BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I am a vegetarian 'athlete'.

I think the 60/20/20 diet works well, and is

recommended a lot. 60% carb, 20 protien, 20

fat.

Running doesnt help cycling more than

anything else. If it takes weight off

(assuming that weight needs to come off)

then it could help, but if you have a lot

of time, ride. If you have 40 minutes,

running isnt bad if you dont injure

yourself.

You need to eat more than 1200 k/day.

period. I am a lightweight and I burn 600

an hour while riding. If you have nothing

to burn you are going to shut down.

Fuel for riding can be the difference

between being able to do the DC trip in

2 days an not, but it is not the limiter.

The limiter is how much time you have in,

being comfortable on your bike, not

injuring yourself by doing too big of a

day without training.

By training to do a big day, you will

learn what foods work for you and what

foods do not. Dont get hung up on fancy

bars. Dried fruit, oatmeal cream pies, and

Peanut MM's have taken many cyclists very

far.

The last long day that I did was 10? hours

and we did every dirty dozen hill 4 times

and the last one like 12. I ate cookies

and oatmeal cream pies the whole time.

I burned 4500 calories. I was able to that

cause my body was conditioned to be able to.

http://truelovehealth.com/

Monique Ryan has a good book called "cycling

nutrition"... most cycling nutrition books

are the same and then have a "for vegetarians" chapter.

The top link is my good friend matt that

does lots of 200+ mile rides. Did a lot

if Iron Distances Tri's did the furnace

creek 508 and Brest Paris Brest. He is

vegan and a registered dietitian. He

writes a lot about vegan endurance athletes.

I'm not an athlete, so I can't comment on optimizing performance. As a female, I will say that my body definitely processes food differently as I age. I think it has a lot to do with fertility cycles and estrogen. As I've gotten older I've had to adjust not just the volume of food and amount of exercise, but the type of food I eat in order to maintain weight (meaning, in order to avoid gaining too much of it).

Steevo is definitely your best local source on this. I do 2nd his buddy Matt and Monique Ryan's book.

I know plenty of people who are vegetarian or vegan who race at a high level. Totally doable, and good luck to you.

A good online forum for vegan fitness is

http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/forum/

I know it's a body building themed site, but the forums have a ton of people that participate in all types of sports.

Slightly OT, but this seems like a good time to remind everyone - women in particular - that cycling can sap calcium from the body. (The high energy demands of the sport, combined with its non-weightbearing nature, consumes the calcium without strenghtening bone structure.) As you look into nutrition, you might want to explore ways to add a little extra calcium, especially if you will be training hard for the 2 day GAP adventure.

Stef... Eryn from Velomuse here in town is a vegan, in great shape, and a top cyclist who rides on average 30 miles a day, besides other endurance-competition events. She would be a great source of information for you, specially in the non-meat nutrition & very healthy kind. I'm a meat-eatarian so can't help on that -let me know and I can properly introduce you to her

As a side note, I run and cycle, and I think thay both of them go great in tandem at performing in-shape both feats. Over the winter I take a break from running due to weather, and gotta say my cycling is been lacking.... gonna start running in probably 2 weeks.

Mainting proper Magnesium (important too!!) & Calcium levels is definitely key too as Swalfort mentioned.... bit besides her points, healthy levels of them help you achieve better-sounding sleep = quality rest & energy for the day rides & keeping stamina.

If you wanna go on a run one of this days, let me know!! I do on average 6-formal races a year (Marathon, half k's, etc), plus training runs on the weekends.

And BTW.... Stef, you ARE not old!!!

thanks guys. i do take a bunch of calcium... maybe too much sometimes. does anyone do any kind of protein powder/meal replacement kind of thing?

S gets some protein powder stuff from Trader Joes, the chocolate kind.. two scoops in a glass full of (soy)milk and blend (hand blender, for easy cleanup) in a banana and maybe some frozen berries, mmmm.

My daughter ran into this a few years when she was on the school's wrestling team. Yes, you read that right. Blog here. I wish I'd written down more about the dietary issues at the time; there were many.

The thing about calcium and cycling is that it's not enough just to consume the extra calcium. That way lies kidney stones. Weightbearing exercise causes the calcium to be deposited in the bones instead of the kidneys (and other bad places).

I am suspicious of the shibboleth that "my body processes food differently as I age." There might be something to it, but at least in my case, it's more a matter of my body processing more beer as I age. And of my brain being less willing to exercise vigorously.

^ or, your body not being subject to the same major shift in hormones as it would were you female.

Yeah, point taken (though there are lots of different hormones, y'know, and most of them are shared by XXs and XYs.), but I wasn't really trying to reason by personal example. Just saying. My friends who are innies have made most of the same gradual behavioral changes towards less and less activity as my friends who are outies.

I tried the vegan thing twice, but didn't couple it with good nutrition, and self destructed (twice). Full recovery made with omnivorous eating (which must be healthier or baluga impersonation happens, at least for me). I never did figure it all out. I'm smarter now, but still not sure I could swing it.

The more I read about the food supply (organic milk uses alfalfa [USDA sux], GMO salmon, BP oily shrimp, etc), the less inclined I am to consume the few animal products and byproducts that I enjoy in quantity. But I don't do soy well, and I don't do wheat well, so I'm feeling pretty stuck as an omnivore. Bit by bit these things are dissappearing from my plate, though, so maybe it's less in the label and more in the shopping cart (for me).

When I was cross training (and semi-succeeding at being an athlete, like one who does races and competitions and stuff - not winning, just trying to win), I found that swimming did more for my running than upping my miles, and rock climbing did more for my strength than weight lifting... eventually I dropped running since everything else I did seemed to improve it more than actually doing it. Never added cycling till recently (but by now I'd rather just be "active" than an athlete - less personal disappointment).

Regardless, thank you for starting the discussion - I'm enjoying all the information and feeling better about sliding down that seemingly (personally) inevitable vegan slope.

i love threads like these.

Might be worth checking out this blog:

http://www.theveganrd.com/

Vegan dietitian that's done work with the ADA, seems pretty well regarded in the circles I run in

If you're looking for protein, Giant Eagle Market district has a couple of vegan options, a bunch of Genisoy stuff that you can mix in smoothies. If you're not up for soy, they have chickpea stuff and the East End Food Coop might be worth a look around

One of the runners profiled in Born to Run is at least a vegetarian, so there's some info there, as well as some spin-off sites, like No Meat Athlete.

Also, stuff like oatmeal cream pies can only be loosely defined as "food."

My wife and I have been experimenting with some of the Tarahumara "super" foods (chia seeds, pinole) as replacements for energy bars.

@lyle I am suspicious of the shibboleth that "my body processes food differently as I age."

I'm not.

When I was younger, I rarely exercised, I ate a huge amount(virtually no veggies), drank beer, and weighed 60 lbs less than I do now.

My advice would be to lose weight very slowly. Losing weight is difficult - but it is easier than either keeping it off, or re-losing it after regaining.

WAY easier. It's hard to emphasize enough how much easier.

Basically LOSING is the fast, easy part. Losing the weight quickly (say, more than a half pound a week), can make the fast, easy part go faster and easier.

You will pay for that, though.

It's hard to find good diet advice - the so-called science is geared towards making money from people who want to lose in 6 months. Which is another way to say, "we don't actually kill htem and the suckahs will be back again in 3 years."

They call 1 year studies "long term." (I call BS).

And that is in the peer-reviewed medical literature. I'm a scientist. Makes me puke.

The only realistic scientific stat I've seen is that if you lose more than 10% of your body mass, you have a 50% chance of regaining it and more.

I suspect that would not be true for people who, say, take 4 years to lose 20% of their body weight, but that is just a personal guess. No one will do the science, buecause those results will not pay for a doctor's Mercedes Benz. "Six months weight loss," no matter how ineffective in the long term, will rake in the cash.

Getting in shape in a conservative program is way faster than losing weight in a realistic regimen.

http://www.meatisforpussies.org/

if its good enough for john joseph of the cro mags, its good enough for anyone.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

You couldn't resist posting an image that admonishes people seeking support in a thread from somebody seeking support?

I don't think that dialogue is particularly useful. That's akin to saying "Sorry you may find this upsetting, but I'm going to enjoy laughing at it anyways"

I'd be interested in hearing on what basis "carnivores" are awesome.

On a similar note, I wouldn't call a meat eater a "pussy."

I prefer civil dialogue to quips and one-upmanship.

oh geez, over-react much? its a silly photo of a silly (and mildly funny) flier on a message board somewhere.

also stef isnt seeking support for being vegan or vegetarian. she has been for many years and isnt the least bit shy or ashamed by it or tempted to not be. she needs nutritional support, and would even if she ate meat since she will be the first to admit that her palette is rather limited and she sucks at nutrition.

uh....

the link i posted is to a book that details the benefits of vegetarian diets for athletes.

i thought that it might be useful, but apparently i am wrong.

Yeah those fliers are funny. I actually get on colin's case more with the "ew, gross"es with the meat.

But anyway i appreciate the advice everyone.

@Pierce: Brian posted a fairly classic piece of intertube humor. Even here, in the depths of the winter doldrums, it's okay to have fun with ourselves.

Besides, if one wants to mock vegetarians/vegans, there are so many ways that you're pretty much spoiled for choice. (That was a joke.)

With regards to diet, if one doesn't object to pseudo-food, Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuem is vegetarian (maltodextrin, whey protein, and some random vitamins IIRC). Liquid calories are easy for many people to digest whilst riding, although I'd recommend trying it on short distances first: 'twould truly suck to find out that it makes your stomach flip AFTER you've gotten 35 miles from home...

Personally, I'd go with the Perpetuem (or a home-made copy) AND the oatmeal cream pies. But that's just me.

it's okay to have fun with ourselves

well isn't that special? i thought this was supposed to be a family board...

I didn't quantify what kind of support she was looking for. Nutritional support = support no?

Steve, I'm not questioning whether or not your linked book is helpful, merely pointing out that I don't think calling people "pussys" based on what they eat (or their views) is not.

@Mick, I totally agree. there's a lot of reasons for it, mostly boiling down to "youth is wasted on the young". The science is generally bad, but even when it's not people looking at the same data will come to different conclusions anyway.

for Steph- I've heard some good things about the book "vegetarian sports nutrition", which kind of sums it up in the title.

well isn't that special? i thought this was supposed to be a family board...

Get your mind out of the gutter, you're blocking my periscope.

Actually, perhaps I didn't react enough. Let's look a little deeper:

This image is a little jab at vegetarians through vegans. (A to Z, wide spectrum of beliefs) The majority of the population isn't familiar with my particular beliefs, which I would call "abolitionist vegan." It's a small percentage of people even amongst those who call themselves vegan. Because my position is unknown and not respected, many can make thoughtless sarcastic remarks against myself and my beliefs.

Now let's apply this image to a larger, more well known group of the population:

"LGBT?

Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, curious? Casual, non-judgmental support[...]"

Then, somebody thought it would be funny to make a little jab against that group:

"STRAIGHT?

Chances are you don't need some wimpy support group.

Keep being AWESOME"

Now how would you feel about posting that around the internet?

I feel upset when people I don't know (or people I do) make quips and jokes about something they know practically nothing about and something that I've spent nearly a decade researching and studying.

So if you want to make jokes about my beliefs that's your choice, but I will respond when you say I'm "overreacting" because I'm bringing attention to it.

Comparing vegans to LGBT? Are you serious Pierce?

Do you have a huge problem with your civil rights because you don't eat meat? Have you been kicked out of your house, thought about suicide? Beat up? Denied employment? Not allowed to marry someone?

A more accurate comparison would be making fun of reddan because he rides a stubby bike with tiny wheels. Recumbent support group? Not needed for us upright riders, because we're awesome!

Wow you are comparing a dietary choice to how someone is born. That's like comparing the treatment get for the way I look (long hair, big beard and lots of tattoos) to treatment people receive because of their race or gender.

I also find it fascinating in that "it says a lot more about the person making the complaint" way that you assume anyone who makes a joke about vegetarians or vegans has no idea what it's about.

I apologize if I offended anyone in posting that image. Really, I didn't mean to do that.

In my own defense, please note I posted a link to a website about vegetarian athletes, and also suggested that Stef take a gander at Born to Run for more information, as I personally found that book to be very insightful.

A more accurate comparison would be making fun of reddan because he rides a stubby bike with tiny wheels

*sniff* Now my feelings are hurt.

I generally find that people who are less secure in their own beliefs are the ones who are more likely to take offense when none was proffered. It's one to say "Look, man. That struck me the wrong way...is that really what you meant?"; it's another to come out swinging, assuming that you've been attacked before even asking for clarification.

With regard to the LGBT thing, I can't imagine being offended by such an image, if it was floating around the internet. Shockingly, there is real, actual, honest-to-Buddha hate speech out there...it's a useful skill to be able to draw distinctions between that and the visual equivalent of bathroom humor.

did someone mention Vikings?

In the 70s & 80s my dad was several times denied a job teaching in public high schools for refusing to shave his beard. (i.e. he was offered the job on the condition that he shave & he refused). Also, he was part of a court case in the late 60s that overturned public schools' ability to suspend male students who grew their hair long enough to cover their ears.

Just sayin'

I'll admit I laughed pretty hard at the "Carnivore" flyer, but I also understand the struggles of having a life outside of the mainstream in anyway: whether by choice or by circumstances out of one's control.

Yes, yes they did.

[edited to add:]No mockery of those with ludicrously excessive facial hair is intended.

Well I for one am offended by that photo

really? i thought it was a picture of you - you bearded people all look alike to me.

Mission accomplished.

So, back on topic: what kind of vegetables have you found in your beard? I found a green bean in mine just a few hours ago.

Ok i was going to post a "palate cleanser", kinda like how tosh.0 will show something cute right after he shows something that cannot be unseen... And then i realized it was in "poor taste", but here it is..

get it?

Why is it in poor taste? It looks delicious.

Vikings?

This thread is amusing and informative! Props.

I mostly find half devoured turkey legs.

So the rest of the turkeys are still in there somewhere?

BTW, many randonneurs swear by turkey sandwiches for ride nutrition. Hah! Almost on-topic!

On a lighter note...

Viking Rule #1: Pillage THEN Burn.

So one time i went to tgifridays in the north hills and asked if they had a veggie burger (probably 5 or 6 years ago). The waiter's response was, "no, but we have a turkey sandwich."

Slightly off-topic.....

WE SHOULD DO A VIKING RIDE!!!!!

Just THINK about all the fun involved!!! And at the end, we can go an 'pillage' a bar or restaurant for lot!!!

I am so glad to have been a part of the viking festivities. A viking ride would be sweet.

^^^THAT is an excellent idea indeed!

Why is it that every conversation in which I partake/observe degenerates into Vikings, Bears, and puns?

Vikings and carrots and bears, oh my!

That *would* be a helluva ride.

I'd have to get my chain-mail shipped up from home...

Dan, my analogy was not intended to compare LBGT discrimination to any riffs against vegans. It was more along the lines of, "Why is it acceptable to mock some marginalized groups, but not others?" What does it accomplish? I imagine as we become more civilized as a species, we'll see less overt discrimination in the forms you mentioned, and more subtle forms of ostracism. I.E. outside of a historical context, (I.E. imagine previous types of discrimination you mentioned didn't happen) would it be any more acceptable to mock minority groups because they're different?

Mr. Burch, the fact that you equate my moral reasoning to a "dietary choice" leads me to believe you don't know what my beliefs are about. (I could be mistaken) As stated above, I was not attempting to compare treatment of the LGBT community to the treatment of vegans.

The reason I feel upset when a joke is made about veganism is because it seems to trivialize the exploitation and slaughter of 85 billion nonhuman animals a year. I don't see the humor in that. Most of our society believes that animals shouldn't suffer unnecessary harm. For example, most would agree torturing dogs or mutilating cats for pleasure is wrong because it's unnecessary. That belief, which some call the "humane treatment principle" would lend itself to the position that if you agree that animals shouldn't suffer unnecessary harm, then you cannot defend using them in the majority of the ways we do. Since we don't require animals for subsistence, (as illustrated by thousands of vegans), consuming animals cannot be described as anything other than eating them for pleasure. So how do you reconcile these two views? (Note: My beliefs aren't really based on that principle, but I figured it's easier to start in an area we're more likely to agree)

I apologize if I've discounted the knowledge of others' animal rights theory, but vegetarianism and veganism have been mocked on multiple occasions in this community and I haven't heard a moral argument for the use of animals yet from those detractors. And to go back to Mr. Burch's comment, even amongst vegans, the theory I follow isn't very well known, which is why I believe an omnivore would be even less likely to have knowledge of it. I may very well be wrong about that though.

bjanaszek, I apologize for mis-characterizing your intentions. I thought the "sorry, but I couldn't resist" bit was an acknowledgment that you were aware it might offend some people. As reddan pointed out, it would have been more prudent of me to ask for a clarification first.

=============

Reddan's viking has an uncanny similarity to myself. I even have a very similar shirt! Viking ride would be cool indeed. We'll have to make obligatory "What's in YOUR WALLET!" jokes (that shouldn't offend anybody)

Unless the wallet is leather. Then watch out.

anybody else find that the nomeatathlete blog loads slow as molasses?

