Yeah, the most ethical diet is plant based.
Why do you ask it?
the most ethical diet is
not a matter of objective fact
No. The nature of life consumptions of living things. I do believe however that it is preferable to eat from the least sentient of creatures as possible. You can even go further and eat things which does not kill things at all like fruitarians. This would be following the ethic of least harm. Its almost impossible for anyone living in the modern world to not be destroying it with their consumption. Most vegans for example would be doing more harm to me than say someone native to the americas before colonialism that ate meat.
morals are anecdotes that define your personal integrity. morals are arguable at best and carry little to no merit outside of personal experience.
I believe you mean ethical.
ethically, no, it’s not wrong. mostly because the animals we consume are bred and raised specifically to eat. however, the treatment of those animals in corporate factory farms is unethical, and so makes the consumption of the products from those establishments unethical.
I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.
Depends on your morals. For mine it is.
A vegetarian diet isn’t much more ethical than an omnivore diet, anyway. Veganism has a much better argument.
Not sure I’m getting your point, but meat tastes better than lettuce.
If ethical = animal welfare, perhaps.
But when factoring in e.g. water consumption and CO2e per unit of food consumed, I would argue the average vegetarian diet to be significantly more ethical compared with the average omnivorous diet.
Obviously the type of animals involved, the way they are treated and killed, and religious views add more complexity to this case.
edit: the essence of my point is that this isn’t a black and white matter.
I think that’s a flawed argument. Cow milk production requires that cows get pregnant once a year, and the calves can’t all become milk cows, too - thus, cow milk production cannot exist without cow meat production. And IIRC milk products still have a worse environmental impact than chicken meat.
TBH I’m not sure about the environmental impact of eggs vs meat. But animal welfare is generally the main reason why people keep to vegetarian or vegan diets, and chicken farming is not great in terms of animal welfare.
The bottom line is: 1 cow birth per year (or let’s call it cow deaths, because that’s what is most relevant here) yields around 10.000L of milk. Out of which around 1000kg of cheese can be produced, plus of course the meat of that calf.
Does that make it ethical? I don’t think so. But I would say around 1.5-2x less unethical compared to eating meat, which is significant.
I read a book called “change of heart” by a vegan animal activist, which was all about research into what actually worked in terms of convincing people to reduce animal suffering. For him, it would be ideal if we reduced animal suffering to zero. But even encouraging someone to eat less meat (e.g. Meatless Mondays) reduced animal suffering, and was a win in his book. I kind of agree with that.
I thought you were talking about environmental impact? Both cow milk and cow meat have a worse environmental footprint than chicken meat.
My point is: ethics should not be confused with a single dimension of ethics. Whether something I’d ethical, depends on your beliefs.
Simultaneously, if animal welfare is all we optimize for, vegetarianism is a step forward. And indeed, so is pollotarianism when optimizing for just environmental impact. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Depends on your morals.
Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or diary, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).
So you believe plants or fungi don’t suffer when you eat them?
There is indeed a very small scientific community that has some (very preliminary) research done on a “nervous system” in plants. The wood-wide-web is part of those hypothesis. It is very intriguing, but reading the interviews with these scientists and their publications didn’t leave me with the impression that plants feel emotions, or that they think, are cognitive or learn from pain. Do you have scientific data to proof otherwise?
Of course not. But nobody has evidence that cows think or have emotions beyond physical sensations either.
How can anyone be so data blind? These things are studied by actual biologists.
Have you ever actually seen a cow in person townie?
probably not.
If it’s possible and you’re capable to do it, then I think it’s a moral choice.
If it’s a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don’t think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.
What’s the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.
It’s a difficult question, so I hope some people who have interesting things to say about it will turn up here. All I can contribute is this link: Ancient Arguments For Vegetarianism
No, if you are Vegan. Yes, if you eat animal products. The question is, do you care?
You are what you eat. Cows eat grass. Cows are machines that convert grass into more cows. Cows are essentially converted grass. Thus, if it’s ok to eat grass, it’s ok to eat cows. Checkmate.
Yes
Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.
Where did this question originate
Why
Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
It hasn’t
Give us you opinion
Don’t have one yet
