Vegan reply to 'I rather eat meat than let it go to waste'

Reply to a person:

Emily Steer,
First of all it is a matter of ethics.

” Please let me be very clear: I think that dog fighting is a terrible thing.

But I must say that the Vick case is rather dramatically demonstrating what I call our “moral schizophrenia” about animals. That is, if one thing is clear, it is that we do not think clearly about our moral obligations to animals.

In this country alone, we kill over ten billion land animals annually for food. The animals we eat—even those supposedly raised “humanely”—suffer as much as the dogs that are used in dog fighting. There is no “need” for us to eat meat, dairy, or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet. We impose pain, suffering, and death on these billions of sentient nonhumans because we enjoy eating their flesh and the products that we make from them.

” Learn more here: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/a-note-about-michael-vick/#.UezrP234V5s

Second of all, even if we have the ability to kill animals doesn’t mean that it is morally justified. You could as well say ’Look we have canines, thus it is okay for meat to kill and eat humans’. Just because you have the ability to wage wars with your hands, thus mean that there is any moral justification to do this.

I recommend you to study this carefully to think more clearly about this issues: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/faqs/#.UezWSm34V5t

”The animals are dieing anyway”. First of all you have the 58 billion of domesticated animals that are bred and killed only because of human demand and consumption. Then you have the more than 1000 billion marine animals that are killed and consumed only because of human demand and consumption, and these animals wouldn’t be hurt and killed. If the demand stopped  these fish wouldn’t be killed.

A vegan diet is very inexpensive. Eat a home-cooked starchbased diet (e.g. potatoes, rice, lentils, beans,etc.) with some vegetables and fruits: http://www.drmcdougall.com/

I also recommend this book which adresses many more counter-arguments: http://www.eatlikeyoucarebook.com/

Some of the arguments that you present were also used to defened human slavery. Those people doing animal agriculture right now, can easily transition to a plants only agriculture. They can easily become self-sustained on their own food.
An plants only vegan diet can feed all the world, and we can eliminate poverty and hunger: http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/expert_testimonies_oppenlander.htm

 

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Reply to Emily that wrote [I didn't adress all the arguments. They are already earlier adressed in this blog or in the links above.] I just see it as a desperate attempt to justify a position that can't be morally justified. You throw out alot of arguments that can easily be refuted. You have those arguments and bring them up to try to still your consciousness that understand on a deep (but maybe not conscious) level that it is wrong to hurt and kill animals for food.:

 

 

 

·  Emily Steier I'd rather eat the meat than have it go to waste--- and nuts and beans and shit are getting more expensive by the day. o.o I'm by no means a twig, I'm a woman with decent curves, that doesn't mean I'm fat either. I just know that Humans were made to be omnivores-- that our canines are there for a reason. I'm not going to make fun of anyone's lifestyle but I'm just saying, the animals are dying anyway, why let their death be in vain? SAVE THE ANIMALS FROM THE DUMPSTER! EAT THEM! And then the price of everything else would go up. There wouldn't be enough farmland to grow enough to meet the supply. We would starve as a people and the animals will die anyway. Because there will be no need for them we'd have to dramatically cull their numbers, Farmers and families would be out of work, people who have herded cattle and died protecting their flock would be lost in vain. There is balance. There has to be balance. We have to hunt, have to kill, because as humans we're overpopulating can't have a lot of animals overpopulating as well so they'd have to be culled.. then what would happen to their bodies, what will feed that tiny little dog can't expect it to be able to survive on veggies, carnivores, omnivores, herbivores. If you can afford to eat vegan don't bash the people who cannot.

 

 

Vegan reply to: 'Don't we have to solve human right issues before solving animal rights issues"?

But…Don’t we have to solve

human rights issues first?

 

“This is a frequently heard “But.” We explain the reasons why we cannot justify consuming animal products and someone asks, “Yes but what about

the problem of battered women?” This is no different than discussing the problem of the inadequate response of the legal system to the problem of battered women, only to have someone respond, “But what about the problem of pedophilia?” There is always something else that could be addressed! And we note that when we ask people who ask this question what they are doing to address human rights issues that they claim are more important than the issue of animal exploitation on which we

are working, nine times out of ten, the answer is usually that they aren’t doing anything. But in the event that you are one of those people who really is concerned about and devoting time, money, or energy to human rights problems, we want to explore this “But” further.

 

There is, of course, implicit in this question the notion that humans matter more in a moral sense than do animals and so we should be focusing on human problems and not animal problems. As we stated at the outset, we aren’t going to challenge

the conventional wisdom that although animals matter morally, humans matter more. [My comment: The authors don’t believe this is the case, but this is a notion that they don’t refute in this book, but in other books.] Yet this “But” still goes nowhere.

First, no one is asking that anyone stop working on or being concerned about human rights issues. On the contrary, we agree that there is a terrible amount of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, and all sorts of other injustice, and we think it’s great that people care about and work on these issues.

 

But what does that have to do with what we are talking about in this book, which is simply that if you agree that animals matter at all, you are committed to not consume them any longer? The answer is nothing. Even if you think that any and all human rights issues are more important than the issue of animal exploitation, you have to eat while you are fighting for those great causes. How does eating, for example, tofu instead of steak impede your ability to fight for human rights causes? It doesn’t. If anything, a healthy vegan diet will give you more energy to pursue those causes.

And that’s where this analysis comes in. So you just leave your morning meeting with the local child protection agency in connection with your efforts to get better protection for kids and you want to grab something for lunch. Where is the conflict between you and the cow that justifies your having a hamburger? Indeed, if you have the burger, then you have just, by your action, rejected the principle that you claim to accept: that inflicting suffering on animals requires a moral justification.

You don’t have one.

 

Second, even if you are only concerned about human rights issues, you ought to be concerned about animal exploitation as well because it is directly connected to a significant human rights issue. As we discussed earlier, the amount of resources required to produce animal foods is multiples of what is required to produce plant

foods. Although there are certainly political issues that hamper the distribution of food, it is also the case that animal agriculture and a diet of animal foods is increasingly a threat to world hunger, our water supply, our topsoil, etc”

 

Quote from http://www.eatlikeyoucarebook.com/

Violence anywhere, hurts everyone, everywhere. We have a moral obligation to fight against all violence and discrimination. Just because someone is of a different species, doesn't mean that the injustices and suffering that they are experiencing are less important.

 

It is our moral obligation to not inflict unnecessary suffering and death upon non-human animals, i.e. go vegan. I recommend you to read the article and linked pages on this website: