Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[bennyboy]

I find it very frustrating that all you do to justify cruelty to animals is appeal to nature

And you appeal to pity (Argumentum ad misericordiam). Oh the poor little animals. They are all crying on death row.

Finding Latin for something doesn't make it a fallacy, especially when you are using the term wrongly.

If a man has locked up a little girl in his basement, and the parents say, "Please give us our baby back, because losing her is breaking our hearts!" he doesn't get to claim argumentum ad misericordiam, as the suffering of the child and its parents is excplicitly linked to his behavior, and he has no moral grounds for inflicting captivity (or any other type of harm) on them. On the other hand, if I try to get out of my speeding tickets, arguing that I've had a bad week and having to pay them is going to hurt my feelings too much-- that's a fallacy, as my feelings are irrelevant to the ticket-paying process.

In the case of the animals, they haven't irrationally said something like, "You have to put purple flowers in our fields, or we will be heartbroken." Their suffering is explicitly linked to our dietary tendencies, and the way we breed and treat them. But there is no moral ground for inflicting suffering on them, as they are not in any way complicit, and have not done anything to earn mistreatment.