I have a question for vegans.

[John the Gamer]

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Yeah, I prefer my salads live and kicking. Tastes a lot better when they struggle a bit...

Meat tends to be killed completely first, because raw meat tends to contain lots of delicious deseases.

True. Although humans must have a pretty low tolerance for disease considering most of the meat-eating animals on the planet eat theirs raw.

I've certainly fed my cat raw meat often enough without it having any obvious ill effects.

Also the few groups of people that eat any kind of insects often eat them alive...

(Being serious for a moment, cooked meat is a lot easier to digest. Disease isn't necessarily the primary reason humans don't eat raw meat.)

I think it's the fact that the human digestive system is more or less omnivoric that makes us more susceptible to food-born disease. Since the digestive system is rather long, meaning food takes a long time to get through. This is an advantage when you want to get more nutrients extracted, but every minute the food's in there increases the chance for disease to get out of the food and into your system.

Spoiler: 1:47-ish

 

[Comocat]

Meat is an incredibly inefficent way to feed a population. If I remember from ecology you generally transfer approximately 10% of energy between tropic levels. So if you go from Plant --> Cow --> Person, you are losing 99% of the energy the plant had made from the sun. If you consider the economic and environmental consequences of 9 billion people moving to a meat centered diet, suddenly the carrying capacity of the world is a lot smaller. So you can be vegetarian or vegan morally by justifying yourself with physics!

But plant life stores most of its energy in the form of cellulose sugars which cannot be broken down by the human consumption anyway. Cows and other farm animals have specialized digestive tracks and symbiotic bacteria which allow them to convert the energy in plants into meat which is then easily consumable by humans.

I'm not sure what the precise ratio is, but by switching to eating only plants, I doubt you would see a significant energy intake. I would even surmise that you would see a decrease in energy intake. When you take into account the fact that other necessary components for a healthy body (such as protein) are not as readily available in plant life, you see that the energy conservation argument doesn't really hold water. Also, it is more difficult to be a vegan than to subsist on a diet which includes meat.

I'm not saying all meat is bad, just that meat is an inefficient way to get energy. For example to make a 100 J of energy in a steak would involve the input of 10,000 J of energy from plants. So feeding cows X kJ of corn is less efficient than using that corn to feed people.

In your argument you also neglect the energy costs of raising meat products, which are considerably higher than growing plants. For example on a similar land size you can get much more productivity out of plants than you can cattle.

Here are a number of links that might be of interest

http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/trophic.htm
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/321foodenergy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency

 

[bojackx]

Exactly what can't vegans eat again?

Animal products like meat, jelly, ice cream, leather, glue, chocolate. The good stuff.

Mmm... yummy leather and glue...

OT: I don't really get it either. I think it's just because it's not as easy to make a statement about how cruel it is whilst you eat eggs and drink milk. It's loses a lot of its punch if you have to explain that it's okay because these animals were treated real nice.

 

[CrystalShadow]

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Yeah, I prefer my salads live and kicking. Tastes a lot better when they struggle a bit...

Meat tends to be killed completely first, because raw meat tends to contain lots of delicious deseases.

True. Although humans must have a pretty low tolerance for disease considering most of the meat-eating animals on the planet eat theirs raw.

I've certainly fed my cat raw meat often enough without it having any obvious ill effects.

Also the few groups of people that eat any kind of insects often eat them alive...

(Being serious for a moment, cooked meat is a lot easier to digest. Disease isn't necessarily the primary reason humans don't eat raw meat.)

I think it's the fact that the human digestive system is more or less omnivoric that makes us more susceptible to food-born disease. Since the digestive system is rather long, meaning food takes a long time to get through. This is an advantage when you want to get more nutrients extracted, but every minute the food's in there increases the chance for disease to get out of the food and into your system.

Hmm.
That's a very interesting point. I haven't really looked into digestion that thoroughly. Still, always good to learn new things.

In any event, I know from practical experience that in certain areas water is as much if not more of a risk than meat.
You don't eat salads if you visit such an area, because the water it's been washed in is probably not exactly safe...

