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Veganism

bein a vegetarian in the military is a hastle because at the dining facility they love to put bacon in everything so i constantly have to ask the ill informed servers and still end up having to throw away my beans.
 
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Vegetarianism can be very healthy depending on your bloodtype. If you are type A, limiting meat is the way to go for good health.
>>

The theory linking ideal diet to blood type has been thoroughly discredited.

ebola
 
ginisfluff said:
Anyways I was wondering if there was such a thing as cruelty free diary products? advocate it quite easy to produce free-range once happy meat produce, but is it even possible to produce cruelty free milk, when it is really only a by-product of constantly getting cows pregnant, taking their babies away and stealing their milk?
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Sure you can. Just the same as you can have human wet nurses. You don't have to take a calf from its mother any earlier than nature intends, you just have to keep milking the cow after the baby is weaned. And of course you have to make sure you milk often enough, but that's not really a problem - it wouldn't make any sense financially to not milk as often as you could!

On a side note, it was quite an eye opener today to see how many people I work with have no idea what veganism is. "No milk? no eggs? no cheese? no chocolate? why? I don't understand? "
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It's just not part of the paradigm... Vegans are a pretty small minority, and it would never occur to most people not to eat meat for no (readily apparent) good reason. And I know what it is just fine, and I still don't get it!!!! But that's because I just love steak too damn much. ;)
 
What about bread? Yeast is a living creature, shouldn't vegans only eat unleavened bread as well?
 
>>What about bread? Yeast is a living creature, shouldn't vegans only eat unleavened bread as well?>>

Yeast are not animals. They are fungi. Plants are alive too.

ebola
 
Oh yeah, for got that too. Two years ago at the Wisconsin State Fair was the first time I had ostrich and bison. Both tastes were identical to beef.
 
Ah.
I've only had buffalo, and it tasted like very, very lean beef.
Heh...or course I'll never know about ostrich or bison.

ebola
 
[totally off topic]

DJDannyUhOh said:
Oh yeah, for got that too. Two years ago at the Wisconsin State Fair was the first time I had ostrich and bison. Both tastes were identical to beef.
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ME TOO OMG!!!! Maybe we saw each other at the bison table!!! The chili stuff they had was damn good. If I had a decent butcher around here, I'd eat nothing but "alternative" meats!

[/totally off topic]
 
kittyinthedark said:
Sure you can. Just the same as you can have human wet nurses. You don't have to take a calf from its mother any earlier than nature intends, you just have to keep milking the cow after the baby is weaned. And of course you have to make sure you milk often enough, but that's not really a problem - it wouldn't make any sense financially to not milk as often as you could!
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Yes but is there anywhere that actually commerically offers this method of milk production? I seriously doubt it.
The only way you could do it is by having a cow in your back garden, or knowing someone with a cow/cows that were milked this way.
 
drklnk said:
What about bread? Yeast is a living creature, shouldn't vegans only eat unleavened bread as well?
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this is a ridiculous statement

frutis and vegetables were once alive as well. plants are living creatures. the difference between eating fruits, vegetables, and fungi (yeasts, mushrooms, etc) and eating animal derived food typically comes from the idea of not eating conscious creatures (as we have come to correlate consciousness with central nervousness, which plants and fungi lack). furthermore, enzymes and yeasts are still living in/on raw fruits and vegetables.
 
ginisfluff said:
Yes but is there anywhere that actually commerically offers this method of milk production? I seriously doubt it.
The only way you could do it is by having a cow in your back garden, or knowing someone with a cow/cows that were milked this way.
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There are plenty of smaller operations that do this. Two that come to mind are Straus Family Creameries in Marin County, CA and Horizon Organic (a larger company that gets product from several smaller family farms). Actually, most organic/free-range animal farms milk this way. Calves are allowed to roam communally (as the do naturally - they are grooming animals like cats) and they aren't taken from their mothers immediately like in mass stock farming. The cows are usually milked 3+ times a day, and individually (rather than just being hooked up to one big machine all day) in most places (some places that are "organic" but still not "free-range" under legal definition).

