Vegetarian: Arguments For and Against Vegetarianism

[Ambrosia]

If I was regularly able to get meat from a family farm where I could see that the animals lived reasonable-quality lives until slaughter, and where I could be assured that slaughter methods were as humane as possible, I would have no qualms about eating some meat. but I can't.

Oh yes you can. You just havent tried hard enough. (hint: mail order)

I'm grading closer and closer to complete vegetarianism, if not veganism.

That's a little like cutting your nose off to spite your face. (choosing complete veganism)

It's a lot harder to eat a balanced diet when you cut out any source of animal protein whatsoever, although it is certainly possible to eat a completely vegan/vegetarian diet without health issues, and if you prefer that, then fine, but you are missing out on a huge variety of food based on eggs and dairy produce and its trivially easy to find Eggs/Dairy in any supermarket that are well farmed. (generally they are the most expensive ones) I do find it odd that some vegetarians wont eat gelatine, (its made out of boiled up hooves and tendons!) but will wear leather, seeing as no animal is ever killed for gelatine, it's a by-product.

I do take issue with intensive farming techniques, there is no good reason to treat animals like dirt, ever. It's pretty straightforward though these days with the amount of information available to source well farmed food if you live in a 1st world country.

To go veggy or to eat meat is just a personal preferance, you pays yer monies you takes yer choice.

Oh and to the the emotion appealers, yes I have killed a cow, if it came down to me needing to survive, I'd kill and eat you, or I'd put up a dam good fight while you tried to kill and eat me.

 

[Drudgewire]

Yes, because we all know things are ethical no matter what, as long as they are fun.

Just as we all know any lifestyle choice one personally disagrees with is inherently immoral.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Oh yes you can. You just havent tried hard enough. (hint: mail order)



That's a little like cutting your nose off to spite your face. (choosing complete veganism)

It's a lot harder to eat a balanced diet when you cut out any source of animal protein whatsoever, although it is certainly possible to eat a completely vegan/vegetarian diet without health issues, and if you prefer that, then fine, but you are missing out on a huge variety of food based on eggs and dairy produce and its trivially easy to find Eggs/Dairy in any supermarket that are well farmed. (generally they are the most expensive ones) I do find it odd that some vegetarians wont eat gelatine, (its made out of boiled up hooves and tendons!) but will wear leather, seeing as no animal is ever killed for gelatine, it's a by-product.

I do take issue with intensive farming techniques, there is no good reason to treat animals like dirt, ever. It's pretty straightforward though these days with the amount of information available to source well farmed food if you live in a 1st world country.

To go veggy or to eat meat is just a personal preferance, you pays yer monies you takes yer choice.

Oh and to the the emotion appealers, yes I have killed a cow, if it came down to me needing to survive, I'd kill and eat you, or I'd put up a dam good fight while you tried to kill and eat me.

Not to get off topic, but I do not get reliable mail service, and mail ordering doesn't allow me to see the farm & process anyway. I do admit I'm not interested in going to that trouble & expense just so I can eat meat that I'm not overly interested in eating anyway. It's not hard to eat a balanced diet without meat, and it's not "trivially easy" to get organic dairy, at least not here. As I mentioned, I live in a rural area where I have limited access to shopping of any kind without a drive of several hours.

The point(s) being made here is that it's not just a personal preference; the action of choosing to eat factory-farmed meat has impacts on the rest of the planet, including, if you don't care about the animals themselves, human beings. These impacts come in the form of concentrated pollution sources.

 

[ejk]

This is the crux of it for me.

Does our desire to eat things that taste good overwhelm the ethics of factory farming?

Me too.

I am not convinced that arguments about how humans are evolved to be omnivores fully address the ethical issues raised by dietary choices in modern industrialized societies. I have therefore, based on my personal ethical choices and values, chosen to minimize my consumption of animal products that have been produced with unnecessary and sometimes horrific suffering of the animals. Others may make different choices, but if your entire answer to the question is that meat is tasty and we evolved to eat it, I do not think you have seriously engaged with the ethical issues.

 

[yy2bggggs]

My position is that eating animals is not immoral/unethical. Therefore, killing them for that purpose is not immoral/unethical.

I don't think that implication works. You can't go from "eating animals is not immoral" to "killing animals in order to eat them is not immoral".

Consider this. My position is that earning money is not immoral/unethical. Therefore, killing people for that purpose is not immoral/unethical. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but the basic principle is there... if doing X isn't immoral/unethical, it doesn't follow that doing Y for reasons of X isn't immoral/unethical.

You question seems to be "assuming that it is immoral, which part is immoral, the killing or the eating (or both)"? Would that be a correct assessment?