Pierce - you've piqued my curiosity, can you point me to a web site or overview of your reasons for being vegan? You've sort of summarized some of the obvious reasons, and I can think of a few others you haven't listed, but I suspect they aren't yours either - I suspect you're right and I (among others) am unaware of your particular reasons. I'm seriously interested - I spend an inordinate amount of my time thinking about what I eat and why and the effects of my decisions on myself, my household, and society at large (whether statistically significant or not... and you could replace "eat" with any verb, really). I should probably spend more time doing and less time thinking, but it's winter and I'm solar powered.

I used to be a pretty strict vegetarian- would get mad at people frying a burger in my cast iron skillet. During that time I was also running up to 70 miles a week, did not own a car, and would go for 60 to 120 mile bike rides just for fun.

In terms of weight loss, I still firmly believe it is a matter of calories in vs. calorie usage- if you pay some attention to the calories going in (eat moderately, limit junk calories) and exercise a lot, you will lose body fat. But be aware that your scale may not tell you that- you can lose 5% body fat, build some muscles, but the scale says nothing happened.

As far as general diet goes, the vegeterian or vegan athlete needs to be aware of protein intake- I would recommend looking at Francie Moore Lappe's "Diet for a small Planet" and read the sections on protein complimentation. It made a lot of sense to me. I would often snack on a mixture of honey, peanut butter, powdered mild, and a little nutritional yeast for extra Vitamin B.

Another interesting read was "A year of living Strenuously" by Bill McKibben- it focuses on xc skiing, but the lessons are good for any effort.

Ah, those were the days! I still run moderately, ride nearly daily, but do eat meat a few days a week. It is not a necessity though.

My best advice is that "diet" should be a noun, not a verb. A few years ago, I switched from a morning flagon of coffee with lots of sugar to a regular cup, and lost 6 pounds very quickly. I greatly reduced my fat intake 3 years ago, and lost another 5 to 10 without varying my activity levels at all. As we age (I suspect I am older than you) we should lose weight if our fat level remains steady due to normal loss of muscle mass.

As the Nike ads say (do they still?) Just do it! Eat less junk, exercise more. You will not regret it.

oh yeah, thanks helen, you reminded me of something that my mom's experience dieting taught me, thankfully earlier rather than later.

Whatever changes you make to your diet in order to lose weight, provided your exercise level stays unchanged, the duration of the change is the duration you can expect the results to last. i.e. - if you're giving up chocolate cake to lose weight, the second you reneg and return to eating a piece a day, whatever gain it bought you dissappears. So whatever changes you make, if you want weightloss to be permanent, make the changes sustainable.

That being said, if you can't give up the chocolate cake, and plan instead on upping activity level for weight loss benefit - the same rule applies (in general). The benefit will be there as long as the activity level is maintained, so make it sustainable.

That's where yoyo-ing comes in, when people commit to short term changes in their food/exercise levels to achieve a goal, then celebrate or slack off after achieving it. Personally, I need my cake, and I can't handle a workout regimen of any kind. But I can eat a *little* cake every once in a while, and try and be as active as possible in my hobbies/lifestyle, and do ok.

It's not that anything people here have said makes me think that's the road they're headed down, but I know I've personally made goals ("I'm gonna bike to work every day for the rest of forever!!!") and then reality has not quite lived up to my dreams ("Four and a half hours commuting a day... in the dark, snowy, ice...") and so I've had to revise my plans.

I guess my long drawn out point is that while it is definitely a balanced equation of calories in vs calories out, that balanced equation is dynamic, because life is dynamic. The trick is to keep up with the changes.

@Pierce, I'd also like a link so I can read up on your vegan philosophy. I think I've read about that line of thought before.

@ pierce more subtle forms of ostracism

You mean like when when after a group ride, while I was trying to arrange for a group meal, I ask someone if they know of any special dietary needs anyone might have and instead of answering they just sneer and turn away?

My vegan philosophy is covered in pretty good depth on this website:

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/about/

Feel free to PM me any questions

Mick, I'm sorry you felt I was sneering. I very much appreciated the dialogue we all had in trying to find a place we would all enjoy, which was difficult because we were kind of going in different directions.

In the end, Kaya was decided, which is vegan friendly, but ultimately myself and the company I was with decided we weren't really up for the cuisine and didn't feel like spending that much money there (And I think we were cold too)

@Pierce: thanks for the link. Interesting reading.

Thank you Pierce! Very interesting, I've got some more reading to do. The logistics seem daunting, but I suspect that's a large part of the point.

When I got married (we're both omni's), my mother (lacto-ovo veg) suggested we have the wedding catered by Quiet Storm (one of my favorites). I thought it was a great idea, but realized that it would alienate the portion of the guests who had conflicting dietary definitions - the "it's not a meal if there's no meat" crowd. So to cater to them equally we opted for kabobs in a variety of forms, including meat. Funny thing is, except half the cake and the "rolls" that showed up without us ordering them, the whole meal was gluten free and nobody noticed, though I think wheat is a more common ingredient than meat in a western diet.

The combination of food and people is I think more complicated than the combination of transportation and people (I keep forgetting this is a cycling board). We really are marvelously varied, wonderfully strange creatures.

@ejwme: once again, she nails it: "We really are marvelously varied, wonderfully strange creatures."

I'll second nomeatathlete.com for lots of info and links to browse through.

I'd also recommend Brendan Brazier's Thrive books. Touts supplements too much for my taste, but has interesting info and they're available at the library.

I've been reading a lot on sports nutrition recently, so I can probably come up with more, just not off the top of my head at work.

@pierce

Because you diet is not just an aesthetic - or even a health - choice, that complicates things. I'm aware thzt there are issues like "unnamed norm" being omnivores.

The is even some grey area- is it OK to easily accomodate friends who are meat eaters? Or should there be at least a moment of awkwardness?

Like many people here I often run into an anologous situation - where it's an effort to refrain from shouting "NO! I DON'T WANT TO RIDE HOME IN YOUR *FILTHY* SUV INSTEAD OF RIDING HOME IN THE NICE CLEAN RAIN! WTF is WRONG with you?"

This has nothing to do with the original question, much like the rest of this thread. Here's a link talking about the book Pig 05049 which documents all the products that come from the different parts of the pig. http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/2009/video-christien-meindertsma-on-pig05049/

It's really interesting because there are a lot of non-food products that one would probably never even think of as a pig/animal product.

Mick, I grew up in an atmosphere of fundamentalist fanaticism, so I have little regard for such antics. You can take your holier-than-thou attitude and (rhetorically) stick it.

Haha, it's National Brotherhood Week!

Lyle - careful, there's a difference (at least to me) between "holier than thou" and "what you're doing sux". The first implies a personal satisfaction that may or may not be present in the latter. Both the self righteous and the self loathing can have severe issues with those who disagree with them. I'm not accusing Mick of being either, just offering up an alternative.

Just for the record, I usually succeed in refraining from shouting that.

Even when people repeatedly insist that they WILL give me a ride home after I've (also repeatedly) declined.

I think it, though.

Loudly.

This board needs to be a little more generous in giving posters a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. Let's just cut each other a little bit of slack, can't we?

I really don't understand why we are oh-so quick to pounce on semantics, technicalities and figures of speech.

Its tiresome, unproductive and unconstructive. There are enough really good threads that we could do without it here.

In my humble opinion.

Please forgive the rant.

I thought Lyle was being sarcastic?

One of the things I like about this board is that I've met most of the participants in person, so even if we differ on views, I can remember "Hey, I enjoyed riding with that person on that bike ride or that person seemed pretty cool at OTB"

Mick, in the event that I can meet somebodies preferences (without explicitly engaging in those preferences) I would try to find a mutually agreeable situation

So for example, I think we rolled around the idea of Chinese food, (where meat people could get meat), and OTB. In retrospect, maybe Double Wide Grill. I think some fry place was mentioned in Oakland, which I turned down on more of a cuisinequalityprice issue.

Again, I think the main issue was that the group was splitting in different ways. I was in no way trying to exclude anybody based on their own own preferences. Maybe we'll get another chance sometime and we can all go to OTB or something.

I enjoyed the company of that bike ride and would gladly sit down and eat with any of them

On a related note...

Viking themed pool ride...

dude, a viking ride would be awesome.

Just for the record, my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I just wanted to get a good circular rant going.

My manifesto:

- killing people is worse than killing animals (most of the time, 'cept for them as needs killing)

- pleasure is not sin. It's an evolutionary mechanism which rewards us for doing things that propagate some bit of genetic material down the reproductive chain, for whatever that's worth. A thing may be morally good, or morally bad, but the presence or absence of pleasure is barely a factor.

- cute animals are not morally superior to ugly ones

- we kill many many more animals through indirect economic activity than we do by eating them (though, to be fair, one of those activities is burning down rain forest to build pasture for raising beef).

- Doing a bad thing less, is better than doing it more. It is not necessary (because it is impossible) to *entirely* refrain from all remotely immoral activity to be a decent human being.

- If you don't know the lyrics to "National Brotherhood Week" you are a blight on humanity and should be driven out of the camp into the woods to be shredded by wild beasts.

@ALMKLM - I'm thinking this is a pretty good discussion. Mostly respectful. Emotionally charged themes. Information passing back and forth.

And, at the very least, it seems we all agree that Lyle should fed to rutting boars, so as to help those wild pigs feel better about their looks.

You don't want to do that, I might end up in your barbecue.

Dammit! I took the bait. Shit.

My sarcasm-radar sucks.

The viking ride-that's serious, right?

For the Tom Lehrer-impaired.

Video of him doing it live.

From the 1965 LP.

Same song, different intros, slightly different lyrics. Listen to the 2nd one if you have to pick.

Tom Lehrer Karaoke Night.

Tom Lehrer karaoke? Awesome...I betcha I can still pull off "The Irish Ballad" from memory.

Lyle, if I may probe your mind...

On what basis do you find killing human animals worse than killing nonhuman animals?

To clarify your second point, you're saying that pleasure is separate from moral considerations? If so, I agree.

I'd be interested in some statistics to support your point about "indirect economic activity." The stats I've seen indicate we kill 56 billion per year directly. http://kids.fao.org/glipha/

"Doing a bad thing less, is better than doing it more." That's pretty broad. I consider the murder of a human morally equivalent to the murder of a nonhuman. So in that sense it would be like saying "Killing three people is better than killing five." I wouldn't pat anybody on the back for killing three instead of five and would consider both numbers morally unjustifiable. I also don't consider nonhuman animal use to be "remotely immoral," I consider the use to be quite concretely immoral.

Pierce, I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind. Just curious about your beliefs.

I consider the murder of a human morally equivalent to the murder of a nonhuman.

"Murder" usually means intentionally killing another human being, but excluding some types of intentional killing, such as soldiers during a war, or executions. Dictionary.com says it can also mean "to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously", which could apply to killing animals as well.

But it sounds like when you refer to murdering animals, you mean something more broad. What do you mean exactly? Is it murder every time a human kills an animal, or are there cases where it's not murder? I assume you object to more than just inhumane or barbarous killing of animals.

You say "nonhuman", which is a pretty broad category. I gather you think killing a human is morally equivalent to killing a cow. How about a raccoon? A mouse? A mushroom? A virus? All these are nonhuman and can be killed. Do you draw a line somewhere?

Finally, let me give you a hypothetical. A wild raccoon bites a child. The child's parent catches it. Some raccoons in the area are known to carry rabies. The CDC says to kill the raccoon immediately and test it for rabies.

The family could instead let the raccoon go and treat the child for rabies, but it's painful for the child, and costs thousands of dollars, a great hardship for the family. They're considering killing the raccoon and treating the child only if it tests positive.

Are they morally bound to let the raccoon go, in your opinion?

Now suppose rabies is rare in their area, not common. They've decided they can only afford to treat the child if they know the raccoon has rabies. Kill the raccoon and the child definitely lives, though there's a small chance the family would suffer (in the unlikely event it turns out rabid). Don't kill the raccoon, and there's a small chance the child dies painfully. Which option do think is better?

You just never know what you're going to learn on this board. To be honest, I never even knew such a movement existed. So, I appreciate you raising my awareness, Pierce, and I respect your level of commitment to your beliefs.

It doesn't look like abolitionism leaves a whole lot of room for compromise, so I don't expect you to respect the way I choose to live, but that's ok, I'm not asking for it.

Some of the materials I read sound like a sort of moral/ethical mind-bending puzzle- a Socratic dialogue intended to make a point. But you and the adherents of these beliefs take this as gospel and guiding principal. I respect that. I just don't believe it.

I hope you don't think I am judging you, I am sincere. Thanks again for linking the information. Like I said, I would never have known.

Certainly Steven, I'd be glad to try and answer.

As far as killing goes, I'd pretty much consider it murder in the majority of situations. Anything outside of self-defense (like being attacked by a bear) I would consider murder. There are also accidental killings I guess, like hitting somebody with a car, which I don't think we'd quite call murder. I guess the intentions are important.

As you alluded to, I object to all killing of animals, regardless of how "humane" it is done, in that I'm concerned with the act of killing, not the methodology of it.

As far as nonhuman meant, I meant to say "nonhuman animal" That's just a subtle (or not) way of enforcing the idea that humans are also animals. The line abolitionists draw is at sentience, which we define as having an interest in avoiding suffering. So mushrooms and viruses don't, mice and raccoons do.

Before I get into your scenario, I would like to point out that a somewhat similar situation occurred earlier this year. A member of the board was bitten by a dog that didn't have a rabies vaccine. Some on the board advocated slaughtering the dog to test for rabies. The CDC advised holding the dog in quarantine for ten days to see if any rabies symptoms showed up. The cases of rabies in PA (and I think the country) in the last like five or ten years could be counted on your fingers. I pointed this out. I think animal control? chose the latter option. As far as I know, nobody got rabies and the dog didn't have to be dissected. I'm not sure about the differences between raccoon rabies and dog rabies, so I wonder if the dog gets the ten day quarantine option because humans value dogs more than they do raccoons.

Anyhow, this scenario puts the human child and the raccoon in an "us versus them" scenario. I would like to point out beforehand, that the majority of our animal use doesn't put us in this conflicting situation. I.E. You can choose to not eat a hamburger or wear jacket and it won't adversely affect you or put your life in danger, etc.

However, in this situation, it's either the kid or the raccoon... I'm not sure if they're morally bound to let the raccoon go. I am sure however, that they don't have a moral justification for killing the animal. Because the raccoon has sentience, a desire to avoid suffering and an interest in living, as the child does, I cannot see how the family could disregard the raccoon's interest in favor of the child's interest.

Now there's an added complication because the child is their child. So to diverge for a second, if two children were in a fire and there was only time to save one, it would be understandable that the parents save their own child.

But to come back to your scenario, the killing of the raccoon is something actively done. So it seems like the raccoon is being killed because not killing it would result in pain for the child and financial hardship. I guess the only human analogous situation I can think of is having a sibling with autism. The autistic child may cause bodily and emotional harm to the other sibling and will cause financial hardship to the family. But because the autistic child is human, the family would never consider killing the child. So to answer your question, I don't see temporary physical harm (rabies shots) or financial harm to be a moral justification for killing.

The second scenario seems a little more weird. In that case, it seems like they're hedging the life of their child on a chance. But the way it is presented, it's still an "us or them" scenario. Because I consider both nonhuman animals and humans to be part of the same moral community, in that they have the right to have their interests considered, I could not agree to killing one to save the other. I.E. I wouldn't agree to killing one guy to give another guy his kidney. (In some hypothetical where the only way the guy could get the kidney would be the result of the death of the other guy)

Oh, but I just realized you said "which is better." After the above statement, I think you'd see that I'd definitely see the second option as better because it doesn't involve any unjustified killing. It seems like you'd be comparing the negligence of the parents (didn't give kid shot because they weren't sure) to unjustified killing of the raccoon. So if you kill the raccoon, the raccoon definitely dies. If you don't, the kid may die and only because of the negligence of the parents.

Hope that illuminates some of my views in a thought provoking way

@Atleast

I'm glad you see the uncompromising nature of abolitionists However, I think I can still respect the way you live, while at the same time disagreeing with the moral implications of the actions taken in that life. I.E. I would never want to do something towards you that you would consider disrespectful

I like the moralethical mind-bending puzzle aspect of it. I love when my mind can be boggled! I think our guiding principle is in recognizing that animals (including humans) want to avoid pain and have an interest in living. Most people separate humans from all other animals via cognitive, social, intelligence and other means as a way to justify the pain we inflict on nonhuman animals. But the major difference with abolitionists is that we recognize that once you set up those cognitive, social and intelligence barriers that you inadvertently separate members of our own species. And so we test everything we would consider doing to a nonhuman animal in a human context, which basically brings us to the conclusion that we cannot use nonhuman animals or treat them as property.

And I certainly don't think you're judging me, nor hopefully I you. The way I look at it, we're just comparing similar actions and coming to different conclusions

So not to be facetious Mick, but that's the long answer to the question if I have any special dietary needs

Do abolitionists avoid modern medicine? It seems to me that it would be hard to turn down a pill or vaccine that will save your or your child's life just because it was founded and tested using animal models for whatever disease you are/will suffer.

There were thousands of raccoons, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, and pigs that were "murdered" to find and test the vaccine. Using the strictest sense of the theory then, the rabies vaccine would then be out of limits in any scenario, and there isn't any point in killing or even watching the raccoon because you can't do anything regardless of the outcome.

Thanks, that was very interesting.

On the raccoon/rabies issue, the CDC link I posted explains that the "length of time between rabies virus appearing in the saliva and onset of symptoms" is unknown for raccoons, unlike dogs, which is why they're treated differently. (But maybe we know more about the course of rabies in dogs than in raccoons because we value dogs more, not due to some biological difference.)

