I encourage people who are not to try and eat vegetarian (never mind vegan - and BTW I am neither) for one week as an intellectual exercise. The issue is not whether one eats meat, but how totally unthinking our meat consumption has become - bacon for breakfast, ham sandwich for lunch, burger for dinner.

The question isn't whether to be vegan or omnivore, but whether it is necessary to eat meat at every meal, as is now common in many Western countries. A lot of the ecological, social and humanitarian concerns of meat production can be significantly improved by just reducing red meat consumption.

A lot of our food choices are habitual choices that can be changed with minor effort. Have hummus instead of ham in that sandwich. Have shrimp instead of beef in your Thai curry. Don't eat a mammal every meal out of reflex - eat it mindfully, and pay a fair price for humanely reared meat. The planet (and probably your body) will thank you for it.

It oddly reminds me of those tiny silly inconsequential rules that you're supposed to pay attention in some religions. Like no alcohol. What does that have anything to do with the main idea of the religion? Oops, you ingested some chicken broth. Feel bad about it. Maybe we'll forgive you later.

[ Please don't break down into some 'but animals die all the time in the wild,' argument. It's slightly different when we created the animal just for the purpose of killing it for meat. We take issue with the idea of growing full-sized human clones just to harvest for organs in the event that the original needs a transplant (i.e. The Island), so why is it that different for animals? They are still living beings, but our society has been raised to treat them like a commodity. No different than some mineral that was mined out of hole in the ground. Unless they are one of the 'chosen' types of animal (e.g. dog, cat, etc) then it's totally immoral to treat them poorly or (god forbid) eat them. ]

Yeah, let's not bring up a totally valid objection!

[edit] I'm being open to debate here, but instead of debate, I get down votes? Is that really what HN is about? [/edit]

Not eating mass-produced chicken or wearing leather makes sense, refusing free-range eggs or seafood does not. Not that there can be any real debate over an issue that predominately comes down to personal opinion. Always better to do what you are comfortable with and allow others to do the same.

Since you posit that huamn beings can infer the feelings of animals I posit that animals prefer to be factory farmed than spend what existence the animal has being constantly chased by predators. Therefore wearing leather and eating mass-produced chicken makes perfect sense and is in tune with the feelings of the animal.

Factory farming or "wild" existence is a false dichotomy. There is the option of having pastured animals. And, critically, there is the option of not existing at all. Furthermore, I'd suggest that domesticated animals are different enough from their wild forebears that spending their existence being chased by predators isn't the default "non-factory farm" option.

From what I know of factory farms, pastured animal husbandry, and the probable preference functions of animals, I would guess the preferences would be: pasturing > non-existence > factory farm

largely from The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

Can you infer the feelings of other humans? If you're willing to accept human communication like speech to answer "no, I don't need to", but are unwilling to accept communication like adult cows being willing to go through physical pain in order to stay with their calves when the calves are being taken away, I think you have a speciesist arbitrary-line problem going on here.

  > You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement.
  > No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

  "Monks, these two extremes ought not to be
  practiced by one who has gone forth from
  the household life. (What are the two?) There
  is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures,
  which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary
  people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there
  is addiction to self-mortification, which is
  painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding
  both these extremes, the Tathagata (the
  Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it
  gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to
  calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to
  Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized
  by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold
  path, and nothing else, namely: right
  understanding, right thought, right speech,
  right action, right livelihood, right effort,
  right mindfulness and right concentration."
  - Siddhārtha Gautama, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

But does anyone know, without any doubt, the living preferences of a potato or an apple tree?

  > free-range eggs or seafood does not

1. Eating seafood supports the over-fishing of our water-ways.

2. The 'free-range' label, IIRC, only requires that the animals have 15 minutes of time outside of their cramped cages. It's not a huge improvement.

3. In general, when they are hatching new chickens for egg-laying they sort out all of the male chicks and then kill them. Industry-standard practice is to put them into garbage bags and suffocate them, or to toss them (in garbage bags) into a wood-chipper.

