Why abstain from meat?

[Shredderbeam]

Health benefits. It could help with some diseases/illnesses.

Personally, I'll probably never go vegetarian or vegan because it wouldn't make any sense for me to do so. I don't particularly care about "animal cruelty" either.

I do understand and respect people's choices with regards to abstaining from meat-related products in terms of diseases though.

If you understand why it would help, why wouldn't you do it?

 

[Curate]

I don't understand how this answers the question at all.



I don't understand why you think that less people purchasing meat would lead to a reduction in the production of meat.

You get what I mean haha... You should start a movement instead of just making a personal decision

 

If you understand why it would help, why wouldn't you do it?

I don't have any autoimmune diseases. Besides, it tastes too good to stop.

 

[Shredderbeam]

Why stop? Don’t.

You not eating meat won’t stop billions of animals from being slaughtered inhumanely.

You not driving a car won’t save the planet.

You recycling a bag won’t solve pollution.

We would all have to participate and I don’t see that happening without legislation.

Sure it will. Every less chicken I eat is one less chicken slaughtered.

Do you find the treatment of animals who can subjectively experience the world in a similar way to us abhorrent?

You get what I mean haha... You should start a movement instead of just making a personal decision

I don't get what you mean. Sure, it would be nice to start a movement, but wouldn't one less person contributing to animal suffering be better than none?

I don't have any autoimmune diseases. Besides, it tastes too good to stop.

Fair enough on the taste aspect, but you don't have to have an autoimmune disease to benefit from less (certain types of) meat in your diet.

 

[Shredderbeam]

As I said,an individual not eating meat won’t stop billions from living and dying inhumanely. With that in mind, until legislation is passed to stop it, I don’t have a problem being part of the problem because doing my part won’t solve it alone.

The problem with billions of animals dying is the aggregate suffering of each animal, not simply the fact that "lots are dying". One less chicken being eaten = one less chicken suffering = reduction of suffering. Nobody said that you had to save every animal.

 

[Curate]

The problem with billions of animals dying is the aggregate suffering of each animal, not simply the fact that "lots are dying". One less chicken being eaten = one less chicken suffering = reduction of suffering. Nobody said that you had to save every animal.

Animals eat other animals too. Just saying.

 

Fair enough on the taste aspect, but you don't have to have an autoimmune disease to benefit from less (certain types of) meat in your diet.

It could be beneficial, but I'm already hitting the gym so I'll be fine.

 

[Shredderbeam]

Animals eat other animals too. Just saying.

Some animal species rape each other. Just saying.

It could be beneficial, but I'm already hitting the gym so I'll be fine.

I wonder what the health benefits of avoiding those meats AND hitting the gym would be?

 

[Shredderbeam]

Sure like making me repeat myself. I don’t have a problem being part of the problem if/until legislation is passed to solve it.

So what's your specific concern? Are you concerned about animal suffering? Is it an environmental thing? Can you spell it out? I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I just want to make sure that we're on the same page.

And that’s after I accept the assumption that the meat industry is so efficient that the math equalizes perfectly like you claim, which I don’t accept to begin with.

Oh of course, the (let's say) chicken industry doesn't adjust their numbers down to single digits, it's probably more like lots of a thousand. So if you don't eat a chicken, that has a 1/1000 chance of your choice affecting anything...though that means that if it does, it saves 1000 chickens, so it cancels out, really. Which makes perfect sense, after all - corporations that want to sell animal flesh will sell less if there are less people buying animal flesh.

Plastic straws kill turtles, waste destroys habitats, and pollution harms even more. Unless solution participation is mandatory the bigger picture won’t be solved and that’s what I’m concerned with.

I fully agree that buying one more plastic straw won't make the difference between turtles surviving or not - but buying dead animals to eat is far, far more direct.

 

[Shredderbeam]

My specific concern is again, billions of animals living and dying in inhumane circumstances. The solution is not me buying less chicken and beef.

Okay, good, the concern is the aggregate suffering of billions of animals. Is that fair? The AGGREGATE suffering of billions of animals, and not just the fact that "billions of animals are suffering"? It makes a big difference.

