You could come up with plenty of analogies. Self defense is an easy first place to look. You can hold the value the health and wellbeing of all other people as equal to your own right up until the point that they directly threaten you with fatal harm.

For myself I’m content in asserting that animals are not human and there’s no reason to afford them the same rights as humans. If I assume that I have the same faculties for reason but need to come to a conclusion behind a veil of ignorance, I would still be ok with a world in which people eat some meat.

In fact I was making a case for considering animal welfare as a meat eater.

You say that people can easily value animals lives less than their tastebuds, but still want to minimize suffering (which is wrong, because minimizing suffering would mean not killing anyone).

Then you make the case that self defense could be a similar example of taking well-being into consideration while still causing fatal harm.

I make the point that self defense isn’t remotely like the act of killing animals for food, and you said I’m building a strawman. What exactly is being lost in translation?

I can find no legitimate evidence that this is even a thing. It seems a mixture of peta propaganda about various other animals but not lambs. I can't find a single example of "forced to drink it's own urine ... [for iron]".

raising an animal for meat isn't pretty but it's never in fact what this comment alleges.

You’re right. I meant to type veal. Here you go!

so lambs and calves are not the same, and drinking urine is not a thing. it's possible you might be getting overly upset about stuff you don't completely understand.

for a more balanced and professional take on veal and eating meat: https://youtu.be/bMGIAZDqYYs

I understand this topic perfectly well, which is exactly why I don’t support the insanity that is animal agriculture.

clearly you do not. you watch a few videos of "cute" animals being mistreated by the worst and poorest industrial farms and think you know what goes on? you don't even know a lamb from a calf or veal from a chop.

> I don’t support the insanity that is animal agriculture

there is a wide range between ethical and despicable. the average is much closer to ethical end of that range - because it is actually more profitable to care for your crop, before eating it.

how many animals (or people) die indirectly due to farming vegetables? ever think of that? do you support the insanity of any kind of farming?

you're human. that makes you, inescapably, culpable for the destruction of nature, same as pretty much every other human. to try to paint yourself as better because you pretend you don't destroy your favorite kinds of nature makes you a hypocrite.

and very poorly informed.

I made this offer elsewhere in the thread: if you wanna discuss this further then email me and we can find time to video chat. I’m not about to spend my time patiently explaining why you’re argument is nonsensical, but if you want to chat then I’m down.

- you post facts that aren't true. your original post contained 100% fiction.

- you defend them with a video that doesn't actually back you up.

- you still haven't defended that any animal production, veal, not even foie gras, has any aspect of an animal being forced to drink urine, let alone due to anemia. that's just untrue.

> "same flawed reasoning that every. single. carnist."

- it's not flawed to use logic and facts vs. the emotional appeal, such as the video you posted.

- perhaps the reason every. single. meat-loving. animal-loving. person. uses the same arguments is because they are right and are more logical and moral than your propagandized appeals (that are not really even arguments).

you are allowed to believe anything you want to - that's your prerogative. but you need to stop hallucinating that you sane and everybody else is "insane" and wrong.

you are the one making terrible attempts at arguments and sounding both quite bitter and agitated.

> we can find time to video chat.

I'll zoom you the next time it's time to kill and pluck one of the chickens. that'll definitely change your mind. <- see that's how you sound.

https://calendly.com/veganism-chat/30min

I'd argue the following:

Imagine that tomorrow a new species pops out, they are technologically superior to humans in every way - they are generally more capable, and they completely dominate any attempt at rebellion we put up.

Afterwards - they offer us a choice between two options:

Option 1: They eliminate us entirely. We compete with resources with them, and they don't like it. They will hunt us down with not with malice - but something much worse: complete apathy. They will kill us on sight, destroy our environment, mindlessly slaughter us as they form the planet in the shape of their liking.

Option 2: They happen to find us quite tasty. They will still do the above, but they will also set aside preserves where they keep a large number of us fit and fed and generally allow us to do as we please. We can have children, hold ceremonies and holidays, continue to exist and live. The downside? Every now and then they will harvest a fair number of us to eat - because they find us quite tasty.

Which option would you take?

Because frankly - I might well choose options number 2.

Further - I'd suggest quite strongly that this is the set of options humans have currently given to basically every large animal that our habitat overlaps with (and that's most of them). We are rapidly exterminating basically every species that competes for resources with us.

If we stop eating cows - there aren't going to be many cows left. Full stop. Ex: Between the 1500s and the late 1800s, we dropped the total number of wild bison in the US from >30million to ~400. 4 fucking hundred. Today we're "preserving" them, so the number is back to around 500,000. Of those 500,000 - only about 11,000 are "wild" in any sense of the word, and most exist in national parks.

