Bletheringvegan

I'm playing through this again as the evilist bastard you can be. Great stress relief.

You are driving down the road and you spot a person and a dog lying in the road after being hit by a car. Which one do you tend to first?... Bearing in mind the person is screaming for help whereas the dog is lying motionless and silent. The person? speciesist! The dog? insane!

This is an unfair hypoethetical. Moral intuition would tell me to tend to the human first and I don't see how this would make me a speciesist. I am concerned with the "unecessary" suffering of animals, but if a situation like this actually did occur of course I would tend to the human first. Question for you: What if the human was the countries worst peodophile and the dog was a member of your family? See, unfair hypothetical.

I'd disagree quite strongly with this. 'Othering' on sex and race is based nothing more on prejudice and hate - Speciesism is based on there being clear and obvious differences between us and cows, chickens, cats, dogs, carrots etc. To say they are analogous does, to me, belittle the stupidity of racism and sexism and serves no use other than to shame by association.

Racism and sexism are based on prejudice and hate because of what? Because of a difference in skin colour/nationality or a difference in gender. I fail to see how this 'othering' is different than the 'othering' based on species.

And for the record it is not my goal to belittle the stupidity of racism and sexism. My veganism stems from a general rejection of all oppressions and hierarchies, so I put as much weight on opposing racism, sexism and homophonia as I do on speciesism.

Oh and also someone said that we should sort out humanity before we worry about animals. Why can't we do both? Most animal rights activists I know are also active in human related causes too.

Wow, this has moved on at least 10 pages since I've last been able to post.

The question of variety is absurd, there's only a few types of flesh and only a few things you can do with reproductive excretions, yet there is a plethora of different vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and whatever else we vegans eat.

I think someone said that you can't compare racism, sexism and homophobia to speciesism, I'd disagree with this. Although the contexts are different, the process of 'othering' is essentially the same.

I just had a quick skim through the last 10 pages so apologies if any of this has already been covered.

+1

o_O?(

+2 ?(o_O

Perhaps Zapatista will be back. I also like how this thread has been rolling, despite the scrappy start.

I like the point Hobo made that traditional people, our ancestors, the original hunter-gatherers, see no wrong in eating meat. On the flip-side of that point, is there or has there been any traditional/ancient vegan culture? The strictest tradition I can think of offhand would be Jainism, where I understand the monks, adherents or whatever you refer to them as even wear masks and sweep the ground before themselves so as not to cause harm to insects. I'm not sure if they're completely vegan though.

Even Tibetan Buddhists aren't traditionally vegetarian but I could see how that would be particularly difficult, what with them being a high altitude dwelling grassland people. It's been a neat trick of ours, using ruminants to digest food that we ourselves cannot.

Although I find historical diets very interesting, I don't see it as a logical basis for our current diets. The reason they ate animal flesh was completely different from the reasons we do. Besides there are a lot of traditions in history that we shouldn't be proud of and definetely shouldn't replicate today...

I'm not sure about traditional vegan cultures apart from the ones you have mentioned, might actually give that a bit of research, would be interesting to find out!

We don't have to but it is more natural to eat meat

Why? So they could get nutrients plants couldn't provide them with!

You are quite right and as I stated earlier I believe we eat far too much meat today. There is no necessity to kill that many animals however it is very necessary to farm animals as it is crops to feed a consistently growing population.

The majority of meat that goes goes down my gullet is pre-packaged, i'm not always happy about this but due to time constraints and licences/permits I cannot always get things my way.

I do on occasion go out for rabbit, fish, crab, shrimp, pidgeon, snails but only when I have enough time - which is not often - as would be the case for most people.

As humanity evolved we have lost some of the time which would otherwise have been used for hunting and gathering. Money is the root of it all because we need money to pay for shelter, heat, light. We need to work for this which consumes time which I've just mentioned. Pre-packaged meat is handy

I'm a sentient being, if I got eaten by a tiger would you go all hippy on it?

I have stated so many times in this thread that you can live perfectly fine on a plant-based diet, which is backed up by all major dietetic associations, so any argument you have regarding meat and its supposed nutritional qualities doesn't really hold.

If you are concerned about a consistently growing population then we should STOP eating meat because a high percentage of the land we could grow plant based crops on for feeding people is used for grazing or growing plants for animal feed.

If you were stupid enough to be near a tiger and harass it enough for it to eat you then I might laugh, but I am no stinky fucking hippy.

Ahem, second post in the whole thread, go see. anyway, toodle pips.

If it is something that bothers you that much why are you hiding from it? Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Millions of people don't see anything wrong with being a vegetarian, doesn't make them right.

I'd rather take my cues on the subject from history, science and other species.

Take for example the Aboriginals in Australia. They were eating fish, insects, animals long before the ideas of vegetarianism existed. Or the caves and huts used by prehistoric man which have contained animal bones indented with toothmarks.

There probably were some vegetarian societies in pre-recorded history but i'm sure this would have been more out of necessity than being nice to animals. They probably ate fish and insects too which wouldn't have made them vegetarians in the true modern sense of the word.

