I... I understand your reasons, but a world without bacon seems... Seems so... I don't know, empty.

Artificial bacon flavour exists. So all we need is something the same texture as bacon which comes from a source as cheap as, but less intelligent than, a pig.

Not to mention make sure it tastes exactly like the real thing, AND can be cooked exactly the same ways.
In my experience, artificial variations of things and natural variations taste very VERY different.

Generally, you don't get an "artificial" variation, you just get a substitute. Soya milk does not taste like milk. It is not an artificial variation of milk, it is just NOT MILK.

For me it's more about trying to not buy cheap factory farmed meat or fast food slurry stuff. Meat should be expensive considering the economic impact of ALL meat production.

In addition I would prefer only to eat British meat. Despite the presence of poor conditions in the UK it's a hell of a lot worse and less regulated on the continent for factory farming as far as I was told.

*ecological impact, blagh.

I remember an episode of Penn and Teller's BULLSHIT where they took the piss out of organic farming, saying it wasn't as sustainable, that there's no room for it, and a variety of other things. I expect that to be the public reaction to meat's price being adjusted to fit the ecological footprint of its production, and who's going to argue with Penn Jillette? Cheap meat production through factory farming is always going to be a presence unless demand for cheap meat is reduced, aaaaand... that's where I think an intelligent and nuanced discussion about our fellow creatures is necessary.

Then again, it's hard enough to encourage people to get vaccinated when there are people out there saying that vaccinations were responsible for the AIDS epidemic.

I think you're right in that we'd have to talk with others to reduce demand for cheap meat... And that it's not the easiest of tasks.

Regarding 'not sustainable', 'no room for it'-- do you remember Penn stating that from a "Mass scale, universal adoption" standpoint?

When it comes to the organic raising of animals for food, I'm finding uplifting stories by people whose job it is to do that. Stories just as nuanced (if not moreso than) as a guy who's TV show is based upon the cynical bursting of others' bubbles.

- Dan Barber on an organic/natural Fish Farm
- Michael Pollan on two things-- 1. How animals and plants have been useful to humans to guarantee a longer lifespan, and more importantly, 2. A talk about a farm that can raise Cows, Chickens, and grass on the same set of fields. Basically, more intelligent organic farming that sustains a field.

I'll comment on things like Pork & etc in a reply to your main post. <:3

Remember you have to be careful with that show any time it bumps up against Penn's libertarianism.

However, there is good news on the demand for cheap meat: For products made with ground meat[1] 'vat meat' is transitioning from a scientific problem to an engineering problem, although it is a tad expensive right now[2].


[1] Ground because the current techniques can only make one kind of tissue at a time. So to get 'proper' meat you have to mix muscle, fat, blood, etc. together, which means grinding it.

[2] We're months away from a lab-grown hamburger, that will cost ~$350,000.

The UK might have a stricter set of national legislation, but the EU legislation is the "acceptable limit" for all continental farming.

I do not know which is really stricter, but if you haven't compared the two, you might want to. Then again, if you're in the UK it's best to eat UK meat for your own economy, etc.

I like the taste of bacon too, but flavor is pretty low down on the list of reasons I'd eat an animal.

As a lover of food and animals. Animals, at this point in time, are made to be eaten, slaughtered and sold. As such, there is loss of some parts of them, meat getting thrown out and such. I try and honor the animals by not letting the flesh we took from them go to waste. That, and it's delicious.

Are there any animals you wouldn't eat, even if were bred for consumption?

Not really, if they're being killed for others, and I am able to help reduce the waste, then why not?

The reason I don't take that tack myself is because it doesn't reduce waste, it just creates more demand. :P

Demand is a terrible thing, but one person isn't going to change the world. That being said, I think that the way that we eat, what we eat and the way it's produced is appalling. Livestock obviously was never intended by natural selection to be herded into small containers to wait and be killed. Overpopulation and cultural stigmas are always the problem. Hell I'm sure people would be happy eating human if there was no stigma against it... and if parts of the human didn't actively destroy parts of the eater. Eating human brain is suppose to create something like mad cow disease in people, but I learned of that way back when in a high school biology class so I don't remember all the details.

I've gotten off topic though.

You asked if I would consider drawing the line at not eating certain animals because of a level of intelligence it possesses? No, given the circumstances (aka life and death) there are few things that I would not eat. As a ground basis for every day life? That depends on taste, allergy, and numerous other factors.

... Well I typed this up, It's not what I wanted to type. I had the perfect response in my head on the walk home but I forgot it by the time I got back. I'll come back if I remember it.

By buying meet you are creating demand. Period. You are not participating in a noble attempt to prevent the waste of animal products you are telling the company, yes I like this, I want this, keep doing this and I will keep paying you for it. Millions of people saying, one person isn't going to make a difference, when collectively they would is a pretty lazy attitude that passes off any responsibility to some conceptual "someone else". You should at the very least own up to what you are supporting.