It also ignores that, in your parallel, we are the aliens. The aliens could make an option 3:: don't eat humans. And all they lose is something they find tasty.

I eat meat. I also go out of my way to pay more for meat that's been raised in conditions that aren't the bare minimum we can do.

Now let's talk more seriously about this part:

>It also ignores that, in your parallel, we are the aliens. The aliens could make an option 3:: don't eat humans. And all they lose is something they find tasty.

Because honestly - I think you're taking a complete cop out here, and I think you basically stuck your fingers in your ears and went "nah nah nah nah" when reading the two options.

We aren't just raising those animals because they're tasty, and if we stopped they could go back to live in never-never land and be happy and healthy and independent.

We're allocating resources to their care because it's an efficient way to use those resources compared to the benefit we derive from those animals.

When we don't raise animals like this - historically, in EVERY fucking case since we left the hunter-gatherer stage, we destroy their habitat and repurpose it for something else - usually something that makes it inhospitable to those animals. We burn it down to clear it for crops. We pour concrete over it to make our homes. We hunt those animals not because we might eat them, but because they might harm us inadvertently, or bring disease into our communities, or harm our crops.

This is not a fairly tale - resource allocation is a real thing. If we don't allocate resources to raising livestock - we sure as fuck aren't going to leave those resources lying there for those same animals living outside captivity. We're going to allocate them to something else.

Basically - we're competing with those animals, and livestock is a form of mutualism that benefits both sides (arguably - us far more than the animals, but mutualism is hardly ever equal). We make sure they get food, water, shelter, space. We use their output - whether that's their labor, their hide, their meat, their milk, etc.

Side note - we do the same fucking thing with other humans, by the way. We just structure that mutualism in a different form.

I engaged at your request, and this is the best you can do... run away while claiming you're correct?

Hardly a compelling response. Again - my firm belief is that if we weren't raising them as livestock - many of them would be borderline extinct. So I've defined welfare as "they are alive, and here, and my children can interact with them." Hopefully - we can continue to move those livestock into better conditions as we become more wealthy as a society.

You're defining it as "how dare we make something bleed". I think your definition is childish.

Is that a horrible deal? Not even all humans think so. You might hear, for example, a soldier say that his job is to die for his country. Mind you, he doesn't sign up to die as a certainty -- it's probabilistic, and there is a moral difference there. But plenty have said, at the end of the day, that their death is their job. And been okay with that.

Now, humans, when they agree to die, like to die for big, noble causes. Something bigger than themselves. Religion! Politics! Or even something as small as a family. It has sometimes seemed tragic to me to consider the breeding animal: she will have generation after generation of children, and they will all die young. This would indeed be an unbearable situation for a human -- but for an animal? They don't crave the sort of impact on history that humans do. They don't think about the future. They don't think about death. They are creatures of the present and of comfort. So it seems to me that swapping a human in for a cow or a rabbit or a chicken in a "What would you die for?" question is unrealistically anthropomorphic. The attachment animals have for their young is not the same as it is for humans -- it's not even the same from animal to animal. Crows are one way, chimpanzees another; cows one way, fish another. You have to get to know the the animal to know.

To care for a human's well-being does mean you guarantee the human has a legacy, a place in history -- even if it is as small as guaranteeing their children have children. To care for a cow's... I'm really not convinced cows care about that. Could you ask a cow, "Would you rather have a stressful life in the wild, or a peaceful life on a ranch, given that the latter might be shorter?" I don't think a cow could even process that question. I think it wants to live comfortably today; I'm not convinced it has any concept of tomorrow at all.

But it could live longer?

It could, but someone has to pay for it. The cow on its own effort, paying its own way in the wild, lives a short and hard life. And the cow at a ranch is still paying its own way -- just in the form of meat -- and it gets a lot for it, between temperature controlled environments and food and treats and medical care. The cow as a pet, could live in that same human supported environment for a long time, and perhaps pays its way in love. Or as a religious symbol or something. That does happen. But there are a limited number of such jobs. Humans only need so many pet cows.

So does every cow deserve to be a pet?

I think this is really the crux of the philosophical difference: do you have to do everything for others that you can? I myself think that to answer that question in the affirmative is naive and hellish -- that questions of obligation and love and compassion are a lot more complex than that. But that is beyond the scope of this comment. But in a nutshell -- I think humans giving a cow a charmed 20 year life is a tremendous gift. I also think humans giving a cow a charmed two year life is a tremendous gift. I don't think the possibility of the first negates the goodness of the second.

I, myself, think there is absolutely nothing wrong with cows on ranches living lives of relative happiness and abundance, and in the end paying their way in meat. I think that's fair. I think the cows are happy. I think they're certainly better off than if the humans weren't involved. I think it's completely obvious that the ranchers care for them, perhaps even love them, and I see nothing wrong or contradictory about the entire situation.

