I feel like most vegans don’t understand how many hundreds of mice, snakes, moles, rabbits, and frogs are killed to harvest crops. When you see a farmer harvesting a field note how there are crows or seagulls following behind, they do this to eat the dead animals

I feel like if you want to minimize animal suffering/death you either hunt a deer or buy direct from a farm that you trust, as the total number of meals you get from killing a large animal is incredible vs how many have to be killed when harvesting crops.

Unless vegans weigh the lives of different animals at different levels like if one rabbit is worth less than a deer

The whitetail deer has a life expectancy of about 4-6 years. For us, this may seem like a very short amount of time. However I can assure you that 4-6 years in a white tail deers position is long enough. The whitetail deer does not have that many major predators as they are a relatively large, fast and intelligent animal. Their predators include very large and aggressive animals which can make for an unfortunate circumstances for the deer. The three main predators for whitetail deer in Florida are black bears, bobcats and coyotes. These three animals are top predators in their environment and can make a nice meal out of a deer. Fawns, or young deer, are generally the target for these predators because they are easier prey to catch.
As one can imagine, the process of getting eaten alive by any of those three predators would be torture. This process can endure for hours and even days, causing major suffering for the animal. Although this is often not the case for adult deer. The adult whitetails main predator is you and I. This is not only the work of hunters but also vehicle collisions and loss of habitat. Hunters are taught from day one to aim for the vital organs of the animal and there are multiple reasons for this. A shot through the vital organs also leaves almost all of the meat in tact, resulting in the best harvest possible for the hunter. It also ensures a quick death for the animal if done correctly. Typically, a deer that has been shot in the vitals will expire within 30 minutes of being shot. This creates a fast, relatively painless death for the animal. Very experienced hunters can fire rounds with such accuracy they can almost guarantee a hit to the vital areas, killing the deer almost instantly with little to no suffering at all.
When a deer is caught by a predator this is not a quick event. The deer will often sense the predator coming and then a chase will begin. This is not as extreme of a chase as you may see with a cheetah and a gazelle, however the end result is usually similar. When harvesting a deer, there is no stress involved before the shot. The deer is completely unaware making the process faster and providing less suffering for the deer.
Now you may be wondering about the deer that avoided the predators, avoided the hunters and avoided the vehicles. Now at age 7, what happens to the mature whitetail deer? Deer are herbivores and spend a lot of their time chewing and grinding food. Eventually all the chewing takes its toll on the deer and their teeth will begin to grind down and rot away. This leaves the deer with little to no teeth left making it impossible for the deer to chew or eat anything, leaving it to starve to death. Unlike humans, deer usually don’t die of old age. Eventually they will get old enough that something will kill them. Whether it be a predator, a human, a brutal winter or an injury, none of them sound like a better option than being harvested by a hunter.

I would love to hear some opinions from other views. This is a part of my college project on the overall morality of deer hunting.

I've seen quite a few threads on r/DebateAVegan where OP makes all sorts of grand standing declarations, has all sorts of "arguments" against what they think is veganism and except for the post OP doesn't participate any further.

I have a lot of trouble restraining myself from downvoting such posts and respect the don't downvote rule.

What's y'all's and the mods opinion on that? Can we downvote posts where OP never commented after the posts after a few hours?

There's posts out there with over a hundred comments, not one from OP... This doesn't seem normal for a debate sub.

generally speaking, we care

1. people we know more than people we don't know
2. animals we know more than animals we don't know
3. people we don't know more than animals we don't know

if you don't agree to "3", you can skip this post...:) otherwise, being a vegan should automatically make you care MORE about random people suffering in the world

russia invades ukraine. lots of people suffering. china invades xinjiang and tibet. lots of people suffering. to name but a few. what have you done on these?

if you think buying products from animal farms is a form of support to them, so is buying products from those governments or corporations owned / subsidized by those governments

if you don't know for example buying a huawei cellphone is actually supporting china government, you are ignorant

if you know that and still buy it, you are contradicting "3". you are willing to do something that can lower the chance of random animals suffering but not willing to do something that can lower the chance of random people suffering

