Is meat murder?
some vegans claim meat is murder.
some omnivores, especially Atkins dieters, claim that it is just the food chain.
yeah i think that meat is murder. however, you have to be practical too.
when you buy clothes, you can't guarantee that child labor or sweat shops did not make them.
when you eat strawberries, you can't guarantee undocumented immigrants did not pick them.
when you use makeup, you can't guarantee they did not get tested on animals.
driving cars causes pollution.
electronics cause pollution.
living things have to hurt other living things to remain alive.
every action could have an unlimited number of effects. not all the effects are physical, direct, visible, or obvious or immediate.
whatever you do is either helping, having no effect, or hurting. it is not possible or practical to guarantee that you will only have the first two effects.
yeah i do not like the concept of hunting for sport. or eating meat just to be eating meat.
but some vegans act like they are so innocent. like they have never done anything wrong before. like they are morally perfect lil angels. and they act like omnivores are evil and devils.
all things being equal, not eating meat is more moral than eating meat. but not all things are equal. and more moral. how much more moral. not much.
likewise, it is necessary to kill bacteria and insects. without intention.
living things have to hurt other living things to remain alive.
lostonearth35
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There are extreme vegans who believe it is and have no tolerance at all for omnivores. I've seen a web comic that is this to a fault. It has seemingly cute anime-style characters that look like something out of Hello Kitty, but it shows the vegan protagonists being nasty, rude and graphically violent to omnivores whom they call "carnists". The comic claims anyone who isn't vegan is a "selfish pr**k", the protagonists who are described by the author as being peaceful and caring, are rudely stealing vegetables off of an omnivore's plate, called a character who suffered an iron deficiency when she tried being vegan "a drama queen" such as if it's also murder to kill harmful bacteria and germs too, and deliberately start a zombie apocalypse by killing an omnivore.
Seriously, zombies that kill everyone is better than living people eating meat. Makes perfect sense.
Even a lot of vegans IRL don't like the comic because they're more tolerant than the author. But the author will not tolerant anyone who disagrees with her. She thinks the world will be a perfect place if everyone became like the protagonists in her web comic, if they really did it would probably be the *end* of the world. If they killed all the omnivore humans on earth, would would they do next, kill all the animals that eat meat as well? But then the herbivore animals will get so numerous they'll destroy the planet!
There are also vegans who have killed their pet cats because they wouldn't let them eat meat, and others who won't vaccinate their kids because they use eggs to make the vaccine. Seriously, they'd rather their kids get a life-threatening disease than taint their bodies with horrible, horrible animal products!!
What I'm trying to say (yeah, trying), is that it's okay to be vegan and it's your choice, but don't force it on others. I'm not going around trying to force vegans to eat a strip of real bacon so they shouldn't go around stealing the french fries off my plate because I wouldn't eat their mock chicken nuggets.
yes. but so is eating vegetables.
the only way to eat without causing murder is to eat things that doesn't kill what your eating from.
no. but taking the milk from a cow that then can't deliver it to it's calf is unethical. furthermore, pumping them full of antibiotics and pregnancy hormones just so they then produce more milk is immoral. not to mention all that ends up in the milk along with puss and ooze due to over production and over milking.
no. chicken produce eggs anyway. unless there is a rooster to fertilize them, then no, it's not.
genetically mutating chickens, like the Isa Brown variety, to unnaturally over produce eggs every day so they end up in pain with swollen and prolapsed cloaca and bottom is +1 people being d**ks and using bu**s**t logic to justify torture.
ownership is slavery. taking care of a pet is guardianship. if it doesn't runaway and chooses to say, that's friendship. and some might argue it's a symbiotic relationship.
Technically no, not unless it is a root vegetable (onions, carrots etc). If it is a leaf vegetable (lettuce, spinach) or a fruiting tree or plant (strawberries, tomatoes, apples) then the plant can go on living perfectly well if you are only taking a small enough amount for it to continue photosynthesis. I know some vegetarians who don't eat root vegetables for this reason - it kills the plant. But other forms of plant-based food are acceptable because they don't.
I don't know about "murder" but I'm vegetarian so obviously find eating meat unethical. But I'm not intolerant of omnivorous people. Everyone has their own ethical judgements to make - I'm not enforcing mine on anyone.
The one gripe I have with many meat-eaters is the fact that they are in denial. No, the cleanly packaged meats in their supermarkets weren't innocent cows who were walking around living their lives once. No, eating duck at a restaurant isn't the same thing as the duck and ducklings that crossed the road in front of you (someone actually said that to me - they weren't the same thing).
If you're going to eat meat, fine. Own it. Don't hide from it with your head in the sand because you don't like the reality of what you're doing.
As shortfatbalduglyman noted, much of the interconnectedness of the world infringes on some ethical principle, somewhere. But to me, that doesn't mean you get out of trying to be as ethical as you can be, within reason. I hear that argument a lot when people find out I'm vegetarian. I always reply with something along the lines of following that retrograde manner of thought forwards, then rape, torture, murder, theft, arson, etc should also be perfectly acceptable, because after all, everything is unethical in some way, right?