And to be terribly blunt -- I think being horrified at the situation has much more to do with the human than it does with the cow. Vegans have a reputation as obnoxiously performatively moral. Trying too hard to look better than others, the perspective having more to do with self-interest than with compassion. I don't know if that's true in every case, but I do know that people who are closest to actual barnyard animals don't have a problem with the situation. I can relate. I am a city girl, and I used to worry about whether slaughtering chickens was fair to them -- until I met one. At which point I immediately said, "Oh, I get it -- you're food." What am I saying? I think veganism motivated by compassion for animals would naturally spring from spending time with animals. And maybe in some cases it does. But in my experience, it's the opposite: people who spend time around animals usually have my reaction. Veganism seems to come, on a population level, from being far away from animals and narcississtically concerned with your own sin and culpability. I think, as a rule, it is about the human, not about the animal.

Maybe not everyone will feel that way. But I do think a lot of the vegan litany of concerns about animal cruelty fade pretty hard when you talk to a farmer about why things are that way. And I do think a lot of the issues turn on an anthropormiphism that isn't realistic, and that goes away when you observe the animals going through their lives. Does that cover all of the issues and differences? Probably not, but I think it covers the most driving ones.

It goes the other way, too. People who are close to animal death -- either because they raise animals or because they hunt them -- even if they are comfortable with eating meat, tend to regard that animal life and sacrifice as a sacred thing. City folks don't care one way or another about throwing out meat, whereas country folks might opine, "it is a sin to waste".

I guess what I'm trying to say with that is that there's more than one way of expressing the sentiment that life is sacred.

A lot of the vegan objection to farm life is that farms are cruel. And to be sure, some are. I think you could find common cause with a lot of non-vegans, if you wanted to improve conditions either through law or education or certification or some other means (and indeed, skipping all of that and going straight to not-very-effective self denial is part of what makes it look silly and human-centric to me). But I also think this is beside the issue, as farms are not necessarily cruel, and some very plainly aren't cruel at all. Like, I buy my beef from this place (https://www.flyingbbar.com/), and I've met the cows. They're happy. I've talked to the ranchers. They clearly care. I don't think it is fair to say that those who eat meat necessarily don't regard animal welfare -- I think it is just that they see it and express it differently than you do. To me, well-cared-for farm animals are a lovely thing, I find the fact that they are given life to be a blessing and a goodness in the world, and I don't find the death in the bargain to be unfair or cruel -- on the contrary, I think an animal's contributing to human thriving is a much nobler meaning in life than almost any animal could hope for. To me, the perspective that says it is better not to live than to live and die seems very hollow, and the perspective that says all human energy is obligated to go into making animals pets seems backwards and devoid of any sense of proportion. I think we have better things to do, and that animals helping us do those things is ennobling for everyone.

Anyway. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure it does. But perhaps that helps provide some perspective.

I’d also like to extend the opportunity to talk to you about everything you said. I believe so, so, so deeply that you are incredibly wrong about most of the things you said. My email is in my profile if you’d like to set up time to chat, but other than that all I can do is suggest those books to you.

No one will be able to challenge your beliefs for you. Only you can. Please, for the animals at least, considering challenging the thoughts you laid out in your comment.

The truth is that our perspectives are very different, at some really deep levels. I don't intent to change your mind, only to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible: I absolutely think compassion for animals is compatible with raising them to eat.

I spent decades eating animals and claiming that I loved them. You are not exposing me to new ideas. I was a carnist for decades, just like you are now. I thought the same things you did for a long time, but I slowly realized how silly and hypocritical I was being. Those books I mentioned are great introductions to the topic. The onus is on you to expose yourself to new ideas, just like I did before becoming vegan. If you choose to ignore the resources that folks point you to, that's on you. Good luck, and please consider leaving animals off the menu. For their sake.

>I spent decades eating animals and claiming that I loved them. You are not exposing me to new ideas.

I don't mean that eating meat is a new idea. I was specific, as a longer quote will reveal: "... to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible: I absolutely think compassion for animals is compatible with raising them to eat." It was in response to this:

> When meat is being served, you know animal welfare is not being considered. One cannot claim to value the welfare of a being before killing it prematurely and unnecessarily. That is a simple fact.

I think I've demonstrated pretty well that your simple fact is wrong, and there's a lot of complexity that allows for meat and animal welfare to exist together. You don't -- for very convincing reasons that are apparently only available to private followers of your philosophy via video chat. ;)

I suppose that means I've failed to get you to see my point of view -- but ah well. To tell the truth, I didn't actually think I would succeed at that part, because as I've said a bunch of times, I don't think this position proceeds from reason -- I think it proceeds from emotion, and some unhealthy emotions at that. To put all the cards on the table, the quote I was initially responding to is the sort of statement that I find aggressive and morally bullying. I'm writing to remove the power from it, to articulate a good answer for people who have trouble doing that, and to demonstrate that standing up to it isn't scary -- quite the contrary, that you can't back it up because it's silly in the first place. I would like to have been able to help you, but my main motivation is actually to prevent you from hurting others.

