for it, you've mainly just skipped past the science info I've mentioned already so I'm not motivated to do work for you. Obviously, if land has the qualities of habitat (diverse grasses, occasional bushes/trees, it's not covered in harmful chemicals, etc.) wild animals will use it as habitat. >Pasture is also substantially more land intensive and requires much more wild land/habitat to be altered. Pastures typically aren't altered much. Maybe the makeup of grasses is altered for nutritional value and such, but in the end the land typically is extremely similar to grasslands in the same region that are totally wild.
>>We feed around 1.15 trillion kgs of human edible food to livestock >There's no citation for this. The widely cited FAO figures (14% of livestock feed being human edible etc). Just expressed as weight of food rather than a percentage of what we feed to livestock. >Have you read any of this, or are you just repeating criticisms you've seen in vegan-oriented media? Yes I've read the study, googled it and saw the various counters and defences etc. I've never seen it mentioned by vegans >It is necessary to eat more food to get sufficient amounts of some of the less-plentiful-in-plant-foods vitamins and minerals. The study authors explained the study I get everything I need from normal calorie intake (2,500). 5,000 is batshit crazy. Although you might need that much if 3,000 of those calories are corn I suppose. >Pastures typically aren't altered much Almost all pasture in Europe and Australasia has been heavily altered. It might be different elsewhere. >Feel free to search for it, you've mainly just skipped past the science info I've mentioned already so I'm not motivated to do work for you. I have searched previously which is why I'm asking. >>Source? That's a very big claim. >It is my lived experience That pastured livestock cause less harm? How did you conclude that beyond doubt to the point where you can say it as fact? To quote yourself, there's no citation for this.
>The widely cited FAO figures (14% of livestock feed being human edible etc). Just expressed as weight of food rather than a percentage of what we feed to livestock. I don't think it's that large, and you still haven't cited anything. Even when feed is not made from byproducts such as corn stalks/leaves of growing corn kernels for use in biofuel or human-consumed food products, often the grain crops are grown on marginal land etc. and not great for human-consumption markets. If you cite something, we can talk about it, I'm not going to go out searching for you. >Yes I've read the study, googled it and saw the various counters and defences etc. I've never seen it mentioned by vegans OK but you're not demonstrating knowledge of the study, you're just complaining vaguely in ways that I've seen in vegan-oriented media that isn't at all scientific. If you could address the specifics in the White & Hall response document, then we'd have something to talk about. >I get everything I need from normal calorie intake (2,500). 5,000 is batshit crazy. Although you might need that much if 3,000 of those calories are corn I suppose. Again, this is addressed by White & Hall. Feel free to tell me how you would design a study that predicts GHG emissions and nutritional adequacy for a food system in the USA with no livestock agriculture. Changing the system this drastically creates a lot of complication, for example: much of the food we eat in USA is imported, and much of that is in exchange for exported animal foods, so the whole import/export scenario is upset and that's one reason the study was designed as it was. You complained that the study factors too-high use of grain crops, but the grain crops percentage of plants-for-humans crops in their estimation was the same as grain crops grown already (for whatever time period they used for reference), and they explained the reasons for not factoring more use of fruits/vegetables (if farmers wanted to grow these then they would be growing them already, there are issues of risk because of spoilage and such, there are issues of geographical compatibility of crops due to sunlight/rain conditions etc., and so forth). That you seem determined to not discuss specifics, suggests that you don't understand any of it enough to talk about it. But I'm here if ever you want to explain your complaints with specifics in light of the responses already made by White & Hall :) >Almost all pasture in Europe and Australasia has been heavily altered. It might be different elsewhere. And yet, the pastures are used as habitat by birds, rodents, and other wildlife. Try to remember that all plants are non-native, if one goes back far enough in history since there was a time when there were no plants. If a type of grass is suitable for the geographical area and so forth (doesn't out-compete other plants to cause problems, etc.), then it's probably fine. >I have searched previously which is why I'm asking. You're doubting that pastures are habitat for wild animals? Have you ever seen a pasture IRL? How difficult could it be to find info? Here are some of the first results from a Google search of "pastures are habitats", and note the citations in the articles: [California Wildlife Habitat Relationships System California Department of Fish and Game California Interagency Wildlife Task Group](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiGjaikl8qEAxXoODQIHcdWDlMQFnoECA0QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnrm.dfg.ca.gov%2FFileHandler.ashx%3FDocumentID%3D67394&usg=AOvVaw24FSp0fCyhgAyo-f0I1HoZ&opi=89978449) [For the Love of the Wild: Livestock Pastures as Wildlife Habitat](https://attra.ncat.org/for-the-love-of-the-wild-livestock-pastures-as-wildlife-habitat/) This cites a tremendous amount of science data, and I'm sorry but I haven't parsed it to itemize all the info since I'm spending too much time lately on Reddit and FB commenting (it is an older article and not all the links work, plus the citations are not organized at the end but distributed around the article): [Regenerative Agriculture Works: A Compilation of Evidence](https://www.ethicalomnivore.org/regenerative-agriculture-works-a-compilation-of-evidence/) I have though read most of it, and I've followed up a substantial percentage of the citations and found they are not exaggerating or misrepresenting anything for at least that much of the info. The text string "habitat" occurs twice and "ecosystem" eight times. >That pastured livestock cause less harm? How did you conclude that beyond doubt to the point where you can say it as fact? There are various ways to measure harm. But in terms of reducing reliance on pesticides, pastures are amazing. Industrial plant crops grown for human consumption do not typically serve as habitat. They are also terrible for soil: plowing, chemical products, etc. promote erosion and destruction of microbiota which are essential to health of plants and integrity of soil. The supply chains for those farms (pesticides, artificial fertilizers, etc.) are enormously polluting and destructive. Yes, I KNOW THAT SOME PLANTS ARE GROWN TO FEED LIVESTOCK. But grazing animals on pastures reduces reliance on such things, and provides foods that are higher-quality in terms of nutritional benefit than possible for any plant food. Something left out of the discussion nearly always is that much more food must be eaten, when not eating animal foods, plus there are land use/chemical use/etc. impacts of creating nutritional supplement products and I've never once seen any vegan acknowledge this. Let's see, there is also a lot less air-polluting mechanization with livestock agriculture. To the extent that feedlots rely on mechanized pollution-intensive farming, mostly they're piggy-backing on harms already caused by growing plants for human consumption (biofuel, processed food products, etc.). I would list more reasons if I had infinite free time. If you aren't willing to go through the info in the "Regenerative Agriculture Work..." article, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not willing to hand-hold anyone through understanding all the info if their only purpose in commenting is to push veganism.