Perhaphs the question should be not 'Should humans eat meat at all' but 'Should humans eat so much meat' or 'Should humans eat only meat killed in an ethically sound way'?

But then this thread started off as some poor soul who seems to have been set upon for no reason, showing his objection to what he incorrectly assumed was the modern slaughter of cows and other animals when in fact it was a halal or kosher slaughter house.

Perhaps we could shed some more light on this since it has taken some turns, from other species farming to cannibalism. I'm going to try another direction! Religion. The Kosher and Halal methods are religious and far more barbaric than the ones we use here perhaps you should send a letter to your closest imam or rabbi and ask them for their views.

So let me get this straight. Because some historical community ate animals then you have to as well? They would have hunted out of necessity. That is the issue here, we don't need to kill 53 billion+ animals a year for our plates, there is no necessity. If you so enamored with historical societies and their animal consuming habits, then why do you eat animal products that are killed, skinned, cut up and put into containers for you?

And why should the question not be "should humans eat meat at all?".

It doesn't matter to me whether the slaughter of animals is done by the grace of some some mystical sky being or not, it's still killing a sentient being that doesn't need to be killed.

Also, yeah, where has the thread starter gone? lol

That's fair enough to me, although I will protest that they're still pets despite the ideological motive. Still, I can't really hate on other people for choosing to keep pets except for that one time my old boss bought her teenage daughter a husky as a house pet. Yeah, a fucking husky! I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at hearing her row with her daughter on the phone about how the thing was going apeshit and smashing the house up. I think they had it put down in the end.

Yeah, that's really sad. Just to be clear I don't 'hate' anyone for eating animals etc, I once did just that before I actually stopped to think about the repercussions my diet was having on other sentient beings and the world as a whole. The sad fact is that although you or I might be capable of looking after a companion animal, a lot of people aren't. Just look at the thousands and thousands of animals that are in shelters and then euthanised, because they haven't been claimed/adopted, to make space for even more unwanted "pets".

What thread are you reading? This a good going intelligent debate, largely thanks to Mr Vegan's contributions. If you're not able to contribute yourself, stay out.

Thank you. I was just going to point out that not once have I insulted anyone. Just because he doesn't even want to entertain the idea that animals might just feel pain and should be extended the right not to be regarded as human property, doesn't mean the rest of us can't have a good conversation/debate about it!

Strictly speaking slavery was logical it was just morally wrong

Its logical to import cheap labour

Oh true, wrong choice of words on my part. But still the point stands, millions of people didn't see anything wrong with slavery, yet that didn't mean they were right.

Don't think so. he just signed up with the username bletheringvegan now he's just posting arguments in this thread, looks like he's just here to cause trouble in my opinion.

No, I'm not. I plan to post on other forums as well, bletheringvegan is just a username I use because I rant a lot and I'm a vegan. I dislike trolls more than most people, but I do like your profile picture. Do you visit B3ta.com by any chance?

I hate you.

and your username.

Who me?

Why is that?

Good argument!

Just because a million people think something is right doesn't make it so. Millions of people didn't see human slavery as illogical Did that make it morally defensible?

I'm pretty sure domestic cats aren't that far removed from the wild, compared to dogs especially, and they can certainly still hunt. It just seems a bit strange for a vegan keep a carnivore as a pet and force a herbivorous diet upon them. Not that I can think of many herbivores that work well as house pets. But, why bother? If someone already had a cat before turning vegan it seems like it should be acceptable to keep feeding it meat-based food for the rest of its natural life.

As I said I remain unconvinced as to feeding a cat a vegan diet especially in male cats, but if a cat can live on a healthy plant-based diet that you provide then why not? Of course some can still hunt, although the cat that I live with is a lazy bastard so I'd be surprised if he came home with a mouse! And vegans don't keep animals as "pets", part of veganism is an opposition to breeding animals for "pets", we are opposed to the property status of animals. But since we have bred these animals into existence it is our responsibility to look after them. I for one will definetely be rescuing as many animals as I can from a local shelter when I get my own place (I currently live with my brother and our flat is tiny).

Pets | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach - here is Prof. Gary Francione discussing the issue of "pets" as seen from an abolitionist animal rights perspective.

What about Wildcats?

Key word : domesticated.

So, I was following some links to find out some more about what vegans think and do and how they live.

including which parts are edible and the best ways to cook them.

and I came across this webpage on the best vegan care for cats:

Cats - Vegan Society

Now pardon me for my galloping ignorance, having already just consumed a plate of chicken this evening, but where is the morality in forcing another animal, and a carnivore at that, to consume an artificially fortified vegan diet? That's a bit fucked, isn't it? Do they get sprayed for bringing in mice?