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Technically no, not unless it is a root vegetable (onions, carrots etc). If it is a leaf vegetable (lettuce, spinach) or a fruiting tree or plant (strawberries, tomatoes, apples) then the plant can go on living perfectly well if you are only taking a small enough amount for it to continue photosynthesis. I know some vegetarians who don't eat root vegetables for this reason - it kills the plant. But other forms of plant-based food are acceptable because they don't.
Is causing the plant stress by torture acceptable? hmmmm... this raises many philosophical questions.
non-the-less that's why i said (as per the black and white question)
"the only way to eat without causing murder is to eat things that doesn't kill what your eating from."
ultimately though, carnivore, vegetarian or vegan, eat what's makes you happy. and if you change your mind the next day, so be it.
Don't bother trying to change people, because you can't, it often just ends in conflict because... people can only change by their own choice. and people don't like being told what to do/think/eat etc. so if you're happy in what you do, lead by example. not demands. and those who choose to, will follow. but that's just an idea.
At least that's how i see it. and i could be wrong about everything.
lostonearth35
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In order for something to live, something else has to die, whether it's a plant, animal, or both. I'm not entirely happy about, but that's the way the world was made. Carnivore animals don't care if the animals they chase down, kill and devour are "cute". Only humans feel bad or guilty for eating things that are cute, as far as I know.
Most dogs and cats are also cute, but because of that we tend to forget they are total predators and that nature made them that way.
Most people think plants can't suffer or feel pain (and they probably don't, lacking a brain and nervous system), but if there are too many herbivore animals in one place they eat all the plants around them, and then with nothing else to eat they die, anyway. Of course, maybe we'll have some nutjobs who claim plants do suffer horribly so it's wrong to eat them too, and then force and guilt everyone into going without them too. No fruits or vegetables or chocolate or coffee or nuts. Then we'll all starve to death. YAY!
Let's face it, nature is a pretty cruel place and unless we plan on giving our modern conveniences and technology to every living thing or cows discover how to manufacture processors that's not going to change any time soon. Things regularly die to become food for other things and this is something unavoidable unless you are one of those bacteria that eats minerals from underwater volcanoes. Even plants need the nitrogen released by decaying dead things to live and grow.
I agree that the way we obtain meat is pretty ethically questionable but it's not like we stopped down to this level, humans have always killed things for food. As usual when dealing with capitalism the solution isn't as simple as "we better stop that", we need something that can replace it which is economically better. I personally believe that the way forward is genetics, imagine being able to grow just the meat of a cow without the brain or anything, or just having their milk production parts, or just having the egg laying organs of chickens. It's probably only a matter of time before this is economically better then what we are currently doing and there is no point in doing anything extreme to get rid of our current methods just a tiny bit sooner.
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In The Secret Life of Plants, Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins cited a study which documented the fact that full grown trees, cut down by the woodsman's axe, emit an ultra-sonic 'scream' lasting for up to three days, as the living organism slowly dies. Another study demonstrated using polygraph technology, that plants, when threatened, even by violent thoughts, respond with measurable reactions of fear.
Only human arrogance and prejudice assume that just because a life form has no face or eyes, that because it does not gesticulate or express conscious thought in ways that we recognize, that it cannot be considered to be "alive" in the same vital and self-aware sense as humans and sentient animals - that because an immobile plant has no recognizable "brain," it is incapable of thought, or of feeling pain.
To assume that vegetarianism is somehow less cruel than eating meat is childishly naive. Unless you can subsist for a lifetime on nothing but fruits and berries (even that would be eating "plant abortions" - progeny destroyed before being allowed to come to maturity), it is not possible for life to survive in this world, without feeding on death.
That greenery itself thrives on the decomposing mulch of other plants and animals, rotting beneath it in the earth. Life comes from death. Every time you chew on a carrot, or tear apart lettuce leaves in a salad, you are munching on a living being, ripped bodily from the soil that keeps it alive, very possibly screaming silently in pain and terror even as you crush it thoughtlessly between your brutal animal teeth.
If "meat is murder," then survival itself is murder. Deal with it.
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"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical or cruel - but I am, so that's how it comes out." - Bill Hicks
Meat is not murder if the animals are slaughtered humanely, causing no pain.
And no, dairy is not rape. Did some SJW come up with that analogy? Again, milk production should be humane and not cause any distress to the animals.
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Yes technically meat is murder. But our human bodies are naturally made to be omnivores. In our diets we need both meat and plant products in our bodies. Not just plants which is what vegans and vegetarians do. But I think it's not healthy for them to do that since our bodies were made to eat both and not just one. So it's just nature that makes us that way.
^ This.
The full argument here is that if murder is defined as the predetermined killing of anything that's alive and has a nervous system regardless of how lawful it is then meat in the current way that it's processed is murder, however that is not the standard definition of murder. In a proper debate this should be established first. Really the debate is about where we should draw the line between what we can eat and what we can't, everyone agrees that eating humans is barbaric and everyone agrees that eating plants is fine, we just need to agree on weather less intelligent animals fall into the category of things we should be eating and given that humans are omnivores the popular position is that they do.
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Also known as MarsMatter.
Diagnosed with Asperger's, ADD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder in 2004.
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