You can avoid eating plants or animals but still survive if you wanted to — yatagarasu

I never claimed that. I said humans can survive on fruit. — yatagarasu

If you eat fruit you eat plant. You may not be killing the plant for it (though you are 'killing' the plants offspring in the fruit). Even if it were possible for humans to survive on eating fruit alone.

No, because eating the deer is intentional making it wrong. — yatagarasu

Why is eating the deer wrong if it doesn't cause any additional suffering for the deer? I should let the flies eat it instead because that's the moral thing to do? why is letting the flies eat it more moral than eating it myself?

If i eat fruit the eating of it is intentional as well, following that logic, eating fruit is just as immoral.

If you eat fruit you eat plant. You may not be killing the plant for it (though you are 'killing' the plants offspring in the fruit). Even if it were possible for humans to survive on eating fruit alone. — Tomseltje

Not if you plant the seeds. It is possible to survive on fruit alone, it is just more difficult ( and not advisable for young people ).

Why is eating the deer wrong if it doesn't cause any additional suffering for the deer? I should let the flies eat it instead because that's the moral thing to do? why is letting the flies eat it more moral than eating it myself?

If i eat fruit the eating of it is intentional as well, following that logic, eating fruit is just as immoral. — Tomseltje

Huh. Thought about this for a while. Consulted vegan friends and they, including myself, couldn't find anything wrong with eating an animal that died of natural causes or was killed unintentionally. I guess it's okay, you would just be hard pressed to find a lot of meat this way, not to mention that eating animals at old age is pretty unappetizing (from what I've heard).

But the question still stands as to whether a painless animal kill is equivalent to a plant or insect kill. Which removes the variable of an animal's capacity to feel pain. Do we now determine what to consume based on intellectual capacity? — NasloxiehRorsxez

If a person kills another human after administering a drug to make it painless, does that mean it is less wrong? Humans and other animals like cows, chickens, and pigs all value their lives. In part, yes, being capable of valuing life is an intellectual capacity--we can obviously see that pigs sunning themselves oinking for joy, or cows nuzzling each other, and dogs playing fetch are happy. To deny this is just stubbornness. I've said it before: it's just plain ridiculous to compare the value of an animal's life to that of a plant. It's obvious that beheading even an unconscious kitten is not the same as dicing a potato.

calling the straw-man version of my question nonsense — VagabondSpectre

Do you call everything you simply can't counter a strawperson? Because I very directly was addressing your argument that it is better to live and suffer than never to have lived. Which is nonsense.

"that's not really the question" is quite unsatisfying. — VagabondSpectre

Satisfying or not, it's true. If you're so concerned about animals having a life to live, go ahead and open an animal sanctuary--just don't kill them for food.

If I've decided killing animals to eat their meat is wrong, what must I do with my hypothetical chickens? — VagabondSpectre

You let them live the rest of their natural lives in peace--is being kind really so unfathomable to you?

The resources we dispense in the raising of the animals must be recuperated, else we cannot affords to raise the animals. — VagabondSpectre

Easy solution: don't cause them to exist. Non-existent entities also do not care about existing--you can't harm anyone by choosing not to cause their existence. That would be nonsensical (as explained previously).

Well I AM the anecdote, so it's not quite fallacious. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, it still is fallacious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Sorry, but just as it wouldn't matter in a philosophical argument about gods or ghosts or unicorns that you personally testified to seeing any of these things with your own eyes, it doesn't matter here that you claim to suffer when abstaining from meat. Even if I believe that you did everything nutritionally correct, the placebo effect is real as well as strong, not to mention coincidental other factors of illnesses or stressors or hormonal fluctuations could all account for your experience. Without controlled experiments or strong statistical evidence, all your personal experience tells me is that it is possible that we might want to do some studies in the case that perhaps there are a couple of exceptions to the general rule.

Do you call everything you simply can't counter a strawperson? Because I very directly was addressing your argument that it is better to live and suffer than never to have lived. Which is nonsense. — NKBJ

Are farm animal lives worth living? This is the question; it's not nonsense. You have no excuse to keep saying this is nonsense.

You let them live the rest of their natural lives in peace--is being kind really so unfathomable to you? — NKBJ

So release my chickens into the wild where they will be swiftly set upon by starvation and predation? Nonsense.

They will live shorter lives of greater suffering if released; farm animals cannot fend for themselves.

It seems like releasing them is immoral compared to euthanasia.

Easy solution: don't cause them to exist. Non-existent entities also do not care about existing--you can't harm anyone by choosing not to cause their existence. That would be nonsensical (as explained previously). — NKBJ

Things that do not exist likewise do not get to enjoy life. It may not be morally reproachable to not cause something to exist but it's not morally praiseworthy to not cause something to exist either.

So we're back to the question of whether or not the lives of farm animals are worth living.

I think in many cases they are. The pleasures and joy of life can outweigh the pain.

Do you disagree?

Are farm animal lives worth living? This is the question; it's not nonsense. You have no excuse to keep saying this is nonsense. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say that question was nonsense. I said comparing existence to non-existence is nonsense. I said the question of whether life is worth living is besides the point, because you're trying to find a way to justify harming and killing them.

For an already existing being, yes, life is worth living and thus you have the obligation to let them live and thus you ought not to kill them.

For a non-existent being, life is neither worth living nor not worth living, because non-existent beings don't value anything.

For a creature who is living in pure agony because we have fattened her up so much her legs break beneath her, and she never sees sunlight, and she can hardly breathe because there are so many of her kind stuffed in a barn, and she will never get the chance to raise her babies, or enjoy a fresh breeze.... that's not a life you should condemn any creature to, but it is what we do to billions of farm animals every year.