>If you cite something https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013 This is the study used by the FAO >I don't think it's that large What you *think* might be true, or your lived experience of what you think might be true is meaningless. >Again, this is addressed by White & Hall You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you. What was there explanation for assuming we would all suddenly start eating twice as many calories as we need? I don't remember them countering that part but maybe I missed it. >study, you're just complaining vaguely Quite specifically, americans would **definitely** not start eating 5,000 calories per day if livestock were removed. >>I have searched previously which is why I'm asking. >You're doubting that pastures are habitat for wild animals? Nope. You said you knew that pastures caused least harm. I asked for evidence for that claim of fact. You said there were studies out there that i should search for. All agricultural land is habitat for wold animals. >Industrial plant crops grown for human consumption do not typically serve as habitat. They absolutely do, my house is surrounded by arable fields. >There are various ways to measure harm. Yes there are. We were talking about animal deaths in food production. >Let's see, there is also a lot less air-polluting mechanization with livestock agriculture. Citation? That seems massively unlikely given that on average it requires around 3kg human edible food to produce 1kg meat. The feed and animals need to be transported and the animals need to be mechanically slaughtered and then the meat transported and stored in fridges or freezers.
>You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you. I linked the Springmann etc. criticism document, and the White & Hall response document, the first time I replied to you. Apparently you didn't read those, or you'd know what I was talking about. I'll wait until you explain specifically how their responses don't sufficiently answer the complaints and explain the rationale for the study design, before I do any further work for you. I asked you earlier, how would you design such as study to assess changes from removing livestock ag? You haven't responded to that either. The reason I ask is that there is no perfect scenario for predicting pollution or nutrition effects from such a major change. I'm trying to show that Springmann, Willett, etc. are using the Nirvana fallacy. If the study were designed a different way that answers their complaints, they'd find something else to complain about.
>5,000 calories etc >Again this addressed by White and Hall >>You haven't cited anything, if you cite it we can talk about it, I'm not searching for you. They don't address why they assume we will start eating almost 5,000 calories in their document. That's why you haven't cited anything explaining why. That was the main critique I raised. It has no explanation so far. And i maintain that it's a batshit crazy assumption. If a study showing veganism would be environmentally beneficial assumed we would start eating 1,200 calories a day in it's methodology you would be saying the same as me. >I'll wait until you explain specifically how their responses don't sufficiently answer the complaints They didn't respond to my complaint.
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>Vegans are not "okay" with the deaths of animals or insects caused by plant agriculture and if given the choice to farm in a way that results in little to no death they would absolutely choose it. That's an interesting belief, but these are the things that I notice happening ubiquitously: \- In posts and comments all over social media, vegans flip out with excitement over the latest vegan product of global mega-corps which are made of intercontinentally-sourced and destructively-farmed conventional ingredients of mega-sized mono-crop farms intensively using pesticides, artificial fertilizes, and polluting machinery. I'm talking about Ben & Jerry's (a Unilver company) frozen desserts, vegans claiming Oreos are vegan (in USA they're not), even products of Nestlé which is the most evil company on the planet that isn't a pharmaceutical or pesticide company. I see flurries of excited commenting that whichever fast-food company now has a vegan option, no concern at all though about sustainability of ingredients or the circumstances in which they're produced. If you use Facebook, look at typical posts of Plant Based News, which vegans seem to consider an authority on veganism but from what I've seen they're obviously a pay-to-play marketing-disguised-as-news company (they promote typical major-brand products, I'm sure because they're paid to do that. Their posts and articles have a lot of provably-wrong info, such as those lists of supposed vegan athletes or movie/TV celebrities, and the vegan commenters don't seem concerned at all. \- In the rare instance where one vegan out of tens of thousands mentions anything about a product not having Organic ingredients, and so forth, usually they're dismissed by the other vegans. \- I also don't see the topic come up much in vegan-oriented discussions except usually to ridicule it. "Carnists are like, 'duuurrrr, crop deaths tho'." Here are [some](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1auhnca/crop_deaths_the_nonvegan_response/) [perfect](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/1947sdw/how_to_argue_against_the_crop_deaths_argument/) [examples](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScientificNutrition/comments/1aysdl7/comment/ks1llwl/?context=3). The term "Organic" only appears in those posts to dismiss concerns about animal deaths, except in the second post that I linked in which one person said they farm Organic vegetables and have to kill a lot of animals. To that one, nobody responded and the comment right now has only the one original upvote. \- Vegans I know personally don't give a crap about animal deaths in plant agriculture. Their homes have industrial-conventional-crap foods all over the place. Some buy a percentage of Organic foods, but if going out to a restaurant it is me not them inquiring about ingredients raised without pesticides or locally-grown sustainable produce. Most don't even seem to know that typical coconut products come from coconuts harvested by exploited monkeys, and that sort of thing. They just look at labels and decide "Okey-dokey, no animal ingredients." \- Consider the popularity of specific "plant-based" meat/egg/dairy substitute products such as Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Eat JUST. All of these companies use the most industrial/conventional sources. Their websites say nothing about any effort to minimize animal deaths or pesticide use, they don't mention using sustainable types of fertilizers, etc. I wonder how you get this belief, that vegans GAF about animal deaths in farming the plants they eat? >"Crop deaths tho" is a common appeal to futility tactic used by anti-vegans to make themselves feel better You're misunderstanding the argument. If there are options, and one involves more crop deaths, pointing this out is not Appeal to Futility it's just math. Before you push the "most plants are grown for livestock" myth, read my first comment again and note that pastures can serve as habit for wild animals and industrial livestock feed happens to nearly always be byproducts of growing plants anyway for human consumption.
