The lengths people will go to in order to avoid eating a plant based diet are insane.
- balderdash ( @balderdash9@lemmy.zip ) 18•9 months ago
There’s nothing wrong with eating bugs; its normal in certain parts of the world and its a good source of protein.
Problem: farming animals is inefficienct, cruel, expensive, and destroying the earth which gives us life life
Solution 1: learn to cook dhal
eww no veggies, I am 12 and refuse to eat them
solution 2: convince the arrogant fussy and cruel hedonist that rejected 1 to eat crickets?
solution 3: keep all of the horror of farming but make it marginally more efficient?
Mmm yay, pigs screaming in terror while they die in gas chambers makes me hungries.
I have found that practical solutions are rarely all or nothing, personally.
Are you against eating meat from a consequentialist perspective, or a deontological one? In my opinion, less meat eaten is better - better for the environment, and less money going into cruel practices around slaughtering animals, etc - even if the reasons for it are varied and not strictly from a standard of moral duty.
- balderdash ( @balderdash9@lemmy.zip ) 1•9 months ago
Everyone is a consequentialist these days it seems. Assume consequentialism until proven otherwise
A reminder to be(e) nice; we all come from different backgrounds, and launching ad hominem attacks is ineffective in getting people to consider your arguments.
It doesn’t have to be cruel. I grew up on a sustainable farm. I agree with you however, it’s the culture that has decided meat or nothing and that’s why it’s cruel.
If the ways we killed non humans were not cruel then we would use them on our loved ones at end of life for euthanasia etc.
we don’t because they’re cruel.
Bugs are delicious. I don’t understand why some people think that eating bugs is a bad thing.
Bugs probably feel pain given they modify their behaviour after injuries and seek to avoid them.
Plants probably also feel pain then, considering that they modify their behavior after injury, seek to avoid them, and chemically communicate with other plants to protect themselves. Life is life, no matter if it’s speaking, clucking, mooing, or photosynthesizing, it’s just a matter of where you draw the line.
I take it you eat plant based to minimise suffering then, as well as cry when a lawn is being mowed?
Not at all; as stated in my comment, the debate is not about whether a given creature experiences pain and works to avoid suffering, but rather where you draw the line on what level of suffering is acceptable. I personally avoid buying meat products from the store because I feel that factory farms are inhumane and unsustainable, but I’m willing to and do raise and harvest meat birds for my own consumption.
Judging by your comment history, you do eat plant-based, and that’s pretty cool. I encourage you to share some of your favourite plant-based recipes in this community :)
It sounds like you are basing how fine it is to hurt someone for pleasure (and that is all it is at this point) on how similar they look to you rather than any principled understanding of behaviour and neurology.
This is called speciesism and is just another manifestation of the cognitive failures that lead to most evil in the world.
It is absurd to equate grass releasing hormones that cause the production of bitter compounds with electrocuting a chicken. That is like saying steel feels pain because because it emits sparks when ground or that an amputated foot feels pain because nerves send signals for a while. Pain requires perception, we obviously have no test for an inner listener but we can compare behaviour.
This is after all why you believe I am a real person and not a sophisticated automaton.
The only real behavioural difference we can find between us and birds for example is possibly language. Parrots and corvids there is some evidence they can do language, rather than communication. Even so it’s absurd to use this as a line for acceptable suffering as you would essentially be arguing that human infants and humans with certain cognitive differences were acceptable to kill for meat.
The problem with isms is that you can’t draw meaningful lines around the world if you start from a conclusion and work backwards (in this case, animals other than humans are sometimes ok to eat). The moment you start trying to defend it you are forced to confront that the position isn’t reasonable but rationalised.
I suspect you know this, because you feel some degree of guilt and are throwing out statements like “plants feel pain” which have the objective of winning an argument rather than finding truth.
Sauce?
In 2021, the E.U. approved feeding insect protein to chickens
Free range chickens have always eaten insects. They eat any insect or seed or small animal they find in the soil.
According to one estimate, Europe’s farm animals have a bigger carbon footprint than its cars.
According to another estimate, leisure cruise ships had a 10x bigger footprint than all Europe’s cars…
But still, it’s great news to reduce farm animal carbon footprint. Not sure whether feeding larvae to piglets will achieve that though (they provide “stimulation”? ugh…), there seem to be better —direct— uses like insect flour, no need to even chew on them whole, although that’s also an option.
This is actually a good development. Bug is protein rich and is much easier to grow than mammals.
Carnists will do anything to avoid the abundance of nutrient-rich plant-based foods that can already meet the world’s dietary needs.