Edit: I originally wrote some defense of responsibly raised food with respect to point 3, which you actually seem to have addressed in the original post.
I believe the other issues are much more complicated than you make them seem, which is to be expected but makes convincing someone more difficult (and makes it way harder to compete against justifications of the status quo). A lot of the meat I eat I can justify from the perspective of animal cruelty (I am fine, for example,being cruel to most of the life on earth, and I am completely fine killing almost all of it), so to convince me to stop you would actually need to win the other arguments. That said, many of the things I eat are in fact inconsistent with my beliefs and I should stop. I’ve made a tiny effort to change my behavior, but its been basically ineffective. Now that I’m thinking about the issue rationally, I would probably have a lot more luck if I tried to somehow coerce my future self into cooperating. I think I could get friends/acquaintances to help with that...
From the (very limited) stuff I’ve seen on this issue, I believe the environmental burden is smaller for smaller animals. So sheep and chickens are more defensible than cows and horses, say.
As for changing your eating habits, it’s always easier to make positive changes than negative changes. Find replacements for things you enjoy now, and work them into your diet. When I started baking my own bread and got my hands on grains with good amino acid balances, I stopped wanting to get chicken. But I really like bread, and your mileage may vary. (I hear about 10% of people simply do not thrive on a vegetarian diet.)
From the (very limited) stuff I’ve seen on this issue, I believe the environmental burden is smaller for smaller animals. So sheep and chickens are more defensible than cows and horses, say.
There was a period of time (before converting to vegetarianism) where I tried to mostly eat chicken and other smaller animals, for that reason. But the more I learned, the more my best guesses about how animals experience suffering led me to believe that while chickens are more environmentally friendly, they also suffer more, and I wasn’t sure how those factors weighed against each other.
Obviously I solved the issue eventually by becoming vegetarian. But if animal cruelty isn’t a concern for whatever reason, it does make more sense to eat chicken than cow. (Not entirely sure, but I think the ratio of energy input : output when farming cows was something like 40:1, whereas with chickens it’s something like 7:1)
I still eat chicken. This thread is making me rethink that decision once more.
However, I have lived around chickens, and am convinced that they have been bred to the point of minimal intelligence and awareness. I know there exist “smart” chickens, but the ones I’ve been around have been unable to learn to stay away from painful and dangerous things, even after nearly daily exposure. If we have to keep a chicken behind a fence because after five days in a row it still doesn’t know not to go near the dog that keeps biting it, I think its suffering is very low on my scale of importance.
Pigs, on the other hand, learn quickly, have long memories, and seem to exhibit a wide range of emotions. Their suffering hurts me quite a lot, though still not nearly as much as a human’s.
I’m not really sure how I feel about intelligence relating to “deserving compassion.” I think high intelligence is an indicator of a complex brain system, and that it might indicate the ability to suffer ADDITIONALLY because it is able to perceive long term dread or hopelessness or something like that, but I think it’s perfectly possible to be stupid enough to keep touching a burning stove, yet still hurt every time, and it doesn’t mean that continuously, deliberately burning that entity is okay.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by awareness. If the chicken honestly doesn’t even seem that bothered by the dog… well, I’m not sure what to think about that. But I’m also not sure how much I’d generalize from that one example either.
As far as intelligent animals go, however I will note that squid are not only pretty smart, but the manner in which they are caught (at least some of the time, haven’t done enough research yet to see whether there are other practices and how frequent they are) involves tricking them into wrapping their mouth around a series of barbs and then trapping them on it.
If anyone does know some specifics about the calamari industry I’d be curious. So far my google-fu hasn’t worked out that well.
In my moral calculus, intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for deserving compassion or consideration. Other entities can have “derived” compassion if they are valued by those that I value.
I feel I should partially share the values of others, which usually includes valuing themselves. Entities that aren’t aware or intelligent enough to have even rudimentary goals or values don’t normally get my concern. An entity could also simply not value itself, but evolution doesn’t produce many of those, so I haven’t seen any.
