Neutrinos
Registered User
- Sep 23, 2016
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It's moral because humans need to eat and that's where eating meat stems from. It is a primal thing, like a lion devouring a zebra, we're just intelligent enough as a species to move forward with technology so alternatives are available now, but that doesn't mean that those alternatives will always exist. Claiming that meat eaters will be looked down upon like we do on slavery is absurd, eating is a necessity for humans to survive, having slaves is not.
When looking at the mass agriculture needed to supply the planet with enough plants and nutrients to survive without eating meat, I just don't see how it's possible. The amount of fertile land required, the amount of chemicals used, the amount of farm equipment, variation in animal populations, etc. makes me think it can't really be done without harming certain animals and potentially the planet. Getting rid of factory farming and unfair treatment of animals is not the same thing as getting rid of meat in our diets.
During times of necessity, our ancestors would've done whatever they needed to in order to survive, but as the world is today, we're no longer faced with those challenges
A lion has no moral compass. No concept of right and wrong. I don't think we should be looking to them as examples of how we should conduct ourselves
It's also a "primal thing" to rape and kill, but the majority of people in today's society live their lives without indulging in such behaviors
Perhaps I should've been more clear, but my suggestion was that factory farming will be viewed by future generations the way the Atlantic slave trade is viewed today
Because they believed they were superior, and because they had the means and the might to do it, white people benefited from enslaving, abusing, torturing, and killing millions of people
That same mindset is being used to justify factory farming, only instead race being used as justification, these living beings are being subjugated because they're a different species
It's estimated that approx. 70 billion animals are raised each year to feed humans
Instead of using fertile land to grow crops to feed to those animals, we could be using that land to grow crops for humans
From a 1997 article in the Cornell Chronicle:
"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population.
Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption. About 26 million tons of the livestock feed comes from grains and 15 million tons from forage crops. For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein.
More than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for the U.S. livestock population -- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares for cultivated feed grains.
U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists | Cornell Chronicle
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