I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    first, you can’t prove plants aren’t sentient. second even if you could, why should sentience matter? what ethical system even accounts for sentience as a factor of right behavior?

    • neuralnerd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      you can’t prove plants aren’t sentient.

      And you can’t prove something is sentient. But scientists have criteria that help determine whether a species is sentient. See this review for example.

      even if you could, why should sentience matter?

      I already answered. If something can’t be harmed there no need to prevent harming it.

      what ethical system even accounts for sentience as a factor of right behavior?

      About all animal welfare:

      Respect for animal welfare is often based on the belief that nonhuman animals are sentient and that consideration should be given to their well-being or suffering, especially when they are under the care of humans.[4]

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        If something can’t be harmed there no need to prevent harming it.

        i don’t really like your use of harm here to exclude everything but sentient beings, but as a term of art, for the purposes of this discussion, i will indulge you.

        why does it matter if something CAN be harmed? what creates a duty to NOT HARM something?

        • neuralnerd@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          what creates a duty to NOT HARM something?

          About all ethics is about reducing harm. If you don’t know that harming is bad I don’t think we can have a discussion.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            deontological ethics are explicitly not about that. divine command theory is unconcerned with that. can you name an ethical system that does concern itself with that?

            • neuralnerd@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              deontological ethics are explicitly not about that.

              I guess it depends on the philosopher, but at least one includes “doing no harm” in the obligations[1]:

              Ross [20] modified Kant’s deontology, allowing a plurality of duty-based ethical principles, such as doing no harm, promise keeping, etc.

              can you name an ethical system that does concern itself with that?

              Probably all consequentialism and at least utilitarianism (harm decreases the global well being). Negative consequentialism is more specifically focused on reducing suffering/harm.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                I’m not a consequentialist at all, and Ross is not using harm in the same sense as we are. even if he were, his is not a very common strain of ethics.

                your ethical theory seems to be on dubious footing to me.

                • neuralnerd@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  So in your ethical theory, harm doesn’t matter at all?

                  You seem to follow some kind of deontology. There’s no obligation in your system to not cause unnecessary harm? I guess you have some obligation not to hurt your dog even if you like doing that. Isn’t that obligation related to the fact the dog would be harmed if you did?

                  Maybe it’s just a difference between consequentialism and deontologism, but I was convinced deontologists generally had some rules that prevent unnecessary harm. They don’t?

                  There’s at least Tom Regan who was a deontologist (at least in his book The Case for Animal Rights) and talks about harm:

                  In Regan’s view, not to be used as a means entails the right to be treated with respect, which includes the right not to be harmed.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    1 year ago

                    I take a view pretty close to kant: cruelty is wrong to practice on other creatures or on people, but for different reasons. it’s inherently wrong to be cruel to people, but being cruel to animals is only wrong In that it conditions you to practice cruelty, and you might subsiquently be cruel to people

    • max@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Even if plants were sentient, and I’m not saying they are, but if. Would you rather “kill” orders of magnitude more plants to feed them to animals, then kill the animals and eat them, or would you kill the plants and eat them directly? One of them causes a lot less harm (if any at all), and it’s not eating the animals.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        well, first, animals are mostly fed plants or parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat, so the scale of the difference you described is orders of magnitude less than you are suggesting.

        but, more importantly, why should sentience matter?

        finally, whether i buy food from a shelf or not, the creature (flora or fauna) it came from is already harmed, and my purchase causes no more harm to it, so eating it has exactly no impact.

        • max@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          Those plants still have to be cultivated. If there are no animals to feed those plants to (for instance, low quality corn or low quality soy), the lane can be used for cultivating food for humans or in the case of low quality soy, the rain forest doesn’t have to be mowed down for it. Sentience matters because ideally, one should strive to reduce harm as much as possible. Especially unnecessary harm. There is a reason why I don’t torture cats and dogs for fun, and it’s the same reason I don’t eat killed and tortured cows, pigs, chickens, etc. just because I like the flavour of them. And of course your purchasing behaviour has impact on the amount of harm caused. Maybe not instantaneously, because it is indeed on the shelves already, but just like with voting in elections, if you don’t buy products that cause harm, demand drops ever so slightly. Then when more people inevitably follow, demand drops further in a big enough quantity to matter. That’s why you see a lot more vegetarian or vegan options in your supermarket today: because people buy them.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            there are more vegetarian options and even more meat is produced now than ever before. the production hasn’t dropped.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            why should reducing harm be a goal? suggesting that eating meat is equivalent to torturing animals for fun is totally specious: almost everyone eats meat, almost no one tortures animals.

            • max@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Meat doesn’t grow on trees, let’s be honest here. There’s plenty of articles, videos, and other evidence online and offline that livestock aren’t exactly treated well. Maybe they’re nice at some farms, but they still get herded into cramped trucks, then disgracefully manhandled in slaughterhouses. Personally, I don’t like to cause people and other living things harm, simply because I feel like being nice is the better option. I believe that doesn’t have to stop at humans and pets.

            • max@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              I don’t. But I do know that the human body can survive, even thrive, perfectly fine without the consumption of animal products. That’s nutrients, not taste preferences, of course. I also like to think that the vast majority of people don’t like harming animals, at least not consciously. I hope I’m not wrong in thinking that.

              • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                people need more than nutrients, and of course people don’t like harming animals, but eating meat doesn’t do that: the animal is already dead.

                • max@feddit.nl
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                  1 year ago

                  Sure, people need good tasting food, too. That’s no issue. As for the already dead animals not having been harmed: Wut? They don’t exactly ask a cow nicely if it could just die for a steak. It needs to be killed. Often in a not too humane manner. Before that, it’s likely that the cow has suffered during transport or when it was forced to birth calves year in, year out, so it could keep producing milk. All those things harm the animal in one way or another, so yes, eating meat does cause harm.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    1 year ago

                    eating a steak does not cause the cow to have been killed (or any of the other things you mentioned), since an event in the future cannot cause an event in the past.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    1 year ago

                    it’s not strictly about taste. people need community and esteem and self-actualization, too.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            the soy fed to livestock is almost entirely the industrial waste from making soybean oil.

            • max@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Fair enough, it seems like it is waste from soybean oil most of the time. However, it does make me wonder why such an enormous amount of soy is cultivated. >75% is used for animal feed (and oil, indeed). (source). I wonder if it’s a similar situation as with corn in the US and the resulting use of HFCS.