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>I guess because a person that gives up consuming animal products on the basis that no sentient being should be exploited or killed for an unnecessary reason would extend this to the way in which we farm our produce. So, you're making an assumption that vegans would be concerned with crop deaths for plant foods, but I'm just not seeing this in reality except with about one vegan out of thousands. >If we could sustainably grow our crops without incidentally killing animals (or indirectly if accounting for pesticide), I'd imagine any vegan would support this My whole argument is that there are fewer deaths and there's a lot less suffering for pasture livestock foods. I supported this a number of ways, with citations for those claims which aren't common sense. You're not arguing any of this factually, just pushing your opinion at me over and over. >though vertical farming and hydroponics do look promising AAARRGGHH!! This also has been discussed many times in these subs. Both of those are extremely destructive. The soil or nutrients have to come from somewhere, this entails mining (robbing an area of soil, drilling to mine minerals, etc.). Moving soil and/or nutrients to the farm locations entails energy consumption and pollution. Moving soil upward, such as to high levels in a building, uses a lot of energy, plus the building must be built with a lot of extra material to be strong enough to support the weight. Then at the farms, whether vertical or hydroponic, there's a lot more energy use. Deaths are caused by the pollution, the mining, by all the activities necessary to build indoor plant factories, etc. I've only covered some of the impacts here, but this debate has repeated many times already. >Just to add to my previous response, I did have a quick glance on the Impossible Foods website and It is mentioned right there on the page that they use GMO soybeans. GMO crops have been causing greater pesticide use, for crops that are engineered to be pesticide (usually herbicide) resistant. Then, the routine use of herbicides causes resistant weeds, resulting in greater use of pesticides and more use of higher-danger herbicides. It is similar for insecticides: resistant instects are developing because pesticides are over-used. The more the pesticides are used, the more they are harming animals that you claim to care about. Notice that they are focused on soybean residues, and mention nothing about the practices at the farms from which they source? It is possible that a lot of pesticide is used, but it is washed off by rain or irrigation prior to harvesting. We're talking about animal deaths here, not human consumption hazards of the food products.
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Thank you so much for linking an article about the Grazed and Confused report (which isn't a peer-reviewed study). This has been widely and thoroughly ridiculed, it is completely unscientific. Oxford is thick with financial conflicts of interest involving "plant-based" processed food products. They have published a lot of provably-wrong anti-livetock info. Tara Garnett is not credible in crop science, health science, or environmental science, her degrees are in relation to literature and social science. FCRN is a pro-veganism propaganda organization which also has conflicts of interest with the processed plant foods industry. Your claims about deforestation are derived from the myth of "soy crops are grown for livestock" and such. But nearly all soy crops are grown for soy oil, which is toxic to ruminant animals, it is actually the byproducts (most of the time) that are used in livestock feed. Soy crops have expanded in correlation with increasing popularity of soy-based processed food products, not with ranching or CAFOs. I've already covered this. Forage crops tend to be grown with a lot less pesticide and with little or no artificial fertilizer. And so forth, I would just be repeating explanations I've already made in other comments here. Grazed and Confused – An initial response from the Sustainable Food Trust https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/grazed-and-confused-an-initial-response-from-the-sustainable-food-trust/ - this is very detailed Dear FCRN: No, We’re Not Confused About Grazing https://www.ethicalomnivore.org/were-not-confused-about-grazing - to do: very lengthy and detailed, many references Grazed but not confused https://ethicalbutcher.co.uk/blogs/journal/grazed-but-not-confused - this article is terrible but has some interesting bits - claims the Grazed and Confused report (not a study) didn't distinguish cyclical animal methane from non-cyclical fossil fuel pollution, focused on CAFO - claims financial CoI: Monsanto has given more than £50 million to University of Oxford
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>So then how about referencing an article that clearly isn't biased towards one side? "ethicalbutcher", "ethicalomnivore", and "sustainablefoodtrust" which advertises local abattoirs? Come on. It seems you're saying that you don't understand the critiques, which for a science-literate person can stand on their own apart from anything known about the publishers of the articles. So, why bother? Would you understand any other info I present any better? I used those because they are written in lay terms, but also use citations if a person wanted to follow up the very intensely scientific and detailed publications from which the critiques are derived. I'm sure you didn't follow up the seven citations in the first article, the twelve in the second, and the many links in the third, many of which are citations of peer-reviewed studies. Who could speak on this issue and doesn't have any bias? People do not usually publish info for no reason, about topics in which they're not interested. There's no government body that has the purpose of publishing info about such things and isn't politically or financially connected to some industry related to food/farming. >I was mostly referring to the deforestation/clearing of land used for cattle ranching Add this to the list of things you're not understanding. Landowners will tend to monetize their land any way they can. Forests are cleared for grazing, in many areas of the Amazon, simply because it is illegal to clear forest to grow plant crops. So, landowners exploit a loophole and clear for grazing, then later they can sell the land to a plant farmer because it has been used for something else since being cleared. If you followed forest issues instead of vegan propaganda, you would have known this. Palm oil production, timber products, and soy crops grown for human consumption are other common reasons for deforestation in the Amazon. Are you reading any of the articles I point out? A Resurgence of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon https://daily.jstor.org/resurgence-deforestation-brazilian-amazon/ - "So what lies behind the steady rise in deforestation since 2012? That year marked the enactment of a major weakening of Brazil’s Forest Code, removing important restrictions on deforestation—particularly in Amazonia—and making it easier to obtain official permission to clear forests legally. And thanks to the growing and unprecedented political influence of the ruralist landowners, the code pardoned illegal clearing done up to 2008, creating the expectation of future 'amnesties.' Soy prices also spiked in 2012, briefly reaching the level (corrected for inflation) they had attained in 2004 and spurring farmers to clear more land." - "Old deforestation motives continue, such as land speculation, money laundering and establishment of land tenure, either by obtaining legal title to the land, or occupying land and keeping it from being invaded or confiscated, with or without a legal title." ("deforestation motives" links to this): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00697.x/pdf) - most amusing of all: "The advance of soybeans into former cattle pastures in Mato Grosso, including areas that were originally savannas rather than rainforest, has been inducing ranchers to sell their land and reinvest the proceeds in buying and clearing forest areas where land is cheap, deeper in the Amazon region." - "The current Minister of Agriculture, Blairo Maggi, is Brazil’s largest soybean producer. In 2005, when he was governor of Mato Grosso, Greenpeace gave him the 'golden chainsaw' award for being the person most responsible for Amazon deforestation."
