While it’s not my thing, and I view dogs as pets and not food, it’s pretty hypocritical to complain about the farming and consumption of dogs for food, while many of us still eat pigs, chickens, cows, turkeys, etc. If Korean culture places dogs on the list of eaten animals and it’s done in as human and sanitary condition as possible for farming the animals, then it’s not my place to try and stop them.
In my opinion, it’s okay to aspire to change antiqued cultural norms that, through a modern lens, we no longer find ethical. By setting the bar so high that it’s effectively “your objections to killing any animals are only valid if you eat no meat at all,” there’s no reasonable approach to reducing meat consumption.
As for myself, I lead by example and eat no meat at all, but that’s not where I began. I first reduced red meat, then became pescatarian and only in my early thirties became fully vegetarian.
Similarly, I believe that identifying a wide range of reasons to justify change can help with taking the first steps to accomplish it, like recognizing dogs as companion animals and for their intelligence, the health, environmental and ecological benefits of reducing intake, and so on.
we no longer find ethical.
Who’s this ‘we’? I would like an explanation of why it’s more ethical to eat some animals than others, please.
I don’t believe anybody can specify who exactly formulates cultural norms. The “we” here is used in the abstract.
In this case, there will be a group of people who share a common moral principle.
I can’t help with providing an explanation for why it would be more ethical to eat some animals than others, because my personal principle is that it’s unethical to eat any animal.
Ok but that we group can choose not to eat meat. That’s their choice but they don’t get to force that on others.
it’s okay to aspire to change antiqued cultural norms that, through a modern lens, we no longer find ethical. By setting the bar so high that it’s effectively “your objections to killing any animals are only valid if you eat no meat at all,” there’s no reasonable approach to reducing meat consumption.
You do you. But foisting your religious views on others isn’t ethical either. If you want to view me as a horrible person, because I don’t view eating meat is inherently bad, that’s ok. But, do realize that I don’t agree with your premise and will mentally lump you in the same boat as the Christian nut jobs trying to control other peoples’ bodies.
I haven’t advocated for making you do anything that you don’t want to do, and I most certainly haven’t suggested that you are a horrible person. Wherever this hostility is coming from, I feel like it’s terribly misplaced.
haha what
The hypocrisy of some people respecting dogs/cats and other animals in stunning. One of my cousins if a fever animal rights activists when the animal is a dog, keep rescuing dogs and donating money and time to shelters and adoption fairs, but had ko problem in participating on those cowboy shows where they torture cows and bulls for entertainment.
Well, I kinda agree with you, but I also kinda don’t. On one hand, animals are animals, so one should either object to eating all or not object to eating any. And if one is going to make any distinctions, they should be for sentience, the ability to be miserable on a farm, and the ability to feel pain. But that means that even though you found yourself a moral foundation for objecting to dog eating while being ok with fish eating (and possibly bird eating), it’s still hypocritical to object to dog eating, but not cow or pig eating (or kangaroo eating in the Oz).
On the other hand, there are things that do make dogs special. We started domesticating them about twice as long ago as we did pigs and cows. We were domesticating them for companionship, not meat, so the selection pressure favoured different traits in the domesticated wolves than it did in the domesticated auroch or boar. Which, for example, includes a special muscle that evolved in canis familiaris above its eyes to give it the ability of giving you that look that we humans can’t help but interpret as cute. Also, if I recall correctly, human and their pet dog gazing into each others eyes is the only documented instance of cross-spegific interaction that leads to the secretion of oxytocin in the brains of both gazers involved.
All of this to say that, actually, I’m leaning towards the notion that there is something special about dogs, that cows and pigs don’t have.
There’s something special about every animal, dogs are no exception. If you spend time with cows and pigs, you’ll know they’re capable of being gentle, loving creatures. Pigs are arguably smarter than dogs in some ways.
