I am very scared of the vegan movement, they will try to take our right away to have companion animals.

[RoughFucker40]

In the case of the American bison, it's hunting and eating them that caused them to go nearly extinct.

Actually it was due to the war between settlers and Native Americans. Many of the Bison were killed simply so the tribes wouldn’t have a food source or make use of their hides.

 

[BlueBeard]

Naw. Decline in numbers is estimated to have already begun prior to arrival of Europeans, though still numbering in the 10s of millions when Europeans arrived. Europeans dramatically increased the rate of extinction, killing bison for a variety of reasons. Meat, sport, fur -- and then, yes, as a strategy of war, cutting off a multi-purpose resource of Plains Indians (food, clothing, shelter, tools, religious icon... and cultural identity). But that was only one factor and not the main one.

Beside the point. Bison were hopeless. Pretty much foregone conclusion they would be extinct. Just a dozen bison left when the effort began, we're up to the half million in North American today. And that's largely driven by bison producers. Conservationists, national park programs, and bison producers working closely together have a goal of doubling that number underway currently. (Where I live, I'm surrounded by bison, which is why it's such a handy example for me. I am not part of the industry myself, though. I do not have any bison, though I know a few local producers really well).

Seems ironic at first, right? But that's the point. They are working to double the number of existing bison *by* eating them (grossly overstated, but fundamentally correct). The cull the wild herds. Bison producers maintain commercial herds as a marketable commodity. It's working. The genetics are improving (returning to genetic profile of bison existing before European interspecies hybridization). The animals are robust and healthy. Their effects on the environment have returned eco-systems to their pre-European condition.

Eating bison is at the bottom of it -- but of course, it's not "just" eating. That we have to eat them comes from buttloads of scientific research and ongoing studies. Culling is a conservation tool. The market itself is a conservation tool. It's not a sloppy, haphazard scheme. And it's far too involved for a thread discussion. You'll have to check out any of the copious resources that exist online. Bison represent the most successful conservation story of the past century, which continues to be studied by conservationists around the world for use in saving other endangered species.

 

[RoughFucker40]

Naw. Decline in numbers is estimated to have already begun prior to arrival of Europeans, though still numbering in the 10s of millions when Europeans arrived. Europeans dramatically increased the rate of extinction, killing bison for a variety of reasons. Meat, sport, fur -- and then, yes, as a strategy of war, cutting off a multi-purpose resource of Plains Indians (food, clothing, shelter, tools, religious icon... and cultural identity). But that was only one factor and not the main one.

Beside the point. Bison were hopeless. Pretty much foregone conclusion they would be extinct. Just a dozen bison left when the effort began, we're up to the half million in North American today. And that's largely driven by bison producers. Conservationists, national park programs, and bison producers working closely together have a goal of doubling that number underway currently. (Where I live, I'm surrounded by bison, which is why it's such a handy example for me. I am not part of the industry myself, though. I do not have any bison, though I know a few local producers really well).

Seems ironic at first, right? But that's the point. They are working to double the number of existing bison *by* eating them (grossly overstated, but fundamentally correct). The cull the wild herds. Bison producers maintain commercial herds as a marketable commodity. It's working. The genetics are improving (returning to genetic profile of bison existing before European interspecies hybridization). The animals are robust and healthy. Their effects on the environment have returned eco-systems to their pre-European condition.

Eating bison is at the bottom of it -- but of course, it's not "just" eating. That we have to eat them comes from buttloads of scientific research and ongoing studies. Culling is a conservation tool. The market itself is a conservation tool. It's not a sloppy, haphazard scheme. And it's far too involved for a thread discussion. You'll have to check out any of the copious resources that exist online. Bison represent the most successful conservation story of the past century, which continues to be studied by conservationists around the world for use in saving other endangered species.

Ah ok, thank you for clearing that up for me.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

This thread is still here? Really?

See, and I don't even believe in a god. And that's just it, humans have the ability to follow their own nature and live in a world that doesn't exploit animals for their own gain.

I am also an atheist, and I eat meat because it tastes good when I put it into my beast-muzzle.

I don't believe in a god or a divine plan. I'm not even sure how you would demonstrate them vs. the way things have naturally played out. Just because someone has the power to cause harm, doesn't meant they should. I'd say that of course we are more powerful than a fictional character (God). And man's activities definitely do mess up nature.

The only way that I will stop eating dead animals is if you produce something that is not even slightly distinquishable from a dead animal and sell it to me cheaper than a dead animal.

Can you prove that there is a god? If so, a Nobel Prize is headed your way. The Old Testament is a horrible book full of highly immoral acts and laws. It says that bestiality should be punished by death. God commands war on surrounding tribes and takes little girls as human sacrifices. It oppresses women, calls for the death of homosexuals and children who talk back against their parents, etc. So I don't give a darn what that book says.

Book of Numbers, Chapter 31. This is the most clear-cut example of atrociousness for its own sake that I was able to find in it.

Yes, let's. Okay, let's look at nature. It's full of death, disease, and horrible things like lions eating the cubs of other prides. I definitely don't want to pattern my moral system after nature. Can you imagine if humans completely patterned our civilization on observations from nature? We'd have no civilization.

