are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[littleendian]

You'll be taking lives with your bean salad as well. Alot of them.

No, those plants are seeds, the plant doesn't have to die to harvest them. If we really need a discussion about the entire plants-feel-pain debate, which I would find fascinating, then I propose we do that in a different thread.

I wouldn't personally argue that - but less suffering as opposed to what, and again, removing suffering from the equation leaves us where? Picture this, livestock chillin in a field (or swimming in a tank) eating an appropriate diet. Safe from predators, protected from disease...and then, one day - nothing. Captive bolt. What then?

I don't think you would defend the holocaust because they chose to use relatively painless means of mass-execution. If you're not free and you can't speak, you're the perfect victim. Do you think it is likely that any profit-oriented industry with a competition will ever have great concern for the pain and suffering of the "product" that goes through it?

But lets pretend it was so, even if those animals had great lifes, then death is usually a messy thing, there is no way to guarantee that there won't be incredible suffering in that slaughtering process. But lets even imagine that it will be completely pain free:

How on earth can we deal out death, the greatest punishment our legal system allows for terrible crimes, how can we deal out death in such a massive scale if it is the one thing we ourselfs are most afraid of?

Call me a new-age, tree-hugging, fairy-kissing son of a stupid person, but I believe, yes, believe, without being able to back that one up with conscious reason or much evidence, that that will creep back into our psyche and it will come back to haunt us. Of course that won't convince you, and thats very good for you, you don't buy something just because someone tells you, kudos! I'm just saying.

The only thing that exists in my mental landscape that I love more than reason is compassion. But, you're right, that's just not an argument, so I'm now officially out of arguments