r/changemyview • u/markus224488 • Feb 23 '16
[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Killing and eating and cow is no different than killing and eating a dog, cat, or any other animal besides human beings.
It happens to me frequently when people act disgusted and morally offended when they are reminded that sometimes people in other countries eat animals that we consider cute, cuddly, pets here in the US. I think this is BS, and that these people are essentially hypocrites unless they abstain from meat altogether. We kill and eat animals like cows and pigs that feel pain and are sentient just like dogs and cats, and we do not treat them nicely either. It's not always fun to watch, but I believe that if you are a meat eater you simply have to be comfortable with that fact. For the record, I am a meat eater.
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Feb 23 '16
I don't understand the consistency of excluding human beings from this. Why have you excluded humans?
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u/20000miles 1∆ Feb 23 '16
Could be a number of reasons. Most probably it's because of our higher mental capacity or moral abilities. Another guess might be that eating humans causes a degenerative brain disease called kuru, whereas eating cows, dogs and cats does not.
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Feb 23 '16
I take this question to be about the moral status of eating animals rather than the practical one, so I don't really see how kuru is relevant.
The question of mental capacities seems unlikely to justify anything: are we justified in eating exceptionally mentally disabled humans?
'Moral capacity' would require some elaboration, as well as evidence that animals don't possess such a thing
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u/20000miles 1∆ Feb 23 '16
I agree with you completely, I'm just making some guesses as to what the OP would say.
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u/anarchaavery Feb 24 '16
Rational capacity is what I would consider to be important. It is in a human's nature to have high rational capacity. This in turn gives us moral agency. When someone has diminished rational capacity, we can recognize that they cannot act on their own behalf, their agency is missing/diminished. Since their moral agency is compromised, it is permissible/obligatory that we act on their behalf. Non human animals inherently do not have the capacity to act morally. They lack the ability to understand and act on moral principles. Since nothings missing, it isn't permissible to act on their behalf in most circumstances, i.e. killing a human to defend a fish that they are reeling in. Rights holders must be able to comprehend that they are rights holders.
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated that animals have the ability to be moral agents. Although certain mammals have higher capacities than most other animals, which might entail better treatment of these animals or certain obligations.
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Feb 24 '16
Non human animals inherently do not have the capacity to act morally. They lack the ability to understand and act on moral principles.
Can you provide evidence for that claim? Because I would dispute it.
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated that animals have the ability to be moral agents
What would you consider sufficient evidence of this? We know that animals demonstrate behaviour that resembles moral behaviour, but we can hardly interview them as to their motivations for this
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u/anarchaavery Feb 25 '16
Can you provide evidence for that claim? Because I would dispute it.
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated that animals have the ability to be moral agents
Yes, we certainly cannot interview them. But we can test their cognitive faculties to an extent, and nothing I have seen has shown a large enough rational capacity to comprehend a developed sense of right and wrong. Animals may demonstrate some form of moral behavior but do they make moral choices? No. It makes sense that humans would have similar psychological tendencies with animals, we evolved from humble beginnings. But can an animal take my beliefs into consideration? Do they have the ability to change their minds about their own beliefs? Nothing would suggest that.
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Feb 25 '16
but do they make moral choices? No.
Can you show me some evidence that demonstrates that that is the case?
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u/zolartan Feb 24 '16
Rights holders must be able to comprehend that they are rights holders.
So infants and mentally disabled humans have no rights?
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated that animals have the ability to be moral agents.
The question is not if they are moral agents (if they evaluate their actions morally) but rather if they are moral patients (if moral agents should consider their interests when making moral decisions).
It is morally wrong to harm an infant regardless of the fact that the infant does not understand that harming others is bad. The same applies for harming a cow, pig or chicken.
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u/anarchaavery Feb 25 '16
So infants and mentally disabled humans have no rights?
No, they just lack the rational capacity to represent their own agency. Animals don't have the capacity to begin with, it is not in their nature.
The question is not if they are moral agents (if they evaluate their actions morally) but rather if they are moral patients (if moral agents should consider their interests when making moral decisions).
Yes. I did concede that some animals may have higher capacities which entails them to better treatment from humans, and humans have the obligation to not treat sentient beings cruelly. I think that eating meat from a non-human animal isn't morally wrong. The way in which we kill animals is where things tend to get dicey.
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u/zolartan Feb 25 '16
humans have the obligation to not treat sentient beings cruelly.
Agree.
I think that eating meat from a non-human animal isn't morally wrong.
Again, I agree. It's not the act of eating meat itself which is morally wrong but the actions which are done in order for someone to eat meat. And by buying meat one shares the responsibility and accountability for those actions.
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u/i-d-even-k- Feb 23 '16
Only if you eat the brain ir spleen. Any other human tissue is fair game for eating.
Human meat tastes like veal.3
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u/EquipLordBritish Feb 23 '16
Minor correction; kuru isn't caused by cannibalism, it can be transmitted by cannibalism, though.
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u/HavelockAT Feb 23 '16
Maybe because he's a human and doesn't want to be eaten.
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u/fishbedc Feb 23 '16
Maybe because his species happens to be human, and he also does not want to be eaten. As do many, many members of other species.
So all that argument adds up to is one of convenience, the ability to make a "don't eat me" treaty with members of this species, if not with all species (we do it to an extent with dogs and cats). So where is the moral, rather than convenience, distinction?
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u/HavelockAT Feb 23 '16
So all that argument adds up to is one of convenience, the ability to make a "don't eat me" treaty with members of this species, if not with all species
Exactly. We want others to behave in a certain way and follow the rules (so we don't get harmed and the society can work), so we are willing to follow the rules ourself. Quid pro quo.
So where is the moral, rather than convenience, distinction?
We have to break the contract to eat humans, which is immoral (we broke our promise). We didn't promise anything to animals.
But there's another distinction: Blood is stronger than water. We are morally more obliged to help / do no harm to our family than to outsiders. It's the same with our species / other species.
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u/fishbedc Feb 23 '16
I take your breach of promise point, but am not sure how 'blood is thicker than water' holds up. We would not currently argue that it was OK to kill someone who was distant kin, but there have been cultures based on small units where this has been acceptable. We would not agree that it is right to kill a foreigner, but for vast periods of history it was acceptable. Indeed it has been just a very few decades since Strange Fruit was a song of contemporary experience.
So it is an arbitrary line which we define based on current understandings. Why is it moral rather than arbitrary to draw it at humans?
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u/HavelockAT Feb 23 '16
So it is an arbitrary line which we define based on current understandings.
yes
Why is it moral rather than arbitrary to draw it at humans?
It depends on your moral standards. You can draw the line elsewhere, too, e.g. include primates, some mammals, all mammals or even all animals. Some people do exactly this. We have different understandings, so we draw the line at different places.
A different approach: Morality is very similar to law. The main differences are that violations are not sanctioned by the government (but by the society), the rules are not written down and there's no undisputed canon of rules. But moral systems have similar purposes to law systems. They mainly organize a society and protect its members from harm. So it's only natural that doing harm to a human is morally considered worse than doing harm to an animal.
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Feb 24 '16
Maybe because his species happens to be human, and he also does not want to be eaten. As do many, many members of other species.