We have already done that. Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, verses 17-18. Let's take a look at that part of the world and see how they are doing, shall we? Golly! Wow! They are still killing each other! That is amazing!

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Why not? Veganism is the way of the future.



That's honest. We differ because I personally don't think taste is an argument, or more important than an animal's life, or a justifiable reason to kill.

Then I would suggest making something else that tastes like meat.

 

[Zoo50]

Just sneaking this in here. Long discussion but nobody mentioned something similar to my take on this. Humans *are* animals. It seems as though that tends to get downplayed or forgotten?

1) As such, we don't have fewer natural born rights than any other animal, other predators/omnivores included. Animals eat animals. I'm an animal. I will not feel ethically obliged not to eat animals.

2). Because I am a human consciously aware of the cause/effect nature of our impact on ecology, humans might be argued to have an ecological obligation to eat animals, wild or domestic.

In the case of the American Bison, for instance, it's *that* we eat them that they exist today at all. The unprecedented success of their return from the brink of extinction (by humans, yes, starting with predation by indigenous peoples) is largely due to, and continues to be hugely dependent upon, bison producers. Can't apologize for what happened in the past. But eating them is necessary to their future. Vegetarians contribute nothing to that conservation effort.

And managing the wild herds, what would we do with the cull from Yellowstone each year, to maintain the herd's health, if not eat it? Make it all into dog food? (But why should only dogs get what is, after all, the no. 1 most nutritive meat for human consumption?).

The bear eats salmon from the stream, not just shoots and berries. Even red deer have learned to tear the heads off sleeping sea birds and eat them for the calcium. Heck, National Geographic documented a whitetail deer eating a human carcass, grabbing a photo of the animal, surprised mid-meal, with a rib dangling from its mouth.

And animals kill animals not just for food. I recall footage of frenzied wolves chasing and killing caribou just for the sheer exhilaration of it, never going back to carcasses that lay behind them at the end of the chase). No one shames them for it. It's part of their nature, part of nature as a whole. The carcasses they left behind no doubt fed scavengers. Eating meat is natural. And its good stewardship. I happily embrace nature by taking my place on the planet as a carnivore -- totally appreciating those who by their own choice prefer not to. Just... don't claim there's no justification for eating meat. It's *not* eating meat that requires justification.

This is nonsense. It is true that humans are animals, but humans understand morality and can make ethical choices (such as the choice of inflicting the least amount of harm / suffering possible).

Also, the idea that animals can be "managed" by killing them is speciesist, because that's not something that would happen to humans -- humans are never managed/killed to "balance" an ecosystem.

You argue that because humans are animals, they can behave like other animals (i.e. killing other animals). The flaw with this reasoning is that is that humans do not have to do exactly what occurs in nature -- non-human animals don't understand moral concepts, but humans do, so humans ought to not kill animals. Your argument is a naturalistic fallacy argument.

You also claim that vegetarians don't contribute to conservation, which is nonsense. You have no proof that vegetarians don't contribute to conservation.

Also, you would probably agree that humans have a right to live -- so what makes it OK for non-human animals to be killed? Why are their lives less important to you?

My diet is mostly vegan, though I make exceptions for fish and chicken. I have vegan friends and your fear OP is irrational. I actually had a good chuckle reading it.

This makes no sense. If you eat chicken and fish, you are not a vegan, and you aren't even a vegetarian -- you are a meat-eater. A vegan person does not eat any animal products. Also, why do you (apparently) consider the lives of chickens and fish less valuable than the lives of other animals?

Bison's so expensive. I'll probably have to settle for a 2 1/2" - 3" thick "tomahawk" they have here. Sous vide that for about 45-50 minutes to medium rare, then finish it to a thin, charred crust over a pile of red-hot briquettes.

You really piss me off. Stop treating living beings as exploitable objects -- bison, and other animals, have a right to live, in the same way that humans have a right to live. Your justifications for eating meat are incredibly weak. And the way you talk about cooking animal meat is really callous and heartless.

I've already dealt with the objections of the "don't eat meat" community on my own, personally, within myself. Not against *them*, but against *me*, as my own objections. *I* had difficulty for a long time coming to terms with it. I've been to a packing plant. I've seen live beef cattle killed and instantaneously hung from hooks, traveling up a conveyor, gutted while they were moving down the line, hided, split... the eyes still twitching, the jaw muscles still quivering as their skinless heads kept moving, the rest of them already divided up. I heard them bawling in the line, knowing that death lay ahead, no way to back out.

I've driven the "skins" truck, that took hides run through scraping rollers to get the fat and meat sticking to them off, from the plant to the hide treatment facility 120 miles away.

I also noted how efficient, clean and quick it was. And ... at the end of the run, hungry, I grabbed a burger... or if I had time, sat down to a steak.

I'm good with that.

You are a callous, heartless person. The fact that you are indifferent to animal cruelty and suffering is horrifying. You apparently have no empathy whatsoever towards living beings. Also, your description of killing a deer is horrifying as well. You do not love deer, because if you did, you would not kill them.

I assume you would not approve of humans being "hung from hooks" and butchered -- so then why are you OK if it occurs to a non-human? If your answer is, "because they're not human", then you're a speciesist.

