Specie-cism and veganism - Page 3

On February 10 2011 06:59 Tony Campolo wrote:


I fail to see how I am racist considering I am advocating against differential treatment of blacks and whites.

On February 10 2011 07:05 gurrpp wrote:
My only stake in the matter would be getting meat and milk. Find some other way to create the same commodities just as efficiently and you could convince me. Also, who think compassion is the only way to go are just naive. There's still competition daily to survive and mate(in first world countries mostly just to mate). Its great to show compassion when that luxury is available, but when it comes down to it sane people will gut each other to survive, and the same thing goes for animals.

Obviously in first world countries we aren't reliant on livestock to survive. Its more of a dietary tradition. I'm willing to bet in the (somewhat distant) future we will be eating processed nutrient paste as a dietary staple. Livestock are really not a very efficient food source. You have to feed them, contain them, kill them, repeat. As the population grows, we will need to find more efficient methods of growing food than livestock. There's a lot of cool research and engineering projects in hydroponics and other farming methods.

However, in third world countries people need livestock to survive. This is where any moral qualms about eating an animal should go out the window. Its no longer a trade off between having a clear conscience and quality of life, but a trade off between conscience and survival, which is a really easy pick.

On February 10 2011 07:08 rolfe wrote:
this establishes sentience as the sole means to determine morality here then this is merely a matter where at what level of sentience layers of morality can be applied. what is your opinion therefore on destroying mosquitoes, rats and other dangerous, disease carrying/spreading creatures for the sole purpose of increasing the quality and chance of human life?

On February 10 2011 07:09 lixlix wrote:


You are using the suffering of humans as examples to push your agenda on animals as well as comparing the suffering of humans of a certain race to the suffering of animals and you fail to see that as racist?

On February 10 2011 07:20 Tony Campolo wrote:


As I mentioned earlier, it's about reducing suffering as much as practically possible. I try to avoid killing insects if I can. The point I am getting across in the OP is that a lot of the suffering we cause is unnecessary - such as factory farming. We go out of our way to cause this suffering. Obviously it won't be possible to be 100% ethical due to practical considerations but it is moral to try and reduce that as much as possible.

On February 10 2011 07:33 rolfe wrote:
so if we establish that killing animal is not an absolute wrong in the same way killing a human would be (excepting cases of clear imminent danger etc etc) and can sometimes be justified on some utilitarian grounds of maximising welfare then is all you are left with the principle of do not be unnecessarily cruel to an animal? then are some systems of farming meat and dairy justifiable when they are not cruel?

as you mention practicality i think it is necessary to point out that even in the farming of crops some killing of creatures must occur as other animals will try to eat them. pesticides will be used to kill other pests and will cause further suffering in the ecosystem and can kill birds, fish etc however all of these things are necessary to produce the food for ~7billion human beings. in that case is it really morally superior to a system where animals are farmed and killed in a decent way?

On February 10 2011 07:25 lixlix wrote:
if you don't advocate giving animals the same rights as humans then stop using humans as an example.

On February 10 2011 07:33 rolfe wrote:


so if we establish that killing animal is not an absolute wrong in the same way killing a human would be (excepting cases of clear imminent danger etc etc) and can sometimes be justified on some utilitarian grounds of maximising welfare then is all you are left with the principle of do not be unnecessarily cruel to an animal? then are some systems of farming meat and dairy justifiable when they are not cruel?

as you mention practicality i think it is necessary to point out that even in the farming of crops some killing of creatures must occur as other animals will try to eat them. pesticides will be used to kill other pests and will cause further suffering in the ecosystem and can kill birds, fish etc however all of these things are necessary to produce the food for ~7billion human beings. in that case is it really morally superior to a system where animals are farmed and killed in a decent way?

On February 10 2011 07:39 Tony Campolo wrote:


My personal position is that if we milk cows without taking their calves away for slaughter, that is preferable (i.e. sharing the milk with them, rather than taking it exclusively for ourselves). This is unlikely to happen given the commercial interests of large factory farms, therefore the better option is to abstain from it in order to affect the profit of these industries. Consumer choice makes a difference - e.g. prior to the 80s people were rarely aware of the differences between caged and free-range eggs.

As for killing animals - if it's not necessary to eat them then it is largely unnecessary to have a system of killing them. The only reason there are so many factory farmed animals is because they are bred for the express purpose of being killed. But it is perfectly valid to survive on a vegan diet. We humans only eat as much meat as we do today because of the industrialisation of agriculture.

On February 10 2011 07:44 Treeship wrote:
The majority of crops grown (at least in the US) is corn to feed cattle that live in factory farms. And the waste from these farms harms the ecosystem much more than that of crops grown in the US. If people stopped eating factory farm produced meat (I'm not saying stop eating meat all together) then the damage to the ecosystem would not only be reduced by the smaller amount of factory farms, but also by the smaller amount of corn fields to sustain these farms.

On February 10 2011 07:46 rolfe wrote:
I think you have miss read what i wrote, i said that even in a farming system not designed for the consumption of animals there will be inherent suffering among animals and that that suffering is not just unintentional but is necessary for the farming to be successful and is this morally preferable to a situation where suffering or death is also necessarily present but the animal is consumed also?

On February 10 2011 07:15 Tony Campolo wrote:


I am not an expert on economics, but see the following:

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet

On February 10 2011 07:53 Tony Campolo wrote:


The fact is though the majority of the billions of animals are created solely for the purpose of consumption thus having to go through the torturous factory farm process. These animals would not exist in the first place if not for the factory farms. They would not be out in the wild suffering, being hunted, starving, or any other danger etc. As they wouldn't exist. The fact that they do and go through a slaughterhouse process is unnecessary, they would not 'otherwise' be out in the wild in a 'situation where suffering or death is present'.

On February 10 2011 08:06 Offhand wrote:


But why stop there? Surely, plants are living creatures, and it would be a sin to consume them as well.

On February 10 2011 08:10 Tony Campolo wrote:


Already addressed this on page two... If that's your level of logic then a vegan might as well argue why would meat-eaters stop at eating animals, why not kill humans for food as well?

Already addressed this on page two... If that's your level of logic then a vegan might as well argue why would meat-eaters stop at eating animals, why not kill humans for food as well?