But yes, you can also go to a local dairy farmer to get your milk to make sure it's produced this way. And a lot of family organic farms do "cow-sharing" where you pay a nominal fee to "own part of the cow" so you can get the milk pre-pasteurization if you want. (There are legal hurdles in selling raw milk commercially, so that's why you "buy" the cow.)
 
takemeonboard said:
this is a ridiculous statement

frutis and vegetables were once alive as well. plants are living creatures. the difference between eating fruits, vegetables, and fungi (yeasts, mushrooms, etc) and eating animal derived food typically comes from the idea of not eating conscious creatures (as we have come to correlate consciousness with central nervousness, which plants and fungi lack). furthermore, enzymes and yeasts are still living in/on raw fruits and vegetables.
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It's not a ridiculous statement; you just added a HUGE qualification - consciousness. I never hear anyone bring up consciousness in these arguments - it's always *life*. And there's a huge difference. And frankly, I don't see why consciousness should make a difference. Many "lower" animals are barely, if at all, self-aware, so I see no problem with killing and eating them as compared to a plant. Why does consciousness somehow change the fact that you are killing another life form? How does that add any value? People put down stray domestic animals all the time, and I don't hear anyone railing about that. If anything, under that logic, people should be a lot more concerned about the dogs at the humane society than the chickens on a farm or the fish in the ocean, because dogs are orders of magnitude more intelligent, aware, and social.

We're all living stuff, living in the same ecosystem/biosphere. I don't care whether anything has a brain or a spine or not. If you're killing something, you're killing something. Granted, sensation of pain makes it more difficult to kill something *humanely*, but to me that doesn't add up to a reason not to kill, just a reason to kill differently. I'd chop the head off a chicken the same as I'd pluck an ear of corn, but I'd yank around on corn or hack it off carefree at the stalk - I wouldn't cut up a still-living chicken.
 
>>It's not a ridiculous statement; you just added a HUGE qualification - consciousness. I never hear anyone bring up consciousness in these arguments - it's always *life*. And there's a huge difference.>>

In these sorts of debates, people often (mistakenly) use "life" as a proxy for consciousness. No vegan would seriously deny that plants are alive. Similarly, the vast majority of ethical vegans base their lifestyle on causing less suffering or abstaining from destroying consciousness.

>>And frankly, I don't see why consciousness should make a difference. Many "lower" animals are barely, if at all, self-aware, so I see no problem with killing and eating them as compared to a plant. >>

1. It could be possible to perceive, and thus experience pleasure and pain, without any sort of emergence of self-hood.
2. This is not an empirical question. We have no real conception of what other species' experiences are like.

>>People put down stray domestic animals all the time, and I don't hear anyone railing about that. If anything, under that logic, people should be a lot more concerned about the dogs at the humane society than the chickens on a farm or the fish in the ocean, because dogs are orders of magnitude more intelligent, aware, and social.>>

1. Higher awareness does not necessarily translate into increased capacity to suffer or experience pleasure.
2. Far, far more animals are slaughtered for food than are euthanized.
3. Some people do politically oppose the euthanization of strays.

>>Granted, sensation of pain makes it more difficult to kill something *humanely*, but to me that doesn't add up to a reason not to kill, just a reason to kill differently.>>

Then what DOES constitute a reason not to kill?

ebola
 
As for the first three points, it's something I generally have to agree to disagree on with people. I simply do not consider consciousness to be a point of value when considering whether I ought to kill something or not. Life is life, end of story. Just because an animal can make conscious decisions and a plant can't doesn't mean anything to me in terms of whether I can justify killing something, especially when it's for my sustenance.

As for reasons not to kill, well, there are plenty. You could say killing is morally wrong on any level (which precludes you from eating almost anything, so it doesn't work too well), or that killing in mass quantity as we do is unnatural (which can be reasonably argued I suppose), or that killing imposes undue suffering (which isn't necessarily true, but you can make a case for it with today's industry), or any other number of reasons. I just don't see any reason to make a distinction between life that has consciousness and life that doesn't. Can you come up with any explanation as to why one is better or more important or more valuable?

But I can kill an animal without causing it pain just as I can kill a plant without causing it pain, so when it comes down to dinner time, I don't see the difference. I've killed and gutted my own food before dozens of times, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. I do it quickly and humanely, and I don't make waste. You could get me on a diatribe just the same, though, about the horrible conditions under which mass-produced food animals are raised. I don't have a problem with killing animals for food - I do have a problem with torturing them. But I will admit though, I still eat at fast food restaurants. Out of sight, out of mind... :\
 
>>. I just don't see any reason to make a distinction between life that has consciousness and life that doesn't. Can you come up with any explanation as to why one is better or more important or more valuable?>>

I was trying to argue via reductio, but you deftly blocked me. :)
What I'm getting at is that I would hazard a guess that you would say that it is morally wrong to kill humans. Why is this the case?

>>But I can kill an animal without causing it pain just as I can kill a plant without causing it pain>>

1. This is not the case with commercial meat (which applies to me).
2. I would consider it an ethical transgression to eliminate any future experiences a perceiving being could have.

>>. I've killed and gutted my own food before dozens of times, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. I do it quickly and humanely, and I don't make waste.>>

I consider this (and hunting for food) ethically superior to commercially purchased meat.

ebola
 
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