Vegans often claim that their morality is superior and more consistent because they give moral consideration to all sentient beings instead of just humans. The reason this makes no sense to me is that most of our morals evolved in the context of how to behave in a society of moral actors (humans). The reason the moral golden rule exists and became a touch point across most common religions is because it creates more stable and functional societies. Even atheists abide to it (or at least, I do) because its value to our society is undeniable: By all behaving with other people the same way we would like people to behave with us, we get a society that treats us well, maximizing the benefits from our coexistence. This principle is deeply ingrained into our cultures, we have been "brainwashed" with it since childhood (for good reasons), to the point that most identify with it. Nonetheless, we should not lose track of why this principle exists in the first place and its rightful context. Extending the golden rule to contexts outside our society is quite arbitrary and makes no rational sense. Our society is not going to improve from treating cows the same way we treat other people because the cows lack moral agency to participate to our society the same way people do. Not to kill or not to steal are not universal principles in our universe (if anything, the opposite is true). They are solid principles only in the context of our human society.

Note: Of course, the above assumes you are not vegan for religious reasons. If you are, I respect that and the above doesn’t apply since you don’t need rational reasons to believe in the golden rule and nothing prevents your religion to extend it to animals.

https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-humane-league/2018-nov/#rf1-4-24548

https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/corporate-campaigns-affect-9-to-120-years-of-chicken-life-per-dollar-spent

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As these studies show, every dollar you spend could be used to spare several animals, and several years worth of animal suffering on factory farms. The humane league was estimated to prevent about 6-13 animals from being bred into industrial farming (via reducing # of animals bred altogether OR effective campaigns leading to the animals being raised on non-industrial farms with high welfare standards). Corporate Cage-Free Egg campaigns cause 10 years of Hen life to be spent in vastly better conditions. There are several other charities ranked with similar effectiveness by ACE. https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/recommended-charities/

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If you already donate to your local animal rescue, I would strongly urge you to consider donating to farm initiatives instead. Shelters for pets use significantly less of your donation for actual animal-related initiatives. Your dollars are much more effective in terms of animals affected in farm initiatives. And shelters often feed the animals they house by buying meat for them, further decreasing the overall effectiveness of your intervention.

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If you don't donate at all, you may be thinking that your only moral obligation is to not do harm, not to actively do vast amounts of good. But do you really think that you aren't at the very least strongly compelled, and shouldn't feel a duty, to spare vast amounts of animal suffering more effectively than essentially any cause in the world by sacrificing trivial luxuries for yourself? If you came across a wild animal suffocating under a fallen branch whilst on a walk, but going and lifting the branch would cause you some slight discomfort and get your pants dirty, would you not feel compelled to prioritize the vast suffering and life of the animal over your own comfort? Would you not feel extremely wrong for leaving the animal to continue suffering when all you had to do was get your pants dirty? One of the common arguments for veganism is that eating meat puts your own minor pleasure and convenience over the vast suffering and death of an animal. Unless you really think there is a massive difference between doing harm yourself and refusing to spare others from harm, the same argument should apply here. *After all, you are here trying to convince people to go vegan (which certainly doesn't fall under mitigating the harm you do to the world) at the cost of your brain-cells, so why refuse to do something vastly more effective?

Moreover, many of the things you spend on are not even good for yourself. Some vegan ice cream is poor for your health and expensive, but you'd still choose to buy it rather than doing real good on a very high scale.

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Think of what Batman does by dedicating his life to fighting crime in Gotham. Despite all his efforts and sacrifices, he still hurts many people, makes mistakes, and never even truly realizes real extreme progress. Many people would think that when you have a unique ability to do a lot of good, you are morally obligated to do so, or at least strongly compelled to, instead of prioritizing your own normalcy. But we as overwhelmingly well-off people in first world countries do, in fact, have a unique ability to have outsized effects on the world around us.