Many people will argue that it is morally permissible to eat non-human animals because of the difference in intelligence. This isn’t a very good argument though. Suppose an alien species with an IQ of 300 visited Earth. Using the logic above, you would have to concede to their request to eat you.
At a bare minimum, the benchmark should be based on suffering. But even this has flaws. If I was to raise my human child until they were 10, then kill them painlessly in their sleep so I could eat them, people would be mortified.
I personally don’t think there is an ethical basis for eating meat of any kind, provided you don’t live in a food desert.
Eating any farmed predatory species is also inherently about 10x more unsustainable enviornmentally than farmed herbivorous species (which are already unsustainable both water consumption and CO2 wise) as about 90% of the energy is lost at each step of the food chain. So essnitally not only do you have to farm these dogs (that haven’t been selectively breed for thouaands of years to have a large quantity of tender meat), but you also have to farm their food. Dogs aren’t obligate carnivores but they do still need a significant amount of meat in their diet.
I agree that there is something special about every animal, but you seem to be talking about generic specialness, about intelligence and capacity for suffering, but you haven’t really addressed my points, i.e. there are actual biological hallmarks of humans and dogs having forged a stronger mental and emotional connection in the course of evolution than humans and any other animals that we eat.
Edit: clarity
So?
Is the implication that it is ethically permissible to eat other animals like cats, because they haven’t had the same evolutionary privileges?
I wouldn’t phrase it in black and white terms (permissible - not permissible), but to answer a question similar to yours - yes, I think it’s normal for people to feel stronger repulsion on the thought of eating animals with which we can form stronger bonds. So I, for example, cringe more at the thought of eating a dog, than eating a cat, than eating a cow, than eating a fish, etc…
What is normal, what we’ve been conditioned to believe, or what produces feelings of repulsion are not good moral foundations.
I’m only interested in what is ethical. I’m not convinced there is any reason to consider cows, or even fish, to be less deserving of life than a dog.
On one hand, animals are animals, so one should either object to eating all or not object to eating any.
I feel like this is a sort of ironic dichotomy we humans find ourselves in due to our evolutionary development that lets us reflect on our actions, along with our empathy stemming from our understanding of suffering of life in general.
On one hand, we are omnivores, we eat plants and animals, it’s not that we decided to eat animals, it’s that we’ve evolved to do so. Vegan diets end up relying on supplements and lots of hoop jumps to achieve the same results an omnivores diet would have. That, while commendable on those who try, shows us quite clearly that we’re going against our most fundamental evolutionary traits.
On the other hand, we understand we are causing suffering to other beings in order to sustain ourselves. No matter how humane out treatment of such animals may become, it’s still something that we will struggle to accept, or that we will ignore outright to not have to struggle with the thought.
It’s a terrible situation to find ourselves in, because that’s literally the solution life itself has come up with, we steal nutrients and energy from other life, period. Yet we understand we are denying other life forms their chance to life, and a lot of the time they suffer while being denied that chance. But what other solution is there? We haven’t come up with better solutions, and we may never do so. We defined a certain threshold for what we deem acceptable, some of us move that threshold, but none eliminate eating life entirely, because it’s not possible. Plants are still alive, fungi are still alive, bacteria are still alive, insects are still alive, and we never ever stop to think about them like we do our farm animals, we only stop to think about life that resembles our own. And that’s, unfortunately, necessary to not starve ourselves out of the equation.
I wonder if we will ever solve this riddle for ourselves. Will we simply accept this forever as a given that some animals just have to suffer for our sake? Will we start growing our own meat, and declare the threshold to be “organisms without a complex neural system”? Will we be able to forego depending on other life entirely and develop our nutrition in factories or through biological modifications without even relying on other cellular organisms? Where will we draw the line next, and will we be able to satisfy our moral qualms?