Stop treating deer, cows, and other animals as objects -- realize that they are like humans: they can feel pain and suffering, they have consciousness, they have sentience, they have a right to live, and they have an interest in not being killed. Also, you need to realize that killing an animal (either through slaughter or hunting) is basically murder.

You apparently only think about the interests of humans, not other (non-human) animals.

To intentionally, deliberately take the life of another sentient creature takes nerve. I'm proud to have that nerve. To disembowel it, select choice organs and set them aside, hide it and prepare the hide for leather projects (they used to have drop boxes to put them in, and in trade you'd get deerskin gloves or a knife or something like that). To bone the meat from the skeleton. To know how to make meat dishes from it, how to prepare and cook it, how to serve it, what to serve it with -- these are skills you'll never make me ashamed of. They are skills I've passed on to my children and they will pass on to theirs.

You are callous, heartless, and cruel. Killing an animal and using its parts is intrinsically unethical. The fact that you have no empathy for other living beings makes me sick. Based on what you've said, you approve of animal torture. Also, you are talking about animals as though they are "things", which they are not. They are beings with a right to live -- as @SkawdtDawg said, animals are someone, in the same way that a human is a "someone". Also, the fact that you're OK with killing some animals, but not others (such as dogs) makes you a moral hypocrite.

From a religious perspective, although livestock animals weren't directly created *by* god, they were created by man using man's god-given gifts, our genius brains, and following *our* nature. So in short, our livestock animals were still created by god. We ARE part of god's plan. What we do is part of his/her/its plan. Same as we did to create and maintain grain supplies of corn and wheat and farm previously nonexistent plants. Same as we did to make "eating" apples, which left to their own devices return to crab apples in relatively short time, just a couple generations. Swine, poultry and beef, no different.

There is no God (at least, no anthropocentric God) and there is no "plan" -- the "God's Plan" thing is nonsense. Things happen chaotically (i.e. without a "plan").

At the very least, we *are* creatures, too, designed by god, and part of nature. We have a right to be here. And we have a right to take our place as the apex predator, clever enough to use the tools of nature laid before us to our purpose, same as any other creature does.

This is speciesist bullshit. Just because humans can exploit animals and land doesn't mean they should. Non-humans animals are not ours to butcher, kill, torture, etc. Humans do not have a "right" to do whatever they want to animals and the environment. Morally, humans are not the "apex" of anything. Also, humans were not "designed by God" -- they are a product of evolution, just like every other animal species.

Look at nature. There are prey animals and predators. Which are we? Generally, predators.

This is bullshit. Humans do not have the role of "predator" as you claim -- they have the ability to create their own role (based on ethics) that involves not harming other animals.

See? The sides are entrenched. No point in continuing. I don't care what *vegans* eat. I'm not out to convince them to start eating meat. But when they start imposing their beliefs on others, turn it in to a political movement, well, then... we meat eaters have no recourse but to push back.

As @SkawdtDawg said, there's a reason vegans are criticizing meat-eaters -- it's because meat-eaters won't leave animals alone. In other words, meat-eaters (and those who support slaughter and hunting) are infringing on an animal's rights and interests. An animal has an interest (and a right) in not being killed, and people who kill animals are violating those interests. You talk about vegans imposing themselves on meat-eaters -- well, meat-eaters are imposing themselves on animals, and they shouldn't.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

I also like seafood!


Hold tight! Hold tight! Hold tight hold tight! Hold tight!

 

[Tailo]

My diet is mostly vegan, though I make exceptions for fish and chicken. I have vegan friends and your fear OP is irrational. I actually had a good chuckle reading it.

This makes no sense. If you eat chicken and fish, you are not a vegan, and you aren't even a vegetarian -- you are a meat-eater. A vegan person does not eat any animal products.

Just for the record, K9CuriousAlex did not say she would be a vegan or vegetarian.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Bivalve mollusks are brainless, but they are good for your brain. Consider eating bivalve mollusks. They are very yummy.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Veganism failed to grow because too many vegans opted for being morally pushy, rather than going to culinary academies and learning how to cook non-animal products that actually taste good to meat-eaters. People are very simple: they eat food if it is inexpensive and tastes good. For better or for worse, they do not really think all that deeply about where it came from. They work hard for their money, so they can pay someone else to worry about obtaining the food.

Here is an example of a veganburger recipe that tastes extremely good to some meat-eaters, for example:

BEET AND CARROT VEGGIE BURGERS — love thy carrot

Why are beets so amazing? They are jam packed with potassium and antioxidants, low in calories, and purple too. Beets make these burgers juicy and sweet and are full of good healthy stuff like veggies, beans, fresh herbs, oats and flax. These bu

www.lovethycarrot.com

And here is some barbecue jackfruit with avocado slaw:

BBQ Jackfruit Sandwiches with Avocado Slaw

I know what you're thinking. What the who is that? It's BBQ jackfruit - aka the ticket to reclaiming your favorite BBQ sandwich. Hubba. Hubba.

minimalistbaker.com

If you just cook me something that looks good and tastes good and serve it to me, then I will eat it.