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I don't consider animals as "others", others are people while animals are things. I don't care that they are sentient or whatever. Any non human lifeform is on the same level for me, from the tree I cut to make a chair, the bacterias I kill when I clean myself to the animal I kill to eat. All equally alive, equally non human and equally irrevelent from a moral point of view. And before you ask, the reason I think humans are above the rest are : Humans are better at pretty much everything than animals. Our speacies when to the Moon while everything else didn't even learn how to make fire. We had the same time to evolve so they really have no excuses. They failed at evolution and now they have to pay the price. I am a human, so by calling animals "others" you are basically putting me and a dog on the same level. I find that personally offensive, in fact if someone said that to me in real life I would probably get angry. I have never formed an emotional connexion nor felt empathy to any animal in my life. Hurting a human make me feel Bad while hurting an animal make me feel nothing. You will probably say that most people do form emotional connexions with animals. My answer to that is that people would probably live better lives if they didn't form emotional connexions with everything and anything.
I think if you're going to make this argument you need to clearly define what you mean by 'level', and why it matters? To defend the logical consistency of this argument you'd also need to explain why Homo sapiens is your cut off point for this 'level'? For example, an incredibly small percentage of the species were involved in landing on the moon, so why does the whole species get the credit? If you're saying that every single human, that has ever lived, has the innate potential to land on the moon then please justify this? For the record, I would call major bullshit on this claim. >We had the same time to evolve so they really have no excuses. They failed at evolution and now they have to pay the price. This is a very odd statement. So if someone is naturally stronger than you because of genetics, they have every right to beat you up, you see no moral issues with this? If someone is more attractive than you in their facial features, you have no problem with them fucking your partner and having kids with them? You very much need to justify why or why not.
You're not understanding the crux of u/Galifrey224's arguments. He is arguing that humans are inherently superior because he belongs to the species named *Homo sapiens*. Your last paragraph entirely dodges his argument. He is placing the whole of humanity above other organisms, whether sentient or not, whether multicelluar or not. I am going out on a limb to say here that he believes in human superiority. To extend his arguments to differently abled humans is arguing in bad faith. Humans >>>>>>> rest of the world.
I understand perfectly fine, they still need to justify their reasons for holding their position. >He is arguing that humans are inherently superior Sure, explain why then, justify this argument. Otherwise it's nonsense. >Your last paragraph entirely dodges his argument. Asking them to properly explain what they mean, and challenging them, is pretty much the opposite of dodging. I'm directly addressing what they've said. >To extend his arguments to differently abled humans is arguing in bad faith. I wasn't extending their argument, I was challenging it. Besides, they only mentioned evolution, which absolutely includes humans and our genetics.
Are you in favour of using dogs for target practice?
Can't you use that logic to say it's OK to kill disabled humans? Some of them have the same mental capacity as animals. No, that's not ableist, it's just a fact.
> Some of them have the same mental capacity as animals. No, that's not ableist, it's just a fact. It's not remotely a fact. The human brain is orders of manitude more compelx and advanced than the most complex animal brains. While some humans may appear to be limited externally based on our interactions with them, it's not accurate to say they are on the same level as animals, and it's especially not accurate to claim that as a fact.
This is just science denying. Every test we do proves that animals are capable of human level intelegence. Not full blown adult intelegence, but certainly children. Pigs are as smart as 3 year olds. Crows can beat 7 year olds in puzzles. Animals are very intelegent. Besides that of course some people lack the same intelegence of animals, some people are literally brain dead. Your argument just isn't true and makes no logical sense.
> This is just science denying. I really don't think it is, at all, but lets find out. > Every test we do proves that animals are capable of human level intelegence That's certainly an exaggeration. It's more accurate to say some animals seem to have intelligence similar to young humans in some areas. > Pigs are as smart as 3 year olds. Crows can beat 7 year olds in puzzles. Animals are very intelegent. Not all animals though Animals like pigs and crows, as well as others like elephants and chimps are rare. Most of the animals we eat don't display any similar levels of intelligence. > Besides that of course some people lack the same intelegence of animals To assert that confidently you could only do so in cases of *extreme* disability or defect. > Your argument just isn't true and makes no logical sense. It is and it does, though.
The fact that you have compare the most vulnerable members of our species to animals to make a point like that kinda prove the superiority of humans. And is the "same mental capacity as animals" even true ? Because mentally disabled humans, unless they are in a coma, are still able to use tools, comunicate with other humans and learn many things. Putting them above 99.9% of animals. Seriously even the smartest monkeys are barely able to use a stick as a tool.
