Perhaps another possibility could be to encourage knowledge about animals and animal behaviour as it is in reality, instead of the vapid Disney-like point of view which is so popular nowadays?
For example, gestation crates
for pig farming sound far less justifiable if one knows something about pig social behaviour and pig intelligence...
Meat is an important part of the human diet.
Environmentally, there are a few things. For instance, cows are big polluters, so it'd not be a bad plan to make sure they go to the slaughter faster in order to minimise the pollution. I would also imagine that land-use for agriculture would be better justified if you were eating the meat produced.
Ethically, also, it'd be a waste of the animal's life (which it will have and lose to agricultural ends anyway), thousands of years of domestication, etc., not to eat meat from livestock.
Meat is important to the human diet. We are omnivores, it's true. But on that point, their importance can be removed totally through our usage of vitamins, or even just through usage of dairy and egg products(although, personally, I don't eat dairy, I can't say it isn't good for you.).
And on the pollution that cows cause, a major reason for that is their treatment(in most major meat production areas), and simply the fact that there are so many of them. This isn't because we don't eat enough of them, this is because, as a whole, we eat to much of them, which has led to the overproduction of cows, which has led to them becoming polluters. It is not because we don't eat enough.
edited 27th Feb '12 5:59:14 AM by Falkon
But in any case, that matters little to me. There is solid experimental evidence (I'd link to the relevant articles, but you can find a reasonable summary on Wikipedia if you want) that vegetarians/pescetarians have some health advantages compared to carnivores, as long as they adopt a sensible diet, and in particular eating too much red meat has been linked to an array of unpleasant health problems. This is what I care about, not what is "natural" for humankind.
edited 27th Feb '12 5:58:49 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.Yeah. I'd say the same about raw foodism and all similar diets too — they strike me as being based more on wishful thinking and on very idealistic ideas of the "state of nature" than on sensible reasoning and careful cost/benefit analysis.
I am ambivalent on vegans. I have no intention of being one myself, and to be honest I think that a diet that forces you to take vitamin supplements in order to, you know, survive cannot possibly be a reasonable choice; but on the other hand, I can respect their commitment to avoid exploitation, even though I think it is at least in part misdirected.
edited 27th Feb '12 6:27:44 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.![]()
With the exception of B12(certainly key, but it's still, as far as I know, the only one), getting the nutritions that you need(whether vitamin or otherwise) can be done somewhat easily. All you really need to do is figure out what you need, it's sources, and the amount of those sources you need, and then eat them.
As for B12, if I were, for whatever reason, to lose a source of the artificial stuff, I'd probably get chickens and get my B12 through 'em, once I figured out how to get the optimum levels out of an egg. I might even be willing to eat them when they get old, if I were to get over my queasiness about meat(it just looks nasty to me). But until that situation arises, I'll stick to being vegan.
edited 27th Feb '12 6:43:03 AM by Falkon
I was just playing around.
You said something interesting, though, about meat becoming a luxury. How, exactly, would this happen? What seems likely is that even if the demand for meat dropped, the agricultural practices involved would not change to anything less efficient. At least, people simply wanting less meat can't make it a luxury. What people would need to want is much better meat (unlikely that such an inclination would become widespread), and in such quantities that it could not be produced (and therefore sold, therefore purchased) without incurring significant expense over regular meat. I would imagine, then, that the solution is to encourage people to eat more meat - to include high grade meat in their diets, while retaining the lower grade meat (something to compare with) (also, I doubt producers would encourage consumers to abandon one product in favour of another when they could just as well sell them both). At least, this is how things work out in the brief consideration I've given the matter, bearing in mind some vague tendencies in consumption and a very definite tendency towards profit-motivation in production.
What do you think?
As much as I love animals and feel that people really, really need to learn to respect and treat the things with much greater kindness I find PETA fucking insane. ANIMALS HAVE FEELINGS AND SOULS TOO.
But making a commercial where a turkey terrorist has taken over a grocery store while threatening to kill the hostages if you don't stop eating turkey on Thanksgiving is not cool or helpful in any way. Nor is harassing people. Or declaring Mario evil. Or any other number of shit they did.
edited 27th Feb '12 8:41:07 AM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan ChahHigh quality meat is really quite costly, cannot be produced very quickly, and generally requires animals to live in decent conditions. You don't get fine wine by growing grapes in greenhouses and pumping them with substances for making them grow faster: you need to grow them carefully and slowly, in an adequate environment, and really pay attention to plant health. The same holds for animal raising.
As I said, I'm not really out to reform the world on this; but if I were, I'd perhaps think that one should encourage people to try high quality meat, and just point out that the low-quality stuff is not only unhealthy, but also kind of mediocre.
edited 27th Feb '12 9:42:21 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.I see the point made by vegetarians, but damn, meat's just too damn tasty.
Likes many underrated webcomics

@Loni Jay:
Hm. You are right, there is quite a lot of excessive sentimentalism with respect to animals. I still don't think that being unfazed by the sight of a slaughterhouse should be a requirement for eating meat, but I can agree that perhaps trying to remove the disconnect that you mention might be advisable.
@ekuseruekuseru:
Care to explain your reasoning?
edited 27th Feb '12 3:58:32 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.