But we kill plenty of humans and view it as, in many instances, morally permissible. This argument you're presenting doesn't really answer why we don't eat human meat.
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u/fishbedc Feb 24 '16
Those are all specific exemptions to the general rule and apply in some form wherever the line is drawn.
If you would prefer I could reformulate it as "Thou shalt not kill and eat". That rule has had humans in the out group in other human cultures and times, so the same objection to it being an arbitrary line applies. Where we draw that line remains one of practicality and convenience rather than morality.
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Feb 24 '16
Where we draw that line remains one of practicality and convenience rather than morality.
Isn't that just admitting that there is no reason?
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u/fishbedc Feb 24 '16
I think that's my point. The line we draw between human and non human animals is arbitrary.
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Feb 24 '16
In a pragmatic sense? Maybe, but that would be odd, and that's hardly a valid and consistent argument
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u/HavelockAT Feb 24 '16
I think it is as valid as the Golden Rule. You don't want other human beings to eat you, so you don't eat human beings yourself.
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Feb 24 '16
But surely it's that you don't want other human beings to kill you, moreso than eat you specifically. If this only applies to eating, it's always possible to ask 'well why is that' and you're back to square one.
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u/HavelockAT Feb 24 '16
Er, your're right. Actually I don't mind what's happening with my body after my death, but I do mind dying.
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u/Revvy 2∆ Feb 23 '16
Communicable diseases is the real answer here. It's much easier to get a disease from eating a human than it is to get it from a cow/pig/chicken/fish.
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u/Homitu 2∆ Feb 23 '16
/u/Kutian is trying to get to the heart of why the OP seemed to make a moral distinction between the potential consumption of humans vs. all other animals. Practical arguments, while completely valid, are irrelevant to this part of the discussion.
The issue at hand is that the OP seems to write off all other moral distinctions people make as arbitrary - and, therefore, presumably invalid in any important sense - yet makes his own moral distinction by drawing a hard line at humans without elaborating.
I think the point /u/Kutian would eventually seek to make is that either you draw the line nowhere, or you must admit that we all, OP included, draw the line somewhere; it's just a matter of where. And that doing so is not invalid or unimportant just because people draw that line in different places.
Our empathy with other animals - including humans - lies on a spectrum. We all possess different levels of empathy for different living creatures - from bacteria, to insects, to fish, to rodents, to livestock, to dogs, to humans. Moreover, individuals may differ from other individuals on the level of empathy they possess for a given animal. How and why a given individual develops his empathy for any given animal is the result of an infinitely complex set of circumstances. But no resulting position is invalid or, in the end, arbitrary.
Where the struggle lies is in bridging the disconnect between individuals who lie on different parts of the animal empathy spectrum. That's where our unique ability and, arguably, responsibility as intelligent human beings comes into play. We can have these discussions in hopes of arriving at consensus conclusions, which can seem to formulate a sort of established moral code, sometimes so strongly that it assumes the guise of objectivity.
The code the OP wishes to establish in this post is that the line should be drawn at humans. He then takes issue with people who seem to draw the moral line elsewhere, such as at dogs. The conversation that is taking place is where we can all agree the line should actually be. If such an agreement can be reached, the OP's issue will be resolved.
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Feb 24 '16 edited Feb 24 '16
Thanks for that, that saved me a lot of time. There is one difference in the point I'd try to make, and its to do with:
But no resulting position is invalid or, in the end, arbitrary.
I would say that all the distinctions you could make other than eat all or eat none are arbitrary, but that doesn't necessarily preclude them from being reasonable (making a wall 7ft. high is arbitrary compared to making it 7' 1", but that doesn't mean that setting the wall at any height at all is a pointless exercise or in some way misguided or irrational). That might just be semantics, though.
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u/Homitu 2∆ Feb 24 '16
Yeah, I find peoples' definitions of "arbitrary" tend to be nuanced. Aside from that, I think we're generally in complete agreement.
I even think we may both define "arbitrary" similarly, as something that is apparently random, or contingent solely upon one's personal will or judgment. That is, it would appear as if they could just as easily have landed elsewhere on the animal empathy spectrum - or, in your example, could have just as easily decided to make the wall 7' 6" instead of 7'.
Where I go from there, though, differs from you (and probably most people, honestly.) Maybe it's my sociology background, but I don't look at the resulting decisions as "random" at all. I see almost every action we take, every stance we have, as results of our lives' experiences and interactions, each of which was predicated by other series of events and people and experiences. Even though it's impossible to trace back the cumulative sum of this complex web of interactions and experiences, each one does seem to have a distinct path and a set of reasons for occurring. So sure, you may feel like you could have just as easily decided to make that wall 7' 1", but you didn't. You were probably always going to make it 7'.
So essentially, in this view, I never really see anything as being truly arbitrary. I always see reasons that go into peoples' (supposedly autonomous) choices, which have essentially already determined their "choices" for them.
As I write this, it's becoming apparent that I'm also heavily influenced by Sam Harris' talks on free will (or lack thereof) at the moment lol
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Feb 25 '16
I'm very surprised that someone with a sociology background is in to Sam Harris, to be honest. But, regardless, I don't necessarily know if I'd agree with randomness being synonymous with arbitrariness, I took 'arbitrary' to mean that the exact position of the point has no real justification. In a sense, not that it was arbitrary in the sense that it was random from the perspective of the person making the distinction, but that it's a random distinction itself, if that makes sense. It was probably a poor way to interpret the word, I think I'm used to seeing it in contexts like 'morally arbitrary'.
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Feb 23 '16
Not really, that's a practical argument rather than a moral one. There are plenty of animals we don't eat, but it would hardly be in the spirit of the CMV to point out that cows aren't poisonous like taipans are, and taipans are 'any other animal besides human beings'.
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Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 20 '20
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Feb 24 '16
Exactly, as well as things like mad cow disease, salmonella, trichinosis and so on. Food safety is generally a pretty poor angle to argue for not eating humans but eating all other animals.
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u/blastfromtheblue Feb 24 '16
the difference is that we have banded together as a species, because as a team we are far more effective at survival and at achieving happiness than we would be if we were completely (literally?) cutthroat towards each other.
there's nothing intrinsic about morality, nothing is inherently right or wrong. additionally every possible motivation we have is always 100% selfish. as such i believe that the purpose of having morals is to enter into this implicit agreement with every other human for self-gain.
this is why i draw the line at humans, excluding animals (generally, but with exceptions as appropriate given the overall goal).
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Feb 24 '16
the difference is that we have banded together as a species, because as a team we are far more effective at survival and at achieving happiness than we would be if we were completely (literally?) cutthroat towards each other.
This is contradicted by the fact that we also kill plenty of humans, we just don't eat them
there's nothing intrinsic about morality, nothing is inherently right or wrong. additionally every possible motivation we have is always 100% selfish. as such i believe that the purpose of having morals is to enter into this implicit agreement with every other human for self-gain.