But to clarify I'm not actually saying buying animal products is wrong. I do however, think factory farms are wrong. Which is were most of our meat and other animal products come from, so there lies the issue for me.

also wow first post *MEAT
also being ethnocentric there, in the US most of our meat, factory farms, etc.

Ok, yeah I like meat, and support the consumption of it as a natural food source. I also said that how it's produced is wrong (factory style). However even if I don't actively eat it, those other millions - 1 will be. My one choice of "welp, I won't eat any more" isn't going to affect the other millions - 1. The same number of cows will be slaughtered, the same number of pigs will be slaughtered and the only thing changing will be the amount of waste being produced. If society could remove the stigmas and change our eating habits to something that doesn't moo, oink or have the shining glint of intelligence then go for it, I'll jump on that train in a heartbeat. But until then I'll be the millions +1 reducing the output to our landfills.

As far as lazy? You bet your honker I am, on this subject at least. I've got little enough time in life as is, I don't want to try and convince millions -1 people to change their eating habits. People don't listen to me anyway, get someone with a better voice.

And that's cool, I like meat too. I am not arguing with the consumption of animal products by any means. But I am arguing with your point that you are reducing waste, you are contributing to a system that produces a hell of a lot waste all by itself.

Anyway, my reference to laziness wasn't along the lines of "hey you get out there and protest!". You yourself agree that factory farming is wrong. The laziness I am referring to is along the lines of someone saying they disagree with a practice, then going out and supporting that practice buy purchasing their products because "well one person isn't going to make a difference". Nothing would ever change if people insist on thinking that way. Every time you buy something it's like voting with your money. In conclusion I'm saying, if you disagree with factory farming then you can help by not buying products of factory farming. Which admittedly is really hard to do, some places it may not be available, it's always more expensive, and when were surrounded by cheap readily accessible meat it becomes pretty challenging to avoid it. But I don't feel the need to get into why it's worth it if you can, you can easily research that yourself.

Be aware, you have basically said "Yeah, I'd eat dog if it was in the supermarket to stop them throwing out left-over dog meat".

Yes, I know exactly what I'm saying.

I have only seen one take on this, and unfortunately it was a joke.

But it was a funny joke - http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.ph.....;id=2393#comic

Nobody is ever going to take this topic seriously, are they?

People don't like change, I guess.

I know animals are sentient, so I try to avoid battery-farmed anything. But I don't scrutinise further than that. I don't like the idea of pets, but I hate the actions of PETA.

I don't trust the word "organic", because it's an easy label to apply to stuff and it doesn't really solve anything.

I would support GM-meat, but the prospect of breeding an animal that would not think is, frankly, morally questionable. Selective breeding it would be better. But if animals get that dumb, they probably won't function properly in their "normal" farm habitat, so you'd have to battery-farm them...

...yeah, thinking about it makes me uncomfortable, so my mind tries to not think about it. That's the big problem. People would rather not know what their food is or where it comes from.

People have a hard time giving giving of meat because they have different morals involving animals than Vegetarian and Vegans do. One of the main reasons is because meat tastes very good, and others don't want to think about the animal that where killed. Another reason is the traditional aspect of it. Families have killed animals to survive and they would used ever bit of the animal for more than just food, . The whole family would gather around the table to enjoy a turkey dinner. However we are still killing animals, but not to survive. the third aspect of the issue is the convenience. In this age that we live in it's easy to go to the store and grab your favorite cut of meat because you don't have to do the work that it takes to prepare the meat for cooking. the last aspect of this issue is that people eat meat because it's a habit. We are brought up like our parents to eat meat because it's what we know to do, and thats all we know.

I could never understand all the fuss about eating animals.

Humans are also animals.

Animals have been eating other animals for billions of years.

It's the way of nature. Nothing wrong with it.

That has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make but okay.

Then I apologize for understanding things wrong.

I guess I'm kinda begging the question assuming that eating certain animals but not others is a matter of ethical concern but maybe someone can make the argument that it's not whenever they feel like it.

All animals are equal... but some animals are more equally delicious than others.

It's because that we are killing animals not to survive but because it tastes good...

Until they perfect tissue engineering to a point where it's cheaper to grow healthy meat in a bioreactor, there is never going to be an "ethical" way to get around the problem. (By the way, PETA does offer a 1,000,000$ reward for the first team to produce in-vitro chicken meat until June 30 2012)

I figure that since meat production is not going to stop anytime soon, the best thing to do is eat the meat and not let it go to waste. Pork is nice, but it isn't as great as some people make it out to be... There are so many types of food with a much better flavour than that.

The "don't let it go to waste" argument was brought up above... but I dunno if you or anyone else would eat meat at a supermarket just because it would otherwise go to waste. People don't go through the produce section only picking the apples with mushy bits because they're just going to be thrown away anyway. People make their meat-eating decisions based on culturally constructed factors like... why aren't we farming/eating insects instead of large mammals? They have less fat, they take less room to grow, they're very rich in nutrients, there are already TONS of dishes that incorporate them. But you know, bugs are icky.