No. First off, I haven't asked a question. Second, I'm not even offering a position. The only thing I'm doing is pointing out logical errors that I believe you're making, or that you could potentially be making.

If you look about the animal kingdom, you see that life feeds upon life; both animal and plant.

Correct.

It seems unfair, but it is certainly the way nature works and I am willing to accept that it is natural behaviour in humans.

Sure.

I realize that this is rather weak logic because there are other animal behaviours that I couldn't justify among humans.

Well, it's weak logic because the fact that it's natural, even for humans, doesn't in itself imply anything about whether it's ethical/immoral. It's natural for humans to worry about what is moral and immoral as well--in fact, the framework under which morality is defined is a human framework. And it's also natural for us to want to strive towards morality. We can't possibly do anything that is unnatural.

If one were to presume that killing animals for food is immoral, I would be interested to hear at what point in our evolution it became so.

Others have addressed this point.

 

[Drudgewire]

Others may make different choices, but if your entire answer to the question is that meat is tasty and we evolved to eat it, I do not think you have seriously engaged with the ethical issues.

Or we have engaged, pondered, weighed the ethical issues to hell and back and somehow arrived at a different outcome than you did because none of us are actually the universal arbitor of morality.

But that would be silly.

 

[Exzyleph]

Oh yes you can. You just havent tried hard enough. (hint: mail order)

That option is not available everywhere, nor affordable by everyone, and surely some people will object that it is inefficient in terms of energy expenditure to transport meat in this manner. Then it's probably easier to just avoid meat, as Tiktaalik notes. Surely vegetarians are allowed to be lazy.

 

[Rasmus]

Just as we all know any lifestyle choice one personally disagrees with is inherently immoral.

I never said eating meat was immoral, I only said at which point one would be required to stop if it was.

I am always surprised at how utterly irrational these discussions turn out. "It's tasty" or "we evolved that way" is no more reason to eat meat than "it feels good" or "monkeys do it, too" is a justification for rape.

It is entirely possible to live as a vegetarian; and it would be entirely possible to change our source of meat away from mammals to other animals - like insects, e.g. if it should be immoral to kill vertebrate.

The question is simply if we need a reason to eat met - I don't think we have one.

 

[GlennB]

.... and it's not "trivially easy" to get organic dairy, at least not here. As I mentioned, I live in a rural area where I have limited access to shopping of any kind without a drive of several hours.

Why not keep chickens for eggs, and maybe a goat for milk? Then you can be sure of the provenance of those products.

 

[Ambrosia]

Not to get off topic, but I do not get reliable mail service, and mail ordering doesn't allow me to see the farm & process anyway.

You could find potentially good farms and then take a trip to view them before getting a courier service to deliver their produce to you. You could keep your own animals and be dam sure of the quality of farming involved.

"I can't get that stuff here" is not the same as "I can't justify the expense and effort to get that here"

On the subject of synonyms "Organic" does not mean "well farmed" either [/nitpick]

It's not hard to eat a balanced diet without meat,

No its not, I'm just saying that its orders of magnitude harder to eat a balanced diet if you choose complete veganism over a vegetarian diet that includes eggs/dairy.

the action of choosing to eat factory-farmed meat has impacts on the rest of the planet, including, if you don't care about the animals themselves, human beings. These impacts come in the form of concentrated pollution sources.

That hangs on how you define "factory farming"

Its entirely possible to raise animals using methods that compared to say 100 years ago are intensive, but dont cause the animals pain or suffering and allow them to exhibit natural behaviour. Farm animals are bred for the farm. Provided they are well cared for, and humanely slaughtered, I have no problem eating them.

I take issue with intensive industrialised farming practices, like raising chickens in dark barns where they dont have enough space to stretch their wings for example.

It is really personal choice though whether you choose to eat meat, or not.

Pollution is an issue whether you are growing potatoes or raising cattle.

I draw my line under badly treated animals, if you choose to draw your line elsewhere then thats your choice.

 

[icerat]

My gf is a vegetarian and I'm a mostly vegetarian. I've spent much of the last decade studying and educating in nutrition and I've come to the conclusion that an optimal human diet has a small amount of meat in it. How much varies depending on individual metabolism, but it's basically very difficult for most people to get optimal nutrition from plant sources alone - possible, but very difficult. DHA (a form of omega-3) is in particular in short supply, but others (including myself!) may struggle with various b-vitamins, amino acids, and minerals like iron.

The problem, nutritionally, with modern meat eating diets is people eat way way too much of it. This has a dual effect - (a) they get too much saturated fat and too much of some animal proteins which have been linked to cancer (eg casein) (b) they eat fewer fruit and vegetables, missing out on all the necessary nutrients you'll find there.