So release my chickens into the wild where they will be swiftly set upon by starvation and predation? Nonsense. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say that. I said let them live--I mentioned animal sanctuaries-- if you want to put them in this world, you have the obligation to make sure they are safe, and healthy, and as happy as possibly until the end of their natural lifespan.

it's not morally praiseworthy to not cause something to exist either. — VagabondSpectre

I didn't say it's morally praiseworthy. Abstaining from meat eating is not about doing a positive thing as much as it is about avoiding doing or participating in a negative one. Similarly, I do not join or support the KKK--that doesn't mean I'm doing anything praiseworthy, it just means I avoid doing something condemnable.

I think in many cases they are. The pleasures and joy of life can outweigh the pain. — VagabondSpectre

Just like you do not get to go up to someone, stab them to death, steal their wallet, and tell them "you've lived a good enough life to outweigh this little thing", so too you ought not kill animals for your own gain no matter how well you've treated them.

Yes, it still is fallacious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Sorry, but just as it wouldn't matter in a philosophical argument about gods or ghosts or unicorns that you personally testified to seeing any of these things with your own eyes, it doesn't matter here that you claim to suffer when abstaining from meat. Even if I believe that you did everything nutritionally correct, the placebo effect is real as well as strong, not to mention coincidental other factors of illnesses or stressors or hormonal fluctuations could all account for your experience. Without controlled experiments or strong statistical evidence, all your personal experience tells me is that it is possible that we might want to do some studies in the case that perhaps there are a couple of exceptions to the general rule. — NKBJ

Anecdotal evidence can be fallacious for a number of reasons (subjective testimony, irreproducibility, etc...), but my testimony about myself would not be considered anecdotal when it comes to establishing the truth about me, because my own experiences are by definition representative of me (whereas normally anecdotes can amount to hasty generalizations, reporting observed facts about myself is specific, does not generalize about anyone else, and is therefore not fallacious).

Claiming to have seen a unicorn is not a form of argument at all, it's a claim. Using it as a premise for the existence of unicorns would not be anecdotal either because actually observing a unicorn would be sufficient proof for its existence. Anecdotes prove anecdotes

An example of a fallacious argument using anecdotal evidence would be "I've seen someone incorrectly attempt a vegan diet and fail before, and you've failed at a vegan diet therefore you must have attempted it incorrectly.".

It's true that I've attempted plant-based diets, it's true that I lost weight while attempting them, it's true that losing weight is a health concern for me, therefore it's true that attempting plant-based diets in the future comes with some degree of risk.

I didn't say that question was nonsense. I said comparing existence to non-existence is nonsense. I said the question of whether life is worth living is besides the point, because you're trying to find a way to justify harming and killing them. — NKBJ

Well I've explained why their death at our hands is made necessary by thermodynamics alone, else they cannot exist, and you don't seem to be offering rebuke to that, so the question I'm asking is from the perspective of the extant farm animal: is life worth living even though I'm destined for death? (we should note that this question, as it is phrased, applies equally to humans and is indeed worthy of inquiry)

If as you say asking this question prior to their existence is nonsensical (though it isn't, we have a very good idea of what kind of creature farm animals will be, and how content they are likely to be with their arrangements), then you will have no objection to me ethically breeding farm animals because they don't exist yet and therefore have no preference (animals can breed on their own; all you gotta do is feed them).

Once they're alive, as you say, the dilemma then begins.

So, I could euthanize Bovina and Child on the spot because I cannot afford to keep them alive, and starvation is torture, OR, we could strike some sort of deal.

I agree to feed and care for the them, and to euthanize them much later in life, if they agree to let me consume their flesh once I have euthanized them. They get relatively long and happy lives out of the deal and I get a thermodynamic return on my investment. This euthanasia is necessary for domesticated farm animals to begin with, so all I'm really doing is extending their lives, which are quite possibly worth living.

For an already existing being, yes, life is worth living and thus you have the obligation to let them live and thus you ought not to kill them. — NKBJ

Moral obligation can be evaporated by circumstance. Delivering adequate nutrition to humans across the planet is one such fiery circumstance.

What magnitude of delay to human progress should we accept by suddenly and simultaneously ceasing the consumption and harvesting of animals? I don't think you're aware of the initial and long term costs of turning every grocery isle into an organic produce section. To do so, I reckon we would need to give up certain activities altogether to afford it without impacting medicine education and security (which seems impossible). Hard to say what we would be giving up though (a little bit of everything probably), let's just guess and say sports and space travel...

Maybe if we gave up space travel as a species and divested all its energy into going organic we could do the goats a solid and stop consuming them. But maybe by sacrificing space-faring sciences we will miss opportunities which could have changed our thermodynamic landscape entirely (i.e, growing burgers and tomatoes fueled by carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen harvested in space) and will thereby prolong the suffering of animals at the hands of humans still living within nature (tribesman, third world), etc...). I'm no fan of sports and honestly wouldn't miss it, but a lot of people would. Perhaps living agrarian lives of gardening and goat-sanctuary building would fulfill our many sports-fans, or perhaps they would funnel that competitive spirit into patriotism for their nation or in-group, and as plants would more or less become a massive part of the new economy, competition over access to the best farmland could become existentially grave.

A slippery slope to be sure (yes it's a fallacy, no it's not my argument; it's a hypothetical depicting possible costs). I cannot say what the true costs will be, but it should be very clear that such radical change does come with cost. To be honest I'm hopeful that science will offer us a solution soon. If we can get abundant energy and can afford to start farming sans animals or even synthesizing nutriments directly then the western world could go plant-based in short order.

We're not there yet though...

If farm animals are to continue existing, individually and generationally, then we're thermodynamically obligated to kill and consume them.

For a creature who is living in pure agony because we have fattened her up so much her legs break beneath her, and she never sees sunlight, and she can hardly breathe because there are so many of her kind stuffed in a barn, and she will never get the chance to raise her babies, or enjoy a fresh breeze.... that's not a life you should condemn any creature to, but it is what we do to billions of farm animals every year. — NKBJ

Do all farm animals live this way?