There have been a few times when i've purchased meat only because it was nearing its expiration date. I'm not saying i feel obligated to buy it, but that it's one of the deciding factors whenever i'm faced with the dilemma. A rotting apple has a very different psychological imprint compared to a rotting carcass...

Also, meat doesn't get mushy like produce (in the time slot where it's safe to eat), so i usually pick the ones that are closer to spoiling.

About the eating bugs part - "nutrition" has never been important here... It's always the taste. Bugs happen to have a gross texture and are way too small to make a good steak.

That 'prize' is nothing more than a BS publicity stunt.

It was set up so that it is basically impossible to win. Note how they picked an animal that no one was working with, (or even thinking of working with), then added a set of conditions well beyond even the most optimistic projections for what was being worked on.

The key trick is that the prize _isn't_ for producing in-vitro chicken meat, but rather for selling 2000lbs of it to the public at a similar price to farm raised chicken within a three month period to multiple markets.

What this means is that to win the prize you would have to, (starting pretty much from scratch):

Grow multi-tissue vat-meat in large pieces, of a quality people are willing to eat.
Get the cost down to dollars a kilo.
Pass all the regulatory hurdles for selling this for human consumption.
Get enough uptake to actually be able to sell 300kg/mo.

And do all of this in just over four years. Note that just getting the go ahead for sales will take at least a couple of years for the first vat-meats, and you can't even start until you have finalized your production process, (i.e. when you're making it for no more than $100/kg).


To put things in perspective, the current state of the art is low-quality ground beef costing ~$2,000,000/kg.

Yeah, i agree with you there. I doubt anybody working on this is really after the prize because the deadline is way too soon. I just said it because PETA was mentioned in the journal - even they acknowledge vat-meat as a proper solution. The first breakthrough in this field is most likely going to be for the medical field (growing donor organs), rather than for human consumption. But really, that's the only way to "edit animals into a more consumable product" - the example with an insensate pig is just a step behind a solid chunk of bioreactor pork.

Actually, were only months away from having vat-meat that is ready for human consumption. It's just a tad expensive and limited in form.

Making food is actually a bit easier than making organs for transplant. Both because you don't have to match things as closely and because muscles are likely going to be one of the easier things to do anyway.

Are you sure? The results i've seen so far have been just small blobs that can't grow any further due to the lack of blood vessels. That, and the meat has to be exercised in order to develop properly. I think i read somewhere that somebody tried to eat one of the cultured meat chunks, but i don't think it must've been very palatable :)

Yes, it's been a recent piece of news.

Note that the reason it's going to be hamburger is that the various types of cells need to be grown separately and in small pieces. When I say "tad expensive" I mean "$330,000 for a burger worse than what you get at McD's"

You're setting the bar pretty low there - McD's beef tastes exactly like paper if you remove all the sauces and stuff from it... Having it as ground meat is a clever idea because you don't have to worry about the size of the pieces. I can't wait to see the finished product now!

As I said: "...the current state of the art is low-quality ground beef costing ~$2,000,000/kg."

Yes, the bar is low. But the first step is to be able to actually make enough of the stuff for someone to make a meal of it. Once that is solved, we can work on improving both quality and cost.

I wonder if anthropomorphization is the very reason I don't mind the fact that I'm eating animals. I think the fact that I attribute them similar rights (I absolutely hate killing bugs) kind of leaves me in some kind of warped moral set where I'd be eating people meat too if it were socially available but avoiding all unnecessary death?

Or something?

This is like post, but shorter XD

*my post, sorry XD

There was one guy questioning meat production in Europe on prime-time television. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He's done shows showing how bad chicken production is and, in a rather unexpected way, how veal should probably be made. It raised the moral question of which is better: a bullet in the head of virtually single male dairy cow born or a beef version of lamb?

It does help that he's a farmer.

Why is it that it's a non-transformational post you make that I feel like I have something to add to.

If you're going to judge what you eat based on how intelligent it is that's as good a standard as any. Probably actually a better one as it's less arbitrary than most. The problem is that intelligence isn't exactly a single stat with a slider bar. Once you make it past 70% you're off the menu. I find it hard to describe just what intelligent quality that we're looking for. Is it just complexity of thought, the ability to recognize themselves, emotional empathy, or some kind of language and communicative skill. Depending on how you define that you either include or exclude a whole lot of creatures. I'm of the opinion that anything that we've got going on in our head, any other creature with a brain has a similar thing. Stuff that we would describe as love, fear, curiosity, anger I've gotta think that most creatures have to some degree as well. What we have had to come from somewhere, and since we've got common ancestry they should have some of it too. If they sit up and shout out "Hey, don't eat me." yeah that's a no brainer, but at the same time it does seem like most everything has the desire to survive and makes that pretty obvious whenever they're threatened.

I'm not sure that breeding mentally challenged pigs is really much more ethical. That almost seems disturbing in it's own way. It would be kind of cool if we could make a creature like that guy in "Restaurant at the edge of the universe" that actually looked forward to being eaten. That would solve all of the dilemma, but it also might seem a little creepy if it was real as well.