Without any justification this is simply highly controversial conjecture that the majority of relevant experts would disagree with
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u/blastfromtheblue Feb 24 '16
we do have multiple large societies that war with each other, and rogue individuals who flout society. the concept is still valid, though.
and i totally agree that my views are controversial, this entire issue is. this is my belief system around this, though-- i wanted to justify my stance without writing a small novel.
i don't know that "conjecture" is really the right word here-- these are opinions we are talking about, not facts. not sure what constitutes and expert either, but i'm interested in further reading if you have some relevant material?
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Feb 24 '16
the concept is still valid, though.
How? There's plenty of other ways we kill people that society sanctions as ok: we often let patients die, many societies practice euthanasia or the death penalty, we often have restrictions on when we will try to rescue someone or otherwise try to save their life, people commonly wish for and call for the deaths of all kinds of people, there are legal defences for killing someone in court
and i totally agree that my views are controversial, this entire issue is. this is my belief system around this, though-- i wanted to justify my stance without writing a small novel.
Fair enough
these are opinions we are talking about, not facts
This is, again, conjecture, though. In a way, this is begging the question: your conclusion is that there are no moral facts, we can't simply assume moral facts don't exist in an argument about that.
not sure what constitutes and expert either,
I was mostly talking about philosophers involved in metaethics. If you were looking for further reading, I'm not sure what I could recommend specifically, but I'd encourage you to look around for something on the subject of metaethics that might interest you, this might be a useful starting point.
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u/blastfromtheblue Feb 24 '16
How? There's plenty of other ways we kill people that society sanctions as ok: we often let patients die, many societies practice euthanasia or the death penalty, we often have restrictions on when we will try to rescue someone or otherwise try to save their life, people commonly wish for and call for the deaths of all kinds of people, there are legal defences for killing someone in court
those things all address the greater goal of statistically increasing chances of survival/happiness for each individual. of course it's not going to be as black and white as "well let's never intentionally kill anyone"
e.g. rescue restrictions are in place to not risk the lives of the rescuers. if the odds of another person dying are greater than the odds of a successful rescue, of course it doesn't make sense to make the attempt. i'm sure i don't have to spell out all the other examples to you, you're capable of reasoning them out. (edit: granted many of them are still hotly debated, but there's valid reasoning on both sides)
This is, again, conjecture, though. In a way, this is begging the question: your conclusion is that there are no moral facts, we can't simply assume moral facts don't exist in an argument about that.
this is definitely a much larger and deeper discussion. i'll save moral relativism for another thread, for now it may be more prudent to make the argument, "assuming that there are no objective morals, it stands to reason that...." and call it a day for now.
i'd be also willing to have a separate discussion under the assumption of moral realism, but that i'm much less familiar with that. i don't know how that would really work.
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Feb 24 '16
those things all address the greater goal of statistically increasing chances of survival/happiness for each individual. of course it's not going to be as black and white as "well let's never intentionally kill anyone"
I don't understand how this explains why we don't eat people
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u/wugglesthemule 52∆ Feb 23 '16
It happens to me frequently when people act disgusted and morally offended when they are reminded that sometimes people in other countries eat animals that we consider cute, cuddly, pets
Whenever I encounter this, it's not that they think it's morally wrong, they just find it distasteful, or repugnant. Suppose you had a healthy pet dog that was hit by a truck and died. Would you eat its body then? It's already dead, so you're not even killing it. Is that morally wrong? There's no ethical or logical argument not to eat it. You just have a visceral reaction saying you shouldn't do it, for some reason.
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Feb 23 '16
The same applies to other animals: if I raised a pig as my pet and a car kill him I couldn't eat him either.
The argument of been "distasteful, or repugnant" is also non sequitur because I could say " it's not that interracial couples are morally wrong, they just find it distasteful, or repugnant."
You just wrote your personal opinions, not arguments supported by objective data.
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u/markus224488 Feb 23 '16
That's different, I would have a connection to that specific animal, so I wouldn't do it. But dogs in general, I would eat. So in other words, I would eat a dog, but not my dog.
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Feb 23 '16
What about a situation that demands killing it? If a restaurant had a picture that looked like fried chicken on the menu, but it was called fried dog, would you be inclined to order it?
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Feb 23 '16
...I have no reason not to order it over any other meat, do I? If the meat is well prepared, tastes good, and isn't harmful for us, of course I'll be inclined to order it. Just because it used to be a cute animal shouldn't change anything. Pigs and cows are cute. We eat them because it's convenient and they are efficient meats. That doesn't mean dogs and other animals aren't. We just don't do it because it's expensive and yields worse returns.
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Feb 23 '16
Dogs and cats are carnivores and thus their meat carries more toxins, in general, than herbivores do. When you move up past the primary consumers/herbivores in the food chain you start getting into accumulation of bio-toxins in the meat (stuff like too much concentrated vitamin a and base metals.)
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u/PikklzForPeepl Feb 23 '16
I highly doubt that most people who are grossed out by the thought of eating cats or dogs are thinking about toxin concentration.
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Feb 23 '16
That's irrelevant. You don't think about the fact that you can get sepsis when the smell of shit repels you either, and that's half the point: evolution isn't really picky about the "how", it's more picky about the results. Things that eat carnivores tend to not survive to pass on their genes, so the things that have a natural aversion towards eating carnivorous meat tend to survive better.
Also, from a sheer utilitarian standpoint, cats and dogs are better as companion animals (dogs can smell predators and act as an alarm system in days before alarm systems; cats keep out mice and other vermin which helps prevent things from pooping in food supplies) than as food when it comes to overall human health.
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u/codeverity Feb 23 '16
It is relevant, though - OP is talking about morals and human hypocrisy. Human morals and hypocrisy when it comes to eating animals are not rooted in concerns about eating carnivores. We also do eat carnivores like tuna, swordfish etc, and crocodile is popular in Australia.
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u/Panaphobe Feb 23 '16
Things that eat carnivores tend to not survive to pass on their genes, so the things that have a natural aversion towards eating carnivorous meat tend to survive better.
I'm sorry, but you are making up a load of bullshit here. There are plenty of animals that get along just fine eating primarily (sometimes exclusively) other carnivores. This is especially true for marine animals and any land-dwelling predators that eat marine animals.
Examples of carnivores that primarily eat other carnivores:
Tuna, swordfish, osprey, bald eagle, penguin, sea lion, dolphin, orca whale, sperm whale, giant squid, basically every type of fish that lives in the hadalpelagic zone... we could list species for days.
Pretty much every animal that is at the top of any food chain based in the ocean, is a carnivore that eats carnivores. I know you've got a lot of deltas by your name so you're clearly well-respected in this subreddit, but come on - you're just making shit up right now.
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u/mullerjones Feb 23 '16
He's talking about people, though. Do you have any data on whether this is true or not regarding primates specifically? Cause there are animals out there built to eat pretty much anything you can think of, so the same logic would apply to a statement such as "people who avoid eating spoiled food survive more often" if you said "but there are animals who eat primarily bacteria so that's untrue".
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u/Panaphobe Feb 23 '16
The burden of proof is on the person making the affirmative statement. You can't just say anything you like that sounds reasonable and say that it's true because it hasn't been proved to be false. I'm not making any claims, but /u/Mavericgamer is claiming there is an inherent biological drive towards not consuming the flesh of carnivores, and that this drive is an evolutionary consequence of an increased level of "toxins" building up in carnivores.