Let's euthanize them all then shall we?

I didn't say that. I said let them live--I mentioned animal sanctuaries-- if you want to put them in this world, you have the obligation to make sure they are safe, and healthy, and as happy as possibly until the end of their natural lifespan. — NKBJ

They have evolved to be taken care of on a farm. Farms are their natural environment.

We cannot afford to give every chicken a helmet and body-armor or jump through whatever hoops are required to release them into the wild. And if we DO manage to create a large enough habitat which they can survive in, then they'll just start breeding, and we will have to manage the habitat indefinitely (and probably start culling them or else indefinitely expand the habitat).

And if we sterilize everything and establish animal Ritz across the country to wait for them to die of natural causes, the expense would create financial deficit and possibly global food shortages in the 5-10 year term. Obviously this is unfeasible, hence, like PETA we're reduced to euthanasia.

I didn't say it's morally praiseworthy. Abstaining from meat eating is not about doing a positive thing as much as it is about avoiding doing or participating in a negative one. Similarly, I do not join or support the KKK--that doesn't mean I'm doing anything praiseworthy, it just means I avoid doing something condemnable. — NKBJ

Yes, but by advocating for the genocide of all farmed animals in the name of moral progress, you're advocating for something similar to what Hitler advocated for. I don't know if that's relevant or means anything or constitutes an argument, but I felt that I should just point it out.

Causing something to exist and providing it with a worthwhile existence at the expense of one day consuming it is the moral trade in question. If I'm arguing for the enslavement of animals, then you're calling for their extermination, but these facetious kind of lines wont advance our discussion.

Strangely, you keep referring to eating meat directly (and the intention to do so) as the immoral behavior instead of the suffering that eating meat possibly causes (which is a strange point of focus). Obviously if you focused mainly on the suffering, then happy farm animals who are slaughtered humanely avoid your condemnation. You've thrown up resistance to the fact that immediate euthanasia would be the only choice if we aren't allowed to eat the meat but I hope you can realize the logistics of animal sanctuaries are beyond our means.

If we must focus on eating meat, then let it be known that eating meat can also contribute to the existence and happiness of farm animals. Does that count for nothing? Not all farms are inhumane...

Just like you do not get to go up to someone, stab them to death, steal their wallet, and tell them "you've lived a good enough life to outweigh this little thing", so too you ought not kill animals for your own gain no matter how well you've treated them. — NKBJ

If I treated animals like I treated humans then your point would stand, but I cannot yet afford to. Humanity at large cannot yet afford to. We've been expanding our spheres of moral consideration to more people and more animals for quite some time, and we still have a ways to go. Forcing immediate and maximal moral consideration of animals would mean reducing moral consideration toward other humans by means of cost alone. when every child is vaccinated and has a well planned, supplement included plant-based diet, then we can afford to let our farm animals die of natural causes out of charity, and perhaps even establish sanctuaries to keep their species around.

There are yet hard thermodynamic requirements for the earth's 7.6 billion humans, and it's not our fault that we have not yet freed ourselves from the food-chains of evolution. Animal husbandry is still too significant a part of even first world agricultural food production to do away with it over-night.

If I treated animals like I treated humans then your point would stand, but I cannot yet afford to — VagabondSpectre

Why? You then rattle on about the general requirements needed by others (not yourself). Why can you not yet afford to?

when every child is vaccinated and has a well planned, supplement included plant-based diet, then we can afford to let our farm animals die of natural causes out of charity — VagabondSpectre

Do you not realize that almost every child AND adult do NOT have a well-planned diet that includes meat and dairy? If most people had a well-planned diet, then your point would stand, but every type of diet needs to be well-planned. And we currently don't have that right now, even with diets including meat. And most deficiencies found in humans are NOT because of a plant-based diet. They are actually found in meat eaters.

Also, do we let our current pets, such as dogs & cats die of natural causes out of charity? To say you will let something live naturally out of charity, is slightly psychopathic.

There are yet hard thermodynamic requirements for the earth's 7.6 billion humans, and it's not our fault that we have not yet freed ourselves from the food-chains of evolution. Animal husbandry is still too significant a part of even first world agricultural food production to do away with it over-night. — VagabondSpectre

If it is not our fault, who's fault is it? It doesn't matter if something is a significant part of a society. If it is more detrimental than beneficial, we should change it. We can't even get people to acknowledge that it is detrimental, let alone even glance at the idea that we should change it.

Not if you plant the seeds. It is possible to survive on fruit alone, it is just more difficult ( and not advisable for young people ). — yatagarasu

My main point is you still eat (part of) the plant, so it's not possible to survive without eating plants as you previously stated. It may be possible to live on fruit alone for a while, but not for a full human life. especially not if living in colder climates or doing hard labor requiring over 5000 kcal a day.
Besides, when is the last time you picked off all seeds of a strawberry and planted them? It may be possible, but even for most vegans too unpractical to be practicing all the time.

Huh. Thought about this for a while. Consulted vegan friends and they, including myself, couldn't find anything wrong with eating an animal that died of natural causes or was killed unintentionally. I guess it's okay, you would just be hard pressed to find a lot of meat this way, not to mention that eating animals at old age is pretty unappetizing (from what I've heard). — yatagarasu

Glad we can at least agree on that part. So it's not wether the act of eating meat that is immoral but it's about wether the act of killing an animal in order to eat it is immoral. Seeing you are sensible about this one, perhaps you can come up with an answer on where to draw the line between wich animals are okay kill for food and wich aren't. Assuming you have no problem with killing single celled sessile animals that is. They don't provide meat, but they can still be quite nutricious, and will be killed in the process of digesting. (if you do have a problem with digesting single celled animals, I wonder how you prevent yourself from doing so, since they can't be seen without using a microscope)

You're just all sorts of confused. I have not advocated for killing animals--you have. I'm advocating for not putting them in this world if all we're gonna do is cause them suffering and murder them anyway. And I'm advocating for letting the existing animals live in peace.

