are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[LastPoet]

Anytime there is a thread on vegetarianism/veganism we have one fundie joining, tellin us how immoral we meat eaters are. It seems they can't live without pushing their dogma unto others.

[CleanShavenJesus]

I used to hunt very frequently (deer, particularly), and I would always prepare and eat what I could kill. Vegans are not any more moral than anybody else. Simply not eating meat doesn't do shit. It doesn't make them better than anyone else. You want to be better than the average meateater? Go protest inhumane slaughterhouses. Go get a thousand signatures on an animal rights petition. Go lobby to save the puppies. Whatever. Do something that makes a difference.

I absolutely despise vegetarians who just don't eat meat and think they're saving the goddamn animal kingdom.

[Praetorian]

On the issue if cannibalism, there's a very specific reason why it's bad: Mad cow disease. It will kill you. Apart from the moral implications, that's a very good reason not to eat your own.

If you define morality as the well being of conscious creatures, then eating the meat of anything that is self-aware is pretty egrigiously wrong. This is likely why western cultures don't eat dolphin. It feels wrong to eat something that you can interact with socially.

Rabbits are an interesting case of animals that are raised for both social interaction AND food. I wouldn't feel bad eating fluffy, but I would never eat a dog.

Interesting conversation.

[Ryantology]

Don't compare "killing" an apple to killing a pig, the former we can do in the comfort of our living room, the other is something so repulsive and contrary to what we feel is right, our innate ethics, that we hide the act away behind fences and walls and pay other people to do it for us and to print pretty pictures on the packaging to never remind us of what was necessary for our pitiful few minutes of taste.

Do you think that our shift from small farm life and slaughtering our own bacon was the result of growing repulsion to the act of slaughtering animals, or would you say that the growing repulsion to the act of slaughtering animals is an effect, rather than the cause, of our desire for convenience?

We don't slaughter our own pigs because we don't have to, not because of some moral development which made us seek alternatives to drawing our own blood for meat.

[fr0d0]

We slaughtered our own pigs because it tastes good. I tried unprepared Sea food with my daughter a few years ago. The whole spread. I think I'm nearly over it.

I'd eat human road kill. I'd need it prepared with the cute pic tho.

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but I don't try to control others' behavior. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I live it, I don't preach it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you think that our shift from small farm life and slaughtering our own bacon was the result of growing repulsion to the act of slaughtering animals, or would you say that the growing repulsion to the act of slaughtering animals is an effect, rather than the cause, of our desire for convenience?

We don't slaughter our own pigs because we don't have to, not because of some moral development which made us seek alternatives to drawing our own blood for meat.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but to reply, even the convenience is an effect, a result. We didn't engage in any of our current agricultural practices with convenience as the impetus. We were starving and/or malnourished - in the US-...not so long ago..and the success of our agricultural practices in alleviating that became a model for the rest of the globe.

It isn't that we don't slaughter our own pigs because we don't have to, but that we don't slaughter our own pigs because it is inferior - in every conceivable way and metric, to our current method-without convenience even remotely entering into the equation- and it just so happens, that due to this, we don't have to. How many of us here have confidence that we would be able to raise and then slaughter a pig in a way that is safe, reliable, and quantifiable - even if we understood the process- on a scale grand enough to feed even our own households or city blocks? I know I ate some dirty meat coming up.

[ideologue08]

I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but I don't try to control others' behavior. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I live it, I don't preach it.

If you really cared about it, then you'd preach it as well, just living it simply is not good enough.

[NoraBrimstone]

I don't even feel that great about other people "turning" veggie. Outwardly I'll be all like "Well done!" But inwardly I'm like "I give it a week before you go on a major pork binge."

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I don't even feel that great about other people "turning" veggie. Outwardly I'll be all like "Well done!" But inwardly I'm like "I give it a week before you go on a major pork binge."

[CleanShavenJesus]

I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but I don't try to control others' behavior. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I live it, I don't preach it.

Like I said in my post further up on this page, you're not being the change. You're just not eating meat. That's not changing anything for anybody besides yourself.