That chicken was exceptionally stupid, but it was among dozens not much smarter. The example wasn’t intended to illustrate that memory is necessary for value...but evolution also doesn’t produce many intelligent entities that are unable to learn. Chickens seem very reflexive, and not at all self-aware to me. I’m not willing to bet my life on this, but I currently don’t care much for them. Maybe 20,000 chicken-years to each human-year.
I’ve never thought much about the moral value of cephalopods, but until I think more about it I won’t eat them. I don’t really enjoy eating them much anyway.
(Not entirely sure, but I think the ratio of energy input : output when farming cows was something like 40:1, whereas with chickens it’s something like 7:1)
One thing kind of bugs me. Chicken is normally cheaper than beef at grocery stores and at most of the medium-priced chain restaurants I’ve been to. If chicken costs less to produce than beef, this makes sense. On the other hand, at every fast food restaurant I’ve been to, the hamburgers are always cheaper than the chicken, and I have no idea why.
I think that’s just a demand (and sort of supply) thing. At fast food places, hamburgers are the established, traditional “common” thing, whereas chicken is slightly exotic and interesting. (Exotic is too strong a word, but on the nonexotic-exotic spectrum, chicken sandwiches are higher than beef).
As I said, the issues are a lot more complicated. I’m supplying the basic gists of the arguments with the intention that people who aren’t familiar with them should go find some professional literature to get themselves familiar with them. I’m not educated enough to defend it that well myself (at least, not tonight). Someone who is better equipped can probably beat me in an argument about how precisely it impacts the environment. But beating me is irrelevant—winning arguments doesn’t make you right. If you HAVEN’T looked at the environmental issues, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on important considerations. The cow pollution > automobile pollution statement might be more hyperbolic or complicated than I made it out to be, but the bottom line is that cow pollution IS a real concern, however it compares to automobile pollution.
There are ways to eat meat that doesn’t impact the environment, doesn’t impact human health standards, and causes minimal suffering to the animals in question. But my general heuristic is that unless you know exactly where your meat is coming from, chances are it comes from a food industry that is harmful in all three categories.
Edit: I originally wrote some defense of responsibly raised food with respect to point 3, which you actually seem to have addressed in the original post.
I believe the other issues are much more complicated than you make them seem, which is to be expected but makes convincing someone more difficult (and makes it way harder to compete against justifications of the status quo). A lot of the meat I eat I can justify from the perspective of animal cruelty (I am fine, for example,being cruel to most of the life on earth, and I am completely fine killing almost all of it), so to convince me to stop you would actually need to win the other arguments. That said, many of the things I eat are in fact inconsistent with my beliefs and I should stop. I’ve made a tiny effort to change my behavior, but its been basically ineffective. Now that I’m thinking about the issue rationally, I would probably have a lot more luck if I tried to somehow coerce my future self into cooperating. I think I could get friends/acquaintances to help with that...
From the (very limited) stuff I’ve seen on this issue, I believe the environmental burden is smaller for smaller animals. So sheep and chickens are more defensible than cows and horses, say.
As for changing your eating habits, it’s always easier to make positive changes than negative changes. Find replacements for things you enjoy now, and work them into your diet. When I started baking my own bread and got my hands on grains with good amino acid balances, I stopped wanting to get chicken. But I really like bread, and your mileage may vary. (I hear about 10% of people simply do not thrive on a vegetarian diet.)
There was a period of time (before converting to vegetarianism) where I tried to mostly eat chicken and other smaller animals, for that reason. But the more I learned, the more my best guesses about how animals experience suffering led me to believe that while chickens are more environmentally friendly, they also suffer more, and I wasn’t sure how those factors weighed against each other.
Obviously I solved the issue eventually by becoming vegetarian. But if animal cruelty isn’t a concern for whatever reason, it does make more sense to eat chicken than cow. (Not entirely sure, but I think the ratio of energy input : output when farming cows was something like 40:1, whereas with chickens it’s something like 7:1)
I still eat chicken. This thread is making me rethink that decision once more.