Put the mix on the shelf next-door to the ground chuck, and instead of labeling it prominently as "vegan," price it slightly lower than the ground chuck, and put a good professional picture of the prepared product being consumed by a wholesome Christian looking family on the package. Make it in different styles, so one is intended to be used for hamburgerless patties, another for meatlessloaf, another for spared ribs, and another for barbefruit. Make it look good, and price it one penny lower. People will buy it.

Vegans really have a distinctly important marketing advantage: the world of vegetables contains a much greater diversity of flavor than meat alone. There are only a few different ways that meat is ever going to taste, all by itself, but vegetables are incredibly diverse. They can taste like almost anything in the world.

Make it tasty, make it pretty, and make it cheap. I guarantee that people will buy it.

Moralizing to me is not going to change the fact that I prefer my food to taste good and to fit into a budget. I also like it to be easy.

 

[caikgoch]

It would probably help if the primary supplier of vegan products in the local supermarket wasn't the devil himself.

Veggie Cuisine | MorningStar Farms®

Just what the world ordered! Discover tasty, wholesome veggie meals and meatless foods from MorningStar Farms. Find links to recipes, coupons, and more!

www.morningstarfarms.com

 

[FeralLovin']

But that's just it--veganism is a moral issue.

There is no inherent morality. Ask a preacher what he thinks is moral and then ask a normal everyday person the same thing. There answers will differ as will anybody else's on the question. Vegans have their morals and we have ours. No since trying to sound better when morality doesn't matter.

Case in point--the Beyond and Impossible Burgers

Have you considered that not everyone eats out? It would certainly help those that gorge themselves on MD or BK everyday, but I only eat out once a year and my annual tradition of eating at the Chinese place for my birthday sure as hell isn't going to change to eat a dumbly named burger. Costs the same to eat 1 of those burgers as it does an all you can eat buffet.

 

[caikgoch]

Do you mean because MorningStar Farms is owned by Kellogg?

Satan's proper name is Lucifer Morningstar. Many cultures besides Christian have myths and legends about a "lightbringer" trouble maker.

And you really should look up the histories of both Kellog's and General mills.

 

[Tailo]

We do not disagree on the facts. We might just be interpreting them differently. Yes, the primary purpose of rabbits is to be food for other animals. God or no god. If purpose is a problem word, exchange it for function. It's a reasonable conclusion inferred from observable fact.

I think bunnies would disagree. Maybe they would say that the most important things in life are to keep the weed in check, bone other bunnies, make the kids happy and raise them to be good bunnies themselves. That and eating one's own poo! Foxes would rather share your perspective on the other hand. We can focus on different aspects of the same facts indeed and while the facts are neutral, our choice of focus isn't.

 

[Tailo]

We are clever monkeys. We observed how nature works, studied nature, and followed nature's lead, ensuring for ourselves a sustainable meat supply by slightly tweaking existing prey animals, first by domesticating them, then by breeding programs. Damn genius, really. A total salute to god. Yay humans!

From a religious perspective, although livestock animals weren't directly created *by* god, they were created by man using man's god-given gifts, our genius brains, and following *our* nature. So in short, our livestock animals were still created by god. We ARE part of god's plan. What we do is part of his/her/its plan. Same as we did to create and maintain grain supplies of corn and wheat and farm previously nonexistent plants. Same as we did to make "eating" apples, which left to their own devices return to crab apples in relatively short time, just a couple generations. Swine, poultry and beef, no different.

It's curious that people keep speaking as if humans are anathema to god and nature. We are not an opposing force. We are part of the divine plan. Heck, most religions treat us as the pinnacle of the divine plan, the reason there *is* a divine plan.

At the very least, we *are* creatures, too, designed by god, and part of nature. We have a right to be here. And we have a right to take our place as the apex predator, clever enough to use the tools of nature laid before us to our purpose, same as any other creature does.

Yes, we are part of nature and of creation, god presumed. I do not think that what we do is necessarily according to god's plan though. Aren't the scriptures full of examples where man has turned against it? The great deluge came for a reason. God is reported to have promised not to rid earth of life like that again, but today we humans are working towards a deluge by heating the planet which causes sea water to expand as well as glaciers on land to melt and add to the oceans. It is as if we would prepare our own punishment for our overuse of natural resources and the destruction of eco-systems. It's astonishingly biblical in my eyes, even if it happens in slow motion in comparison. The extent of meat production is a contributing factor among others to this.

It's also interesting that pride is "considered, on almost every list, the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins", to quote Wikipedia. And aren't we humans proud of our greatness as the crown of creation?

If *you* believe in a god, and nature is his careful design, then he wouldn't let us muck it up, right? We're not more powerful than god or nature.

I once heard a presumably Jewish joke that went like this:

It had been raining for days, the river was rising and people living in the valley near it were requested to leave their houses and seek refuge in higher territory. A righteous man—let's call him John—refused to leave, since he had always been good and prayed and was convinced that god would save him. The flood rose and the water ran into his house. Rescuers came with a boat to see if there were still people in the houses and saw John looking out of his window. But John insisted on staying, he had rubber boots and rubber trouser and was sure that he would be fine, since he was a just man and prayed, so god surely wouldn't allow harm to come to him. The water continued to rise and John had to get atop his roof, where a helicopter spotted him. They came to save him, but John denied getting on the ladder and coming with them. Surely the flood would soon be over, he said. He continued to pray to god, whom he fully trusted to save him. The flood rose further, destroyed Johns house and drowned him. As a righteous man John rose to heaven and met his creator. John asked god why he hadn't saved him despite leading an exemplary life and praying for protection. And god told him that he had tried, that he had send help three times, once in the form of a news anchor who told people to get to higher ground, once in a boat and a third time in the form of a helicopter.