To Dove: if it's unnecessary to eat the animals, then their slaughter is cruel. See the movie Dominion to see why even "full & happy life" may may nothing compared to their final days.

People did once say such things, but they were wrong: dehumanizing humans is a mistake. But anthropomorphosizing animals is also a mistake! That people were wrong to once say humans were subhuman has nothing to do with the sense of applying the sentiment to cows. Of course they're subhuman. They're cows!

The movie you recommend sounds like a documentary about the ways people are horrible to animals. I agree people are horrible to animals sometimes, and would cheerfully make common cause with you about stopping that. At the same time, this thread began with a discussion of slaughterhouses designed along Temple Grandon's principles - and I don't think there's anything wrong with those at all. Which is to say, it's done wrong sometimes; it's also done right.

We have animal cruelty laws; sometimes they're insufficient or broken, I'm sure. That's awful. But to turn around and say we should therefore nuke the industry and never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response. Like I said - I know where my cows are raised, and I know where they die, too, and I think it's fine. And while I know there are abuses, I also think the industry as a whole does a lot of good, and am in no way prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It seems to me that the resources recommended by you and by the sister post here turn on horror at death and suffering, and recoiling from it personally. I think some of this is justified -- there are real abuses -- and some of it is simple shock. An attempt to reject and opt out of the principle that living things consume life.

Anything worth doing involves horror and hard things. Running a business involves being willing to fire as well as to hire. Running a forum means being willing to set rules and enforce them -- and creating a community in accordance with your vision means being willing to force people out or down who detract from that. A surprising amount of medicine involves hurting people in the process of healing them--an EMT might tell you that saving people's lives often involves wrestling them, because what you're doing hurts and they'll fight you. Writ large, I once heard it said that going to war requires accepting the fact that the war will cost lives -- the lives of soldiers, it's easy to accept; the lives of innocents caught in the war zone, that's the tough one. It is a statistical certainty that some children will be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and if you want go to war, you need to believe ahead of time that what you're fighting for is worth it, because it's a reality you will encounter on the battlefield.

There are two reactions to this.

To recoil from the horror of war by saying no war is ever worth it.

Or to look at the things war accomplishes and say that they mean that much.

I'm firmly in the second camp. I think to always refuse to fight guarantees a perpetual tyranny of evil, and I think that is worth resisting -- potentially at a very high and horrible cost. And I think, in more specific cases, sometimes the independence and self-determination of a people is a bright and valuable thing that absolutely can be worth war.

Does this state of affairs mean that these horrors are okay? It absolutely does not. The medic must be as kind and compassionate to his patients as he can. The solder must check and double check and triple check his intelligence, and keep his moral sense about him on the ground, and is compelled to refuse orders that are clearly wrong. The parent must never excessively punish the child. If firing workers is necessary for the running of a business, it is nonetheless the responsibility of the boss to navigate that situation with compassion and grace.

But never lose sight of the bigger picture.

Merely recoiling from horror makes you lose track of things that are worth it. What is needed is not someone who is so horrified at terrible things that he will never do them, and not someone so callous as to never mind doing them, but someone who can feel the horror of the cost and the joy of the payoff and hold it all at once and navigate the situation with both compassion and without compromising the vision of the bigger picture. In fact, what is needed is precisely what the parent post thought impossible: someone who can kill and love the same being, at the same moment. Such a person can be both compassionate, and achieve, and to be such a person is the only way to achieve compassionately.

Anyway. It is absolutely true that animal death -- however nicely done -- is a horror. The intuition behind that goes back centuries, cross-culturally. Do you know, in the ancient world, when they sacrificed animals to the gods, they would generally still eat the animal? The sacrifice wasn't the meat, it was the life -- the sense that life is sacred and belongs to something beyond us is ancient. And if we, in our materialist world, don't invoke the gods -- even those closest to animal slaughter feel the sacredness of the animal's life, and the sense that something precious is lost. Sure. It's terrible that animals die.

I think, in writing this, I've failed to make an appeal for what the tremendous upside is, that justifies that.

It is true, that all life costs life. Veganism doesn't excuse you from this. Crops wipe out entire ecosystems -- birds and mice and whatnot can't live alongside corn fields the way they can at a ranch. Farmers are compelled to shoot feral hogs to protect crops, or to wipe out insects of one sort or another. Even the notional monk who eats from his own, extremely gently nourished vegetable garden, has to keep the rabbits and the potato-bugs away, and if nothing else, takes food they want. And of course, the sort of nutritionally complete diet you need can't be accomplished that way -- shipping in exotic foods from far away! Emissions! Nothing is blameless. (And along this metric, I'm a pretty big fan of regenerative ranching; I think it does quite well.)