[O]nce you set up those cognitive, social and intelligence barriers ... you inadvertently separate members of our own species.

Yes, that's exactly the problem I see with the "conventional" approach. And your philosophy addresses that neatly.

I think it's admirable that you've followed the implications to their logical conclusion, not carved out a bunch of convenient exceptions to make things easier.

Still, for me it's hard to embrace a philosophy that says (and please correct me if I'm wrong), if the only way to save a human child is to kill a flea (or a tapeworm, say), it's better to take no action and let the child die.

If you set up a cognitive barrier to human rights, the logical implications can be disturbing. (For instance, that it's OK to treat people with severe mental retardation the same as we treat non-human animals, or that a human infant might deserve fewer rights than a particularly smart chimp.) But I'm not sure they're any more disturbing than the logical implications of abolitionism, with its complete moral equality of all animals.

I'm still looking for an answer I find satisfying for these difficult problems. I'm glad you found one that works for you. Thanks for sharing it.

I really hope you don't support PETA. They are awful. They have been known to push for BSL against "pit buls" and they euthanize dogs instead of having them adopted out.

And Dan, i cannot speak for pierce, but as a person who understands the importance of medicine and the reality of things, I hate to see animal testing, but I realize that if we are to go forward with medicine for humans and animals, animal testing may be involved, and if that is what it takes, then i accept that. I am not a fan of animal testing for many things outside of products used to treat people for medial conditions, but again, I understand reality. In addition, I love my pets and I am not new do pierce's whole philosophy's general idea. I do kill spiders and stink bugs. Maybe hypocritical for me, but then again, i am not vegan.

@Pierce: I am relieved to hear your response. One of the disheartening aspects of life on Earth in the 21st Century, is the "true believers" often demand respect, and then fail to show any to those who do not share their faith.

I have to admit, I was always the guy who would break my vegan/vegetarian friends stones. While I'm pretty sure they were not abolitionists, knowing what I know now makes it pretty unlikely I'll do that again.

On what basis do you find killing human animals worse than killing nonhuman animals?

this seems like a rather simple one. i am human. the more like me something is, the more interest i have in seeing it alive and well. this holds whether we're talking about just people, or about the whole spectrum on through inanimate matter.

also: i'm interested to know what the avoidance of suffering means to you. i bring this up because i have read about many types of plants that exhibit behaviors that seem akin to the avoidance response of animals to what we would imagine is pain. of course, it's much slower than in animals, and the lack of a nervous system makes it difficult to imagine they experience pain in any way analogous to how we do, but acknowledging that would seem to require a compromise, i think.

Pierce, do you eat fruit? What about honey? This is a serious question. I am well aware of the thinking behind your approach to veganism and you are much more articulate about it than many. This is why I ask.

"On what basis do you find killing human animals worse than killing nonhuman animals?

this seems like a rather simple one. i am human. the more like me something is, the more interest i have in seeing it alive and well. this holds whether we're talking about just people, or about the whole spectrum on through inanimate matter."

Ouch! How narrow is an acceptable definition of "like me?"

i bring this up because i have read about many types of plants that exhibit behaviors that seem akin to the avoidance response of animals to what we would imagine is pain.

I work in the field of anesthesia research, and some of the most interesting studies I read are centered on non-animal models (mostly because we already know what anesthetics do to animals). There is a plant that curls and droops its leaves when they are touched. While it does not have a "central nervous system" that we might recognize, it does react to "pain", and this reaction is easily modulated by a variety of clinically relevant general anesthetics, drugs that target the nervous system in almost every animal/bug I've seen. This suggests there is at least some link between the way plants might feel, and the way animals feel.

Ouch! How narrow is an acceptable definition of "like me?"

do you mean how close to me do i consider killing to be acceptable? i suppose this is a reasonable question, but i don't think most people would construe what i said to mean "i think it's ok to kill someone who doesn't look like me."

it seems natural to me (as in biologically ingrained) to have less empathy with a thing the more distant it is from me, given some measure of distance (which i don't wish to define at the moment, if that's ok). humans? very much like me. grasshoppers? pretty distant. mushrooms? even more distant. the pang of any thing's destruction seems lessened the farther away it is from me, biologically.

to hv's point. its moral relativism. it is acceptable to kill things more and more "like" you on a curve. the more extreme the situation and dependent on that killing your survival is, the more "like" you.

Also, this.

HiddenVariable: check out the radiolab episode called "The Good Show", specifically the first section: "An Equation for Good" which outlines (in an easily digestible way for a non-scientist) how we are evolutionary/instinctively wired to save things closer to our own genes. The example they lay out is that your sister has 1/2 your genes, your second cousin has 1/16th your genes, so if both were drowning in a river, your instinct to save your sister should be roughly eight times higher than your instinct to save your second cousin.

http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/

George Carlin is the best, thanks for posting that, cburch!

I have no idea what I am talking about in this particular arena so bear with me. I was under the impression that humans did not operate at all due to "instinctive" drives, at least not in the same sense as animal behaviour like migration and such, at least past the newborn stage. So I would think that if your sister and cousin were both drowning in a river you would be motivated to save the one you had a closer relationship with, which would be a learned thing. I would think even perceptions of racial differences are completely learned and not ingrained. To take it a step further, I think most little kids think it's pretty horrible to kill something else so you can eat, until they learn or go into denial that it's just the way it is, you kill something so you can eat. Just some thoughts.

Edmunds, you sound pretty far over in the Nuture side of nature vs nurture. There are very heated ongoing arguments back and forth. The nuture people get a lot better press, but it isn't at all clear they are right.

If you want to read really fun stuff about biases in social science and evolutionary psychology science publication, read Elisabeth Lloyd's "The Case of the Female Orgasm."

It doesn't have directly to do with "nature Vs Nuture" controversy, but you can imagine similar biases in scientific study for that. (or any "science" involving gender, race, economics, human aggression, or criminal justice).

The relevant issue here isn't what happens with female orgasms, but rather the way the scientific community approaches and (distinctly non-scientific) reasons for various approaches.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6GFNvA6TvlwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=%22Elisabeth+Lloyd%22++orgasm+&ots=ORPPpDJrXl&sig=HRIg_1K6OYR4_8s5nu-l6KvADIc#v=onepage&q&f=false

An abbreviated talk on the same subject by Lloyd can be found below. This is the kind of scientific paper that people pass around and read at parties. Or at least at really geeky parties.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/853/1/chapter_2.pdf

(or any "science" involving gender, race, economics, human aggression, or criminal justice).

just call them cargo cult sciences.

well, i have nothing to add to this conversation other than Trek of Pittsburgh's winter lecture series is coming up, and on feb 23 there will be a Nutritionist & Ironwoman that focuses on women’s specific nutritional needs.

It's free. i don't know if she's vegetarian, but i imagine any nutritionist worth their salt today would know about a veg diet.

Fuel for Women Athletes, Kim Schwabenbauer– Nutritionist & Ironwoman

As a competitive athlete, Registered Dietitian/Licensed Nutritionist, founder of Fuel Your Passion: Sports Nutrition Counseling and Endurance coaching. Kim has the right combination of theory and practice to make for an exciting and informative talk on fueling our body for peak performance. She’ll focus on women’s specific nutritional needs.

thought it was relevant.

more info: http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2011/02/10/trek-of-pittsburghs-4th-annual-winter-lecture-series-starts-feb-16/

thought it was relevant.

I thought this thread was about vikings?

re: nature and nurture- I have read several studies indicating that racial differences are absolutely ingrained. Obviously hate and slurs are learned, but it is totally natural for babies and kids to be able to see who is like them and show a preferance for that. One study showed kids will rate others who are on their team (wearing the same color jersey) as smarter, kinder, more attractive, etc than those not on their team.

I'd also have to disagree with the idea that kids would find eating animals unnatural and have to learn it. Of course kids now think everything comes from the grocery store, but it's a general detachment, not just from animal products. In my classes only the kids who have gardened or had other exposure have a clue where food is from. For example: blueberry bush or blueberry tree? No idea.

There is a plant that curls and droops its leaves when they are touched.

I have a lamp that turns on or off when touched. With some kind of chemical detector hooked up to it, maybe an engineer could make it detect anesthetics and stop responding to touch for a while. My point is that reacting as an animal does in certain simple ways may not be a good yardstick. Plants might be more like a lamp than like a dog.

The example they lay out is that your sister has 1/2 your genes, your second cousin has 1/16th your genes

Don't all three share 99.9%+ of their genome? Say your sister is 99.998% the same as you genetically (just making up a number), and your second cousin is a mere 99.984% the same as you. Then why wouldn't your instinct to save your sister be proportional to that? I.e. almost the same.

(With those numbers, your difference from your sister would be 0.002%, while you'd be 0.016% different from your second cousin, to match the 2:16 proportions in the original example.)

For that matter, if you use logic like "your second cousin has 1/16th your genes", consider a drowning indigenous Australian. You may not share a common ancestor with him for 30 generations. So by the logic presented, he has 1/(2^30) of your genes, and your instinct to save him should be 1/1000000000 as strong as your instinct to save your sister, or virtually nonexistent. That seems absurd.

Do abolitionists avoid modern medicine? It seems to me that it would be hard to turn down a pill or vaccine that will save your or your child's life just because it was founded and tested using animal models for whatever disease you are/will suffer.

not to answer for Pierce specifically, I think in general they do believe in taking advantage of the gains made in modern medicine up to this point, but that it should now stop using animals. I would expect though that an abolitionist would decline a pig heart valve or pig insulin.

There was an important case several years ago in which a vegan refused to get a vaccine that was egg-based as required by his employers. Veganism was ruled not a religion and so he didn't have the grounds to refuse the vaccine.

Tabby - I once got out of a mandatory vaccine based on a slight egg allergy. I (and my doctor, I checked with the immunologist first, in case anybody gave me a hard time) don't think it would have harmed me in any way, other than maybe some hives. But I also didn't want it, so I said "sorry, egg allergy, can't" and that was the end of it.

Not knowing the employer or the situation, I can imagine very, very few circumstances where the restorative medicine wouldn't adequately protect the person's life, should they choose to avoid the preventative medicine. And I've lived in places with some really truly nasty endemic diseases.

True, there's something to be said about herd innoculation, but that's a whole 'nother topic, greater good vs. individual rights.

yeah, too bad he didn't have an allergy. It was a mumps vaccine.

@pierce I'm curious as to how you would deal with lice, scabies, bot flies, and tape worms.

Sounds sassy, but I really am curious.

So they can use stuff gained by killing animals before they became abolitionists? What about a chemotherapy drug that makes it to market next year? Surely that was tested on animals after the magical point in time where it became wrong to benefit from such things. Are they to use the old drugs, just because they killed animals further in the past than the new drugs?

How about leather boots from 1903? Those fair game? Seems the problem with such theories is there are oodles of exceptions whenever it is inconvenient to follow along with said theory.

@Steven: I said roughly, and the example was taken directly from the radio show aimed at a lay audiance...the actual mathematics are quite a bit more complex than that, so lets not confuse the issue with arbitrary ratios and percentages applied to the simple example. There are quite a few more variables, and you can read about the actual mathematics of the theory in "The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness" or on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection

Yea, mumps is an awesome disease, I wouldn't want to be protected from that. Good thing all the people around him don't have similar issues.

I predict all the vaccine denier folks are going to be the cause of a massive, developed-world outbreak of some horrible, preventable disease sometime in our lifetime. Continue on with your war on science, we'll pay the price sooner or later.

mumps... the childhood killer. From the '50's. I'm sure he'll die soon. That's BS. Granted it's one of the few diseases I haven't had, so my bravado may be totally out of line. But still doesn't seem right.

Having had parasites of a variety of different flavors, I'm pretty sure those deaths would stand squarely in the "self defence" catagory (at least for me). There's only so long you can consider them your million or so extra special friends before it becomes worth taking the wretched medicine (which has its own nasty side effects). It sucks to hurt every time you eat or drink, but that brilliant human immune system is not equipped to win every war (esp. not all at once).

edited to add - after seeing dwillen's link to mumps on wikipedia, I take it back. it's not a childhood killer. Death is rare. Seems to me if the guy wants to make an educated choice, that's on him.

I'm not a vaccine denier, I just question whether or not it is appropriate to force people to take them or not. Not only that, but I've had vaccines and STILL gotten sick with the very diseases I was supposedly innoculated against. Treatment was delayed because "you can't have that, you were vaccinated", so I suffered needlessly because in my comprimised state I couldn't explain statistics to an incompetant doctor.

I'd get vaccinated again, despite all that. But it's my choice.

Yea, from the 50s, before the vaccine. Last year, over 2000 people contracted mumps in or around the New York/New Jersey area. It was over 7k in the UK. There was a similar outbreak in 2006 in the US.

The reason he won't die soon is because most of the population got the vaccine for him, lowering his chance of getting the disease. Given that the vaccine isn't even 100% effective, he is putting everyone else at risk, even if they did get vaccinated. An incredibly selfish act if you ask me.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5905a1.htm

I predict all the vaccine denier folks are going to be the cause of a massive, developed-world outbreak of some horrible, preventable disease sometime in our lifetime.

You mean like the whooping cough outbreak in California last year?

One of the thornier problems with vaccination is that some diseases that an older child can shrug off with minimal permanent harm have a higher incidence of fatality in infants who are too young to be vaccinated. Unvaccinated-by-choice carriers may not end up killing themselves, but the newborn they infect at the farmer's market may not be so lucky.

As ejwme pointed out, the tension between individual rights and societal good makes herd innoculation (needs to be at >95% to be effective?) an interesting question. I have no good answer.

Yea, you can still get a disease even if you get the vaccine. None of them are 100% effective. Thus the importance of vaccinating everyone around you. Even if your vaccine doesn't work, if everyone around you is not going to contract the disease, you're a lot more safe.

If you start getting masses of people who reject vaccination, the whole thing falls apart.

I always believe in choice, even if I don't believe that others are making the right choice.

So you believe people have the choice to sideswipe you with their car? It is their choice?

so dwillen, if it was a legitimate allergy, like not my case where I might have gotten hives, but say like a peanut allergy where you've got 30 minutes of life left, what then? vaccinate and protect the airway, hope for the best? Or would he be selfish in not wanting to risk his life at the chance he is putting eveyrone else at risk?

In discussing his personal case, the analogy doesn't make sense, but in examining any individual's state, vaccinated or not, it holds - when would a chioce not to vaccinate not be deemed selfish?

I didn't say anything about allergies. If you have a legitimate problem (like having a brand new immune system, like a baby!) that prevents you from being vaccinated, then by all means. Most of the people turning down vaccines don't. They are just operating on some diluted notion that the vaccine will kill them or sterilize them, or some other pseudoscientific nonsense someone has perpetuated. If the vaccine puts you at more risk than the disease, then don't vaccinate. That seems like common sense and is not something I am arguing about.

I've been reading this thread from the sidelines (with the exception of Viking comments), and am interested in the reference to -property- that is mentioned on the one weblink. Does this mean that having an animal as a pet is considered not right? I certainly wouldnt own a person as a pet, so wouldnt this apply to a nonperson animal?

So you believe people have the choice to sideswipe you with their car? It is their choice?

Obviously not. I believe in the choice to accept a vaccine or reject it (along with the consequences of that which may include not taking a job that requires the vaccine and also the chance of contracting the illness). In general I do believe in allowing others to make their life choices. Sideswiping is not a life choice.

dwillen - the case mentioned was not rejection based on delusions of sterility or impending death due to vaccine, but based on a choice to avoid animal products and byproducts. At least that was the way it was presented.

So clearly people may have a reason other than stupidity for refusing vaccines.

Marko82 - the pet idea intrigues me as well.

I do escort some insects outside of my house, but then again feel that some have the right to co-habit with me. I regularly save worms from rapidly drying on sidewalks. We do own a rescue cat, and try to stop it from harrassing birds in the yard.

I do eat meat sometimes. I do slap mosquitoes and flies, and kill any ticks I find on me.

It gets very complicated, does it not?

Nothing is black and white is it?

@Dwillian

Abolitionists avoid products that contain animals, which may or may not include modern medicine, depending on the particular manufacturerproducts. I don't know much about vaccines, but I know some involve egg use, as ejwme? Pointed out.

I don't see a moral dilemma in using information obtained from torture after the fact. Nobody is going to suffer further from the use of information already obtained. Didn't we get a bunch of information from human experiments done by the Japanese and Germans during WW2? That doesn't mean however that we'd advocate for future human experimentation or that we condone the tests on the Jewish and Chinese prisoners.

Allow me to pull a quotation from the abolitionist approach website:

"Most of us are opposed to racial discrimination, and yet we live in a society in which white middle-class people enjoy the benefits of past racial discrimination; that is, the majority enjoys a standard of living that it would not have had there been a nondiscriminatory, equitable distribution of resources, including educational and job opportunities. Many of us support measures, such as affirmative action, that are intended to correct past discrimination. But those who oppose racial discrimination are not obligated to leave the United States or to commit suicide because we cannot avoid the fact that white people are beneficiaries of past discrimination against people of color.

Consider another example: assume that we find that the local water company employs child labor and we object to child labor. Are we obligated to die of dehydration because the water company has chosen to violate the rights of children? No, of course not. We would be obligated to support the abolition of this use of children, but we would not be obligated to die. Similarly, we should join together collectively and demand an end to animal exploitation, but we are not obligated to accept animal exploitation or forego any benefits that it may provide."

