this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
467 points (97.6% liked)
science
20185 readers
292 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But I’m hungry
eat non-cruel food. actual food. not animals. animals aren't food for humans.
All animals, us included, are food for other animals, and plants.
That's what is called an "ecosystem".
That's a food web. An ecosystem incorporates the environment organisms live in and how the organisms interact within that environment. The soil, climate and weather are all part of an ecosystem.
buying meat from the grocery store is not an ecosystem
I live in a no hunt region. So, unless I travel 30 minutes to hunt for 12 hrs, grocery store is the next best thing.
city says i can't shoot the squirrels anymore tho
There are not enough squirrels. They would be extinct quick.
If that were true, we wouldn't be able to digest them. Ever tried eating a tree? Or a boulder? Those aren't food for humans. I'm not gonna argue against moral motivations for veganism, but I will argue against factually incorrect ones.
Animal flesh causes cancer and heart disease. if we were MEANT to eat animals, we wouldn't get those diseases.
Life causes cancer, plaque build-up causes heart disease. Nothing was meant to do or eat or kill anything, that's just how life evolved. Again, I'm not arguing over moral stances, I think it's very admirable. But I mean, even just as mammals we've been consuming other animals for more than 200,000,000 years! The reptiles those first mammals evolved from probably ate animals, as the fish those reptiles evolved from probably did as well. Cooked meat is very likely the evolutionary edge that lead to what what we can sentience, it obviously "works" on a biological level. To argue otherwise is delusion.
If eaten in large amounts. Also, herbivore animals get cancer too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqLsus9_YsQ
All food is cruel. You can, at most, minimize the cruelty.
But you should know that millions of insects are killed in agriculture. Insects are indeed animals.
You can, if you want, minimize the amount of animals your presence in this world brings to an early death. But you cannot reduce it to zero no even near zero. Probably hundreds of small animals (most insects but surely many other small animals) die each day because things you do.
The line on how much do you want to minimize might be on one place for you, and that's ok. But you have to respect other people lines as well.
There's a difference between actively choosing to kill an animal, and having an animal die as a consequence of another action.
Driving a car means that you'll inevitably hit an animal at some point, but the alternative (walking) is often impractical and you'll still try your best and stop or swerve when a cat runs into the road.
Eating meat, on the other hand, is an active choice that always involves someone killing an animal. The alternative is always there and is as easy as can be: eat something else.
Your personal freedom stops where someone else's freedom begins. The question is whether you consider animals to be someone or something.
Arguing that driving a car is mandatory while eating meat is a choice must be the most braindead argument I've seen from a vegan.
It's semi-related but this meme comes to my mind:
and also this one:
sorry for the poor quality of the second one, i couldn't find a version with more pixels.
The fact that you don't see the bugs being killed in the agricultural process do not mean they do not die because of your choosing. Killing bugs is a necessary part of the making of all the food you eat. It's not an "accident" or "undeliberated". The word "pesticide" for instance should give you a hint. Also a lot of the cleaning process of any vegetable is meant, among other things, to get rid of any bugs present.
You also, presumably, live in a house, what do you think that happened with the thousands of bugs that used to live in that plot of land. They didn't die by accident, they died because you wanted a cozy house instead of sleeping on the grass. The clothes you wear, all consumer products you use, your phone. Millions of bug deaths could be prevented if you decided to live caveman style. If they die is your choosing. And everyone else respect that choice. Respect yourself other people choices that imply a small margin more of animal deaths.
I'm very well aware of the impact my existence has on the planet, but I can still try and minimize that impact as much as possible, even without taking it to the extreme and ending society. It's not all or nothing.
If you want to minimize the amount of bugs killed, not eating meat is a great way to achieve that. Instead of harvesting tons of crops to then feed to animals, you could just eat those crops yourself. You'd even end up needing less space to grow your food overall, meaning you could re-naturalize a lot of farmland and create a habitat for billions of insects.
How about you respect other animals right to bodily integrity.
You pit your line respecting animals body integrity at one particular position. As you have already recognized.
Respect that other people's position of that line are different. At the end of the day you kill 1000 animals a day, eating meat I might kill 1050 animals a day. Not that much of a difference so... Just respect, it's not that hard not to try enforce your way of life in others for such a small difference in animal deaths. Who knows maybe due your other habits you end up killing more animals than me. Do you do international travel by any chance? Do you drive cars or mount on motorized vehicles daily?
Be aware and prepare to be heavily judged by others if you pretend to judge people on those basis.
At the end we should just make a throughout body count of animals killed, including insects, you'll probably be surprised by the results.
Or, much easier option, just respect that other people eat meat. And don't try to enforce your traditions on others.
I think you're grossly underestimating how much land and it takes just to feed an animal until it is ready to slaughter. I'm sorry to say but you'd be indirectly killing an order of magnitude more insects by eating meat, when considering all that feed.
I think a veggie or vegan diet, maybe even organic veg if possible, would help you preserve insect life (which really needs preserving as you rightly point out)
I agree! so we should try to get locally grown food without pesticides and then people can stop coping. Somehow my family manages to grow food without it and if there's a bug we just dust it off into the grass. People who freak out over a little bug or fruit that's not totally perfect are actually part of the problem.
