Food ethics: How do you choose what species are morally wrong to eat?

At least on a tentative basis,
I accept your criteria of intelligence & charisma.

If I clone myself for the purpose of generating spare parts,
that is different than eating other humans; it is taking from myself.

Having read the book, no it doesn't. It doesn't proselytize at all, and does address many other practical problems of making a vegetarian diet work. Sufficient protein intake just isn't one of them.

For an independent confirmation, you can go to Google Schoolar and search for "health risks vegetarian diets". I checked the first five pages of results, and none of the scientific articles on them mentioned insufficient protein as a risk. To nudge the search results further into the direction of protein deficiencies, I then Google-Scholared "Protein Vegetarian Diets". Same result. Needless to say, you may want to double-check. I've overlooked things before.

Considering how often people express concerns about adequate protein intake in vegetarian diets, these concerns are conspicuous in their absence from the scientific literature.


What about them? Why not oppose those cruelties, too?


They've already slowed down their birth rates considerably -- presumably because their economic situation has improved. Where populations in the Third World still expand, it's because death rates are declining, not because birth rates are increasing.


That depends on who the "we" in your sentence refers to. If it's all humans on this planet, we may not have enough land for the cut flowers industry. If it's only the humans in developed countries, we do have enough arable land for feed lot animals.


Indeed it is. But farm state senators like to bribe their electorates with subsidies for this crap, so I'm afraid they're here to stay.

Where are you going in this Thomas?
Its a fact that , while veggiematerians do have life styles that can reduce certain conditions (like obesity because most vegematarians are busy starving themselsves). However , nutrients like Iron, speicifc proteins, vitamins B12, D and Niacin,as well as several other bulk nutrients are NOT ABSORBED ESSILY IN A VEGGIEMATARIAN STYLE. Our entire body has evolved a furnace that is best equipped to be driven in an Omnivorous state.
We may (by some rule of acquired characteristic) be able to evolve into a cud chewing species, but not at this point in our time line.

A balanced diet (moderate portions) is still the best way. WEven veggiematerian athletes, (If there were such a thing) would be deriving much of their bulking agents and ligament health crap FROM MEAT POWDERS, sold over the counters as "health ****". (READ the fuckin labels of Niacin and mineral powders for bulking) most all sources are derived from animal by products. SO, in essence youd be eating things with a face anyway.

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Nowhere in particular. All I'm saying is that if ethical concerns about eating animals are a problem for you, health risks from vegetarianism are no realistic defense. There is no health problem from vegetarianism that doesn't have a narrow technical fix. These fixes are things like fortified food, vitamin pills, and so forth.

I have no idea what a veggiematerian is. Please define.

I definitely see needing to use pills to supplement your diet a problem.

Eating a well-balanced diet is optimal. Luckily, most of us posting here have that option.

Choosing not to eat a balanced diet, <shrug> I think people create their own difficulties.

Im still back on the premise of this thread. Robert was trying to elciti some sort of response that would possibly define a justifiable reason for killing WILD animals, like whales.
So far , Ive seen none . Ive just sen these discussions of meatatarianism v veggiematarianism, and Ive yet to find out where its leading to.

Such a book doesn't have to proselytize, the streets are full of militant, sometimes even ranting vegetarians and vegans. College towns are the worst. The Beef Council and the Pork Council (or whatever they are calling themselves these days) spend money on television advertisements, but its hardly likely that they're going to do research into the deficiencies of a vegetarian diet. Their interest is in selling their product, not engaging in some kind of culture war. Vegetarians and vegans, however, are interested in culture wars, and most of their advanced bases are college campuses, and academic scientists are often their allies. I habitually mistrust attacks on meat consumption, and claims about the manifold benefits of vegetarianism. The people who wrote your book don't have to proselytize, there are already legions of militant (usually young) vegetarians out there willing to do that, and often in a hectoring, ranting tone. FM has addressed things i have read myself, but if you think it will help your social standing to portray yourself as a vegetarian, help yourself.

Certainly why not oppose those cruelties. That's what i'm asking, why are the militant young vegetarians as vocal and insistent upon opposing those cruelties?

I'd be interested in the data you have that people in what was called the third world have "already slowed down their birth rates considerably." I didn't say that their birth rates were increasing, in any event, so that is a straw man. I'm simply pointing out that in primitive agricultural societies, and especially those in which there is no provision for old age pensions, there is always a motive for large families, which motive disappears with greater economic security.

Certainly i'm referring to all humans on the planet, i don't know that RG has limited the discussion to any more discrete group. However, my remarks were addressed to typical vegetarian propaganda, which decries the use of arable land to provide feed for feed lot animals, but remains mute on the subject of how much arable land is devoted to non-food producing activities, such as growing flowers for the cut flower industry. There are much better reasons to oppose the feed lot industry, and i frankly would like to see it eliminated--but not unless it means that livestock for meat are then raised through grazing, which is a use for arable land which i consider justified, and which would be even more plausible if it were a part of a broader program which addresses other issues not normally discussed in a narrowly focused discussion like this, with population reduction at the head of the list.

