If you support the animal industry are you indirectly supporting slavery?
Vegans make the point that even animals who are exploited for their hair and body fluids are enslaved
The point of veganism is animal liberation and reduction of animal suffering. Most human beings would think these are good goals when applied to people yet when we look at society we see very similar things happening to people that we see happening to animals. We see human beings getting exploited by the prison industrial complex of for profit prisons, we see long prison sentences, we see even in the US Constitution itself the loophole allowing slavery as punishment for a crime. Our system also has capital punishment which gives the state the ability to murder convicted criminals who meet certain specific criteria.
The question is, do vegans have the right idea? Is something as simple as drinking a glass of milk encouraging the "low empathy mindset" which enables torture, slavery, and murder of human beings? Is it encouraging the "low empathy mindset" in particular to expose children to the idea that farming animals to exploit them for whatever purpose is okay? Steemt, what is the appropriate way to feel about this and are vegans right or are they taking it too far?
ople who make the decision to change their diets and embrace a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle can do so for a number of reasons. Some believe in the sanctity of all life and are against all forms of animal cruelty. They seek to exclude the exploitation of other animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. Some also believe that eating meat is unhealthy and/or that raising beef cattle and dairy cows is bad for the environment and ecologically irresponsible.
For me eating animals is the cycle of life,
cycle goes something like this:
The problem is the industrial scale. The damages to the environment are not a belief, but a fact.
The cycle of life, I hate to say it, was made up by humans, the perpetrators of this ongoing 'holocaust' towards animals in an effort to appease people's conscience's. Animals in the wild actually have the chance to fight back - when an alligator goes for a deer, there is always that chance for a deer to escape. Our systematic raising-and-killing of 56 billion of land animals(this does not count marine/aquatic life who's yearly numbers killed are so vast they are only measured in tonnes) isn't 'the cycle of life.' It's not benefittng the earth at all. Please take the time to watch Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret to understand that the choice to eat meat and other animal products is the antithesis of benefitting the earth in some way. I know this is 'up for debate' although truly becoming less and less so with each passing day, veganism is actually much healthier for us and it's no surprise that something that is healthier for us actually is healthier for the planet as a whole as well.
Oh and if anyone takes offense to the holocaust reference, there have been actual holocaust survivors that liken the 'current an ongoing animal holocaust' to that they experienced under Nazi Germany so this is a very legitimate comparison to be made with many parallels. The thing is that people have objectified animals to such a degree that they are not even victims anymore.
I think everyone believe in their own beliefs , what is right for them is wrong for some , and vice versa . Maybe the point is that we shouldn't put animals and humans on the same wavelength , we are different creatures so we can't link the two.
Sometimes when eating meat I do feel like it's life that I'm eating and feel a bit bad , and then I eat plantations and feel the same . It is life too .
Humans are mammals.
Yeah but plantations(plantains?) can't feel pain and suffer like animals can. That bananna isn't going to scream when it's cut... or try to run away... people like to say 'oh but plants are life as well' but everyone knows it's not the same thing. There's no way that cutting a carrot or an apple or a piece of lettuce is the same as killing a rabbit, pig, or even fish. If we stopped and put ourselves in 'the shoes' of these animals we wouldn't be so quick to impose 'our beliefs' on them in the way that we do. Animals are some of the most innocent beings on this planet and yet for many animals life on this planet is an utter and absolute hell because of us.
And even if plants could feel pain/fear/suffering like animals do, we'd still be 'harming' more plants that way... Like the vast majority of the worlds crops go to feeding livestock, the vast majority of Amazonian rainforest destruction is going to clear land for growing feed and to have cattle. With animal agriculture, we must raise so much more feed than if we just were to grow the food directly ourselves.
If we just directly ate plants and survived from that(which vegans are proving every day it's possible to do) we not just eliminate the unnecessary suffering of the animals but also pose less of a buren on our ecosystem. Let's face it, we only have one planet! And while humans may not be on the same wavelength as animals, we are still animals at the end of the day, and we all have to inhabit the one and only earth that we all rely on to survive... and our 'beliefs' that it's okay to raise and kill in excess of 56 billions of land animals each year worldwide but we wonder why we are having trouble feeding 8 billion people?
I really recommend watching Cowspiracy for an explanation of the environmental impacts that animal agriculture contributes to. If there are any 'environmentalists' who continue to eat meat then are ignorant to what the implications of this dietary preference truly entail. It's so much more than a 'personal choice' when you look at it from different angles. Another really great but more difficult to watch documentary is Earthlings. I am glad that I watched it though because it really opened up my eyes to a lot of things.
