"so therefore we were MEANT to eat them" how should i argue with that?
"so therefore we were MEANT to eat them" how should i argue with that?
Tell them that they are bred so much because of the demands of meat-eaters, that cows are artificially insiminated every 6 months, which they only do once a year in nature. Cattle, like anything else, is supply and demand, and should the demand go down, supply also would.
That should shut them the hell up.
Sounds like 'what would happen if the whole world went veg*n right now.' which is not going to happen.
its the stupidest argument ever.Animals are bred for meat.If the demand was not there,neither would the supply be.its just soemthng meat eaters say,because they know they do not have a valid argument.
i think they mean that if we just let domesticated animals live they would eventually become too overcrowded
If cows, sheep etc were left as nature intended they would not 'become overpopulated' it is because humans intensively breed them for 'food' that there are so many of them.
its us who have become overpopulated!
Yes, we're the ones ruining the planet!
ok cool, thanks guys!
This was a response put to me today that I didn't know how to counter. The person contended that if animals were not reared for meat or dairy, then no trees would be planted and all the fields would not be maintained so grass would disappear and land would be 'prairie-like' which in turn would lead to a loss of various wild-life which inhabit the fields.
Instinctively this doesn't feel right but I wasn't sure how to reply. To say 'why do we need fields' sounds churlish to me - I do like having countryside - but not if the only way to have it is for farming animals.
Thoughts?
Last edited by Korn; Mar 26th, 2010 at 03:16 PM. Reason: THis was the first post in a similar thread
It's just rubbish isn't it.
Trees being planted? By whom? Meat farmers?
Fields being "maintained"? wtf? Hedgeless, slurry and nitrate riddled wastelands more like.
Honestly, what did this person think happened before farming? The loss of species' numbers would probably be offset by growth in others, or maybe not, but that's not the point. The suffering we inflict on them would end. Which is the point.
..but what would they do with all the cows?..
What do they mean about no trees being planted? Trees aren't planted for animal farming reasons are they? There was grass and trees before agriculture came along. (I think the trees were removed in the first place partly to provide farming land - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defores...e_Roman_period)
The countryside would have to be managed differently if there weren't any farmed animals but fortunately we'd have plenty of time to think about how best to do it. For example, some types of land may need grazing animals to maintain their ecosystems, but we wouldn't necessarily have to eat the animals.
My thoughts are that they have never been to a farm in their life, lol!
Do they think potatoes, wheat, peas, turnips, barley and the like grow out the back of supermarkets?
Probably 70% of arable farm land in this country is used for crop production and if there were no livestock reared then the other 30% would be turned over to growing food as well!!!
As for the trees bit, i'm not really sure what he means. Farmers in the UK at the moment have a government monetary incentive to replant
hedgerows and tree lines, it's nothing to do with the meat or dairy industry. It's to do with increasing the biodiversity of our countryside again!
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty!
Waitrose got involved in a campaign not so long ago (18 months or so) with the slogan "No cows, no countryside"... I think that is where this utter nonsense comes from...
needless to say it is bullshit, for instance, there was lots of countryside before we started farming animals!
... I sent them a letter and here is an extract of it:
I cannot believe that you support a campaign that sends such misleading
message. I can suggest a different slogan: No Cows, Less greenhouse
gases. I am sure you must be well aware that the FAO has reported that the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent - 18 percent - than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/...448/index.html
I find it very disturbing that in this day and age a supermarket of
your reputation has decided to get involved in a campaign that
advocates global warming and animal exploitation.
If you could, please also send me a copy of the evidence that backs up your argument that if there were no cows, the countryside would disappear. So far logic leads me to believe that if the unnaturally high number of cows that inhabit the world to feed a few humans would disappear, we would all enjoy more forests, green areas and biodiversity would flourish since we would not need to cut trees and
destroy natural habitats to create pastures or to grow an enormous amount of crops to feed them.
Maybe you should have a look at these numbers: 70% of the land in the
UK is used for agriculture, 66% of this is used as permanent pasture and a high proportion of the remainder is used to grow crops to feed livestock.
Needless to say, they never sent me a copy of any evidence to back up their argument...
Rain forests are being devastated so that food animals can be reared....
I have nothing to declare but my genius - Oscar Wilde
If there were no farm animals, British wildlife would flourish... now that is true countryside!