However, I have lived around chickens, and am convinced that they have been bred to the point of minimal intelligence and awareness. I know there exist “smart” chickens, but the ones I’ve been around have been unable to learn to stay away from painful and dangerous things, even after nearly daily exposure. If we have to keep a chicken behind a fence because after five days in a row it still doesn’t know not to go near the dog that keeps biting it, I think its suffering is very low on my scale of importance.
Pigs, on the other hand, learn quickly, have long memories, and seem to exhibit a wide range of emotions. Their suffering hurts me quite a lot, though still not nearly as much as a human’s.
I’m not really sure how I feel about intelligence relating to “deserving compassion.” I think high intelligence is an indicator of a complex brain system, and that it might indicate the ability to suffer ADDITIONALLY because it is able to perceive long term dread or hopelessness or something like that, but I think it’s perfectly possible to be stupid enough to keep touching a burning stove, yet still hurt every time, and it doesn’t mean that continuously, deliberately burning that entity is okay.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by awareness. If the chicken honestly doesn’t even seem that bothered by the dog… well, I’m not sure what to think about that. But I’m also not sure how much I’d generalize from that one example either.
As far as intelligent animals go, however I will note that squid are not only pretty smart, but the manner in which they are caught (at least some of the time, haven’t done enough research yet to see whether there are other practices and how frequent they are) involves tricking them into wrapping their mouth around a series of barbs and then trapping them on it.
If anyone does know some specifics about the calamari industry I’d be curious. So far my google-fu hasn’t worked out that well.
http://www.squidjig.com/commercialstylesquidjigs/coastalsquidjigs.htm
In my moral calculus, intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for deserving compassion or consideration. Other entities can have “derived” compassion if they are valued by those that I value.
I feel I should partially share the values of others, which usually includes valuing themselves. Entities that aren’t aware or intelligent enough to have even rudimentary goals or values don’t normally get my concern. An entity could also simply not value itself, but evolution doesn’t produce many of those, so I haven’t seen any.
That chicken was exceptionally stupid, but it was among dozens not much smarter. The example wasn’t intended to illustrate that memory is necessary for value...but evolution also doesn’t produce many intelligent entities that are unable to learn. Chickens seem very reflexive, and not at all self-aware to me. I’m not willing to bet my life on this, but I currently don’t care much for them. Maybe 20,000 chicken-years to each human-year.
I’ve never thought much about the moral value of cephalopods, but until I think more about it I won’t eat them. I don’t really enjoy eating them much anyway.
One thing kind of bugs me. Chicken is normally cheaper than beef at grocery stores and at most of the medium-priced chain restaurants I’ve been to. If chicken costs less to produce than beef, this makes sense. On the other hand, at every fast food restaurant I’ve been to, the hamburgers are always cheaper than the chicken, and I have no idea why.
I think that’s just a demand (and sort of supply) thing. At fast food places, hamburgers are the established, traditional “common” thing, whereas chicken is slightly exotic and interesting. (Exotic is too strong a word, but on the nonexotic-exotic spectrum, chicken sandwiches are higher than beef).
And thus, we evolve into Babyeaters.
As I said, the issues are a lot more complicated. I’m supplying the basic gists of the arguments with the intention that people who aren’t familiar with them should go find some professional literature to get themselves familiar with them. I’m not educated enough to defend it that well myself (at least, not tonight). Someone who is better equipped can probably beat me in an argument about how precisely it impacts the environment. But beating me is irrelevant—winning arguments doesn’t make you right. If you HAVEN’T looked at the environmental issues, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on important considerations. The cow pollution > automobile pollution statement might be more hyperbolic or complicated than I made it out to be, but the bottom line is that cow pollution IS a real concern, however it compares to automobile pollution.
There are ways to eat meat that doesn’t impact the environment, doesn’t impact human health standards, and causes minimal suffering to the animals in question. But my general heuristic is that unless you know exactly where your meat is coming from, chances are it comes from a food industry that is harmful in all three categories.