But why meat? Couldn't that animal death be somehow less, or more removed or... something? What's the big up side?

I would say, "human thriving". People like meat. They thrive on it! Oh, I know you could get in a big paper fight about optimal human nutrition, but let's ride past that and talk about some facts on the ground.

Let me start with a case where I think it's pretty likely you'll agree with me: alcohol. The manufacture of alcohol necessarily involves the slaughter of yeast. And yet, when I weigh the romantic dinners over wine, the beers with friends watching a game, the cocktails and parties and Christmas wassail against all the generations of the lives of yeasts, the scale tips so hard it's like they're not there.

I submit to you that meat is not dissimilar.

We're coming up on Thanksgiving. Since antiquity, people have celebrated with big feasts centered on meat. If I look at all the Thanksgiving dinners about to happen, and all the turkeys' lives it costs, again, I find the scale tips so hard as to make the question silly. These feasts are precious.

The discarding of meat is the discarding of burgers and fries with friends. Of crispy bacon and pancakes. Of backyard barbeque. Can you do these things without meat? I think that's like suggesting you can party without booze. You can.... but it's not the same. Perhaps you see hedonism here. Me, I see joy. I see human thriving. I see precious moments worth having.

And I think it's not as trivial as you might think. I could talk about the health benefits of animal nutrition -- substantial, if you examine the nutritional deficiencies of past, poor populations who couldn't afford it (and hoo boy, if you set the most horrible factory farming against the suffering of poverty and malnutrition, I will pick the humans with ENTHUSIASM. Save the children and bring on the caged chickens!). I could talk about carnivore diets and autoimmune conditions. I could talk about the achievements of atheletes and their crazy diets. I could talk about rickets and milk and eggs, and the improving lives of the poor people who finally got off of nothing but rice and beans thanks to factory farms. I could talk about the theory that humans only ever became intelligent because of eating meat.

But I think what I want to talk about is a pizza commercial. It's been years -- I don't remember the specifics of the ad -- but the gist was that pizza enables things. Say what you will about kale and quinoa, pizza is there at those final exam study sessions, at the midnight engineering sessions, on the hacking runs. Look at a big and complicated and difficult thing, and you're probably seeing something where, at some awful moment along the way, pizza helped. I think that's true. I find that a compelling point.

I'm convinced meat is like that. It enables human thriving. That the joy people have in feasting isn't mere hedonism -- it's the push that gets them to the goal. It enables the inspiration and energy that drives them to be awesome. I think that joy is important, and real . . .

. . . and absolutely worth what it costs.

Can you have that without meat? To be fair, I think the Hindu population is a pretty good argument that you can get there, at least with vegetarianism. They seem pretty happy. But I'm not so convinced by that that I'm ready to prescribe it for everyone. Perhaps it turns on some peculiarity of culture or biology; perhaps they're not doing as well as it looks. I'm not going to say that's doing it wrong, but neither am I ready to buy into it for myself -- you'd have to prove it to me. For my money, the Thanksgiving dinners are not an applecart I'm ready to upset, even if people who kill turkeys sometimes do it wrong. To me, this is one of those "don't lose the big picture" things. Maybe we could have Thanksgiving with tofurkey? I think a lot of people would tell you "it's not the same". And until they feel it is the same, in full measure, leave it be. It's that important.

Human vitality is a precious thing. And one of the forms it takes is gentleness! Some people who are vegetarian out of gentleness are sincere and beautiful souls, and that is the form that their human vitality takes. I think that's beautiful, and I think it's absolutely worth the feral hogs and mice and global emissions and whatnot that it winds up costing. I also think it's incumbent on the practitioner to make it worth that. Mighty examples of gentleness can change the world, even if the people inspired by it apply it in other ways. I think Gandhi exemplifies this path. I don't think he would have been Gandhi without his vegetarianism, and I think he changed the world in some really big ways. I'm glad we had him.

But on the other hand, I worry very much that some vegans are not like this -- that they are not running towards gentleness, but away from blame; that they are not driven by generosity, but by a sense of their own smallness. That they leave in their wake, not people inspired to be gentle in other spheres, but people made sadder and smaller by the drumbeat that all that matters in life is to consume less. I wonder, how small your self-esteem must be, to avoid ice cream to spare dairy cows who are clearly, if you meet them, quite happy with their jobs. This looks less like gentleness and more like abuse to me -- just who told you you were morally compelled to impose so little, that your joy was valued so cheap? -- and I want to hug them and tell them it's okay and they're worth it. I find the situation tragic for the human, and the more angry and self-focused the person, the more I suspect this path -- anger is often a result of being hurt. And like, perhaps the people around them are telling them that their thriving isn't worth the humane death of a cow (or even the statistical inhumane death). But I would firmly disagree. It is absolutely worth it.