That was the math all along. Pointing out the hypothetical math in an alternate scenario doesn't change my mind that in reality the math can't be that granular and direct down to 1 meat purchased:1 life saved. I would speculate the ratio is much lower. This is not to mention the fact most meat purchased is a small fraction of an animal, so that ratio lowers even further. Meaning for every time I purchase meat I'm saving a minuscule portion of a animal that may not have even had a inhumane life or death to begin with.

The math is absolutely that granular when it comes to, as I meant in my example, purchasing whole chickens. Of course it doesn't work out exactly like that when it comes to pigs, sheep, and cows, but I'm sure you understand that there's no magic number of people that need to stop eating meat for it to have an effect. Going back to the "buying a whole chicken" example: Even if you're the only person who chooses not to buy meat, even if you're a rounding error, as I said, if meat is produced in lots of 1000, then you have a 1 in 1000 chance of saving 1000 chickens, so it evens out. The mathematics aren't quite so neat for pigs, sheep, and cows, but surely you can't deny that fewer meat-eaters = fewer animals slaughtered.

On a side note, and perhaps this isn't as much of an issue for you, but if you were horrified by billions of animals being killed for their flesh, wouldn't that disgust you to the point of not wanting to partake of that suffering?

 

Some animal species rape each other. Just saying.



I wonder what the health benefits of avoiding those meats AND hitting the gym would be?

That could be nice. But then again I wonder what the health benefits would be if I started drinking less coffee, spend less time on computer, stretch every single day etc.

Lots of benefits, but I'm not doing that either.

 

Not your life, not their choice.

That could be nice. But then again I wonder what the health benefits would be if I started drinking less coffee, spend less time on computer, stretch every single day etc.

Lots of benefits, but I'm not doing that either.

If you give that little of a fuck, why reply to this thread? Lol. If you cared about health benefits in the slightest, you'd have made the change yourself, regardless of what it is you switch to / eliminate. A little research goes a long way.

 

Not your life, not their choice.



If you give that little of a fuck, why reply to this thread? Lol. If you cared about health benefits in the slightest, you'd have made the change yourself, regardless of what it is you switch to / eliminate. A little research goes a long way.

Transitioning diet from meat-eating to meat-abstaining isn't worth it for me. Do I care about animal lives/feelings? No. Do I care about the health benefits? Sure, to a certain degree. But it's not enough for me to change my lifestyle.

As for why I replied to this thread. It begs the question why abstain from meat? Factoring in the non-subjectives such as health benefits (plant-based diet that doesn't abstain from fish could help with autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis), then it comes down to whether the pros outweigh the cons. For me, it doesn't.

 

[Curate]

I think every point has been argued at this point, good discussions guys.

 

[Shredderbeam]

You're taking my words to mean what you'd like them to.

I never said aggregate. I'm saying billions of animals. There's always going to be some animal suffering and we can't control every individual animals life, so it's not about any individual animal. It's about mass consumption of inhumane life and death, which no one person can change.

Fair enough, you never said "aggregate". Let me ask you, then, does it make a difference to you whether 5 or 7 billion animals die? Are they both equally bad because "billions" are dying? Or is one worse than another? Please note, I'm making up these numbers to demonstrate my point.

The math in a hypothetical is that granular, but not in reality. The net outcome of what you suggest is absolute perfection of efficiency in the meat industry. Every piece of meat not purchased equates perfectly to one less produced. You're living in a dream if you think they've achieved that at this scale. It's just not reality.

You're right, it's absolutely not that granular. I was being too simplistic.

Suppose that I propose a system where animals are slaughtered in batches of 1,000. In such a system, your choice to buy one less chicken would only have a 1/1,000 chance of having an effect, but if it did, it would save 1,000 chickens, so by basic math, it actually cancels out.

Animals live and die. If they live humanely and die humanely I see that as a better life than most animals have in nature. So no, it's only natural, not horrific. What's horrific is suffering throughout life and prolonged painful deaths.