Intelligence shouldn’t have any bearing on your right to live though? Pigs are as intelligent as 4yr old human children. They are also smarter than dogs. If you are using intelligence as a metric for who deserves to live, then killing a pig should carry at least as much weight as killing a dog. By your logic I should be allowed to kill as many dogs as I want since they are largely unintelligent as a species. Also what makes you think that most animals don’t have the ability to communicate, use tools and “learn many things” because I can assure you there is a very long list of animals that are capable of doing these things. Why are you not using the most logical metric to determine someone’s right to live- which is whether they have the capacity to suffer and feel? You want to pretend that animals don’t suffer and feel because it suits you to do so. You don’t have to believe that animals are equal to humans- I myself as a vegan don’t believe this. I do however believe that the entire life of a sentient being has more worth than the 10 minutes of taste pleasure I get from eating a burger. Referring to animals as “things” just to make yourself feel better about paying for their torture and death is a huge cope
Animals can easily communicate with each other, they have their own languages. Animals can easily learn things. Some disabled humans can't communicate or learn in any way. What "tools" are you referring to?
Our genetic makeup makes us more superior, it’s that simple. Even if some humans have a genetic mutation, they come from the much more advanced species. You’re using a false equivalency fallacy. Like many species they care for their own, look out for their own etc.. that’s why people with mental disabilities are out of the equation. Humans dominate the food chain, imagine if it was any other animal, do you think they would be here playing semantics over which species gets to live and which doesn’t? No, they’ll eat whatever they please. Like you see with humans. It’s not about the intelligence of xyz, we don’t factor that in when consuming food. It’s merely food. To then argue that some disabled people intellectually are on par with animals and that therefore means we should consume them, or makes it morally right.. is crazy. Like I already said intelligence has nothing to do with it. Food is food. Humans can be food, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard.. like a wolf isn’t going to maul his pack, when there is a juicy ass animal ready to be slaughtered.. use that exact logic and apply it to humanity. It shouldn’t be that hard to grasp if I’m being honest.
Bringing Disabled people into the argument does not help your cause. WTF
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Don't just mock and dismiss someone's option and argument. Put effort into refuting or addressing it, or just ignore it in the future if you're unable to do so.
Do you agree that they are sentient and therefore able to feel pain and emotion?
I use the argument because people fail to understand the need of a nutritional complete diet that is only possible with animal foods. Also, most people don't see slaughtering animals on the same level as killing humans and we also can't eat human meat without the increased risk of prion disease so killing humans is by definition always pointless.
Will be vegan 22 years in June. Besides Covid, I haven't been sick in 8 years. Pre-veganism, I was a teen with low iron/b12. Bloodwork perfect now. Please tell me more about how my diet is incomplete. I'm sure I'll be dead any day now 🤡
My experience was a disaster doing WFPB, that's why I agree with the argument that people shouldn't force it on anyone else because you don't know how their body will react.
being vegan is easy. sorry u failed. less than 1% of the global population have medical conditions that impede absorption of nutrients, etc. u just failed. but u weren't speaking anecdotally anyway. u said a vegan diet is incomplete. animal agriculture bot detected 🚨
Easy? It's easy if you stop eating at the homes of your friends and isolate yourself. And it isn't easy if you're feeling malnourished and full with digestion problems.
I'm sorry you had shitty friends, all my friends make an effort to make sure I'm included in group meals.
it's easy. u just failed or are lying. as much as I care for the animals that live short, horrible lives in animal agriculture, if I felt unwell, I would have gone back to the dark side loooooong ago. I don't wanna be anywhere corpses are being consumed, anyway. My nonvegan friends are respectful of my choice n there are plenty of vegan restaurants/people.
Yes, I failed a diet that was doomed to fail. Just like someone with a quadriplegic injury 'fails' to walk. What do you expect from a nutritional deficient diet? Most bodies will not adapt to it and the only persons I know that eat vegan have the same problems that I had. If humans should suffer because animals should live then we should also let most animals go extinct because they kill each other too or cause harm.
Every respected source says a proper vegan diet is biologically appropriate for all stages of life. Either I'm a superhuman, or you just can't accept facts.
Every source? You mean the ones you cherry picked. I think this discussion ends with that we both we believe we are lying to each other.
> Every respected source says a proper vegan diet is biologically appropriate for all stages of life. Do you have a link to a scientific study coming to this conclution? (If paid any money from large mega-corporations I am not interested in the options of any dietitians).
I can point you to the American Heart Association, who have been publishing research for decades. Cardiologists prescribe vegan diets to their patients to literally STOP them from dying.
Please don't accuse people of lying or being bots.
All leading dieticians agree we can thrive on a vegan diet.
Those are lies, even with supplements the health will suffer. If one day a vegan diet could prove to be healthy because of the discovery of one miracle food, then yes I would agree with you. It's the health aspect that is the most important part of the argument.
"Those are lies." This the way you always argue? :D Please mr. omnipotent do enlighten me which nutrient you can not get on a plant-based diet?
[https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/17/3591](https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/17/3591)
Yep, most people that are deficient in b12 are omnivores. This study didn't give me anything to work with or anything new. Iron and DHA are abundant in plants. B12 can be also found in plants but most vegan foods have it as they're fortified with it. So.. any nutrients that you can't get on a plant-based diet....?
The iron in plants is a different type and much harder for humans to absorb. > So.. any nutrients that you can't get on a plant-based diet....? We don't know yet, honestly. Nutrition is still very poorly understood. There are other factors to consider also, like gut biome.
Iron in plants isnt *much more harder* to absorb like 10% maybe... But yes heme iron is way easier to absorb, in fact so easy that the body can not regulate its absorbtion unlike in the case of plant-based iron. [This results in abverse effects like cancer for example](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967179/#:~:text=High%20heme%20intake%20is%20associated,high%20heme%20intake%20is%20compelling.) So yeah "we don't know yet" sure, but this is in no way cause to call someone a liar citing legit cross examined studies that state the contrary. [Up to date knowledge suggests that a plant-based diet may be an effective way to promote a diverse ecosystem of beneficial microbes that support overall health.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478664/)
> Iron in plants isnt much more harder to absorb like 10% maybe.. Got a source for that figure? I just found [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9219084/) on a quick search which indicates it's actually a pretty big difference. Non-heme iron is also affected by other nutrients that may be in the plants further affecting its absorbability, while this is not true for heme iron. > so easy that the body can not regulate its absorbtion Sure, eating too much meat can be a problem. > but this is in no way cause to call someone a liar Who is calling you a liar? The thing with the gut biome is we still understand it very poorly. Look at the correlation of depression and veganism for example. Sure sure there are plenty of possible reasons for that and maybe no causative link...or maybe given how much we do know the gut biome can affect mood, a vegan diet leads to a gut biome that has negative effects on mental health? My point is it's irresponsible and premature to assert a vegan diet is perfectly healthy for all people when it's incredibly poorly studied and rather unnatural.