As someone already pointed out, people with some kind of restricted diet tend, virtually by definition, to be more careful about what they eat and it's this aspect that can tend to lead to healthier diets rather than the restrictions per se.

Other considerations are ethical and environmental, which have been well discussed. I for one cannot abide by some of the habits of factory farming. They're not only cruel to the animals, they're also damaging to the nutritional quality for those that consume them. Of course the latter can (and does) apply to fruit & vegetables as well! When I do eat meat I try to purchase humanely farmed and killed meat and I encourage the meat eaters here to do the same. Ethical considerations aside you'll find it's usually healthier and tastier too! And since it's more expensive you might cut down on your overall consumption and eat more of fruit & veg as well

On a related note, the research into the lives and "awareness" of plants is getting pretty intriguing too. I recently read The Past Matters to Plants on ScienceDaily and it's fascinating how "intelligent" much plant behaviour appears to be. Personally I think it speaks more to how much of our behaviour may be "instinct" than it does to plant awareness, but it certainly adds some weight to the "tomatoes have a right to life too!" anti-vegetarian arguments.

 

[Red3]

You could find potentially good farms and then take a trip to view them before getting a courier service to deliver their produce to you. You could keep your own animals and be dam sure of the quality of farming involved.

Who's got the time or know how or funds for those in reality?

 

[ejk]

Or we have engaged, pondered, weighed the ethical issues to hell and back and somehow arrived at a different outcome than you did because none of us are actually the universal arbitor of morality.

But that would be silly.

I didn't mean to suggest anything of the sort. Nor do I mean to imply that people haven't weighed these issues. You may have thought it through and come to a different conclusion than I have; indeed, I expressly acknowledged that.

But some of the discussion in this thread has been very flippant and dismissive, as if there are no deeper issues to weigh. All I'm saying is that the line of reasoning expressed in some posts here does not sufficiently address all the relevant issues.

 

[yy2bggggs]

It is entirely possible to live as a vegetarian; and it would be entirely possible to change our source of meat away from mammals to other animals - like insects, e.g. if it should be immoral to kill vertebrate.

The question is simply if we need a reason to eat met - I don't think we have one.

Uhm... no. I don't buy that argument. This is essentially ignoring the costs. Somewhere along the lines both burden and sustainability comes into play.

I agree that "it tastes good" isn't an argument for the morality. "We evolved that way" isn't either, but it's a legitimate factor, and should be weighed in.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Is it ethical, morally-sound for an individual to eat meat on a regular basis?
Should a person eat meat or not?

All the animals I've eaten were dead long before I got to them. It's better their nutrients went toward keeping me alive than leaving them to rot.

 

[armageddonman]

Why is it that all discussion about vegetarism contain ad-hominems ("snotty vegetarians") or ridicule ("won't someone think of the tomatoes")?

How come, so many meat eaters are always so defensive/agressive when trying to justify their meat-eating habits?

I would prefer if people just aknowledged that this is what they are used to, don't want to consider being wrong and that they don't care about (most) non-human animals.

 

[quadraginta]

Why is it that all discussion about vegetarism contain ad-hominems ("snotty vegetarians") or ridicule ("won't someone think of the tomatoes")?

How come, so many meat eaters are always so defensive/agressive when trying to justify their meat-eating habits?

I would prefer if people just aknowledged that this is what they are used to, don't want to consider being wrong and that they don't care about (most) non-human animals.

Nope. Nothing "defensive/agressive"[sic] about that statement.

 

[novaphile]

Human == Animal, anything else is woo.

Animal behaviour is no justification for human behaviour.

Jadey,

I may be reading something into your statement here that you're not saying, but I can't see any valid reason for seeing humans as something different to any other kind of animal.

Sure, we have intelligence, but so do lots of other animals.

We build structures, but so do lots of other animals.

We cooperate, but so do lots of other animals.

etc.

Do you have a particular reason for seeing humans as something other than a class of animal?

 

[TimCallahan]

I've got an idea: The only meat we should eat is the flesh of snotty vegans!

 

[Furcifer]

My gf is a vegetarian and I'm a mostly vegetarian.

What a coincidence.

@ambrosia- I see you corrected yourself and pointed out a vegan diet is much harder to balance than a vegetarian diet. I noted several other posts that kinda made the suggestion that a vegetarian diet is harder to balance than one with meat. I'd just like to point out that in my personal experience a vegetarian diet was much easier to balance. I'd say my weight was much more steady, as were my energy levels.