Adopting a global vegan diet would require fewer resources than the meat-intensive ones that are currently wide-spread.

Argue for your anecdote all you want--as you point out, all it can do is have any meaning to you--but it has no meaning to me or anyone with whom you are trying to engage in a philosophical conversation. You simply don't have any solid evidence to back you up, thus I have no reason to believe you.

And how does it make any sense to argue that the value of life outweighs the tragedy of death, therefore murder is acceptable? Again, you can't go up to someone on the street and kill them with that logic...that would just be insane.

Humanity at large doesn't have to treat animals like humans. But they can treat them with the basic decency of not murdering them in order to harvest their flesh.

Why? You then rattle on about the general requirements needed by others (not yourself). Why can you not yet afford to? — chatterbears

Because I'm too thin, have difficulty gaining weight, and I cannot afford professional assessments or expensive foods. It's a combination of risk and expense.

Also, do we let our current pets, such as dogs & cats die of natural causes out of charity? To say you will let something live naturally out of charity, is slightly psychopathic. — chatterbears

If we consumed our pets as standard practice then letting them die of natural causes would be charity because we slaughter our living chattel before it becomes unhealthy. It's not psychotic to realize that chickens and sheep and cows cannot survive indefinitely in the wild. Chickens will die off rather quickly, the sheep might not last a season un-sheared, and the cows will eventually be taken by coyotes, wolves, disease, and the elements.

It's psychotic to think that turning farm animals loose is somehow doing them a favor and not condemning most of them to imminent death and the rest to prolonged hardship in nature.

If it is not our fault, who's fault is it? It doesn't matter if something is a significant part of a society. If it is more detrimental than beneficial, we should change it. We can't even get people to acknowledge that it is detrimental, let alone even glance at the idea that we should change it. — chatterbears

Actually animal rights groups have been fomenting for quite some time. If you ask around most of us who are aware of factory farming and it's effects are against it. More and more people are realizing that over-consuming meat has no health benefits and that diet in general has a lot to do with health (something we've somewhat neglected in the 20th century).

I'm not saying we should not change, I'm saying that this change is expensive and can only occur at a certain rate. Our understanding of dietary health still does need improving, as does our technological and economic capacity for improved plant-based agriculture.

You're just all sorts of confused. I have not advocated for killing animals--you have. I'm advocating for not putting them in this world if all we're gonna do is cause them suffering and murder them anyway. And I'm advocating for letting the existing animals live in peace. — NKBJ

Letting existing farm animals live in peace would mean letting them die horribly (the farmer kind of has to tend to them, shelter them, winter them, feed them, protect them from predators and their own stupidity (i.e: a ravine) etc...). We cannot afford that many animal sanctuaries, so euthanize them we must.

Furthermore, you continuously presume without justification that the lives of all farm animals contain nothing but suffering and death. It is easy to demonstrate that farm conditions are not all equal, and in some examples farm animals might actually enjoy their existence. Would you disagree?

Adopting a global vegan diet would require fewer resources than the meat-intensive ones that are currently wide-spread. — NKBJ

Reducing the rate of meat consumption and therefore meat-agriculture in some western countries would save us money, but going full vegan would cost us too much money. As I've pointed out earlier, the pastureland and farmland used for cattle feed isn't exactly fit for growing squash and eggplant. Having a herd of cattle that can extract energy from un-farmed fields is a great economic bonus, the manure means fertilizer (making plant farms cheaper), and many other by-products are put to use.

Over eating meat and over farming animals is unhealthy and inefficient, but I have not seen a study that demonstrates the health benefits of eating no meat as opposed to reasonable amounts of it as a part of a well-planned diet, or which identifies possible economic gains from eliminating animal husbandry from human agriculture completely.

Argue for your anecdote all you want--as you point out, all it can do is have any meaning to you--but it has no meaning to me or anyone with whom you are trying to engage in a philosophical conversation. You simply don't have any solid evidence to back you up, thus I have no reason to believe you. — NKBJ

I'm satisfied to have raised the possibility that going vegan entails health risks for me, which is a part of the moral justification I give for why I eat meat. Calling me anecdotal and demanding scientific evidence of my personal dietary observations is a bit much don't you think?

And how does it make any sense to argue that the value of life outweighs the tragedy of death, therefore murder is acceptable? Again, you can't go up to someone on the street and kill them with that logic...that would just be insane. — NKBJ

The logic of slaughtering an animal we've raised is that it's an established means of acquiring nourishment and sustenance and is thermodynamically necessary for the collectives of farm animals to exist in the first place. We cannot slaughter other humans because A) humans can fight back, B) we don't want to live in a world where we're under threat of slaughter, and C) we empathize with other humans very strongly.

If you wish to consider a fair parallel with humans, consider the following dilemma: your wife (or you?) is/are 7 months pregnant, and genetic testing reveals that your unborn child has a genetic disease which will manifest symptoms around 7-8 years of age and is universally terminal before 10 years of age. You also know that the genetic disease will cause great and prolonged suffering after it manifests such that a medically induced coma and eventual euthanasia are the most humane medical responses.

Would you be morally justified in going through with the pregnancy knowing beforehand what the outcome must be?

We cannot afford that many animal sanctuaries, so euthanize them we must. — VagabondSpectre

Yes we can afford it. And if the whole world miraculously turned vegan overnight, obviously we would care enough to find a way to fund these. But of course this is a far-fetched hypothetical scenario that we don't really need to discuss, because it's not going to happen that way. As people's awareness grows, the whole factory farm system will simply be phased out.