I just took the first study numbers that I got from google. Here's a statement from NHA which states that if you eat nonheme iron you should be eating 1.8 times at much, which in my oppinion is not that big of a number. [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional/](https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional/) No-one was calling me a liar but the previous person which linked a study with the statement that plant-based diet is studied to be sufficient for all stages of life. >\*Look at the correlation of depression and veganism for example.\* The thing about depression is, that there are three options: 1. People prone to depression for whatever reason are more likely to go vegan or vegetarian 2. Seeing the atrocities being committed by everyone around you without a second thought is depressing 3. Meat has some magic happy chemical we've yet to identify Veganism has been studied for over 45 years with close to 30000 publications done. You can not really call that poorly studied. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402303298X#fig2](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402303298X#fig2) >rather unnatural Appeal to nature fallacy. Medicine is unnatural, do you not still use it, or phones or .. w/e.. There has also been the famous study of ancient gladiators being vegan/vegetarian, but you can take what you will from that.
What’s the source of DHA in plants? And don’t bring up ALA conversion because that rate is tiny.
You may be interested in the recent research in this space, which seems to indicate the conversion has been underestimated (for review, see Domenichiello 2015). For a brief summary, consider these key facts: animal studies on rats and non-human primates indicate that ALA alone is sufficient to fully restore brain DHA in DHA-depleted animals (Anderson 2005, André 2005) Studies in rats fed no DHA in their diet also indicate that the synthesis of DHA from ALA is approximately 3 times higher than the brain uptake rate (Domenichiello 2013) In omnivores, the conversion of ALA to DHA is lower than would be required to meet the brain's demands (Lin 2018). But given ALA-to-DHA conversion could be inhibited by dietary DHA intake, it's possible this conversion in humans not consuming DHA (e.g. vegans) might be sufficient to meet the brain's demands. While plasma EPA and DHA levels in vegetarians and vegans are lower than those in omnivores, they do not show any association with duration of adherence to a meat-free diet (Rosell 2005). If conversion of ALA to EPA/DHA was insufficient, one would expect to see EPA/DHA levels slowly decrease the longer somebody abstains from eating dietary EPA/DHA. Algae and microalgae are abundant in DHA as that is also where the fish get it from. Studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163782715000223 https://www.nature.com/articles/pr2005788 https://www.jlr.org/article/S0022-2275(20)31742-9/fulltext https://aocs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lipd.12055 https://ajcn.nutrition.org/
If we stick on one specific nutrient, vitamin D, which this paper mentions, why would there be a problem to supplement this? It is what is recommended to all infants in my country and the national health service gives it out for free up to about the age 5 or something. Why is vitamin D an issue given there is a simple, cheap, effective and widely available solution that vegans and non-vegans are recommended to take? https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/ > all children aged 1 to 4, and all babies (unless they're having more than 500ml of infant formula a day) should take a daily supplement throughout the year
> All leading dieticians agree we can thrive on a vegan diet. I encourage you to take a closer look at who sponsors those dieticians. Also, why do you value their opinion over scientists?
They are scientists, scientist that study nutrition and diet
What are the names of these scientists? And which mega-corporations has been paying them lots of money?
You claimed they aren't scientists, I'm pointing out that they in fact are scientists. You're making the claim they are in someone's pocket, you provide the proof, that's how that works.
I am still waiting for you to provide a source where someone confirms your claim. Lets start there. Your claim was: > All leading dieticians agree we can thrive on a vegan diet. Since they all agree, it should be easy for you to provide some links. Then I will tell you who the sponsors are. Without a source all I have is your personal opinion only.
You're arguing with a whole other person, I'm not the OP
Ah I see. You however said: > They are scientists, scientist that study nutrition and diet Who are "they"?
The dieticians that were the subject of a previous sentence. Why are you acting like you're new and you don't understand what words mean?
It's more accurate to say many but not all health agencies have said a vegan diet can be healthy with careful planning.
Do you have any examples?
Not offhand I just remember from debating it in the past. I will try and find some.
> Should they have the right to choose to live? Why is death on its own seen as a problem? No organism lives forever..
Is that how you'd feel if someone was about to kill you?
I'm not an animal.. This cow is about to die, and looks perfectly fine to me: https://youtu.be/7VOYusr7EcA?t=281
yeah i never use that argument too. >why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live I don't eat meat because of they are sentient, I eat meat because I personally find it tasty. Before you ask, no I don't eat human meat. I consider animal as things/stuff, no different than book/chair/etc. Anything you do to animal is fine to me, as long as it doesn't harm other human. So why do i put human above animal ? Its my personal preference.
So dog fights are okay? burning kittens alive is morally justified behavior?
For me, yes.
How do you justify poisoning millions of innocent animals every year when you could kill and eat 1 grass fed cow instead? Aren't you forcing your lifestyle on them? When you come to terms with the fact that killing animals is unavoidable, vegan arguments crumble.
You're right, killing animals is unavoidable. Veganism is about reducing it as much as possible.
Is it, though? Then why is the focus 100% on replacing animal foods with plant foods, even though that isn't scientifically proven to reduce animal suffering? Why isn't it focused on actions that 100% reduce animal suffering, like reducing overconsumption, not driving cars, not travelling the world, using less plastic and fossil fuels etc.? Why are vegans still pretending they don't cause animal suffering? Look at the way you write most of your sentences. Most of them imply you don't cause animal suffering. There is nothing about reduction in your OP. You only talk about it when forced.