You are the complete time complaining about mass production maybe without knowing.
Why should, just because the way it is produced is incorrect at the moment, people eat what you or someone else want, like or think it is the best? Let the people eat whatever they want because this is not the problem, regulate the way is produced not the peoples right to free choose whatever they want to eat.
I do not need to watch a documentary film for to see it is wrong the way it is done all this, just going to a super market do the job.
Eat meat is not the problem, people can eat whatever they want but the way is produced is a BIG PROBLEM and not only neat, also vegetals can go in this list. Maybe if we start to pointing out to what the real problem is and not saying to the people what they or not should do people will start to realize and think about it.
Just my 5 cents and taking what my experience has showing me going around in the world.
How do you know someone is a vegan?
Don't worry, they will tell you.
Not my joke, but hey, it's funny.
(except to vegans, because they have no sense of humor)
hehehehe it is funny because sadly it is a big true ... it looks sometimes (majority part) more a political "correcteness" movement than something else ... Honestly I do not care what people eat or not, it is not my problem what they do with they lifes (put in not only the food stuff but also sexual, social and whatever other). Taste is not the problem, never was but to avoid seeing or disscusing what the real problem is (mass production) people tend to "ignore facts that contradict their beliefs" ... or fight against them just to feel confortables with them self .... kind of egocentric behavior from my point of view.
Btw, I share a very interesting article about "confirmation bias", you should read it ;)
Pd: I know some vegans with a good sense of humor :D luckily not all are how you say hahahaha
Ppd: All vegans I know live in capitalist countries (USA, Canada, Europe) where they can have a variety of choices in big super markets ... just saying! They do not care at all what people in other poor countries have to do to find food or what kind of food the can get in the hands normally ... so for me, Veganism is a "1st world" countries movement... no a real world problem honestly... people in real world are fighting for to have something to eat, they do not care what it is if they can eat today...
I agree - Having the choice of what to eat, denotes a spoilt decadence all of its own.
I don't know the numbers, but I would wager a much higher than average % correlation of SJW's et al, being vegetarian/vegan.
(all my travel stories are true - living like that soon knocks any decadence out of you, believe me.)
followed.
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/italy-rummaging-in-rome - for example lol
will start to read ur series ;) and I know who I need to call if I go to Thailand (maybe next year when I am german :) ) followed back
lol- no problem. I hope you enjoy.
I could make some questions to the vegans like
But people, the majority part of the time, preffer the best solution for them not the correct ones for everybody. I always recall to this video from George Carlin when I think about all this subjects
But you are aware that most of the crop is used to feed the animals we eat, yes? It requires ~12kg of food (and 15,000l of water) to produce 1kg of beef.
I am aware that they use a lot of Soya if this is what do u mean? Do not get me wrong, I am against, in general, the industrialization of both, the agricultural and animal growing ... but I see it as a dopple-moral to fight against one and not the other. Go vegan is not the answer to the problem of the industrialization, at least for me. And it is true also that we (normal people) just care for animals we know, means dog, cat, pigs, cows and the 2 or 3 more... the other ones that we do not have contact in our everyday live we do really not care at all. It si a reality that I have seeing with my own eyes, not just in a news on Internet... so u get. for example, the aborigens figthing for lands in Chile because big companies are cutting all the endemic forrest to make plantations of many kind... mostly wood for paper but you also get agro-food plantations. And with the forrest all the animals living there died or moved away ... this animals also have rights ;) And it is just one example but I understand that if you do not see it with your own eyes it is not the same.
Edit: I am also aware we trow away 50% of the food production every day ... we produce more than we need, or at least it looks like. Maybe this is the problem and not to eat this or that
A lot of it is soy, yes, but not only that. In the US it's mostly grain.
The point is, without meat we'd need much less land for farming. 36% of the calories of plants we grow are used to feed livestock. And 90% of those calories are lost (while threatening the climate through farts).
The more meat is eaten in the country, the more - in the US it's a whopping 65% which is fed to animals! In other numbers, the amount of land that feeds 5 people right now, could feed 16 in a vegetarian usa.
But you can grow your animals by your self at home like we did in Cuba normally, you can also hunt. You do not need to grow animals in a industry scale and is what I advocate for, same for agriculture. The mass production come because of mass comsuption not the other way around. Without mas comsuption the mass production could not exist.
My idea, let the people choose what they want to eat and they should also do it by they self. Maybe they can produce a bit more to give away or exchange for something else of course. But not in an industrial level or then you get what we have now. A criminal industry and monopoly.
Agreed. The scale is the issue, but our consumption habits are responsible for that.
