This is starting to sound like an echo chamber. I'm a vegan for ethical reasons—it's bad for the environment and it's bad for animals. Yes, corn and soybeans are bad for the environment. But corn-fed cows, chickens, pigs, etc. are far worse.
I do think veganism is more ethical than an omnivorous diet. However, I don't think hunting, fishing, or slaughtering animals are necessarily immoral. No, they're not kind to animals but they're on an entire different level from factory farms. Nature is horrible, and death is painful, that's not where I have a problem. What I have an issue with is the prolonged torture animals are exposed to for the sake of a few moments of pleasure.
Also vegan jokes are annoying, we've heard them all a million times and you're not funny. What's more irritating is that we can't respond without being called "preachy."
If it actually came with super powers, I would be vegan. Then again, so would a lot of people, I expect.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswI can't say I've interacted with enough vegans to determine what the "majority" opinion is but environmental vegetarianism/veganism isn't uncommon in my experience. I think the meat is murder bloggers and activists tend to be louder and more recognized so the environmental aspects get swept away. In my opinion, you can't really call yourself an environmentalist and still consume factory farmed products. I suppose there are exceptions, but considering the damage that farms do, there aren't too many in my mind.
Essentially, the argument for veganism (for me) was: is it right to support mistreatment of the environment and of animals because I enjoy the taste? Veganism is an accessible diet for me and it's pretty inexpensive. I'm not sure what the moral argument against veganism is, although I can see why veganism is unattractive/difficult/inconvenient etc. etc.
edited 24th Nov '12 11:04:03 PM by VocabWord
Eh, I don't think so. I think that if you're really into saving the environment, you're better off sticking with buying local and eating in-season food. Otherwise you run into the problems with transportation and stuff.
At least around here, I know that most of the produce in the winter gets imported from Mexico, and that's a hell of a long way away.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -DrunkscriblerianSure, but that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about whether veganism is more ethical. It's undoubtedly more environmentally friendly than regularly consuming factory-farmed food (although there are a lot of vegan processed foods that are pretty bad).
Why doesn't animal rights veganism make sense? Animal abuse is illegal, why doesn't that extend to farm animals?
You've got it backwards. The majority of humanity can't digest cow milk. There's just a particular European mutation that lets some people do so. If you're a Eurocentric imperialist (tongue-in-cheek), you might think it's "normal" but it's not really. Not particularly rare, but the not the majority either. Even the article you linked notes that it's only talking about people from Northern Europe.
Incidentally, I like to call milk-drinkers mutants because it amuses me to think of digesting milk as being an X Men superpower.
edited 28th Nov '12 10:54:58 PM by Clarste
Now, I've met plenty of healthy vegetarians...they can make that stuff work (and are often quite fit). But vegans? They always make meth addicts look like the picture of wellness at least as far as I've seen.
I can understand not wanting to eat certain things because of where they come from. But humans are omnivores. Some people need to square with that.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~My aunt is a vegan for heath reasons. She's got a digestion issue that makes it very hard for her to digest animal proteins. She cheats a little to get the proper nutrients, but she can't cheat too much or she gets sick. It's a medical condition she's suffering from though and it's fairly rare. Even her doctor says that a completely vegan diet isn't really healthy.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickActually, a whacking great big swathe of African-derived people can handle milk, thanks to a strong pastoral bent to many, many cultures there for centuries... heck, thousands of years (Kemet and Kesh were strongly pastoral... and had effects on other areas of the region)... (and, you'd know that if you knew anything about natural yoghurt and sour-milk products).
And, that mutation you go on about? Hello: Monguls, Huns and the vast majority of the Indian Sub-continent.
In fact, there's an argument that European populations became better able to handle dairy as a result of a massive inoculation of Mongul genes into the paddling pool, thanks to certain events.
It's not "just a Euro" thing, and has cropped up in peoples separated from others (like in the Americas — dairy wasn't the major disaster smallpox was on the various natal systems).
It's a set of mutations that readily happen in any human population, in short. Heck, it's only a slight adjustment to something we all have as babies, anyway.
edited 29th Nov '12 11:24:15 AM by Euodiachloris
I'm vegan and I play rugby and am training to do a 10k. There's been research that gladiators probably ate a mostly vegan diet rich in legumes and carbohydrates (not for animal rights reasons, of course, but because it was cheapest). There are also vegans who eat only processed foods and oreos and are probably on the brink of collapse.
Individual experiences are not evidence of ethics and there isn't medical consensus about the healthiest diet. I don't think animal products are unhealthy, but I do think the way they are collected is unethical (which is the point of this forum).
So far I don't think anyone has posted an ethical reason against veganism.
I like veganism, though I'm not a vegan. Or a vegetarian for that matter. :P I personally feel veganism won't ever get anywhere unless vat meat
is perfected.
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Last time when I say why I think certain parts and implications of veganism is wrong I was told that I was "nick picking"
, so now I'll just treat it as something like religion that you cannot disagree with.
edited 30th Nov '12 7:20:16 PM by IraTheSquire
Okay, I just read your posts about contradictions in vegan morality. First, veganism is not a religion nor a monolith. The consumption of animal products is just as much of a belief structure as refraining from it.
Second, speciesism is sort of a weird concept that I think is a bit overblown. I've seen it defined a million ways. I don't think all vegans would agree that every life is equal.
Third, yes animals are killed during crop production. But these incidental deaths, as common as they are, are not comparable to the horrendous practices of factory farming. In my eyes and the eyes of most vegetarians, factory farms are torture. Animals will always be dying, it's the planet Earth. But I'd rather not be responsible for that brutality.
Fourth, ethics is all in shades of gray, not a point system. I acknowledge that I am still responsible for animal death in my eating choices. I am also responsible for and benefit from human suffering. That doesn't mean I should just throw my hands up and say fuck it, might as well buy as much sweatshop-produced shit as possible.
edited 30th Nov '12 8:33:44 PM by VocabWord
Pest control. "There's a kid who keeps stealing the food that I've grown. I set my dogs to eat him/kill him with poison/kill him with disease to protect my crops."
Yup, sounds very incidental to me.
That only applies when the choice that you made is actually more moral. The choice here either I kill 10 or 1000. Either way I am still screwed because there is still killing. You can only ever be more moral when you cause 0 deaths, for even when you just kill 1 you're still a murderer.
Less animal suffering= more moral? Makes sense. Less animal deaths=more moral? Hell no.
edited 1st Dec '12 2:48:06 AM by IraTheSquire

Agreed.
If someone gets up in my grill about their being a vegan and me not (and therefore me being a worse person than them or something), then it's open season on anything they say or do.
If they engage me in conversation and actually bother to try to sway me, we get a nice discourse.