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The Ethics of Eating Non-Human Animals


Angry Goose

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I love meat. Especially beef. I easily suffer from anemia, so there are times that I can eat a huge big ol' steak.

But, I see the point about the ethics of eating animals. They are defenseless (mostly) and even the way we waste our food seems awfully calloused. I knew someone who worked in a slaughter house and he had a lot of horror stories.

But, I still love meat and there is nothing better than sucking that warm blood from a rare steak, IMO.

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My girlfriend of 3 years started eating meat after 12 years of being a "healthy vegetarian".

Doctor and her swore up and down she had the best vegetarian diet and she feels better than she ever has now that she has a normal balanced diet.

Her skin is better, she has more energy, she enjoys food more, and it's more fun for us to cook together.

In our case we live on the island and eat locally raised delicious meat.

I don't see the problem.

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Haha I never thought I'd find myself on this side of the argument but this guys seems like he needs some support and there's been some pretty sloppy reasoning going on here. I won't get into the animal rights bit as that's quite contentious depending on your point of view. However from an economic and social perspective, it makes a lot of sense to limit your animal protein intake or even go cold turkey. I'm not going to get into a huge debate as I try to avoid such things over the internet but I think it can't hurt for people to have a look at some facts about their diets.

Since people like to quote the biology angle, as you go up trophic levels (food chain) only 10% of the energy is transfered between levels, the rest is lost as inefficiencies. For example, if you have 100 units of energy in grains, and you feed those 100 units to a chicken, you are only able to consume 10 units of energy from that chicken. As we try to feed 7 billion and growing people this poses a slight problem.

Keeping things short I'll throw out some numbers that cause me quite a bit of discomfort as an avid meat eater.

-If everyone were to have a heavy meat diet, the world could sustain only 2.5 billion people, if everyone were vegetarian that number grows to 9-10 billion people.

- Half of the worlds agricultural area is dedicated to growing food for our food, as mentioned quite inefficient.

- The amount of land used to produce 1 unit of a meat eaters diet could sustain 20 units of a vegetarians.

- In the US, 70% of grain grown is for the purposes of animal fodder and livestock requires half the water withdrawn in the country.

- You need 1000 liters of water for 10 grams of beef protein and only 67 liters for 10 grams of protein from potatoes, (476L for pork and 135L for wheat)

- Along the same lines you need 4900 liters of water for 500 calories of beef and a measly 89 liters for 500 calories of potatoes, a magnitude shift of 55x.

It maybe delicious but going forward it certainly is not a smart means of consumption.

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Pigs roam around eating garbage and live quite a filthy life, and yet killing and roasting them converts all of that terrible stuff into delicious food? I think most meat eaters couldn't stomach killing their own animals for food. All they really see is a neatly packaged box in the grocery store without thinking about what it is that they're consuming. You guys are like vultures.

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Pigs roam around eating garbage and live quite a filthy life, and yet killing and roasting them converts all of that terrible stuff into delicious food? I think most meat eaters couldn't stomach killing their own animals for food. All they really see is a neatly packaged box in the grocery store without thinking about what it is that they're consuming. You guys are like vultures.

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Pigs roam around eating garbage and live quite a filthy life, and yet killing and roasting them converts all of that terrible stuff into delicious food? I think most meat eaters couldn't stomach killing their own animals for food. All they really see is a neatly packaged box in the grocery store without thinking about what it is that they're consuming. You guys are like vultures.

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