Another Point About Eating/Torturing Animals

[carlo]

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The individual movements of all animals such as a lion is a manifestation of this supersensible "ego" which is the "real lion" and in this we can understand how a beaver can build a dam or a wasp build its nest.This can give us an understanding of the "group ego" or the "group soul". Man does not have a "group soul" or "group ego".

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Have to clarify this. Man does not have a "group soul" or "group ego" on the earth but is contained within supersensible "group souls" such as nation and race and are as real as your finger.

[Phil153]

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people who want to change their eating habits to minimise animal suffering should not become vegetarians.

do you see why?

chez

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No, I don't see why.

Since this thread is long dead, could you provide your reasoning? I can't see any possible reason this would be true. Modern meat production involves far more land, more growing of crops, and more forest destruction than a vegetarian diet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ..._Vegetarianism

I can't find any support for your statement.

[chezlaw]

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people who want to change their eating habits to minimise animal suffering should not become vegetarians.

do you see why?

chez

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No, I don't see why.

Since this thread is long dead, could you provide your reasoning? I can't see any possible reason this would be true. Modern meat production involves far more land, more growing of crops, and more forest destruction than a vegetarian diet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environ..._Vegetarianism

I can't find any support for your statement.

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The environmental benefits are a different issue, my claim is just about the suffering of animals being eaten. here goes:

1) Not obvious vegetarianism reduces suffering at all.

The choice here is between NoMeat or EthicalMeat. NoMeat equals no suffering as the animal wont exist but its not obvious that an animal produced for EthicalMeat has a net suffering, maybe it's better off with a decent life and being humanely killed then it would be not existing.

2) NonEthicalMeat results in much suffering.

We can take this as read or there's no point in vegetarianism at all. Importantly this makes no direct difference to NoMeat or EthicalMeat.

3) People are indifferent.

Most people are indifferent to to some extent. They may prefer buying EthicalMeat but there's a limit to how much money and effort they will put into it.

This is the nub, the more people who buy EthicalMeat the cheaper and easier it becomes to buy EthicalMeat and the EthicalMeat market will capture more and more of the indifferent market.

There's an additional benefit in that many of us think EthicalMeat generally tastes better than nonEthicalMeat (no-one thinks the reverse though many claim they're the same) so accidental exposure to the indifferent may reduce there indifference in the right direction.

So a vegetarian is not directly responsible for less suffering than an EthicalMeat eater and is doing less to reduce suffering caused by others than if they demanded ethicalMeat. Instead of all the "suitable for vegetarian" labels they should concentrate on "produced with 100% EthicalMeat".

chez