Furthermore, you continuously presume without justification that the lives of all farm animals contain nothing but suffering and death. It is easy to demonstrate that farm conditions are not all equal, and in some examples farm animals might actually enjoy their existence. Would you disagree? — VagabondSpectre

Two things:1) factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States. So the conditions of factory farming are of utmost importance to this discussion. 2) A cow who enjoys her life still would like not to be murdered--you consistently seem to think that a good life, or an adequate one somehow means it's okay to harm someone. It does not.

going full vegan would cost us too much money — VagabondSpectre

Sigh.
The costs of producing meat versus plants have been thoroughly discussed in this thread numerous times. For the details, please go back, read, and inform yourself. Long story short: a vegan diet requires much much much fewer resources than an omnivorous one.

Calling me anecdotal and demanding scientific evidence of my personal dietary observations is a bit much don't you think? — VagabondSpectre

Nope. Without evidence, I have no reason to be convinced. And you're the one trying to convince me of your experience...

Would you be morally justified in going through with the pregnancy knowing beforehand what the outcome must be? — VagabondSpectre

No.
But it's not a perfect analogy either--we're not talking about 7 month old fetuses when we talk about ending meat-eating--we're talking about creatures who don't exist yet at all, not even as fetuses, zygotes, or embryos...

My main point is you still eat (part of) the plant, so it's not possible to survive without eating plants as you previously stated. It may be possible to live on fruit alone for a while, but not for a full human life. especially not if living in colder climates or doing hard labor requiring over 5000 kcal a day.
Besides, when is the last time you picked off all seeds of a strawberry and planted them? It may be possible, but even for most vegans too unpractical to be practicing all the time. — Tomseltje

It is not considered part of the plant. That is why it is called a fruit, as it does no harm to the plant if picked properly. It is not advisable for teenagers and younger children to have strictly adhere to a fruit diet, but it is definitely doable and sustainable for everyone else. Fruits contain enough sugar and fats to survive. Why would I need to plant all of them? All I need to do is ensure the survival of some of the seeds and the plants lineage is unharmed. Not all plants are guaranteed reproduction now and every seed doesn't need to germinate. Just as not every human gamete is protected or guaranteed reproductive success.

Glad we can at least agree on that part. So it's not wether the act of eating meat that is immoral but it's about wether the act of killing an animal in order to eat it is immoral. Seeing you are sensible about this one, perhaps you can come up with an answer on where to draw the line between wich animals are okay kill for food and wich aren't. Assuming you have no problem with killing single celled sessile animals that is. They don't provide meat, but they can still be quite nutricious, and will be killed in the process of digesting. (if you do have a problem with digesting single celled animals, I wonder how you prevent yourself from doing so, since they can't be seen without using a microscope) — Tomseltje

None of them are okay to kill for food. They have a right to live. Accidents are accidents. (see deer example), that is not intentional killing, which is the moral dilemma here. By sessile I assume you mean like sponges and coral? If that is the case then I would say they fit into the same category as other animals. If it lives, you shouldn't kill it to eat it, unless it is unavoidable (see bacterium/fungi).

It's not psychotic to realize that chickens and sheep and cows cannot survive indefinitely in the wild. Chickens will die off rather quickly, the sheep might not last a season un-sheared, and the cows will eventually be taken by coyotes, wolves, disease, and the elements. — VagabondSpectre

Nobody said anything about surviving indefinitely. Let me give you two scenarios.

1. Live in a confined area 99% of your life. That area is where you urinate, defecate and also eat from. You're handled aggressively from birth, with constant pain and discomfort. You're also tortured from time to time, and then abruptly hauled off to get your throat slit or put into a gas chamber.

2. Live out in the wild with a right to life and liberty. You're free from oppressive restrictions imposed by an external authority. You still must live with the dangers of predators and/or disease, but you may do so freely.

To say you'd rather live "safe", free from predators, in which the 1st situation would be more appealing, is absurdly dishonest. If anybody had a choice between those two scenarios, they would only pick #1 if they were masochistic and did not desire a life of liberty. The 2nd scenario has a probability of death from predators and/or disease, but it is not 100% guaranteed. And while you live out that probability, you are not completely oppressed without the ability to exercise your free-will.

What we do to animals is absolutely disgusting and ridiculous, just to get taste pleasure from a hamburger. Animals constantly get eaten by other predators all the time out in the wild, but I can guarantee they [and you] would prefer a life in the wild, than life as a factory farmed animal.

When the conditions in which they are confined are atrocious, of course it would be preferable for an animal to live freely. However, that's not always the case. So what would you say then? Furthermore, wouldn't it also depend on the animal in question and what is needed for them to live a satisfactory life, which is why I don't understand the relevance of what a human would do in that situation. Additionally, many types of pets live confined, but are seemingly content. Not having concern for predators, starvation, dehydration, extreme weather. Barring any abuse or inadequate conditions enforced from an external figure, it doesn't seem too far fetched for other animals or even a human to prefer that life style to the wild. Of course, other things to consider would be how an animals lifestyle would be in the wild, some are far more parlous than others.

I'd actually say yes, but that doesn't necessarily justify the action simply because it's less wrong than something else.

Anyways, on topic. It's not the same because the kitten is still alive and the potato is already dead.
I've also skimmed some research on plant consciousness. It's clear plant's are complex organisms, but don't necessarily feel, think like animals do. Many however, have defense mechanism's to ensure their survival. Ultimately, neither plant or animal "wants" to die. Though they may process differently. So why should animals be prioritized simply due to their sentience? So I ask the same question as I did before, is there any circumstance in which a painless animal kill would be equivalent to a plant kill? A few factors to take into account I presume would be how the animal's death would affect others, perhaps the animals intellectual and emotional capacity as well.

It's also interesting, because apparently some philosophers that advocate veganism draw the line with different animals. For Singer, I think it's oysters. I presume the line is drawn for valid reason. So at what point do vegans demarcate? Is there a certain level of sentience or lack of? Or just none at all?