I can’t be for or against any of this, all I can do is hold my own actions to my own moral line and accept that everything else is just how things have to be due to the cruel reality of being alive. I’m unable to kill, and I’m convinced I’d first die than kill even a chicken to survive (or if I do, the guilt will eat me alive), but I eat chicken every day and I will continue to do so until the day I die, even though there’s a strong cognitive dissonance there, since I can’t really do much about it without compromising my own nutrition in some way, I can’t go against the very rules of life. It’s truly a cruel joke that life has played on us, forcing us to depend on taking life from other organisms to stay alive, while also allowing us to empathize with other life forms and enter such a dissonant state of mind. That’s just the torture of life, I guess.
[Vegans diets require supplements to achieve the same results as omnivore diets]
This is really a non issue, it’s not hard, it’s just a minor change. I’ve been vegan for about 3 years now. Every morning I have a vitamin B12, and in the evening I have an Omega 3, Vitamin C, Magnesium and Calcium.
Every six months I get my blood tested. My GP is always surprised that I’m consistently landing in the centre of the recommended range on all metrics, including iron.
Interesting read, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I personally think that in many ways, we do simply choose to eat meat. I’m vegetarian, and even by avoiding some animal products like milk and eggs, I find that since doing so since my early thirties it has had no impact on my health whatsoever. My iron and vitamin levels are fine and in checkups my blood work always looks good.
While I largely agree with your post, I did want to argue with:
On the other hand, we understand we are causing suffering to other beings in order to sustain ourselves. No matter how humane out treatment of such animals may become, it’s still something that we will struggle to accept, or that we will ignore outright to not have to struggle with the thought.
There is a third option. We accept that our continued existence is predicated on the death of other life forms and stop being bothered by it. You seem to have a foundation premise that people must be bothered by killing other living things. That’s an assumption on your part and one which doesn’t hold true for all others. This also comes up again in your post when you state:
I’m unable to kill, and I’m convinced I’d first die than kill even a chicken to survive (or if I do, the guilt will eat me alive), but I eat chicken every day and I will continue to do so until the day I die, even though there’s a strong cognitive dissonance there, since I can’t really do much about it without compromising my own nutrition in some way,
This is an expression of how that foundational assumption builds your moral system. You have drawn a line at the direct killing of another animal while being less clear about the line of allowing an animal to be killed. This isn’t a terribly surprising distinction, and is often explored via The Trolley Problem. Most people end up viewing allowing harm as less morally problematic as causing harm. Though, any hard lines are then exposed to be less hard by pushing the parameters of the problem about.
This is also one of the places where your base assumption clashed with one of my own assumptions: that outsourcing the killing of an animal for consumption is tantamount to killing it yourself. I don’t expect to convince you of that, nor do I expect that you’ll convert me any time soon. However, it’s useful to try to understand the positions of others and how they likely arrived at their beliefs. And this why I pointed out the line at the start of this response. You created a false dichotomy by which one must either give up meat or give up morality. There is a perfectly valid third option, which is, I don’t agree with your moral premise and therefore do not face such a dilemma.
You’re absolutely right and it is something I sometimes fail to account for since it nourishes hopelessness in me. I do, however, believe that such empathy is developed and not something you’re born with. You see it in varying degrees by how much someone cares for their families, friends, their community, and really even themselves. Some just care about themselves, some care about their peers but not their communities, and some don’t care about themselves but would bend over backwards for others. Empathy for lives beyond our own species is something that would be nurtured just like empathy for other humans is.
When I talk about our options as a species, I am inclined to believe that most of our species leans towards having empathic feelings for lives beyond our own species. It may just be a matter of hope that I’m reflecting on my comments, but it is also an evolutionary advantage for us to develop such empathy as we further develop our abilities to morph this world to our needs and wants, since we do depend on other species for almost everything.
Maybe I’m intertwining the necessities of our species with our individual feelings over those necessities, but I would believe this moral conflict would surface for most of us, with the level of such moral conflict varying greatly from person to person. My previous comment mostly wonders of the possibility that a great number of us start to develop such moral conflict over more than just domesticated species or cute mammals or such.