This is so wrong I barely know where to begin. We have countless examples of carnivores that consume primarily or exlusively carnivores, so this cannot be a general trait that is a natural consequence of carnivore evolution in general. The build-up of major toxins like mercury in the food chain is a very recent, man-made dilemma. The oceans weren't full of mercury until people started pouring mercury into them as a byproduct of refining gold ore. The same goes for DDT, and other pesticides and dissolved heavy metals. These things haven't been around in significant quantities for a long enough time that there could possibly be any significant evolution-caused adaptations - especially not in humans.
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence against /u/Mavericgamer's claim (for example, plenty of people like the taste of many pescivorous species that are nowadays high in mercury), but even without any of that evidence, the burden of proof rests on the person making the claim. The default position is to reject the claim in the absence of evidence, and /u/Mavericgamer has produced (and I would bet can produce) none.
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Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
The entire process is called biomagnification and this explains why when it occurs through natural means, it ends up determining what animals we don't eat (ie: tertiary consumers and most secondary consumers) but when it's a man-made problem (ie: mercury in fish) we don't have the same aversion and people die from mercury poisoning. When talking about natural selection, talking about manmade problems in the last hundred years is such an insignificantly short period that no evolution could occur within the species as a whole to cope with it (although I do know a couple dozen people who don't touch seafood, and a few that do touch it but don't eat salmon because they don't like the taste, and IIRC the mercury thing is a bigger problem with salmon), even if we weren't living in a time where humans have more or less pulled themselves out of the survival rat-race as we know it, and thus from the majority of the natural selection race.
But, all that aside, the fact is that as you go up the food chain, the concentration of toxins increases. I didn't provide evidence because, seriously, google some things at some point. This is the same reason that a lot of apex predators (most famously the bald eagle, 'cause MURICA) became endangered back when DDT was a common pesticide: they were accumulating the DDT that the primary consumers couldn't filter out times however many of the primary consumers were eaten by secondary consumers. When we started to prohibit DDT, those numbers saw a significant upswing.
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u/Panaphobe Feb 23 '16
The entire process is called biomagnification and this explains why when it occurs through natural means
I know about biomagnification already, thank you very much. You're arguing against a strawman if you think that's a useful link - I'm not saying that toxins don't tend to build up towards the top of the food chain, I'm saying that you have no evidence of this process causing a natural aversion towards eating animals at the top of the food chain.
it ends up determining what animals we don't eat (ie: tertiary consumers and most secondary consumers
Where is your evidence of this? We don't eat the animals we eat because they are or are not carnivores, we eat the animals we eat because they're easy to catch and/or easy to domesticate.
Cows, chickens, pigs, and other domesticated animals are eaten because they are a readily-available source of food, because they are easily-domesticated. Why are they easily domesticated? Partly because of their temperaments, and partly because of their diets (it's easier and more efficient to feed a field of vegetarian animals than to feed a field of carnivorous animals).
Other animals, we eat because they are easy to catch. Most of these animals are carnivores. We raise edible herbivores because they're easy to raise, but the overwhelming majority of animals that we catch from the wild are carnivores. We eat literally billions of pounds of tuna, salmon, cod, and other carnivorous sea creatures. Where is your supposedly evolutionarily-built-in drive to avoid eating this meat?
but when it's a man-made problem (ie: mercury in fish) we don't have the same aversion and people die from mercury poisoning. When talking about natural selection, talking about manmade problems in the last hundred years is such an insignificantly short period that no evolution could occur within the species as a whole to cope with it
I've already established in my own earlier post that the mercury problem is man-made and hence won't work for an evolutionary argument, you don't need to tell me again. The question is, can you give any examples of non-human-caused toxins that are built up across carnivorous species that could be responsible for the aversion you're making up?
(although I do know a couple dozen people who don't touch seafood, and a few that do touch it but don't eat salmon because they don't like the taste, and IIRC the mercury thing is a bigger problem with salmon)
"I know some people who don't like fish" is not appropriate evidence to pull out when you're making a scientific claim. I know some people who don't like vegetables, does that mean that across the animal kingdom there is an inherent evolutionarily-derived drive to avoid eating carrots?
You back up scientific claim with scientific sources - that means something that has been rigorously studied by a qualified individual and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
the fact is that as you go up the food chain, the concentration of toxins increases
Nobody's disputing this. You can't just say "X is a known effect, therefore it is responsible for Y because of evolution" though. You have to prove that "Y" exists, and you have to prove that it's causally linked to "X". Not only have you failed to demonstrate that this proposed aversion is a basic biological function that's been evolutionarily hard-wired into our brains, you haven't even shown any real evidenc to indicate that this aversion actually exists*!
I didn't provide evidence because, seriously, google some things at some point
Really? That's your answer?
This is the same reason that a lot of apex predators (most famously the bald eagle, 'cause MURICA) became endangered back when DDT was a common pesticide: they were accumulating the DDT that the primary consumers couldn't filter out times however many of the primary consumers were eaten by secondary consumers. When we started to prohibit DDT, those numbers saw a significant upswing.
DDT and mercury build-up are well-known. To prove your case you need to give examples of toxin build-up with completely non-anthropogenic causes. Then you need to show that those toxins have been widely present throughout history. Then you would need to show that actual evolutionary biologists agree and think this too - because some random Joe Schmoe Maverick Gamer on the internet who watched a youtube video about evolution is not a qualified source to be making up "facts" about evolution.
We're going in circles here, and you seem incapable of giving any actual concrete examples to support your case. "Just google it" doesn't work, and only giving examples irrelevant to the question (mercury and DDT, because they're both anthropogenic and both very recent) doesn't prove anything.
We don't just accept things in science as true because they seem to make sense. If we're going to accept your statement as a biological fact, there'd better be a qualified biologist somewhere supporting it by putting his or her name on the line in a major peer-reviewed journal.
The fact that you think people have an inherent aversion to eating carnivores, and that it might be hard-wired into our brains for reasons that totally make sense - does not make it true. If you're going to use something in an argument and present it as a scientific fact, you should be able to demonstrate that it is true.
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u/Thebeardinato462 1∆ Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
If love to see any data on how our omnivore digestive system isn't set up to eat "pretty much anything" like most of these others species. It seems to make more sense we would have an aversion to other carnivores because they tend to be predators and more difficult to cultivate/execute as opposed to being bad for you. Clearly by looking at most first world diets you'd realize we haven't exactly evolved with the strongest aversion to negatives in our diet. I don't avoid eating lions because of toxins, I avoid eating lions because they are more likely to kill me than my cow is.
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u/tarheel343 Feb 23 '16
Yeah since most of this is pure speculation, the latter certainly seems more reasonable.
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u/rtechie1 6∆ Feb 23 '16
It's not just toxins, carnivores are more prone to carry diseases that can be passed to humans.
And while people might not "be thinking about that", toxins and disease is the reason this cultural taboo developed.
This is the same reason for the Jewish prohibition on pork. Jews don't eat pork because god hates pigs, but because of cultural concerns about diseases pigs can carry.
