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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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 Posted: Fri May 20, 05 9:34 pm Post subject: |
 
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| Milo wrote: |
Well, let�s kill loads more then? It doesn�t matter how many we kill? What type we kill? Why we kill them? (I trust you can readily identify a rhetorical question?).
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I see no reason to treat this as a rhetorical question.
We kill animals. Fact of life. Intentionally and otherwise. That we kill them doesn't mean we're bad. It doesn't mean we're immoral. I'm waiting for a good argument to the contrary.
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*Including the smartarse? |
If you don't want a polite discussion on this, just say so. I'll stop now if you likem but be clear on what you want here. We're keeping this good and civil or not?
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| You�re right, btw, I don�t even know what tardigrades, rotifers are, but I assume that they are very, very tiny squiggly things. Am I right? |
They're multicellular animals with identifiable nervous systems; they're as 'animal' as sheep in the fields or birds in the trees. Do they not count then?
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#Don't have to. But you can if you like; continued deprivation of habitat (i.e. farming) also restricts animal populations, very effectively killing progeny.
Hey, let's all eat dictionaries! I suggest that we�re now back at, or close to, the 10acres and how many people can be fed on what.
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You mean, you can't justify that omnivory is wrong on the grounds that it kills more animals than veganism, you're going to go back to the claim I've already responded to that you can feed more people with entirely vegan agriculture?
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#Actually, no, this isn't grey. It's black and white.
* I can no longer remember what this was about.
#By existing you are responsible for the death of countless animals. Live with it.
* �Live with it�, put like that does seem to me to fall somewhere between totally dismissive and moderately aggressive, and it definitely seems to me to be ill-mannered, but perhaps I�m just a sensitive little flower!
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It's telling things like they are. Your existence causes other animals to die. All of the time, unavoidably. You've got the option of living with it or curling up with guilt at the prospect. Which do you choose?
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#But don't try to define any moral structure based on not killing animals,
* Well, I don't think I've made any reference to morals, have I, but now that you mention it, I might just give it a try! Your comment is comparable with actually telling someone what to think � pretty damn pointless, I suggest.
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If I had meely said that, you'd have a point. Every part of my argument has been backed up with reasoning.
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#it is not consistent with your own existence.
#The number of animals we actually eat is vanishingly small compared with the number that die that we may eat.
* Well, let�s do what we can to keep the number to a minimum? And aren�t you clinging rather desperately to your tardigrades?
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What's wrong with tardigrades? Are they not as important as sheep or rabbits or bumblees? And, more to the point, what do you do to reduce your real impact on the sheer numer of animals you kill? Do you really believe that measurably fewer animals die to keep you alive than die to keep me alive?
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*OK, let�s kill lots and lots of animals and not bother about it at all?
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Who's saying that?
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*Oh, man, I can still just about make you out�.. Yes, hold on, there you are�.. That is you, isn�t it, scrabbling around down there at the very bottom of your thought-barrel? And apparently, gosh, yes, you�re collecting lots of tiny insects! I guess now you�ll pile them up and stand on them so as to improve your perspective?
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That's your third strike. I'm out of this. I shall discuss this with you if you intend to be civil, as everyon else here has been. If not, well, bye; I'm not going to be involved in a flame war here. |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Fri May 20, 05 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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Cab,
My sincere apologies for causing offence.
Mrs Womble,
#Milo, you may enjoy sarcasm,
*I don�t generally, unless it�s very mild. In fairness to me, (some of) mine was only in response to someone else�s sarcasm.
#but its getting in the way of your argument.
*I can well see that it might. I probably felt I was in a bit of a corner and wanted to get fierce, but a corner can sometimes be a very good place in which to be fighting, [especially when you believe that the leg(s) upon which you�re standing are strong and certainly no more artificial than an opponent�s might be].
#I don't understand the points you're trying to make,
*Then my erudition must be sadly lacking, or flagging. Consider perhaps that in a bartering situation it is customary to ask for rather more than one expects to receive?
#and I am really trying. We all enjoy debate and you are right to say its healthy. I understand you think its wrong to kill animals. I don't share that view.
*But I�m sure that you do to the extent that you think it�s wrong to avoidably or unnecessarily kill animals. If I�m right in that assumption, then clearly within this context it�s only in the interpretation of �avoidably or unnecessarily� that our views differ.
#Animals which I keep (or pay someone to keep on my behalf) healthy, sheltered, happy and as naturally as possible for a domesticated species may have a short life, but its a comfortable one. We can't ask them to choose,
*Perhaps one could just not keep them, or not keep so very many?
