Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html
4 comments
Personally I don't think that we should link to articles like this. The whole point of these types of articles is to generate controversy and draw page hits, by directing more traffic to these articles we are just supporting the practice.
The plant behavior stuff was fascinating. The conclusion was trite, I'll agree with you there.
I don't think most vegans/vegetarians delude themselves that they're not doing any harm through their consumption, but rather are content to be doing less harm.
Anyway, still a fascinating article if for nothing else than the sophistication of plant behavior it highlights.
Anyway, still a fascinating article if for nothing else than the sophistication of plant behavior it highlights.
What sort of harm, though? Instead of the (arguably renewable) leather windbreaker, now you're pumping oil out of the ground to do it with synthetics.
Harm to the animals. The practices in the livestock industry are pretty horrible. There are some places where a percentage of the animals survive the 'kill' stage and are still alive as all of their parts are harvested. There are places where the animals that are too lame to make it through the slaughterhouse are just tossed onto a pile of dead bodies to freeze/starve to death (rather than at least killing the animal first).
The livestock 'industry' has turned animals from living beings into 'moving lumps of commodity resources.' Is this necessarily a good thing? Don't we lose our humanity at some point?
I haven't look too far into it, but for things like livestock raised for meat, we grow a lot of food just to feed it to livestock. I've seen some numbers that put a large portion of the farmland in the US as growing livestock feed exclusively. How much of our resources are being diverted into raising and feeding the livestock which could be used for other purposes? These are all questions that no one asks because it would mean that possibility of limiting the amount of meat/dairy/eggs that they eat (or eliminating it altogether). People would rather live in ignorance of these issues that face the possibility of having to undergo a lifestyle change.
The livestock 'industry' has turned animals from living beings into 'moving lumps of commodity resources.' Is this necessarily a good thing? Don't we lose our humanity at some point?
I haven't look too far into it, but for things like livestock raised for meat, we grow a lot of food just to feed it to livestock. I've seen some numbers that put a large portion of the farmland in the US as growing livestock feed exclusively. How much of our resources are being diverted into raising and feeding the livestock which could be used for other purposes? These are all questions that no one asks because it would mean that possibility of limiting the amount of meat/dairy/eggs that they eat (or eliminating it altogether). People would rather live in ignorance of these issues that face the possibility of having to undergo a lifestyle change.
> Don't we lose our humanity at some point?
I'd argue that the mere act of killing the animal would strip us of our humanity, industrialized slaughterhouses or not. In any case, there is also the implication that industrial agriculture kills millions of animals per year by robbing them of their habitats, or where they get caught and ripped to shreds by industrial machinery during harvesting.
Simply put, I do not buy the idea that by being vegetarian I'm doing significantly less harm - I may be one slight degree more removed from the animal that has to die to put food on my plate, but morally it makes little difference, and technically it makes even less difference.
> These are all questions that no one asks because it would mean that possibility of limiting the amount of meat/dairy/eggs that they eat
I object against this presumptuous attitude. Plenty of us meat-eaters ask these questions - and we decide to continue being omnivores while being entire conscious of its consequences (as well as the myriad of negative consequences of pure vegetarianism). "Them ignorant meat eaters" is all too common a presumptuous attitude I get from self-righteous vegetarians. Thanks for portraying us as a bunch of ostriches with heads in the sand, while heroic vegetarians lead the way. On, comrades!
I'd argue that the mere act of killing the animal would strip us of our humanity, industrialized slaughterhouses or not. In any case, there is also the implication that industrial agriculture kills millions of animals per year by robbing them of their habitats, or where they get caught and ripped to shreds by industrial machinery during harvesting.
Simply put, I do not buy the idea that by being vegetarian I'm doing significantly less harm - I may be one slight degree more removed from the animal that has to die to put food on my plate, but morally it makes little difference, and technically it makes even less difference.