Raw potatoes are dormant, not dead.

Animals who can feel pain and value life shouldn't be harmed or killed based on those qualities. Same thing applies to humans. Basic. Why don"t you kick Bobby in the shins? Because it hurts, and hurting others is wrong.

Singer draws the line at oysters because they do not seem to possess a nervous system capable of pain and suffering. He says they are in those ways closer to plants than animals.

Sooo, on what basis do YOU think it is wrong to kick an innocent person in the shins?

I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but there was a major new study that came out in Science today about the global environmental impact of food production. There are a bazillion studies analyzing food production and the environment, but this is by far the most comprehensive one ever attempted -- a metastudy of over 500 other studies covering 40,000 farms and about 1,000 processors in about 120 countries. So for sheer scale and ambition there are no competitors. Here is the link to the study in Science:

The global impacts of food production

Joseph Poore, professor at Oxford and the leader on the study, told the Guardian unequivocally:

A vegan diet is probably the single best way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.

A pretty rousing endorsement from an Englishman!

As people's awareness grows, the whole factory farm system will simply be phased out. — NKBJ

Not if the population keeps growing and we don't come up with a new way to meet our food and nutrition requirements.

Two things:1) factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States. So the conditions of factory farming are of utmost importance to this discussion. 2) A cow who enjoys her life still would like not to be murdered--you consistently seem to think that a good life, or an adequate one somehow means it's okay to harm someone. It does not. — NKBJ

You were making the argument that breeding farm animals is necessarily immoral because of their inevitable death at our hands, but I'm sugesting that these can be lives worth living, death included, which cannot otherwise be had. If you want your argument to apply to all farm animals, you need to account for ethically raised and humanely slaughtered farm animals too. Given my position on over-consuming meat, the immorality of factory farming, and the inefficiency of over-farming animals I would expect you to be primarily addressing the position I actually hold.

Sigh.
The costs of producing meat versus plants have been thoroughly discussed in this thread numerous times. For the details, please go back, read, and inform yourself. Long story short: a vegan diet requires much much much fewer resources than an omnivorous one. — NKBJ

A diet with less meat would be cheaper, but a societal diet with no meat or animal husbandry would not save us resources if we aimed for our current levels of nutrition. The extra variety and volume of plants that we would need to grow to ensure rounded nutrition for everyone would be immense. Losing the fertilizer system we typically use would strain our existing crops as it is. Oil based fertilizer is getting more expensive and those 56 million acres of sub-par farm-land are going to require fertilization if we plan to grow nutrient rich vegetables on them.

I'm not crazy, I'm not just ignorant of the science either. Animals who recycle waste and harvest grass/hay fields which otherwise we could not monetize are an economic gain for us. They produce densely packed nutrients of fat and protein, fertilizer which cheapens the rest of our crops, and a slew of by-products. Losing these things will inevitably cost us money or nutrition.

If you look at the issue comprehensively you will find that there is quite a lot to consider for our society to go full vegan. Land used for high quality feed could be converted to human-edible alternatives, and we would get the calories we need, but overall we would be at a nutritional deficit. It's possible to have a very well crafted plants only diet and not need constant supplements, but the variety just wouldn't be there for all of us to do so at once.

None of the discussions or studies linked in this thread address the net economic and nutritional costs of western societies such as America removing animals from agriculture overall. Studies which do examine comprehensively the ramifications of eliminating animals from agriculture find that there would not be sufficient availability of variety to provide adequate nutrition for the entire population. As I've alluded to before, there wouldn't be enough well-planned diets on the shelves; not enough kale.

Here's a study that examines the ramifications of removing animals from agriculture entirely with interest in greenhouse gas emissions and the nutritional requirements and impacts of and on populations

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/E10301

It considers what sorts of foods can be grown on the land currently used for animals and projects what our basic diets would look like in a plants only system compared to one which includes animals. It concludes that a plants-only agricultural system would increase deficiencies in certain nutriments while over-providing in calories and bio-mass.Nobody has presented me with any kind of economic or nutritional feasibility study such as this yet. You do claim to need scientific evidence for belief right?

Nobody said anything about surviving indefinitely. Let me give you two scenarios.

1. Live in a confined area 99% of your life. That area is where you urinate, defecate and also eat from. You're handled aggressively from birth, with constant pain and discomfort. You're also tortured from time to time, and then abruptly hauled off to get your throat slit or put into a gas chamber.

2. Live out in the wild with a right to life and liberty. You're free from oppressive restrictions imposed by an external authority. You still must live with the dangers of predators and/or disease, but you may do so freely.

To say you'd rather live "safe", free from predators, in which the 1st situation would be more appealing, is absurdly dishonest. If anybody had a choice between those two scenarios, they would only pick #1 if they were masochistic and did not desire a life of liberty. The 2nd scenario has a probability of death from predators and/or disease, but it is not 100% guaranteed. And while you live out that probability, you are not completely oppressed without the ability to exercise your free-will.

What we do to animals is absolutely disgusting and ridiculous, just to get taste pleasure from a hamburger. Animals constantly get eaten by other predators all the time out in the wild, but I can guarantee they [and you] would prefer a life in the wild, than life as a factory farmed animal. — chatterbears

This is such a silly false dichotomy, or else extraordinarily ill-passioned...

Would you rather

1. Live a longer life in a protected habitat free from predators, which is large enough to live in comfortably, has food provided, where you are handled by compassionate keepers, live happily, but must one day be humanely slaughtered.

Or

2. Life a shorter life out in the wild with only the pains of cold, hunger, and the fear of constant danger keeping you alive for the moment, until statistically you fall prey to the elements or a predator, and will endure suffering of the most unimaginable cruelty (slow starvation or slow disembowelment via predation or slow death by parasite or disease).

A sane person could only ever choose option 1, to disagree would be psychotic.