So... No uncooked meals in general there. Nor untreated water. (I was given a lot of soft drinks on the assumption those were safer than water, but it turns out those aren't always what they seem, and some may have also been made with untreated water...)

Bacteria. Yay!

 

[peruvianskys]

I can understand not using animal products for religious, environmental and cruelty reasons. However the one thing I don't get is this: What if you kept chickens and treated them right, fed them and made them free range etc. Could you then collect, and use the eggs knowing that you had not abused the chickens into laying them?

If you had animals, and treated them without abuse or hormones could you then harvest their products? Milk for example comes naturally to cows.

I am not looking to flame or troll, so please don't any of you.

I think your question is a good one, and it points to the fact that "animal rights" is a really misused term. Most people, when they talk about animal rights, are really referring to animal welfare, showing interest in making animals suffer less or freeing them from dangerous or painful situations. I am a member of the minority who actually supports a priori rights for animals; rights like the right to life, the right to self-ownership, and the right to freedom of desire*. I believe that all sentient beings, including both human and non-human animals, should never be bought, sold, owned, or exploited. So while taking eggs from a kindly-treated chicken would be really low on my list of things to complain about, I would still think that conceptually it was a violation of their rights; just like it would be wrong to harvest the organs of a disabled person, even if it caused them no harm and they didn't understand what was going on, it would be wrong to take the eggs of a chicken solely because the chicken does not have the ability to consent to the eggs being taken (because it's a goddamn chicken).

So if a vegan wanted to eat the eggs from his or her own personal chicken, and only that chicken, after ensuring that it was not harmed in any way, I wouldn't take the energy to complain, but I'd still be against it just for consistency reasons.




*Obviously the desires of a chicken start and end at "sitting around and not dying." When I say that I support the right of a chicken to pursue its desires, I want to make it clear that I am not pretending the chicken has particular abstract desires like human beings do.

 

[Tom Roberts]

Meat is an incredibly inefficent way to feed a population. If I remember from ecology you generally transfer approximately 10% of energy between tropic levels. So if you go from Plant --> Cow --> Person, you are losing 99% of the energy the plant had made from the sun. If you consider the economic and environmental consequences of 9 billion people moving to a meat centered diet, suddenly the carrying capacity of the world is a lot smaller. So you can be vegetarian or vegan morally by justifying yourself with physics!

But plant life stores most of its energy in the form of cellulose sugars which cannot be broken down by the human consumption anyway. Cows and other farm animals have specialized digestive tracks and symbiotic bacteria which allow them to convert the energy in plants into meat which is then easily consumable by humans.

I'm not sure what the precise ratio is, but by switching to eating only plants, I doubt you would see a significant energy intake. I would even surmise that you would see a decrease in energy intake. When you take into account the fact that other necessary components for a healthy body (such as protein) are not as readily available in plant life, you see that the energy conservation argument doesn't really hold water. Also, it is more difficult to be a vegan than to subsist on a diet which includes meat.

I'm not saying all meat is bad, just that meat is an inefficient way to get energy. For example to make a 100 J of energy in a steak would involve the input of 10,000 J of energy from plants. So feeding cows X kJ of corn is less efficient than using that corn to feed people.

In your argument you also neglect the energy costs of raising meat products, which are considerably higher than growing plants. For example on a similar land size you can get much more productivity out of plants than you can cattle.

While that is partially true of corn, is assumes that the land could grow corn as easily as say grass. If you feed 10 KJ of Grass to cows they thrive, 10 KJ of grass fed to people is...less useful from a not-starving standpoint. Also your math is off 10 KJ of Plant would make 1 KJ of Cow, assuming the above 10% rule. 100 J of Cow would come from 10 KJ of Sunlight.

Lastly it assumes that cows would extract the same amount of energy from corn that people would. This strikes me as a bizarre premise.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Besides, it's about time for another ice age, I'm getting fed up with this sunshine/rain binarity of it all.

Wait what

We're moving out of ice age

What? You're saying it's getting warmer because we're getting out of an ice age? Damn, and here I was firmly believing we humans had an impact.

OK, then. Skip the ice age.

O, Sun, burn some sense into us. Make it hurt.