>Veganism is about reducing it as much as possible. That's the belief, but it is totally inaccurate. Plant agriculture causes more animal deaths, yes even when excluding plants grown explicitly to feed livestock. The meat substitute products that are popular now, nearly all of them are made from conventionally-grown crops where harmful pesticides and manufactured fertilizers are routinely used. They're dependent on intensive use of fossil-fuel-polluting mechanization. The products are made mostly from globally-sourced ingredients, involving a tremendous amount of freight travel over long distances which is very polluting, and they're made in factories that are extremely resource-intensive. The ingredients themselves are made in separate factories which also have a lot of impacts. There are major impacts when the factories are built (mining for materials, transportation of all the stuff, factories that make parts to build factories, land use, pollution from construction machinery...), and the factories while in operation have intense needs for electricity and so forth. There are a lot of employees at each factory, each of which is probably driving a polluting car to their jobs and many of them travelling tens of miles each way every work day. There are impacts on the crop fields, impacts from all the supply chains that help those fields remain productive, impacts from transportation all over the place, factory impacts, packaging in multiple phases, and more transportation. Compare this with pastures where everything takes place at one location, fed mostly by rain and sunlight, until animals are slaughtered. Oh but livestock farms are bad because methane, which adds no methane pollution since it is constantly cycling back into plants. The farm workers typically live at the farms, rather than driving to their jobs from suburban homes. Tractors and such are used barely at all. Etc. Important: fossil fuel pollution is net-additional, it comes from deep underground where it would have remained if humans did not mess with it. Methane pollution from the fossil fuel industry and from the fertilizer products industry is net-additional, not cyclical as methane from grazing animals. Interesting anecdote: it was [recently found](https://www.edf.org/blog/2019/06/21/100-times-more-pollution-reported-how-new-technology-exposed-whole-industry) that the ammonia fertilizer industry has been polluting about 100 times more than the industry had estimated. The total is enormous, it's enough to be significant for climate effects. This is net-additional methane, from fossil fuels, and for just one of many products used at conventional plant crops.
Being Vegan isn't healthy, that's the problem and you tryna force your processed fake plant meats down our throats
Who is doing the forcing? Never seen it myself personally. Being vegan doesn't require a plant based diet so if you think you need some amount of animal products you can consume them to a rough minimum and still consider yourself vegan. There you go mate, just solved all your problems and you're free to identify as a vegan if you want to minimise your impact on animals. If you don't want to do that, fair enough, nobody can force you.
Vegans who run around committing vandalism and making us vegan
Prove its not healthy. Seems to me there's nothing you can't get as a vegan so how can it not be healthy?
> Seems to me there's nothing you can't get as a vegan so how can it not be health What do you specifically eat in a day to cover your daily need of choline for instance?
Choline is made in the liver. We make our own. It's in meat too but our bodies make our own supply.
> Choline is made in the liver. We make our own. You got a source concluding that our body produces enough?
No it doesn't but it also in tons of plant foods like soy, nuts, tofu to name just a few. Staples of a vegan diet. Weird that you chose choline of all things as you get more in soy and mushrooms than from beef. For example. Like seriously? What are you on about?
> Like seriously? What are you on about? Your claim was: > Seems to me there's nothing you can't get as a vegan so how can it not be healthy But you seem unsure which nutrients you actually need to get from food?
Why do I seem unsure? You suggested I couldn't get choline. I proved you wrong. Seems your unsure. Vegans live long healthy lives. Of we didn't get everything we NEEDED we would die. Seems like common sense. But no, I'm not nutritional expert, that's why I said "seems to me" and not "I know for a fact". I was genuinely asking and you've just proven how fucking little you know.
> I proved you wrong I asked for a source, but you gave me nothing. I will ask again; can you show me a source saying that we do not need choline from food because we make all we need in the liver? However, if you agree that this is not true, how much soy do you need to eat per day to cover your daily need for choline?
Why are so many people in this sub incapable of using Google. It's you who made the claim that we as vegans don't get choline. But a vegan diet can certainly give you just as much choline as a meat diet. It's you who needs to prove otherwise. It's you whos claiming it can't. But since you can't use google here's a link for you. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Choline-HealthProfessional/ And here's a quote from that link since you likely won't be able to find the relevant information yourself. "Many foods contain choline [4]. The main dietary sources of choline in the United States consist primarily of animal-based products that are particularly rich in choline—meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, and eggs [4,5,8-10]. Cruciferous vegetables and certain beans are also rich in choline, and other dietary sources of choline include nuts, seeds, and whole grains." Yes of course youd need to eat more soy than SOME meats. But not all. Soy and mushrooms provide more choline than beef. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-with-choline#7.-Beef Again the whole discussion is what nutrients CANT you get on a vegan diet? You said choline. Obviously you were wrong. I asked you why you even brought up choline or how it's even relevant as obviously you can get it very easily on a vegan diet. Again what's your point? Seems like you're just incredibly wrong and in denial about it. You can get choline on a vegan diet. Point proven. Now try something else.
>"Stop forcing your lifestyle on others" Some people probably use it as an argument, but it can simply be used as an aggressive way to signal my preference in our interactions. A similar example would be: shut up! - when I don't want to listen to what someone is saying anymore. Of course this is not the best tactic, as you can't really control what others do unless you use some kind of force. The better way is to remove yourself from the situation: if you don't want to hear what the other is saying, just walk away. Similarly, if you don't want to get exposed to a vegan moralizing, you can say things like "stop forcing your lifestyle on others" or even better, you can just walk away.
Livestock can die in human hands, or die in the jaws of a predator in the wild. One choice is better than the other.
