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The whole taste argument completely ignores nutrition.
Why don’t you only eat potatoes? Do you derive taste pleasure from B12 supplements?
Attaching a system of morality to a diet is just religion.
I maintain that veganism is just halal/kosher for atheists/agnostics.
Do you derive taste pleasure from B12 supplements?
The store stocks them with raspberry and mango taste, so yes? I have no idea what your point is, though.
If you’re vegan and you don’t supplement with B12 or eat food specifically fortified with B12, I don’t think you’re being optimally healthy.
You don’t have to believe me though, just read what the vegan society has to say on this.
If you’re suggesting you can get enough b12 purely through a diet without animal products, supplements or fortified food you’ve misunderstood nutritional science.
What I’m railing against is this; vegans say that omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure and that’s a straw man argument.
No one just eats meat for taste because there is also a nutritional component. In the same way vegans have to supplement with B12 to be healthy so they recognise that things must be eaten beyond just taste pleasure.
Ah, so your point was that we take B12 supplements for the nutrition, not just for taste pleasure. I genuinely had not understood that.
I am aware of B12 being recommended to supplement. Personally, I don't worry much about it, because my oat milk is fortified, my vegan cheese is fortified, even the multi-vitamin juice in my fridge has B12 in it. And the supplements are dirt-cheap, too. But yeah, sure, people in different regions might not have it as easy in this regard.
The thing is, though, if we disregard those people, and also disregard all the meat-eaters who genuinely care about their nutrition and genuinely believe that they can only get it from meat, i.e. we let those eat their meat,
then that still leaves a huge number of people, who would significantly improve their diet, if they significantly reduced their meat intake (or cut it out and replaced it with appropriate vegetables + supplements/fortified stuff).Nutritional experts have been screaming for decades that people should eat their veggies. Because those contain a massive range of vitamins, which the average person is not getting enough of. And if you're eating enough veggies, then you need to cut back meat intake far below the average or do a lot of sport, otherwise you're just consuming too much food.
Ultimately, why the nutrition argument is rarely taken serious, is because the average meat-eater is so far removed from eating healthy that they probably don't even know what B12 is.
I guess, if you want the sensitive version of the strawman argument which you just came up with, that apparently the hivemind of vegans says that omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure, then as a certified Vegan™ and part of the hivemind, I am glad to tell you:
Not all omnivores eat meat only for taste pleasure. But a significant portion of those living in developed countries could easily go vegan without sacrificing nutritional quality and rather even improving it.Unfortunately for you, in observational studies, vegans on average have better serum B12 levels than carnists do. If you're suggesting you can get enough B12 purely through a diet of animal products, you've misunderstood nutritional science.
Do you know how B12 gets into your meat? It is injected there. ANIMALS CANNOT PRODUCE B12. Just take the fucking supplements instead of using murdered animals as a delivery system for the exact same fucking supplements.
And maybe, if you are trying to sound educated on a subject, do more than a single solitary google search.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
B12 is produced by microorganisms inside the guts of cows/ruminants.
They don’t inject B12 into animals as far as I know. Maybe you could link a source for that? First I’ve ever heard of it.
No disrespect intended, but you are out of your depth and seemingly don't realize it. You should not be nearly this confident. Instead of googling, "vegans need b12", you should have googled: "cows b12 injection" and come up with some of these hits:
https://morningchores.com/b12-for-livestock/
https://www.drugs.com/vet/vitamin-b-12-1000-mcg-injection.html
https://au.virbac.com/products/sheep-cattle-nutrition/hy-b12-vitamin
https://nz.virbac.com/products/trace-elements/smartshot-b12
https://farmanimal.elanco.com/au/sheep/product-directory/cobalife-vb12
While this 20 seconds of research does not establish that supplementing B12 is actually necessary for livestock, it does go towards establishing that it is an industry-wide practice.
Yeah I probably should have, thanks for those links.
The existence of products designed to inject B12 is different to what I interpreted the person who I replied to was saying though.
I understood them as saying that farms are injecting B12 into animals so that meat gains some kind of nutrient that isn’t naturally occurring or not occurring at an appreciable level.
I have no doubt animals have all kinds of vitamin deficiencies and receive supplements to improve the over all health of the animal and the nutritional value of meat.
But is this the reason they are injecting B12?
Obviously I’ll read more on it.
EDIT: so the very first link basically confirmed what I just said, when an animal is deficient in B12 farmers inject it to make it more healthy. They aren’t injecting B12 into animals because animals just don’t have B12…
You also don't address the fact that carnists have poorer B12 levels than vegans. I am willing to bet that the only time you ever care or think about B12 is when you want to argue against ethical veganism. Have you ever had your B12 serum level checked? Have you ever tried to calculate your required daily intake or your actual daily intake? Obviously not. This is a disingenuous argument right from the beginning. You are working backwards from the conclusion you wish to reach and using any rationalization you can lay your hands on.
It is obvious you don't actually know what you are talking about, which is darkly ironic considering your accusations. You are arguing for what you want to be true, but you have been careful to keep yourself ignorant of what IS true, because if you knew then you might have to change.