It may not fit here perfectly—I don't think that we are all righteous people like John was—but maybe you see a meaningful message in it anyways.

We meat eaters are doing just fine by god. Don't know if you're Jew or Christian, but if so, the Old Testament is full of agriculture. Bad place to turn to for arguments against killing animals. Almost have to be atheist to do that. The Jews split animals open pretty regularly on altars to offer them up as sacrifices, right? So not only keeping livestock but killing them seems to have been endorsed by a Judeo-Christian god. (Probably also by the deities of other belief systems. Jainism, not so much. And depending on what region of India you're in, this or that animal is off the slaughter list: here a rat, there a cockroach, most widely cows).

For the most part, naw, you won't find an argument against farmers from god. He sort of likes them, according to various literature. So vegans will to rely on ungodly, unnatural arguments for veganism. (Sorry. Being funny).

Oh, I am neither Jew nor Christian. Sometimes I have melancholic feelings when I see the positive sides of spiritual community and myself not belonging to them. I enjoy talking to missionaries—the ones I met from the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints as well as Jehova's witnesses have always been kind. I also have spiritual feelings sometimes. But organized religion just doesn't seem to work for me. I suppose I think too much and then there is also my preference for dogs and the compelling feeling when a male dog mounts me that what we do is 100% right and good. This seems to be in harsh conflict with what institutions of Abrahamic religions preach.

I've started reading the bible from the beginning. I gave up at some point but went far enough to know you are right: The religion as practiced by the old Israelites must have been a bloodshed. So much sacrificing of animals ... But that's not why I stopped reading. I stopped because I realized that this has got nothing to do with me. From some point onwards it had clearly, explicitly been for the Israelites and I am none of them. It's simply not directed at me, neither the shedding of animal blood at the temple to praise god nor the prohibition of sex with animals.

I like the foremost chapters of Genesis that still applied to all people and I could call myself a Noahide. But then again many people claim that Noahides mustn't have sex with animals. I do not see why that would be so in the scriptures, but anyway ...

The way I understand the first chapters, humans did not eat animals in the garden of Eden. I understand that god allowed to eat animals after the deluge, after having seen how weak people are (weak as in lack of self-control to do the right thing). But I do not see why you consider eating meat an obligation. It seems to be clear to me that the ideal was not to eat meat.

Since the site's poll indicates the vast majority using this site (who responded to the poll) are atheist, lets remove "god" from the discussion now. Doesn't make a difference. What most godly people attribute to a god is what they observe in nature. Look at nature. There are prey animals and predators. Which are we? Generally, predators.

We choose.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

What about Beyond and Impossible Burgers, Brats, and ground plant-based meat? Have you tried them? A lot of meat-lovers have said that the taste is close enough that they can't tell the difference.

I found the beet and carrot things to be more passable for meat, honestly.

I am watching a company called Mosa Meat very closely, though.

Mosa Meat

We’re a European food technology company that’s helping everyone take a bite out of a better future – starting with the world’s kindest beef burger.

www.mosameat.com

But that's just it--veganism is a moral issue. The whole point is not unnecessarily harming and killing animals. The other things, like health benefits and the environmental impact reduction, are just bonuses.

That is the problem of the person that produces it. As far as I know, as a shopper, the meat could come from a magical meat mushroom that is picked by elves from the singing meat caves of Niflheim. A poor manufacturing labor is a tired and overworked single mother nursing a screaming infant that she actually knows is destined to suffer from profound psychological problems related to neglect, and a recently elected local government just scrapped an afterschool program that would have hedged against some of those problems. Her feet are sore, her arms are tired, she is frustrated, she feels absolutely abandoned by society, and literally the only thing that is keeping her from smothering her own infant and then killing herself is finding something to make herself feel better. Make her feel better because that is what is going to sell a product.

Those recipes look great.

Yep, and most importantly, I like them. They taste good, and they make me feel good. I am not about to swear off meat, but I am very open to trying really great vegetarian options. I very strongly agree with feeling good. I believe that there are many great benefits to me feeling good. I fervently support me feeling good, and I like it a lot when other people support me feeling good. I don't eat those things because they are vegetarian. I eat them because they taste da bomb.

That's what's happening already with the Beyond and Impossible products (and some other brands now); they are being placed in with the meat products. The problem with prepared food like this, is that right now not enough people are buying them for the prices to be lower than meat--meat which is only priced as low as it is because we pay for it with our tax dollars through subsidies. There has to be enough of a market.

You would have to talk over the subsidies with your congress person.

At the end of the day, it is a moral issue, though. Sure, it's not comfortable, but saying you'll only follow certain moral principles if the world caters to you is a rather self-centered view. A person can't just pick and choose their morals based on convenience. And the thing is, in a free market, products are produced based on demand. If it seems there isn't much demand for a plant-based meat alternative, there aren't going to be companies producing the product.

