Dr. Doug Graham (80-10-10 raw vegan)

[The Grand Nudger]

You can be pretty damn certain that the money you give to your local butcher is causing animals to suffer. Therefore, pursuing the best possible outcome, as in causing the least suffering, necessarily includes not buying meat.

I grow alot of my own, but more often the not I buy the majority from someone else (up to and including the grocery store)...no matter who the supplier is, animals suffer.

-and I can be pretty damned certain that the money I pay in taxes is causing animals to suffer. I'm pretty sure the money I don't spend on this or that is causing animals to suffer. My very existence....causes animals to suffer. Obligate parasite, in context. Neither you nor I actually have control over this, and our relative dietary choices are not sufficient grounds to elicit a change in this situation.

But we've already been here, this ground has been covered. All of the above applies to my money hurting people as well, and yours too, ofc.

(I want to mention here that something ought to pop out at you. You can, without having seen what I buy reasonably assume that something on that list causes harm/suffering/death to animals....have you ever thought to go down that same rabbit hole with regards to AG -et al.....how many critters die to get us a head of lettuce or to keep the lights on at our houses?)

The suffering of the animals, how does it reduce the suffering of the animals?

You're asking how a reduction in fossil fuel use and dependence would reduce animal suffering? Just sum up for me the state you feel the fossil fuel industry is in regarding the suffering of animals (including ourselves..of course)?

Since you're having this discussion with me I assumed you are not vegan. Am I not correct? And yes, you have a choice, it is not buying the damn meat.

Nope, not a vegan. I am a picky eater though with much wider leeway than yourself for reliably sourcing my own food in a manner that I can be certain is consistent with my principles. Even so, I can't honestly claim that my freedom of dietary choice relative to yourself actually reduces the suffering of animals - or gives me any moral or ethical purchase.

There's a fundamental difference between bacteria and most animals; the animals are sentient, bacteria are not.

Speciesist. How convenient for your pleasure.

Animals have an interest to live, bacteria do not.

LOL, of all the things about sentience and how it seems to lead to differences in life that -are- easy to quantify, that's not one of them. All life, by any consistent metric, has "interest to live". Not immediately relevant but it's just something I had to opine upon when I saw it.

If something cannot suffer, if something cannot even want anything, then I have no problem with eating it. However, if it can suffer, and it does have a will to live, then it is in our circumstances not justifiable.

Because.......? Also, so long as we're not eating it but are hurting or impeding it in some other way...are we then in a similar position - or will we only extend this criticism to omnivory?

(the short version of that long disappointing convo is that were are simply not at a point in ag where it's even possible to feed people without suffering and harm being done to animals..and that's best or worst case scenarios. We're might not even be in a position where reduction is feasible if possible...as any suffering alleviated on one side will simply be absorbed by the other)