The idea that virtually all life should be preserved whenever possible sounds like some weird religion to me. Death is part of the cycle of life and one animal eating another is part of nature. There are billions of chickens living in the world today. How many do you think there would be if the entire human race went vegan? Enough for zoos? Is it better to never live at all than to be killed and eaten? I don't even see how people come to that conclusion.

Otoh, the suffering involved in meat production is definitely a problem.

Do you think you live a better life than a chicken?

I don't argue the cycle of life argument at all. But pretty sure I'd rather be dead/not exist at all than live the way most animals raised for food exist.

is there any political debate around this issue?

Animal welfare is political. Not sure there's much mileage in maximising the lifespan of a chicken.

To what extent should the laws promote/enforce ethical meat (or even vegetarianism)?

It isn't about taking the chickens life, it is how the the chicken lived and died. Very few people would have a problem with meat if the animal was raised and killed humanely. Right now in factory farming it is horrible. It is much better to have never lived than to live as a chicken in a factory farm, it is not even close.

It's not even that simple. I suggest reading the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. Reality is, even if we redistributed all our food to save the starving children today, without much more work to fix government corruption, education, build societal infrastructure, -these things are being worked on, and are not easy - we'd just be adding to overpopulation and adding to the problem of world hunger down the line.

Christ, Foldn.

World hunger could be solved with $30 billion (UN) a year. This is not a lot of money.

The US should pay for this as the PR would be fantastic.

I meant solving the problem of starvation not give everyone dinner for a while.

Why do you think the problem would be solved for 30 bil per year? You know the world bank loans out more than this annually, and while it does help, we're not even close to ending world hunger.

? sorry I know people misunderstand me a lot but I never said anything about 30B a year or any amount of money did I?

Masque could write an appropriately long response to you but I'll just say it's an organisational and motivation issue, there's no shortage of wealth in this regard. That's not to say giving money doesn't help a lot.

We have strayed OT so I'll add that I don't see a huge link with animal rights.

It sounds harsh, but do you not see the simple math here? I've had this discussion with a friend who works for an advocacy group that petitions the World Bank to distribute their funding more equally to African nations. He lived in Tansania for 5-6 years and has worked hard to help. One of the best guys I know. Now he's in D.C. working with the World Bank, which is subject to political strains, as you may expect, and much of the money gets loaned out to nations who may not need it as much as others. I asked him once what the biggest problem was in Africa and he said it's education, and that many of the leaders their fight against it because it would weaken their power. He's not letting us off the hook, our imperialism is what started the problem.

Let's consider redistributing all the food instead of feeding it to animals. This way we can feed everyone today, and for a few years. Now what? First, we're assuming the food gets where we want it. It doesn't. Warlords and corrupt government officials use it to strengthen their power. But some of it will get through. Now families who normally have 6-10 children for similar reasons we used to here in the US, to help out with the farm, family biz, etc., now instead of half perishing to malnutrition and disease, they all survive.

We can feel pretty good about that. But how about the next generation that is now substantially larger? How do they get proper nutrition? Has anything changed about their environment or society to make them now self-sufficient? We can all be vegetarians and continue shipping them food, but now they need more and more and that will continue until the corruption stops, their governments allow them to be educated and modernize their societies to become self-sustaining.

No, that's just not true. Lots of people truly believe that the killing is wrong. Just look at the OP:

"the part of me that believes virtually all life should be preserved whenever possible."

Now, I agree entirely with giving animals better lives and am a proponent of free range, grass fed, wild caught whatever, but these discussions universally have people that think all meat is murder, and I take issue with that idea. It's a bizarre moral position with no basis in logic or reality.

Foldn: Arguing that starving people now is somehow superior to starving them later is not a good argument. I have heard about donated or harvested food rotting in silos while people starve -- I don't think your eating or not eating meat plays any part in this. I would pull chute on that line of reasoning.


Do what is right, not what is easy.

Make it easy to do what is right.

You mean like remembering what kinds of foods are meatless?

It doesn't really get any easier than not doing something -- if you have moral hesitations about eating meat or build a little box around it cognitively for no reason but to avoid thinking about it then the only thing left to do is live up to the expectations you've set for yourself. Good intentions aren't worth anything if you have nothing to show for them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/ne...6176.html?_r=0

$30 billion figure.

Except it is. Going back to earlier in the discussion, replace a human with any of these scenarios and in no way would it not be considered murder. It may have a purpose, but that doesn't change the fact that it is indeed murder.

But it is ridiculously easy, tbh. In 17 years I can count on one hand the number of times I have been unable to find a satisfactory alternative on a menu. Is it really that hard to get the cheese pizza and not sausage? It's more laziness/willing ignorance/emotional ties to eating meat than an actual inability to do it, and to me killing something due to laziness or "because it tastes good" is just not a good enough reason. And who says it has to be all or nothing? One can still simply reduce the amount of meat they eat and have a significant impact. No one needs meat three times a day.

It was more a snappy approach to ethics, responding to yours.

Applied here, I mean more like the problem many people have which is the conflict between the desire to eat meat and a concern for animal welfare. One approach is to do the hard thing of never eating unethical meat, another is to make it harder to eat unethical meat.

(I'm talking about welfare rather than prolonging life because I don't understand the later issue).

[QUOTE




Do what is right, not what is easy.[/QUOTE]

i just paid 90 dollars for my 15 pound thanksgiving turkey. being sent from this place: http://www.localharvest.org/good-earth-farms-M6402

i think i've got wrong and difficult all in the same package. but i really don't feel bad about this choice. my dogs remind me every day just how tasty meat is. so even though a part of me wishes humans were all vegans, it's a small part.

what i'm really baffled by is how the factory farms have done such a good job hiding reality from the consumer.

people are never going to stop eating animals, willingly. but i bet there's a huge percentage of people who would be willing to pay significantly more for their animal products if they were aware of what's happening.

am i wrong about that? little kids are taught to believe by advertisements that all the turkey they eat comes from farms like i linked to. if a 7 year old saw the reality, how would he react?

if he was told that instead of eating meat 5 days a week, it would only be twice a week, but the meat would come from real farms, how would he choose?

Meat is not murder and I reject the false guilt trip that goes along with that false equivalence of a political statement. If eating meat make you feel bad, don't do it. Expecting conformity to that emotional plea is never going to happen, particularly from people who find the taking of life for food to be a sacred part of natural existence. In fact, you may meet resistance.

It's been made easier, it would have been much tougher 20 years ago.

One reason for pushing ethical meat (eggs, milk etc) is it makes it easier for everyone else to follow. It's why I claim it's better than vegetarianism if people are concerned about animal welfare. There is a good counter-argument that ethical meat is harder than no meat.

I agree it's not all or nothing that's pretty much the point. The more we do these things the easier they become both for ourselves and others.

Chez: You keep arguing that your choices are other people's responsibility -- Make it easy for me to X. Make it easy for me to do Y. Do everything for me. I am a self-actualized person.

To put it another way, if your spouse bangs someone else but says she felt terrible about it, is that good enough, or do you think actions are what count?

It's not about what I think you should eat, it's what you think you should eat, then eating that.

Because it's illegal to show what goes on in them.