#and you can't speak for their choices.
*But I�ll have a damn good try.
No-one could persuade me, nor you surely, that a (farm) animal which is about to be killed and is aware of that, (or aware that it is likely to come to some extraordinary harm), does not choose to take avoiding action, i.e. to survive, nor that it will not, for just as long as it can do, take extraordinary action in order to survive.
#Man is part of nature, nature evolves and changes, and changes its environment.
*And some, not I, would say that nature doesn�t exist.
#Thats not an excuse, we have responsibilities that come with our evolution.
*Yes, don�t we just!
#Other species kill and eat other animals, some in pretty horrific (certainly compared to a good abbotoir) ways. Why are we different?
*Because we have evolved to have great big brains.
And we can think in depth.
And we have an understanding of compassion.
And we have a duty of care.
#every animal (and plant) is dependent on other animals. We can't live independently, or remove ourselves from the ecosytem.
Even if you were totally vegan, you would still have to defend you crops from competitors, somehow. I'm sure it could be done, with either enormous capital, chemical or labour outlay.
*�Enormous capital�. Are we now we�re moving into Values? And not just monetary values? I�m certain that Values are very relevant to this discussion. We might also include Quality as an object of philosophical contemplation and then perhaps we might go right on through to quality as an economic variable.
I�m pretty sure though, that at the deepest level, quality of life and the value of life, human or animal, is inherently unquantifiable, but you can certainly put up a valuable fence and keep valued deer out of a valued wood, valued rabbits out of a valued allotment, etc. and thereby increase what we would presumably consider to be both the value and the quality of that wood or allotment.
(With others I once planted hundreds of broadleaved trees as �whips� in a fenced-off area of steep, rough hillside in Breconshire. The neighbouring farmer cut the fence, folded it back and allowed his sheep in. One was not amused, as you can well imagine).
#I think its unlikely to be sustainable on a global long term basis. I've said before I think balance is the key and I think a totally vegan system is just as unbalanced as the present one.
*Now don�t be surprised, you know I�m not really an extremist and it is quite obvious I'd have thought, that to almost any reasonable person balance is most certainly the key.
Our interpretations of that balance do differ, but I�m very sure that you won�t be recommending that everyone in Asia eat as much beef as do the majority of folks in the UK, US, etc. Well, they couldn�t possibly, could they, because don�t we know that there isn�t enough land, (viz. 10 acres will support by growing soya - 60 people, wheat - 24 people, maize - 10 people, cattle - TWO people).
No major religion commands its followers to eat meat. Many devout Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Jews are vegetarian, as indeed are all Hare Krishnas and Jains. Most Hindus eat no red meat. For most religious people the question is one of individual judgement, but most religions do celebrate compassion, kindness and mercy. The abattoir, let alone the factory farm, are definitely not consistent with that.
#Clearly you have very strong views. Most people here do, and most people with have thought very carefully about the meat and right issue. They have good points to make too - don't alienate them beofre you've heard what they have to say, or before they have listened to what you have to say.
*You are indeed a stubborn lot. On another forum when I was last involved in a similar discussion one chap (and his wife and children), turned vegan overnight, (literally), and they remain as happy as can be with that decision.
Anyway, if anyone does feel alienated, you won�t catch me telling them to, �Live with it�, that�s for certain.
Last edited by Milo on Sun May 22, 05 1:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 05 8:30 am Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
*Meat-eating and vegetarianism are not two sides of the same coin - one brings death and suffering to animals, disproportionately damages the planet and harms human health. And the other doesn�t.
#Put simply I think that's wrong. Both forms kill animals.
*I would say that one form kills far fewer animals, and by that I mean animals as we generally understand the word, i.e. not including very, very tiny squiggly things. |
Commercial arable farming may even kill more mammals. I suggest you do some research before stating something like this.
| Milo wrote: |
Forgetting factory farming for just one minute, are you saying that a farmer who grows nothing but arable will kill, or be involved with the deaths of just as many animals as one who on the same acreage �grows� pigs, sheep, cattle, etc?
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If it is intensive yes. Probably more, rabbits, mice, birds will die or be prevented from living due to control and destruction of habitat. For example, where do you think field mice go when corn is harvested? Some will escape others will be munched by Mr Combine I would have thought.
| Milo wrote: |
#A land owner in this country is legally obliged to control rabbits����.
*Source for this? I understand that landowners have a legal right to kill rabbits, but where�s the �legal obligation� to be found?
Has anyone ever been prosecuted for not killing (sufficient) rabbits on their land? |
Source: Sections 98 and 99 of the Agriculture Act 1947.
