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Then don't eat animals you have to feed. If you really want to reduce animal suffering as much as possible, then you should try to survive via hunting and fishing as much as possible.
In fact, if you consider that a wild-caught fish was likely about to kill other fish, then catching a fish may be as morally necessary as flipping a switch on a runaway trolley.
Why is it that you insist on killing others? My plant based diet is cheaper, healthier and creates less suffering. Do you think everyone could or should just kill wild animals when they don't need to? https://xkcd.com/1338/
The fish has no alternative and if you catch one you steal it without the need for it from other animals. Are you trying to make lions vegans? We have options, we have moral agency.
Killing animals is inevitable regardless of diet. Your plant based diet requires growing crops, but tilling soil and harvesting plants kills millions or billions of invertebrates. They are so small that they escape everyone's attention, yet they are still animals killed to make your food.
Fishing and hunting kills animals too, of course. But it does not require literally uprooting an ecosystem.
Finally, a trolley has no moral agency either. That doesn't mean nobody should interfere with it, or even destroy it if it threatens enough other lives.
Are you a concern troll or do just don't know that we could reduce with a plant based diet the land use, the tiling of soil and the killing of those billions invertebrates? The intentional killing of 90 billion land animals and trillions of fish aside
Sure, you could reduce land use for farm raised animals.
But I'm not talking about eating those, I'm talking about eating wild caught animals. Unlike vegetables, wild caught animals require no land use at all.
Alright, abolish animal farming then. All wild animals in the world would last less than 2 months. We don't have to kill others.
Animal farming isn't going to be abolished in my lifetime. And I can't make decisions for everyone.
So the relevant question is what I should do, personally, to reduce my personal impact. A purely vegan diet is not the answer.
Elaborate please?
Well, since farming vegetables kills more animals than killing a wild fish, it makes sense to include wild fish in my diet.
A purely fish based diet is not the answer. It destroys the hole ecosystem.
So neither pure fish based nor pure plant based, but rather a combination of the two. Also one could occasionally eat other wild animals obtained via hunting, like deer.
Or dog, to stay on topic. https://www.elwooddogmeat.com/meet-the-dogs
Dog meat is farmed. The whole point is to avoid farmed food when possible, whether it's plant or animal.
Right, but you got to acknowledge that dogs and cats are a far more available in cities. Just because you have the privilege of easy to kill fish you can not blame others for killing wild dogs and cats. Cats kill so much birds, it is much better for the environment to kill them instead of fish.
People do kill feral dogs and cats. Even PETA does this. Morally, they should be eaten afterwards.
A wild fish can kill other animals every day. Cats do kill a lot of birds, but not quite at the same rate since they can also subsist by scavenging.
So while it's moral to kill and eat feral cats, wild fish are preferred. Even if you have to pay someone to catch them.
So you are all the way vegan but jump from time to time in a lake and grab some fish? Is this how you imagine the world will progress?
I don't need to jump in a lake for the same reason I don't need to operate a farm. It is equally moral if others do it for me, so I buy wild fish and vegetables from my grocery just like most people.
Also, pure veganism isn't necessary. For example, honey is not vegan but producing honey likely kills fewer animals than producing almonds. Beekeeping might even be a net positive given the benefits to the ecosystem at large
Ok, so you only eat the not farmed grocery shop fish and besides that you live vegan from the farmed grocery vegetables?
I think that is the best way to avoid unnecessary animal deaths (honey is also on that list).
It is something I often consider when shopping, but I don't always try to minimize unnecessary animal deaths. Just as I generally try to avoid big box stores and products made in certain countries, but sometimes buy those things anyway.
Why do I make exceptions? Because I don't believe that every single thing I do needs to be aimed at improving the world. It is simply an aspiration.
Maybe you would more of a impact on others if you decide to stop support the killing. I do shitpost sometimes, it be like that. But I also try to inform others. The point is not that you will change the world alone, but maybe convince others. If avoiding unnecessary deaths is your aspiration you can be a example to others.
What makes you think I'm shitposting?
I am perfectly serious when I say that I believe veganism is incompatible with the stated goal of reducing animal deaths.
And I am serious when I say that I have increased my intake of wild fish to support that goal, even though it is not my only goal.
To me, the unspoken goal of veganism is to protect appealing animals at the expense of unappealing animals. That is why they show pictures of farmed cows, but not flooded rice fields. I can't ever get behind that goal.
If there is some event that puts us all back to pre industrial times it will work.
A plant based diet would feed with the amount we grow 10 billion right now. How many would a forage and hunting society sustain? To give you a idea of the proportions: https://xkcd.com/1338/
I'm not sure why you linked me to a chart of mammals. Hunting mammals may be a good way to feed a small population, but as you point out it's not feasible for the entire world.
Three fourths of all animal biomass is aquatic (fish, crustaceans, and mollusks), together accounting for 30-40 times more biomass than humans. Mollusks are the smallest component, but they still have more biomass than all the mammals in your link put together. Fish by themselves account for seven times as much biomass as all animal livestock put together. And crustaceans have even more combined biomass than fish.
I'm not even suggesting that people eat only fish. Rather, by including some fish in our diet we would reduce our reliance on farm-grown vegetables.
Globally, humans currently eat an average of 20 kg of fish/crustaceans/molluscs per year. That might be a bit too much, but I have no doubt that we could sustainably eat 10-15 kg per year.
this is the kind of stuff that screams shitpost :) you do you.
Only if you assume that farm grown vegetables are more moral than any other food.
It's repeated so often that nobody even questions it. People assume you're joking if you don't take it for granted.
But if you think about it, the assumption does not hold up. Farms are not benign, no matter what they produce.