Unfortunately the documentary Cowspiracy is operating with massively exaggerated numbers (it claims meat is responsible for more than 50% of ghg emissions, it's explained on the wikipedia article of the film).
Real numbers from credible sources are that greenhouse gas emissions from the meat and dairy industry are around 15%. Which is large enough to take this problem seriously, but it's still far away from those claims.
I think this is harming the case. The problem is big enough to be passionate about fake meat. No need for exaggeration.
I watched Cowspiracy. It was not convincing. It used numbers that seemed wildly exaggerated on their face, even before doing follow-on research. It also seemed designed to be emotionally manipulative more than informative. Maybe I don't watch enough documentaries, but it had a youtube conspiracy theorist vibe to it, rather than a measured, investigative approach.
Any time there's a vegan angle to a scientific study or a documentary the standard of proof for me is much higher because these causes are often pushed for animal rights reasons.
> Any time there's a vegan angle to a scientific study or a documentary the standard of proof for me is much higher because these causes are often pushed for animal rights reasons.
I think that's a mistake. Or rather, the standard of proof shouldn't be higher for "vegan angle" scientific studies, because most studies have some background reason for existing, so our standard of proof should be high in all cases.
7% isn't necessarily better, it could just mean USA adds more additional unnecessary GHG emissions to their agricultural production.
I can't quite recall from the IPCC reports but isn't logistics, particularly shipping, far bigger a contributor. Not that we can only address the biggest contributors. So perhaps shipped soya/maize/whatever is worse than local meat?
This is a really strange argument.
Even though you wouldn't exist if not for your parents, but you would still probably agree that they shouldn't have you for dinner?
When animal smugglers are caught at the border, the police has to handle the animals. They can't release them into the wild, they can't repossess and sell them because of the unknown health risks and costs, and they can't keep them at the border for all time. The most common result is thus to kill them.
Similar when there is an dangerous pandemic among animals, the most common response is to kill all the sick and those close by. Culling is the most common response to bird flue.
For obvious reason we do not treat humans in the same way, and it would be extremely inhumane to do so.
What makes rewilding / reforestation a better focus for helping animals? I'd have thought the current situation dire enough that one would want to focus on the low-hanging fruit like regulations against the current cruelties and elimination of "Ag-Gag" laws.
> The cow wouldn't even exist if it weren't useful to us.
I hate this argument so much.
For a start, animals are perfectly capable of breeding on their own. They don't need you. You are not their god.
Who is pretending they are something they are not? They are sentient beings whether you like it or not. You might think you are superior, but your cat and your dog are certainly not.
And who says that being alive is good? They're born into captivity, without a chance and many of them tortured for their entire life. But that's OK, because at least they got to live?
The problem is that, as far as we can tell, they're not self-aware. They have no concept of "captivity". Their life is their life; they don't have hopes, dreams, or desires. They eat, shit, and fuck. That's all they do in the wild, that's all they do in captivity.
The beauty of being human is that we are not controlled by our instincts. We have meta-cognition, which therefore makes us distinct from all other animals. This is why the vast majority of the earth's population agrees that killing a human and killing an animal are very different things.
I actually think this is a legitimate concern. Here's my rationalization: Plants probably don't have a sense of individuality. Personally, I wouldn't care about eating parts of an animal that grew back (like eggs or milk). Plants seem to be no different.
I don't think it's clear why the root of a plant like a carrot should have any special significance except to us. What about onions, turnips, potatoes, etc?
I meant a carrot is something that would probably be more individualized than say a strawberry. So I get your point about eating from plants that grow back, but I guess a carrot wouldn’t fall under that categorization.
Also, what about animals that regrow limbs? Would you eat the arms of a starfish every so often?
I think it's possible combined with ethical farming practices I could be convinced it's not so bad to eat starfish arms (although they don't sound very appetizing).
To be clear I do already eat meat today. I am just not convinced about its necessity and am interested in ways to avoid doing it.
Respectfully, you and most people have no clue what plants experience. There were those studies published in recent years that suggested plants "scream" when they are being eaten or destroyed, presumably to warn other plants.
We don't know what anything or anyone else experiences internally. But we know enough to make some good guesses.
Plants lack a brain, the organ responsible for thoughts. There's no more reason to think they have thoughts than a cell inside your body, or a computer. All three can process stimuli and communicate.
"Screaming" is editorializing for page views. They found some plants will produce an ultrasonic click every few minutes when dry or when cut. Because it's sound, and because we're looking at it with a human bias, some articles used the term "scream". But it's similar to when plants release chemical signals to communicate. Just because it's sound, it doesn't indicate they subjectively feel pain anymore than chemical signals would. (And chemical signals are used by cells in your body, and that also isn't evidence for consciousness.)
That seems like a bit of a non sequitur. I thought we were discussing whether plants have feelings.
Killing animals painlessly is certainly better than killing them painfully. There are a lot more problems than just the killing though. From the Wikipedia article on slaughterhouses:
> Eiznitz interviewed slaughterhouse workers representing over two million hours of experience, who, without exception, told her that they have beaten, strangled, boiled and dismembered animals alive or have failed to report those who do. The workers described the effects the violence has had on their personal lives, with several admitting to being physically abusive or taking to alcohol and other drugs.
> The HFA alleges that workers are required to kill up to 1,100 hogs an hour and end up taking their frustration out on the animals. Eisnitz interviewed one worker, who had worked in ten slaughterhouses, about pig production. He told her:
> "Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much, they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in the chute that's had the shit prodded out of him and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him backwards. You're dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen hams – thighs – completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward."
Ozzy Osbourne's first job was working in a slaughterhouse. It had a big affect on him! Seriously, check out his book.
Also I have a friend who was vegetarian as a teenager, she wanted to become a vet and one of the things they do is suggest you go to a slaughterhouse and see how it works. She is no longer a vegetarian and loves eating meat, but she didn't become a vet either!
This is ridiculous. Consciousness may be mysterious, but the fact that something emits sound when you break it doesn’t bring it into the same ethical domain as cows and other mammals with brains and an obvious desire and ability to avoid pain and death.
The same reason anaesthesia doesn’t make it okay to kill humans. There’s lots more on this in chapter 4 (“What's Wrong with Killing?”) of Singer’s Practical Ethics, if you’re interested.
Well, if we are to follow the parent's mention of Peter Singer, you could go check out just about any source of preference utilitarianism. Briefly:
An animal has a conscious will to live on, a preference so to say, and those preferences are the basis of moral consideration.
A plant lacks those kinds of preferences (lacking any brain activity - what we can see are mostly just hormonal cell responses and such; things that all living cells have) and thus the plant in itself is not worthy of moral consideration.
The argument has never been that it's only ok for humans to live if we do zero harm. It's obvious that we can't do that. And that's fine. Human life is worth much more than anything else for us humans, so eating something to survive is necessary and ethical. Same logic applies also to vaccines that need animal products in production. I would prefer if they wouldn't, but I'm not judging anyone for taking it.
What we're talking about here is that simply because steak is s bit tastier than tofu or saitan isn't good enough reason to slaughter 50 billion animals per year and destroying a good amount of environment while doing it.
Real numbers from credible sources are that greenhouse gas emissions from the meat and dairy industry are around 15%. Which is large enough to take this problem seriously, but it's still far away from those claims.
I think this is harming the case. The problem is big enough to be passionate about fake meat. No need for exaggeration.