I know of no large-scale subsidy program to encourage the use of arable land for the production of ethanol. I know that there are such programs, but they're modest in comparison to programs such as the land bank, which is regularly scammed by corporate capitalists. The main reason that a lot of land is given over to production of grain (usually what Americans call corn) for ethanol is that it is a much more reliable market for a farmer's grain than the widely fluctuating grain market for animal feed or human foods. Farmers know they can get a good price for their corn for ethanol, and a relatively reliably predictable price than is the case with producing grain for animal or human consumption. I don't think blaming the Senate for this is very realistic.

Well our bucolic native population which pursued its very "natural" lifestyle, without "despoiling" the earth - as greens allege we have done, subsisted to a very large degree on the killing and eating of wild animals, including whales.

Are the moral rules for small carnivorous populations different from those for large ones?

I'm not so much opposing your position farmerman, as pointing out its inconsistencies.

Its all a matter of poplualtion density isnt it georgeob? ANYWAY, Who said anything anything at all about "bucolic"? The word implies animal husbandry and shepherdry .As far as I know,when the PaleoIndian populations came to this in this hemisphere , they ere "HUNTER GATHERERS". Dr Adevissio has stated that , from genetic data, the average lifespan of the PaleoIndian was not even 30 years and child mortality was very high due to periodic famine. No herding of animals was practiced so far as we know. When the population of Amerinds exceeded the 10 million number (the estimate for Indians in the N and S Maerican continents was as much as 50 million or even more according to several population geneticists), famine was a constant neighbor. Certain populations just disappeared (look at Kahokia Ill), so to imply that the early Indians werent partnered with famine is unrealistic from the evidence found in burals and "disappeared villages"

As far as whales, anytime the take is leass than the species critical "carrying capacity" we have stability or stasis. The original Aboriginal whalers , the Innuit , and Tlingits were unable to venture far out intoBeringean waters. The U'Miak was , at best a "coaster" and the target whales were taken one at a time from a population that was then large and stable. At the other end, The "Golden Age of European and American whaling" (1600 to early 1900,) left the whale species populations in a state of almost unrecoverable numbers. The only speicies that were left unmolested were Minkes and other smallish species because they werent large enough to justify the economic outay to go fishing and even these species were less than half of their pre whaling estimates.
The Japaneseare claiming "sustainable catch" and even the IWC says bullshit to that assertion. The total annual target catch for Minke whales is listed by Japan alone to be about 1000 whals. Te icelandic and Nordics are somewhere the same. Thats 0.10% of the species number and even the IWC is dubious that these are sustainable numbers BUT, we just dont know and the JApanese are proposing to kill the whales and find out whats sustainable. JEEZUS Christe thats madness in my mind.

SEVERAL other species have almost been fished to extinction including Atlantic Cod. If these fish rebound, Im sure we will see extreme catch limitations to avoid what happened to the species in recent years when everyone "In the fishing industry" declared that they were fishing responsibly and in a sustainable manner. (Thats the reason I have no faith in letting this entire industry go unregulated). NEVER has deregulation worked. If you can name one industry wherein deregulation has resulted in respoinsible extraction, exploitation, huntin g, growing, transporting or developing please let me Know . Like H Ross Perot, Ill be all,ears

I believe that many people who oppose whaling, do so, whether or not they are candidly honest about it, because they seem to be sentient beings on the same order as humans. I have always wondered if the majority of opponents of whaling are necessarily motivated by anything other than sentimentality.

I see nothing wrong with hunting wild game, as long as the populations are sustainable. We could stand to have a hell of a lot more safe, responsible hunters going after white tail deer in the U.S.

FM's point about Amerindians and starvation is very well taken. Indians presenting themselves at York factory on Hudson's Bay could get a Hudson's Bay Company musket, with five pounds of powder, two pounds of lead, a bullet mold and a cleaning kit for 23 made beaver pelt. Being, just like all the human race, natural capitalists, some of the Cree and Slave Indians, who lived not far from York factory, would make heroic treks to the factory (which in those days didn't mean a place where something was manufactured, but just where the agent--the factor--hung out) to get HBC muskets. They then could take them back and dispose of them at enormous profit. A young coureur du bois who worked for HBC at the beginning of the 18th century made an exploratory hike which eventually took him to the Bitterroot in what is now Idaho. There, he found that an HBC musket, no powder, no lead, no bullet mold and no cleaning kit, sold for 200 made beaver pelts. Indians immediately recognized the energy equation involved in a comparison of hunting in the winter with a bow and flint tipped arrow, and hunting with a musket.

I believe the economist's name for the phenomenon is "the tragedy of the commons". No one has the incentive to protect and preseve a resource that is commonly held: on the contrary participants feel compelled to race to get their share before it is gone.

It's not just the cod fishery near Newfoundland. The herring catch in the Norwegian sea and around Iceland has been grossly depleted by Russia, Iceland, Norway and Britain. (I recall, decades ago, coming across the then Soviet fishing fleet while flying over the region on a cold wintry day - there were easily 400 plus trawlers and at least 10 factory ships, all concentrated within a 15 mile radius - an incredible sight. As a boy I was fascinated by the ocean liners of the 1930's - 1950s. One of the factory ships looked oddly familiar so I descended and took some photos at close range. It turned out to be the former German liner "Bremen", once the Luxury queen of the Atlantic, now reduced to canning fish.)

