Some of the (i)logical reasons for being vegetarian - some I though of, some I was told...
“It is morally wrong to take the life of a sentient being”
This is probably a big point of disagreement, since it is hard to logically prove that killing a sentient being is inherently wrong.
What is easy to agree on though is that it is wrong to cause suffering.
For further notice, “suffering” is referred to as a form of mental pain, that can be brought on by physical pain, by the expectation of pain in the future, the remembering of past pain, and pain brought on by stress because of the environment or the fellow organisms behavior.
Agreeing on this basic principle means that most slaughterhouses will have problems not causing suffering in their production of meat. There is a lot of doubt regarding the the level of consciousness of livestock, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, it can be assumed that going (for the first/last time), to the slaughterhouse will be a stressful experience a least.
Opposed to this is the end of life for livestock in small non-industrial populations. These animals will most likely die in their normal habitat, maybe by bolt gun, by the hand that usually feeds them - they’ll most likely not be stressed, as they won’t know what’s coming, and they won’t feel it coming either. No suffering here.
Lastly it can be postulated that dead group members leaves the remaining animals stressed (eg. hierarchical collapse), or mourning (as in elephants).
This is actually one of the reasons for not taking the lives of humans, apart from being a great taboo, it’ll also leave the relatives emotionally devastated.
Sorry for painting this morbid picture, but one vegan suggesting that you might as well kill a three-year-old as a pig, as they reportedly have the same mental capacities and thus suffer to the same extent when killed (no source was cited).
Fact is though that none of the above will know what happened, but death of the hominid will by all standards cause more suffering.
The conclusion for this topic is therefore that suffering should be minimalised, but animals need by no means suffer from being killed for the benefit of human consumption.
“It is healthier to be vegan”
Maybe. Studies like “The China Study” (I’ve only read the wikipedia summary) seem to prove that a vegan diet is more healthy, so surely this is true…
It didn’t take long to find other views on that opinion online, check out: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
(a thorough statistical walkthrough of much of the study or just www.rawfoodsos.com for some light good night reading)
I my opinion/experience any diet that focuses on variety and quality of food is going to do wonders for most people - no matter what the “theme” is. The act of directing your attention to your diet, makes your diet better, everything is an active choice, and bad food are left out in this process.
As most vegans are so by choice, they choose their food with care (often out of necessity, as it can be hard to find). This is a rather stark contrast to the average citizen, who maybe buys more out of convenience than out of nutritional value. Comparing the two groups is a biased comparison, and yields predictable biased results.
“It’s more environmentally friendly”
Can be. Truth is, in most cases it probably is, and i my opinion this the only merit for vegetarian and vegan diets (allergies excluded).
For most endothermic (~warmblooded) animals around 90% of the energy going in one end is used for moving about, and for staying warm. This means that a maximum of ten percent of the energy eaten is fixed in the biomass of the animal (and accessible for our consumption). Obviously producing fodder for animals where human food could have been grown is a waste of resources, and also often pollutes because of pesticides and/or fertilizers (not mentioning the effect a huge monoculture can have on biodiversity in an area). But for getting rid of food waste, chickens and pigs are unbeatable, and together with your garden compost, they can re-fertilize your land effectively.
This is not environmentally unfriendly.
Animals can eat, and thereby convert, non-human food to human food. This can enable humans to source all their food locally, and in truth, the logistics involved in getting food around is probably more polluting than anything else (no source for this yet - working on it). So think about your quinoa from Brazil, your cashews from Vietnam or your lentils from India next time you think about how much CO2 my free range pig bacon has caused. Beef from Argentina fed with soy from USA is of course worse, but so is all production on an industrial scale.
(23/04/2015) An update to this:
In arid regions it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to have cattle instead of growing the same amount of food as crops. By having extensive grasing of cattle in a big area one can produce a lot of food, without destroying the land and thus biodiversity. If this same land was to be farmed, huge resources would be devoted to watering the crops, draining nearby rivers, and the fields would be devastating to biodiversity.
“Animals are treated as slaves”
A hard one - it’s clearly hard to be objective here. Human slaves most likely suffer both physically and mentally, and “Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work” ((Laura Brace (2004). The Politics of Property: Labour, Freedom and Belonging. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 162–. ISBN 978-0-7486-1535-3)
Livestock is bought and sold and as such they are slaves, but surely the point of abolishing slavery is to lessen suffering!?
Think about an average wild boar, in their natural habitat they are threatened daily by wolves, bears, lack of food or the competition for it, hypothermia and if they’re male, fighting the other males and enforcing territories is a major stress factor.
I can’t be certain, but it seems to me that a free-range pig only suffer any of the above to a minor degree - if at all! (a farmer I spoke to thinks free-range pigs are cold during the winter). But, sensibly, it must be fair to assume that the life in a protected free-range pen is less stressful than the wild life. This is true for pigs, but certainly also for chickens, cattle, sheep and goats, they are all better fed, less stressed than their cousins in the wild. Not really slavery in my opinion.
“It is morally wrong to take the life of a sentient being”
This is probably a big point of disagreement, since it is hard to logically prove that killing a sentient being is inherently wrong.