 

[John the Gamer]

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I think it's the fact that the human digestive system is more or less omnivoric that makes us more susceptible to food-born disease. Since the digestive system is rather long, meaning food takes a long time to get through. This is an advantage when you want to get more nutrients extracted, but every minute the food's in there increases the chance for disease to get out of the food and into your system.

Hmm.
That's a very interesting point. I haven't really looked into digestion that thoroughly. Still, always good to learn new things.

In any event, I know from practical experience that in certain areas water is as much if not more of a risk than meat.
You don't eat salads if you visit such an area, because the water it's been washed in is probably not exactly safe...

So... No uncooked meals in general there. Nor untreated water. (I was given a lot of soft drinks on the assumption those were safer than water, but it turns out those aren't always what they seem, and some may have also been made with untreated water...)

Bacteria. Yay!

Yeah. Cholera probably killed a multitude of millions of people. (Cholera = aggressive diarrhea & vomiting, death from dehydration within ~2 days if lost moisture is not replentished) Mostly because it's a waterborn disease that tends to get into the village water supply when, say, the clothes of a contaminated person are washed there.

There's no cure for cholera btw. Only ways to survive it are: (1)not contracting it (2)having good medical services who know what they're doing and manage to keep you alive whilst it passes through your system.

I found the following comic/manga surprisingly informative and mostly accurate about some medical stuff.

Spoiler

http://readonline.egscans.com/Jin/Chapter_009

 

[Innegativeion]

Personally, I think veganism is hypocritical, considering how many day to day products uses resources from animals.

Computers, vehicle tires, fabric softeners etc. It would be pretty damn difficult to live a modern life that doesn't include using something made with animal parts.

Very difficult, but still hypocritical.

This informative chart may help!

As far as I can see, the only way to be truly vegan is to become some kind of nudist cave-dwelling vagrant, eating only berries and roots and generally avoiding all contact with the civilised world.

Saving this image. I've always thought veganism to be rather silly, since it has no great health benefit, and farmed animals haven't NEARLY the emotional complexity most vegans anthropomorphically impose upon them, that is necessary to understand slavery, or the difference between the farm and the wild. Not to mention if they're not being raised on a farm for human's dinner, they're being raised in the wild for a wolf's dinner.

I've also always known that most vegans aren't really free of animal products,

but I've never been arsed enough to look up specifics.

 

[Ashadowpie]

no one ever touches the issue with " i dont eat meat ever, except fish" ...dude, last time i checked Fish are ANIMALS! they have exactly the same organs We do and they can feel pain! is it cuz they're dumb? what makes it okay to kill and eat fish? is it because they dont scream? seriously, its okay to kill an animal just because it doesnt scream? how interesting humans are. i wonder if this means that it would be fine to kill a human that was unable to talk/scream? wow that got dark.


im a normal eater, the only personal rule i have is i refuse to eat cute animals. duck,rabbit,baby cow,lamb,deer,quail. thats all i can think of at the moment. i do buy free range organic eggs though and i also buy eco friendly cleaning products

 

[FulfilledDeer]

Here's how it makes sense to me: I don't need to kill animals to live, so if I do it's only for pleasure. How egotistical and cruel to believe that their life is worth less than my slight discomfort.

Now if I can't live without killing them for whatever reason, down they go and I'm not going to feel bad. But that's not the world most of us live in right now. And touting that infographic makes you seem a brat that doesn't quite get the point. Ignoring the fact that it's waay misleading - some of those products don't use the animal anymore, and you can usually find substitutes (when's the last time you actually played with catgut strings?) - pointing out that a vegan may be using some animal products doesn't somehow invalidate their reasoning. That's like using hiding a tiny piece of chicken in something served to a vegan and then expecting them to just go "well, I guess I'm no longer a vegan. Better go kill some more chickens - lead the way". Clearly they're against those uses too.

 

[thiosk]

Personally, I think veganism is hypocritical, considering how many day to day products uses resources from animals.

Computers, vehicle tires, fabric softeners etc. It would be pretty damn difficult to live a modern life that doesn't include using something made with animal parts.

Very difficult, but still hypocritical.