I am in the camp that we are animals, and animals eat other animals all of the time. I don't personally have a lot of problem with consuming most of them, but there are a bunch that I'm not in any hurry to try. Ethics here runs more along the line of my own hangups. Over here in America we don't really eat dogs or horses, but from what I understand horse meat is actually a little common on continental Europe, and up until recently dog meat was common in south east Asia. I can't see a real discriminating difference between eating a horse, a cow, or a bison other than my own personal preferences and the peer fallout of the people I know.

I also recognize that while animals eat animals all of the time the kingsnake eating a rattler in the YouTube video I just watched doesn't really have a lot of other places to go. As omnivores we humans can be successful on a mostly if not exclusively plant only diet. The decision to switch to one culturally is going to be a hard one to climb especially if people don't have the same hangups that the veggie only crowd does. I've switched to all vegetable diets for a while a lot of times because I'm a little lazy. For me cooking meat takes a while and makes more dishes to wash then a lot of raw fruits and vegetables. However, I'm not going to switch just because someone is going to try to guilt me into it. Not saying that you're trying that, but I've experienced it before.

I find it a little ironic that there are a large number of animals that their mental wiring doesn't really seem to register stuff like pain and emotions, are reasonably easy to produce, convert more of their food into edible protien than most other creatures do, and are probably as close to organic machines as we've seen. However, except for crabs, lobsters, and shrimp nobody, again in the west, is in a hurry to add bugs to their diet.

This isn't an ethical reason, but I often avoid eating pig because I don't trust it was cooked well enough to kill the oodles of parasites pigs carry. Pigs are parasite factories. Sure, everything carries parasites but pigs are loaded. I remember working at a pig roast and fighting with the cooks to finish cooking a hunk of pork that still had blood running out of it.

We're all just star dust anyway.

This is a really interesting journal :D I had the same thoughts crossing my mind before, and I ended up doing a big research paper on it. I discovered that while eating meat is necessary to a degree, once you start eating more than you really need to, it's bad for everything - more specifically, it's not good for your body, it's not good for the environment, and it's actually rather wasteful. If you think about it, the total amount of food you derive from a cow has to be at least equal to the resources you used to RAISE the cow - and in the end, we're actually feeding our food and getting a net loss. This stuff gets pretty deep, but hey, it's good to find your own answers =)

i wonder how much a cow is actually wasted though (wasted as in % of animal used, not cost/quantity of resources used vs resources yielded). granted, the amount of an animal people consume directly as food is probably fairly minimal (the cuts in the butcher shop, organs and "garbage parts" like used in ethnic cooking [pig feet, etc]) but i had thought that much of the remainder parts of animals in some cases are used anyway (leather, meat and bone by-products, fillers, etc). not to say that doesn't have it's own set of issues (after all, wasn't it "recycled cow" that spurred outbreaks of mad-cow?), but it doesn't seem like an industrialized operation would pass up squeezing every penny out of a product. did you happen across anything like that while writing your paper?

I was actually watching Dirty Jobs or something studying a farm/butchery. The skin was prepped and tanned for leather, the meat was cut off, then the rest of the carcass was ground up for fertilizer and such. And another thing I saw had people who even came and picked up cows that had died naturally or from disease and did a similar thing, so no, the animal is not wasted. As suspected, they wring every penny out of it that they can.

That's why I keep an eye on things like this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011.....7M31VE20111111

It's really difficult to discern this when all the evidence you can get is PETA screaming at the top of their lungs that 'eating animals is wrong! It doesn't matter the reason!'

I think no matter what they do outside of just scientifically spawning bio-meat that does not come from a sentient animal, there will be ethical issues for some people. You have issues of killing a living breathing animal, plus the morals questioned in doing so when one can survive on alternatives to meat. I will give some vegetarians that point, as people can survive these days on products minimizing suffering and life itself and those who eat meat are choosing to let something die for flavor.

I don't think it is wrong per se as the planet is designed with life and organisms are made to devour one another. Even bacteria and plants eat us when we die. However I do truly believe it is ignorant for people to not understand that yes, something does in fact die for your sammich, and they should be respectful that the only reason they are functioning is off of the death of others. IMHO people who sit there cramming meat in their faces while laughing at PETA are far more annoying than the veggie crowd ever could get (not that PETA doesn't make me roll my eyes a fair bit too).

As far as people treating animals well...... sorry but that isn't going to change. You could have animals who talk, walk, and do advanced calculus and people will still think it is okay to abuse them. A large part of this I place squarely on religion, Christianity breeding some of the worst and Judaism being almost scott free of blame on the issue as they've always respected animals. The whole "dominion" belief instilled to them that God gave them the planet to do whatever the fuck they pleased as long as they chant to Jeebus. Want to beat a puppy to death and laugh? It's okay because dominion says it is a piece of property. Seriously, people feel that way and it baffles my mind.