People are awesome. Eat bacon with relish, and grin, and go create art. That's a trade I'd take all day, on anyone's behalf.

I don't mean that quite as rudely as it sounds, but it certainly is the case that your writing here doesn't make it sound like you'll say interesting things if I call you.

And you're wrong on too many points to discuss it at full - sorry, no space here, also have family to feed and work to do. My bookmarks folder about dangers of animal products/agriculture has hundreds of items. I'll cherrypick just few of them to get you started.

You'll find several of your viewpoints discussed here:

https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en

Want to learn more? (pun intended)

Movies:

- I'd recommend Dominion movie again, but you won't probably see it, and even if you do, i don't think the suffering of animals/horrors of the meat production will be enough to change your opinions, so I'll talk about it from different angle.

- Cowspiracy

- Seaspiracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7JE8j5Ncmw - This man makes you think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI - Dairy is scary

Health:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ - Dr. Michael Greger | How Not To Die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnHYHjchn6w - Foods for Protecting the Body & Mind: Dr. Neal Barnard

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whatthehealth - What the Health! (2017)

Impacts on biodiversity / climate change:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/30/us-food-...

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow...

OK, I'll react to few of your points.

> "never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response"

So avoiding killing is a neurotic, narcissistic response? Like, really?

> "to avoid ice cream to spare dairy cows who are clearly, if you meet them, quite happy with their jobs"

Are you sure? I've met a lot of them, when i was a child. You know that cows giving milk are mothers, forcefully impregnated/raped every year, with their calf taken from them on the day it's born? They loudly grieve for days/weeks, sometimes hiding the calf from the farmer only to be taken away from them days later? Do you know that producing milk on industrial scale shortens lifespan of cows to cca 1/3 (5-6 years instead of 20+), only to leave the cow exhausted/crippled and killed (changed into burgers) in the end?

Why we drink cow milk? Why not rat milk, giraffe milk, dog milk, human milk ... why it has to be cow milk? Why are cca 50-70% of people milk intolerant? Do you know about pus in the milk? About linked diseases like parkinsons and other autoimmune diseases linked to milk? That cow eating grass near industrial factory will eat more pollutants in a day than somebody living near breathing air for 14 years? About bioaccumulation of toxins in the milk/meat? About all proteins/b12 coming from plants/bacteria, not from the animals?

> And your next point - war.

You're clearly an american. Your country is the only country in the world being involved in wars constantly for 250+ years, achieving so little for so high a price. Your viewpoints mirror the indocrination you've received. It does not reflect reality either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv...

I could go on and on, have to go, leaving you to it, sorry.

> You're clearly an american. Your country is the only country in the world being involved in wars constantly for 250+ years, achieving so little for so high a price. Your viewpoints mirror the indocrination you've received. It does not reflect reality either.

Impressive.

I didn't defend the average war in general, or any specific war. I certainly didn't defend perpetual war, any particularly American doctine of war, or indeed any particular philosophy of war at all.

What I said was that war is good sometimes (a viewpoint that almost all people hold -- even if we disagree strenuously about how much and when and where and why), and that its conduct, no matter how good the cause, requires the ability accept to causing some horror in the context of a bigger picture.

You read past all of that and jumped straight to a horrible example you can associate with the concept and accused me of believing in that.

That is hilariously on the nose. That is exactly what I'm talking about. That's the style of reasoning I find so typical of veganism, that appears to be to be unhinged. If I'm defending war, I must be defending industrialized perpetual war for any reason, I must be the worst possible person you could associate with any concept of war and they only way for me to have your approval is to give it up entirely. Evil, run away, run away! If I'm defending eating meat, I must be in favor of eating all animals, I must be in favor of doing absolutely anything to them along the way. If I'm willing to kill animals, I must not care about their welfare. No room for tradeoffs or distinctions. No grey. Black and white. Guilt by association is real and travels along the most logically tenuous lines and justifies extreme responses and viciously aggressive social judgement. To get anywhere close to something horrible that can be associated with a concept, anywhere, anytime, mandates running screaming in the opposite direction.

That. Looks unhinged. That is why the perspective doesn't come off to me as admirable, but as unwell.

I've never said/meant something like this, and I don't judge you and/or see you as an evil person. I'm just trying to speak for those without voice.

And I don't agree with you there. War may be necessary sometimes, but never good.

> So avoiding killing is a neurotic, narcissistic response? Like, really?