Now think of what the average income person in first-world countries could do by donating just 5% to one of these charities. You could effect 15,000 + animals by giving up a few luxuries while otherwise living a pretty normal life and clicking a few buttons on your computer. And, of course, you could completely revamp your lifestyle and be many times MORE impactful than that.

So I was vegan for 3-4 years, and while I was I based that belief on a kind of utilitarian principle, something like:

• 1: it’s wrong to cause unnecessary suffering

• 2: animals can suffer

• 3: therefore it’s wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to animals

• 4: consuming animal products causes unnecessary suffering to animals

• 5: therefore it’s wrong to consume animal products

However, I think this argument is not valid and no one lives according to this in practice. Realising this was one of the main things that undercut my veganism.

If we accept (3), we would behave very differently to how we actually do. It doesn’t just entail veganism. For example, it seems that if (3) is true then I have to eat only the number of calories that I strictly need to survive, because otherwise I’m eating more food than I need and therefore causing more harm to animals than is needed.

But if I’m not willing to give up vegan junk foods like chocolate, which I could give up with no negative impact to my health (if anything it would probably improve my health), then it seems like I must accept that there is some acceptable trade off between animal suffering and my own pleasure which I’m willing to make. And if I’m willing to make that trade off then the line of not consuming animal products seems somewhat arbitrary.

I know most vegans are not utilitarians, but rather deontologists: they’re convinced it’s wrong to consume animal products almost axiomatically. I initially tried to fall back on something like deontology but I ultimately found it unconvincing.

So I think this is one of the issues with utilitarian justifications for veganism, and it’s why I’m no longer vegan.

According to most vegans, there's no problem for predators like lions to hunt and eat meat. Why then is it "wrong" for humans to do so? This reeks very much of slave morality, in which humans, the apex predator on the planet, are expected to feel bad for our dominance over weaker beings. This is a speciesist double standard against humanity.

This is further compounded by many arguments I see, which state that not only is it "wrong" to kill animals, it's "wrong" to eat or use them even if they're already dead. This logic, that humans may not benefit from an animal, even when there is zero suffering being caused, blatantly reveals that the foundation of veganism is anti-human, not pro-animal.

I personally will not accept any framework of morality in which I have fewer rights than wild animals.

Quite often when discussing veganism, the phrase "we don't NEED to eat animals" will pop up. The thing is, necessities aren't objective entities which apply equally to all human beings, so why do vegans feel they're the ones who can claim what is or isn't a necessity to the rest of the population?

If a person's most pleasurable experiences stem from being able to eat meat, is that not a necessity? Because if we're going the by the most strict definition of what constitutes a necessity, eating surplus calories isn't a necessity either, and I'm pretty you already know about this crop deaths issue.

What if someone understands that the Bible permits eating meat but feels a personal conviction to not partake because they feel it is immoral to kill and eat animals if they can just live off plants?

Hi, vegetarian here. Whilst I agree wholeheartedly on the not killing animals part, I’m interested to see your take on animal products such as milk, honey, eggs etc. I have 2 points I want to mention and I’d like to see your thoughts on them

1. farming: many animals farmed for milk and eggs would not survive in the wild as we have domesticated them too far. We would risk damage to ecosystems or killing of more animals if we removed a place they can safely live at the cost of milk and eggs being taken.

2. the environment: many substitutes for milk etc use soybeans which require mass deforestation to produce.

Disclaimer: I’m mainly doing this because I want to see what vegans think on this issue, not because I want to be antagonistic but I should warn you I will play devils advocate if it keeps an interesting discussion going.

Whilst there does seem to be some degree of a split in the vegan community regarding the definition of veganism, the majority seem to hold the following belief:

Veganism is not just about what you eat. It is about what you believe. It is an ideology, not a diet.