Then produce a better product. Vegans could spend the same exact time studying the culinary arts or marketing as they do moralizing, and I guarantee that they would have half the western population converted to veganism. I eat vegetarian products if they taste good and make me feel good. Being cheap and easy also helps.

Case in point--the Beyond and Impossible Burgers; for years the closest thing you could buy were Boca Burgers or veggie patties. Then a few years ago, the amount of vegans started to shoot up, which created a market for them. Ten or more years ago, those items probably would have flopped because the demand wasn't there. Now there is actually enough demand that fast-food restaurants carry them. Change starts with people. Then products will follow.

Products are made by people and marketed by people. Nobody bought the boca burgers because boca burgers tasted like crap. Better stuff emerged, and people are buying it because it tastes good and is properly marketed. Meat consumption is actually dropping.

Meat in Decline

worldpreservationfoundation.org

I think that better stuff being available and that stuff being properly marketed has a lot to do with it.

 

[caikgoch]

Okay...

I live near a Southern Baptist town. There are more churches than grocery stores around here. Think maybe their marketing sucks?

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Right, that's why educating people is important. I had no idea how the system worked. I just ate whatever was on my plate, and figured the poor person who killed those elderly animals that had lived a long life was going to go to hell for it. My view of the world has changed greatly over the years, which never would have happened if I didn't keep an open mind and researched questions that I had. In a perfect world, we'd have as many or more prepared meat substitutes than meat, and they'd be priced cheaper. I think that's the way it's going, but it takes time. The more people we have who are willing to change, the faster the change will happen.

Education might entice someone that is already a vegan to study and pursue a career in a field that could lead to superior and less expensive non-meat options being available to the average consumer.

Most people tend to fit their ethics around their established lifestyle and social relationships, for better or for worse. This is why coming out as gay (and by extension as zooey) to your friends and family works so well at producing social change: assuming that you maintain those relationships, people tend to model their ethics around making sure to shelter those that they are attached to.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/118931/knowing-someone-gay-lesbian-affects-views-gay-issues.aspx

It is actually extremely difficult to get people to model their behavior based on abstract ethics, and people actually do tend to live and think chiefly based upon their instincts, including their social instincts. If you want to change people's behavior, then work with that fact.

For instance, if you want to encourage other people to take up vegetarianism, then back off for a while from moralizing to them. Instead, self-identify as vegan, and when you hear about a new restaurant in town, mention, "They have some really good vegetarian options that I want to try." Just because they know you, they eventually figure out that you are not actually a Puritanically self-loathing health fanatic possessed of super-human self-control and outrageously Spartan culinary sensibilities, but instead, you are just a person that likes many kinds of very good food that happens to not have meat in it. I can guarantee that you would eventually find them becoming more open-minded to trying vegetarian options. Instead of being a moralizing vegan, try being a proud vegan. That affected me. I had friends that were vegans or people that were attempting to eliminate certain meats from their diets, and I started trying some of their favorite foods. I realized that I actually liked some of them quite a lot.

Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study

The Asch paradigm was a series of conformity experiments by Solomon Asch designed to investigate how social pressure from a majority group could influence an individual to conform.

www.simplypsychology.org

Whether I ever intended to or not, I am reacting to the human drive to conform. This is a natural human behavior. I am a gregarious ape: I am doing what I am supposed to do. It is both unsurprising and not even slightly alarming.

You will not change human behavior without exploiting the natural drives in their psychology.

 

[Tailo]

Here's a short holiday tale:

For New Year's Eve both my brother's family and I joined our parents. During breakfast my little nephew asked me to pass him a sausage, which I happily did. Before he could cut some slices off, my mother announced to him: "But it is a vegetarian sausage. You know, uncle [Tailo] doesn't eat meat."—And I thought 'Oh no!', because I expected what would happen: My little nephew, not even ten years old, suddenly didn't want the sausage anymore.

But then my brother (my nephews father) who is well known to really like meat and eat a lot of it, but also likes not to conform to expectations, took some of the sausage without hesitating. This made my nephew very curios and he snatched some of it from his father's plate, ate it, and announced with pleasure: "Ha ha, this isn't vegetarian." But it was.

I think we can learn two things from this: On the one hand, some vegetarian products have advanced so far that people will mistake them for being made of flesh, despite being told they are not. Personally, I don't need vegetarian products to taste like that, but I surely don't mind if others enjoy exactly that taste.

But secondly, being that good won't be enough to convince some people, because they won't even try when they can have it for free. For some reason the vegetarian label makes it automatically yucky for them, although they love eating other vegetarian stuff like French fries with ketchup that aren't explicitly labeled as vegetarian.

I don't really know where that comes from, but I have seen that the prejudice already affected my preteen nephew. Maybe it was because of how my mother said "But it is a vegetarian ...", maybe he had adopted that elsewhere. I can guarantee that it was not due to me moralizing. I had never talked about vegetarianism with my nephew and I didn't say anything in this episode other than "of course, here you are" when passing the sausage.