This informative chart may help!

As far as I can see, the only way to be truly vegan is to become some kind of nudist cave-dwelling vagrant, eating only berries and roots and generally avoiding all contact with the civilised world.

Theres an old chestnut involving 'how great the indians were because they used "every part of the buffalo"'

We don't just use every part these days. We use every iota

I also like to occasionally remind people that there is no such thing as a natural chicken or cow. These animals were created by selective breeding; in essence, they are genetically engineered constructs designed over thousands of years to suit our specific needs.

 

[FulfilledDeer]

Personally, I think veganism is hypocritical, considering how many day to day products uses resources from animals.

Computers, vehicle tires, fabric softeners etc. It would be pretty damn difficult to live a modern life that doesn't include using something made with animal parts.

Very difficult, but still hypocritical.

This informative chart may help!

As far as I can see, the only way to be truly vegan is to become some kind of nudist cave-dwelling vagrant, eating only berries and roots and generally avoiding all contact with the civilised world.

Theres an old chestnut involving 'how great the indians were because they used "every part of the buffalo"'

We don't just use every part these days. We use every iota

Which I'm sure makes a big difference to the cow.

 

[flarty]

Milk for example comes naturally to cows.

I heard someone tried milking a cow with horns once.....

Sources say the horned cows milk didn't cum ... sorry ... come, all that naturally.

I heard he had to brush his teeth after trying.

 

[Zealous]

I can understand not using animal products for religious, environmental and cruelty reasons. However the one thing I don't get is this: What if you kept chickens and treated them right, fed them and made them free range etc. Could you then collect, and use the eggs knowing that you had not abused the chickens into laying them?

If you had animals, and treated them without abuse or hormones could you then harvest their products? Milk for example comes naturally to cows.

I am not looking to flame or troll, so please don't any of you.

Vegetarian here.

Basically what you're asking is would someone who objects to animal cruelty also object to having a chicken's eggs taken from her and sold by someone else?

Interesting. Never really though of it that way before. I don't really have an answer for you...

Although I still eat eggs and dairy products (for health reasons) and use various animal products (for convenience, they're everywhere), so I'm not really in a position to answer this question anyway.

 

[FulfilledDeer]

I can understand not using animal products for religious, environmental and cruelty reasons. However the one thing I don't get is this: What if you kept chickens and treated them right, fed them and made them free range etc. Could you then collect, and use the eggs knowing that you had not abused the chickens into laying them?

If you had animals, and treated them without abuse or hormones could you then harvest their products? Milk for example comes naturally to cows.

I am not looking to flame or troll, so please don't any of you.

Vegetarian here.

Basically what you're asking is would someone who objects to animal cruelty also object to having a chicken's eggs taken from her and sold by someone else?

Interesting. Never really though of it that way before. I don't really have an answer for you...

Although I still eat eggs and dairy products (for health reasons) and use various animal products (for convenience, they're everywhere), so I'm not really in a position to answer this question anyway.

Yeah, back to the point - I sort of forgot this was the question. This is definitely the point that separates vegans from vegetarians. I think the answer for vegetarians and probably a lot of vegans is yes, that would be fine. There are a subset who will still object on the grounds of using an animal, but I think that most serious objections are due to treatment (i.e. just because there's no a priori need to be cruel to get these products, doesn't mean that's the way we operate right now).

Also, as a side point, I think vegans tend to be a little grossed out by some of the animal products after a while. I love me some cheese, but milk is kinda gross when you think about it.

 

[Jedi-Hunter4]

Here's how it makes sense to me: I don't need to kill animals to live, so if I do it's only for pleasure. How egotistical and cruel to believe that their life is worth less than my slight discomfort.

Your really making a huge leap here. I'm a meat eater, I see 0 shame in it any more than I have shame about breathing. I don't take any pleasure in the act of killing anything.

But the simple fact is you can not gain anything with out first taking it from something else. Life is inherently an uncaring, unbalanced process and from certain perspectives unfair. Where you are sitting right now at your computer would have once been other animals habitat and feeding grounds, but the animals and plants have been driven off or killed, the ground leveled and poisoned so plants don't grow through the foundations. By the exact same definition where you live has killed animals, by this same counter-reality logic you should have looked for an occupied cave.