I recognize some vegans don't believe this, I am sure you have been told you are not a real vegan. However, this comes up fairly often, especially when people discuss being plant-based yet not believing fully in some vegan ideals. These people are usually told they are not vegans, they are plant-based and what follows is usually a comment regarding how the definition of veganism needs to remain clear and consistent. Fair enough. I also think it needs to remain clear and consistent. The definition I see quoted most often is the Vegan Societies, which is:

"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals"

It is this last sentence I think causes some problems, as the the same word is being used to describe two different things. One is a philosophy, one is a diet. I have seen quite often in this sub people noting they are vegan for health reasons only to be told they are not in fact vegan because they don't believe eating meat is wrong, despite practicing a "vegan" diet. However, the same camp seems to be very firm on ensuring their definition of vegan remains intact. As such, I believe this means that the word vegan needs to be removed from plant-based foods. For example, vegan cafe's or vegan restaurants should not be using the term unless they exclusively are serving philosophically inclined vegans, and people who are plant-based but don't subscribe to that definition of veganism, should not be asking for vegan food. If these definitions are important, then they should be respected across the board. The issue I think is that separate word is not really used ubiquitously. Plant-based restaurant doesn't quite roll of the tongue.

I think about the wording of things like halal and kosher. The word describes food that is suitable for the ideology. The word used to describe the ideology is not also described as the food. It's not called Muslim food or Jewish food. That would imply it is food designed only for people of the Muslim or Jewish ideology. Anyone can eat halal or kosher, it just means that Muslims and Jews can also eat it.

I am not a vegan, but I mostly eat plant-based and when I go to a venue or ask for food, it doesn't seem right to ask for vegan food, because I am not a vegan. I don't want or seek the vegan label or title and I do not want to ask for food that implies I am of a specific philosophical belief. However, I get the impression that vegans would rather this ambiguity in the wording in this regard as it helps make the term more ubiquitous and keeps the word veganism in the cultural mind. It benefits the vegan society to have ambiguity in this regard, despite advocating for conciseness in other ways.

Anyway, I am just pointing out something I believe to be wrong and have some degree of hypocrisy. Ultimately, creating new words to refine these definitions in practice would more or less be impossible. I don't think we should refer to plant-based food as vegan food, because it isn't just for vegans. But at this point it's too late to change. Ultimately I believe it does both vegans and those who practice plant-based diets a disservice and I think if we could separate the concept of plant-based food being for vegans, then maybe more people would be inclined to consider the diet because it would no longer come with the stigma associated with vegan groups.

We can only blame the reality of animal suffering on nature. It isn't an idea created by humans.

Yes we have the option to only eat meat because we just so happen to be omnivores. But that's due to random luck. If we were obligate carnivores I doubt you'd call for being vegan.

We're just one species that happens to eat other species of animals.

The stupid vegan videos online that show all the suffering of various animals who are trapped and suffer immense pain do to our consumption of these animals is stupid. Because this suffering exists regardless of human interference. The suffering won't end when we stop consuming meat. It's literally almost entirely useless and all it does is limit our experience at best and our need for variety as worst.

Our contribution to this suffering is so incredibly miniscule it's silly to point the cameras at these suffering animals to try and make meat eaters feel bad for it.

I might think this movement made any sense if human contribution to this suffering was like 20%?

And maybe even more so if the concept of carnivorous predation was invented by humans and not nature.

Edit: okay before this post is even approved, for honesty purposes, I did a quick research on Google and yeah the 0.0...1% figure in the title was intended as an exaggeration, it's still probably significantly larger than that given that and I say this because apparently Google says human biomass is 2.5% of all animal biomass meaning we probably cause more than 0.0...1% of the total suffering but I mean my point still stands that whatever it is it's pretty neglible.

Edit 2: then again the biomass is kind of wrong to use because if 1 human is equal to a hundred thousand ants, the suffering of 100 thousand ants is 100 thousand individuals suffering but the human is just one.

So I think we do indeed cause a very neglible amount of the suffering especially because we eat larger animals like cows.

Vegan here, I am going to play Devil's advocate on this one.

Pesticides used for protecting crops kill countless insects. As far as I'm aware, there are no hard numbers on this, but we can be fairly sure that the numbers are huge. These insect deaths are problematic. Maybe insects count less than bigger animals, but the sheer number of victims should overcompensate this.

