this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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If you eat factory meat, you're doing something morally wrong that can't be justified.
And the vast majority of people who get defensive about that, deep down know what they are doing is morally dubious at best, but they can't/won't admit it, so they lash out at vegans/vegetarians instead.
Guess what, most if not all veggies and vegans are also doing something morally dubious at best.
Factory farming, extensive farming, they’re all bad for the soil, bad for native wildlife, bad for native plants. The societal impacts of factory farming are also not small. In the end, the moral lines people draw are mostly at different places, neither is undoubtedly better than the other.
As it currently stands, the morally correct option for food production would probably be for a large amount of the population to starve. That, of course, is also not entirely morally correct.
Disclaimer: I am personally omnivorous. I have a son and many other relatives and friends who are or were vegetarians or vegans. I love a lot of veggie food and used to frequent vegan restaurants, so I have absolutely zero qualms with it.
I have personally tried to give up meat twice, once for 6 months and once for a year. On both cases my health suffered massively for it, and I went back to eating meat. I had a cousin who was, for many years, a hardcore vegetarian. She was also of the opinion that eating meat was wrong. A few years ago she reintroduced fish in her diet to overcome health issues after fighting them for years. Most symptoms subsided in a handful of months. I believe she now also eats beef, although infrequently and in small quantities.
I’m sorry to be that guy but reality is more complex than whatever moral line any one of us would like to draw. You’re not wrong but it would behoove you to acquire some nuance on your thoughts.
There are a lot of calories lost when eating meat, because the animals burn calories by staying alive. So eating meat is like eating 15x times more calories from veggies. So everything bad for the environment about vegetarian consumption is true for meat too but in worse.
And perfect is the enemy of good. Veggies aren't perfect, but they're far better than meat for the environment.
Some of those are useless calories, we can't eat grass and on some lands where only grass grows so cows are a way of using that grass, but that's not the majority.
most of what animals are fed are parts of plants people can't or won't eat, or grazed grass. in that way, we are conserving resources.
This is not true. The vast majority of farmed animals come from high intensity operations and the vast bulk of the food they eat is grown agriculturally. This is one of those happy little lies people repeat to themselves without verifying because it provides them with a shred of moral license. They don't really care whether it's true or not and finding out it is false won't change their behaviour, it's a totally facile argument.
sure, but I can't eat cornstalks and I don't want to eat soy cake, so feeding that to livestock is a conservation of resources.
Where are you getting your information?
The majority of all the plants that humans grow are fed to livestock. That's just the fact of the matter. It's not conserving anything, rather it's incredibly wasteful. Human food crops could have been grown instead, on a fraction of the land.
And again, you don't really give a shit. It wouldn't change your behaviour to discover you are mistaken, it's a disingenuous argument. It's sophistry.
human food crops are grown. soy is a great example. about 80% of soy is pressed for oil, and the byproduct is fed to livestock.
this is a lie
That's exactly what I wrote
no, you said those calories are wasted.
Read more than the first sentence please
"Some of those are useless calories, we can't eat grass and on some lands where only grass grows so cows are a way of using that grass, but that's not the majority."
most people don't want to eat soy cake, or crop seconds, or spoilage. feeding that to livestock is a conservation of resources, not a waste.
Even if this were true, it does not address the moral argument that is at the root of this discussion. It's a way that you distract yourself from the moral component of your choices. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it doesn't even matter if you believe it or not. It just has to distract you long enough that you get past the point where you might accidentally engage your empathy, and have a feeling you don't want to have.
the moral argument in this thread is about allocation of resources. if you want to make a separate moral argument, you're free to do so.
it is