Generally speaking, I think it's worse to kill a monkey than a chicken, worse to kill a dog than a shrimp, etc. It also depends on how desperate one is to survive.
Granted, on both counts. And I feel absolutely zero remorse when it comes to killing as many as I can of those little red ants that flourish around my bathroom sink.
As for survival, as I have pointed out to others, Sidra was explicit in condemning meat-eating in the rich world, not the poor.
But but but. That isn't looking at it holistically. How much petroleum goes into transporting and manufacturing synthetic clothing substitutes? You can certainly get by with plant-based fibres if you're living in a warmer climate, but not so much in Canada. How far do fresh fruits and vegetables have to travel to get to your table? How much pesticide does it take to sustain a soya bean farm, and what happens to the run-off, and how many animals does that kill?
Thank you. This is what I was trying to get at when I said that Sidra's post has vulnerable; she loves animals, but it wasn't clear whether she had thought through all of the repercussions of that feeling.
For sake of argument, let's assume it is environmentally more destructive to ship me a handful of almonds (from where? Brazil?) than it is to ship me a steak from Perth. Am I morally obligated to eat the steak, even knowing that the cow didn't have a good life?
To me the first question is sustainability of the ecosystem as a whole.
Are we still talking about morality now, or simple survival?
Simply cutting meat out from your diet doesn't address that. There are ethical concerns beyond the suffering of individual animals. You could be less wrong than a lot of vegans by eating local free-range meat, for example.
I don't remember the figures off-hand, but it takes a lot of pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat. I'm sceptical about your implicit suggestion that an animal-based food-and-clothing regime is less ecologically destabalizing than one based strictly on vegetables.
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dancing_serpent
Worse and Worser
Date: 2007-01-19 04:29 am (UTC)Granted, on both counts. And I feel absolutely zero remorse when it comes to killing as many as I can of those little red ants that flourish around my bathroom sink.
As for survival, as I have pointed out to others, Sidra was explicit in condemning meat-eating in the rich world, not the poor.
But but but. That isn't looking at it holistically. How much petroleum goes into transporting and manufacturing synthetic clothing substitutes? You can certainly get by with plant-based fibres if you're living in a warmer climate, but not so much in Canada. How far do fresh fruits and vegetables have to travel to get to your table? How much pesticide does it take to sustain a soya bean farm, and what happens to the run-off, and how many animals does that kill?
Thank you. This is what I was trying to get at when I said that Sidra's post has vulnerable; she loves animals, but it wasn't clear whether she had thought through all of the repercussions of that feeling.
For sake of argument, let's assume it is environmentally more destructive to ship me a handful of almonds (from where? Brazil?) than it is to ship me a steak from Perth. Am I morally obligated to eat the steak, even knowing that the cow didn't have a good life?
To me the first question is sustainability of the ecosystem as a whole.
Are we still talking about morality now, or simple survival?
Simply cutting meat out from your diet doesn't address that. There are ethical concerns beyond the suffering of individual animals. You could be less wrong than a lot of vegans by eating local free-range meat, for example.
I don't remember the figures off-hand, but it takes a lot of pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat. I'm sceptical about your implicit suggestion that an animal-based food-and-clothing regime is less ecologically destabalizing than one based strictly on vegetables.