I won't be debating this, don't bother.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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I think veganism should be encouraged from a administrative level, but it's similar to the process of secularization. For example: You can't force people away from religion and it's abusive practices (or eating meat for that matter). Education campaigs and massive restructurings in all social fields to make it more accessible, be it in terms of the school system (,costs of food or adjustments in the health sector) are needed to further secularization (or veganization) imo
Practically, you can't literally force people to stop eating meat, but we should do everything we can.
I agree but there have to be alternative structures in place first. Structures on which people rely on during and after the adjument. You need that procedure if you don't want to hit less priviliged people disproportionally hard (as it the case with closing coal power plants for example)
Which structures are missing?
We already have plant based alternatives for everything and plenty of resources to help people transition.
readily available education ("just google it" is insufficient in the current SEO fuelled hellscape) and support to help people build their own plant based diets, combined with plant based alternatives that are just as cheap + easy + nutritionally balanced. IMO there's great progress towards both, but neither are there yet for becoming vegetarian/vegan to be a trivial process for those who want to.
I'm physically disabled and struggle with most meal prep, so I mostly live on frozen meals. On an especially good day, i can make a sandwich, or put some chips in the oven. Can't manage much more than that, and I've failed to find plant based alternatives to those things that i can both afford, and make myself. It could exist, but I haven't been able to find it, and the sheer volume of ableism in the vegan (etc) community is exhausting to sift through. The last time I tried had some guy talking down to me telling me that "foraging isn't that hard, actually", lmao. And i'm someone who wants to reduce how much meat I eat, and have been trying to do so despite all of this!
To be fair, there are a couple of veggie frozen meals at my local store (nothing vegan, though). But have you tried rotating the same 3 meals for a year and not completely losing it?
There's a lot of resources which aren't just "google it" tho, check out https://veganbootcamp.org/ for example, they'll help you through getting started.
Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study
Your situation is unfortunate and if you truly can't afford plant based options which are practical for you then you can't afford it.
But a lot of people just refuse the cheap plant based options, rice, beans, frozen veggies, potatoes and so on aren't expensive.
Able-ism sucks and people shouldn't be telling you to just go forage, I think part of the reason some vegans react negatively to it being mentioned is that it's often brought up by people who aren't actually disabled but just use other people's disability to excuse their own destructive and cruel habits.
There will ALWAYS be people who eat animals, for medical or cultural resons and they should not be excluded.
The cruelty is in the industry not in a practice that is as natural as nature itself.
There's very few medical reasons to consume animal products and the few there are will hopefully have alternatives soon.
Bringing that up in the context of the general population going vegan is silly.
Cultural norms is not a good reason to engage in exploitation.
The cruelty is absolutely in the practice, killing others is wrong.
Non human animals are living and feeling beings just like you and I, they experience the world, they have likes and dislikes, they have best friends, they enjoy chilling in the sun.
Just like humans, other animals also have the right to not be needlessly killed.
So when do you start a campaign to turn cats and dogs vegan? What's the plan for lions and bears living in the wild?
Cats and dogs can thrive on a plant based diet, so yes that's what we should feed them.
Wild animals don't have the capability to consider the consequences of their actions or the possibility to not eat other animals, humans do.
Do you normally base your morals on what wild animals do?
That's flat out wrong. Cats are obligate carnivores, so feed them vegan diet only if you really want them to suffer horribly.
If you consider the "capability to consider the consequences of one's actions" as the ultimate method of determining if killing is OK or not... then you should be equally fine with mentally disturbed humans killing other humans. Are you?
Let's not involve "morality" into this, since morality is a very subjective thing. The morality of abortions being an excellent example. It also puts the whole discussion about, say, euthanasia in a very peculiar spot.
Also: what about the morality of extreme deforestation to make room for farms growing vegan food? What about the morality of the increase in carbon emissions, the destruction of topsoil and reduction of biodiversity that soy farming brings?