The extent of the computer you are reading this on stretches even further. Electricity generation and the scale it needs to be on is unimaginable for a single individual to accurately visualize. 100's of miles of cabling connecting you with the station that needs to be sourced and then laid. Gigantic energy plants effecting the area for miles around. Components within your computer often include relatively rare minerals often sourced from African mines in countries that have 0 laws protecting animal welfare or habitat.

So don't sit there on a high horse lauding over the rest of us merely following nature's natural route. If you don't eat meat on "moral" grounds, they are that you don't want to trade the beinfits of a balanced diet including meat, as we have evolved to do, for animal lives. But don't pretend almost every single good thing you have as a modern conveinece is not at the detriment of another animals. It's literally the circle of life.

By this bizarre logic applied to a reality where life does not care or recognize ethics of any form, the human race would of approached wolves and asked politely if they could share their land, shortly to die moments later. Or if following the logic that we should merely take what is needed simply to survive we should of stopped development as a species at tipi's, never progressed through the industrial revolution, let alone entered the electronic age.

I mean do you know just how many animals are killed due to the use of motor vehicles. So this is my question to you we could technically survive without them, the world would take a step back, industry would slow, the world would change forever but we could do it. SO should we abandon the use of ALL motor vehicles to save animal lives. By your logic is it not egotistical to think the advantages of speedy convenient travel are worth more than the lives of animals.

Here are some figure's I found on a site to put this in perspective "Every year our nation's experimenters kill 100 million lab animals, hunters kill 200 million "game" animals, and motorists kill nearly 400 million road animals. Only America's meat-eaters take a larger toll than its motorists." So why are vegetarians driving car's if it's immoral to kill animals for meat, its not an accident that these animals die due to road use, we KNOW it will happen and we accept this and trade their lives for the advantages.

I have a motorcycle as my primary form of transport, where the road kill numbers are exponentially lower, should I be lauding it over car users like vegetarians do attempt to over meat eaters?

 

[ischmalud]

Personally, I think veganism is hypocritical, considering how many day to day products uses resources from animals.

Computers, vehicle tires, fabric softeners etc. It would be pretty damn difficult to live a modern life that doesn't include using something made with animal parts.

Very difficult, but still hypocritical.

This informative chart may help!

As far as I can see, the only way to be truly vegan is to become some kind of nudist cave-dwelling vagrant, eating only berries and roots and generally avoiding all contact with the civilised world.

dood had to steal that chart of u and put it on my FB site since it rocks!

 

[FulfilledDeer]

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Whoa there, a little touchy, aren't we? And by "we" I specifically mean you. In case that wasn't clear. I didn't say you take pleasure in killing things, I said you kill things solely to take pleasure. And that's where the rest of your screed falls apart: my issue is when you take life with the sole benefit of pleasure. Electricity, computers, planes, trains, and automobiles are not simply pleasure items. As you pointed out, there would be huge consequences if we stopped using them. Not so with eating meat - all that happens is you miss out on some amount of pleasure.

Note too, I don't say that if you're being attack by....a cow, you shouldn't kill that cow. Or if you need to eat/kill an animal - for whatever reason - that you shouldn't do that. In fact, I specifically stated you should. Your characterization of my position as consistent with "Whelp, might as well go ask wolves to eat me" is ludicrous as well as a straw man.

So, to be abundantly clear, my position is that pleasure is not equal to something else's life. If there's any more benefit to consider in that equation, then things are not so simple. But with food, for a lot of the population, that holds.

 

[Loonyyy]

Exactly what can't vegans eat again?

Animal products like meat, jelly, ice cream, leather, glue, chocolate. The good stuff.

]

Who eats leather? O-o

OT: I am a bit of a carnivore but in my pursuit of health I've found myself eating meat for protein and not much else.

I heard that Roman soldiers sometimes ate their shoes if supplies were low. Being leather sandals, they apparently were like hard jerky.

Having never eaten jerky, or my shoes, I can't attest to it. I can't remember where I read it either. Balls.