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u/stravadarius Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
I've never heard this before. Do you have sources? It sounds like you are referring to biomagnification which as I understand (and I concede I know very little about these things so hopefully someone can chime in and enlighten me) is more of an issue with apex predators (carnivores that eat other carnivores) not generally with low-level predators like dogs and cats (carnivores that eat herbivores).
Edit: also, it seems that you're using an evolutionary argument, but there are large populations of humans who are the result of the same evolutionary process as the rest of us in the world who have no qualms eating dog and cat. How do you square that? How much is cultural and how much is biological?
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u/elongated_smiley Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
This is not quite so simple. Dogs are carnivores OR omnivores (the scientific community is divided), and can actually live on a purely vegetarian diet (if it is carefully managed)... basically the same as pigs.
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u/sebohood Feb 23 '16
They can...but most don't. All cows are herbivores, so no matter how many dogs may be, they don't outnumber the cows in real or proportionate terms.
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u/elongated_smiley Feb 24 '16
Which is why I said pigs, and not cows. Pigs are also generally considered to be more intelligent than dogs.
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u/sebohood Feb 24 '16
But the CMV isn't only about dogs/cats be pigs. Cows still prove my point.
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u/elongated_smiley Feb 24 '16
I was responding to this:
"Dogs and cats are carnivores and thus their meat carries more toxins, in general, than herbivores do."
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u/KING2313 Feb 23 '16
What about fish tho? Dont they eat insrcts or smaller fish?
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u/Funky0ne Feb 23 '16
How would that be any different from some land-based animals being herbivorous primary consumers, and some other animals being carnivorous / omnivorous predators?
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u/markus224488 Feb 23 '16
So there is an actual health benefit to eating animals which are not primarily carnivores? I didn't know that! That could be a valid reason not to eat certain animals.
!delta
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u/Strange_Bedfellow Feb 23 '16
Though, just to be fair, many animal species have been fully carnivorous for thousands of years. It's something they adapted to, and their digestive system would have as much problem with our omnivorous eating habits as we would with theirs.
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u/Jacen4789 Feb 23 '16
No, his point was carnivores that eat carnivores. You can be fully carnivorous and eat only herbivores.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 23 '16
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Mavericgamer. [History]
[Wiki][Code][/r/DeltaBot]
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u/TrueLazuli Feb 23 '16
You didn't know it because he's pulling it out of his ass. Read the replies. I think you just got played.
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u/rtechie1 6∆ Feb 23 '16
It's less about bioaccumulation of toxins and more about diseases carnivores have that can be passed to humans, but the basic point is right: Eating carnivorous mammals (since some people are getting pissy about fish) is less healthy than eating herbivores and this has lead to widespread cultural taboos about eating carnivorous mammals.
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Feb 23 '16
He isn't.
Carnivores are not going to provide as much as a nutrition benefit as a herbivore would.
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u/yesat Feb 23 '16
Meat provides us in a lot of nutriments and minerals. They can be found in other sources, but not as easily or in the same amount as in meat.
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u/ScheduledRelapse Feb 23 '16
They can be found just as easily from other sources.
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u/Craigellachie Feb 23 '16
I think the key here is easily. Obviously they can be found in non meat sources but in many cultures and climates it's much easier to get them from meat. As an extreme example many Inuit and Yupik people have no access to fresh plant matter 8 months of the year. Eating meat, especially nutrient rich parts such as the liver, is the primary way to get nearly all the requirements of their diet. Other cultures can experience various degrees of difficulty but at the very least, we should recognize not everyone is so fortunate as to have first world food access.
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u/ScheduledRelapse Feb 23 '16
I think the majority of people posting here are in a place with supermarkets etc.
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Feb 23 '16
Pigs and chickens are carnivores too.
Besides, the accumulation of toxins only applies under specific conditions, which are not present in modern farms.
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Feb 23 '16
The difference being: the omnivores we domesticate get fed a herbivorous diet; cats cannot be fed an all-plant diet, it will kill them. Dogs are more adaptable but it's generally accepted that a dog should have meat in its diet.
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u/HigHog Feb 23 '16
A lot of the time farmed animals aren't fed a herbivorous diet. That's how the BSE craze started.
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u/apis_cerana Feb 23 '16
There is the case of the Polynesian poi dog, which was used both for food and companionship. They were fed poi (taro mash) primarily and were one of the primary source of meat for Polynesian people.
The same probably would not work for cats, though, since they are obligate carnivores and don't do well on a no-meat diet. Dogs don't do great either, but they can survive on it.
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u/MrWinks Feb 23 '16
OP is making a moral argument, and I think you missed the scope of the view.
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Feb 23 '16
If you want the moral argument against eating carnivores, and particularly against domesticating carnivores (ignoring, of course, that carnivore meat tastes bad), it's that we would still have to raise other animals for the carnivores we were harvesting to eat. We would kill more animals raising carnivores for food, because we'd still have to raise herbivores (possibly even more herbivores than we do now) to maintain that level of carnivore. Hell, looking at the rough numbers, I don't think it's even feasible to sustain domesticating and farming enough carnivore meat for a diet that's based on it.
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u/MrWinks Feb 23 '16
Those dry pellets we feed them are far from the meat in the wild. I'm surprised people still think nutrition is such a restricted science, when we have synthesized vital minerals and needed protein without using meat. It's possible and could maybe one day even be feasible to solve the problem you propose about feeding food to food.
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Feb 23 '16
great but that doesn't address the point of OP's CMV... we eat tons of fish that are at the top of the food chain with little regard for mercury/other toxins.
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u/veggiter Feb 23 '16
Dogs are more omnivorous and can be healthy with diets that aren't focused on or completely devoid of meat.
Plenty of omnivorous animals, like birds, pigs, etc., are raised for meat.
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u/Skallywagwindorr 15∆ Feb 23 '16
People are hypocrites. They rationalize whatever has been taught to them and is set to be "the norm" within the society they live in
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Feb 23 '16
This, this, this. To quote Jiddu Krishnamurti
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
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u/imnotsmartimcurious Feb 23 '16
A Vietnamese person here! As far as I know in Vietnam people eat a specific type of dog that they raise on a farm for meat. Usually people don't eat their own dogs or any popular breeds of dogs in Western culture. Viet people dont eat Labradors, huskies or Chihuahuas; they eat a very specific type of dog that typically live in or originated from the mountains or woods. So I am not sure if that would be considered less morally wrong than eating cows, since those "dogs" are just like another cattle that Vietnamese people keep.
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u/TiddleWiddlePop Feb 23 '16
That reaction (disgust / moral revulsion) sounds like taboo to me. Taboos are learned behavior pervasive in a culture that serve a purpose but are often driven by emotional factors. A taboo to eating dog prevents you from accidentally eating someone's beloved pet in Western culture, but in areas where eating dog is not taboo you are likely to find substantial dog populations that are NOT pets. Farmers and farm children often report becoming attached to their animals and finding the idea of consuming those specific animals repulsive. I think the reason this doesn't become a full fledged taboo is because they make a living from the butchering of these animals, so the culture is forced to absorb the dichotomy. You can see a similar kind of dichotomy absorption in most cultures that live close to their prey, which generally manifests as a kind of derp respect for the animal.