We don't support nonhuman animal models for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is that it doesn't recognize nonhuman animals as members of the moral community. Another quotation (from memory) "We find nonhuman animals similar enough to us to be useful for research, (which I don't necessarily agree with) but dissimilar enough from us to be able to treat them as things."

@Steven "[...] if the only way to save a human child is to kill a flea (or a tapeworm, say), it's better to take no action and let the child die."

In this case, the tapeworm is killing the child, so it's justifiable to kill the tapeworm. (Similar to my bear attack analogy)

@stefb I certainly don't support PETA. There are a bunch of reasons, but mainly, they advocate for "reforming" an act I consider morally unjustifiable. (The use of animals) In a human context, I wouldn’t advocate for “humane” child molestation, because I find child molestation morally unjustifiable. I would advocate against child molestation. Additionally, they engage in sexist campaigns and sexism is similar to speciesism in that both discriminate based on morally irrelevant characteristics, so it’s hard to advocate against one while engaging in the other. There are myriad other reasons, but it would take a lot of typing to get into it.

@HiddenVariable

On plants, as Dwillian says "[...] there is at least some link between the way plants might feel, and the way animals feel." It seems like they both respond to stimuli, but I wouldn't call that "pain." To quote again from the website "As far as we know, plants are not sentient. They are not conscious and able to experience pain. Plants do not have central nervous systems, endorphins, receptors for benzodiazepines, or any of the other indicia of sentience. Plants do not have interests; animals do." Even if you question whether or not plants can "feel," it does not justify the exploitation of animals, which we clearly recognize does feel pain.

@Dwillian

“Seems the problem with such theories is there are oodles of exceptions whenever it is inconvenient to follow along with said theory.” As stated previously, animal research accounts for a very minuscule amount of animals used in our society. The vast majority of animal use doesn’t put us in this “us or them” conflict so I don’t see how a few truly exceptional circumstances can negate the moral implications of 99% of animal use. I don’t see how leather boots from 1903 could be considered an “us or them” conflict. Nobody is going to die from not wearing leather boots. But as somebody else pointed out, the moral implications also seem to lead us to the position that you would also have to consider non-consenting human experimentation justifiable, which I doubt you do.

Since you put “murder” in quotation marks, I would like to point out that while I consider the unjustified killing of nonhuman animals as murder, I don’t really consider vivisectionists murders. It’s hard to condemn them (or anybody else) because they don’t come from a mindset that nonhuman animals are persons. So if you don’t understand the implications of the actions you’re taking (in the frameset that I do) I cannot consider you a murderer. I still don’t agree with the action however. I also don’t consider vivisection any better or worse than any other unjustified animal use, so I would not single out vivisectionists for criticism.

@cburch

“Pierce, do you eat fruit? What about honey?” If I may say so, that’s a really good question. I do not consume honey and find bees to be sentient. The connection (I’m assuming?) is that bees are used to pollinate fields of certain fruit. From what I know of that kind of husbandry, the bees are shipped around the country and lots die in the process. I think it would be hard to justify that. I’ll have to consult my abolitionist colleagues and get some more information. As we hope society moves away from using animals, these situations can hopefully be resolved. For starters, I know I can avoid all animal products. (Especially clearly apparent ones)

@ Marko82

“Does this mean that having an animal as a pet is considered not right? I certainly wouldn’t own a person as a pet, so wouldn’t this apply to a nonperson animal?” It would indeed. The problem with pet ownership is that they’re still considered property. So if you decide you want to kill all your cats and dogs, you can. If a dog gets sick you can kill it instead of paying for medicine. Since we recognize the sentience of dogs and cats, we find this problematic. However, because we created domesticated animals to the point where they cannot survive on their own, we’re obligated to care for them. I consider it more of a guardianship than ownership.

@Helen

Eh, I find the basics pretty clear cut. There are some moral complications, but it doesn't amount to very much compared to the majority of our animal use

As stated previously, animal research accounts for a very miniscule amount of animals used in our society.

True enough, but unfortunately it is the target of most outspoken animal rights activists, including protests, vandalism, and violence. Maybe I have your set of beliefs confused with another. I apologize.

But as somebody else pointed out, the moral implications also seem to lead us to the position that you would also have to consider non-consenting human experimentation justifiable, which I doubt you do.

Just as we experiment on animals to develop drugs, we also experiment on humans to develop those same drugs. These experiments are called clinical trials, and the experiments are done thousands of times over. While the people all consent, I can't figure out how you might ask an non-human for consent, so it seems the only difference here is a communications issue. Even if we could talk to mice, I can't imagine they would understand what they might be consenting to.

Allow me to pull a quotation from the abolitionist approach website:

I went and found what I believe was the same website, they continued:

We certainly could develop drugs and surgical procedures without the use of animals, and many would prefer we do so. Those who object to animal use for these purposes, however, have no control as individuals over government regulations or corporate policies concerning animals. To say that they cannot consistently criticize the actions of government or industry while they derive benefits from these actions, over which they have no control, is absurd as a matter of logic.

I suspect you didn't paste that bit because you might not fully agree with it. I think the person writing that has absolutely no clue what goes into developing a drug or treatment for a disease. You might start out with 100,000 compounds, and only find one that works. We'd quickly run out of consenting people to test all those compounds on. Further, I don't understand how this conflict is absurd logic, seems pretty sound to me. I'm happy that you've personally come to terms with the necessity of it.

On plants, as Dwillian says "[...] there is at least some link between the way plants might feel, and the way animals feel." It seems like they both respond to stimuli, but I wouldn't call that "pain." To quote again from the website "As far as we know, plants are not sentient. They are not conscious and able to experience pain. Plants do not have central nervous systems, endorphins, receptors for benzodiazepines, or any of the other indicia of sentience. Plants do not have interests; animals do." Even if you question whether or not plants can "feel," it does not justify the exploitation of animals, which we clearly recognize does feel pain.

Anesthesia and consciousness is an interesting thing. There are plenty of drugs that will render you unconscious that will not block your body's reaction to painful stimuli. Not sure why they selected benzodiazepines, but those drugs effect many of the same protein targets as the general anesthetics I referred to above, the drugs that block the plant's response to touch or "painful stimuli". So these plants do have such receptors, shared with us.

"[...] unfortunately it is the target of most outspoken animal rights activists, including protests, vandalism, and violence."

Aye, we refer to those people as "militant direct action" people. As advocates of peace and non-violence, we condemn their actions and have ourselves received threats from them.

As I alluded to, if killing a chicken for food is as morally problematic as a killing one for testing, it makes no sense to single out researchers.

Vivisectors, like other people engaged in industrial animal use also just carry out the demand of the people. So as long as people demand animal testing (or governments require it) even if somebody smashes a window someplace, another lab will pick up the slack. So violence in this context appears utterly pointless.

That's why we strive to educate individuals, who can in turn lessen the demand for animal use.

"I'm happy that you've personally come to terms with the necessity of it." Actually, I'm not sure I do. But I don't know enough of the science behind animal models to really say anything informative to a scientist. That's why I stuck more towards the morality aspect of it.

You keep saying vivisectors, but I'd like to point out that is rather rare in the animal research world.

Oh yes, now i remember why I decided not to go vegan. Colin brought up the point that labor of animals, such as bees, are used by force and also in nature to pollinate fruits, etc., and i deemed it impossible or nearly impossible to actually be a vegan in a strict pure sense.

Eh, sorry, thought it was a general term for animal research folk

@stefb

Don't bees pollinate flowers without using force? (I.e. in nature) I still wouldn't force moving them around, but it's analogous to the water analogy listed above.

I also cannot ensure that all my clothes were produced in fair labor conditions, but I don't go around exploiting people and treating them as property because of it. It's not about personal purity, so much as it's about doing what's practical. Practical is a loose term, but in most cases, it means choosing one product over another.

Uh, this thread is getting me all depressed again about the beloved cat I decided to have euthanaized in her end stages of kidney failure.

On a more positive note (I think?) I am a mumps survivor - woo hoo! And, I survived encephalitis at the same time - yesssss!

My mom is super pro-vaccine, so I can't imagine that I wasn't vaccinated for it, if there was a shot available for it at the time. She also fed us unbelievable amounts of flouride (teeth!). I've never had lice, but my mom (a public health nurse) has lots of experience in this arena. You can smother them with mayonnaise or other oily stuff. So, vegans with lice: you could probably do fine with vegetable oil.

Mayo's got eggs in it, but I do know a girl who keeps her hair full of baby oil because she's so paranoid about lice.

@pierce Didn't we get a bunch of information from human experiments done by the Japanese and Germans during WW2?

I don't know about the Japanese, but it was decided after WWII to NOT use the German death camp data.

BTW, Peirce, I think it is excellent that you are taking the time to answer the questions here.

I'm still curious about how you and/or your colleagues deal with pest animals that are massively uncomfortable, pretty much unhealthy, but in no way life-threatening: "Crabs, scabies, botflies, and tapeworms."

If my facts are correct, this building was immortalized in a song by Jonathan Edwards called "Shanty."

There were an number of other ...unusual... aspects of the people there lived that are hilarious, but not board-appropriate.

In my life as a medical researcher, there is much about the animal rights movement that has bemused me. When I worked with animals, I was asked a bunch of times in social situations, "You dont' work with animals do you?" Although those asking seemed concerned, I always inquired if they were vegetarians and (by chance) they never were. I'd say, "The cruelest thing I do to animals is eat at McDonalds."

It's a valid question to me: If we give up killing animals for food, cosmetics, clothes, and convenience, would we still use them for medical research?

The answer "yes" is plausible.

If you change the treatment of cardiac arrest, say, you might save a few thousand human lives a year. It might take a few dozen animal deaths (typically dogs) to get the information on that treatment. The alternative is that you could also get the information by doing clinical trials on humans, but it would still cost lives - probably many more lives than a controlled experiment.

I am assuming that we use whatever data you get from the research as input for the best computer/statistical models we can build.

I worked (a lot) with computer models of cardiac functions. I've had arguments about whether computer models substituting for animal work. When I've made the claim that computer models are not sufficient at this point, I've been told - by poets, painters, and waiters -that I'm only saying that because I don't understand what computer models can do. And they are right that I don't really understand what computer models can do, but it isn't like they have that knowledge.

(It's right up there with car owners saying "But you can't live like that!" when I describe how I get by without a car)

The last 15 years or so, I have only done work on human clincal data. So instead of disassembling a few rats, I gather data, for example, from 19 year-olds who died while getting boob jobs.

Regarding bees--the small scale farmers I know, regardless of what they grow, keep bees. Those bees aren't trucked around, but they keep bees nonetheless.

But, to Pierce's point, bees are a critical piece to stuff like fruits growing, and they were carrying pollen around long before people were on the scene, methinks.

Changed my mind on posting.

@myself I don't know about the Japanese, but it was decided after WWII to NOT use the German death camp data.

I've been informed that this is not true, although I think it was true at one point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation#Modern_ethical_issues

In this case, the tapeworm is killing the child, so it's justifiable to kill the tapeworm. (Similar to my bear attack analogy)

Could you clarify why your answer here is different than in the second rabies case, when you argued

Because I consider both nonhuman animals and humans to be part of the same moral community, in that they have the right to have their interests considered, I could not agree to killing one to save the other. I.E. I wouldn't agree to killing one guy to give another guy his kidney. (In some hypothetical where the only way the guy could get the kidney would be the result of the death of the other guy)

Granted, the second rabies case had different circumstances: we were weighing the certain death of a raccoon against a small chance of a child dying. But I get the sense from your quote above that the "small chance" issue wasn't the deciding factor, and that you'd oppose killing the raccoon regardless of the percentage risk to the child?

Re: bees.

As I understand it from Wikipedia's article, we truck bees around because it's far cheaper than the alternative of having suitable bee habitats (forests or grassland) within reach of every turnip or melon field.

But if people were convinced of Pierce's position, I assume we could spend the money, rework our agricultural system, and stop moving bees.

The ongoing serious decline in pollinators may force the industry to change anyway, though how is unclear.

I don't mean to derail the topic of bees, but what about animal predation (that is, animals eating animals)? Is just seen as an evil fact of life, or would an abolitionist try to promote peace among animals, too? Please note, I'm not trying be a jerk--it strikes me that predation could be a thorny issue, and I'm curious how it is worked out within this particular ethical framework.

Also, it strikes that me that the slavery analogy is a bit specious (or, at least, not applicable to all cases of owning animals). It seems that in many situations, the relationship between human and animal is cooperative. An example: the farm up the road has chickens, raised for their eggs. On its face, it seems like a good deal for both parties--the farmers get eggs, which they can eat or sell, and the chickens get pasture in which to roam (they have full access to the outdoors), protection from predators, and a supply of food and water. I suspect that if the farmers would free those chickens, they would likely be dead in a matter of days. It seems there are plenty of opportunities for cooperative relationships between humans and animals (in The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan lays out the case that for many farm animals, it is in their own interest to be owned, as otherwise, they would likely cease to exist).

On plants, as Dwillian says "[...] there is at least some link between the way plants might feel, and the way animals feel." It seems like they both respond to stimuli, but I wouldn't call that "pain." To quote again from the website "As far as we know, plants are not sentient. They are not conscious and able to experience pain. Plants do not have central nervous systems, endorphins, receptors for benzodiazepines, or any of the other indicia of sentience. Plants do not have interests; animals do." Even if you question whether or not plants can "feel," it does not justify the exploitation of animals, which we clearly recognize does feel pain.

i don't bring this up to justify the exploitation of animals. as an analogy, i don't consider the exploitation of someone not quite as smart as me to be justified (on that basis, anyway).

my goal in this discussion is to find out where the line is drawn between ok and not ok to "exploit" (i quote to indicate that i don't mean the word literally, but as a catch-all--eat, use for tests, carve up for garments, whatever). it's as much a personal exploration as it is grilling you on your beliefs. and i'd like to thank you for continuing with the discussion as much as you have. i appreciate it, and i consider it a great courtesy on your part.

and now, to the point!

the mechanisms by which pain is carried are far from universal through the animal kingdom, and indeed, many reasons we believe animals without our hardware feel pain is because they act to avoid what we presume to be pain. there are plants that also do this, and not as the simple stimulus response to which steven alludes, but what appears to be long-term, goal-oriented behavior to prevent damage.

whether it can be considered pain in any sense is certainly debatable, but if that debate is open, must it not also be open for animals with more specialized nervous hardware that is nonetheless different from ours?

humans experience pain, and that experience is somewhat independent from the experience of suffering. in general, suffering naturally accompanies pain, but the connection can be severed, and nociception can be experienced without the feeling of hurt. this causes me to wonder about the source of suffering and what is required for it, and what else might experience it.

so: how like us must something be to experience what we consider morally-important suffering? this is a vexing and interesting question; certainly i don't have the answer. sentience, to me, isn't a binary quality, or even one that's easily defined. is it like life? i know it when i see it?

some more interesting questions. I have one too. What if farm animals were no longer kept (let go extinct I guess since they can't survive indipendently) and we reverted to hunting? Is that in any way more acceptable since the animal is living its life in the wild and not being kept as property? If not hunting, what about scavenging? If there were no farm animals and no hunting, I would be hanging out on 376 waiting for a deer to get hit. Also, sometimes my dog kills things. Maybe we would share.

eta: I didn't mean the above to come off as crass or insensitive, I'm just exploring hypothetical situations.

@bjanesek Is just seen as an evil fact of life, or would an abolitionist try to promote peace among animals, too?

Chris Smithers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpNoQaB2LT0

"Now, lions dont' eat cabbage

And in spite of that old adage,

You'll never seen one lie down with a lamb."

I've never tried to be a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, but I've been heading that way for a while. Why? Because of a variable we haven't discussed yet, world overpopulation and unrelated limits to the world's petroleum supply. As I understand it, it takes a lot of petroleum in one form or another to produce food. World supplies are limited.

OTOH there is no limit to our world-wide ability to make more of ourselves. In my lifetime, the world population has nearly doubled, and we weren't sure we had the ability to properly feed four billion of ourselves, let alone seven or eight.

Another little thumbnail-guess statistic I picked up is that as you go up the food chain, 99% of the food required by each level is spent in running the organism at each level. Example: 99% of what you feed a turkey makes a bigger turkey (than a chick); only 1% of the feed it ever got goes to providing you with food on the fourth Thursday in November.

Working from that, I prefer plant-based foods solely due to saving the planet, not out of concern for the critter I might otherwise eat.

Bottom line, though, I do eat some meat, just not very much. It's expensive.

@Stu: Cows, in particular, are pretty interesting animals in that they can live (and do well) by simply eating grass. So, if you live in a climate amenable to easily growing grass, it doesn't take much additional inputs to raise cattle (please don't raise the issue of cow farts--please see Bill McKibben's reasoning about this). Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia runs on virtually no external energy inputs (see Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma for more).

If you're talking about industrial farming (be it either animal or vegetable) then, yes, it takes a whole heck of lot of petroleum to produce the food. There are plenty of smaller producers, however, that have figured out ways to reduce the amount of fossil fuels necessary for farming.

@bjan aszek please don't raise the issue of cow farts

Why NOT raise the issue? Aside from the energy consumption issues, cattle raising is a major cause of green house gases.

Please read the linked article. Bill McKibben points out that it is likely that a few hundred years ago, there were MORE ungulates roaming the world. I'm not arguing that industrial agricultural methods aren't a problem, though.