With regards to the trolley problem, you’re right. By me profiting from the atrocities of others, I’m a part of such atrocity. It’s a fact of more than just harvesting farm animals. It affects our economies, our climate, our biodiversity, our social norms and behaviors towards outsiders and minorities, as well as our digital lives. It’s a cop-out to just wash my hands from such actions and only hold myself responsible for my direct actions regardless of those of others that my benefit me, and that’s why I said it was a cognitive dissonance, one that I just have to live with of my own choosing.
Yes. Exactly. It is weird.
If Korean culture places dogs on the list of eaten animals and it’s done in as human and sanitary condition as possible for farming the animals, then it’s not my place to try and stop them.
What if I told you that dog slaughter is commonly done at the height of adrenaline, which intently means violence, due to the belief that it changes the flavor of the meat? Because that’s part of the practice. There’s nothing humane about it.
What if I told you that dog slaughter is commonly done at the height of adrenaline, which intently means violence, due to the belief that it changes the flavor of the meat? Because that’s part of the practice. There’s nothing humane about it.
I stand by my previous post, that the farming of dogs for meat isn’t any more morally objectionable than farming of cows, which I do not find morally objectionable. However, as I stated, it should be done in as humane a way as possible (yes, I did have a typo and wrote “human” rather than “humane”). Taking what you claim at face value, the practice of killing an animal “at the height of adrenaline” strikes me as inhumane and that practice, in particular, I would be against.
Not to argue in favor of eating dogs or anything, but I think posting a source would really help the claim you’re making.
In which case, animal cruelty laws should be the solution.
There is no such thing as humane slaughter. The whole process is inherently violent.
The outrage from this, is just another example of white people forcing their morals on others.
They are asian animal activists.
I feel like it was pretty obvious I was talking about the outrage on Lemmy
living a vegan lifestyle has never been easier, it’s time to be on the right side of this.
Truth. Choose compassion over violence today, not tomorrow.
Sadly. There are no right sides. Just sides.
I strongly disagree. On one side, people get to eat, yet conscious, feeling creatures are killed so that humans can eat their “preferred” source of food. On the other side, people still get to eat, animal suffering is greatly diminished, only some people may not enjoy their dinner quite as much.
I refuse to accept that the atrocities that are committed against what we call “meat animals” are worth it to satisfy someone’s culinary preferences. You can get all the nutrition you need from plant-based sources.
Are you going to go and stop all the predators from consuming other animals in a way more violent fashion that how we consume them?
Human beings have developed the science and technology to grow crops to feed the population on a massive scale. In fact, growing plants takes a much lower energy input per output calorie than farming animals for meat. Meat production requires the production of plants first in order to feed the meat animals; it’s extremely inefficient compared to producing plants for direct human consumption. Not only does a vegetarian diet reduce animal suffering, it’s also a more efficient use of natural resources.
Predatory animals do not have this option. The owl that eats a mouse isn’t doing it because he would rather eat a mouse than a soybean. He’s doing it because eating a mouse is the only way he’ll survive. Owls do not have farms, genetically modified crops, fertilizers, statistical analysis of crop yield, or any else of our agricultural advancements.
The fact of the matter is that human have no need to eat meat. We eat meat because we want to, not because it’s necessary for our survival. If you choose to have a steak for dinner, you’re making a decision that your desire for a specific flavor of food is more important than the suffering of a cow that provided the meat.
We are still evolving culturally, but we have moved past a lot of horrible things that we did throughout history. We can afford animals with the same right to life and happiness that we afford each other. The fact that so many people refuse to make even the smallest effort toward that goal is disgusting. “Eat something else” is such as simple request, yet the smallest inconvenience is just too much to handle. What does that say about our species?
O… you’re one of those militant vegans…you do realize the majority of what we finish cattle on is non-human consumable feeds right? Like all the roots and stems and sticks that you as a plant eater can’t digest. Meat also has a lot more fats and protein in it than the same portion of veggies. Acting like we could feed everyone on just a plant diet is naive…
What an utterly dumb thing to say.
