Quote:
Originally Posted by dok
My point is that a lot your argument for vegetarianism is very much tied to modern, industrialized agriculture, and the way meat is produced in that system. Your problem is not with meat eating, per se, it is with the way most meats (and plenty of vegetarian products, for that matter) are produced in this any many other countries. This is why I think it's very relevant to the discussion for me to toss out all the public policy measures that I think should be taken in order to encourage sustainable and healthy practices.
I don't think that these sustainability arguments necessarily mean I shouldn't eat meat, either from a "think globally" or an "act locally/personally" perspective.
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True about the vegetarian products. I used to eat those, but only occasionally these days. And true, my problem is with the modern system in large part. Without the modern system most people would probably not be able to afford meat or be able to attain it easily. If there was some way of producing the current amount of meat, there would certainly be some other side-effects which just shifts the environmental impacts to another area. Still there would be the lack of education that most people don't have, and even if it was there we'd still see people not caring about what they're doing to their bodies. A interesting tidbit from Supersize Me was that our bodies aren't built to consume in one week the amount of meat in a single Big Mac, yet most people eat at least a couple Big Macs worth of meat per day. (I am recalling that from memory and might not be exactly right.)
The animal rights side of this just comes from the fact that our diets are already in an abusive relationship with us, our children and our planet. Adding on top that the diet is a choice, not a necessity means to me that any other 'casualties' (pain, suffering, fear, death) is just kinda mean-spirited.
I'm really not interested in speculation of what an animal would prefer. We're not doing the cows a favor by bringing them into the world. We could just as easily not bring them into the world and they would be fine and dandy with the idea.
And finally, I believe strongly that ostriches are strictly for riding.