Now, farm animals obviously eat a whole lot of these crops as well, rendering the argument useless as a justification for buying meat at the supermarket, but hunting or fishing does avoid these insect deaths. Hunting is of course very unsustainable, but if it only happened on a very small scale, it seems like it might actually cause less animal suffering. So from a purely utilitarian point of view, if someone came along and claimed they got 99% of their calories from plants and 1% from hunting AND are willing to stop the minute a farming method is developed that avoids insect deaths, would you hold it against them?

If in a far future humanity explores the space (lets suposse that at that time veganism is the law among all humanity) and makes peaceful contact with an inteligent species that is carnivore and haves a great carnist industry (they only can eat meat, so they're not carnist by choice) ¿What should humanity do?, ¿How would be diplomacy with that civilization?

I can’t seem to justify eating meat from a ethical point of view. Mainly because I can get nutrition from other means and do not need to kill an animal to stay alive. However, predator animals need to do so to live. If consuming a predator animal, like certain fish, how would you consider this as a moral question? Is it more moral to consume meat from predator animals rather than an animal who is purely herbivore or omnivore? Thank you. I could not find any diologue on this question.

While I think the primary reasons for being vegan are ethical reasons, I also believe that a plant-based diet is the healthiest option, and that cessation of animal farming is better for the environment.

But I thought it might be interesting to look at the ethical considerations of veganism under a different lens - what if that wasn't the case?

How important is the claim that veganism is the correct ethical choice against the health and environmental benefits? If the roles were reversed, and veganism was worse for your health and the environment, does that change the calculus for whether an individual ought to be vegan or not?

It's difficult to answer this hypothetical without looking at concrete examples, because the degree of health and environmental impact may weigh into whether that means one ought be vegan, so let's put some bounds on the hypothetical. Say that all the health benefits that vegans claim are instead found to be true for a primarily omnivorous diet, and all the health risks associated with meat are instead found to be true of a plant-based diet. Say all of the environmental factors are reversed as well, where an agricultural system to support an omnivorous diet actually uses less land and causes less GHG emissions, as well as all the other environmental factors that vegans bring up.

Does that change your opinion on whether you would be vegan or not? If not, how bad would things have to be for you to say that it would be permissible to switch to an omnivorous diet?

I recently came across a survey indicating that liberals in the West tend to support veganism. However, in India it's the complete opposite, Indian liberals often lean towards supporting meat consumption. They justify this stance by advocating for everyone's right to choose their own food. What are your thoughts on this? Should humans really have the "right" to take away an animal's right to live? P.S. I'm a vegan.

I remember hearing this a ton from vegans. Only issue is it’s a fantasy from people who don’t understand farming, particularly industrial agriculture. In order for production to remain high, in the vast majority of field crops, you have to apply ammonium nitrate, which despite what you’ve been told, is not immediately available to the plant. It REQUIRES a carbon source for the microbes in the soil to process it. Hence why, if any of them lived in the country, they would understand that’s why they apply MANURE to the fields, as a carbon source. High production IS NOT possible with out it. And unless we start going Hindu and literally grabbing the pieces of shit coming out of a cow’s ass, those manures are collected from feed stations/lots. “We’ll use biosolids”-vegans…. Ohhhhh? Willl you? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/24/pfas-michigan-rivers-fish-study hope you enjoy 5-10 times the “safe” level of pfos in your food.. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/30/kale-pfas-forever-chemicals-contamination Largely from biosolids. There isn’t ANY solution for farming, at scale, that doesn’t include animal husbandry. There is room for the argument for more humane treatment or to abandon the industrial model but those include farm animals as well. And all ya get back is : “your just whatbout’n this old 100% pasture raised model that no one is gonna(or is) do(ing) at scale” Well, the vegans are living on fantasy island if they think that without animal manure any resemblance of the type and level of farming we experience now, is viable. 🤷‍♂️ where’s the daylight?