It's pure cope to say "I can't avoid causing suffering so me making a deliberate choice to cause MORE suffering to animals that are the same intelligence as my dog is actually fine."
It's just using logic to destroy some common militant-radical-vegan arguments.
These people kill thousands of animals each years. And get angry that you kill a thousand and one.
They get angry that you say that human beings are more important than cows. But then they act as cows are more important than ants.
At the end that line of thinking is approaching religion levels of dogmatism. Thus why I feel compelled to rebate some arguments.
Your history for instance doesn't really hold up. A little home leisure grows doesn't provide for a family. To provide food for humans you do need proper agriculture, and proper agriculture, even traditional one, means the destruction of animal habitats and their massive killing.
If you don't want to eat animals, specially the bigger ones because you feel sorry for them that's ok. I would never question your personal choices. But if you start trying to enforce your personal choices on me, and start trying to moral shame me in a religious sort of way, then is when I have to push back. I already had my cup of religious moral shaming on catholic school, I don't need more of it.
There's nothing inmoral about eating meat. And not eating meat doesn't make anyone a better person.
I think any vegan who is at least somewhat sane would say squishing an ant is not the same as killing a cow, because one is clearly more sentient and capable of experiencing suffering than the other. Obviously you don't want to do either of them, and yes overpopulation and food waste causes us to kill enormous amounts of insects and wildlife. But I also don't advocate for increasing the human population and try to waste absolutely 0 food because I know the impact it has. Buying food locally from non-factory farms is also much better, vegan or not.
It's also true that animals consume and require MUCH more resources than just eating the plants ourselves, so even under that framing we are still doing significantly more harm because now we have to grow extra food, have space for these animals, and deal with the extra emissions from feeding/giving water/transport.
I absolutely can't support myself nor anyone else with some backyard gardening, that's definitely true. But with 2 people doing it in our leisure time, we reduced how often we have to buy any foods by about 40% by having ~8 fruit trees, 10 raised beds, and a freezer. Obviously this isn't 0 harm because we do need a fence and sometimes have to trap and release some animals, but it is possible and not infeasable to feed a neighborhood by gardening like this, and it's been done in many neighborhoods already.
You definitely can not exist without causing harm, and meat is not the ONLY negative thing to reduce, it's just the most obvious and requires the least amount of legislature to actually reduce the harm from it. If we had a much smaller amount of cows that only ate the waste, that were humanely slaughtered, I think most vegans still be sad about it but not be nearly as upset, and meat would be a special thing rather than a staple.
This...plants feel pain. Mushrooms may actually be sentient. Everyone draws their own lines, it doesn't make them better or worse.
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that's what we have evidence for. Don't pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.
So your line is at "feels pain on a level identifiable to something in the animal kingdom"
Yes they are. They have been for eons. It's not all they are and people should work towards meatless options and ethical meat like lab grown. But animals are definitely a food source.
I don't want to cause plants pain, that's why I eat meat
Hilarious
Human beings are omnivores and nature doesn't moralize.
-Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Good old natural factory meat
This is why I primarily only eat what I shoot, or what I catch.
But on a serious note, how good is venison? Fucking delicious. You ever make chili with it? Goddamn backstrap chili. Like eating heaven.
I only eat meat that consents. Anybody want to come over for dinner? Coincidentally, you'll have to sign a waiver.
this depends on where you live, surely. i have open field farms all around me that cooperatively own a slaughterhouse. they sell meat in stores under one brand but you can go to any of the farms and get it directly.
I grew up on a farm and enjoy eating meat
Have you tried some good alternatives to meat? Like, try seitan* crumbles in a taco. With all the spices and other toppings it's really hard to tell the difference. Also, I find it almost impossible to tell an Impossible Whopper with Cheese from a regular Whopper with Cheese, after all the glop they put on it. I know those are both bottom-of-the-barrel meat choices, but maybe branch out and try a thing or two. If you don't like it - no biggie.
I've tried casually dipping my toes into the vegetarian pool with just occasional meat substitutions. Occasionally I find something that's "No way" but more often than not, I find something that is also really tasty. It's not meat, but it's also tasty in a different way, so I don't miss meat as much. I've found vegetarian dishes I actually like. My biggest problem however is getting enough protein in my diet when I start eating mostly veggies.
[* Seitan only if you can handle gluten. Because, it's like 100% gluten! ]
Meat alternatives are a nice thought. I'm glad they exist for people who can accept them in place of meat. I haven't found them to be very good substitutes yet so I'm not there. I've had the impossible whopper, and while it's good, it's not a replacement for me. Hopefully more options come over the years. I'm hopeful for lab grown meat personally since it'd still be meat, just ethically produced.
It's crazy that people don't like meat substitutes, but if you tell them it's not a meat substitute, but actually a special cow from nepal with a different taste, it's suddenly good and exotic. I hate it when it doesn't taste like animal suffering.
Slaneesh would agree.