Any fish that dies from plastic is dying from a method that isn’t me eating it. Also, there’s lots of fish I don’t eat that I’m not cool with dying to plastic. I really like the ocean plants that make all the oxygen I breath too.
People here are talking about fishes as our food source but what about fishes as a food source for other aquatic life? Or other animals that feed on those marine life? The effects can be far reaching. So the implication of a fish dying from plastic is a bit more complicated than what OP’s making it out to be
It’s weird. I don’t like most fish, but I really don’t have an ethical problem in general with eating fish as long as they were harvested sustainably. Unfortunately, most of the saltwater fish I have enjoyed over the years- shark and swordfish steak, cod, tuna- are not harvested sustainably, so I don’t eat them. That pretty much leaves me with farmed trout and catfish, the only two other fish I like. And I just don’t feel like it’s the same as eating a cow or a chicken. Maybe I don’t have any actual scientific basis to go on, but fish are just so different from us and so much more primitive that it just doesn’t bother me.
Now I know what you do: you are shitposting inside a shitposting community! If that’s what lemmy has become, I don’t want to be part of it anymore. Sad.
For example that producing and shipping the pure amount of mass corresponding to the same amount of nutrition in vegan foods vs dairy/meat products is not sustainable, because plant based foods contain so much less nutrition than animal products. You have to level and destroy forest habitats to grow all these things for 10,000,000,000 people… That’s an infant amount of plants.
And a lot of foods that claim to be “good sources of protein” don’t really… contain much else, like meat does. Some are even harmful in large quantities like too much soy in your diet, especially to children.
I dunno, these are things I’ve been told. Just the messenger so take with a grain of salt. But I thought they were interesting points that shouldn’t be ignored and should be disproven before dismissed. I just have too much going on in my life to worry about researching it right now. 😓 But one day maybe!
What do you think? I think this topic is definitely more complicated than “let’s fix/save the world by going vegan”.
I know it’s a meme, but is anyone actually sad for the fish? I thought we were terrified about what was happening to our food. If someone autopsied a downed cow and a bunch of toxic plastic shit spilled from their stomachs, we aren’t thinking “poor cow ate all that plastic and died.” We’re worried about our food supply.
I’m sad for the fish because if they’re gone I can’t eat them, and they can’t eat the tasty little fish, and they miss out on all that lovely tasty phytoplankton…
I’m sad for the fish. Imaging being forced into a massive pile of others just like you while being crushed by the weight of them and suffocating to death. It’s fucked up
They didn’t say anything unusual. Smoked kippers are delicious. We have some of the most amazing meat and fish on this planet and that’s something to protect. Our food matters.
The fishing is sadder to me because it’s intentionally causing unnecessary harm. I can see why accidental harm might be sadder though, and it is very sad either way. Systemic injustice and global catastrophe both need to be addressed though obviously
The vast majority of humans can thrive/be healthy on a vegan diet, therefore it’s not consuming for survival. That’s an excuse or ignorance (again, for the vast majority of humans, especially those who are reading this. There are always exceptions tho)
the scientific consensus is that a well planned vegan diet can be healthy for all stages of human life. Plant staple foods are some of the cheapest foods around (rice, beans, grains)
none of those mean that the vast majority of humans can thrive or even be healthy on a vegan diet. and while the food itself may be cheap, it may lack convenience or cultural appropriateness, and therefore come with costs that are hidden at the checkout counter.
sure, there are a lot of factors that would make it difficult. If most people can’t afford to be vegan (for monetary or other cost reasons especially) that reflects a failure of our food system. Our food system hasn’t even gotten to the point of ensuring nobody goes hungry, we should be using our cropland to feed humans not other animals (look up how much of our crops go to livestock)
we should end the biggest problems first, and start with ending factory farms, but we should also remember that culture is not a good reason to hurt others
Almost certainly we do. But, do you think if there was a culture that ran dog fights, that would be ok just because it’s part of their culture?
I would not find that ok, because all sentient beings are worth moral consideration, and culture is not a good reason to hurt sentient beings. I might not focus on it especially if that culture was already marginalized and discriminated against and there were bigger problems to solve, but I’d still have the understanding that it’s bad
Our food system hasn’t even gotten to the point of ensuring nobody goes hungry, we should be using our cropland to feed humans not other animals
do you have a plan to accomplish that? until such a plan is implemented, there is not even a question whether it’s moral to eat meat, seafood, dairy, or eggs: most people have no volition in the matter and no one can actually change that.