What is easy to agree on though is that it is wrong to cause suffering.
For further notice, “suffering” is referred to as a form of mental pain, that can be brought on by physical pain, by the expectation of pain in the future, the remembering of past pain, and pain brought on by stress because of the environment or the fellow organisms behavior.
Agreeing on this basic principle means that most slaughterhouses will have problems not causing suffering in their production of meat. There is a lot of doubt regarding the the level of consciousness of livestock, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, it can be assumed that going (for the first/last time), to the slaughterhouse will be a stressful experience a least.
Opposed to this is the end of life for livestock in small non-industrial populations. These animals will most likely die in their normal habitat, maybe by bolt gun, by the hand that usually feeds them - they’ll most likely not be stressed, as they won’t know what’s coming, and they won’t feel it coming either. No suffering here.
Lastly it can be postulated that dead group members leaves the remaining animals stressed (eg. hierarchical collapse), or mourning (as in elephants).
This is actually one of the reasons for not taking the lives of humans, apart from being a great taboo, it’ll also leave the relatives emotionally devastated.
Sorry for painting this morbid picture, but one vegan suggesting that you might as well kill a three-year-old as a pig, as they reportedly have the same mental capacities and thus suffer to the same extent when killed (no source was cited).
Fact is though that none of the above will know what happened, but death of the hominid will by all standards cause more suffering.
The conclusion for this topic is therefore that suffering should be minimalised, but animals need by no means suffer from being killed for the benefit of human consumption.
“It is healthier to be vegan”
Maybe. Studies like “The China Study” (I’ve only read the wikipedia summary) seem to prove that a vegan diet is more healthy, so surely this is true…
It didn’t take long to find other views on that opinion online, check out: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
(a thorough statistical walkthrough of much of the study or just www.rawfoodsos.com for some light good night reading)
I my opinion/experience any diet that focuses on variety and quality of food is going to do wonders for most people - no matter what the “theme” is. The act of directing your attention to your diet, makes your diet better, everything is an active choice, and bad food are left out in this process.
As most vegans are so by choice, they choose their food with care (often out of necessity, as it can be hard to find). This is a rather stark contrast to the average citizen, who maybe buys more out of convenience than out of nutritional value. Comparing the two groups is a biased comparison, and yields predictable biased results.
“It’s more environmentally friendly”
Can be. Truth is, in most cases it probably is, and i my opinion this the only merit for vegetarian and vegan diets (allergies excluded).
For most endothermic (~warmblooded) animals around 90% of the energy going in one end is used for moving about, and for staying warm. This means that a maximum of ten percent of the energy eaten is fixed in the biomass of the animal (and accessible for our consumption). Obviously producing fodder for animals where human food could have been grown is a waste of resources, and also often pollutes because of pesticides and/or fertilizers (not mentioning the effect a huge monoculture can have on biodiversity in an area). But for getting rid of food waste, chickens and pigs are unbeatable, and together with your garden compost, they can re-fertilize your land effectively.
This is not environmentally unfriendly.
Animals can eat, and thereby convert, non-human food to human food. This can enable humans to source all their food locally, and in truth, the logistics involved in getting food around is probably more polluting than anything else (no source for this yet - working on it). So think about your quinoa from Brazil, your cashews from Vietnam or your lentils from India next time you think about how much CO2 my free range pig bacon has caused. Beef from Argentina fed with soy from USA is of course worse, but so is all production on an industrial scale.
(23/04/2015) An update to this:
In arid regions it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to have cattle instead of growing the same amount of food as crops. By having extensive grasing of cattle in a big area one can produce a lot of food, without destroying the land and thus biodiversity. If this same land was to be farmed, huge resources would be devoted to watering the crops, draining nearby rivers, and the fields would be devastating to biodiversity.
In arid regions it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to have cattle instead of growing the same amount of food as crops. By having extensive grasing of cattle in a big area one can produce a lot of food, without destroying the land and thus biodiversity. If this same land was to be farmed, huge resources would be devoted to watering the crops, draining nearby rivers, and the fields would be devastating to biodiversity.
“Animals are treated as slaves”
A hard one - it’s clearly hard to be objective here. Human slaves most likely suffer both physically and mentally, and “Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work” ((Laura Brace (2004). The Politics of Property: Labour, Freedom and Belonging. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 162–. ISBN 978-0-7486-1535-3)
Livestock is bought and sold and as such they are slaves, but surely the point of abolishing slavery is to lessen suffering!?
Think about an average wild boar, in their natural habitat they are threatened daily by wolves, bears, lack of food or the competition for it, hypothermia and if they’re male, fighting the other males and enforcing territories is a major stress factor.
I can’t be certain, but it seems to me that a free-range pig only suffer any of the above to a minor degree - if at all! (a farmer I spoke to thinks free-range pigs are cold during the winter). But, sensibly, it must be fair to assume that the life in a protected free-range pen is less stressful than the wild life. This is true for pigs, but certainly also for chickens, cattle, sheep and goats, they are all better fed, less stressed than their cousins in the wild. Not really slavery in my opinion.
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