> These are all questions that no one asks because it would mean that possibility of limiting the amount of meat/dairy/eggs that they eat
I object against this presumptuous attitude. Plenty of us meat-eaters ask these questions - and we decide to continue being omnivores while being entire conscious of its consequences (as well as the myriad of negative consequences of pure vegetarianism). "Them ignorant meat eaters" is all too common a presumptuous attitude I get from self-righteous vegetarians. Thanks for portraying us as a bunch of ostriches with heads in the sand, while heroic vegetarians lead the way. On, comrades!
> Simply put, I do not buy the idea that by being vegetarian I'm doing significantly less harm - I may be one slight degree more removed from the animal that has to die to put food on my plate, but morally it makes little difference, and technically it makes even less difference.
Those animals are going to be mauled by the machinery anyways. You are not saving them from the mauling by eating meat. If you avoid animal products or at least limit your consumption of them, you are reducing the demand to produce these products, thereby reducing the amount of animals that are ravaged by our industrialized food engine. While this might not seem to make a noticeable different due to our ever-increasing population, were all the vegetarians/vegans out there to revert back into omnivores demanding meat/dairy/eggs a resulting ramping up of production to meet this demand would occur.
There are two points that I have with your argument:
1. Animals that are ripped to shreds by farming equipment are at least able to live a 'free' life in the wild. Animals that are part of the industrialized livestock industry commonly live in cages where they can't even turn around. Sometimes their flesh melds into the cage walls (as can be the case with egg-laying chickens) completely grafting them to their cage (i.e. hens whose feet have grown around the bars/wire of their cage floor leaving them permanently fixed to the cage).
2. The idea that "well animals are going to die anyways so why even bother" is not an attitude that I find healthy or conducive to change.
> I object against this presumptuous attitude. Plenty of us meat-eaters ask these questions - and we decide to continue being omnivores while being entire conscious of its consequences (as well as the myriad of negative consequences of pure vegetarianism). "Them ignorant meat eaters" is all too common a presumptuous attitude I get from self-righteous vegetarians. Thanks for portraying us as a bunch of ostriches with heads in the sand, while heroic vegetarians lead the way. On, comrades!
I apologize if I came off that way. Most of the time when expressing your views as a vegetarian or a vegan all you get are responses like, "I'm going to eat TWICE as much meat just to offset your moral choice! Haw haw haw!" And I agree that there are people that have at least weighed these ideas and have made the choice to eat meat. I applaud you for doing so.
There are plenty of people that think of the topic as 'taboo' because it's 'unsightly.' I've met people that don't go to petting zoos because they don't want to see the farm animals that they are eating when they eat meat. The idea that they might associate the meat with the face of an animal frightens them because it means that they might end up with a moral dilemma. I have relatives that don't want to hear about the conditions in the slaughterhouses because it would make it hard for them to eat meat. I have a huge loss of respect for these people.
Update: I should add that I don't 'look down' on people that eat meat like a lot of vegans/vegetarians do. Though I may have come off as having a self-righteous attitude, I don't. Unlike a lot of vegans, I don't have an extremist attitude. If we were able to ween ourselves off of the heavy dependence that we have on animals (at least in food) I think that we would be in a much better place morally and nutritionally as a society (though I am not of the mind that a vegan diet is 'automatically' healthy like some people seem to believe; there are tons of unhealthy foods that are perfectly vegan).
Those animals are going to be mauled by the machinery anyways. You are not saving them from the mauling by eating meat. If you avoid animal products or at least limit your consumption of them, you are reducing the demand to produce these products, thereby reducing the amount of animals that are ravaged by our industrialized food engine. While this might not seem to make a noticeable different due to our ever-increasing population, were all the vegetarians/vegans out there to revert back into omnivores demanding meat/dairy/eggs a resulting ramping up of production to meet this demand would occur.
There are two points that I have with your argument:
1. Animals that are ripped to shreds by farming equipment are at least able to live a 'free' life in the wild. Animals that are part of the industrialized livestock industry commonly live in cages where they can't even turn around. Sometimes their flesh melds into the cage walls (as can be the case with egg-laying chickens) completely grafting them to their cage (i.e. hens whose feet have grown around the bars/wire of their cage floor leaving them permanently fixed to the cage).