Thankfully Pope John Paul II finally had the chutzpah to tell the Catholic church that animals indeed had souls, so being asshats to them was not very nice. Pope Benedict has followed suit and not refuted this claim, so hopefully the dominion crowd will come around eventually.

I'm a TF person, so I'm always hoping people will change. Maybe a week in an egg farm will change their minds, haha.

Turkey bacon is really tasty (and lower in fat, too), and turkeys are far lower in intelligence than pigs.

I'm a professional biologist, and I have no health problem with any of the currently offered GMOs. Most farmed plants are the result of wide inter-species crosses where the genetic outcome was random rather than carefully planned.

The first generation GMOs were designed to reduce production costs, such as by allowing no-till agriculture with reduces diesel consumption and reduces top soil loss. The second generation GMOs are often designed to offer health benefits, such as golden rice, golden in color because of the genetically engineered carotenoid content which can prevent blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

I like GMOs! I think they're a super promising new technology, and I think there's enough backlash against them that any progress in their development will be highly scrutinized, which is really important. I keep wanting to read some of what Vandana Shiva has written in that regard.

what about those stores that come out saying some pesticides are helping increase the cancer rate? thing is, that's partially why i don't like GMOs i mean, i like meat, but i'd rather eat somthing that came from a natural seed, rather then somthing slapped together in a lab somewhere.

GMOs aren't pesticides, and plenty of fantastic things we slapped together in labs! Vaccines save countless lives every year, for instance, and are responsible for completely eradicating so many diseases that used to be hopeless epidemics.

Besides, nothing we eat now is "natural". The banana we're familiar with didn't exist until we started a program of selective breeding.

There are tons of issues specific to genetically modified food! GMO crops need to be produced by a company, and if you have a Walmart sort of situation happening with crops where a specific type of seed becomes much cheaper and easier to produce than the natural varieties, you can end up with a massive monoculture that is very, very, VERY easy to wipe out. You're essentially creating an ecological niche for any pest or virus or parasite to thrive, and if a pest eats all of the food, people starve, they lose money, and if you're a farmer, your crops are everything. That's just one of the reasons to be concerned with GMOs, there are many.

However, there's been a lot of interest in bio-hacking lately which could result in a more grassroots GMO culture, which would provide a means of economic stability for regions which don't have the greatest growing conditions. Imagine if you could tailor a crop to be suited to your climate and soil, that would grow without needing pesticides, that would be resistent to different diseases and funguses. That kind of grassroots approach would also introduce a LOT of biodiversity, which is subject to evolution. Creating that biodiversity and subjecting it to natural selection is probably going to be the best way to create the sustainable, safe yields we need to feed everyone in the world.

At least, that's my hope.

I think that in another 20 years or so that it will be difficult to buy unhealthy food because most common foods will have been made healthy by genetic engineering. While I agree with you about the intelligence of pigs, they have already been engineered with two enzymes from algae resulting in their fat being just like that of salmon - and hence just as healthy.

Ounce per ounce common potatoes raise your blood sugar more than pure table sugar - not good! Installing an enzyme from a digestion resistant strain of corn results in starch that is slowly digested resulting in a much slower sugar release and less blood sugar elevation. Cook those French fries in high oleic sunflower oil (96% monounsaturated), and you have a delicious health food. Those potatoes are now in test plots.

Dammit, I lost all my content due to a browser mishap. Sigh. At least I can summarize.

I had to read your post a few times as it seems multi-layered just by reading the surface glean. (I usually think I have great reading comprehension, but posts like this throw me for a loop.) So, here's how I think to begin my reply:

I think we're just beginning research into "do how we treat the animals we consume improve our health?" Hopefully, with the 'organic' movement, we'll have more studies soon.

I don't think we will ever stop killing animals to eat them, as each culture has its own list of what it will eat, and what it won't. However, the more awareness that's spread, the more we can do to keep some animals thriving instead of going extinct, and the more we can realize what we're doing as we taste some delicious beef.

Ultimately, I think you'll have to judge what you can and cannot eat on a personal level. Even animals may not kill a baby of another species if they raise it. However, stories of rodents eating their young are around as well.. Could you eat an animal you sympathize with? Maybe only if you respect the sacrifice it did to sustain your life... That's all I can do for those who loved me and will die (from hopefully not-being-eaten) someday.

It is now mandatory at this point to bring up THAT Bob The Angry Flower strip.

http://www.angryflower.com/vegeta.gif

The ethics of diet, so to speak, is really easy to put on a slippery-slope type of argument, which I think is a good way of getting to a reasonable mode of determination.

So, we have to first skip a huge swathe of debating and take something as reasonable to accept based on the sheer volume debate they raise. Thus, first, it is reasonable to accept that animals feel both pleasure and pain. Next, it is also reasonable to accept that inflicting suffering or pain on another creature is always unethical (in a. strict yes/no, dichotomous argument situation). Following this, it is also reasonable to accept that exploitation inflicts pain and/or suffering (directly or indirectly). Lastly, it is reasonable to accept that it is not ethical to exploit/inflict suffering even when the subject of this suffering/exploitation is not at all aware of being exploited and/or suffering.