This is a bit complicated, domestic animals are only on this earth as they are now because we bred them to be here. In essence we have bred almost all survival instinct out of them and so if we let them into the wild they wouldnt last long. So they depend on us for everything, they are like children that never grow up. There is nothing natural about a domestic cat or dog. But you have a point, I'm not convinced, and a lot of other vegans aren't, that feeding a cat, especially males as they can develop urinary problems without meat, a vegan diet is a responsible thing. But saying that, if a cat can live healthily on a vegan diet and you are his or her sole provider then it's fine in my opinion. Dogs are omnivores so they can easily live healthily on a vegan diet.

I know i'll shit alot more than i already do!

Which is only a good thing

haha yeah, at least 3 times a day!

I'm not disputing that fact but it is a world of difference between that and consciously torturing an animal. Have you ever been in a slaughterhouse?

Where did i say i don't agree that we can't live without eating animals? I simply said that i don't agree that it is better for the human body to be vegan/vegetarian than carnivorous. I suggest you might read my post a bit better rather than jumping down my throat and putting words in my mouth. It's obvious that both are achievable and without any detrimental effects (something that you'll see when you re-read my post that i didn't disagree with that). Both dietary choices have their merits and you'll've noticed that i haven't said there is anything wrong with being vegetarian or vegan at all, i just like meat and i won't be made to feel guilty for eating it.

Woaaah, calm down, I didn't jump down your throat. I obviously did misread your post an I am sorry. No I have never been to a slaughterhouse, but I would argue there isn't a huge difference between hiring someone to kill an animal or killing one yourself. Yes you can live on an omnivourous diet, but you don't need to kill animals, so why do it? It just seems completely illogical to me.

You seem awfully concerned about being made to feel guilty about eating animals, why is this?

Ah yes, that's clear now I read your post again. You're probably right about that but it's very difficult to say what the optimal amount of protein is and it may vary from person to person. Certainly, if you are taking in too much you can suffer renal problems. If you don't take in any animal protein then you're up on calcium at least, as long as your intake of it is good, leafy green veg etc.

It's good to know about nutrition but applying this knowledge is more of a chore...

Yeah, agreed. I am kinda getting more interested in nutrition as I learn to cook better. But as I say, even if I did get all the nutrients I required I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't matter anyway considering the levels of blood in my alcohol system. Wait...other way round?

Slightly off topic ..... Got any good vegan recipes ?

I have a few vegan cookbooks that have some pretty good recipes in them. What sorta stuff do you like?

Flax seeds and other plant sources do not contain long chain omega-3 fatty acids. They only contain alpha-Linolenic acid which your body must produce enzymes to convert into the EPA and DHA, common in oily fish, which is essential for brain health. Unless you have a remarkably efficient digestive system and do no drink alcohol you may not be able to get enough from the likes of flax seeds. Fortunately, supplements made from marine-sourced algae have become available in the last few years.

And I'm pretty sure you don't understand what the word 'protein' means if you think it should be the least of anyone's worries. Look it up. I'm not advocating strict food combining either, if that's what you meant, though a balance of legumes and grains in the diet is essential if a herbivorous person is to have the best chance of getting an adequate amount of all essential amino acids.

By the way, if you flush the toilet with the seat up, you're brushing your teeth with shit particles.

I have never heard of these terms mentioned before, but thanks for the info, will look it up! I'm no expert on nutrition, but I know that I am still alive and that there are millions of vegans who live perfectly healthy and active lives. My veganism is entirely for ethical reasons, and in any case I drink far too much beer to ever be considered healthy. I'm sure if I went to a doctor to be tested for a lack of anything there would be some stuff lacking, but thats not because I am vegan, it's because I'm too lazy to plan my diet properly. The same could be said for a student that lives entirely on rustlers and tennents!

And regarding protein, when I said the least of anyones worries I meant that the majority of people in our society get too much protein.

Interesting read. Thing is though, i'd wager most of the people killing animals for human consumption aren't doing it because they "enjoy doing it". They're more than likely doing it to put food on their families tables (be it vegetables or meat as they both cost money). The animals aren't being brutally tortured with blow torches they are being killed in the most humane way possible. If anyone can find an efficient and cost effective way of killing animals that is also non-suffering then that would be great and there have been substantial movements on the subject over the past 50 years.

I'd agree, it's not 100% necessary for humans to consume animal products to survive but i take issue with a statement that says we can live better without animal products as there is no quantifiable evidence to back up that claim.

We may kill animals in the most "humane" way possible on free-range farms, but this is a nich market where the flesh is more expensive. The reality is that things move far too fast in a conventional slaughter house for there to be guaranteed a "humane" death, in fact sometimes the animals are still conscious long after they shouldn't be. But regardless of this, even if we were killing them in a "humane" way (oxymoron), even if we sang them a fucking lullaby, caressed them and gave them a lollipop before we slit their throat at the end of the day death is death no matter how nice you wrap it up.

If you don't agree what we can't live without animal use then what of the millions of vegans worldwide, and indeed the many vegan athletes, should they be dead? And anyway, every major dietetic association says that we can live perfectly fine on a plant-based diet, even the American one which you know just has to be funded by the meat industry Furthermore, publications like the China Study go a long way to show that a plant-based diet is more healthy.