2. The idea that "well animals are going to die anyways so why even bother" is not an attitude that I find healthy or conducive to change.
> I object against this presumptuous attitude. Plenty of us meat-eaters ask these questions - and we decide to continue being omnivores while being entire conscious of its consequences (as well as the myriad of negative consequences of pure vegetarianism). "Them ignorant meat eaters" is all too common a presumptuous attitude I get from self-righteous vegetarians. Thanks for portraying us as a bunch of ostriches with heads in the sand, while heroic vegetarians lead the way. On, comrades!
I apologize if I came off that way. Most of the time when expressing your views as a vegetarian or a vegan all you get are responses like, "I'm going to eat TWICE as much meat just to offset your moral choice! Haw haw haw!" And I agree that there are people that have at least weighed these ideas and have made the choice to eat meat. I applaud you for doing so.
There are plenty of people that think of the topic as 'taboo' because it's 'unsightly.' I've met people that don't go to petting zoos because they don't want to see the farm animals that they are eating when they eat meat. The idea that they might associate the meat with the face of an animal frightens them because it means that they might end up with a moral dilemma. I have relatives that don't want to hear about the conditions in the slaughterhouses because it would make it hard for them to eat meat. I have a huge loss of respect for these people.
Update: I should add that I don't 'look down' on people that eat meat like a lot of vegans/vegetarians do. Though I may have come off as having a self-righteous attitude, I don't. Unlike a lot of vegans, I don't have an extremist attitude. If we were able to ween ourselves off of the heavy dependence that we have on animals (at least in food) I think that we would be in a much better place morally and nutritionally as a society (though I am not of the mind that a vegan diet is 'automatically' healthy like some people seem to believe; there are tons of unhealthy foods that are perfectly vegan).
Harm as defined by the intersection of your values and your understanding of economics.
This article doesn't go very far towards rationalizing its thesis with the fact that some vegetable matter is actively, aggressively designed to be eaten. The balance of reproduction and survival is different between plants and animals.
And when you eat those fruits, but then deposit your waste in a toilet and send it off to a sewage treatment plant, are you in harmony with that design or subverting it?
Actually, it doesn't really matter. Some argue that industrialized agriculture is in fact playing right into the plants' design. We contribute to their survival and spread by continually re-planting them -- corn, for example, is arguably the king of this kind of adaptation. For more on this, I highly recommend Michael Pollan's "Botany of Desire" or, for a shorter version, his TED talk on the same subject.
I'm fine with that argument (although it seem to apply to raising animals as well). I was responding more to the parent's suggestion that certain parts of certain plants are designed to be eaten (and then pass through your digestive system and re-seeded). That bit of natures design doesn't work so well in the face of modern plumbing.
What's your point? I'm just saying that it's not reasonable to anthropomorphize plants by saying they have behaviors and adverse reactions to damage.
Could one not also make the argument that some animal matter is actively, aggressively designed to be eaten? You don't exactly see herds of feral cows roaming the plains, do you? The ability to be domesticated as a source of food is what enabled the cow to survive while the auroch and other similar animals failed in this task and are now extinct.
I've made this case to my wife, and she won't have it. The problem with this of course--you can't be 100% ethical without starving. Sorry plants.
"All whales are meat-eaters. They feed on the flesh of other animals, even if these are very small and strained from the water, as are krill." -- Steve Parker, Whales and Dolphins (Sierra Club, 1994) p. 28.
Yep, we might as well get used to the idea that while plants are autotrophs,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotroph
all of us heterotrophs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotroph
have to eat something, so we may as well eat what helps us be healthy and live according to our adaptations and place in nature.
Yep, we might as well get used to the idea that while plants are autotrophs,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotroph
all of us heterotrophs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotroph
have to eat something, so we may as well eat what helps us be healthy and live according to our adaptations and place in nature.
Turns out a lot more plants are carnivorous than previously estimated (as with obvious cases like Venus Flytraps):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6727709/Tomatoes-c...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6727709/Tomatoes-c...
And, then, how is starving ethical to yourself?