Land owners have a duty to control certain pests and failure to control can lead to notice being served by the Government and people can be brought in to control the pests at the land owners expense. Pests include: rabbits, hares, rats, mice and other rodents, deer, foxes, moles and non-protected birds.
I believe it is quite common for people to be brought in to control animals and then the pests are often not consumed. So, IMHO a land owner should make use of whatever pests they can for food which is more ethical than being a vegetarian. |
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 05 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Commercial arable farming may even kill more mammals. I suggest you do some research before stating something like this.
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Well, I'm not stating my views as facts, but as opinions, as are you.
I might even be moved to do some research if only I knew where to start, (other than "on the web"). Suggestions, anyone? Has Defra done anything like this? Or English Nature, etc.
Surely the starting point should be the real world, i.e. initially at least a UK countywide analysis of agricultural, (arboricultural?) and horticultural land usage as is at present, followed by mammal counts whenever any relevant changes take place and to include an understanding that it was necessary to factor in proximity to woodland, extent of hegerows, like-for-like as far as possible.
And then, hey, what if you were right. Or even right by a long way?
I don't think that it would prove very much without superimposing a realistic UK-based interpretation of that global view, [soya, etc : cattle, (60, etc : 2) ratio], upon the results.
Wouldn't we surely find, allowing for variations in the plant species grown, intensity of farming, mixed v. mono, climate generally, rainfall and irrigation, organic / chemical techniques, etc. that the 60 : 2, call it 30 : 1 ratio, was reduced?
What if it were reduced pretty drastically to 10 : 1? Or even 5 : 1? Couldn't we then safely infer that there had been 10 times, or 5 times too much land being used for agriculture?
And what would we do with the 90%, or even 50% left over?
Well, the indigenous mammal population would be quite pleased to see it, wouldn't they? Large nature reserves could be set up for the once traditional (now rare) breeds and there would be land available for forests and woods and other habitats where genuinely wild British species of animal and plants could flourish.
In other countries we could encourage the breeding in the wild of our farm animal's wild ancestors - the wild pig, turkeys and jungle fowl (the forerunner of the battery hen) by stopping / reducing the destruction of their natural environments. |
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
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wellington womble
Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 05 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for responding to my points Milo, I'm a lot clearer now.
I do agree that we should minimise avoidably and unecessarily killing animals. But I also think that as a meat eating animal we have evolved to do just that. It means we should eliminate (not minimise, eliminate) stress, pain and discomfort to the animal involved, because I think we owe them that. I don't eat any meat that hasn't been raised and slaughtered to the highest possible (with the EU laws  ) standard. I also eat, in comparison to many meat eaters, very little meat, so although I have made the decision that its right for me to eat meat, I have reduced the amount of animals kept for my consumption.
I'm assuming that your belief is that killing animals for consumption is avoidable. Yes it is, but I don't think its practical on a global scale. I also think that the western world isn't going change overnight, even if veganism is the way to go. What I think is the real crime is the amount of meat that's wasted. either thrown away (at any level in the supply chain) or never used. I think its wrong to kill for sport, but not for use.
I'm not suggesting that anyone eat more meat, least of all hindus etc etc, the very opposite for most of the western world. But are you suggesting that everyone should live on soya? Incidentally, the late, great John seymour states in his book of self suffciency that five acres of good land will support a large family (lets assume 6, for safety) of which your ten acre example will support 2 - that's at least 12 people - more than maize alone, by mixed farming, and it will provide them with more than just food (wool, firewood, soap, leather etc etc) and considerably more than just beef.
Stubborn - maybe, but people here will have thought about all this (as I have) and probably made their choices, so you may not be converting carnivores into vegans overnight, but you might make people think, and make changes. For example, as a result of Treacodactyls posts, both here and elsewhere, I have decided that we should eat more game, as this is frequently killed wastefully. This will result in us eating less farmed meat, and reduce the number kept and killed for our consumption.
we do agree that present farming practice is out of balance (with pretty much everything!) so we've found some common ground. Maybe thats what debate is about? |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 05 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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#Thanks for responding to my points Milo, I'm a lot clearer now.
*Good-oh, but my brain hurts now!
#I do agree that we should minimise avoidably and unecessarily killing animals.
*Except that I'd aim for "stop", rather than "minimise".
#But I also think that as a meat eating animal we have evolved to do just that.