I don’t. I try to get people’s goals to align and recognize that these are important issues, and I’m working to grow more of my own food and get in a position where I’m able to have more of an impact, but no I don’t have an answer for everything and I don’t need one to be able call out injustice when I see it. And like most people I’m a hypocrite in some ways, I see these massive injustices and I still buy avocados and contribute to capitalism and waste time watching tv and arguing with people online instead of using that mental energy to actually do something in the world. I’m working on being better tho
All of Lemmy be up in arms here. Just vote with your wallet when you can. Buy the eggs at the farmers market, or the veggies if you won’t eat eggs. If you don’t have the funds, buy what you need to survive. I want my animals treated well before butchering, and I’ll mix the vegetarian meal into my diet regularly because it’s health for me to not eat meat every meal. I’m still going to eat animals, and most people have already decided what they are ethically ok with. Vegetarianism isn’t the biggest ethical concern for me at this time.
Conveniently forgetting that the only reason a healthy nutritionally balanced vegan or vegetarian diet is even remotely possible is due to globalised trade and access to internationally produced and shipped vegetables.
To maintain a nutritionally complete vegan diet for an individual year round actually requires far more use of fossil fuels and directly released carbon emissions due to limited seasonality and local accessibility than a cow produces for the same nutrient density and complexity locally.
Here’s a “fun” fact, first world demand for fruit and grain variety has out priced primary sources of food for local populations in third world countries including things like lentils, quinoa, and avocados.
Or that nutritional deficiencies caused by incorrectly managed vegan diets are why doctors in Italy and Belgium are pushing for it to become illegal to feed children vegan diets, because the number of malnourished and dead children of vegan parents are rising in those nations.
independent.co.uk/…/veganism-environment-veganuar… the main thrust of the article is buy more locally grown food, grow your own food? I agree with that lol. To go a step further, community gardens are good!
Those things are failures of our food system, and problems we could and should solve. The cool thing about eating plants is it doesn’t inherently require exploiting other sentient beings, but it does still happen unfortunately. That goes for animal ag too tho, and animal agriculture inherently depends on the exploitation
To maintain a nutritionally complete vegan diet for an individual year round actually requires far more use of fossil fuels and directly released carbon emissions due to limited seasonality and local accessibility than a cow produces for the same nutrient density and complexity locally
while this doesn’t go super in depth, it’s a counterpoint to the idea that veganism (And definitely vegetarianism) is only possible with global trade. www.iamgoingvegan.com/vegan-cultures/
but, one thing we could do is divert the massive subsidies and bailouts the US gives to animal agriculture (and a lot of the subsidies to plant ag too! It leads to a tremendous waste, iirc the reason corn syrup is so common is we grow too much corn cause it’s overly subsidized. People need good food, not corn syrup) and spend that on actually feeding those people
While we’re redirecting funds, the military budget could use some massive cuts that could also be used to provide food, shelter, and healthcare to people
Vegans just casually creating a class system to value one life above others.
We have a name for the class of animals that eat grass, stay in packs for safety, and lack the individual skills necessary for individal survival. And even they are smart enough to be opportunistic omnivores.
The only species of animal stupid enough to consume against their needs and instincts are humans.
What? That’s what you took from vegans saying “stop killing others unnecessarily”?
Carnists are literally putting out an idea that values someones sensory pleasure over the lives of others and then acting accordingly and killing by the billions each year.
To the best of my knowledge plants are not sentient. If they were I would take much better care of houseplants and still be vegan because eating other animals still kills way more plants (google trophic levels)
Sentience is what I base my ethics on (i’m a sentientist or sentiocentrist), which has implications on diet when considering whether to exploit and/or kill sentient beings for food. I don’t think it’s arbitrary, if someone is sentient, they are morally relevant because they can experience positive and negative valence (pleasure/pain, to put it more plainly but lose some nuance). If something is not sentient, I don’t see how it can be ethically relevant except in cases where the nonsentient thing matters to a sentient being
if you’re looking for arbitrary, the anthropocentrists are that way
Also I agree we can’t prove that plants aren’t sentient, that’s why I said “to the best of my knowledge”
I explained why it’s not arbitrary, then pointed to a group that does draw arbitrary distinctions. That’s not tu quoque because I’m not saying “you also”
you’re saying it’s not arbitrary. “no, you” is still a form of tu quoque. you haven’t actually made a case that sentience isnt an arbitrary standard, and there isn’t a case to be made: sentience isn’t a natural phenomenon outside of human subjective classification. without people, there would be no concept of green or warm or sentient, and any of those attributes is an arbitrary standard to use to judge the ethics of a diet.