Oh well, we can also learn a third thing. There are ways around that prejudice. Like other meat-eaters being "brave" role models and trying.

 

[HyperWoof]

I think bunnies would disagree. Maybe they would say that the most important things in life are to keep the weed in check, bone other bunnies, make the kids happy and raise them to be good bunnies themselves. That and eating one's own poo! Foxes would rather share your perspective on the other hand. We can focus on different aspects of the same facts indeed and while the facts are neutral, our choice of focus isn't.

It doesn't really matter what the fox or the rabbit think about their place in life though does it?

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

@SkawdtDawg

Ah, but slaughterhouse horrors don't work on me.

It was a weird situation. The problem is that my mother was always a person that was incredibly easily moved to disgust. She found an infant to be an unfathomably disgusting thing. She could barely even bring herself to change a diaper. My father, on the other hand, had two things going for him: for one thing, he has substantially stronger nurturing instincts than my mother, and for another thing, he is not really all that squeamish at all.

However, my father always liked to go out hunting as his main hobby in life, and if he was going to be playing nursemaid to an infant and eventually to a toddler, he was not about to give up the one thing he had in life besides work and sex for it. I was being taken out on hunts with him from as early on as I could remember. I watched deer being skinned, and I grew very acclimated to it. A dozen profoundly drunken hooting and shouting men pulling the skin off a deer by tying part of it around a trailer hitch and putting the truck in drive while the surrounding drunks cheered and hooted was actually an incredibly normal thing to me. A part of my early childhood memories includes playing with a deer's eyeball and pondering its similarity to a squishy marble. I was trained to shoot a bee-bee gun when I was still just a toddler, and I was shooting birds out of the sky when I was quite young. I would follow my father through the bushes as he would track down a deer that he had maimed and finish him off. I watched dogs that had been trained to kill do the same with their bare jaws in bloody fights in which they were often in grave danger of getting gored by an antler. My father taught me, when I was seven years old, how I could finish off a dove by whacking its head on a log.

Trying to horrify me just does not work. I grew up seeing sloppier and more brutal killing from my very infancy.

I never liked the actual act of killing a thing. When I see a thing actually alive and actually make eye-contact with it, I very quickly start becoming emotionally invested. I instinctively make eye-contact, and I start getting a reading. In a way, I transform into it, internally. I get such strong readings off of animals that I have actually attempted to walk and run naked on all-fours, balanced on the balls of my feet, over a fair stretch of a hiking tail (during the off season for tourism), just in order to get a better idea of what it felt like. I honestly would no more take pleasure in actually killing an animal that I have actually met for its meat than I would in propositioning a woman for sex (I am very gay). I am aware that other people do it. It just does not fit on me very well. Once I have met an animal, I care a lot more about his dick than about his capacity for being turned into meat.

Eating meat still does not bother me. I could not possibly explain to you why to save my own life. When it's packaged and processed and presented to me in the sanitized setting of a grocery store, it is very difficult to get attached, emotionally, to a package of ground chuck. I don't see a cow. I see dinner. I see happy and smiling young people sitting around a table and holding bulging and dripping hamburgers in their little hands.

The only thing that is going to work is to convince me that I should like non-meat ingredients. I am not going to lie: I like jack fruit. I love avocado. I eat lots of pasta with extra gluten. I actually am a case of a person that, while I am not about to swear off meat, will still purchase a non-meat product that was packaged for me appealingly and was reasonably affordable. I am not complicated: take good ingredients, and prepare them well.

 

[HyperWoof]

Apparently it doesn't to those that hunt them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Obviously? Why would I take into account what a rabbit thinks how the world should be run?

 

[caikgoch]

I'm not sure what to think of that. I guess it would be easy to suspect that the company was founded by devil worshipers wanting to glorify Satan's name. Then again, Will Kellogg, the founder of the parent company, was highly religious, so that sort of contradicts that theory. I don't believe the devil actually exists, though humans can be pretty devilish.

Kellog is dead and gone, it's just another multi-national corporation now days. That's not the point. I agree that you're not going to change what people eat with logic.

So how does "Satan's Red Hot French Fries" sound as a marketing campaign for the rural South in America? I live here and I can say with certainty that about half of their potential customers glance at the name and move on without even thinking about it.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

Maybe I have just decoded a part of why I am possessed of a desire to fuck animals.

What if it's a hunter's instinct? Generation after generation of hunter-gatherers would have had to make their living off of tracking animals through every possible kind of wilderness, and in order to predict those animals, they needed to be able to understand those animals.

Maybe it cost them more, emotionally, to kill an animal that they had become emotionally invested in, but maybe that would explain a part of why they originally began draping themselves in the cleaned skins of those animals. While they might have killed that animal and eaten its meat, they still missed it, and they craved the gentle feeling of its fur against their bodies.

The bear cult religion was a huge part of Holarctic prehistory. If you have ever seen the film Brother Bear, then it is probably inspired by the prehistoric bear cult religion. Hunter-gatherer peoples of the Holarctic needed the warm fur of bears in order to survive the harsh winters of that time. They did not just have respect for those bears, though, but they worshiped the animals. They even believed that they could transform into bears. This translated, in time, into one of the traditions of the cult of Artemis, in which little girls just entering puberty symbolically transformed into bears, thereby reliving the fate of Callisto: just as the nymph Callisto was transformed into a bear for being intimate with a man instead of remaining chaste for her goddess, the girls were transformed also into bears during this ceremony in which they ceased to be innocent little girls and began the process of becoming women. This obsession with the bear was deep, and perhaps it went back to the very roots of our evolution.

