> being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.
That’s like saying you kill chickens to eat eggs. You don’t kill a plant to eat its fruit. In fact, plants benefit from animals eating what they produce, be it oranges or tomatoes or something else and crapping the seeds somewhere else for proliferation.
The dark truth about keeping chickens and many other poultry is that they hatch in an approximately 1:1 male:female ratio, but can't be kept in that ratio without severe conflict and stress. Thus, hatching chickens to keep for egg-laying requires killing most of the male chicks. So yes, you have to kill chickens to eat eggs.
The "severe conflict and stress" part may be hard to understand for the cityfolk; you have to kill chickens to eat eggs, or else they will do it.
Same for dairy cattle: males are redundant. My grandfather was an AI pioneer in the UK in the 1940s. AI being artificial insemination of dairy cattle....
I mean, dairy cattle also have the issue of keeping the female pregnant and then taking the baby anyway. And then, once they are done producing milk, what do you do with a giant animal?
Same with chickens that lose the ability to produce eggs.
We put the redundant roosters in the woods, let nature do the killing for us. They didn't last one night.
Getting eaten alive makes you feel better than euthanizing them quickly?
Well, at least a wild animal had something to eat?
I'd say main benefit is not doing it youself.
That is pretty much just fruit. Vegetables are typically either the whole body of the plant (like carrots) or a vital part.
I killed so many slugs eating my broccoli it started to get to me. I technically didn't kill them myself, I put the cannibals in a bucket together. 1/3 to 1/2 bucket per day. About 30 full buckets for 20 broccoli plants of which about 8 were ruined.
The conversation is about the necessity of killing what you eat. Those slugs have nothing to do with either argument nor were they a necessary casualty.
I think in practice pest control does require killing the pest, and in that example was a necessary part of growing broccoli to harvesy
Not sure how killing things and then not eating them is morally superior. If you aren't eating meat you are probably getting most of your calories from grains and legumes. The people that grow and store those for you are killing a lot of animals to get them to your grocery store.
This response feels quite emotional, so I’ll start by saying there was no judgement in my comment. At no point have I made a comment on the morality of the matter. Furthermore, not only do grocery stores not even enter into the conversation, you are assuming to know what the people who grow and sell the food at my local markets eat. I assure you, you do not.
I think you’ll benefit from this video. Don’t let yourself be consumed by emotions of an imaginary argument. The entirety of your point is a response to something you imagined I said and not my words or intentions.
I think you misunderstood me, perhaps I didn't express myself well. You said the slugs were not a necessary casualty. Growing the acres and acres of grain and pulses necessary for a vegan diet necessitates the killing of way more animals (insects and rodents, etc) than the few cows, chickens, or pigs necessary to feed a carnivore. Every kind of agriculture requires killing. There is no other way to do it at scale.
The real problem is the sheer number of humans we have to feed. Hopefully another couple centuries of low birth rates will help.
Admittedly this is pedantry on my part, but isn’t this only true for fruits? GP’s argument seems perfectly valid for e.g. carrots or mushrooms.
Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).
And fruits are broader than most people think. Many of the things you think as vegetables are fruits: pumpkins, zucchinis, tomatoes. But even outside fruits there is food you can harvest without harming the plant, like potatoes. And we haven’t even gotten into seeds and grains, like rice.
So you can definitely live without killing what you eat.
Hah of course you're 100% right on mushrooms - that totally slipped my mind. Am I completely out to lunch on root vegetables though?
> Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).
They are the "fruiting body" of the fungus, but biologically they are not fruit.
That is correct, which is why I used quotes. It is important to not get bogged down in pedantry and lose sight of the argument, though. The matter being discussed is if you need to kill what you eat, and I’m using “fruit” as a shorthand for the thing a plant produces to be eaten but is not the plant itself.
aren't plants alive?
They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread. If you want to engage in the conversation, please make an effort to do so in good faith and actually address the arguments. If you’re only going to make basic queries everyone already agrees with, we’re just wasting time and space.
"Aren't plants alive?" is such a bad faith argument that I don't know why you even bother replying. It's legitimately on the level of "internet troll". I eat meat btw, but I wouldn't even entertain someone that pretends there's no difference between a sentient mammal and a stalk of broccoli
You are right, of course. But I have noticed as of late that I sometimes became unkind in my replies, which I don’t like and didn’t use to happen. I want to do better.
Surely the right move here is not to play, but if you don’t get annoyed trolls can’t win either.
The point is that you're still killing that broccoli, not that the two acts have equal moral value. It doesn't normally need to be said but you know, someone was wrong on the internet
Ever ate a carrot? The whole plant has to be "killed". Killing doesn't even make sense in the context of plants, a lot of them can just be cloned from a leaf, stem or root. Where do you draw the line between damaging and killing a plant, the termination of the apical meristem? The plant will stop growing but it can still clone itself, or grow more apical meristems...
This whole argument is absolutely meaningless.
edit: just pointing out I'm not directly replying to you but to the whole thread.
> purpose of being eaten and spread
why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.
> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
Pretty sure it is the cow's purpose. Humans first domesticated a wild animal and then with selective breeding cows were "made". That has no weight on ethics tho.
Also, this is a ridiculous argument.
If someone raises their human kid “to be eaten”, that would be the purpose of the kid.
Does that make it ok to eat the kid?
Here’s a compromise.
Neither you nor I get to decide what the purpose of another sentient being is.
Absolutely. But while I cannot declare its ultimate "final cause", perhaps I have some right to declare a penultimate one? I have my reasons for believing this is the case. What are your reasons for believing it is not (or do you believe that we do have some right to declare penultimate final causes for living creatures, and if so, what are the limits?)
> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
Clearly you’ve never experienced the sight of animals in a slaughterhouse, as they realise what is happening to the animals in front and begin to panic and violently bellow and push back.
> You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.
That is only true for people who don’t engage in good faith and don’t have a genuine desire to learn and are open to changing their minds. For everyone else, it can and does provide value.
your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn't answer my question though.
Why do you get to decide that the purpose of a cow isn't to be eaten?
Why do you get to decide it is? The onus of proof is on the one making the claim.
I guess someone could also repeatedly bash you over the head with a tire iron and break your legs, and when criticised reply “how do you know their purpose isn’t to get hurt?”
“Well, when I approached them to hit them, they cowered in fear, asked for mercy, and tried to flee.”
“Your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn’t answer the question though. How do you know their purpose is not to be ravaged?”
> They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread.
There is a chasm of difference between your purpose and the purpose of something you do.
If you build a chair, the purpose of doing so could be to sit or to earn money by selling it. We can derive exactly which from your actions and the outcomes, but there is still an identifiable purpose. However, it is entirely different to claim your purpose is to build chairs.
Similarly, in my previous example someone can hit someone else with the purpose of harming them, but it doesn’t mean that person’s purpose is to cause harm.
Do you see the difference? I do kind of feel like I’m discussing middle school philosophy here. I surely hope that is not my purpose. This whole conversation was unnecessary with a tiny bit of steel manning on your part, don’t you think? Does it truly seem reasonable to you to claim an entire species’ purpose is to do something they do not only not pursue but actively avoid? I’m confident you are able to see the point by now.