It's difficult to put your point across sometimes when people say things like this to you - partly because you're not really sure what they're talking about (what's this whole PLANTING TREES thing about??? Bizarre..)
I help with vegan stalls when i can and you get people saying "I'm a farmer and i do this or that and i'm sustainable and i couldn't use my land for anything else" and you think "How can i argue with that? He's a farmer, i don't know him or what his situation is, if he tells me that i guess i have to accept it".. even though you know deep down it can't make any sense.
..But i'd say generally that considering most animals farmed for meat live in sheds and never even know what grass or countryside is, the flourishing of the countryside is not as connected to farming animals as people think. They're probably only thinking about cows and sheep and i doubt they eat many sheep.
If what these people are saying is "i have to eat meat to help the countryside" why do they eat intensively farmed chicken or pig products? or FISH? How does eating fish help maintain the countryside? They obviously eat meat because they like it, not because they want to help the countryside.
... then how exactly do you think animal populations would look?
I sometimes hear the argument that if there were no commercial animal farming, then there'd be fewer animals, for what are, well... obvious reasons
I'm really keen to know what people think about this, or how they counter this kind of argument.
And would - now we are living in this utopia - industry-farmed animals now be controlled (steriised) and killed out of kindness (vitally, now in older years!), in much the same way one might put down an old dog...
i'm of the view that leaving animals to die (including humans) naturally is an unkind act: I would rather a society that took the pain of suffering away, than one that let it linger. More than this, that fewer animals (if it were to be so) would be better than the current state of things, and that in any case, a benevolent, animal-caring society - as we are 'now' living - would know a great many benefactors, and enterprises, (publicly or privately financed) that animal populations might be upwardly assured.
You might say i'm having trouble fathoming a vegan utopia from a utilitarian perspective...(the two are non-compliant in any case, I know this )
p.s. I know it's doomed logic coming at things from this perspective
Last edited by Korn; Mar 26th, 2010 at 03:16 PM. Reason: THis was the first post in a related/similar thread
Correct, there would be less animals and that is definitely a good thing because we breed them for our use their numbers go far beyond their natural breeding numbers.
Since the world isn't going to go vegan overnight (if it ever does totally go vegan), I can imagine a world where these farm animals are sterilized and looked after by caretakers until the end of their lives in line with the decrease in animal agriculture.
Animal agriculture jobs would slowly go away and new jobs would be created. I'm sure our capitalist society would survive such a change, it always finds a way to chase whatever is in demand and make a profit.
I'd recommend you read Making a Killing by Bob Torres, it discusses this and the in's and out's of animal agriculture in detail.
The thing about our current industrial food production is that it really shifts jobs and capital. It switches capital from local farmers that produce simple unprocessed foods to large scale industrial megaliths controlled far-away collecting money for the owners while the laborers are abused and underpaid.
I imagine that *just* by switching from animal foods, which are the basis for A LOT of the industrial production, there would first be a switch of capital and resources to the masses from the owners.
Of course, vegan food can certainly be quite production intensive, and I am sure that without challenging capitalism directly, a vegan world might find more processed vegan foods and more junk food veganism would be even more prevalent.
However, at the least, animals exploitation would lessen. Without large scale animal farms, and ideally with sanctuaries to care for those animals left in farms, we would all see a renewal of natural resources to more efficiently combat world hunger and energy for the multitudes of alternative uses (rather than CAFO's). Some animal species would probably go extinct, like the massively engineered chickens in CAFO's... but IMO, that would not be a loss of biodiversity. I would see that are liberation.
The economic transition for humans would really be no bigger than that of when the internet started becoming mainstream, or movies supplanted popular plays. Humans have dealt with much bigger. Heck, it would be akin to the loss of slaves in the US South... but then again, the entire US really never gave up slavery in practice (Prisons, Jim Crow, etc.). But it would be like that.
context is everything
I think there would be way more animals without human hunting/farming.
If you consider fish and marine life that has been pretty much wiped out by comercial fishing. I think I read that humans have wiped out 95% of the world's sharks etc. people say there are no fish in the med because of over fishing.
It may take thousands of years for the natural populations to recover but they probably would.
If it was a 'utopia' then IMO there would be no capitalism. I think Utopia actually means 'no such place' or something like that so by definition it can never happen.