4. Egg-laying hens are only kept alive as long as their production is at a certain level. As soon as it drops below a certain level they are called 'spent hens,' and killed.

this morning, I woke up to this submission. Going trough my morning routine and walking to work, I completely felt bad. For the first time, I feel bad to be part of HN due to many illogical and harmful statements.

What I'm going to say is: Thank you for encouraging intelligent conversation in these threads. I'm giving each and every comment an upvote.

* http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

It's largely ignored in philosophical discussions because of the issues mentioned in these pages (and more!).

I hope you don't drive on roads, or use anything produced by the petrochemical industry.

Hell, somewhere between your computer and HN a switch, server or piece of critical infrastructure is powered by burning dead animals. Or perhaps, it's just the plastic sheath on your ethernet cable that was made from petrochemicals.

I hope you're seriously considering refraining from using the internet because of the animals that were killed to make it.

Also, have you EVER considered how many field animals die to produce vegetables? You think a combine cares if there is a mouse in the way? Now, lets say you rely on a good shipped by trucking, train or ship, well then odds are somewhere along the line something was diesel powered, as we all know most diesel comes from oil fields, oil to the best of our knowledge contains dead animals.

If you're living you're consuming dead animals. Stop feeling bad about it and start enjoying the taste of meat. They died so you can live. It's the way of life, you think a tiger ponders the morality of eating a human?

Not eating meat is basically the sorriest excuse for making a difference I've seen, it's basically on par with believing recycling makes a difference. It's a small step to take with the aim of moralizing to everyone else how big of a difference you're making. Also, how many animals had to die because of habitat loss to make that nice house you're living in?

Meat may be murder, but so what? Pay soldiers to kill the animals then they are just casualties and it's no longer murder. We can now say the animal died in combat.

  > I hope you don't drive on roads, or use anything produced by the
  > petrochemical industry.

  > Also, have you EVER considered how many field animals die to produce
  > vegetables?

2. Who are you to decide whether or not a person should care whether or not gelatin (or chicken broth or whatever) is in their food? You're coming from the opposite side and reacting against the idea that I'm trying to tell you what to do, but your response is just to tell me what to do. Seems a little ironic to me.

3. This entire post comes across as, "Yea! I really stuck it to that vegan guy! I win!"

  > Not eating meat is basically the sorriest excuse for making a
  > difference I've seen, it's basically on par with believing recycling
  > makes a difference. It's a small step to take with the aim of
  > moralizing to everyone else how big of a difference you're making.
  > Also, how many animals had to die because of habitat loss to make
  > that nice house you're living in?P

Secondly, who said anything anywhere about 'making a difference?' I certainly didn't. I've only talked about living according to my own moral code. Is living my own life according to my own moral code a 'small step to take with the aim of moralizing to everyone else?'

Whoa, here. The argument against voting is completely separate from the argument against supporting something you abhor in the market. In the latter case, all else equal, the industry will eventually do less of that thing than they would if you were supporting it, even if no one else ever changes. The effect seems small weighed against the sum total of usage, but over years, there are animals never born, raised, and killed if you choose to stop using animal products. The analogy with voting is poor, since if you, personally, choose to vote for the other side or not to vote at all, your decision has literally zero effect on the outcome.

I believe that ConAgra has a plant for doing this to left over bits of turkey.

More to the point as far as we know oil deposits are created by thermal depolymerization of plants and animals on geologic timescales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation Therefor anything produced from petroleum very likely contains dead animals.

1. There are definitely shades of grey, but I tend to think that putting animals in your tank and on your plate are largely the same. If you think that eating dead animals is wrong, then why would consuming any product of which a component was dead animals be any different? Would it be ok to just kill an animal for no reason and not consume it?

2. I'm primarily attempting to point out that your actions and your moral code are hypocritical and thus you should be ignored as someone who advocates a standard for which they are unable or unwilling to meet themselves.