Why NOT raise the issue? Aside from the energy consumption issues, cattle raising is a major cause of green house gases

And bike parts are made over seas, shipped on container ships and trucked to their destinations.

Uh... Sorry, I didn';t read the whole article before responding. The article doesn't yet convince me that beef can be raised in a way that lowers greenhouse gases, but it might be right. I'm not going to dwelve into it.

I worked with a chemist many years ago that was measuring the methane output from rice plants. It was not an unsubstantial amount.

I think the big takeaway from our little tangent is that we cannot, right now, produce food for 6 billion people without doing some damage to the earth.

Here is another question I have for pierce. Do vegans feed dogs and cats a vegan diet? I have heard of people feeding their dogs only vegetarian food, but from what i understand, that is not healthy for pets.

I don't think abolitionists believe in having pets.

but they "share their home with companion animals"

you have to love the mental hoops people jump through to balance ideals with desire...

i for one would like to know what year they draw the line at for medicines derived from animal models. it there a date that is set or does it keep sliding forward?

I'm not convinced that being vegetarian/vegan necessarily saves resources. It's very hard to grow healthy people on a minimally processed vegan diet that is also locavore. It's much easier to be vegan with imported avocados, coconuts, goji berries and various supplements than it would be to be vegan strictly on the items that grow in this climate. Also as pointed out above, animals can be grazed on land that would not be suitable for farming. The system is imperfect any way you look at it (environment, health, compassion) but animal farming is far from the only problem.

@Steven

Your second case didn’t really seem to imply that the raccoon was the cause of the child’s death. It was the parent’s lack of money. Why should the raccoon die for that? If the raccoon was mauling a child to death, it would be morally justifiable to kill it it in defense if necessary.

@bjanaszek

Abolitionists generally take the position that interference with other nonhumans in nature is a bad idea. There aren’t many positive outcomes from our interference in the past. We cannot control predation in nature, we can control our own.

I find it hard to categorize a relationship as “cooperative” when one party holds all the control and makes all the decisions. I’m assuming the farm you reference raises the eggs for economic benefit. If so, the chickens are economic commodities. When they no longer produce what makes them economically viable, they’re slaughtered. If the hens came from a hatchery, all the males chicks were destroyed at hatching. (Suffocation or grinding) The males have no economic benefit because they’re not domesticated to grow meat like broiler birds. Maybe they’re turned into feed. No matter what, they’re slaughtered. If the hens are just for the farm’s personal use, unless you know otherwise, when they stop producing eggs, they’re still probably slaughtered. Unless you know them to be pet chickens? Being slaughtered doesn’t sound like it’s in their own interest.

As for protection from predators, food, and water… Every domestic animal existed in nature before we domesticated them. They were all able to avoid predators, and obtain food and water before we domesticated them. Analogy: “I’ll give you food, water and shelter. You’re my property. I decide how long you live, if you reproduce, who you reproduce with, where you go, what you eat, when you sleep. You’re an economic commodity and you’re not worth very much. Medical care, entertainment, stimuli, no. You make eggs or you make meat, then you die” So how does that sound for a trade off? How many people want to go to prison, it’s a similar tradeoff, except as humans you actually are guaranteed some sliver of dignity and rights, which aren’t afforded to any nonhuman animals.

Pollan is popular because he purports the idea that by enslaving and killing nonhumans, we’re doing them a service. He also shows a couple of glossy farms with exorbitantly high prices for the majority of the population, and then people think that’s what they’re getting from their “cage free” and “free range” eggs that come out of industrialized farms. Even in the glossiest of farms, the scenario I described above is true.

In the real farms that your eggs from Giant Eagle come from, it’s a living hell, which any other welfare group can tell you about. I don’t exactly see the benefit of existing in that condition, one in which none of your interests can ever be met and each day is a never ending cycle of agony.

@HiddenVariable

I think suffering can be independent from pain. The majority of the examples I listed above were more emotionalmental than psychical. Being treated as property or being a slave sucks even if you can’t physically feel it. It’s pretty easy to see in the majority of things we exploit.

@Tabby

Why would we revert to hunting? We don’t need animal flesh to sustain ourselves and hunting is inefficient. More importantly, it’s not morally justifiable. Scavenging is fine. You have no moral obligations to extant beings, except perhaps to others that may be mourning their dead (elephants, maybe crows?) Didn’t take it as crass or insensitive, I too am exploring situations to their logical conclusions

@environmentalhuman population concerns

As Stu pointed out, and as a bio 101 class might, 90%? of the energy is lost going up the food chain from moving, sex, and heat loss. So you’re getting only a small portion of the energy you put into the cow you’re consuming. We will all do some damage to the Earth. The question is, where do we draw the line? Some won’t because we can’t eliminate all damage. I don’t agree with that position. Choosing grain over meat seems like an easy choice if you believe climate change and starving populations to be a problem. I’m familiar with the environmental ramifications of animal based diets, but it isn’t really significant compared to the moral problems I see with animal use.

@stefb

It depends and is somewhat a matter of debate. Some cats and dogs don’t seem to do well, others seem to. The reason we’re in that pickle is because we domesticated animals. We don’t want to be in that position.

@dwillian

Pets were mentioned earlier, your assertion isn’t quite correct

@cburch

Am I jumping through mental loops? I feel I’m making the best moral choices I can being that I’ve found myself born into a massively speciesist and exploitative society to both humans and nonhumans. I’m actively working to correct the moral issues I find in society. You haven’t provided any moral justification for the exploitative nature of animal use I’ve outlined so far, only pointed out that it’s very difficult to abstain from all harm. I agree. (in the all harm part) But what relevance does that have to the 99% of harm done that I am abstaining from, quite easily? And more importantly, what justification is there for engaging in those 99% of acts?

Inspirationdidactic story time:

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8236.asp

I was read that story in 4th grade, it was pretty good

@tabby

Vegans take one acre to feed, omnivores take four. The only way to feed the current population is through industrialized agriculture, so the grazing theory is irrelevant. The world isn't going to go vegan overnight, so I think focusing on the moral considerations that are applicable right now is more useful than theorizing about some future far off distant world.

i find this one of the best threads we've had so far. I would just like to put this out there.

What part of killing makes is bad? Is it the way you do it? If someone killed my husband, I AND HIS FAMILY would be upset and pursue what? money i guess? If he was murdered we would want to punish his murderer by sending him to jail? MY HUSBAND wouldnt give a rats ass, because he'd be dead. So if I raise chickens (as my cousin does) and I killed one to eat it, who would be upset? It lived. it hung out with other chickens. Would the other chickens miss it? it's not like im going to cook and it the chicken infront of it's "friends". What is it that makes killing things wrong? I think its how it is done. I eat as little meat as possible when I don't know where it came from.

After that, i want to say i have not read this thread cover to cover. I am not saying i am right and someone is wrong. I just want to hear thoughts on what makes "murder" "bad".

Thanks for the thread praise, but you've missed the most important element: the individual

Human context: I pluck some orphan or hobo off the street and eat them. Nobody knows the orphan, nobody knows the hobo. Nobody misses them, is there a problem?

Yes, because we recognize that the hobo or orphan has a desire to live and fulfill their own interests. Nonhuman animals have the same interests.

What gives us the right to deny them from fulfilling their own interests to satisfy our own?

I want sex, why is rape wrong? I want free labor, why is slavery wrong?

I think the best way to judge whether something is problematic is by trying to put the situation in a human context

So should we spay and neuter dogs and cats to make them extinct, which causes them pain, just so that there won't be domesticated pets?

Or do we let dogs go wild and susepctable to predators? Cause my dogs seem better off at my house.

Yes stefb, we should end the line of the mutants we've created through domestication.

Look at the way wolves live compared to the lives of dogs. The majority of dogs live lives of boredom and tedium so that we can pet them and give doggie treats for a few minutes a day. Wolves travel miles, dogs might get to go around the block.

Why do you think dogs and cats sit in chairs and look out windows all day? Because it's the only source of stimuli they have

They endure all the control we exert over them as the chickens I mentioned earlier. It's like asking a fish to live out of water.

The reason your dogs are susceptible to predators is because we've bred them to be that way. Why continue to breed animals that cannot exist in the state they evolved in?

Another instance where that idea isn't going to happen overnight, so I think it's more prudent to question why you protect dogs, but use other animals.

should we consider it in human context because we are human? Should dogs think about things in dog context?

right, so rape and slavery are wrong (now), and we punish people for doing these things. We punish people for murder of humans. We sell licenses to kill animals. Why have we decided animals aren't worth it? You can shoot an animal for hunting, but if someone shot my dog there'd be hell to pay. We kill lice (or crabs or whatever) because they dont belong. Should we put what lice are doing in "human context?" if we did, they would be punished. Should we pull them out of our heads and put them in a little cage until they've learned their lesson then set them free?I just dont think we can put EVERYTHING in human context.

BTW, if someone killed my husband you probably see me on the news for all the terrible, terrible things that would happen.

Dogs are more like us than other animals. There have been studies showing that dogs can pick up on human's facial expressions, and they are able to relate to us/interact with us in a more meaningful ways than even chimpanzees. There are also therapy dogs, which is beneficial for both dogs and humans. Studies have also shown that humans and dogs release oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone (found in newborns) that also improves mood. I disagree with you on that point. Strongly.

and i think we protect dogs because WE have domesticated them. Ever see a stray cat? know someone who feeds strays? they survive on their own (some of them). If you saw a dog would you feed it and let it go? You'd probably either take it in or call animal control. We made dogs unable to fend for themselves, we must take care of them.

EDIT: my dog is a rescued hunting beagle. She needs someone to take care of her. It took a while for her get used to being part of a family. She carries her food bowl into the living room to eat with us, she goes to mom for dinner, she sits on the couch and stars at the TV. She knows i give her scraps, she knows im not supposed to. She has even recently been going to the bathroom to pee on the floor there when she has to go and no ones home.

It seems like we've reached the point where people aren't going to engage in a discussion about their own animal use

Let's suppose that x is a variable for different kinds of animal use, y is a constant for unjustifiable use and 1 through 10 represents a set of different animal uses.

So I feel I've adequately proved that uses 1-9 = y and is unjustifiable. Nobody has recognized that except AtLeastMy (in that the logic may lead to us using humans too)

The only justification I've heard is that we "protect" them. I think I already illustrated why that was flawed reasoning, but here's another example. We protect people as wards of the state. Are we justified in exploiting them?

I don't see the use in probing hypotheticals, when everybody is engaging in uses 1-9 that I've already discussed. I'm not willing to move past 90% of animal use to focus on 10% that isn't applicable to anybodies lives here. (If you've got crabs or lice you can ponder the moral implications of that while chomping down on a hamburger in a leather chair with a wool jacket on)

The fact that I haven't satisfactorily explained use 10 in no way invalidates what I've already proven in use 1-9.

I guess my disagreement still goes back to the basic idea that animals deserve equal rights in the first place.

Why should sentience be the deciding factor in moral significance, not level of cognition, say, or being alive (which would include plants), or having mass (which would include rocks)?

The web site you linked to answers this question by saying "sentient beings have interests and the possession of interests is the necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the moral community." But don't plants have interests (like getting enough sun), and seek to further those interests (by pointing toward the sun)? Don't rocks have interests? (Water erodes them. Granted, rocks don't do much to avoid water, but it still causes them to stop existing, so avoiding it would be in their interest.)

So the web site's answer seems lacking to me. Can you provide a better justification for using sentience as a determinant for rights, rather than the various other ones people use?

Edited to add:

And why should any sentience at all result in full rights? Why not say that if you can slightly perceive, you deserve only slight moral rights, and the more you can perceive, the greater the rights?

I just wanted to thank Pierce for engaging in this discussion. It warms the cockles of my heart knowing that we can have this exchange with a relatively high degree of civility.

I'm not sure what cockles are, but otherwise I generally agree with bjanaszek.

Heh heh cockles

Good point, stephen.

I am also curious as to why abolitionists are against domestication of dogs if it is bad that we created mutants whose natural instincts and ability to defend themselves has been bred out/taken away by humans and what we have done to them. Wouldn't abolitionism be doing the same thing to humans? I know we are more intelligent and civilized than animals, but it is our natural instinct to hunt and kill our food to sustain life. Being a vegan doesn't promote that. So there is a flaw in the reasoning or there are holes in one of the theories, and i would like to believe it is the former.

Also, I don't buy the whole thing about protecting certain animals cause they are cute. Have you ever seen the ugliest dog contests? Have you ever google image searched no face kitty? (well come to think of it, no face kitty was injured, so i could see why it might be a different argument to take care of something that was injured and cant help itself)

Dogs are a unique condition, I think. The relationship between dogs and humans goes back so far in prehistory, even before language. It's not likely that some pre-language human decided to "domesticate" dogs for their enjoyment. From what I've read, one theory is that early humans were primarily vegetarians prior to observing and learning hunting behaviour from dogs/wolves, and that is in part what promoted human success. I've also read that it is possible that human empathy and social behaviour was learned/evolved from living with dogs. It is entirely possible that dogs made the decision to live with us, and not vice versa, and that they have evolved us as much as we have evolved them.

Another thought, relevant or not, I would bet that most dogs, even the foofiest of house dogs, would stand a better chance of survival if turned loose "in the wild" than most people. The vast majority of people today would die miserably in the wild while surrounded by sources of food, water, and shelter.

wow. I have to admit that I've got the flu, so some of the longer posts are a little beyond me at this point, but all the hypotheticals are exhausting.

At the end of the day, every one of us gets to decide what to put on the end of a fork (spoon, chopstick). We decide what to purchase from stores (if at all), we decide where to go, how to get there, what to do, etc.

Pierce has been totally awesome in explaining the framework he uses to make a fair number of those decisions. Others have chimed in with theirs (reaching similar conclusions), also very awesome. In the end, though, I think an idea that gets lost is that it is a framework for individual decisions. It is not the only framework that exists for making those decisions, and it may or may not provide clear direction in all cases - that's for Pierce to resolve, since it's his framework.

Trying to apply his framework to wild animals doesn't make sense. They have their own framework for making decisions. Besides, part of his framework is to respect the individual regardless of species, so he wouldn't try to force the animal to go vegan anymore than he'd force one of us to go vegan.

Trying to apply his framework to a patient (or parent with a child) with a nonfatal disease whose cure was discovered by harming animals doesn't make much sense, unless that patient is him, at which point he'd most likely educate himself on the specifics and make the best decision he can. It may be a totally gray area with no clear cut comfortable answer - life's like that sometimes. It doesn't mean his framework is invalid. That's for him to decide.

I understand that some of this is exploration into reasoning and discovering the murky gray areas of the framework, out of curiosity and respect. But some of it feels a little like "where does he trip up?" Like he said, he's covered 90% and people are jumping on the (intellectually fascinating) 10%. The 10% may be interesting, but don't sound like the majority of life decisions. And it still doesn't make his framework invalid. If that 10% is enough to make it implausible for another person, that's up to them.

Last, if this is all gibberish, please forgive. I get to take more medicine in about 20 minutes. No idea if that medicine fits in MY framework (fairly confident it wouldn't if I weren't miserable), but I hurt enough to adapt right now. Perhaps that makes me a moral relativist. I'll figure out the implications when I feel better, unless you guys can sort it out for me

@Steven

As alluded to much earlier in the discussion, if you use cognition as a baseline, you exclude members of our own species. People with mental development problems, autistic kids, etc, could be excluded. Yet none of us would agree that because they don’t share the same cognition as us, they don’t deserve the right not to be treated as property. The only reasoning we can provide is “because they’re human.” Well what does that mean? And why do we get to decide what is valued and what is not? If we’re basing the standards on ourselves, it seems problematic from the start. We use sentience as the standard because sentience means they have a will, they want to do something.

Plants do not have wants. They don’t think “I’m thirsty, I’m going to find water” They merely respond to the conditions around them. They have no wants or no interests. Compare a dog to a houseplant. I think you can see the difference.

We’re not advocating for “full rights,” we’re advocating for the right not to be treated as property, a right we grant to all humans without any conditions or prerequisites.

@stefb

I think in your previous post you were answering my question as to why we protect dogs, but use other animals. You may have proven that we are similar to dogs, but you did not provide a reason why being dissimilar to humans is a justification for exploitation. See examples above of dissimilar humans. Despite that similarity, we as a general matter still treat dogs as property and kill them when they’re inconvenient for us to take care of.

The difference between the domestication of dogs and the movement towards nonviolence of humans: We’ve put dogs in a place where as a species, they by and large cannot survive without us. As a theoretic matter you can debate how they’d do if we set them all free, but as a practical matter we’ve stuck them all in houses and they’re completely under our control. When dogs and cats get loose they don’t just stick around the front door, they run off and explore because that’s what they want to do and because they have nothing to do in a house eight hours a day while everybody else is at work. We’re denying them that and many other freedoms. I don’t see a justification for that. If you think there is, read my previous prisonchicken example for the pros and cons.

If humans refrain from using animals, they’re in no way giving up any freedoms. I.E. I’m not going to exert any control over any other vegan via imprisonment, solitary confinement, forced breeding, etc, etc, etc. Humans already have the freedom to pretty much do whatever they want. Dogs only have the freedom to do whatever we let them do. Not sure about the cute part, we don’t distinguish between animals based on anything but sentience.