This line of reasoning leads us to an ultimate conclusion that anything which exploits anything capable of feeling pain is unethical. Narrowing that down to animals only, this doesn't only mean that it is unilaterally unethical to eat any animal, but it is even unethical to eat anything at all that exploits animals in any way (ie Vegan), and it is even further still unethical to use any products that exploit animals. Obviously when we take this far enough it begins to become absurd, but that is exactly the point.

Once you understand that absolute pure ethical treatment of animals, particularly with regard to diet is virtually impossible, you are free to move pragmatism to the forefront and place ethics in a secondary, guiding position.

The true purpose of ethics then is to guide your resources, which are not infinite. You have so much money, so much time, and so much energy. If you do not have very much money, you are not going to spend a lot of time worrying about a principled diet. Once you take the money out of the equation, you still have to realize that the time required to adequately evaluate the complete path of any food product you consume is enormous. Ethics begins to develop as a factor wherein you must make a choice with regard to how much time you will spend on this. Other time factors of your life will necessarily restrict how completely you can guide your decisions. And even if you enter a truly theoretical world where you have infinite time, if you've read this far you must realize that there is an upper limit on the mental resources you are able to devote to this consideration.

Summarized, you can make a reasonable argument to draw that line almost anywhere, which means that where you draw this line of ethics does not matter. But, what DOES matter is that you choose to draw it. You recognize the idea of ethical behavior, you understand that there are to some extent boundaries which can be argued as arbitrary, but you elect to place yourself within them anyway, after giving due consideration to whether you can make any greater or lesser supposition of right or wrong. Thinking about ethics and maintaining the broad ethical principles is more important than determining the minutia.

Well yeah, I think you've pretty much got the problem nailed down. But I don't know if just drawing a line is enough, there should be at least a cogent argument for why it's important to draw a line. To me, I value the quality of intelligence in the universe, and I think we as a species need to recognize sentience in non-humans and, you know, value it, because there's a huge social, economic and even evolutionary benefit to a partner relationships with other species. I don't think that taking something from an animal, even its life, is necessarily exploitative if it can be turned into a mutually beneficial relationship, like ants farming aphids. Cooperation gets us off that slippery slope, doesn't it?

Well, since I hate those reductio ad absurdum arguments (which are fun and easy to make), I will call it reasonable to say cooperation does so. The alternative jumps off the cliff of whether an ideal exact even exchange exists, which is a viable devils advocate point but is mostly argument for the sake of argument.

So the big and Very Important question we are left pondering is the definition of intelligence, which is another one of those that's been vexing humankind for years. For example, crows can build tools, have social units, language, and some sense of history. They fit the criteria reasonably well, but it's hard to suggest that they are sentient, high-level thinking creatures since they also eat roadkill and poop on cars.

But, flipside, if we restrict the rights of true sentience to only creatures who have achieved what we have done, a theoretical advanced alien culture could legitimately wipe us out with no remorse.

I think then you can say that if you have done the due dilligence one person can do to understand the intelligenve of creatures sharing your world, and you make an effort not to impose suffering or exploitation on those creatures directly, that is a fair line. It should also be understood that, as a social collective, we have a larger responsibility which stems from individual action.

eg, you as an individual are powerless to cause the massive industry which creates pork products to cease. But by not eating these products you are upholding individual and collective action. If you are able to direct political actions to favor someone who is generally or specifically supportive of this position, you would. Note again you are not solely responsible to be that person, but by your individual action, you help to create an environment in which that person can exist.

So there you go. By choosing to individually take responsibility for the sanctity of intelligence as you see it, you form part of a sociohistorical chain that creates the potential to implement that responsibility on a broad policy scale which you, as an individual cannot and should not be responsible for.

Yeah it's pretty much the disrespect that I have a problem with more than the actual act of killing and eating. Otherwise I'd be a vegetarian, haha.

As animals don'tvoften consider the feelings of other animals before eating them, neither do I. I generally find debate about the topic either stale and uninteresting, or entirely offensive.

The way I see it though, I'd probably eat anything given to me, provided it were safe, sanitary, and preferrably organic-raised. I will admit to being shallow enough to say that things are mostly based on looks too though. I'd be upset to eat a cat, because I have a cat, and I'd probably be upset to know it was a cat or to be able to identify as such. But also domesticated animals are generally fattier and full of antibiotics, which I don't approve of either of those. But I would eat wolf, or any other game animal.

For me, it's simply less about if it feels pain and more about the benefits of eating it versus the benefits of keeping it alive. It's possibly cruel, but to be fair, I would also eat other humans if it were tasty, feasible, and legal. Also good for you, because lord knows I wouldn't want any of what most people put in their bodies in me. Nevermind the diseases. :( You can mess yourself up if you eat human. Holes in your brain and such, if I've read correctly.

Anyway, I've rambled and I'm on my ipod, so my spelling is probably atrocious, and I'm off-topic, so I'll bow out.