I’ve been really struggling with this question. You see, in everything we do, we cause suffering for wildlife and flora. From the cars we drive, to the jobs we work at, to the beds we sleep in. All of these things take resources, which extracting requires the plowing away of forestry or habitable lands for biodiversity. It’s just not sustainable or realistic to expect we can live like this with our population, no matter how “sustainable” we get, since we require copious amounts of resources to still employ said practices. The food we eat too, such as land repurposed for our agriculture. Even if we have enough room for cropland, we still took a huge sum of land from species that could have inhabited it. It seems no matter how hard we try, we can’t escape it. I’ve come to only a few solutions, all of them being unsatisfying. We either A. Reduce the population so we can live in a way that strains the planet only as much as we did pre industrially. B. Employ degrowth and return to a more primitive way of life (I’m not super versed on this one so correct me if I’m wrong.) Or C. Consider a Antinatalist approach and stop having kids. The last being the most convincing to me, although still upsetting.

I honestly don’t know what to do anymore, because I can always do more to not be a strain on the environment. And most people probably won’t do the same so I don’t even know if it’s worth it. What do yall think? Am I just freaking out over nothing or is this a legitimate concern? It’s pretty late and I’m tired so I might be.

Being a non-vegan (as in diet) I find the vegan movement quite honorable. But at the same time really naive and impractical.

Starting with the number of people in the world. It’s impossible for 8 billion people live in the world without damaging it, and without altering its environment. It would be less evasive if all 8 billion people alive were on a plant-based diet? Sure. But to sustain all that life, it’s still bad for the planet.

As a meat eater and as someone who loves my dogs. I would love for a more “humane” form to kill animals that I eat.

The question of sentient is quite frustrating. What can be considered “worthy” of not getting eat? We know throughout evolution that numerous plants develop defense mechanism to prevent its death. That a living thing, it is aware of the process of life and death. And like everything on Earth it’s just here to reproduce, to grow.

The part of the lifestyle. I find quite bizarre the fact to impose a lifestyle to a child based on your own. Sure, parents do whatever they want to their children. But I see this the same way I see children being raised in religious lifestyles. Sure they can choose for themselves when they grow up.

A child is a product of its environment. It’s going to grow according to the morals and beliefs and ideals of said environment.

I do get bothered by things that happens in our societies. But not bothered enough to change. Would I kill a pet pig or cow to eat? No, I got a personal attachment to that animal. Will I still eat meat? Probably yes.

Humans throughout history have made mistakes countless times. Is eating meat one of those? Maybe or maybe not. At the moment it might seem. Is there any records of a population thriving solely on a plant-based diet? (Genuine question)

Ps: I hate every religion of the world, please don’t use them as arguments.

Lately I've met a few people who attempted and failed a plant-based diet. In speaking with them the consistent thread is that they failed because they experienced health issues, and that their approach to veganism wasn't just to eliminate animal products but to focus on whole/unprocessed foods. When I mention to them that I take multiple supplements and eat plenty of processed foods they're incredulous, like those things are antithetical to veganism.

Like a lot of other people, I'm not a huge proponent of getting into veganism purely for health, but it's a very common gateway and people who stick with it seem to get on board with the other reasons soon enough. But these people are also hyper health-aware and any downturn in their health will inevitably lead them to blame and abandon veganism, lack of calories and iron seem to be the two biggest culprits. It's obvious to me that veganism can be very healthy and someone who knows what they are doing can absolutely thrive on a diet of exclusively unprocessed foods with no supplements, but that requires a lot of knowledge and a lot of effort.

For people just beginning to experiment with a plant-based diet high-calorie processed foods and supplements (I do iron, zinc, and b12, plus protein powder) can be really helpful. Once someone has figured out how to be healthy then they can venture out, but aiming not just to eliminate animal products but to also radically change your diet just seems like a dead-end for so many. I know a lot of vegans don't love acknowledging supplements because omnivores, often loaded up on their own slew of supplements, will seize on the opportunity to imply that veganism inherently requires them. I am more than a bit biased on this though, I'm not at all a fan of the spiritual brand of veganism and I view this diet approach as very tied to that.