“but it is our natural instinct to hunt and kill our food to sustain life.” I disagree. I think it is in our natural instinct to find food, as it is in all animals. Sometimes we could forage, sometimes we had to hunt. If we put a never ending supply of fruits and vegetables in front of a tribe of our ancient ancestors I’m pretty confident they’d drop their spears.

I’m not sure whether wolves have an instinct to hunt and kill or if they too are just responding to their instinct to find food. (Evolution seems to suggest that species evolved around finding guaranteed sources of food with the least amount of competition.) What we have done however is take away the tools in which dogs can meet that need. Their teeth are less sharp, their bodies less powerful, stomachs not as capable of digesting raw meat, etc, etc. So we haven’t made dogs more “civilized,” we’ve just taken away their tools and their incentive to hunt and kill, along with all their freedoms. As you pointed out, we’re more civilized. What’s natural to us and what’s instinctual to us really has no bearing on moral questions. (People have claimed that sexism, racism, etc was “natural”) Not sure where the flaw in reasoning is.

@edmonds

Even if the descendents of dogs chose to live with us, I don’t see how that gives us moral justification to imprison them, dock their tails, inbreed them, kill at our whim, etc in the present day. I highly doubt the majority of dogs would stick around their houses all day without some form of force to keep them there. That seems like evidence to me that we’re doing something against their will.

@ejwme

Thank you for observations, they were appreciated. Hope you get well soon

@Pierce: You have very clearly demonstrated one of the differences between humans and most animals: the ability to put yourself in another's shoes, to imagine that things may be different.

That said, I think there is a fundamental problem with the idea that we can simply wash our hands of our domesticated animals. Regardless of the morality of the initial domestication process, it happened. They're here, they depend on us, and it would be the height of immorality (in my opinion, of course) to say "okay, no longer my problem.Live or die without human interference."

As far as the morality of making decisions for animals goes, why not? We make decisions for ourselves, for our family members, and for other members of our society as a matter of course. Family is especially key to consider, as family transcends blood relation, and can transcend species as well.

Finally, using the fact that some people engage in vile practices (factory farms spring to mind, as does dog fighting and poodle cuts) to determine that all human interactions with animals are wrong is simply illogical. It's simply not true to pretend that no cooperation exists, that all human/non-human interactions are to the detriment of the non-human. The undeniable fact that some people behave in reprehensible ways is not a blanket indictment of all people.

BTW, thank you again for sharing your beliefs in this regard...it's been very thought-provoking.

@Reddan

Just to reiterate, we don't wash our hands of domesticates, we recognize that we're morally obligated to care for them.

But we also recognize that them being dependent upon our care and the freedoms we must take away from them to protect them (which is why we keep dogs in doors) is problematic.

I also recognize that there are many benevolent dog owners. But the fact remains, as a society, dogs are disposable to us.

I would also like to thank you for your input and ideas contributed to the discussion

2 of my neighbors let their dogs out their front doors to run free several times a day, crap in my yard, and they go back home of their own free will. They could leave at any time. And these are full size dogs, not foo-foos, I'm pretty sure they could take off and take care of themselves. They identify those people as their pack, and that's their home.

As reddan said, animal mistreatment cannot in any way be conflated with responsible pet keeping.

I would also be willing to bet that the vast majority of dog "owners" are benevolent, rather than "some", based on the millions of dogs in this country alone. Obviously there are "some" bad, but I would bet there are as many people who mistreat their children as people who mistreat their dogs, there are just shitty people out there.

We’re not advocating for “full rights,” we’re advocating for the right not to be treated as property, a right we grant to all humans without any conditions or prerequisites.

I disagree that we afford these rights to all people. People with severe mental development problems, for instance, don't get the same rights as others. We confine them sometimes, and don't let them make their own decisions about various things when society decides it knows better.

We treat children the same way. We respect a parent's right to control and restrict their child, within certain broad boundaries. Children are treated somewhat like competent adults, and somewhat like property -- some specific adult has authority over the child, just as property has an owner.

Granted, we don't buy and sell children (though money can change hands in an adoption). But the way we actually treat them isn't that different from the way we treat pets. Further, infanticide has a long history in many cultures, and continues today: often the reason is similar to the reason a pet might be killed. So that's not really a distinguishing characteristic either.

So while there's still a difference between how we treat the worst-treated humans and the best-treated dogs, it's not that large, and can be easily explained by the same factors that make us favor a relative over a stranger.

Compare a dog to a houseplant. I think you can see the difference.

Sure. But compare the simplest animal to the most complicated plant. Are insects really capable of thinking “I’m thirsty, I’m going to find water”? Or are they just responding more like the way a plant turns toward the sun or a Roomba looks for its recharger, with simple hardwired responses to stimuli? The simplest animals don't seem to have anything remotely resembling a brain, and I suspect it fits your explanation of why plants don't deserve equal rights as well: "They merely respond to the conditions around them. They have no wants or no interests."

If there's no clear dividing line between having recognizable desires and merely mechanically responding to stimuli, or between being capable of feeling something sufficiently akin to pain and not being able to, then perhaps moral rights should be on a sliding scale as well.

Thanks again for the interesting discussion. It's helped me better understand these complex issues.

Well I think an important thing is that people should question why they are doing what they are doing. I went to a catholic school, i ate meat, and I drove everywhere (just examples). Then when i was old enough and wise enough, i realized that I was mindlessly doing things because i was once told what to do and that is just what i did. So i found things i disagreed with regarding religion, eating meat, and driving everywhere. I have a friend who runs a company, stay vocal, and he goes one step beyond recycling and sells repurposed items/reusable items, and that gets me thinking about all of the waste i produce (and i am not just talking about poop here). So I could go on about things that most people do that aren't necessarily the better choice for the planet, etc., but my point is that i wish more people would think about what they are actually doing. Luckily, there are more and more documentaries out there that open people's eyes to issues that are just kind of ignored or that people are ignorant to.

Granted, we don't buy and sell children

Should be changed to: Granted, it's illegal to buy and sell children. Human trafficking is alive and well, and you may be shocked to learn that it exists nearly everywhere.

That said, Steven, you've articulated some of my ethical concerns with the animal liberation/abolitionist movement. There is cognitive dissonance for me between views on the rights that animals have and the rights that certain humans have. The logic that says that it wrong to have a cow for milk but it is okay to kill an infant, the infirm, or the mentally handicapped is a bit fuzzy to me.

Pierce, I want you to understand that I am in no way criticizing your beliefs. Last spring some frogs did the natural thing in the water on my pool cover, and I spent hours putting millions of their babies in 5 gallon buckets and taking them to a local pond because I couldn't bear to dump them on the ground. I'll take 4 foot blacksnakes from my yard to Settlers Cabin park rather than whack them. Several times. I despise killing. For a while I was taking stink bugs outside, but at this point it's kind of an us-or-them scenario.

I eat meat, but sparingly and thoughfully, realizing that I killed something (though indirectly) in order for me and my family to live. I have neither the time or energy to go vegan in a healthy way given the framework of society I live in. I am glad some people are working toward that.

I simply think your group should consider that it's all-or-nothing approach will lose it very sympathetic allies with a shared interest of animal welfare, who would work toward the abolition of factory farms, for instance, but who are not willing to go the full route of animal equal rights, much as the biking community would lose effectiveness if we were to demand that cars be abolished entirely.

Anyway, I value your point of view.

I was getting ready to go ride and got hooked on this thread. Hope you don't mind that I skipped from page 2 to the last one, but it does appear that I have not missed much.

I eat meat for protein, but I am sure that substitutes are out there. I ride long distance at times, but not ultra yet. I live on coconut milk and almonds and refer to the Makers Diet. Cheese and peanut butter are good, but stop any weight loss. I eat pizza in the days after 200 mile plus excursions - or whenever I come up with an excuse. I was concerned about performances on long rides but I did a great century last year in 6 hours and plan even more improvement this year. Yeah, I lost weight too.

I'll ride to DC in two days also. Let me know when please.

Gotta go, troll out.

also, i think this is a good idea:

http://www.heifer.org/

The durability of this thread has been impressive. It has withstood no fewer than three attempts at taking it Viking. Impressive indeed.

I've not seen Pierce say anything about it being acceptable to kill an infant, the infirm, or the mentally handicapped. I may have missed that part, but I don't think so.

I'm not trying to speak for him, but maybe keep in mind that there are a lot of battles to fight in this world - it's a little unfair to dismiss someone's concerns as illegitimate simply because it doesn't cure all of society's ills.

So people shouldn't devote their energy and resources to feeding the homeless because it doesn't do anything for the high infant morality rate in developing countries? Or working tirelessly to relieve the infant mortality rate in the developing world is unjustified because it does nothing for global warming?

It's his framework. It's not a panacea, I hadn't noticed him claiming it to be. Granted, if he didn't think that if more people adopted it the world would be a much better place, it wouldn't make much sense as a framework.

I see nothing wrong with most of the abolitionist framework; I don't happen to share some of the basic tenets that make it logical, but that's no skin off my nose.

My sole concern is when someone begins advocating (actively or passively) wiping out animals because their presence is inconvenient. Note that this is NOT exclusive to the abolitionist movement, but that movement is the context of the current discussion.

Whether it be Pierce's statement to stefb: "we should end the line of the mutants we've created through domestication", or whether it be the website he linked whose FAQ states "We should, of course, care for all those domestic animals that are presently alive, but we should not continue to bring more animals into existence so that we may own them as pets", I have to speak out against such behaviors.

I don't care how you slice it, taking action (or deliberately not acting)in order to ensure that species die out is not acceptable. Doesn't matter if the motive is profit or morality. Living as an abolitionist vegan is a fine personal choice, and I will not argue against it: advocating gradual genocide is not.

Yah i love my doggies. We bought a king size bed just so they can sleep with us. My husband may be the only one who does not like this, mainly cause he still gets shoved out of bed somehow.

same at my house stefb.

@ejwme: Pierce never touched on this issue--I'm speaking more generally about the philosophy that unpins some of the movement. I agree that there are many battles to be fought, but I'm pointing out what I see as ethical contradictions with the movement (or, segments of the movement). Granted, there are ethical gray areas, but, as I pointed above, I just can't square the positions toward life that some members of the movement hold (and, again, I'm not pointing at Pierce, because we haven't really approached this issue in the discussion).

I'm also willing to be shown that I am flat out wrong about the utilitarian philosophy that supports the animal liberation/abolitionist movements.

Edmonds, with all due respect they were probably toads and not frogs. I assume they looked like this?

I have witnessed a toad orgy (it's just how they roll) and it's pretty bizarre

image fail above

toad and frog tadpole difference:

Yes, toads. It's surprising how many people don't know the difference.

Totally OT, even O the secondary T...

anything with teeny weeny legs that small is adorable. In australia there was a species of frogs that were gastric breeders - the mama held the babies in her stomach until they were growed up enough to live on their own, then she urped them up. Fatal flaw - when startled (and quite easily so), she'd projectile vomit them (regardless of stage of gestation) a distance of like 6 feet or something (couldn't find it on the webs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheobatrachus_silus ). Stephen Jay Gould is an awesome writer.

The image of baby-barfing Aussie toads is stuck in my head. My morning is now complete...thanks!

Plants do not have wants. They don’t think “I’m thirsty, I’m going to find water” They merely respond to the conditions around them. They have no wants or no interests. Compare a dog to a houseplant. I think you can see the difference.

i have a degree in cognitive science, and i can see the difference. but there is nearly as much difference between a human brain and a dog brain (well, it depends on how you measure the difference), and considerably more difference between a dog brain and, say, a bee nerve cluster.

i maintain that if you can conclude that plants are fundamentally different (i.e. they lack desires) because their hardware is fundamentally different, then you must also conclude that non-human animals are fundamentally different from humans.

I think the best way to judge whether something is problematic is by trying to put the situation in a human context.

i think we differ strongly on this point, and i imagine we must here agree to disagree. i had a feeling we'd reach that point somewhere along the line, and i thank you for sticking with this as long as you have.

I had to agree to disagree back at the premise. It has never been established that humans don't need animal foods to thrive. Some will thrive for a long time, some will survive just fine, and some really will do very poorly. It's not an optimal diet for optimal health for everyone. Neither is McDonalds and feed lot meat, so for many people eating a vegan or vegetarian diet may be an improvement over their current lifestyle, but it's certainly not a given that it would be. That's a whole nother can of worms, but that's my reason for why I can't get behind the goal of making the world animal free. I totally respect the choice, but my choice is different.

@ALMKLM It has withstood no fewer than three attempts at taking it Viking. Impressive indeed.

Obviously the idea that vikings were strong because they ate meat is flawed.

I think this is an excellent discussion, but I worry that Pierce might start feeling like he's being pig-piled. (...if you pardon the expression).

I think this is an excellent discussion, but I worry that Pierce might start feeling like he's being pig-piled. (...if you pardon the expression).

i've had that fear for a few pages now, which is why i'm eager to back off. i cook vegan all the time, and my favorite person is vegan, so it can definitely be said of me that i support the lifestyle. but my girlfriend hates these sorts of discussions, so i don't get much opportunity to have them, though i often have the desire.

which is why, though it makes me feel like i'm singing kumbaya, that i must frequently thank pierce for holding up his end of the discussion.

which is why, though it makes me feel like i'm singing kumbaya, that i must frequently thank pierce for holding up his end of the discussion.

+1.

@Steven

Steven, regardless of whether or not every human isn't treated as property, we agree as a society that it is wrong to treat humans as property. Our laws reflect this. No such luxury is afforded to dogs. We don't kill orphans or old people or the infirm when we can't find homes for them or they cost too much to take care of. Again, I'm not advocating for equal rights, I'm advocating for the right not to be treated as property. The fact that some treat their children as property doesn't justify treating nonhuman animals as property. Some people rape humans. That doesn't justify raping nonhumans. "So while there's still a difference between how we treat the worst-treated humans and the best-treated dogs, it's not that large, and can be easily explained by the same factors that make us favor a relative over a stranger." We never intentionally kill the worst-treated humans in our society because they're inconvenient for us, nor do we kill homeless people. I don't treat strangers like people treat their pets. I don't think I'm superior to strangers as people do to domestic animals.

"If there's no clear dividing line between having recognizable desires and merely mechanically responding to stimuli, or between being capable of feeling something sufficiently akin to pain and not being able to, then perhaps moral rights should be on a sliding scale as well." I think there is a pretty clear dividing line between the majority of the animals we exploit and plants. I think there is a pretty significant scientific divide between plants and any animal, but even if you wanted to debate that, how can you argue that there is a meaningful separation between the animals we use and all the humans we don't treat as property? What I'm afraid of is that because people cannot draw a concrete line at X animal, they feel they're justified in exploiting everything short of human. I think this is flawed logic and is only useful in alleviating oneself of the moral implications of animals use.

@stefb

"I think an important thing is that people should question why they are doing what they are doing."

Agreed

@bjanaszek

"The logic that says that it wrong to have a cow for milk but it is okay to kill an infant, the infirm, or the mentally handicapped is a bit fuzzy to me." I don't advocate for killing the infants, infirm, or mentally handicapped, but I question what value makes them worth preserving more than the animals we thoughtlessly slaughter? "Because they're human" The purpose of putting things in human contexts like that is because it illuminates our own biases, which don't seem to have any moral justification. When I'm unsure whether or not something is deserving of the right not to be treated as property, I err on the side of caution. Others seem to throw caution (or reason) to the wind and exploit everything

@edmond

Thanks for the preface of non-criticism, I haven't been receiving the comments so far as such. Thank you for saving the frogs and snakes, I'm sure they appreciate it. Not sure what's us or them about the stink bugs, they don't seem to cause any harm. I'm curious why you point out meat as something you consume sparingly. Any use of animal results in their death. When cows no longer produce milk they're slaughtered, when they bore male calves they're turned into veal. Some argue that there's more suffering in a glass of milk than in a pound of meat because milk cows are exploited longer. Every use results in death.

Luckily, if you're at all interested in veganism, it is becoming easier and easier to become one. So it might take less time and energy. Many proclaim that vegan diets are healthier and that they feel more energized in comparison to the Standard American Diet. (I'm imagining fruits and vegetables for breakfast over like a sausage muffin)

The reason why we cannot ally ourselves with animal welfare people is because we have completely separate goals. We want to abolish the use of animals. Welfare people want to keep using animals, they just want to feel better about it. A well treated prisoner is still a prisoner. An unjust murder is still unjust no matter how the murder is preformed.

Furthermore, there are very problematic aspects to the whole welfare movement. All the welfare reforms they advocate for increase the efficiency of slaughter and lower the cost of production. Bigger cages, and gas killing = better product/less cost for the companies. Cage free eggs can be produced for a small percentage more, but companies can charge much larger percentages and reap in profits. It all results in more profits for the companies that are doing the exploiting.

This isn't by coincidence. Animal agriculture economists look for ways to lower cost and improve product. They release these findings in trade publications. Then animal welfare organizations come in and advocate for the same changes that would already be to the economic advantage of the institutional users. If anything, it slows down implementation of these supposed "reforms" because companies don't want to appear to cave in to protester demands because then they'd have to give in to everything, even things that may not be to their economic advantage. I explained this to somebody yesterday and they called it a "conspiracy theory." I assure you, it isn't.

No welfare group is advocating for abolition of factory farms, they're just advocating for marginally better, and in my view inconsequential, reforms. "who are not willing to go the full route of animal equal rights," Again, just to reiterate, I'm not talking about equal rights, I'm talking about not being treated as property. Equal consideration in matter of life and death. The majority of the time it isn't. I believe it's the only morally justified thing to do. Welfarists don't agree and that's why we cannot work together. We're working in two opposite directions.

