As someone with farmer parents... please, don't drink milk. The saddest sound I have ever heard in my life is a mother cow calling for her calf after it has been taken away.
Yeah milk is problematic. I don’t think people always realize that cows don’t magically generate milk, they need to be impregnated before you get to milk them. It sounds obvious but I’m not sure if it’s commonly known.
Also, milk has plenty of good alternatives (in my opinion). Give Soy or Almond milk a try if you haven’t. You can also substitute milk for milk alternatives in some recipes (coconut milk can be good as a replacement for cooking).
Yeah, milk is disturbing. Most people's intuition about what is most humane to eat does not match the objective cruelty of what they consume. The life of an average cow versus the life of an average chicken for instance.
I like the point about not doing a terrible thing not being enough if I am passively tolerating other people doing terrible things around me. We are all complicit by either active participation in evil or by inaction. Factory farming is evil, there's no argument about that. And it's industrial-scale evil: billions of conscious creatures living their worst possible lives. And there is no argument about them being conscious too: anybody who's ever owned a pet knows that these creatures have rich emotional lives, personalities, fears and joys. And it's not a necessary evil too - there is plenty of protein and calories without meat.
> The [Save Our Bacon] Act would stop any state or locality from regulating the sale of meat based on how it’s produced in another state.
Interesting to think about this adjacent to the current availability of mifespristone by mail debate. They're not identical, but to what extent do the laws of one state impact the lives of those who reside in another?
So true. One of the smartest animals being treated in the worst possible way. You can't even justify it with some nutritional or health argument - there's nothing essential in pork that humans can't get from other sources. It's cruelty and torture that's happening out of habit, out of people being stubborn and not wanting to go without a taste they're familiar with.
"Furthermore, vegetarianism, though morally laudable, has an obvious economic limitation — when one person refuses to eat meat, it lowers the price of meat for everyone else"
I very much doubt that, I think the opposite is happening in the long term because of economies of scale.
So go ahead, become vegan! You already know you should!
Lowering demand doesn't always lower price. Assuming the industry is competitive, and capable of supplying all demand, which it usually is, the loss of demand mostly means less money for the producer, and more money for the former consumer to spend on something else.
I have so much hope for lab grown meat and animal byproducts, but between opposition to "gmos" and agricultural lobbying, I think it will take a century before it's the norm.
vegetable protein replacements are like 90% there tastewise as far as I'm concerned, the only time I feel a need to eat meat anymore is when someone would have thrown it out otherwise (an outrageous waste)
If this topic interests you, I recommend reading “Animal Liberation” by the philosopher Peter Singer.
I discovered it during my philosophy classes at university, and eventually became vegetarian as a result of this about 15 years ago.
Honestly at this point I can’t remember the details of the book, only that it had enough of an impact to stop me eating meat.
As someone with farmer parents... please, don't drink milk. The saddest sound I have ever heard in my life is a mother cow calling for her calf after it has been taken away.
Yeah milk is problematic. I don’t think people always realize that cows don’t magically generate milk, they need to be impregnated before you get to milk them. It sounds obvious but I’m not sure if it’s commonly known.
Also, milk has plenty of good alternatives (in my opinion). Give Soy or Almond milk a try if you haven’t. You can also substitute milk for milk alternatives in some recipes (coconut milk can be good as a replacement for cooking).
Yeah, milk is disturbing. Most people's intuition about what is most humane to eat does not match the objective cruelty of what they consume. The life of an average cow versus the life of an average chicken for instance.
I like the point about not doing a terrible thing not being enough if I am passively tolerating other people doing terrible things around me. We are all complicit by either active participation in evil or by inaction. Factory farming is evil, there's no argument about that. And it's industrial-scale evil: billions of conscious creatures living their worst possible lives. And there is no argument about them being conscious too: anybody who's ever owned a pet knows that these creatures have rich emotional lives, personalities, fears and joys. And it's not a necessary evil too - there is plenty of protein and calories without meat.
Always has been.
> The [Save Our Bacon] Act would stop any state or locality from regulating the sale of meat based on how it’s produced in another state.
Interesting to think about this adjacent to the current availability of mifespristone by mail debate. They're not identical, but to what extent do the laws of one state impact the lives of those who reside in another?
So true. One of the smartest animals being treated in the worst possible way. You can't even justify it with some nutritional or health argument - there's nothing essential in pork that humans can't get from other sources. It's cruelty and torture that's happening out of habit, out of people being stubborn and not wanting to go without a taste they're familiar with.
"Furthermore, vegetarianism, though morally laudable, has an obvious economic limitation — when one person refuses to eat meat, it lowers the price of meat for everyone else"
I very much doubt that, I think the opposite is happening in the long term because of economies of scale.
So go ahead, become vegan! You already know you should!
Lowering demand doesn't always lower price. Assuming the industry is competitive, and capable of supplying all demand, which it usually is, the loss of demand mostly means less money for the producer, and more money for the former consumer to spend on something else.
I have so much hope for lab grown meat and animal byproducts, but between opposition to "gmos" and agricultural lobbying, I think it will take a century before it's the norm.
vegetable protein replacements are like 90% there tastewise as far as I'm concerned, the only time I feel a need to eat meat anymore is when someone would have thrown it out otherwise (an outrageous waste)
State's rights, amirite