Here is my thought process.

Veganism is both a lifestyle and a diet. I know this because historically veganism started as a social movement to remove all animal products from daily use. In the modern context however, the vegan "diet" is the most popular iteration of the word. Many people use the term, "social vegan" to describe vegans that actively remove animal products from their lives. The word vegan is now synonymous with food rather than with a lifestyle. This is important as words change and evolve with the passage of time.

Each person has equal merit to exist and coop the name associated with that group. No person owns the right to be vegan. Refusing to allow people who are actively aiding in the reduction of animal product consumption to coop the name is extremely elitist and counterproductive to vegan goals.

If you want less people to use animal products, you need more vegans. For you to convert more vegans, you need to make connections and empathize. To connect and empathize you need to be inclusive.

The larger the vegan movement becomes the easier it will be to advocate for less animal product consumption.

You need to slowly build your community through acknowledging the injustice, but not belittling or hating those that don't agree with you 100%.

The more hated vegans are, the less likely you will get people to become one.

That is why, in my opinion, it's extremely counter intuitive to make an already niche group even more divided.

EDIT: I would just like to point out that anyone rage down voting is proving my point. The face of veganism is hate filled and egotistical. This subreddit is called "debate with a vegan", if you choose to downvote instead of having a conversation, then you are harming more than helping.

Do you think humans are disproportionately more valuable than animals? Let's find out:

How many animals does a human need to threaten with imminent death for it to be morally permissible to kill the human to defend the animals?

If you think, it's between 1 and 100, then this argument isn't going to work for you (there are a lot of humans you must think you should kill if you hold this view, I wonder if you act on it). If however, you think it's likely in 1000s+ then you must think that suffering a cow endures during first 2 years of it's life is morally justified by the pleasure a human gets from eating this cow for a year (most meat eaters eat an equivalent of roughly a cow per year).

Personally I wouldn't kill a human to save any number of cows. And if you hold this position I don't think there is anything you can say to condemn killing animals for food because it implies that human pleasure (the thing that is ultimately good about human life) is essentially infinitely more valuable compared to anything an animal may experience.

This might not work on deontology but I have no idea how deontologists justifies not killing human about to kill just 1 other being that supposedly has right to life.

[edit] My actual argument:

1. Step1: if you don't think it's morally permissible to kill being A to stop them from killing extremely large number of beings B then being A is disproportionately more morally valuable
2. Step 2: if being A is infinitely more valuable than being B then their experiences are infinitely more valuable as well.
3. Step 3: If experience of being A are infinitely more valuable then experience of being B then all experiences of being B can be sacrificed for experiences of being A.

I see this argument a lot online. (Never in real life though). Not being a vegan is not equivalent of being a rapist for so many reasons. There are way better comparisons to make but for some reason I see the rapist comparison so much and it doesn’t make sense.

It is not culturally nor is it socially acceptable to be a rapist. It is to eat meat.

A very small percentage of people have committed sexual assault let alone rape someone so it is not an act in which we have to make the active decision not to do every day. But for people who were raised eating meat, and have just started questioning the ethics of it, going vegan takes a lot of effort, time and money. Not raping someone is free, easy, and saves you time.

A person committing sexual assault is committing a violent crime directly to another person. Unless you are butchering your own meat you are separated from the violence.

One person can stop a sexual assault from happening by not committing sexual assault. One person can not stop thousands of animals dying, this would take a collective societal shift in which these companies see a loss in profit.

A much better comparison would be shopping fast fashion. We know people get abused and underplayed in factories producing cheaply made clothing. Just like how animals are abused and killed in factory farms. We also know that one person not shopping fast fashion does not change the industry. Just like how one person going vegan doesn’t change the meat industry. Individual change in these areas are good but it is only with collective change that we will actually see a difference. It also takes effort, time and money to find companies that make clothing ethically. Just as it does to find vegan recipes, alternatives, restaurants etc.