@stefb

I find the heifer project problematic. Firstly on moral grounds, as I don't condone the use of animals as property. Secondly, it seems like we're putting a resource inefficient system into other countries. Refer to previous four acres of land to feed omnivore, one acre to feed a vegan. Also the biology fact of loosing energy as going up the food chain. It looks like all the countries the project supports can get grain or grow crops, if they couldn't how do they feed the animal? I don't believe in exploiting one person to raise the standard of living for another. I know it's done all over the world, but that's not a moral justification.

@Hiddenvariable

"but my girlfriend hates these sorts of discussions," Nor does my significant other, which is another reason why I'm enjoying this thread, it's like vicariously debating

when I was a vegan bumping up regularly against non-vegans, and always asked "why", I was told I was a hypocrit when I cited the agribusiness cruelty to animals. There are starving children without shoes, afterall (literally this was one man's argument as to why I should eat meat). It bugged me to no end, and probably is the main reason I started hiding my views from the people around me. It makes more sense to be pissed off at home gardeners for taking money away from farmers (yep, heard that argument too) than to be mad at vegans for not eating animal products. But tell that to a car driver who's pissed at cyclists for biking rather than driving. Same thing.

I haven't seen that here at all, thank goodness.

What I have seen is different, hard to explain, luckily only slightly unsettling, and Pierce has born it very well. Maybe someone more eloquent (or just plain lucid) can describe it... A baby/bathwater situation maybe. Then again I've never been one to accept any dogma as an inseparable whole, more like a tenent buffet.

I have found not just the conversation topic fascinating, but also the conversation - it's interesting how everybody's interacted. I've been happy to be a part of it, thank you guys

re: "I'm curious why you point out meat as something you consume sparingly."

I dunno, I suppose I do believe in a sliding scale of good/evil, I do believe it is less evil to kill one person compared to, say, 5, or a million. Let's say I saved 1.5 million tadpoles, but I couldn't do anything about saving 500,000 of them, eh, I gave it a shot. I am an absolutist in almost nothing. But that's just my framework, what is that, moral relativism?

"baby-barfing Aussie toads"

Punk band name?

I think that's just what New Zealanders call the folks on the other land mass.

@edmonds - yup moral relativism vs moral absolutism is really the issue at stake here.

@pierce - if i came across as a bit nasty it's probably because i was fairly well insulted at my assumed ignorance of your position. as someone who has spent a long time involved in the punk/hardcore/straightedge scene i have been living with and around vegans and vegetarians of all sorts for a couple decades now, and in fact was lacto-ovo for quite a few years myself. the reason i was asking the rather pointed questions was that you are much more articulate about the position than many other people i have encountered and was i hoping to get better answers than "because its bad" or "because i like animals" or "i dunno, just because". the whole vegan eating organic food that uses forced labor and relocation of predatory insects to control crop destroying insects and uses bees who are forcibly relocated and repeatedly traumatized by smoking the hive in order to move them more safely to cross pollinate the crops so that the farmer can have a high enough yield to hopefully break even at the end of the year, but refusing to eat the honey that is a by-product of all this pollination (and unused in the hive because there is no queen in most commercially used hives) has always seemed a very odd and arbitrary line to draw to me. likewise with the medical tech based on animal models thing, i could not find an answer anywhere to where the line is drawn between acceptable technologies based on past wrongs vs future technologies that should not be used if based on animal testing. i wasn't so much trying to debate you as i know both of our minds are well made at this point, but i was hoping to get some lucid answers to a few questions that have puzzled me for a long long time.

also i look like a viking.

What I have seen is different, hard to explain, luckily only slightly unsettling, and Pierce has born it very well. Maybe someone more eloquent (or just plain lucid) can describe it... A baby/bathwater situation maybe. Then again I've never been one to accept any dogma as an inseparable whole, more like a tenent buffet.

this image keeps coming to mind:

(i hate this image.)

people seem to think that just because it's difficult or impossible to succeed completely in an endeavor with which they disagree, that the endeavorer is foolish for even trying to endeavor.

i've seen it elsewhere in plenty. vaccines is a good example. often, they don't come in a non-animal variety, but are necessary for the health and well-being of our society as well as individuals. some people would prefer to have nothing to do with any animal products for moral reasons. but if they must get a vaccine, say, for a job, that is in conflict with their beliefs, are they a hypocrite for doing it?

i think people feel judged by folks who abstain, for moral reasons, from actions they consider routine. they want to put those vegans in their place and say "you're no better than i am." so they latch onto any potential gotcha they can and throw it back.

i don't know that i've seen any of that here, but i give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

What I have seen is different, hard to explain, luckily only slightly unsettling, and Pierce has born it very well. Maybe someone more eloquent (or just plain lucid) can describe it... A baby/bathwater situation maybe. Then again I've never been one to accept any dogma as an inseparable whole, more like a tenent buffet.

this image keeps coming to mind:

(i hate this image.)

people seem to think that just because it's difficult or impossible to succeed completely in an endeavor with which they disagree, that the endeavorer is foolish for even trying to endeavor.

i've seen it elsewhere in plenty. vaccines is a good example. often, they don't come in a non-animal variety, but are necessary for the health and well-being of our society as well as individuals. some people would prefer to have nothing to do with any animal products for moral reasons. but if they must get a vaccine, say, for a job, that is in conflict with their beliefs, are they a hypocrite for doing it?

i think people feel judged by folks who abstain, for moral reasons, from actions they consider routine. they want to put those vegans in their place and say "you're no better than i am." so they latch onto any potential gotcha they can and throw it back.

i don't know that i've seen any of that here, but i give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks Colin, your bee question was the only one I haven't come across out of all the questions discussed so far, so it was a learning experience for me as well.

I think the water plant using child labor example kind of deals with that, as best as it can be dealt with.

The line does seem fuzzy, but while I cannot control the pollination of crops, I can control buying bee products. So it's kind of like least harm, to the extent I can.

Not sure if the water plantcountry founded on racismhuman testing examples were any help, but it makes a little more sense in my mind now.

@HiddenVariable

Similar imagesrealizations of the amount of stuff that contains animal products (roads surfaces, electronics) has gone around our abolitionist community as well.

The reason that so many things contain animals is because they're economic commodities. Anything not used is lost profit. I think once we get rid of the big uses, we'll see less animal byproducts.

Where I disagree with the image is that there is no such thing as a vegan. Our veganism is based on not treating animals as property. Even if we cannot abstain from using animal products completely, when we lack a choice, we certainly don't treat animals as property.

@ the original poster: Stef, trying to read this entire thread *is* training for endurance.

New BikePgh sticker concept: "I survived the Vegan/Viking thread!"

or would that be TOO inside?

i think a fair number of people here may be confusing abolitionism with total abstention as well.

not to be a pain in the ass, but i still haven't gotten anything even approaching a non-hypothetical answer to the question of where the lie is drawn on medical technology. is there a date somewhere or is it the constantly sliding present.

again, not trying to prove you wrong or a hypocrite, its one of those moral/philosophical questions that simply intrigues me. the bee and bug thing is something i have been asking people for years. maybe decades at this point.

growing up on a farm in a farming community kept me a lot closer to and aware of my food than most people, no matter where they fall on the dietary spectrum. so i think about stuff like that, and about how locally produced conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are both healthier and more ecologically sound in many (all is too much of a presumption without a LOT more research) than organic equivalents that are trucked/flown/shipped around the world before they get to your table.

On a related note...

There is a bee smoker in the craigslist bicycle section...

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/bik/2214235374.html

Have to keep our advocacy separate. I don't want to lose anti-bike vegans or anti-vegan cyclists

Actually yeah way off track. Oh yeah now i remember why i never became vegan. See image above in the combination with the bees/bug thing.

If seeing fireworks and being vegan are

mutually exclusive (like image depicts)

I doubt it is possible in pittsburgh

@cburch

Did you see the quotation pulled from the site earlier in the discussion?

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/faqs/

Question 13.

The response isn't hypothetical. We're living in that reality. As I stated earlier, as soon as the information is obtained, it can be used.

This isn't to your point, but to Stefb's, but I'm not actually sure what point she's articulating (and we've already established we have different standards when it comes to what we owe non-humans)

"But the impossibility of avoiding all contact with animal exploitation does not mean that we cannot avoid the most obvious and serious forms of exploitation. The individual who is not stranded in a lifeboat or on a mountaintop always has it within her power to avoid eating meat and dairy products [...]"

I saw that. What I got from it was that while avoiding the explicit statement it was essentially oking the use of all medical technology derived from animal models until some hypothetical future date when the practice is abolished. To me that seems pretty out of line with the rest of the positions espoused on the site. I assumed I was missing something. But maybe not.

Could you elaborate why you feel it's out of line with the rest of the framework?

I think the site and myself have explicitly okay'd the use of information obtained from problematic ways. We haven't okay'd the use of the problematic ways.

The author thinks animal models are relatively useless and don't result in much useful information. I.E. whenever the cure for X, Y, Z disease comes around, we don't think it's going to be a result of animal models.

To put it in human context it strikes me as analogous to a northern abolitionist buying southern cotton bourbon sugar and tobacco. Thus supporting the very thing they are attempting to abolish.

A more personal analogy would be you continuing to eat meat or wear leather until the meat industry is gone while attempting to abolish it.

@cburch What I got from it was that while avoiding the explicit statement it was essentially oking the use of all medical technology derived from animal models until some hypothetical future date when the practice is abolished.

Would one somehow unlearn knowledge because one disapproves of the provenence of that knowledge?

I disapprove of the atom bombing of Hiroshima, but I dont' reject the knowledge gained fomr the bombing of the effects of radiation.

Although I must argue: Animal research is the well-spring of our ongoing medical science. Stop it and most research will stop in it's tracks. Computers models of physiology won't get around that - data currently gained from research is pretty much data processed to get all that can be gotten from it as it is. Computer models in medicine will rarely reflect anything other than current knowledge.

If you change the medical practioe of treating cardiac arrest - even in a minor way, you save a few thousand human lives a year. That's because of the frequency of cardiac arrest deaths. From what I've seen myself, preliminary research involing a dozen or two dozen animal and followed up by a study of 100 or so animals will lead to such a change in treatment.

BUT, if animals are valued in the way humans are, we would not do that.

One example is this: Veternary science developed a vacine for feline leukema using research cats. I don't know the details but I imagine a few hundred, maybe even a thousand, cats died in the course of deveoping the vaccine. The vaccine, in turn probably has save a million or 2 cats.

We would not do this with humans.

I believe something similar could be done to deveope an AIDS vaccine - but it would involve killing a few hundred human animals in the attempt. So it is clearly out -even though it would save thousands, if not millions of lives.

If we valued animals in the same way we do humans, the cat leukema vacine could not have been developed. Many treatments for humans could not be developed.

So if we value animals that mnuch, we should quit using them in research, even though it would cost lives (not specifically human). This is true even if the lives lost in research would be small in number compared with those saved by the results.

So the argument is not "Does research with animals save human lives." It does. Animal research saves human lives.

No light and mirrors nonsense about computer models will change that.

The argument is that -even if it does save lives, we shouldn't do it.

---

Although I agree with reddan that it would be a shame to drive domesticated animals to extinction, I don't think this is necessary.

There are wild versions of most domesticated animals that are the same species. Dogs, horses, pigs, sheep and cats for sure all have wild versions that are the same species. I think the same is true for chickens and cows.

Side thought: I agree with some scientists that say cats were never really domesticated as in "something humans do TO animals." Rather the cats negatiated their ability to kill rodents for a welcome place on the periphery of humman culture. Co-domestication they call it.

Farm cats, for example, aren't pets and aren't bred. They just live on the farm.

Some scientists make the same argument for dogs, but I'm not really buying it

In real life? Of the two cats I've lived with, I owned one and the other owned me.

If we don't kill them off with some kind of toxin/fungus virus combination that seems to be decimating them, bees would survive without domestication. And they would continue to pollinate apple trees and such.

***

I'm still curious abouit how vegans deal with animals that, while not fatal are seriously uncomfortable to have. Lice scabies, botflies,

***

I don't think it would be any harder to practice localsim as vegan than it would be as an omnivore.

***

Another aside: Jainism.

The Indian religion Jainism is fairly extreme as far a vegan sorts of practices. I've read before that Jainists almost never farm because farming involves kllling micro-organisms in teh soil.

Here's a couple of passages about them from Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Jains do not believe in the concept of a God head responsible for the manifestation of the Creation and Maintenance. The universe however keeps changing due to interactions between matter and energy in the course of time and governed by laws of nature with no necessity of a co-ordinator/regulator. It also believes that there is life in other parts of universe other than earth. Jains have extensive knowledge and classifications of various living organisms including micro-organisms that reside in mud, air and water. It teaches respect for all forms of life and encourage minimising harm to other living beings by practicing five major ethical principles.

And

They do not consume root vegetables such as potatoes, garlic, onions, carrots, radishes, cassava, sweet potatoes, turnips, etc., as the plant needed to be killed in the process of accessing these prior to their end of life cycle. In addition, the root vegetables interact with soil and therefore contain far more micro-organisms than other vegetables. However, they consume rhizomes such as dried turmeric and dried ginger. Brinjals are also not consumed by some Jains owing to the large number of seeds in the vegetable, as a seed is a form of life. Strict Jains do not consume food which has been left overnight, such as yogurt because it contains large amounts of bacteria.

***

Massive props to Pierce for hanging in there.

The author thinks animal models are relatively useless and don't result in much useful information. I.E. whenever the cure for X, Y, Z disease comes around, we don't think it's going to be a result of animal models.

If there is anything in this thread I disagree with it is this. Drugs cost billions of dollars to develop and take 15 years to make it from "hey, check this new molecule!" to "take two of these and call me in the morning".

If you pull animal models out of the equation, you can multiply each of these values by a few orders of magnitude.

You might develop 100 "drugs" based on assays, cocrystals and computer models. Maybe a few actually work when you test them in vivo (in an animal), and you won the lottery if any of those actually work in humans.

what do you do when the deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and crows eat all your vegetables?

Drugs cost billions of dollars to develop and take 15 years to make it from "hey, check this new molecule!" to "take two of these and call me in the morning".

If you pull animal models out of the equation, you can multiply each of these values by a few orders of magnitude.

Let's try it!

Drugs cost trillions of dollars to develop and take 1500 years to make it from "hey, check this new molecule!" to "take two hundred of these and call me in the morning".

Wow. That would be bad.

But I think your point is sound. Drug companies would love to replace expensive animal testing with cheap computer models, if only they worked as well.

Still, such testing is a tiny part of the picture compared to all the other uses of animals. It's sensible for abolitionists to concentrate on the big numbers first, and work on the small-scale issues that present difficult ethical tradeoffs later.

Anyway, if all people came around to the abolitionist point of view, there's a simple enough solution. Replace all animal testing with human testing, since only humans can consent. It puts humans at more risk, sure, but if you treat them as morally equal to animals, it's no worse than the current situation. And I bet we'd work extra hard to minimize the dangers if we were giving these new drugs to people first.

(I'm not sure how an abolitionist would ethically test drugs intended for animals, though. Just try them on sick animals and hope they work?)

what do you do when the deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and crows eat all your vegetables?

You think "Why didn't I put up fencing or repellents?" People have been farming for thousands of years, and managed to deal with pests well enough. It probably takes more work than shooting or poisoning them, but in an abolitionist world, various things will. And deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and crows are much easier to deal with than Vikings.

@Mick - It was exactly the Jains I was thinking of when I concluded that, yes, I do live somewhere on a relative scale. Since I am not going to become a Jain monk, wearing a cloth over my mouth and sweeping the ground as I walk so as not to harm any living thing, neither am I going to become Ted Nugent, eating every living thing. I am probably somewhere on the Jain side of the center.

I would be interested to know the abolitionist perspective on species such as the Black Rhino and certain species of tigers that exist only in zoos, and can continue as species only due to human management. Since human activity has wiped out their habitat, should we let the species expire because we should not keep them in captivity? At some point, if more of the human race becomes enlightened, it might be possible to replace some habitat and re-intoduce these species into that habitat.

Since humans have over-run the planet, I believe there is essentially no "wild" left to release animals into, and the entire race needs to come to that realization, and manage everything responsibly.

As an aside, a couple of years ago I flew to Los Angeles on a late flight. I spent most of the flight looking out the window, looking for some dark patch without lights to indicate that some small area had been left untouched by people. There are none, in 3,000 odd miles. You have no idea how depressing that is to me.

It's interesting that this discussion has reached the point that our previous discussions about oil usage usually get to--you absolutely cannot divorce yourself from the problem unless you move out of society and live in the hills, producing everything you need to survive. I think an ethical/philosophical framework can live with some degree of contradiction (aka dialectics). We have to play the game with the hand we were dealt, as it were. We all make these sorts of decisions and compromises on a daily basis (even while being potentially ignorant of them).

@edmonds: I suggest you drive around the western states. There is lots of open land there. Granted, much of it is desert, but there is a lot of space (mostly) untouched by humans.

Regarding animals that survive only in zoos, I believe abolitionists would say "they are not property, and those creatures are mutants, so if they die, they die." Pierce can correct me if I'm wrong, though.

Regarding pests--I would like see a history of farming and hunting. I suspect the vast majority of cultures did some degree of hunting to deal with pests/provide for food, but I've not read enough to state that as a fact.