I'm aware of the paradox, but the utopian vantage point is a useful conceit.
I disagree that capitalism couldn't accommodate the change, agreeing with zero. People are the bad element of capitalism, not the system, it's otherwise a democratic means for change, it's just that people are so sloooooooow.
^I strongly disagree.
Capitalism, like all other economic systems before it, are human inventions. Capitalism is far from perfect, and hopefully in the future, we will have a system that is more humane, ethical, democratic, and efficient. Folks used to say feudalism was unchanging, and "natural", and pretty "good", but that imperfect people were messing it up.
When we settle for less, it makes it harder to get something better.
context is everything
If people understood purchase power better (cared!), or rather, made a binary choice between convenience and the ethical purchase, then capitalism is fit for the purpose of change. Certainly, this is more desirable than the intractable, non-democratic oligarchical tendencies that communism is prone; mass organisation is not capable of consensus.
People need to lead the battle with their wallets.
Last edited by Stuart; Mar 24th, 2010 at 01:23 PM.
<If the world went vegan...>
I would rejoice.
I couldn't disagree more.
A wallet is not a citizen. A wallet is a narrow way to look at the fullness of humanity, especially citizenry. The ability to choose from the narrowly defined confines of the market is not democracy, or real choice. I am not what I consume, or what I buy, or what I choose from the few choices I have in the market. A consumer is the not the same as a citizen or a community member, or a friend or a family member we can count on. Relationships are the foundation of all society (even non-human!), not what products we can hawk or pawn.
The choice isn't between capitalism and a planned economy (like most communists propose). The choice is not between capitalism or feudalism. Heck, there were millions of naysayers when the world transitioned from feudalism to capitalism, and there certainly were fits and starts in the process. But there is no start when folks settle for what we have, and thwart the attempts of others for something better.
I live in a consensus community. I have worked in them. I have experienced real direct democracy. It is NOT easy. But it does work. Heck, the idea of capitalism (where a few control the capital, and everyone else works, and this inequality is maintained by the state) is actively being challenged every day when factories like those "taken back" by the workers (no boss, no owner!) keep producing tractors, tiles, suits, etc. in Argentina. Capitalism is challenged every time a parent and child care for each other without resorting to the market.
The market can change a few things. It is useful, and certainly not all evil. It just cannot make the real change that is needed. Capitalism cannot further real democracy for all. Capitalism cannot solve problems which require the efficiency of cooperation. Capitalism is not the most efficient, or most just, or even more innovation creation system possible. It is based on the fact that people are selfish, and it rewards that. People are also altruistic, and there is no reward inherent in the system. Society is not products, but relationships. People make decisions based on values, not just the monetary value. Those are places were more effective counting, or rigs in capitalism cannot fix. Those are the problem places that blew up in the last economic melt-down (lack of high growth investments led financiers to fund redistribution of money towards themselves with financial markets rather than creating progress and wealth for all).
Capitalism is not democracy, nor is it justice, nor can it ever be the same thing. There has always been a tension, and that is a basic reality of the the design of the capitalism.
context is everything
I have to say xrodolfox your posts are always a pleasure to read and I enjoy your perspective and quality use of words.
As for the original post the only thing I have to say is that no matter how wonderful we all feel being vegan is the world will never be vegan. There are too many people and all those people have choices. Most people will not give up their cultural cuisine. The elk hunters I know would keep hunting and eating elk even if there was a massive, earth changing phenomenon (disease, nuclear war, mass enlightenment?).
I'm pretty sure all the feral cows, sheep and whatever else would be eaten by predators or wouldn't be able to survive without human assistance. It would be amazing though to see the seas have more biodiversity again.
pro-vegetable
Sorry that sounded a bit negative when I read it back (about utopia being impossible)!
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make things better because a real utoia is unlikely.
I don't think capitalism in it's current form could survive into a kind of utopia because the current fat cats will not give up their wealth and they control the media that brainwashes the masses into keepig things how they are.
I think voting with your wallet (whist a good thing to do) will not bring about that much change, unless it is combined with another way of changing things (eg. creating alterative media).
But it is the citizen that makes him or herself complicit to cruel, inhumane practices through the wallet. They have the democratising power to bring down companies en mass, should they choose to consult their conscience. People are worth something here are they not?