*Mentally, but not physically. We can digest meat, but our digestive systems are different from those of carnivorous animals. Our guts are longer (so we can digest lots of plant materials) and our teeth aren�t designed to slice and tear flesh. Our teeth and mouths are the wrong shape to be able to kill and hold captive, struggling prey. Compare our jaw shape and teeth to a lion � or your cat or dog!
Humans cook meat before eating it and we�re no good at crunching and munching uncooked bones. As for our sharp teeth, gorillas are entirely vegetarian � as are almost all primates � and yet have far longer and sharper canine teeth than human beings.
The diet of the ancestors of human beings was vegan until they began hunting (about one-and-a-half million years ago?), but even then meat formed just a tiny part of their diet. That�s why people live long and healthy lives on vegetarian and vegan diets, but would very probably quickly become unwell (and die) if they ate nothing but meat.
Only when we started farming (hardly natural!) did meat become even a regular part of most human beings� diets and eating meat on a daily basis is very recent - since the advent of factory farming after the Second World War. This brought the cost of rearing animals down and the meat eating explosion was the result. In 1946 the number of poultry eaten in Britain was 31.9 million and in 2001 it was over 800 million.
Cut.
#I'm assuming that your belief is that killing animals for consumption is avoidable. Yes it is, but I don't think its practical on a global scale. I also think that the western world isn't going change overnight, even if veganism is the way to go.
*Never suggested it would, WW, not even within my three score and ten. Mind you, come the revolution, eh?
Cut
#I'm not suggesting that anyone eat more meat, least of all hindus etc etc, the very opposite for most of the western world. But are you suggesting that everyone should live on soya?
* No, beetroot, broccoli, haricots and hazelnuts, �soya and drugs and rock �n� roll�, would be fine!
Back to Asia, there is undeniably a political angle within this topic, (as there is to some degree within almost any topic of any sort), and I am unable to see any good reason why you and I, or anyone else, should have any more of anything than anyone else does. I am fairly determined however that I will not curl up and die of guilt while I ponder upon such issues.
And can anyone tell me within what latitudes soy(a) can currently be grown?
#Incidentally, the late, great John seymour states in his book of self suffciency that five acres of good land will support a large family (lets assume 6, for safety) of which your ten acre example will support 2 - that's at least 12 people - more than maize alone, by mixed farming, and it will provide them with more than just food (wool, firewood, soap, leather etc etc) and considerably more than just beef.
*In 1974 when it was new I had a copy of Self Sufficiency by John & Sally Seymour, but lost it years ago.
Cut
#we do agree that present farming practice is out of balance (with pretty much everything!) so we've found some common ground. Maybe thats what debate is about?
*At the very least 10 acres of common ground! |
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wellington womble
Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 05 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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But we've established its simply not possible to live on this planet and stop impacting on other life. No species does that.
I think we have evolved to eat meat. Not exclusively, and not as much as we do even, but we can digest it just fine (as well as a lot of other things) and we have teeth equipped to eat it. Not kill it - we learned to do that by teamwork and tools, but definitely eat it, even raw. Chimps eat hunt and eat meat.
Farming and natural is another topic, but there are other species that influence their environment to their gain - elephants push down acacia trees, and the result is more grass, which they prefer. I agree that we we eat far too much meat as a whole.
There isn't going to be a vegan revolution, not even if its the right thing to do, but there is already an organic/animal welfare revolution going on, which is a step in the right direction in that it makes meat, better, less available (ie more expensive) and happier. Many people here support that (including me) and deserve credit for their principles too.
May I suggest you have a look at a copy of 'meat', by Hugh fearnly whittingstall, if you are interested the topic. It doesn't really deal with politics, but is very informative. If you don't want to read it because of your principles, then I respect that, but I do genuinely think you'll find it interesting. it must have got into libraries by now! |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Sun May 22, 05 1:04 am Post subject: |
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#Apology accepted. I'll accept it more wholeheartedly if you go back and answer the points sensibly instead.
*Are you, or were you ever a schoolteacher?
*Well, let�s kill loads more then? It doesn�t matter how many we kill? What type we kill? Why we kill them? (I trust you can readily identify a rhetorical question?).
#I see no reason to treat this as a rhetorical question.
*You won�t like this, but I�d meant them to be rhetorical because I wasn�t expecting you to provide me with an interesting or a helpful answer.
#We kill animals. Fact of life. Intentionally and otherwise.
*Some people kill animals intentionally � the hunter, fisherman, slaughterman. Some kill them incidentally � slicing a sickle through a mouse nest perhaps. Some kill them both incidentally and unavoidably � biting on an apple and finding half a grub, halving a worm whilst digging a hole in which to plant a tree, or driving a car into which a bird flies. etc.