The problem with meat industry is that, well, it became an industry. Excess is the evil here, not the ACT of consuming an animal. There are plenty of ways of giving animals excellent, pleasant lives and then ending these lives in a way that produces no fear, no trauma in them. Or even awareness of the fact.
We are all just life. Life starts, requires fuel, and then ends. Sometimes life kills other life in order to get the fuel, and that's fine. What we, as the most technologically advanced form of life on this planet can do, is do all in our power to ensure that while all the forms of fuel remain available to us, we do so without causing excess harm. Which also means things like growing meat in labs instead of obtaining it through the killing of animals, of course. I'm very much a fan of the concept of lab-grown meat, but that's just something that's not obtainable on a large enough scale in the nearest future.
Cats are obligate carnivores in nature because of taurine, cat food doesn't have taurine because the ingredients are shit so synthetic taurine is added to meet the cat's nutritional needs.
The same synthetic taurine is also added to plant based cat food so it meets the cat's nutriotional needs.
Dogs are omnivores like us and can easily thrive on a plant based diet.
Yes let's involve morality, needless killing of animals is immoral.
Most farm land is used for animal feed.
only 20% of soy is used for direct human consumption, the rest is animal feed, so if you want less soy farming you should drop the animal products.
No it's the act that's wrong, needlessly killing other beings when we don't have to is clearly evil.
There is no way to ethically kill someone who doesn't need or want to die.
You wouldn't accept these condition for "human farms".
Why be cruel when we can easily avoid it?
From the wiki:
There's another problem of the cat digestive system just being too short to handle most plant matter.
I want to. Well, not "drop" but rather "limit". That's exactly why I mentioned "excess" being the problem here.
You didn't answer the question, though - how do you feel about the morality of topsoil degradation, greenhouse emissions and biodiversity reduction caused by most vegan food alternatives?
Please reply to this question:
Which conditions? The majority of farms - sure, the conditions are horrible and it's exactly what I'm saying we should eliminate. But there are modern farms that have conditions most of the human population would gladly sign up for. Damn, I'd be one of them!
Precisely my point. That being said, there are a myriad of methods of killing an animal without being cruel.
There's protein in plant based cat food.
I did; Most farm land is used for animal feed., so plant based food uses way less farm land and thus causes way less degradation and emissions.
Mentally disturbed humans who act violently are still humans and part of our pack, I think we should make sure they don't hurt others.
The conditions of "humane" treatment but still killing.
You seriously think that humans would sign up to get needlessly killed for profit/taste..?
How do you ethically kill someone who doesn't need or want to die?
Most is not all... Also: if we practically eliminate the meat industry, the "vegan farms" need to grow as well. It's not like all that land that's currently being degraded for animal feed will be freed to recover. No, it will still be producing environmentally catastrophic food - but for humans directly.
That's not an answer to my question, though. You posited that only the "capability of understanding that you're causing harm" determines whether killing is OK or not.
Wild animals do not have that capacity, therefore them killing other animals is OK.
Which means that humans with damaged cognitive abilities (like psychopaths, sadists, etc) killing other humans without the realisation of the hurt they're causing... Is also OK.
Yes.
So here we come back to my previous question: how to you prevent wild animals from killing other wild animals who most definitely don't want (or, in many cases, need) to die?
And also my other previous question: how do you ethically deforest swathes of land, destroying topsoil and biodiversity, ALSO killing lots of animals in the process - directly or, mostly, indirectly, through the removal of their natural hunting/feeding grounds and condemning them to starvation?
EDIT: changed the link to an even more appropriate one. The previous link, for those interested, HERE.
Could you recommend me some vegan cat and dog food brands?
You're abusing animals if you actually do this. Cats and dogs are not able to consume those sorts of diets and survive without getting very sick.
For the love of the gods, do not force your beliefs on those who will suffer for your moralism. Dogs and cats are obligate carnivores and actually need to eat meat to get all the nutrients they need. Dogs can survive the diet better than cats, but there's no need to introduce unneeded suffering on their part.
If you don't want a pet that needs to eat meat get a rabbit or hamster or something. Please don't torture a dog or cat with a vegan diet.