So for all these reasons I think the comparison of not being a vegan to being a rapist is absurd, hurtful to sexual assault victims and really doesn’t make sense. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a change nor that we shouldn’t fight for a change.

This is more of an “how many angels on the head of a pin” question and only intended as a mental exercise but given that much of veganism ethics is based around the conscious lives of animals, is there some tipping point where they ethics of veganism offers us an inquiry into the nature of how we treat Ai?

Consider this an episode of Star Trek but instead of debating whether or not Data has a consciousness and is “living” we’re talking about a robot honey bee or robot goat or something to that effect.

When I study the earth's past, it becomes obvious to me, at least, that at some point in either the near or distant future, there is a 100% guarantee that a cataclysmic natural disaster will destroy most of civilisation. In this scenario, almost every individual that didn't learn how to hunt before the disaster is pretty much guaranteed to starve along with the loved ones they care for. I'm curious, is there a vegan answer to this very real predicament?

I have been musing over the ethics of eating meat for some time, and I've decided that the deciding factor on eating meat is whether the animals are conscious. All other reasons are not good enough. However, when I think about I'm not sure whether they do have an experience. I know many people intuitively believe that but how do they know? I can assume that about other people because I am a human and I am sentient, so it is reasonable to assume that others of the same species are too. I believe that an effect of sentience is that one is able to not only experience pain but also understand there experiences as a narrative. Great Apes, I believe do have a lot of evidence of seeing their life as a narrative and therefore they are probably sentient. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that simians are also sentient.

For insistence

A lizard (not sentient) : Banana good. Banana better than apple.

A chimp (sentient): This banana tastes creamy and sweet. The apple is also good but it has too much fiber and is hard.

A lizard (not sentient): Red button assoiated with pain. No touch red lever.

A chimp (sentient): I did not like touching the red button, for some reason in made the room so dark and cold. I felt so lonely. I'm not touching it again.

The animal doesn't have to be able to articulate these opinions, even to themselves they just have to understand them.

Edit:

A reply that makes things more clear-

I don't just want pain reactions. I am very much a skeptic when in comes to experience. I am not certian that you for insitance have an experience. I just know that I have an experience and you and I are the same species. As for the chimp, I know that many great apes have a grip on languese.They aren't as good as us, but the fact that they for instance bonobos can assoitate idea X with lexigram Y, implies they have a mental model of the world, and a experience. For cows to prove that, they would also have to have something to prove that they have a mental model, not nessarily a langauge but something. I'm vegartian right now. I would have a hard time having these conversations otherwise. But, (maybe selfishly), I'm giving these animals "the detriment of the doubt".

Link to bonobo language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkish

As a warning, this is probably gonna be incoherent and stupid, its just something I've been thinking about that i wanted input from other people on.

Most of the vegan argumentation i see, starts off with the principle that "animal suffering is wrong" and in my mind when i imagine animal suffering, I imagine an animal experiencing suffering the way I do and I was wondering how we know that animals experience anything similar to that, being way dumber than us.

Like some animals seem to have very different conscious experience than humans do, Why should we assume they can experience deep suffering the way a human can? Even if animal behavior seems to suggest they can feel scared how do i know that even means anything to them?

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I've been watching/reading a lot of vegan content lately, especially all of the ethical, environmental, and health benefits to veganism. It's fascinating to watch videos of Earthling Ed talking to people on college campuses, as he masterfully leads people down an ethical road with only one logical destination. As long as someone claims to care about the suffering of at least some animals, Ed seems to be able to latch on to any reason they might come up with for why it could be ok to eat animals and blast it away.

However, I haven't seen how he would respond to someone who simply says that they acknowledge the suffering involved in consuming animal products, but that they simply don't care or aren't bothered by it. Most people try to at least pretend that they care about suffering, but surely there are people out there that are not suffering from cognitive dissonance and actually just don't care about the suffering of farm animals, even if they would care about their own pets being abused, for instance.

How can you approach persuading someone that veganism is right when they are admittedly indifferent in this way?