@bjanaszek: Open space is different from wild space.

If there is a road through it, is managed or owned by the government or military, it's not wild.

somebody started a sentence above with the phrase "If we lived in an abolitionist world..." and it caught my eye.

We don't. We probably never will. Never in the history of our species has the whole species held a singular, common belief. Getting all 7 billion of us to agree on anything would be the most monumental achievement possible. That's why I personally don't find the whole theory unacceptable even though if we all became abolitionists, there'd be no more Fluffy, and no more mumps vaccines. I'm not even confident of my own views on Fluffy and MMR, but I don't have to deal with those hypotheticals, so it's ok.

I watched a modern marvels episode about potatos yesterday (I'm scraping the bottom of the internet barrel here, being sick sux), and I never want to eat potatos at a restaurant again. But you don't have to kill the plant above ground to take the potato from below ground - they'll die off on their own. Jainists sound like they don't know how to garden.

About pests on farms: some you can control with passive methods. Some you can't. We spent a good 50 years using passive deer control techniques but in the last decade the whitetail population in the area exploded and there were too many starving deer to keep them out. We had to apply for a year round control permit and start shooting them. It was way cheaper and easier to hang hotel soap on the trees, but they are now desperate enough to find food that the human smell no longer frightens them. One small herd can destroy a huge portion of not only the years crop but the trees themselves if left alone in an orchard for a few days. Ten years later my uncle is still killing one or two deer every few weeks and this barely keeps them in check over the 300-400 acres we farm.

Introduced species + local extinction of alpha predators = disaster for all parties.

OK, I don't know much about agriculture, but couldn't you keep deer out with tall fences if you didn't want to kill them?

300-400 acres is a lot of fencing. i've heard 8' fencing has a chance at keeping them out assuming it's flat land (they couldn't jump from the top of a hill). keeping deer out seems like a tougher problem to me than keeping cattle in. the cattle are mostly happy, fed, and slow. the deer are mostly miserable, starving, and fast. fencing is expensive, and maintaining it is intensive.

i'm sure it's a possible solution, especially if you remove killing deer as a solution, it would become more attractive. but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the killing is in addition to fencing.

(edited to add: the 8' potential was around a backyard garden. running start, they frigging fly.)

Adding to what ejwme just said: It's probably ecomonically unfeasible. Deer can jump an 8' fence. Check out the cost of 8' fencing per linear foot or yard and you'll see the problem.

So, if humans were to re-introduce wolves, who used to naturally reside here, as a natural control on the deer so that we didn't have to kill deer, sort of "hired teeth" if you will, would that be considered making a decision without the animals approval? The wolves would probably like that decision, the deers, less.

i ask about animal pest on the farm because this is an example of a managed ecosystem where humans are in direct competition with other animals for food. its economically impractical to erect a 12 foot deer fence around an entire farm, and its ethically suspect to deny wild animals access to habitat. its inevitable (morally as well as practically) that some of your crop would be eaten by wild animals, calorically and economically it would be most practical to manage animal populations actively and eat them. right?

as for wolves.. coyotes (which cross bred with wolves) are now filling in wolves' ecological niche, which is mostly small game and fawns. even mountain lions prefer fawns. except for humans, not many animals would go out of their way to eat a doe of childbearing age. furthermore: why is it OK for a wolf to kill a deer and not a human?

about murder: i think we as a culture need to abandon morally absolutism. sometimes its OK to kill! for example, its ok to kill: unborn babies, in self defense, evil people, carrots and in order to live.

@nick- "why is it OK for a wolf to kill a deer and not a human?"

Partially because wolves are carnivores and humans are omnivores. Now pigs are also omnivores, but I still don't think that abo vegans would be upset by a pig killing a fawn (and yes, it totally would). I think it comes down to humans ability to reason and that we should be enlightened enough to choose a vegan diet instead of the omnivorous one of our past.

why would a person be more enlightened to be vegan than to be an omnivore?

"Economically infeasible" sounds like "it's cheaper to just shoot the deer". Imagine you were in charge of keeping school kids from 400 acres of candy trees. Would occasionally shooting a few still be necessary?

Granted, it could well be far more expensive.

I wonder how much of our civilization could be recreated under abolitionist principles. The earlier diagram lists products made just from cattle: cement, ceramics, fertilizer, plastics, adhesive, etc. Add in every other animal we use. Do we have, or can we find, workable substitutes for everything required to build a tractor? Can we mine metals without harming animals (worms and groundhogs, for instance)? Can we still have tractors, or do they contribute too much to animal-harming climate change?

If not, we might be back to early stone age technology, with hand plowing (assuming plowing is allowed). Or maybe just gathering whatever plants naturally grow nearby and trying to survive on that.

I didn't mean enlightened as in more spiritual and wise. I just meant that as humans we can make a moral/ethical/reasoned choice not to consume animal products. We can make that choice now because it's easier than ever before to be vegan.

tabby is describing, not espousing, the evangelical vegan position on diet which is a logical extension of an emotional response to the idea of consuming animals. in their opinion killing animals is wrong, so not consuming them would be the morally superior choice.

"Economically infeasible" is a polite way of saying the farm would go bankrupt from trying to do things this way. most people are not aware of just how big a struggle daily survival is to most small family farms in this day and age.

But wouldn't they go bankrupt only because food prices are low, due to competition from other cheap food sources?

If all farmers practiced these methods, food prices would go up for everyone. People have to eat, so they'd have no choice but to pay whatever the farmers needed to run their farms under the new system (or, people being rationalizing creatures, decide killing animals was OK after all).

We might well see a change from one type of farm to another, if (say) potatoes are cheaper to raise than apples when you can't kill animals any more. But overall, farmers should get more business and much higher prices for their crops.

@Steven?

"Regarding animals that survive only in zoos, I believe abolitionists would say "they are not property, and those creatures are mutants, so if they die, they die." Pierce can correct me if I'm wrong, though."

Animals in zoos typically aren't domesticated. I think Black Rhinos and the like could survive without human assistance. Some kind of sanctuary or reserve would be highly preferable to a zoo though. If the species declined due to human interference, it seems ethical to rehabilitate their population. We did this with Bald Eagles and it seemed successful.

@cburch

"which is a logical extension of an emotional response to the idea of consuming animals. in their opinion killing animals is wrong" That's semi true. But I think it's also because we have a negative emotional response to the idea of consuming a cognitively similar human. That's our indicator something's not right.

"A more personal analogy would be you continuing to eat meat or wear leather until the meat industry is gone while attempting to abolish it." I was thinking about your question last night. So it seems you believe that consuming meat from dead animals and using knowledge obtained (or fruit) from dead animals are morally similar actions.

Here is the difference: If you consume meat, it creates demand for meat and that demand can only be filled by the slaughter of more animals. If I consume fruit or use information obtained from dead animals, I can continue to demand fruit and medical knowledge, but I don't have to demand that bees be exploited and animal models be used. That demand can be met without the exploitation of animals. The demand for animal products cannot.

"I wonder how much of our civilization could be recreated under abolitionist principles. The earlier diagram lists products made just from cattle: cement, ceramics, fertilizer, plastics, adhesive, etc. Add in every other animal we use. Do we have, or can we find, workable substitutes for everything required to build a tractor? Can we mine metals without harming animals (worms and groundhogs, for instance)? Can we still have tractors, or do they contribute too much to animal-harming climate change?

If not, we might be back to early stone age technology, with hand plowing (assuming plowing is allowed). Or maybe just gathering whatever plants naturally grow nearby and trying to survive on that."

well, sometimes when you till a field or mow a cover crop you get to watch rabbits and voles running for their lives.. they don't always make it. its quite sad.

technologically speaking, veganism may only be possible due to high technology oil-fueled innovations (tractors, chemical fertilizers, international shipping and the global economy in general). making the comparison to stone age technology is a little naive i'm sorry to say. the stone age economy was very animal dependent for food, clothing, tools and weapons. but yes, veganism is a far more possible choice today than ever before.

i think its important to have a relationship with animals rather than trying to avoid them altogether.

tabby

well, lets not use words like "enlightened" to compare moralitys. its fine if you think your morality is superior to mine, thats life.

steven

ahh, now we get to the part of the discussion about whether its possible to farm sustainably without animal manures, fish emulsion, and blood and bone meals...

Nick, just FYI, as far as I know, Tabby isn't an abolitionist vegan. Since she isn't, I doubt she meant "enlightened" in a condescending way.

I don't think making value judgments on each others moral conclusions is fine. It seems you're a little irked by the comparison because it makes your own position sound "less enlightened." (Which is quite understandable)

So value judgments like that usually interfere with an open dialogue. I'm not content with "that's life"

if we don't think our own morality is the best, we're doing it wrong. we must necessarily conclude, then, that anyone who doesn't adhere to our own ideas isn't quite as good as they could be.

I grew lettuce last year expressly for the bunnies (it was an experiment, neither of us could stand the flavor of the only one that grew unattended). I didn't eat any of it. They had a field day. It was awesome, except my neighbors kept telling me about how the rabbits were eating my garden. I kept telling them that I knew, it was intentional, and they just kept telling me about it like I outta do something. I'm tempted to do it again just to keep the neighborly head tilt going. Can't let them get too comfy.

just thought I'd throw that out there. I spent the summer semi-amazed that I am so well off that I can spend time and energy growing food to give away to the animals that wander through my yard. Most farmers are not so lucky.

Nick mentioned the abandonment of moral absolutism. This thread has me thinking about moral absolutism and relativism. It strikes me that one of the principal assumptions grounding this entire discussion relies on moral absolute: that eating meat/keeping animals as property, etc., is entirely wrong.

I'm starting to wonder whether there is ANY thing in this world that is entirely right, entirely wrong, absolutely good or absolutely bad.

Life on Planet Earth in 2011 is a moving target in a minefield. Social values/norms/expectations constantly shift. Any ability to maintain some steady moral compass is constantly undermined by our realities, ie: how many families HAVE to feed their kids McDonalds and Sunny Delight because they can't afford healthy normal food. (Please don't dissect my example, I am sure it is flawed, but I'm just trying to put you in mind of the kind of choices a lot of people have to make).

In a perfect world, we'd all do things differently. We wouldn't HAVE to make those difficult choices-the ones with two bad options, and one only slightly less bad than the other.

I'm afraid for the vast majority of us, all we can do is the best we can. There are no absolutes (ironic?), and what we think is right today, will only seem less right tomorrow.

So I'm with Nick. And I'm letting myself off the hook. There are no Rights or Wrongs, and our only real responsibility is to try and do the best we can.

Forgive the sophomoric nature of this rant, I'm no philosopher.

@nick

Well I don't think telling people "they're not as good as they could be" is an effective way of getting them to consider another perspective. I just present the arguments and let people decide for themselves. That's what they're going to anyways

@Atleast

I disagree with that moral relativism idea. The vast majority of us agree that treating humans as property is morally problematic.

Some humans are similar to non-humans and it would still be morally problematic to treat them as property, therefore treating nonhumans as property is morally problematic.

@Pierce: thats not what I said. What I said was, BE as good as you can be, but don't kid yourself that there is some perfect ideal out there that you are expected to match.

if we don't think our own morality is the best, we're doing it wrong. we must necessarily conclude, then, that anyone who doesn't adhere to our own ideas isn't quite as good as they could be.

Perhaps this is tongue-in-cheek, but there is a point to be made there. If you don't believe your ethical/moral framework is correct, why, then, are you following it? That said, you can discuss opposing ideas without resorting to insults, and you can open to be different opinions that may provide a reason to change your position.

@nick: "and in order to live" kinda leaves the door wide open to kill anytime, no?

@edmunds ...wolves, who used to naturally reside here, as a natural control on the deer...

The wolves would probably like that decision, the deers, less.

I've thought that if there were powerful aliens that visited earth, they would consider "thinning the herd" of humans "...for their own good."

@bjanaszek - "you can discuss opposing ideas without resorting to insults"

Sorry, I missed something. Is the insult in my comments, HV's?

Nah, it was a mix-up due to a flurry of back to back posts. Nick thought Tabby was calling abolitionist veganism "more enlightened"

@Mick

There's a lot of good sci-fi based on that premise

The vast majority of us agree that treating humans as property is morally problematic. Some humans are similar to non-humans, therefore treating nonhumans are property is morally problematic.

I disagree. While we don't buy and sell slaves in public anymore, many aspects of our culture have thoroughly dehumanized large swaths of the population. We've thrown about the examples of chickens and cows being slaughtered at the end of their useful lives as egg and milk producers. I don't see a huge difference between that and, say, miners, who routinely work in absolutely horrible conditions, and are little more than resources on a spreadsheet for a corporation. Of course, we can say that is wrong, and perhaps even crusade against it, but, much like the contradictions required of being a vegan (medicine, etc), we have to realize that so much of our society is built on the backs of people who are essentially treated as things.

Sorry--I don't mean that to be a critique of anybody's views. I just think we can't think that dehumanization (or, I suppose, whatever the appropriate term would be from a vegan perspective) doesn't exist, or isn't as pervasive as the abuse of animals.

Ooops, double post.

@almklv: I wasn't pointing a finger at anyone--I was merely saying we can disagree about morality/ethics without calling each stupid (which, we have).

@nick why would a person be more enlightened to be vegan than to be an omnivore?

To chose to be a vegan, we need to have more awareness/enlightment than a pig has.

Of course, to chose an all-meat diet, we would also need to be more enlightened than a pig is, as well.

Nope, I totally agree it exists. I think I even mentioned "we still buy gas even though miners are killed in the extraction of natural resources" That might have been somewhere else though.

That's why I'm also working on the idea of housing coops and cooperative food sources. If humans weren't reliant upon an exploitative system to sustain their food and shelter, they might be less likely to put themselves in such exploitative situations.

@bjanaszek - but I didn't call anyone stupid, right? I was trying very hard to be respectful, so am a little alarmed at that.

Gosh, I'm having a problem saying things clearly today. I meant "we have not resorted to calling each other stupid whilst talking through philosophical disagreements."

Compared to the way discussions like this play out in other corners of the internet, this has been a veritable lovefest.

@Pierce: Right on.

re: moral relativism - it definitely exists even in regard to human treatment. A number from 2009 indicates that some 2.3 million people were imprisoned in the U.S., most people probably find that acceptable, as those people have demonstrated that it is threatening to society for them to be free. There's Guantamo. Absolutism would say, it's either right or wrong to imprison someone.

And I think most people would find it abhorrent to kill another person, unless that person tried to kill them, that would be ok. It's still relativistic, it's just that the graph is long and level with a huge vertical spike at the end.

"Well I don't think telling people "they're not as good as they could be" is an effective way of getting them to consider another perspective. "

i'm confused. when did i say that?

uh, so anyway.. i think its important to believe in what you believe in (and believe its right), otherwise its tempting to melt away into the post-modern puddle. that said, life is infinitely more complicated that many of us would like it to be. so making absolutist statements really puts us in a pickle. but, if we don't have grand ideas to build our morality upon, its easy to drown in nihilistic despair.

i'm all for clean air, water and good food, because i'll die without them. that's about as absolutist as we can convincingly get these days. even something as simple as "be nice to people" can't always be relied on anymore (i think think of a million examples of people we should be mean too).

but more to the point, its possible to raise animals without treating them as property. i'm grateful for vegans and vegetarians for drawing attention to cruelty towards animals. but there are better ways to raise pork than factory farms.

It must have been simpler in Viking times.

Eat what you can get your hands on, or die. Beat the other dude over the head harder, or die.

Good times...

@nick- I know this thread is long (6 pages now), but if you read any of my other replies you'd know that I am not vegan or vegetarian.

I kind of regreted using the word enlightened, but I do stand by the fact that it takes higher order thinking to arrive at a moral framework that invovles eating a certain way. So, that would include all sorts of religious/cultural dietary practices, not just veganism.

it takes a lot of higher order thinking to arrive at a moral framework that invovles eating a certain way.

it also takes a sufficient level of prosperity.

@HV agreed

HV - my dad is fond of pointing out that morality is what you can afford. I would modify that to state it is what you perceive you can afford. There are plenty of rich people who are amoral by the standards of ... the majority of the population (madoff comes to mind, I'm sure there are others).

"it also takes a sufficient level of prosperity."

A level of prosperity I'm assuming reached by the majority on this board. I make less than 12k year.

///////did someone say prosperity?///////

Forgive me for interrupting this thread, but this looks like a very interesting film, showing @ melwood screening room. Tonight is the last night. http://www.wastelandmovie.com/

/////

<- wouldnt read this entire thread for 40 bucks

Pierce, that's why I said something about perceived level of prosperity. I'm going to go ahead and make a lot of assumptions, but many people who make somewhere around $12k/yr probably perceive themselves to be too poor, and a vegan diet to use too many resources (time/money, which they think they are too short on) to adopt. True many of those people, if they made $100k/yr would still not adopt a vegan diet. But I'm sure a portion would.

But replace "vegan" with "healthy" and you're closer to most people at that income level who understand that potatos and corn are nutritionally not the same as most other vegetables. That's why FLOTUS has tried to raise awareness of food deserts, and the affect poverty has on health and lifestyle.

I perceive myself to be ridiculously wealthy, though by most standards I am lower middle class. I simply judge myself by standards that don't jive with my financial peers or the society I live in. It's how I afford the few things I do spend money on, and don't have to shop at Walmart. There are many people who believe they have no choice but to shop at Walmart. They perceive themselves to be poor.