That’s just as dumb, imo.
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What did dog-meat do?
He kept blocking doorways, he had it coming.
Anti dog-meat? Anti dog meat. Yes, that’s better.
While I’m completely in favor of this, it doesn’t address the more significant problems. Factory farming and the consumption of beef and chicken cause far more animal suffering worldwide than eating dogs. Legislation needs to exist to prohibit the production and consumption of ALL meat products. What’s the point of banning dog meat when cows, chickens, goats, sheep, etc are all raised for meat? Banning dog is a good first step, but it’s insignificant. I see no difference in eating dogs va eating the normal “meat animals.”
Before anyone asks, no, I’m not vegan, but I’m in favor of coexisting with animals and using what they leave for us (like free range eggs), not murdering them for food.
not murdering them for food
I’m a meat eater, but your axioms are vegan. Fundamentally you cannot create an egg laying operation without culling male chicks. You cannot have milk without impregnating and taking the babies away from heifers. You cannot manage a herd/flock without culling animals in general. Animal husbandry explicitly denies the rights you ascribe to animals. As I said, though, I do not ascribe those rights to them.
I agree in part: you cannot create an egg laying operation without culling male chicks. That’s why factory farming of eggs should not exist. There’s a huge difference between someone having a few hens and roosters that happily live on their farm and a factory farming operation. One is providing a safe home for animals and receiving food in return; the other is exploitation.
What I’m saying is, even on a small farm, you need to cull male chicks and unproductive hens to feed yourself, not even considering feeding other people. That’s how it’s always worked since the domestication of the chicken.
Most small farmers buy chicks that are already sexed for this reason.
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No need to be vegan to acknowledge that animals are thinking and feeling beings who deserve rights.
Yours is the take of a person without empathy or conscience.
If you believe animals have a fundamental right to life, you logically must be vegan. Full stop. I believe in preventing suffering of animals, but I don’t believe they have a fundamental right to life.
Edit: I want to give a side example of milk production without killing unproductive animals/males. In India, since BJP vigilantes will attack farmers transporting animals to slaughter, farmers instead abandon their cows, which usually die from dehydration or disease and sometimes wander the streets of the cities. There are consequently way more stay bulls attacking people at random as well. I honestly think that practice is worse than killing the cattle.
Surely you realize that you have constructed a logical argument around the conclusion that you wished to make? You can make life choices that best align with your principles and do your part to make a difference.
With reducing animal suffering, there’s is veganism on one end of the scale. It seems that you lean somewhere towards the opposite end by making no attempt to resolve this whatsoever. Vegetarianism and pescatarianism exist somewhere in the middle.
I don’t really understand. It’s not a position I hold so it’s not a conclusion I wish to make. If you believe killing animals for meat is a violation of a fundamental right, it’s also a violation of that right to use other animal products.
I find endorsement for more restrictive diets for environmental or utilitarian(reduce animal suffering) reasons to be fine. If, however, you believe that eating meat is murder because animals have a right to live, it’s disingenuous not to be vegan.
animals are thinking and feeling beings who deserve rights.
what rights do you think animals deserve?
Forget rights.
What ethical foundation permits someone to kill animals when they don’t need to?
animals are killed all the time out of convenience or by accident or for profit. it’s so common that i think a justification must be made that it is immoral.
Something being common doesn’t mean it’s moral.
i think it’s amoral, actually. and a phenomenon being so ubiquitous is a good indicator of amorality, even if it is not a guarantee.
edit: do you have an argument that killing non-human animals is not moral?
The right to life and freedom from harm.
do you think they would be willing to recognize that right for others? they certainly don’t act that way, now.
Just because they’re incapable of being moral agents, i.e. capable of understanding why murder is wrong, doesn’t make it OK to murder them. A toddler would happily push you off a cliff, but that doesn’t give you the right to push toddlers off cliffs.