3. I don't really care how it comes across, if it effectively communicates to anyone else that the lifestyle choice and moral code of people who practice veganism or vegetarianism for moral reasons are hypocritical, then it has served it's purpose. If people who are not vegans or vegetarians for moral reasons laugh at the hypocrisy then it's also effective. Sometimes you have to make Modest Proposals in order to communicate effectively.

4. I think that voting is largely ineffective and that the electoral system produces results that are far more influenced by lobbying and money than by casting votes.

5. The entire point of the post was to convince you and others that don't eat meat for moral reasons that you are NOT living your life according to your own moral code. Or that your moral code contains arbitrary exceptions for the consumption of animals for whenever you find it convenient.

But in point #1 above, I think you drifted off course; the problem from my perspective isn't dead animals but rather killing animals needlessly. An animal which was dead eons before I was born is not my moral responsibility. It is my responsibility if an animal dies so that I can eat steak, if I could have just as easily had beans.

In the same way you could argue that unless you become completely carbon neutral any attempt to minimise your carbon output is pointless, or indeed if you can't stop all crime, why bother trying and stop any.

Most vegetarians aren't hypocritical because they don't claim perfection, they just claim to be doing more in this one regard than the average and in that respect they're normally correct.

  > Regarding producing oil from livestock, you'll want to look into
  > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
  >
  > I believe that ConAgra has a plant for doing this to left over bits
  > of turkey.
  >
  > More to the point as far as we know oil deposits are created by
  > thermal depolymerization of plants and animals on geologic
  > timescales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation
  > Therefor anything produced from petroleum very likely contains dead
  > animals.
  >
  > 1. There are definitely shades of grey, but I tend to think that
  > putting animals in your tank and on your plate are largely the same.
  > If you think that eating dead animals is wrong, then why would
  > consuming any product of which a component was dead animals be any
  > different? Would it be ok to just kill an animal for no reason and
  > not consume it?

The only possible exception here is if you wish to postulate that some or all of the animals that crude oil comes from were killed by intelligent (and sentient) extra-terrestrial or terrestrial beings that left no trace behind for us to find.

I'm also clueless as to why you question if it's ok to kill an animal for no reason and not consume it. Most of the animal-based products that we have on the market today come from animals that humans have raised, and killed for the expressed purpose of creating that product. Do you not realize that these animals would not be killed if there were no demand for these products (or at least only a demand for similar products that were not animal-based -- e.g. faux leather).

  > 2. I'm primarily attempting to point out that your actions and your
  > moral code are hypocritical and thus you should be ignored as
  > someone who advocates a standard for which they are unable or
  > unwilling to meet themselves.

  > 3. I don't really care how it comes across, if it effectively
  > communicates to anyone else that the lifestyle choice and moral code
  > of people who practice veganism or vegetarianism for moral reasons
  > are hypocritical, then it has served it's purpose. If people who are
  > not vegans or vegetarians for moral reasons laugh at the hypocrisy
  > then it's also effective. Sometimes you have to make Modest
  > Proposals in order to communicate effectively.

To use a religion analogy, you're trying to condemn all Christians based on the actions of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in no way represents all Christian religions, but they are seen as the 'canonical' Christian religion in most people's minds. But in this case it's even worse, because the view points that you are attacking aren't even associated with some proper group or institution. It's just a view point that some people who are vegetarian/vegan hold.

  > 4. I think that voting is largely ineffective and that the electoral
  > system produces results that are far more influenced by lobbying and
  > money than by casting votes.

  > 5. The entire point of the post was to convince you and others that
  > don't eat meat for moral reasons that you are NOT living your life
  > according to your own moral code. Or that your moral code contains
  > arbitrary exceptions for the consumption of animals for whenever you
  > find it convenient.

I also question why you are attempting to tell others that their moral code should be black-and-white. Is you own personal moral code this black-and-white? Is murder is always murder, and self-defense is no excuse? Or do you allow an exception in that case? A picture of a naked child is always child pornography, even if it's just the 'classic' bathtime photo of a baby? Are these not 'arbitrary exceptions?'

