RE: are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?
May 16, 2013 at 10:46 am
(This post was last modified: May 16, 2013 at 10:52 am by The Grand Nudger.)
No, no, no, no...we absolutely may (find better use). Plenty of people are working on that right now. The thing is, what constitutes as -better use- may be production of even more crops that are unsuitable for human consumption but can be processed -by livestock or other means- to increase the overall pool of nutrition available to human beings. This process is currently being hobbled, in some ways, by ill informed activists - but ultimately the core of what we might hope to address is an entirely seperate issue (that also has people working on it). Any increase in one area likely comes at a cost in another. If we produce more food here - we're mining more fertility there, essentially. Often one imagines that any given current or developing food production tech or method or dietary choice is the more ethical one by focusing on what we see "here" and ignoring what happens "there".
While I would agree that for you, given your opinions of livestock production - vegetarianism is the more ethical decision - so long as you can maintain it (you're fortunate here) - sadly, a great deal of the suffering or damage you hope to avoid or curtail by making this decision continues unimpeded "there" to produce the very products you are choosing in favor of. Not that I think this devalues your choice personally - as there's very little that you can do about it...it does make it difficult to throw the blanket over everyone.
While I would agree that for you, given your opinions of livestock production - vegetarianism is the more ethical decision - so long as you can maintain it (you're fortunate here) - sadly, a great deal of the suffering or damage you hope to avoid or curtail by making this decision continues unimpeded "there" to produce the very products you are choosing in favor of. Not that I think this devalues your choice personally - as there's very little that you can do about it...it does make it difficult to throw the blanket over everyone.
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