Youve tried , just without much success.

Exactly right. However, I think we are smarter than that. We want to have cod and herring, Chilean Sea Bass, urchins, and WHALES available to us. Well, we are gonna have to learn conservation and read our Malthus.
I stated a fallback position where I will grudgingly accept whales for meat (depsite the fact that the Japanese culture has "devceloped this recent taste" rather than handed it down through generations). However, I will not accepot tbe present assertion that they are fishing in a sustainable fashion. A normal Hrdy Weinberg distribution "THROUGH 5GENERATIONS" shows that the present rate of Minke slaughter (0.10% of population and almost 0.5% of the southern Minke population per year). Will result in a genetic "bottleneck" in less tan 5 years (Minkes take more than a year for gestation and they only breed on 18 month estrus between gestation. They also nurse their pups for about one year SO the actual breeding rate is waaay lower than the "Take" and the genetic diversity is gonna be clipped by whaling from one country. THe hell of it is that IWC even admits this. I cant get it where all this expertise in Whale genetics and ecology has suddenly asserted itself on this chat line to even give them the time of day.Everybody is quick to jump on Watson and the brave souls who put their asses on the line to stop (or at least reduce the rate) of whaling each year.
IM NOT SURE THAT THE JAPANESE WHALING IS SUSTAINABLE AND HAVE PRESENTED SOME BASIC HW population (genetics) figures that suggest that IWC may be right from a purely speicies diversity standpoint. WHy is anyone even considering the validity of the Japanese whaling industry"s position??

I am sorely vexxed, in your effort to be "fair" to industry, youve failed to take into account that the JAPANESE may be lying out their asses..

Why? How is it a greater problem to swallow a Vitamin B pill every morning rather than, say, putting a cube of sugar into my coffee every morning? Or a cube of artificial sweetener, which is what I personally do? Would you consider the need for something sweet in your coffee an argument against coffee-drinking, too?

Robert can speak for himself, but I understood him to be asking about criteria for the morality of eating any kind of animals. Although it was the whaling thread that had sparked the question, I don't think the question itself was restricted to wild animals.

My opinion on wild animals consists of two points: (1) If you kill them painlessly, I prefer eating wild animals to eating factory-farmed animals, other things being equal. At least wild animals live reasonably decent lives before we kill them. (2) You need to make sure you don't end up extinguishing whole species. That's a problem about eating wild animals that you don't have with eating farmed animals.

Does the sugar or sweetener somehow balance your diet? counteract the effect of coffee on your diet? I'm not at all sure how that point is relevant.

Eating a balanced diet is possible (for most posters) without having to resort to using compounds/chemicals/whatever to create the required balance. A healthy balance can be achieved for most of us at A2K without relying on supplements.

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I hadn't contributed earlier to the thread as I can't think of any "moral" reason to not eat any species. There are cultural issues and environmental and "ick" factors, but morality? I don't think it comes into play with deciding what to eat.

I also don't think it's morally wrong to use vitamins. Some people need vitamins and supplements because of specific illness and aging processes. I do think that in many cases, in a generally young and healthy population, it's a lazy way out of balancing a diet.

If it's no more relevant, why do you accept an ethical prohibition against murdering humans but not against killing animals? Anyway, my point is that just because you can describe it as natural (which, as you note, you can for human death) doesn't mean it is ethical and you accept ethical prohibitions on "natural" events such as human murder.

I am not a vegetarian myself and accept the inevitability of killing to live but I can't just as easily dismiss the ethical arguments on the basis of it being my nature. I don't think it's morally wrong to eat meat, but I do think there is a strong case to be made that it is more noble not to.

This is not my criteria though, as it is complicated given the inexact definition of intelligence, a very intelligent animal being one of the tastiest (pig), and more than anything else that charisma is in the eye of the beholder.

I am not a vegetarian, dummy; I'm a hypocrite. I've openly said so in my very first post to this thread. I find the ethical arguments for vegetarianism convincing, but couldn't yet bring myself to acting on them.


You'll have to ask vegetarians who are militant and young. I can only speak about the author whose ethical arguments persuaded me. It's Peter Singer. Although a vegetarian, he is mild-mannered and elderly. More importantly, he does spend a good deal of his time and money ameliorating the misery of poor people. Therefore I see no reason to address your silly stereotype about typical vegetarians being young and militant.


I originally read them in Bjorn Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg is a source one shouldn't trust without checking first. But he cites a UN database that is published annually under the title World Population Prospects. If you go there and look at countries' birth rates, Lomborg's summary does check out.


Again, I feel no compulsion to defend whatever you mean by "typical vegetarian propaganda." If you have a particular charge of propaganda to push against me, by all means push it. But I'm not interested in collective stereotypes, and can't be bothered to defend vegetarians, or any collective, against them.


You just wait. The Ethanol bubble -- subsidy programs, fuel standards mandating the use of ethanol, and so forth -- is only a few years old. I bet the land bank you're talking about is much younger. Ethanol will get there, too. Just give it time.