To industrialized abuse, yeah. My response is to check that the ranch I'm associated with doesn't do that, and that the laws and standard procedures are things I'm comfortable with, and move on with my life. It's pretty common for vegans to bring up that some farms are abusive and awful, and I think a psychologically normal response to that is switch and/or to try to fix farms. Responding by checking out entirely strikes me as either dishonest or narcissistic -- it says to me that it isn't about the animals, it's about you. That you don't see a problem to solve, you see guilt-by-association to run away from.

It's perfectly fair to point out that plenty of people do both. Nonetheless, it has always seemed to me that the people involved in realistic, practical efforts to improve animal welfare are also the ones that eat them. Vegan efforts seem to be, by comparison, performative. I suppose it's just an impression, but I jumping so hard and so fast to making things about you... yeah. I do find that neurotic and narcissistic.

> What the Health!

LOL. That film is legendary for having a hilariously creative relationship with medicine and science. Don't take my word for it -- go look at the Wikipedia page for the film.

Is your other stuff that good? XD

> You know that cows giving milk are mothers,

Of course. Being a mother myself, I'm actually pretty familiar with how lactation works in humans, and I'm given to understand cows follow a lot of the same principles.

> forcefully impregnated/raped every year

Well.. this may be technically true, but is a good example of being at odds with biological reality. Cows go into heat and want to get pregnant -- so badly that cows will hurt themselves letting other cows mount them, even when there's no bull available. So the idea that a cow in heat doesn't "consent" to getting pregnant is like . . . I'm not sure what sort of consent you're looking for? Like, they really, really, really obviously want to in any conventional sense of the word. Beyond that, I'm not sure the concept would even apply to cows?

If you're asking whether I have a problem with the artificial insemnation of cows in heat on an annual basis, overseen by a farmer with the health of the cow in mind, my answer is that the question itself is ... LOL. Dude. Check your anthropomorphism.

I have no idea what sort of alternative reality you have in mind for these animals. If they lived in a herd with bulls, you better darn well believe they're getting pregnant as often as biologically possible. The alternative is, I guess, living solo as a pet? I am very okay with cows living sub-pet-quality lives, yes. I think this entire line of inquiry is silly.

It's not like, if these cows could delay pregnancy, they could go to college and it would be good for their career. It's not like they're left with emotional issues that require therapy. This is what animals in general, and cows in particular, do. The whole process is like nature, but safer. This is the silliest objection EVER.

> with their calf taken from them on the day it's born?

This used to concern me, until I saw them, and they seemed chill. I dunno. Different animals have different attachment to their offspring. This would certainly be cruel to humans; it's necessary and expected with fish. Where are cows on this scale? They... seem pretty chill. Iunno, if they don't care, I don't? And the explanation that was given to me for this practice was to protect the calfs, which makes sense to me.

At any rate -- I know in humans, babies and moms heal each other, both physically and psychologically. I'm completely confident that if it worked that way in cattle, it would be done that way. The people making this tradeoff seem to be thinking of a lot of things, and they seem to love their cows. I'm pretty comfortable with them in charge of that, and at any rate, they certainly seem to have a better handle on the considerations than you do!

And anyway anyway, is the thinking that this is done to take milk away from the calf for profit? Because those calves are bottle-fed and drink... milk. So I'm really not sure what your theory is about what's going on here.

> They loudly grieve for days/weeks, sometimes hiding the calf from the farmer only to be taken away from them days later?

Um, no. I have no idea where this idea comes from, but I can say with complete confidence that it's not accurate in general. On the contrary. Sometimes they can't tell whose calf it is.

Animals. Aren't. People! Different animals are more or less like people in a lot of different ways in this area, and cows are not like people in this one.

> Do you know that producing milk on industrial scale shortens lifespan of cows to cca 1/3 (5-6 years instead of 20+), only to leave the cow exhausted/crippled

... also nowhere close to true. Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled. It's a perfectly normal process that I personally have gone through as a human that is not damaging to the body. "Well, you didn't do it industrially" -- no listen, there are humans that do some amazing things in this department. It's hard work, but the idea that it uses up your body and shortens your life somehow is coocoo for cocoa puffs. Quite the opposite. In humans -- and in cows -- the way to high milk production is (a) lots of food and (b) low stress lifestyle and (c) lots of rest. Dairy cows live in a day spa because it's profitable. Facts. It's got to be just about one of the most charmed and comfortable examples of animal life!

Being old makes these older cows tired, but they are old! Living much longer than they normally would! Living to 20 isn't normal -- living to 20 is with humans doing their utmost to care for the cow. "Normal" is how the cows would be without human intervention, i.e., in the wild, and I don't think their wild cousins typically get to six. Yeah, humans can care for some super old cows, and that's lovely. That doesn't mean every cow is owed that. Dairy cows typically live, like, six years? I think they do well at that.