1. Live a longer life in a protected habitat free from predators, which is large enough to live in comfortably, has food provided, where you are handled by compassionate keepers, live happily, but must one day be humanely slaughtered. — VagabondSpectre

Can you be more inaccurate? The percentage of factory farms that hold to these standards, are probably less than 1%. You know very well I was referring to the overwhelming majority of 99%, in which factory farms operate. Until factory farms operate in this so-called utopia of living comfortably and being handled by compassionate keepers, buying meat is contributing to the torture of these animals. So you want to talk about false dichotomies, you're portrayal of the current reality is way far off compared to mine.

Can you be more inaccurate? The percentage of factory farms that hold to these standards, are probably less than 1%. You know very well I was referring to the overwhelming majority of 99%, in which factory farms operate. Until factory farms operate in this so-called utopia of living comfortably and being handled by compassionate keepers, buying meat is contributing to the torture of these animals. So you want to talk about false dichotomies, you're portrayal of the current reality is way far off compared to mine. — chatterbears

I've stated that factory farming standards are immoral in one my earliest posts in this thread...

But just to clarify, if I ethically raise chickens and goats in my animal utopia where they are handled with compassion, would you object to me consuming them? Unless I consume or sell these animals (which have not been tortured at all or suffered unnecessarily) the whole operation will have to cease. Do you argue that I would be morally obligated to do so?

http://www.gfi.org/images/uploads/2018/03/EmoryAlmyPNASFullReply.pdf

Point by point rebuttal of your article.

Nice article. Do you have the original webpage for this article, or is it only linked to the PDF?

I've stated that factory farming standards are immoral in one my earliest posts in this thread... — VagabondSpectre

Do you still eat meat? If so, then saying something is immoral is irrelevant if you are going to continue contributing to the industry that you claim is immoral. Talk is cheap.

But just to clarify, if I ethically raise chickens and goats in my animal utopia where they are handled with compassion, would you object to me consuming them? Unless I consume or sell these animals (which have not been tortured at all or suffered unnecessarily) the whole operation will have to cease. Do you argue that I would be morally obligated to do so? — VagabondSpectre

Your animal utopia scenario would be vastly better by an inconceivable margin. But the treatment of these animals is only one piece of the puzzle. They would still lose the right to life. It's the concept of being killed for exploitation, which is immoral. I'd assume if you had the choice to live in an animal utopia, where you're guaranteed to die at the hand of another, depending on when your owner feels hungry and ready to kill you, or the choice to live how you do now, which would you choose? In your current life, you can make decisions that will allow you to live longer, or maybe live shorter. In the animal utopia farm, there's no decision any animal could make that would allow them to live longer. They would all die whenever they become useless to the person exploiting them for food. Such as, a hen that can not longer lay eggs. That hen becomes useless, so off she goes to get her throat slit.

It is not considered part of the plant. That is why it is called a fruit, as it does no harm to the plant if picked properly. It is not advisable for teenagers and younger children to have strictly adhere to a fruit diet, but it is definitely doable and sustainable for everyone else. Fruits contain enough sugar and fats to survive. Why would I need to plant all of them? All I need to do is ensure the survival of some of the seeds and the plants lineage is unharmed. Not all plants are guaranteed reproduction now and every seed doesn't need to germinate. Just as not every human gamete is protected or guaranteed reproductive success. — yatagarasu

Following this logic it would also be ok to eat eggs, especially when unfertillized. Most fruits hardly contain any fat or protein apart from the seeds. And we should just let young childred die or what are they supposed to eat? Any idea how much fruit one has to eat in order to get to those 5000 kcal a day? 1 kg of apples has about 540 kcal. So one needs to eat almost 5 kg of apples a day to just get the calories needed. However 1kg of apples only has 4 gram protein, so even when eat 5 kg, you only consumed 20 gram protein, where you need at least 50 gram a day in a 1500 kcal diet.
Humans need about 2,2 gram protein per kg fatfree bodymass a day. So a 110 kg guy with 10% fat tissue needs about 220 gram protein a day. If only eat apples he needs to consume about 50 kg apples a day. but then one would have 10 times the calory intake needed. So what fruit diet are you suggesting?

None of them are okay to kill for food. They have a right to live. Accidents are accidents. (see deer example), that is not intentional killing, which is the moral dilemma here. By sessile I assume you mean like sponges and coral? If that is the case then I would say they fit into the same category as other animals. If it lives, you shouldn't kill it to eat it, unless it is unavoidable (see bacterium/fungi). — yatagarasu

Sponges and coral are sessile, however they still are multicelled organisms. I was talking about single celled sessile animals like the Vorticellidae.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorticella),
Gametes are living too, they just happen to be the haploid lifephase of a haplo/diplont organism. The 'if it lives, you shouldn't kill it to eat it" applies to eating fruit as well if you don't take out all the seeds and plant them. One can only prevent killing for food when scavenging, wich just means you let someone/something else do the killing for you, quite likely more brutal to the killed individue than had you killed it yourself.

In the animal utopia farm, there's no decision any animal could make that would allow them to live longer. They would all die whenever they become useless to the person exploiting them for food. Such as, a hen that can not longer lay eggs. That hen becomes useless, so off she goes to get her throat slit. — chatterbears

Nonsense, in the animal utopia farm I could also choose to wait with killing and eating the animal till it reaches old age, and it starts suffering from worn out joints. By killing the animal then I prevent it suffering alot of pain from walking about with worn out joints. You are conflating current practices you've witnessed with the suggested idea.

This is an excellent study and shows exactly how far animal husbandry has to go if it is to have any sustainable future.

That animal husbandry has long way to go to become sustainable, however, is not the argument in the OP. That argument in the OP is that absolutely any killing of animals for meat is morally wrong on the basis of either;

1. Killing an sentient thing is morally wrong because we're sentient and we wouldn't like to be killed.
or
2. Using meat to make up your protein, B-vitamin and other trace nutrients is always more harmful (by some as yet unspecified definition of harm, but something vaguely environmental) than farming the equivalent vegetables.