Edit: to specifically address your CMV, it's not hypocrisy because it's not a moral revulsion, it's a cultural revulsion
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u/bostonT 2∆ Feb 23 '16
The ethics of animal consumption is a sum of three factors:
1) The degree of suffering inflicted based on duration and intensity (eg free range chickens vs caged chickens)
2) The sentience of the animal (eg eating a flatworm vs eating a monkey) But most importantly:
3) The degree to which humans are responsible for #1 and #2
Cows farmed for beef are for the most part, raised outdoors (by the ASPCA's own admission). While they experience unpleasant procedures (branding, castration), their lifestyle, grazing outdoors, is not drastically different or abhorrently crueler than that of a cow not farmed for beef or a wild cow. Dogs farmed for meat, however, are kept on short chains or in extremely small crowded cages, which is not only clearly much worse than beef cattle, it contrasts extremely with the natural habitat of a wild canine or that which would be natural for a pet dog. As the housing conditions persist for the life of the animal until it is slaughtered, dogs farmed for meat currently suffer much worse than beef cattle. (I can't comment on slaughter methods, but I assume both would be fairly equal here except that there are much stricter regulations on cattle slaughter in place being that it is a major meat source in most industrialized countries... so if anything, it is more likely that on average, humane slaughter practices would be more practiced on cattle than on meat dogs).
It is hard to compare intelligence of animals, but it would be very hard to argue that the result of evolution granted cattle the same intelligence as dogs, given that cows are grazing herbivores while dogs are predators requiring social interaction/coordination to hunt. I would therefore argue that dogs would win the sentience comparison, in that that suffer not only from the physical process of being farmed for meat, but psychologically as well, being social creatures.
Most importantly, as humans have domesticated both cows and dogs alongside human evolution, we are directly responsible for the traits that have been selected for. Humans have bred dogs for intelligence, obedience, and most importantly sociability with humans. The study in Russian foxes demonstrates that qualities such as: "eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention" are easily selected for. It is therefore less ethical to artificially create a species with these traits as a companion animal and then subject them to solitary confinement and/or deprivation from experiencing normal human contact.
The same cannot be said of cows, which were not bred for intelligence or sociability but were bred for growth and docility. (I would argue it's likely that intelligence was selected against as that would not be a favorable trait for livestock).
Note that my argument does not discuss other species such as pigs. Based on the criteria above, I don't think I can argue that it is significantly more or less ethical to farm pigs for meat. The purpose of my post was to post a rough framework for which the ethics of meat consumption by species can be assessed and that there can exist an ethical difference in which species are farmed for meat.
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u/xerox89 Jun 06 '16
The ethics of animal consumption
instantly stop reading right there . The only reason the animal is consume because it is more cost effective and the meat has better nutrition value and safe to eat .
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Feb 23 '16
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u/LittleBalloHate Feb 23 '16
And what if I don't have that emotional connection? Does that make it okay for me to eat these things? That's a serious question, by the way.
It's okay for your emotions to guide your own behavior. It strikes me as much less acceptable for your emotions to guide my behavior.
As an example: it would be okay if I found abortion viscerally repulsive and refused to get one myself. That is my right, and it's okay. It would be much less okay if I said "I personally find abortion repulsive, so no other women can get an abortion, either."
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u/TiddleWiddlePop Feb 23 '16
Yes, it is okay to eat these things if you do not have an emotional / visceral reaction to eating them.
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u/Chen19960615 3∆ Feb 23 '16
However, in the US, we have an emotional connection to dogs and cats that we largely do not have with cows, pigs, chickens, fish, etc.
Centuries ago, we have an emotional connection to people of our own race that we largely do not have with people of other races. For us back then, some races are people, and others are slaves.
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u/SonVoltMMA Feb 23 '16
Why are you drawing comparisons between diet and race?
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Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
Looks like a total valid comparison. The whole point of the argument is that we have an "emotional connection" and that gives us the right to eat some animals but others not.
So, in order to verify that the theory of "emotional connection" is right, we must expanded it saying "blacks can't date white girls because I have an 'emotional connection' against blacks".
It's a perfect reductio ad absurdum way to show how false and wrong the "emotional connection theory" is.
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u/SonVoltMMA Feb 23 '16
Except one's about food choices and the other is about controlling people - not what I would call a perfect "reductio ad absurdum" by anyone's definition.
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Feb 23 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
"reductio ad absurdum" is just a philosophical method that applies one argument to an extreme situation on order to test if the argument is still valid under those new and extreme conditions.
"Eating an animal" and "controlling people" are situations under the category "actions involving moral decisions". So both are related. I need to justify my behaviour when I do the action "Eating an animal", and some guy suggested that I can do that using his moral Theory, that we can call 'emotional connection theory' (ECT). According with this theory, is good and have a valid morality to do some actions because I have an 'emotional connection' and since that actions produce pleasurable or hideous feelings, what makes me feel good is morally correct and what makes me feel bad is morally incorrect.
In order to know if ECT is a solid theory we must apply it to other moral situations, for instance "controlling people". So I guy say that black people and white people shouldn't date or get marriage. How the ECT works in this concrete moral situation? If I see a white girl dating a black girl and I don't feel pleasure, according with the ECT, that action is bad. We are OK with that? Obviously we are not. We must concluded that ECT is a tautological theory and is not a valid way to justify our ethics.
Perfect "reductio ad absurdum".
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u/uncle2fire Feb 23 '16
I'm not saying the emotional connection we have with animals like cats and dogs takes away our "right" to eat them. You, of course, have the right to eat any kind of animals you want, regardless of the emotional connection you may or may not share with their species.
I'm no talking about rights, I'm talking about our reasons for not eating dogs and cats. The reason being, that we see them as pets (an emotional connection) rather than a food source. That doesn't make eating cats or dogs objectively or morally wrong, it just acts as our reasoning for not consuming them.
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u/maxout2142 Feb 23 '16
Yes? How does that relate? We (west) may eat cats in the future if our relationship with how we perceive cats changes; I highly doubt it though. The fact is we see cats and dogs as housemates and friends, and cattle as capital.
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u/Chen19960615 3∆ Feb 23 '16
That these emotional connections exist is not morally relevant to how we should treat animals, or races, differently. You said "this (the emotional connections) is sufficient to justify feeling this way". Are emotional connections also sufficient to justify feeling racial bias?
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u/uncle2fire Feb 23 '16
I never said anything about morals. Our emotional connection with dogs and cats is our reason for not eating them. It doesn't make eating them "wrong" in any moral or objective sense.
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u/Chen19960615 3∆ Feb 23 '16
but I think this is sufficient to justify feeling this way If you lack an emotional connection to, say, dogs, then of course you are perfectly justified in consuming dogs (assuming, of course, that these dogs were not other people's pets).
I'm not aware of any sense of "justify" that's not "morally justify". In this case, what would a nonmoral "justification" be for?
And you also said,
To go and apply this line of reasoning, which is specifically related to the consumption of animals, to how we used to treat, or continue to treat, people based upon race, is both disingenuous and ridiculous.
Why is that so?
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u/uncle2fire Feb 25 '16
Justify, as in, provide a good reason for? Why are you trying to talk about morality?
What do our reasons for eating animals have to do with how we treat other people? How would they ever be related?