Perhaps that is why there are some of us zoos to whom our zooiness is even a part of our spirituality.

If this is feasible, then perhaps us zoos are hearing an echo of our ancestors, who lived in a very different world.

 

[HyperWoof]

Maybe I have just decoded a part of why I am possessed of a desire to fuck animals.

What if it's a hunter's instinct? Generation after generation of hunter-gatherers would have had to make their living off of tracking animals through every possible kind of wilderness, and in order to predict those animals, they needed to be able to understand those animals.

Maybe it cost them more, emotionally, to kill an animal that they had become emotionally invested in, but maybe that would explain a part of why they originally began draping themselves in the cleaned skins of those animals. While they might have killed that animal and eaten its meat, they still missed it, and they craved the gentle feeling of its fur against their bodies.

The bear cult religion was a huge part of Holarctic prehistory. If you have ever seen the film Brother Bear, then it is probably inspired by the prehistoric bear cult religion. Hunter-gatherer peoples of the Holarctic needed the warm fur of bears in order to survive the harsh winters of that time. They did not just have respect for those bears, though, but they worshiped the animals. They even believed that they could transform into bears. This translated, in time, into one of the traditions of the cult of Artemis, in which little girls just entering puberty symbolically transformed into bears, thereby reliving the fate of Callisto: just as the nymph Callisto was transformed into a bear for being intimate with a man instead of remaining chaste for her goddess, the girls were transformed also into bears during this ceremony in which they ceased to be innocent little girls and began the process of becoming women. This obsession with the bear was deep, and perhaps it went back to the very roots of our evolution.

Perhaps that is why there are some of us zoos to whom our zooiness is even a part of our spirituality.

If this is feasible, then perhaps us zoos are hearing an echo of our ancestors, who lived in a very different world.

 

[SigmaTheZeta]

We might have inherited the bear cult from neanderthals. It was a very interesting part of neanderthal culture.

 

[Zoo50]

Obviously? Why would I take into account what a rabbit thinks how the world should be run?

You ought to consider the interests of other animals (such as rabbits), and respect their interests, rather than only respecting your own interests. A rabbit has an interest in not being killed, therefore people shouldn't kill rabbits.

Just as a human has an interest in not being killed, a rabbit also has an interest in not being killed.

Trying to horrify me just does not work. I grew up seeing sloppier and more brutal killing from my very infancy.

Eating meat still does not bother me. I could not possibly explain to you why to save my own life. When it's packaged and processed and presented to me in the sanitized setting of a grocery store, it is very difficult to get attached, emotionally, to a package of ground chuck. I don't see a cow. I see dinner. I see happy and smiling young people sitting around a table and holding bulging and dripping hamburgers in their little hands.

This is idiotic nonsense. You know where the meat in the store came from (horrific, unethical slaughter) -- stop looking at superficial things (such as how meat looks when it's packaged) and realize that meat was once a living being. Basically, your argument is weak because you are using very morally shallow reasons for your actions. Like BlueBeard, you are seeing animals as only objects, not as beings worthy of morality.

Also, your position is morally inconsistent. You say you don't like it when an animal is killed, yet you approve of meat in a sanitized package in a store, even though the meat in that package came from an animal that was killed.

If you saw dog meat, would you still eat it, even if it was in a "sanitized" package?

Also, you say that the horrors of animal slaughter don't bother you -- this is disturbing, and is perhaps an indicator that you are just as callous as BlueBeard.

Also, in response to @caikgoch -- there's nothing wrong with MorningStar Farms products. It's more ethical to eat them than it is to eat animal meat.

 

[HyperWoof]

You ought to consider the interests of other animals (such as rabbits), and respect their interests, rather than only respecting your own interests. A rabbit has an interest in not being killed, therefore people shouldn't kill rabbits.

Just as a human has an interest in not being killed, a rabbit also has an interest in not being killed.

And a grizzly has interest in taking your place at the top of the food chain. How about you go lay your soft body in front of him and appease his interests.
No. humans have the intelligence required to be making all the shots, not rabbits or foxes.

 

[Zoo50]

And a grizzly has interest in taking your place at the top of the food chain. How about you go lay your soft body in front of him and appease his interests.
No. humans have the intelligence required to be making all the shots, not rabbits or foxes.

It is not morally wrong if a grizzly bear kills a person (it would be unfortunate, but not morally wrong) -- the reason for this is that grizzly bears don't understand morality, whereas humans do.

Just because humans are intelligent does not give them the right to deprive another being of his/her life. Morally, humans are not "above" other animals.

Generally, when a human kills another human, it is viewed as wrong (with a few exceptions, such as the death penalty) -- similarly, when a human kills another living being who happens to be non-human, that should be viewed as wrong as well.

 

[FeralLovin']

If you saw dog meat, would you still eat it,

I would gobble him up