A toddler would happily push you off a cliff, but that doesn’t give you the right to push toddlers off cliffs.
right, but the thing that makes it wrong to push a toddler off a cliff may not apply to non-human animals.
This guy is saying he doesn’t believe animals have rights and people are agreeing with him?
Not what I said.
it’s wild to see. it’s easy to forget that people are still actually thinking this way.
I agree but that issue is years away while something about this can be done right now, don’t sabotage your own movement by trying to get everything done at once, it never works.
You’re right. It’s just the double standard makes me angry. We have millions of cows and chickens tortured and slaughtered every year, and the vast majority of people don’t care. Yet dogs are seen as companion animals and not a source of food. Pigs are by far as intelligent as dogs and cats, yet everyone loves bacon.
If it were up to me, factory farming would be outright banned, but it’s years away still.
I think the best hope right now is factory grown meat, once that becomes more profitable than factory farming, it’s game over.
It’s called cultured meat, fyi.
no one is torturing cows and chickens.
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you don’t know anything about what’s happening in factory farming
what makes you think that?
I take back my “Shut up”. But I stand by everything else I wrote.
What makes you think that?
Because it is factually wrong. I’m informing myself about that industry for many years now. I’m not an activist vegan (because where I live that doesn’t take place), but I follow many activists and have seen a lot of videos, so I know what’s going on.
Isn’t it torture to confine mother-sows for month on hard wooden planks in spaces they can’t move at all, laying in their feces and involuntary suffocating their own piglets.
Or breeding chickens that have to give 20-30 times more eggs than their ancestors which leads to calcium deficiency and lets their backbones break.
Clipping teeth, tails and testicles of young piglets without anesthesia?
Shipping calves around the world in container ships in every weather condition without proper food and water supply, where a lot of them die and the ones surviving getting kosher butchered in Morocco?
I could go on an on. I’ve seen some shit. So sorry for being condescending but such takes just make me angry.
the intention of torture is to inflict pain or suffering, and for the subject to know why (usually punishment, to get information). the pain is the point and it is intentional.
if the practices you’re describing caused no pain or suffering, we would still do them. the pain is incidental, not intentional.
Do you know what animal-ag gag-laws are
you’re being condescending.
The word “murder” only applies to human animals.
And cows are certainly not “raped” for dairy, when a farmer shoves his entire arm inside a cow to for her to become pregnant.
Why? Because the word “rape” only applies to human animals.
Words like “murder” and “rape” only apply to non-human animals because for much of history, taking those actions on animals were necessary evils for us to survive. Our species has learned to evolve over time, and we no longer take many of the horrible actions that were commonplace centuries ago. We need to evolve as a culture away from eating meat, and our language needs to evolve with us.
Nothing is horrible, but thinking makes it so.
Humans still do most of all these “horrible” actions. We have not changed. Some of us just are more empathetic and compassionate. Like we have always been.
We decide whom murder and rape apply to. You may decide differently, but an argument based on them not applying is begging the question. This is not to say that the first poster’s argument was sound, but you didn’t really address the argument, just reaffirmed existing definitions where the first poster was looking to expand them.
It’s like if someone compared aspirin and cannabis, in that many people use them regularly without developing addictions, and the rebuttal was that cannabis is an illegal drug, so it’s a different kind of drug.
Do we decide? We have already decided. That is my point. I reaffirm nothing. I only say, the word “murder” doesn’t apply.
The case has been decided, that non-human animal suffering is just not important. Not to the vast majority.
Hell, we can’t even agree that human suffering matters.
Assuming you live in a democracy, then yes, we have decided and do still decide. We can change the laws at any time (I know this is idealistic in a lot of countries) and use a new definition, or we can determine on a jury that something is or is not punished. I’m not comparing slavery to animal husbandry, but the US (I assume other slaveholding countries were similar, but I don’t know) has changed the definition to include or exclude slaves at various points. Murder is a social concept, not an immutable truth about the world.