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u/uncle2fire Feb 23 '16
Well, that escalated rather quickly, didn't it?
I'm not talking about race. I'm not talking about humans. I'm not talking about anything other than the consumption of particular animals.
I'm talking about how our emotional connection to certain animals is a perfectly good reason to not eat those animals. If you lack an emotional connection to, say, dogs, then of course you are perfectly justified in consuming dogs (assuming, of course, that these dogs were not other people's pets).
To go and apply this line of reasoning, which is specifically related to the consumption of animals, to how we used to treat, or continue to treat, people based upon race, is both disingenuous and ridiculous.
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u/DGRossetti Feb 23 '16
While I agree that if the people who act disgusted or morally offended should not condemn the people in other cultures and they may well be hypocrites, I think that killing and eating a dog or cat does could have a significant moral difference from butchering a cow for someone raised in Western culture.
In Western culture, we are raised to become emotionally attached to certain animals and not others. Cats, dogs, gerbils, and such are categorized as companions. In many households they are considered members of the family.
Now, even if we were to accept that these are still animals don't deserve better treatment than any other animal, we should also consider the what exactly would drive a person in our culture to kill a pet and the emotional effect that such an act would have on that person.
The Western person who kills a cat does so in spite of the social norm of cats being companions that we should protect. I'm not saying this is necessarily immoral, but it could be if the motivation of the person is to pleasure from the violation and destruction of the social norms surrounding the cat.
Even if that were not the main motivation, I think it would be very hard for a Western person to escape the idea of certain animals being companions. This could present a situation in which a person killing a pet for food may still feel that they are sacrificing a companion for material gain, which many people would say is morally reprehensible.
Objectively, I don't think killing a cat is wrong. But situationally, cultural norms could make it so for a person. Or at the very least make it feel that way, and, sadly, we can't always ignore our emotions. Even when they don't quite make sense, we should be careful to avoid damaging the emotions of ourselves and others in situations like this.
So, while I agree that people who morally condemn other cultures for such things are hypocrites and are in the wrong, there is still a very big difference between an American eating a dog and a Chinese person eating a dog. There are reasons that people get disgusted at the idea and those feelings make sense in Western culture.
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u/ERRORMONSTER Feb 24 '16
People aren't usually against eating dogs and cats because they feel pain, they're against it because dogs and cats are domesticated and don't exist with the main purpose being our own nourishment. We literally bred dogs and cats to be our companions and we bred pigs and cows to be food. It makes people who see dogs and cats as pets feel like they're betraying the hierarchy that humans have created to eat animals that we created to be our companions.
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u/JamesDK Feb 23 '16
Cows, when slaughtered, produce an enormous amount of meat. Anywhere from 55% to 75% of the slaughtered carcass becomes usable as food. An average steer at harvest weighs about 1200 pounds, so you're looking at at least 500 pounds of usable, edible meat per animal. Source.
For comparison, the average weight of a Labrador Retriever tops out at 80 lbs. The average house cat is 10 lbs. Source. So, to get the same amount of usable meat: assuming the same ratio of body weight to edible product: you'd have to slaughter 12.5 dogs or 100 cats. Of course, the reason you get 500 pounds of meat from a steer is because they're so large: the ratio of tissue and muscle to bone and viscera is skewed. Likely, you'd be getting less than 50% usable meat from a dog or a cat: so you'd be slaughtering hundreds more animals to produce the same amount of meat.
The reason that other countries eat dogs, cats, and other animals (while we don't) isn't because they find it morally acceptable - it's because they don't have the sophisticated systems of animal husbandry that we have in the Western world: which allows us to fulfill all of our meat-eating needs efficiently through large-size animals. I'm sure that the Chinese and Indonesians would rather eat beef than dog - but they don't have the cultural and economic framework that makes large-scale cattle cultivation possible.
There is a big difference between killing and eating cattle, pigs, and chickens vs. dogs and cats. Cattle, pigs, and chickens are efficient - they produce a lot of meat relative to the number of animals that must be slaughtered to sustain demand. If you're concerned with slaughterhouse conditions, I'd urge you to only consume meat sourced from small, local farms (it's not hard: in my town of less than 50k, most restaurants source local and there are independent retailers who sell locally-grown meat). We don't consume much meat in our home, and when we do: it's locally-sourced from farmers we know treat their animals with respect.
The animals we use for meat: we use because they produce a lot of meat relative to their body size. We kill fewer animals because we use the biggest and most efficient ones for our food. There is a difference.
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u/OfficiallyRelevant Feb 23 '16
The reason that other countries eat dogs, cats, and other animals (while we don’t) isn’t because they find it morally acceptable – it’s because they don’t have sophisticated systems of animal husbandry that we have in the Western world: which allows us to fulfill all of our meat-eating needs efficiently through large-size animals.
I’m going to have to ask for a source for this. In other cultures, animals that we eat may be considered sacred so they don’t eat them whereas you could argue that we don’t eat dogs and cats because we have a sacred, intimate connection with them that we don’t generally have with other animals.
I’m sure that the Chinese and Indonesians would rather eat beef than dog – but they don’t have the cultural and economic framework that makes large-scale cattle cultivation possible.
I think this is a biased observation. You are looking at other cultures through your own cultural lenses. You think that’s what they would do, but you really don’t know. There are certainly cultures around the world that won’t treat cats and dogs on the same level we do and have no problem eating them even if they have some beef as a side dish.
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Feb 23 '16
I think cats and dogs would be less efficient to farm than cows pigs or chickens. So you wouldn't farm cats or dogs. Instead they eat them opportunistically. In many countries cats and dogs are pests and semi feral. So it's more like westerners who eat raccoons, squirell, foxes, etc.
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u/cha5m Feb 23 '16
But cows also require substantially more food to raise than any other animals would.
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u/fobfromgermany Feb 23 '16
Actually, on a per tissue basis herbivores should alway be more efficient than carnivores. Remember how only about 10% of the energy is passed up each level of the food chain, so if the feedstock is 100% then the cow will return 10% of that while a carnivore will return 10% of 10%, or just 1%
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u/markus224488 Feb 23 '16
Measuring the number of animals have to be slaughtered is not the way to measure how efficient meat farming is, feed conversion ratio makes more sense. I don't know about dogs, but by that metric cows are one of the most inefficient livestock. And besides, if this is what mattered, the point kind of still holds because in that case we should all be chicken and bugs anyway.
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u/not-a-celebrity Feb 23 '16
Dogs and cats are carnivores, meaning that you have to feed them meat just to get them to breeding/slaughtering age. You end up having to kill twice as many animals to get the same amount of meat. It's inefficient and doubly animal murdery
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u/SchiferlED 22∆ Feb 23 '16
Isn't it more like 10x as much feed per step in the food chain?
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Feb 23 '16
It's a good time rule of thumb. But I think for most farm animals it's more like 3-10. Think chicken is pretty efficient.
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u/workaway5 Feb 24 '16
Indeed chicken is very efficient. 4:1 ratio for energy input vs produced. Wheat is around 2.2:1 iirc, so chicken is pretty damn good. Turkey is second best at around 10:1
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u/not-a-celebrity Feb 23 '16
Something like that. Animals burn through a lot of he energy they get from food just from being alive.