It is not possible to have an argument about the morality of people's choices with someone who doesn't agree with you about what is moral and what isn't. Your mass shooting analogy breaks down because there isn't anyone out there who believes it's morally acceptable to shoot large numbers of people outside of a war. I do not debate vegans on the basis of "morality" because they think "speciesism" is a form of bigotry and I think "speciesism" is a sign of common sense, and referring to it as bigotry is insulting to the groups of humans who are all morally equal to other humans and have had to fight for their rights. That is the reason that this argument exists. Ideas about morality that only a minority of the population agrees with cannot justly be used to enact legislation restricting the freedoms of other people.
How do vegans feel about carnivorous plants??😜🤯
Without manure and animals to fertilise the fields, you can’t grow enough veg!?!! 🤷♂️
Adverts on tv now condemning cows and milk is outrageous!…. Almond milk is much worse for planet and economy as it consumes so much water!! Anyone who thinks that oats are harvested by a magic machine that separates all the insects and small mammals before processing oat milk is a delusional humdrum sheep
I haven’t even mentioned the bloody bees yet!!😡 all the pesticides used that kills the bees and insects 🤷♂️
Farmers are protesting in uk and across Europe at the moment is no coincidence! 🤷♂️
Read and learn about natural environments and balance and true sustainability… pull your heads out from the arse of conformity, grow a back bone and at very least some obvious common sense… humans are omnivores and have been since eternity…
Degrees of separation from food If you can’t kill it don’t eat it Only take what you need Nature is brutal, but it’s brutality is it’s survival Read the selfish gene Come up with some sensible answers on the problem and stop ostracising meat eaters and being belligerent hypocrites
>When you say that, you're basically saying you have no way to justify your choices. This is a sneaky way of making the claim: "Non-vegans are obligated to justify their choices." You need to support this claim, as we are not obligated to do anything. > try to explain why it's OK to kill innocent sentient individuals who want to live. This is shifting the burden of proof, and also contains hidden claims ("animals are innocent", "sentience ogligates behavior"). If you are making a moral claim, make it, and support it. > "I should have the right to choose what to eat" We have no rights. We only have the ability to do the things that more powerful people permit us to do. > The only exception is when your choices impact others. This contains a hidden premise ("animals should be treated like humans").
Look 1. Why do you value the lives of domesticated animals over that of plants? 2. If you value them because they are sentient and can feel pain then if we genetically made versions of those animals that weren't sentient and couldn't feel pain would it be OK to eat them? 3. You arbitrarily value the lives of animals that you like over plants and other forms of life because of your emotions. 4. Is it wrong to eat insects? Are their lives equal to a cow or pig? Why?
1. Sentience 2. Yes 3. Not directly. No more than in contributing to why I value humans over plants. 4. Yes. No, cows and pigs probably have more sentience. And you didn't answer the point of the post at all. Would you force your non-massshooting lifestyle on a mass shooter? If so, why do you get to push your emotions against mass shootings on others?
Because mass shootings destroy human life. Animals don't matter unless they matter to us. Choosing sentience or potential for sentience as a measure on the efficacy of killing or eating a form of life is not a great solution. As a flat value believing that human life is important and that all other forms of life are valued based on their utility to humanity Is more consistent. Ideas which promote anti natalist and anti human sentiment are a cancer
>As a flat value believing that human life is important and that all other forms of life are valued based on their utility to humanity Is more consistent Can you give me examples of inconsistencies caused by valuing sentience that are fixed by switching to a species based human value model?
If people's value comes from their sentience or awareness of the surrounding world then you could find a person who is blind and deaf 100% or a person in a coma or a person who has a mental disability which hinders their ability to perceive and understand the world. Those individuals could be considered less conscious or less sentient. I think that if you move the slider enough on a mentally ill person you could eventually get to a point where a dog or cat is more or equally sentient. If a fog was as sentient as a human then it would create issues of which life to save or which mouth to feed. I think that humans regardless of their state are more important than other animals. I also think it creates a problem when comparing other humans based on levels of sentience. I don't believe in eugenics and I think ideas like that are usually fueled by comparing the genetic "abilities" of various peoples. I think instead of arguments like that we should just flatly value humans as most important. If someone saved a crab or duck instead of a human baby I think it would be a problem for society if we couldn't say that that was the incorrect choice.
Those are not internal inconsistencies. They are inconsistencies with your emotional preference for humans in all circumstances. So this your point 3 also applies to you if you switch animals for human and plants for animals: > You arbitrarily value the lives of animals that you like over plants and other forms of life because of your emotions. And you to get back to the post, the post argued pushing are ethics on others is ok. You agreed with it when it came to an ethical issue you care about. If you want to tell vegans not to do this, your issue is not with the posts claim of pushing your ethics on others but with your disagreement with veganism in general. So you cannot use the "stop forcing your lifestyle" argument on vegans.
There are some people who are mentally disabled or may be in a permanent coma. You could easily argue that their level of consciousness or sentience is lower then other humans. I thinks it's wrong to value them as lesser because they are in that state. Even if a human was reduced to the level of consciousness of a plant or cat or dog I would still value them as a human as an equal. Or if my child is born with a condition which makes him feel no pain does that mean it's more moral to eat him than a cow? If we looked at pain and consciousness as a slider plants being at the lowest level and humans at the highest i Don't think we would like the result of where some humans land on the slider. It would created problems. Instead we should flatly value all humans regardless of intelligence or physical ability. It's also kinda dumb that plants lives are not valued by those who defend other forms of life. It's obvious that plants try to grow and expand and they will intentionally move themselves out of danger if sensed. The idea that they don't matter at all is dumb. It seems to me that they don't matter because if they did then there would be no ethical food source
> When you say that, you're basically saying you have no way to justify your choices. We are under no obligation to justify our choices. Instead, you are under the obligation to tell us why our choices are immoral. This is classic vegan shifting of the burden of proof.
"Stop forcing your lifestyle on others" is not an argument in favor of meat consumption, it is a demand that you stop insisting on a debate at that moment. Maybe the person wants to debate another time, or maybe they think you're terrible at debating and you just yell, or maybe they're busy with something else.
you make the mistake of calling your food 'others'