That doesn't make any sense, because these are animals that are bred in captivity, without influence from outside animals. Now, if each cow bred on a free-range farm meant that one less wild animal suffered a horrifying death, sure, you could make the argument that factory farming reduces suffering. But it doesn't.

That could be nice. But then again I wonder what the health benefits would be if I started drinking less coffee, spend less time on computer, stretch every single day etc.

Lots of benefits, but I'm not doing that either.

Very poor example. A better thing to wonder would be what health benefits there would be if you stopped drinking 12 cups of coffee a day, didn't spend 14 hours on your computer daily, and got a minimal amount of daily exercise every day. Don't misrepresent what I said.

 

[Shredderbeam]

Them dying isn't my concern. It's living and dying inhumanely. And 5 or 7 billion living and dying inhumanely doesn't make a difference to me no. Whether I steal 1 or 100 candy bars, it isn't more or less wrong.

To clarify, then - you're equally as outraged by one animal dying by billions?

Again you keep repeating that like it magically works. Once again, the net outcome of that proposition is that every piece of meat I don't buy results in exactly 1 less produced. Which no system that large is ever that efficient. In a hypothetical purely mathematical scenario it works, but we live in reality.

Okay. Let's reduce the efficiency to where animals are purchased in lots of 10,000. I'm sure that you can imagine a scenario where one less animal is purchased, and the order drops accordingly? If not, can you please explain how else the order would drop, if not by less people ordering animals?

TThat wasn't the argument I'm making. I'm saying it's natural for animals to live and die. And if we breed them to live and die humanely then I don't see any problem with that. Animals in the wild live and die inhumanely with a lot of suffering and no one has a problem with that. Not proposing they are related, just making that observation.

It kind of sounds like you're trying to suggest that animals bred to live and die "humanely" somehow take away from animals that live and die in the wilderness. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

 

Very poor example. A better thing to wonder would be what health benefits there would be if you stopped drinking 12 cups of coffee a day, didn't spend 14 hours on your computer daily, and got a minimal amount of daily exercise every day. Don't misrepresent what I said.

Only thing is no one's gonna stop eating meat for minimal health benefits, which is why I specifically mentioned autoimmune diseases in the first place.

 

[Shredderbeam]

Nope, just not more outraged by 5 or 7 billion living and dying inhumanely.

Why not? If 1 billion deaths outrage you, why wouldn't 2 billion deaths outrage you more?

It does drop by people ordering less, I've already said that. The argument is that it's not 1:1. There's no system that large that efficient. And that math applied to reality proposes that one less purchased is one less created, which would be an absolute miracle of efficiency. Just isn't true.

No, as I explained, in my scenario where chickens are sold in batches of 10,000, one person's choice would have a 1/10,000 chance of affecting the total number of chickens produced. Unless you're suggesting that the number of chickens produced isn't based upon consumer demand?

I specifically said I'm not relating the two. Not sure why you're trying to.

My mistake. I'm not sure why you made that point, then.

Only thing is no one's gonna stop eating meat for minimal health benefits, which is why I specifically mentioned autoimmune diseases in the first place.

I never said it would be good for autoimmune diseases, and I'm curious as to why you think that a plant-based diat would have "minimal" health benefits.

 

I never said it would be good for autoimmune diseases, and I'm curious as to why you think that a plant-based diat would have "minimal" health benefits.

I said they could be good for autoimmune diseases, which again would the only reason I'd consider changing diet. It'd have minimal health benefits in my current condition. The reason for this is I've already cut back on several stuff such as sugar, butter/high-fat foods, and any hot drinks to a certain degree.

 

[Shredderbeam]

I said they could be good for autoimmune diseases, which again would the only reason I'd consider changing diet. It'd have minimal health benefits in my current condition.

Well, I don't know your current condition, so I guess I can't speak to that

The reason for this is I've already cut back on several stuff such as sugar, butter/high-fat foods, and any hot drinks to a certain degree.

Which of the three (sugar, high-fat foods, and hot drinks) do you think are responsible? Whichever way you respond, can you talk to us a little bit more about how hot drinks are bad?