I don't know if a lot of animals have the capacity to put themselves in the position of their prey, or their instincts overwhelm any sympathy they might have. We don't have that problem. We can make conscious decisions about what we eat, and maybe we should!

I grew up helping out on my uncle's farm. He had a bunch of free range piggies who'd run around and play in the mud and then when they were big enough one would get turned into bacon and sausages.

Happy piggies make better bacon! =D

I'd probably eat some of that bacon, but I'd probably feel pretty solemn!

They had a good life, so i dont feel too bad :3 THough you do have to keep a bit dettatched.

But... why should intelligence be the measure?

I understand pigs are intelligent animals (hey, I'm a pig myself)

How about other humans? Should I take them into consideration too? Every time I go to the market around the corner, even before I but any food, the engine in my car burns the equivalent to a thousand lunches for starving African babies.

Whether I eat meat or not, I'm still sitting on top of a "food pyramid" whose base is composed of millions of people who have never ever heard of bacon in their whole lives. Should I feel sorry for them? They are pretty intelligent too (not as intelligent as me, of course, otherwise they would have climbed up here) but they are still sentient beings who live in abject poverty while I'm overweight.

My point is we live in a cruel Universe. It has been like that for millions of years and it will continue to be like that after we are gone as species. Nothing we do will change it.

I really hate the "nothing we do can change things" attitude, because it's not true at all. If we have the capacity to recognize cruelty in the world, and we can do something about it, even just a little thing, we do it!

As for the starving African babies, ugh. How dare you. I don't want anyone to starve, but saying that nothing will change because African babies are still starving is not only wrong, it's kind of insulting to the African adults who are making DAMN sure that the babies of their communities don't starve. African babies are starving because of massive income inequality in many of these countries, and many of them are NOT starving because of really brave, innovative and hard-working Africans and non-Africans coming together to solve problems on the continent.

Look at India and tell me that nothing we do can change things.

Ridiculous.

I'm just pointing at the nature of the Universe.

Right and wrong, good or evil are constructions of the human mind. If we look at Nature from our human point of view, we will find life is monstrously cruel.

Babies will continue to starve by the million no matter how much money idiots like Bono dump into Africa. Because it has nothing to do with right or wrong... it's simple mathematics. Every species is designed by nature in a way a bunch have to die so a few can survive. Nothing will ever change that.

Thinking we insignificant apes with shiny gadgets can change the way nature has been working for billions of years is ridiculous. The whole existence of mankind is but a spec of dust inside the complex machinery of nature, an this machine will continue to run after the last memory of mankind has been wiped out from the surface of the planet.

Nothing we do can chance the nature of the world. All the good intentions of all the idealists in the planet are like like throwing a single drop of water in a raging forest fire and pretending it helped put it out.

I'm not saying it's wrong or right. I'm just saying that's the way it is.

Global warming.

Halley Comet.

Actually this is the most fallacy-loaded statement I've ever heard in a while. We can... literally... completely wipe the entire planet into a near-lifeless dustball by the wide scale application of nuclear weapons. We can change climates, grow organs, move rivers, reshape mountains, create and destroy forests, engineer lifeforms, build materials that don't exist in nature, harness electricity, and wipe out (and even create, if you count urban environments) entire ecosystems, and countless other things that nature can't do, or simply cannot do as well or as fast. And yes, we can even completely destroy it if we try really, really hard.

Not only can we change nature, we can make it <i>our bitch</i>, but whether or not it's going to be a healthy relationship or a damaging one is entirely up to how we proceed.

You really overestimate the power of our feeble species.

Even if we now detonate every single nuclear weapon in existence, it will only cause a fraction of the effect of the asteroid that wiped the dinosaurs millions of years ago. And that asteroid could not stop life from continuing, it just bumped it into a new direction.

Building cities? Harnessing electricity? Destroying forests? All that is just scratching a little on the surface of this huge ball of a planet.

Climate has changed radically before (with temperatures changing hundreds of degrees, not the ridiculous two or three a century or CO2 is supposed to cause) and Earth survived. Entire ecosystems have been wiped out completely several times by global volcanic activity and continent shifts... and Earth survived.

Do you really think the laughable rising of the oceans by a couple of inches will be even felt by our old scarred planet? Earth has been ripped almost in half before (that's how the moon was born) and yet it's still here.

We can't destroy Earth even if we all try hard. All we can do is destroy ourselves. And that will go unnoticed by an indifferent nature which will continue to evolve into new forms for millions of years after the biggest of our cities has been eroded into dust.

