Depends on your morals.
Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or dairy, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).
So you believe plants or fungi don’t suffer when you eat them?
There is indeed a very small scientific community that has some (very preliminary) research done on a “nervous system” in plants. The wood-wide-web is part of those hypothesis. It is very intriguing, but reading the interviews with these scientists and their publications didn’t leave me with the impression that plants feel emotions, or that they think, are cognitive or learn from pain. Do you have scientific data to proof otherwise?
Of course not. But nobody has evidence that cows think or have emotions beyond physical sensations either.
How can anyone be so data blind? These things are studied by actual biologists.
Don’t engage with them. It’s a troll account.
Hush, so am I.
Have you ever actually seen a cow in person townie?
This is an argument in favor of plant-based diets, since it results in fewer plants being eaten
If it’s possible and you’re capable to do it, then I think it’s a moral choice.
If it’s a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don’t think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.
Is it morally wrong to ask a bait question on a public forum?
It’s bait if it makes me angry
I guess you’re not going to bait stickly into examining the consequences their choices have on others who are powerless to protect themselves from those consequences. He’s too clever for that kind of bait.
I don’t understand wht you mean.
But I’m not baiting anyone. I wanted to see people’s personal opinions and get some insight from their arguments.
Yeah, the most ethical diet is plant based.
Why do you ask it?
explain how you developed this idea it is more ethical. based on what exactly?
Minimizing harm to others and harm to the environment is more ethical than not minimizing harm to others and harm to the environment
It is not minimizing harm in the way you can’t hear a plant scream. That’s the same logic people had about fish. This is a foolish and irresponsible way to think of consciousness.
I will agree it is minimizing harm on environment however we have much room to improve even on that standard.
Like not burning crops simply because it doesn’t make money.
“Plants feel pain” is an argument that supports a plant-based diet because it is more efficient to consume plants directly than to feed them to animals.
i agree with the efficiency.
stick with that argument.
it works for you.
stepping into moral logic around consiousness around pain and suffering: that the shittier arguments vegans come up with to feel satisified with themselves over others with magical thinking and that shit needs to stop.
Vegans’ moral arguments are just fine, it’s just that most people don’t give a shit. When you realize how shitty most people are to other people, it makes the need to take a different approach very obvious.
Everyone requires a certain amount of mental gymnastics to consume any living plant or creature to continue to exist in a meat body.
You can pick and choose food but you don’t get to pick and choose who has consciousness.
Denying that is shittier.
A foolish and irresponsible way to think about consciousness would be to pretend we can actually define it, then go around professing things are either conscious or not without considering there might be a scale.
so you say you cant define it but you can throw something you dont know on a scale? so its only ok if you do it. uh huh. i see. that is some bullshit, fool.
I said “consider there might be” whereas you were all over the thread speaking in absolutes to support your weak hypothesis.
Nuance is obviously lost on you which is a shame as it’s kind of a prerequisite for the philosophical debates you keep attempting to engage in.
you certainly defend yourself in absolutes. pick a lane.
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I generally agree with you, however your argument does add some subjectivity to the maybe and no sections. I’d add that while not every situation can accommodate a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, in 2026 the vast majority of people have the capability to change to a non-meat diet without any detriment to their health or lifestyle besides social ostracism of unaccepting peers depending on where they live.
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Yeah I think so probably. The animal product industry seems pretty messed up. Very un-cool what we do to them. Inefficient too but that’s another argument.
Is it not morally wrong to drink the milk of an animal that was forcibly impregnated and whose child was murdered for said milk? Why stop at vegetarianism?
artifical insemination doesnt need to happen for milk production
It’s not clear here if you think that is the only problem with rape, child theft, torture, and murder. It’s not even clear whether you understand that a child has to be created, neglected, and abused for a mother’s milk to be sold.
- how is it rape
- how is it torture
- child theft?
- murder?
He thinks cows are people.
I think cattle are moral individuals that have the capacity to be wronged. That is all. That doesn’t require that they are human-like people with full human-like capacities and rights. Just because a human is worth more than a cow doesn’t mean a cow is worthless and you can do whatever you want to her, doesn’t mean that a cow cannot suffer every bit as harshly as you can.
Giving different words to the crimes we commit against animals is a way of insulating yourself from the crimes you commit, like how calling cow flesh “beef” insulates you from the horror and cruelty you commit.
Coming in quite hot and using a lot of assumptions, my friend
Is there a serious problem with the standard agricultural practices of large dairy farms of systematic forced pregnancy, either destruction of the calf or adding to the birth cycle once old enough, and other layers of mistreatment that should neither be condoned or continued? Absolutely and we should all strive to get the whole process abolished.
That said, most cow breeds overproduce milk for their calfs needs and it is unhealthy for them to stay full at all times. Milking them is a kindness and until we can undo eons of selective breeding, needs must.
I have an endless list of problems with the agricultural world and its practices but the reality is if we all went pure vegan right now, more animals would suffer in preventable ways. Tapering off the demands for the products of big agriculture, especially by forcing the market towards small farms treating the animals with kindness, and working towards reversing the changes we’ve caused in the breeds that make them more product than animal is the best route to end exploitation of animals.
If you care about animals, shaming people does fuck all. Educating them without assuming malice goes a whole lot farther towards your point of view. Also recognizing that literal millennia of selective breeding will not be undone in a single generation and the process of reversing is slow and fraught with its own challenges that need to be addressed.
Tldr: educate yourself beyond the rhetoric and hanlons razor. Idealism is great for concept but will fail on the reality when put into practice
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You cannot even accept “torture”? Really. Well then that clarifies your original comment.
they should be killed swiftly and painlessly
non sequitur
you’re clearly speaking from a place of ignorance, about what you want to be true. you should learn more about where your food actually comes from and what externalities are being paid by others because of your choices. right now you’re just brainwashing yourself so that you don’t have to emotionally cope with your cruelty and violence.
No.
Being vegetarian or omnivorous isn’t very different, morally, as producing milk still requires killing calves. I think the better comparison would be with veganism
producing milk still requires killing calves
It certainly is not a requirement. They don’t have to use the males born to make veal.
Yes, it is an economic requirement. They can’t compete with beef cattle for meat production, keeping them alive just makes the milk more expensive than the farmer down the road who murders his calves can sell it for.
Sell them to beef ranchers. Make even more money and meat. 🤦♂️
Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.
Where did this question originate
Why
Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
It hasn’t
Give us you opinion
Don’t have one yet
Or you could simply off your opinion based on the information as presented.
This seems like an attempt at trying to sidetrack the topic rather than providing an answer. Which is odd given that commenting here is opt in. It’s not like someone directly approached you and asked the question.
What’s the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.
When driving a car, would you swerve into a haybale to avoid hitting a human? Would you swerve into a human to avoid running over a pile of soybeans?
I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.
Yes
No, if you are Vegan. Yes, if you eat animal products. The question is, do you care?
You are what you eat. Cows eat grass. Cows are machines that convert grass into more cows. Cows are essentially converted grass. Thus, if it’s ok to eat grass, it’s ok to eat cows. Checkmate.