I'd argue that actually, people ought identify themselves with what they consume, if what they consume leads to deforestation, slaughter, or whatever else; these purchases are character-testing decisions.
If not communism, i'd like to know how a viable alternative to capitalism works. I've been trying to get answers on this for a long time. I'd be interested to learn more about the mechanics of a consensus community, if you'd like to tell me.
I'd also like to make it known that I am not blind to the ills of capitalism, but as a system will advocate it over the planned economy; I consider this far more dangerous, and oppressive.
I don't think "efficiency of cooperation" is conducive to humanity; mass society is chaotic and recalcitrant, and a shared power structure does not reflect this, especially a purposeful one. It is true that capitalism does not give people autonomy, or let it decide for itself what it wants, but we may reject what is offered. Capitalism has afforded us many innovations, services and goods that we enjoy, that only unrestricted, private capital-raising could give (computers, drugs, cosmetic surgery, cars...) and could not otherwise be hoped; more than this, 'products' divergent enough to serve a broad plurality.
However, people needn't be so excessively wasteful, accumulating as much as they do, or neglect human/animal rights violations and so forth to which they are tacit in the transactions they make. And this is their fault, not that of Capitalism.
The real trouble is that people are still ridiculously trusting of companies, and naively believe that Nestle, Coca Cola or whoever it might be, would not dare to cheat them, deferring all good conscience to them, as if this were something familiar to a large organisational entity; now, many companies do act with a conscience, but countless many don't. Yes, a great many organisations do not value people as people, and views them only through a monetary prism, flouting all kinds of abuses to get their product to market, but it is the indulgences of the people, and its willfully looking away that has allowed the monster to grow; they expected too much, or rather stood with their hands covering their eyes', and fingers in ears, enjoying the treats.
I refuse to devolve people from this mess: they could have put their wallets away.
Yes, it is an economic system that does not pretend to have a responsibility; unlike Communism which is purposeful from a humanitarian perspective, but promises no democracy, or individual freedom and there's nothing desirable in this.
Capitalism doesn't know justice or equity, skews opportunity and access to the wealthy, and worse, but it can be regulated by law, and markets can fail where people withdraw their support. What you see 'out there' is what people are buying into, one must assume they want this.
Last edited by Stuart; Mar 24th, 2010 at 11:01 PM.
I hadn't thought you were being negative -- no worries
Yep, and agreed, a utopia is impossible.
Fat cats aside, I think most people know they shouldn't be eating animals and could make that difference. Probably not many dairy, or eggs, and other animal derivatives though; well... I know not many.
If the world went vegan, would that mean no more "pets"?
lv
Perhaps a renewable resource based society, where we put time and energy into making the world better for mankind and create better machinery infrastructure to remove menial jobs from mankind, the bulk of people could be engineers, programmers, artists, designers etc.
People could work together to improve their local communities instead of being so separated.
It would be a complicated system but for certain and would require taking that mass amount of wealth away from that minority of powerful people.
Time and investment would go into geothermal evergy and ways to create freedom of transportation etc.
Sounds far fetched, and that is because it is and very unlikely to happen. It would need to consist of a real democracy, not one represented by a few individuals, hard to facilitate but not impossible in theory.
I think it's possible for the world to become vegan. Morality changes in time. So it's always a possibility.
This is clearly getting way off topic. If you want to further discuss capitalism, you should start another thread. ...but I am having fun answering, so I will anyhow.
Like I said, you are setting up a false dichotomy: capitalism vs. planned economy with no other options. Heck, in that false dichotomy, both options are terrible, but I would also choose capitalism.
But that are *not* the only options.
Like I intoned, take a look at the CURRENTLY running factories taken over by workers in Argentina. There, the factories are running without a boss, without an owner, and they still produce, often at prices lower than that during capitalism, and the workers get paid more too. There is less labor strife, and the companies are flexible enough to change to meet new demands (like environmental issues). Thus, the factory can operate using ethics as well as community, not just markets as their guide.
Find out more here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/klein_lewis
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/So...Argentina.html
Film! http://www.thetake.org/
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=4930
That is just *one* possible set of solutions.
There are many others that have worked, albeit briefly in large scale, in other places which are precursors to the take-overs in Argentina. Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War is one such example, or the Paris Commune(s).