I find that jump from (a) to (b) is unfounded. There's a qualitative difference between (i) a mouse killed accidentally by a combine, (ii) a lab rat killed by a drug company, (iii) a pig raised and killed to be eaten, (iv) a mink killed for its fur and (v) an endangered mountain gorilla killed so a collector can stuff its head and hands. Different people draw their moral lines at different places.

A lot of people might have a problem with (v) but be okay with (i) through (iv). I can personally live with (i) and (ii), but have a problem with (iii) especially given the messed up fact that while almost a billion people on the planet are malnourished, the US has enough excess to give the majority of its soy and corn crops over to feeding livestock. As in, we're literally choosing to feed the pigs, cows and chickens we're going to kill before we feed the poor. I know of people who will accept (ii) if the research is for a compelling medical cause, but not if it's for something like cosmetics. I know plenty of people who can live with leather, but won't accept fur based on the crazy cruel stuff that happens on fur farms.

This stuff isn't black and white. You can't just equate animals that died millions of years ago that turned into oil with animals that we raise to kill; not all animal deaths are equal. The ethical and moral questions get complicated, and there's a lot of grey areas encountered when balancing human needs and desires against the potential suffering of creatures whose subjective experience we can't understand. And then there are health arguments and environmental arguments, and it never ends. Given that it's complicated, please have a little respect.

You write as though you expect that vegetarians and vegans must not be aware of natural predators or animals killed unintentionally by humans for reasons other than meat, or the weird, myriad ways we use highly processed animal products in the modern world -- and that if we had been aware we should obviously have come to the same conclusions you did. That presumption, that vegetarians and vegans must have made their life decisions out of simple ignorance of the facts, is a bit offensive. I'm not saying you should believe anything different about eating meat. But please don't flippantly talk down to people who have chosen to draw their moral distinctions in different places than yours.

But have you ever considered that the difference between your arguments (i) to (v) (with exception of (iii) maybe) is the intention of the humans involved not the suffering or the dead of the respective animals? This kind of moral reasoning is human and can be seen in other areas as well. For example, we care a lot more about the comparably "few" deaths caused by terrorism vs. the many caused by traffic, because presumably in the former there is intention of bad guys involved whereas in the latter its merely bad circumstances and chance. The result is the same: an animal or a human is killed. However, the moral reasoning is different. Just saying ...

But there's also the issue of scale: while laboratories do kill quite a few animals (ideally in a somewhat humane fashion after a decent life, but that's not nearly always the case), the food industry kills a lot more.

But even if you take a wholly consequentialist or utilitarian view (where the utility of animals gets some limited consideration), I would argue that eliminating (iii) through (v) is beneficial because it allows us to greatly reduce the animal suffering we cause, with minimal impact to our own wellbeing. In the modern age, pretty much no one needs fur, and certainly no one needs stuffed gorilla heads, and most people probably don't need meat. Steaks and mink coats are wasteful luxuries we can do without. However, getting rid of cases like (i) would require a great deal of effort, and getting rid of (ii) could block the path of medical advances which might significantly reduce human suffering from disease.

Statement two: "It's impossible to never harm someone, so it's stupid to even try."

Surely you don't agree with statement one? So why does the argument hold for statement two?

For the record, I'm a vegetarian, but I drink filtered wine (isinglass or oxblood), eat cheeses made with rennet, eat sugar without knowing whether it was whitened with bone char, and last week ate a dessert that likely contained gelatin. I don't think those things mean I'm not a vegetarian, but I find it crazy that our society has so much dead animal hanging around that we've stopped keeping track of where we put it.

Chicken broth is used in too many places as "instant flavour" where water would do just as well, or a mushroom broth. There's no reason for it, and the chefs I spoke with in Italy were horrified by the use of chicken broth in making a risotto.

I choose not to have anything with gelatin in it, because it's a useless filler, especially to yogurt. If you really need to thicken yogurt because you're reducing the milk's fat content, use agar or pectin.

(I am ova-lacto vegetarian, although I reduce my lacto because I'm mildly milk intolerant, more's the pity.)

But you're right that it is a little more debatable with shrimp than with oysters.