Solution : Eat cat and dog :D

for me personally, i decided to stop eating any animal altogether; to me, personally i don't feel it's fair to be biased based on species. i was a pescatarian for a while but decided that was still kinda silly of me...
my reasons are because i feel for the animals, it's a fucked up situation; not to mention all the pollution from the factory farms etc;
i am not, however, one of THOSE vegetarians that rubs it in people's faces etc. if people ask me, i'll tell them and be honest. otherwise i don't like to bring it up, it seems to be a sensitive subject even with meat eaters. from my experience, they've gotten pretty butthurt and defensive about it. which makes me LOL.

i always wondered, also, what differences people see between "food animals" and "pets". lots of "food animals" are domesticated and are even pets. yet it's so atrocious to consider other animals as food. that is usually what gets them and makes them stop arguin with me :>

i would be happier with people eating meat if it was free range, etc; so at least those animals can have a fair life before it's snuffed out.

Non-human intelligence? My lord, human intelligence, look around you, everyone, look in the mirror, examine your own lives, we're not ALWAYS smart. Many people around the world sit slack jawed at the computer or TV, doing nothing, doing nothing to better the situation they're in, the majority of us can attest to having done this at least once or more at some point in our lives.

...my next subject, why do other creatures have to think like us, for humanity to decide not to devour them? Why must they remind us of ourselves, triggering the idea of "CANNIBALISM BAD! RRRRNNGH!" (which it is, disease, y'all) ? Instead of us not eating these other creatures, because they're there, living their own, differing-species lives which we cannot relate to for the most part, outside of the fact they're alive at the same time we are.

Now, the whole "Vat-grown" meat thing...what's the problem here, outside of its apparent million dollar cost? To stay in touch with the discussion...outside of the cells that create the side of beef formed, the same kind of cells, more or less, that repairs your knee when you skin it, what's the reservation? There's NO brain, no idea that humanity will create a race of pigs that are retarded to such a degree, they exist in a pig-purgatory of isolation. It's just a Happy Meal burger (which is actually kangaroo meat D;), sans ever having "lived", being connected to an organic computer.

(And yes, I HAVE considered whether or not vat-grown meat would taste differently, on the grounds it would lack the sensations associated with actually being a part of a living, human-intelligence gifted or otherwise, animal)

Even speaking as a meat eater, I have moral qualms with the notion that a pig is "too smart" to eat but other animals are fine and dandy. I'm suspicious of any construction of a hierarchy, by any set of values, of who has the right to life and who doesn't. I am aware of my own hypocrisy given that "human above animal" is the most basic hierarchy of all

I am of the opinion that at some point I have an ethical duty to become a vegetarian. I have a lot of vegetarian friends already so I wouldn't be without support. But that most selfish of reasons, that I would miss the taste, has stymied me so far

On the sustainability side it's an interesting question that occasionally comes up in a particular semi-hard-science roleplaying game I'm in with a few friends. We're not at the point yet where growing meat in a vat is viable yet, but it might be in the future. The problem is that a lot of the current methods of food production are just so unfeasible for the long run, and they can't keep up with our population. Plus, if we're really going to expand to other worlds at some point, livestock is just such a drain on resources that it wouldn't be viable.

Ultimately, it seems like we really are going to have to accept that sources of protein like insects are really the best food source for large populations. They reproduce quickly, they're rather nutritionally wonderful, and they can actually be somewhat good tasting if you can get over the squick factor (I did, and I actually kinda like fried grasshoppers.). You have to season and all of that, but it's better off doing that then having to load up stockyards (and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they're pretty gross).

I think us humans are bad enough at philosophy of mind, and utility calculation, that the only thing that can prompt most of us into vegetarianism is a traumatizing experience.

Like so:

My sister keeps rabbits as pets. They are indoor rabbits, and they are polite and have little personalities. Limited sentience, but no sapience, obviously; regardless, they ping to my instincts as friends, and thereby I can sympathize with their situation and their limited cognition.

At the same time, I discovered Epic Meal Time, where a group of pretty funny guys eat ridiculously large portions of meat and meat accessories. It was entertaining, right up until I hit the episode where they eat a bunch of whole rabbits - that pinged my primal emotions as seeing a group of strangers eat the bodies of my friends' relatives[1].

Traumatizing.

So I went vegetarian. As a person who tries to be logical and reasonable, it was a bit shameful to realize I was making a decision for emotional reasons that I should have made much earlier in my life and for rational reasons[2]; that doesn't mean emotion is more accurate than logic, just that I'm a much worse rationalist than I'd previously thought. And if I'm actively trying to be reasonable and can still screw up, that doesn't bode well for the decision processes of people with different priorities.

[1] I still watch Epic Meal Time. It's still pretty funny. I just have to avoid a couple episodes for the sake of my sanity.

[2] Here's a lump of conflicted utility: swapping out all beef and pork for tofu and tempeh, or an economically viable future version of vat-meat, would cut the global pollution rate (by 25% if soy; or by 20% if vat-meat as per present estimates), cut the global water-consumption rate (10,000 gallons per cow per year versus 100 gallons per acre of soy per year), and increase the overall availability of food (16 pounds of grain are required to produce 1 pound of cow meat, or 5 pounds of fish meat). If you think such a pollution reduction, and food-and-water-availability increase, would be required for people as a whole to succeed, then you'll have to give serious thought to either going veggie, or switching over to vat-meat when it hits the shelves.