To be fair, capital and social forces have conspired to help you remain ignorant.
Yeah, when you link a source for your claim that people are injecting B12 into animals I’ll reengage with you.
I tried googling and got nothing.
Do you know how easy it is to get your b12 met with just regular vegan foods? You act like fortified foods dont exist.
If you think its such a big deal, why dont you ask on here if any of the vegans have actually had a b12 deficiency, ever.
I literally talk and gave a link about B12 fortified foods in the comment you replied to.
Attaching a system of mortality to a diet is just religion
... what? I'm sorry, but this simply doesn't make sense at all. By this logic what is wrong with cannibalism? Attaching a system of morality to that diet would just be a religion right? And I'm sure eating human meat has all kinds of nutrients.
Nothing is inherently wrong with cannibalism.
I’m not a moral realist. So I don’t believe in moral facts I.e. that murder is ‘wrong’ or being charitable is ‘right’
It’s kid stuff (IMO) to believe in mystical rights and wrongs of the universe. The universe does not care one iota that you cease to exist tomorrow or if all humans were to become extinct (IMO).
If you disagree please point me to the source of your morals, how do you know what’s right and what’s wrong?
Both "ethics" and "morals" fundamentally deal with questions of right and wrong, good and bad, and how we ought to behave. In many philosophical and everyday contexts, the terms are used interchangeably without causing confusion. Ultimately, trying to differentiate veganism as purely "ethical" rather than "moral" is likely a semantic game rather than a meaningful philosophical distinction.
You can confidently assert that there's no significant difference between ethics and morals in this context.
Who here is claiming that there are moral facts? Of course morals are constructs of human culture, but that doesn't make them less important. Morals are essentially what we have learned to be important rules for good, healthy societies. Humans who abide by the idea that it is "wrong" to kill another human are far more compatible in a community than ones who do not. These concepts have developed over a very long time, which is why we tend to "know" when things are wrong (eg feel bad, guilty conscious, etc). One of these "rules" is that needlessly inflicting pain on intelligent animals is wrong. Similarly, causing unnecessary damage to the environment is wrong. The context of climate change is quite new, but the principle is the same.
Vegans. Vegans are claiming there are moral facts when they say that I am wrong for consuming animal products.
Although I’ve had discussions with vegans who claim they aren’t moral realists, I can’t recall a satisfactory argument for a moral anti-realist vegan position.
If you’d like to offer one, please do.
I believe I just did? My argument is that despite morals not coming from some magical entity, they have an origin in humanities success in society, and are therefore still important. For something to be immoral doesn't merely mean an entity says it is bad, it means that thing goes against principles which benefit our societies. Murder is immoral, not because an entity decided that, but rather because societies which accepted murder were far less successful than societies which did not.
For veganism, the environmental mortality is clear. Besides that I suspect the reason we tend to see unnecessary animal abuse as immortal is because kinder humans tend to be better for society, and kinder humans also tend to be kinder to animals, not just humans.
Yeah what you’re describing is basically humans make morals.
The problem you should have with this is that currently society is fine with eating animal products.
Many societies were successful because they ate meat.
How do you reconcile a situation where you believe humans are the source of morals but you disagree with a particular moral created by humans I.e. that it’s ok to eat meat?
Well first, I don't think that "is ok to eat meat" is a moral. But it's true that humans haven't tended to find it immoral (though there are exceptions to this in certain cultures, regarding certain meats).
But you make a good point, and I think the answer is that since humans make morals based on their circumstances, and the circumstances of society can and does change, then certain morals become less relevant compared to others. Murder is a fairly constant moral, because regardless of how a society changes, a murderous individual is gonna be bad for it. But on the other hand, there used to be pretty strong morals regarding how dead bodies were treated; you leave them alone. And this used to make sense, since people who messed with dead bodies were likely to get diseases and spread them. But as medicine and science and hygiene improved, this became less relevant as compared to the need to investigate dead bodies to improve understanding of disease and human biology. So our common morals regarding respect for the dead changed.
For veganism, it used to be for most societies that they couldn't afford to simply not eat things, unless they were poisonous. So this need overwhelmed morals of kindness to nature and animals, even though this moral of kindness was still there (respecting nature is a moral found in very many cultures). But in modern day when we now have an abundance of food to the point of large waste, the need to eat whatever you can is no longer as important, and the moral of kindness to animals (and the environment) can be expressed more freely.
And indeed, I think the vast majority of vegans would agree that eating meat is not inherently immoral if there is no other choice, it's only when meat is chosen over other alternatives that it becomes immoral, because it is unnecessary.
Sorry for the wall of text
One of these “rules” is that needlessly inflicting pain on intelligent animals is wrong.
that is not universal
who gets to define need
Obviously the observer decides for themselves what they think is needed. I didn't think it would be controversial to observe that people tend to dislike/have an aversion to hurting intelligent animals for no reason.
Not everyone necessarily feels this, but many people do. Enough for us as a society to largely ban/shun things like dog fights, bull fights, circus animals, animal torture videos, etc
Veganism is not a moral system, it is an ethical system. Before we continue, do you understand the difference?