Obviously, the report has no bearing on 1) and it remains unresolved how this is proven, so I'm presuming the report is being advanced in favour of 2). To that effect, in the interests of balance, I'd like to point out a few flaws in the report that my statistical colleagues have mentioned. These are all from the published data, not the original source so are tentative warnings, not absolute critique.

1. The graphs and conclusions are drawn from the mid-percentile range. The lowest 10th centile to the highest 90th centile. This is quite normal practice as it remove aberrations. To give a general picture (as I said it gives a pretty damning general picture). What it does not do, however, is support the claim that even the very best of animal husbandry is less sustainable than the worst of arable farming. It is entirely silent on the comparison having missed off the data for the very best of animal farming (the top 10%). This conclusion comes from their chart, the key to which shows a bar appearing to go from 10th percentile to 90th percentile.

2.The measurements of CO2 emmissions, acidification, eutrophication and land use have been 'standardised' across the 570 studies included in the meta-study. This introduces a serious element of noise, not so much with acidification and eutrophication which are relatively easily measured, but with CO2 emissions (the total carbon footprint of the entire operation and all of it's consequences and requirements) and land use (likewise the total use), it will heavily depend on the measurement methods used by the various studies involved. Again, this is irrelevant for the conclusion that animal husbandry in general is way more harmful than arable as this noise is far less than the size of the sample. But that's not the claim that's being made here on this thread. This thread is trying to make the claim that there is no form of animal husbandry that's less harmful than the equivalent vegetable farming, and that is something this report cannot (and does not) claim.

3. The measure 'land use' does not appear to be stratified and yet is highly significant in some sectors. It is simply wildly wrong to presume that the land use figures for soy (for example) would be equivalent if soy was grown on the land currently growing lamb. Soy is currently grown on the most fertile soils (additionally fertilized with animal waste taken off the land used to graze animals). If you take fertility from one land type and put it on another, which was already more fertile in the first place, then you are going to get a much higher return from the fertilized land per hectare than you are from the land from which you have removed the fertility. To imply that soy-farming is better to the extent that it makes more efficient use of land, is simply false. It has a higher return because it is on more fertile ground. We do not know what the land use comparison would be if the land were properly stratified by fertility.

4. All ruminant animals produce methane, all animals are net greenhouse gas producers, all plants are net greenhouse gas reducers (presuming soil and vegetative waste are handled efficiently). Ignoring this, the report takes the total greenhouse gas contribution of animal husbandry and compares it to vegetable farming. But a wild landscape in the grazed pasture-land would also be a net producer of greenhouse gas emissions. So again, the report is not comparing like with like. If the cattle and sheep were taken off land suitable for arable, there would be a massive net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions - definitely a good idea then. But if cattle and sheep were taken off natural grassland and it was returned to wild grazing, there would not necessarily be a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So to imply that a change in diet away from fully grass-fed animals on less fertile areas would help reduce greenhouse gas emission is unsupported by this research.

Point by point rebuttal of your article. — NKBJ

It's customary to make some attempt to cite or paraphrase, otherwise we're just hurling links at one another.

Its main criticism is based on the fact that the study I cited presumed that land used for producing animal feed would be used for legume and grain counterparts of similar nutritional makeup (i.e: human-edible corn). But this main criticism seems to be in part misinterpretation of the original study's assumptions (they even say that the study suggests humans would actually be eating animal feed, which was not a conclusion or assumption it actually made and was not relevant to its total nutritional estimates). It does not cite any evidence showing that a variety of more nutritional foods can in fact be grown on the lower quality land currently used for animal feed production, and it does not address the reasons the original study cites for making the specific assumption under criticism. Very high quality land is generally already being used for fruit and vegetable production which require it; the human-edible foodstuffs we could grow on land currently used for animal feed would likely be of similar nutritional yield for these reasons.

To assume that an equivalent amount of nutriment could be passed directly to humans as is currently passed to to animals from livestock feed is indeed an assumption that merits further testing and modeling, but it might turn out that most of the pasture/forage and animal feed farmland is simply not suitable for nutritional plant-based production.

The Good Food Institute is a non-profit lobby group, and while it's amply clear their hearts are in the noblest of places, they outright accuse the authors of showing bias towards animal agriculture and fail to substantiate their reasons. Very clearly the Good Food Institute is biased to begin with. If I've misread or misrepresented either the study I referenced or the document you linked, please point out how.

Do you still eat meat? If so, then saying something is immoral is irrelevant if you are going to continue contributing to the industry that you claim is immoral. Talk is cheap. — chatterbears

Whether or not I eat meat is irrelevant to the argument at hand, in point of fact

Your animal utopia scenario would be vastly better by an inconceivable margin. But the treatment of these animals is only one piece of the puzzle. They would still lose the right to life. It's the concept of being killed for exploitation, which is immoral. I'd assume if you had the choice to live in an animal utopia, where you're guaranteed to die at the hand of another, depending on when your owner feels hungry and ready to kill you, or the choice to live how you do now, which would you choose? In your current life, you can make decisions that will allow you to live longer, or maybe live shorter. In the animal utopia farm, there's no decision any animal could make that would allow them to live longer. They would all die whenever they become useless to the person exploiting them for food. Such as, a hen that can not longer lay eggs. That hen becomes useless, so off she goes to get her throat slit. — chatterbears

Farm animals living as I do now is not an option for them. Left un-cared for ("freedom") they would die in agony, and without the return we get from harvesting animals, we cannot afford to have them exist at all. So once again, the dilemma is not between torture and freedom, as it stands the dilemma is between non-existence/painful death and a life worth living that will one day end at the hands of a human, as humanely as possible.