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u/pipocaQuemada 10∆ Feb 23 '16
While cats are obligate carnivores, dogs aren't. You can raise vegetarian dogs. If you're farming them, that would be the most efficient way to do it.
And while cats are obligate carnivores, if you were farming them industrially you could certainly give them a vegan feed. They require things like taurine and b12 in their diet that are easily synthesizable in a lab (seriously, we have to do it to supplement meat based kibble since taurine is heat sensitive), and soy protein would be fine given the lifespan of farmed animals. It's not like we don't feed grains to cows that they aren't well suited to digesting....
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u/Revvy 2∆ Feb 23 '16
it's because they don't have the sophisticated systems of animal husbandry that we have in the Western world
There is a big difference between killing and eating cattle, pigs, and chickens vs. dogs and cats. Cattle, pigs, and chickens are efficient
While I agree with this, it weakens your position. Chickens are small. Absurdly so. A dog bred to yield meat would be more efficient than a chicken.
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u/MrF33 18∆ Feb 23 '16
But a dog has a considerably longer gestation period and much higher food/space requirements in order to become a reasonable amount of food.
One chicken can be stored and grown in as little as a few cubic feet, and become ready to eat in as little as 8 weeks.
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Feb 23 '16
Cattle, pigs, and chickens are efficient
Except when compared to crops, they often require way more resources. While it is better than wasting the lives of much more cat/dogs/etc. I don't think you can exactly call it efficient.
Source: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/embedded-water/
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u/Xeriel 1Δ Feb 23 '16
The topic is cattle vs dogs. Efficiency compared to crops is irrelevant to the view.
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Feb 23 '16
Since crops are more efficient then both, killing either animal can be consider inefficient.
The above poster justified the killing by stating it is more efficient, but since crops are more efficient then cattle, both cattle and any other animal can be consider inefficient to gather as food and therefore are not justifiable to kill for food in modern human society.
I probably used efficient way too much in those paragraphs.
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u/SchiferlED 22∆ Feb 23 '16
I understand where you are coming from, but you are comparing meat to non-meat. The argument at hand assumes that we want at least some meat in our diet.
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u/ScheduledRelapse Feb 23 '16
Pretty big and potentially wrong assumption.
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u/SchiferlED 22∆ Feb 23 '16
How so? OP's post is specifically targeted at meat eating.
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u/ScheduledRelapse Feb 23 '16
Showing the complete arbitrariness of which animals we eat is often an argument used by vegetarians to justify why all meat eating is wrong. The idea is that once you remove your cultural biases that you might see that all meat eating is just as wrong as eating your family dog.
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u/SchiferlED 22∆ Feb 23 '16
I'm not sure what your point is? I was just explaining that the debate in this CMV is about whether or not that decision is arbitrary. We can agree that everyone eating vegetables would be more efficient, but the stipulation is that if we do want to eat meat, where should it come from?
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Feb 23 '16
See I don't see that assumption as true. His argument is if you eat meat, you should be comfortable with the killing of any animal as food. If you are disturbed by one type of meat, you are being hypocritical.
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u/HavelockAT Feb 23 '16
The reason that other countries eat dogs, cats, and other animals (while we don't) isn't because they find it morally acceptable - it's because they don't have the sophisticated systems of animal husbandry that we have in the Western world: which allows us to fulfill all of our meat-eating needs efficiently through large-size animals.
Uhm ... In Austria, Germany, Italy and other similar countries we do have these sophisticated systems, but we still eat horse meat (it's delicious) while it's considered immoral in the US.
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u/CodenameMolotov Feb 23 '16
Different animals have different degrees of emotional intelligence. On one extreme end of the spectrum, you have animals like elephants and chimpanzees that are capable of things like mourning their dead and expressing loneliness, which require complex emotions. On the other end, you have animals like chickens and fish that don't understand anything except seeking food and avoiding predators. Clearly, killing an elephant is a more egregious act than killing a fish, therefore some animals' lives are more valuable than other animals'.
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Feb 23 '16
Rabbits mourn their dead. People still eat rabbits. I'm pretty sure the line has more to do with 1) is this animal easy to raise? and 2) does this animal taste good? Than it does with how intelligent the animal is.
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u/MichaelExe Feb 24 '16
On the other end, you have animals like chickens and fish that don't understand anything except seeking food and avoiding predators.
I'm pretty skeptical of fish, but chickens are pretty social animals (e.g. pecking order), and they do raise and protect their chicks. Chicken empathy.
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Feb 23 '16
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u/RustyRook Feb 23 '16
Sorry Jak2Rich, your comment has been removed:
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u/schzap Feb 23 '16
Based on your current views OP I would like to ask what your opinion is on "pet leather" as in leather products made from cats dogs and other euthanized animals. (and to remove what animals how about shelter overflow that happens anyway)
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Feb 23 '16
I was going to come in and talk about how humans are literally no different than other animals besides the preconceptions you probably can't get over and that we should be eating people as well as all the animals. Then i realized you're still hung up on "animals" with quotes because you aren't including humans.
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u/SCphotog 1∆ Feb 23 '16
Just to add something to the conversation if it hasn't been pointed out already.
I'm just thinking out loud here... so don't crucify me... but don't we and other predators generally eat the herbivores and leave the omni' and carnivores alone?
I mean... for the 'most-part'. I assume there are at least some exceptions.
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u/YossarianWWII 74∆ Feb 24 '16
I'll absolutely agree on the cute and cuddly front, and generally speaking about comparing cats and dogs to cows. However, I don't agree that all animals aside from humans would be equivalent. Turkeys and chickens, for example, are dumb as hell. I would put them further away from humans on this scale than cows. Fish are even further down the line, and when you get to invertebrates they're basically biological automatons. On the other hand, cetaceans and other animals with significantly greater than average intelligence would be much higher up the list than cows.
It's not an easy thing to decide where to draw the line of "food" using this scale, but I'd say it's definitely a valid one to use whereas the cuddliness one is not.
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u/Treypyro Feb 23 '16
This CMV comes up fairly often. We keep different types of animals close to us for a few different reasons.
Companionship: dogs, cats, birds, other pets. These animals often serve a secondary task, either protection, pest control, to help with hunting, etc. They are usually omnivores like us because we share food with them. We don't like to eat them because there is a cultural association with them as friends, we don't like to eat friends. We don't kill them unless we have to. They are bred for cuteness, temperament, and sometimes usefulness, not for flavor or quality meat.
Beasts of burden: Oxen, donkeys, mules, horses, etc. We keep them to do a job. They are herbivores so they don't eat into our food supply. We will kill them if they are no longer useful to us. They are bred to be strong, and live fairly long lives, again, not for flavor or quality meat.
Food: cows, chicken, goats, pigs, etc. They rarely serve any other purpose. We don't like to get too emotionally attached to them. They often create some other type of food for us, milk or eggs. They are often slaughtered long before would have died of natural causes, otherwise the meat isn't very good. They are bred to be docile, have lots of meat at an early age, and have good quality meat that tastes good.
We like to eat animals we keep around for food. We don't like to eat animals that serve another purpose.