The experiences of animals are real and matter. Their suffering is identical in nature to your own. Your moral perspective demands that you deny or ignore these facts. If you can deny that an animal's experience has any value, you can do the same to a human.
So you’ve never killed a mosquito, right? Or a spider? Ants, perhaps?
This is a bad faith argument, similar to saying "so you've never left a light on all day?" To someone protesting climate change.
The point of veganism (besides the environmental side) is that there is far too much unnecessary suffering caused to animals; complex and intelligent animals, because of the meat industry. Of course humans will probably always cause death and suffering to animals and even other humans, but accepting this and taking it as a reason for "why should I care at all then" is ridiculous.
I don't think we are at the point where all of humanity can refrain from meat. Maybe most Americans but we should maybe collectively decide this is the goal before pursuing it.
Being incendiary is a strategy that only had small short term gains. Looking at th big picture more people need to understand the argument and it can't be, "you should feel bad." At least not until you've established the expectations and clear reasons why they exist outside of one's own personal judgement.
Why can't we?? Meat is a luxury product!! The only reason you can afford it at all is because I subsidize it so heavily with my taxes. It is made by refining cheap, safe, plentiful plant food using the bodies of animals to create a toxic, addictive, scarce luxury good. In that process, MOST OF THE NUTRIENTS ARE LOST. If we all stopped eating meat, we would have such an overabundance of food, we would have to stop farming more than half the land we are currently farming for plants.
Now tell me why YOU can't stop being cruel and violent against the kindest, gentlest creatures on the planet? Because even if you can come up with a tortured hypothetical reason some unlikely hypothetical person can't, if you can, then what you are doing is atrocity.
Not that I was going to listen to you anyway, but the entire way you’re going about this just makes you look like a dick.
Also, accusing me of being cruel and violent for buying a slab of meat off the shelf is laughably stupid.
I agree not everyone can refrain from eating meat, but waiting until everyone is doing it before one stops eating meat is a good way to ensure it never happens. Veganism has grown to where it is now from people deciding to adopt it for themselves, regardless of other people are doing it.
But yes you are right, the argument shouldn't be "you should feel bad". I think educating about the problems of the meat industry, and also making veganism ever more accessible and normalised are the ways forward. But it will spread person by person, not as large communal decisions. At least not yet.
I could deny that a human's experience has any value, true. But I generally don't.
So, do you only eat like shadows and stuff?
I can deny the importance of human experience (the heat death of the universe will erase all traces of our existence and impact) without wanting to kill humans right now.
How did you conclude the experiences of animals matter?
How do you know animals are having experiences?
How do you know human experiences matter?
I don’t claim to have any answers to the above but I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer to these questions other than ‘I just believe it is so’ and if it boils down to my belief versus your belief I have to conclude that neither one of us actually has any idea.
You should be just as confident that animals are having experiences as you are that your fellow human beings are. They TELL you that they are having experiences. Have you never known an non-human mammal in your life?
If you were emotionally motivated to think of Irish people as not having the same full experience of life and suffering that you do (perhaps they taste good, or perhaps you have a coal mine their children labour in) you will find that you can convince yourself that they don't. You are engaging in a set of obvious psychological defense mechanisms to protect your worldview that lacks any coherent ethical structure against ideas that are ethically consistent.
I dont know why you call it your moral system, when your system apparently is that the earth is supreme, humans dont matter, therefore anything that happens is okay. Morals are a societal thing, if you dont care about society then what's the point?
How do you apply this system to your own actions? Just anything goes cause it doesnt matter?
I agree, morals are a societal thing and right now it’s perfectly socially acceptable to eat meat.
How I apply this to my own actions is by conforming to the made up rules of society because that seems to keep me alive.
If I lived in a vegan society and it was not socially acceptable to eat meat I likely wouldn’t.
They don't. It's a facile philosophy invented on the spot to avoid thinking rationally about ideas and feelings that they are not prepared to process. It's disingenuous bullshit that we aren't really supposed to engage with, it's just suppose to distract and derail their own thought process. It's fucking pathetic, practically solipsism.
If you can deny that an animal's experience has any value, you can do the same to a human.
values are subjective
Okay? So?
Being cruel and violent to innocent creatures requires that you learn to suspend your empathy. Being cruel and violent to innocent creatures EVERY SINGLE DAY requires that you main your empathy, to actually injure yourself and impair your ability to be empathetic AT ALL.
To respond to your apparent non sequitur, I value compassion and empathy. Don't you?
I value compassion and empathy
everyone does..not everyone has a problem with eating animals.
And yours are inconsistent. Is there a problem with people pointing that out?
no one can value everything the same.. of course they are inconsistent
I didn't say they had the same value. I said they had value. Consuming them for hedonistic pleasure is only ethically consistent with the view that animals have effectively zero or even negative intrinsic value.
nothing has intrinsic value
All of your efforts at self-preservation seem to disagree.
intrinsic value implies objectivity, and i cannot be objective about my own wellbeing.