For sure! And it is what I also advocate for changing but not saying to the people that something they do for 1000s years is bad. You should show what the real problem is from my point of view. Maybe then, people will start to understand and will began to buy less meat in the markets (sometimes in Germany in the supermarket the meat part is empty on the weekends, crazy!) as a forst step to a better future .... they also need to put the TVs off. ;)
Those issues are well known and presented in the media once in a while. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
12kg of food (and 15,000l of water per day????? Really??? I did not knew that! Honestly this is too much, I should re-think again about it... I knew about the plants and the water in the earth... planst like pine and eucalipthus that take 100, 150 liters of water every day and when you cut this plants for the wood you can not use this earth to plant anything any more til 20-25 years later.
Not per day, per kg of meat we get out of the animal.
Ah ok! I got scare, that were big numbers! :)
They are ;-) A cow gives 300kg of meat and lives ~18 months. If you want to get the number per day per cow, it's ~8000l of water.
Excellent point Pharesim! Hey, hate to go off topic here but just had a quick question regarding the production rate of Steem. Does the production rate still double every 2nd year and on the 3rd year increase by 10 fold?
I just read the Steem blue paper and it seems from reading it that the Steem production may have dramatically declined in Dec. of 2016 so that, as mentioned in the Blue Paper, "The rate that new tokens are generated was set to 9.5% per year starting in December 2016, and decreases at a rate of 0.01% every 250,000 blocks, or about 0.5% per year. The inflation will continue decreasing at this rate until it reaches 0.95%, after a period of approximately 20.5 years." Wow! If this is true it would be a huge change in the production rate. Is the Blue Paper true? tip!
Yes, that was changed. The blue paper is up to date.
Hi @pharesim! @paul.atreides is sending you 0.1 SBD tip and @tipU upvote
:)
@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment, get share of the profit :):) no offense, but if anybody gets to ask questions it's the other way around.
Why?
Because meat eaters don't pay for vegans and vegetarians. But vegans and vegetarians pay big-time for meat eaters. The price of meat is only a fraction of what the real costs are to produce it and pay for the damage done.
The rest of the bill we all get to pay for through taxation (theft). If meat eaters start paying for their weird obsession with corpses themselves I would feel much less inclined to mention the topic.
No offense at all, we are debating! Why should I??? Question can be done in both ways as far as I see, why should be just one way around? What make so special people who do not want to eat something????
As far as I read you are talking about the way meat is produce ... Do you think there is only this industrial way to produce meat int he world? I come from a family of farmers in Cuba so I know other ways ... maybe it is the problem for many people who think like you ... you all think there is just one way, the industralized one ... not offense but all your coment it has nothing to do with eating but producing ...
This is a joke right? You see that you are all the time talking about producction.
But the worlds problems are not only around industry meat all the time, really sorry to say ... the industry of paper, for example, cut a lot of trees just for to produce books and stuf like that, I do not see people complaining for other peoples who read a lot of books or kids in the schools buying notebooks... Do you know how many trees the cut just for that and no one care? You at the end withou knowing it are playing the game no seeing what the real problem is ... Mass Production!
And do not get me wrong .. for me it is the same what you or someone else want to eat. It is your problem what you introduce in your body, you are free to decide. Now if you want to talk about how WE PRODUCE EVERYTHING in some countries like USA, Canada and countries from Europe then maybe we can find a solution to all this problems.
I do not think to eat this or that have to do with it.
I am well aware that industrial meat production is not the only way. Who isn't?
But it exists and it destroys our world like nothing else does at a tremendous cost for everybody. watch this for more information:
Sadly I can not see the video, it is blocked in Germany by Very US Network.
Are you aware that in many part of this world people can NOT CHOOSE what they can eat, they eat what they get the same day, whatever it is and sometime from the trash can... they are not super markets and things like in USA, Canada and some countries in Europe where the majority part of the vegans I know live ... (Not talking about India where cows are sacred or musulmans countries where they do not eat pig)
I am aware of this. I just fail to see how that changes the fact that the meat industry is destroying our earth like no other horrible thing we do and nobody is talking about it...
I can see that there are other problems, though, thank you.
Ps: if you really want to know, you will find a way to watch.
It is not about other problems... and the meat industry is not the only one who is destruying the planet the way u want to put it... you forget so many other industries like wood, paper for example, minery and so on that really destroy the world in a vissible way ... but hey! it is just my personal experience when I was a bit around the world making docu films ... not seeing them in internet ... for example
About the deforestation and the water problems in Chile not because of the "horrible"meat industry but the wood and paper industry ... they mapuches are fighting against it. If you do not understand spanish you can jump to minute 26 and see what happens in reality in those countries when u fight a "real terrible industry" ... btw you can see me there too
Esta Todo bien, amigo. Yo se de la lucha de los mapuche... Pero parece que tu no tienes ni idea cual industria está responsable para el parte más grande de la deforestación del mundo.