Some people who raise chickens for eggs or cows for milk give them a retirement past their productive years. That's lovely, but I don't think it's a moral obligation.

> and killed (changed into burgers) in the end?

Of course! That's part of their job!

> Why we drink cow milk? Why not rat milk, giraffe milk, dog milk, human milk ... why it has to be cow milk?

I have no idea what you're getting at. Humans drink all kinds of milk. They definitely drink human milk. I think, globally speaking, we mostly drink goat milk?

> Why are cca 50-70% of people milk intolerant?

Hehehehehe the interesting and awesome thing is that 50-30% of people (to use your numbers) are NOT! The persistence of the gene that allows the processing of lactose is SUPER advantageous and an absolute historical civilization GAME CHANGER! Cows built civilization!!! Which is awesome! Human thriving!! They're still doing it!!! :)

> Do you know about pus in the milk?

Ehhh... to me, this is a little like worrying about the presence of ground up bugs in coffee or flour or whatever. Or like, did you know basically all of your food has an allowable percentage of rat poop, and it isn't zero? Biological processes are messy. It's never gonna be zero. Sorry. But it's small and it isn't dangerous. They actually do a really good job sanitizing those cows, IMO.

> About linked diseases like parkinsons and other autoimmune diseases linked to milk?

That is a whole bucket o' worms, so I'll just say I'm hip to the medical implications of milk and not personally worried. Different people have different experiences, though I will say that fortunately, almost all the stuff people worry about in milk goes away if you focus on cream. Which is awesome anyway.

> That cow eating grass near industrial factory will eat more pollutants in a day than somebody living near breathing air for 14 years? About bioaccumulation of toxins in the milk/meat?

I know the industry is super aware of this phenomenon and is far more careful about it than I can police them to be. :) And that if this worries someone, there are all kinds of grass-fed, pampered, share-in-a-cow-you-personally-know options out there.

> About all proteins/b12 coming from plants/bacteria, not from the animals?

I did not know that about B12! Pubmed says, "We depend on B-12 producing bacteria in ruminant stomachs." Rad.

I don't know, 95+% ?

> That you don't see a problem to solve ...

You can solve it by not participating.

> Go look at the Wikipedia page for the film ...

The film is (mostly) compilation of the responses of health professionals, some passages are debatable, and i'm not ready to defend the work. I haven't linked any scientific sources, because those are biased as well - you can always find sources from both camps. I've linked this film because it's easy to digest and covers some of the areas where you're so off. But you haven't looked (i'm pretty sure) at any link i've provided previously.

> The explanation that was given to me for this practice was to protect the calfs, which makes sense to me ...

Beef calves are kept with their mothers. Where there is a profit motive (milk), calves are taken away. Where there isn't, calves are kept with their mothers. Hmm. Maybe just milk cows are horrible mothers?

> That's part of their job!

Job? You're surely joking.

> Animals. Aren't. People!

They don't talk (as we do). They don't think as we do. But they have intelligence, and are capable of suffering. Isn't it enough?

> ... also nowhere close to true. Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled ...

Absent farming needs, cows have a typical lifespan of 15 to 20 years. That lifespan could even understate their longevity. Guinness World Records lists the oldest cow as 48 years and nine months old.

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/cow-lifespan-how-long-do-cows-l...

> Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI - dairy industry in 5 minutes

https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch

> Human thriving

This again. We don't have to cause suffering by eating meat or milk to thrive. But sure, go and rationalize your behaviour away.

> did you know basically all of your food has an allowable percentage of rat poop

Yep.

> I'm hip to the medical implications of milk and not personally worried

Until it personally touches you. All humans are like that.

> We depend on B-12 producing bacteria in ruminant stomachs...

And where those bacteria comes from? Calves stomachs are not working the same way as adults' are.

"The rumen, reticulum and omasum remain undeveloped at birth and during the first few weeks of life. The calf’s largest stomach compartment is the abomasum. At this stage of life, the rumen doesn’t function and thus some feeds that mature cows can digest, calves can not. "

"The rumen will remain undeveloped as long as the calf stays on milk. Once the calf begins eating grain and forage, a microbial population will develop in the rumen and reticulum. The end products from microbial fermentation are responsible for developing the rumen. Calves don’t need cud inoculation to start rumen development."

https://extension.umn.edu/dairy-nutrition/ruminant-digestive...

Hm. What about animal agriculture destroying the planet? No response there?

Anyhow. I think that it's you who see the world as black and white. You have things you choose not to see. You rationalize away your actions to be able to thrive on food your tastes buds like so much. Your critique of veganism is selective and misguided.

So let's agree to disagree. Wish you enough courage to be able to see the truth. Howgh.