Heck, in my day-to-day, I certainly have MANY interactions which are not capitalist which are the foundation of my life. The market has been doing its best in infiltrate all of life to capitalize/own it/ and thus profit from life (like patenting genes), but as it stands now, if just those non-market, non-privately owned, collective places in our lives expanded, that would be quite anti-capitalist.
I am *NOT* suggesting planned economies. I come from Chile during the dictatorship where CAPITALISM was let rampant, and the streets ran red with the repression of the state. Capitalism is NOT freedom, and I have lived through the most recent and dramatic pairing. In Chile we did have complete "free" markets for many years, but we sure weren't free. We could choose what product to buy, but in the end, whether we chose Dole or Chiquita for our fruit didn't stop the state from "following the law" and stopping workers from "harming" the "personal property" of the owners and their imperative to make a profit.
I also reject planned economies, as I have lived in an authoritarian gov't, and I do not wish it on anyone... and for most heavily planned economies, a large central gov't is required.
The solutions for a better economy will not come from the boardroom or the universities, just as modern capitalism started with fits and stops and starts not in a board room, but rather with simple merchants with boats in the Netherlands.
Give workers freedom, and give communities the power to take back what is theirs (like factories), and the communities will find solutions. I am not a person who believes in one-size-fits all solutions, and I do not know the future. SO I will not prescribe a single solution to capitalism. However, I do know that communities, if given freedom, find their own solutions to the inefficiency and lack of ethics in capitalism.
context is everything
I don't agree that there would be less land animals if veganism was more prevalent. I live in the countryside and the fields are not all full of cows and sheep, most fields are just monoculture grass (created through regular application of herbicides, ploughing and reseeding), which is grazed in rotation or harvested for silage. If this land was reforested, it would provide a much richer habitat for a much wider range of plant and animal life. The numbers of wild forest animals like deer would increase into the new territory. Veganism requires much less land than animal farming, so much more land could be 'left to nature', which hopefully would lead to a massive increase in biodiversity. Right now where I live, intensive dairy farmers are not content with enslaving and exploiting 'their' animals, they want to kill ALL the badgers, which they accuse of spreading TB to their herds.
What 'menial jobs' are you talking about? Personally I enjoy the manual labour involved in production of food and fuel and building work, although it is only part of what I do and not full-time drudgery.
once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right
Not a chance - see this RSPCA report: http://www.politicalanimal.org.uk/as...rch%202010.pdf
850 Million chickens are bread and slaughtered in the UK every year for food, so just think about how many other species there are because that is one species alone. You don't see animals in fields because they are locked away in sheds or cramped together somewhere to keep things more efficient for the most part.
Many animals gain a 'natural equilibrium' in their population numbers (there are exceptions of course) but there is no way they would breed to the degree that we force breed them.
I'm generally talking about mass manufacturing. There would still be manual labor of course, but I could see people working together more in their communities to create and better the area for everyone. I by no means claim to have all the answers on this one, I was more just thinking out loud
Well, of course there would be less broiler chickens and dairy cows, but they wouldn't be able to survive in 'natural' surroundings anyway. The point I was making is that, if the land was freed up from monoculture production, woodland cover and species diversity would develop naturally , accompanied by an overall increase in animal numbers (although of course mostly not large mammals).
once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right
The number of animals an area can hold is not a measure of the health of an eco system. Rather, the measure of biodiversity is a closer match to ecological health. Thus, for the health of an ecosystem, I would much rather have low total animal numbers, but high biodiversity.
It is clear that no matter how you cut it, decreasing the industrial production of animals for food for humans would allow space for greater biodiversity in the wilds and everywhere else.
context is everything
But generally there are high numbers of animals when there is high biodiversity. I've noticed that very often people seem to only count vertebrates as animals. For example, an oak tree supports 284 species of insect, but average farmed grassland would have very few.
once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right
Although, I totally agree with you about high biodiversity being a better indicator of ecosystem health than high numbers of few species. Because most farmed animals consume cultivated crops which have been sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, their existence depends on mass biocide.
Added to this, many farmed animals are closely related because of artificial insemination, which uses sperm from a very limited number of 'fathers' with 'desirable' attributes for milk or meat production, so genetic diversity is highly limited within the 'dominant' species on the farm.
once in a while you can get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right
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