Yo no lo sabía hace poco. Cuando ves los números se te van a abrir los ojitos.
Viva la libertad!
I grew up on a farm, I do not support vegans and their wonderful ideas as to why they are vegans. As far as animal cruelty goes, it is something that I wish never happened.
So I had a thought, when you cut open a tree, it bleeds. So if we had to use the same ideology and logic that vegans use to come up with some of their amazing ideas. One could become a meat eater because of all the horrible things people do to plants.
So for me, if everything is done humanly then it is all fine.
A cow that gives you 300kg of meat ate 3,600kg of plants. You don't save the plants by eating meat :P
Hahaha. This is just one of those topics that go round and round. I never really thought of this before, my mind is blown. I think I need some meat right now ;)
Another way to address the argument you made is this: Do you know there are many children who are horribly upset when they realize that animals are being killed to feed them?
Now, did you EVER hear about a child being upset when it found out that vegetables are being ripped right out of the ground? No. Why?
Because it never happened.
We all know the difference very well...
Edit: upvote for honesty.
I feel it's because animals can communicate with us much more than plants can, and we have them around us. In movies children will be glad to see a beast like a huge bear killed, because those beasts don't stay around us, and they are dangerous, and yet they are animals. I don't think the children feel sad because an animal is killed, but Bacause an animal they are conversant with is killed, and animal they feel is harmless is killed. Okay look at a cockroach for example, a child would want it killed without feeling any remorse, not because it is an animal, but because it is one that causes damage. Would a vegetarian kill a mosquito he/she finds on his/her skin,?
I was not pointing you towards my comment, but the one from pharesim.
Sorry I was not being clear.
As for your answer: I agree that we have less compassion with potentially dangerous animals.
Fear determines how much we are able to love. Some can only love their dog, some love EVERY creature around. Fun fact: I once left two ticks in my skin because I did not see a way of removing them without harm. Would I always do that? No. Still it was good for me to face this particular fear...
Wow you left ticks on your skin, hmm thats a new one.
If you really believe that cutting vegetables and slaughtering an animal are essentially the same,
I dare you to actually do it. Did you ever slaughter an animal? I have, I wish I had not...
Also try leaving a dead animal in your kitchen together with the zucchini for -- let's say a week :)
Wow, it's all a matter of point of view.
I think it's all a matter of ethics. It seems to me there are basically two kinds of ethics:
Anarchist ethics:
Don't initiate force.
Spiritual ethics:
Don't use force.
I am in between the two. Sometimes I use force when attacked (by a mosquito for example) sometimes I don't even when attacked (by a mosquito for example).
Both ethics ban one thing: the initiation of force.
The only difference is that Anarchist ethics allow force when attacked, spiritual ethics NEVER allows force.
Regarding massproduction of bodyfluids like dairy/milk. Anyone who watches the below non-graphic video has to admitt that is a cruel industry, in my opinion.
If vegans are right or not is not really a relevant question. If you take the moral high ground most people will ignore your arguments. For the same reason I would have never gone vegan somebody put it to me like that. I had to find out for myself (offcourse others fed me with information) how these animals are treated. After seeing this, I know I can't live with myself knowing that I'm facilitating this.
To eat this or that is not the problem but mass production as far as I see it. You facilitate a lot of bad things just buying a pack of paper for print or a shirt in a shop if you want to put it like that. People should point to what the real problem is more than saying other what to do and from my point of view the problem is, as I wrote before, mass production!
I went vegan couple of months ago, not that much for saving animals but simply because eating meat and diary products isn't good for human health.
Being one with the nature tells you to do to others, including plants, the same as you would like to be done to you.
Karma works nonstop.
Good post! Keep spreading knowledge!
Hmm, well if we are to look at it this way, do you know that plants too are living beings, and plucking them and cutting them can also be seen as exploitation, which means that we all would not have anything to eat. Just my thoughts
Just scroll up a bit to see how a certain Dragonslayer got burned badly for the same argument...
Did not see it before, just replied to it, read my comment on it.
I wasn't yet strong enough to make the full transition. But i have became vegetarian for that same moral and ethical reasons. And even when I have vegetables and go have food out I always try to be conscious about the company where I am getting the food from. I try as much to read labels. And i think that is the most important.