#That we kill them doesn't mean we're bad.
*It might mean that we�re not as good as we could be, depending on the circumstances.
#It doesn't mean we're immoral.
*But in certain circumstances we might be.
#I'm waiting for a good argument to the contrary.
*That�s it � the circumstances.
#(tardigrades, rotifers) They're multicellular animals with identifiable nervous systems; they're as 'animal' as sheep in the fields or birds in the trees. Do they not count then?
*Pedantry is the word, Cab, literalism, laboriousness and / or lack of imagination. In so far as it relates to your repeated reference to creatures of about 0.35mm in length, (or in the case of the tiny weeny rotifer, 210-240 �m) with total confidence I accuse you of the first two. And perhaps the third as well.
It�s quite possible that I have never, ever discussed anything with anyone as pedantic as you are being at present. The only mitigation acceptable to me might be that you are finding amusement or even humour within your own reasoning, basic though it is on this much laboured point. I�d very much like to believe that you�re �avin� a larf, but I somehow doubt it.
Of course ruddy tardigrades count. They are valuable.
But how do we value them?
How many insects are there on the planet? The ratio of people to insects? How can a person avoid killing some insects? Sometimes insect deaths can be reduced, but very, very, very obviously they cannot always be avoided.
How many tardigrades in a rural acre of central England?
Unavoidably kill one and what happens?
Nothing else. It almost certainly feels no initial distress, its mother knows nothing of the death and, unless it�s under a microscope, no person is aware of the death either.
How long might it have lived, had it not been killed?
Not very.
Deliberately and unnecessarily kill a bull calf and what happens?
You very probably cause it distress initially, you distress its mother and probably any similar beasts in the vicinity and you might well distress some people too.
Had it not been killed, how long might it have lived?
Thirty years.
How do I value a calf against a tardigrade?
Very much more highly. And so do you.
And so does everybody else on the planet.
*I suggest that we�re now back at, or close to, the 10acres and how many people can be fed on what.
#You mean, you can't justify that omnivory is wrong on the grounds that it kills more animals than veganism,
*Are you telling me what I can, or cannot, justify? Or are you asking me? Or is the relative numbers of deaths simply a conclusion at which you�ve arrived and which, quite possibly by no small coincidence, matches your opinions on this matter?
As I recall, these �grounds� relate to arable v. mixed / non-arable farming and were put forward by you. Something isn�t necessarily a fact just because we happen to state it as if it were one.
#you're going to go back to the claim I've already responded to that you can feed more people with entirely vegan agriculture?
* Well, I might have been going back, yes, (hell, I might even have been reiterating), and this might quite simply be a question of interpretation, but am I to infer that because you�ve made a response, what you stated in your response is a fact? Isn�t there�s something almost biblical about that, as in �In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God�? For �God� read �cab�? Surely not.
*�Live with it�, put like that does seem to me to fall somewhere between totally dismissive and moderately aggressive, and it definitely seems to me to be ill-mannered, but perhaps I�m just a sensitive little flower!
#It's telling things like they are.
*Possibly. And being blunt in the process.
#Your existence causes other animals to die. All of the time, unavoidably. You've got the option of living with it or curling up with guilt at the prospect. Which do you choose?
*I wasn�t going to mention this but, to be quite honest, I stick a pair of panties on my head, ram pencils up my nose, and go "wibble".
#But don't try to define any moral structure based on not killing animals,
*Well, I don't think I've made any reference to morals, have I, but now that you mention it, I might just give it a try! Your comment is comparable with actually telling someone what to think � pretty damn pointless, I suggest.
#If I had meely said that, you'd have a point. Every part of my argument has been backed up with reasoning.
*Does that make it flawless?
#The number of animals we actually eat is vanishingly small compared with the number that die that we may eat.
* Well, let�s do what we can to keep the number to a minimum? And aren�t you clinging rather desperately to your tardigrades?
#What's wrong with tardigrades? Are they not as important as sheep or rabbits or bumblees?
*No. Not on a one to one basis, of that I�m certain. And so are you.
#And, more to the point, what do you do to reduce your real impact on the sheer numer of animals you kill?
*I doubt that it is �more to the point� at all, but I maintain a near vegan diet and see above re values, because it seems to me that your interpretation of �sheer numbers� may be relevant only to you.
#Do you really believe that measurably fewer animals die to keep you alive than die to keep me alive?
*I don�t know. Nor do you, but I know that I value a goat more highly than a rotifer.
Rotifer
Tardigrade
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