this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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The meat industry overall is bad for everyone, the amount of food it requires to feed the meat we eat is extremely wasteful. From an economic standpoint, meat is "bad", let alone the lobbying done by the meat industry.
Eating meat increases the chances of heart disease. Some protein is good, but we eat way too much. From a public health standpoint, meat is "bad"
In general, it's good to lessen harm. Factory slaughtering living things that grew up in what's effectively a prison is not lessening harm.
But, I do like the taste of meat unfortunately. Ill splurge on lab grown meat when it becomes available, but even though I'm a hypocrite for liking the taste of meat doesn't mean vegans are wrong because they're annoying to deal with
a lot of what we give livestock are parts of plants that people can't or won't eat. that's the opposite of wasteful.
Parts of plans that were specifically grown for livestock that we won’t eat, that is. At least a big part.
i'm talking about waste product from our crops, like cottonseed from the textile industry or soymeal leftover from making soybean oil or silage.
And he's talking about crops specifically grown for livestock. Of which there is quite a lot. Hell, even pets that aren't considered live-stock outright, like Horses, consume tremendous amounts of feed that isn't just by-products.
what i said was true. what they said wasn't nuance, it was stated as a contradiction. your framing of it as nuance is a red herring.
you can't know that. consequentialist ethics run into this all the time: you can't actually know what the future holds, and it may be that without the current agricultural system, even more harm would have been done.
I see your argument that thinking how a pig in a meat factory feels is just speculation, but there is a point where we have to think about the future and speculate what could be and how possible it is. If we have better options now, and, maybe not as a single human, but collectively can act to stop this harm with a great possibility, I think it's worth it to speculate. I don't no where you draw this line, but it is beyond mine, so I am willing to speculate that this is the better way.
that's not what i'm saying here. i'm saying that they could be experiencing an immense amount of suffering, but we can't know if that is saving the world from an even greater suffering sometime in the future.
And I would say that I am ready to speculate, that stopping this suffering does not conclude to more.
you can't really know, though. the model you presented for right behavior precludes you from ever knowing if you're doing the right thing.