Are you saying everything we can talk about is arbitrary because everything we can talk about is with words and concepts?
Are you talking about meriological nihilism? (thanks alex oconnor for teaching me that term lol)
I know sentience is real based on the fact that I’m experiencing things right this moment. Based on my understanding of the brain and nervous system, and the strong evidence that those things give rise to my sentience, I think that it’s reasonable to extrapolate that other, similar nervous systems/brains are also sentient and their experience is worth consideration in a similar way to how I consider my own experience (among the many other reasons to have a basic level of empathy)
Based on my understanding of the brain and nervous system, and the strong evidence that those things give rise to my sentience, I think that it’s reasonable to extrapolate that other, similar nervous systems/brains are also sentient and their experience is worth consideration in a similar way to how I consider my own experience (among the many other reasons to have a basic level of empathy)
the same can be said of DNA. this is a completely arbitrary standard, and you would be better served to embrace that than pretending it’s somehow objective.
I’m not saying it is objective, I’m saying it’s not arbitrary.
If my dna was isolated in a test tube and it could experience things then I would also care about what it experiences. There isn’t any evidence I’m aware of that that’s the case. Dna is the instructions and tool to build the sentient being, not the sentient being itself. So no, the same couldn’t be said of dna. Extrapolating from how much I care about what I experience, I think it’s reasonable to care about what things that experience things experience
Once you go to a deep enough layer I think you’re right. But, the one subjective thing my argument rests on is that you care about your own experience. Anyone who flinches away from touching a hot stove because it hurts cares about their experience at least a little. The next step is recognizing that from an objective view, there’s no reason to think your subjective experience is any more important than anyone elses (subjectively there is).
That seems to bother you. Let’s taboo the word. When I say “someone”, “anyone”, “person”, etc, I’m referring to a sentient being, a subject of experience, an experiencer, one who is experiencing. Now you can interpret what I’m saying better, do you disagree with the actual points I’m making?
yes, I do: sentience is too broad a category, and not actually relevant to most people. if we are talking about people, then all of your statements are fine. but I don’t agree that these axioms are or should be applicable to, say, mosquitos . or mice. or dogs or cats. or fish. or livestock.
it’s too broad because it includes mosquitoes and mice and dogs and cats and fish and livestock. most people don’t treat them the same way. most ethical systems don’t treat them the same way. My ethical system doesn’t treat them the same way. so I do not agree that it’s okay to write an axiom about how you’re supposed to treat sentient beings. treating people better than animals is a good thing.
Hell even to get past solipsism you have to subjectively assume to that your mind and senses accurately reflect the world at least a little bit, otherwise gathering any accurate data or reasoning about that data productively would not be possible
there are other approaches to sentientism that aren’t based on valence. I don’t feel like writing a book on the different ones, but to give an example of a rights based one that I think is strong is that every sentient being has, at the very least, a right to their body, since that’s the one thing they’re born with and that is (almost certainly) what gives rise to their sentience in the first place. And to violate another sentient beings bodily autonomy is to forfeit your own (a sort of low level social contract), which allows for self defense and defending others
but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility. I don’t really feel like getting into the weeds of that discussion though, and I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the conversation anyways
but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility.
this is a good reason to doubt the validity of the theory: it is constructed in a way that it is not disprovable.
Sentientism answers the question of “who/what matters?”, not “what ethical framework should be used to care about who/what matters?”. It can underly many ethical frameworks, personally I don’t care that much what ethical framework you use as long as we can agree on who’s included in the moral scope (although there are some utilitarians who I think have bad definitions of utility and/or do a bad job weighing the utility)
I have to admit, I skipped the rest of this sentence on I don’t foresee myself attempting to read it: I don’t believe in rights as an objective phenomenon, either.
Disingenuous, ignorant, mentally deficient from years of choline deficiency. You’re right. If the shoe fits.
Eating keeps things alive, only a vegan would think taking something out of its natural environment and subjecting it to worse living conditions and a shortened lifespan without the purpose of benefitting another lifeforms ability to survive as being less harmful.
We kill for survival, you kill for pleasure and ego.
Classist vegans only care for sentience, not life.
We kill for survival, you kill for pleasure and ego.
Why do non-vegans always have the stupidest takes wrapped up in some pseudo-intellectual bullshit. You obviously don’t believe that someone killing your houseplant or lawn is as bad as someone killing your dog, so why say something so blatantly untruthful and dumb?
And how are vegans killing for pleasure when they have a more restricted diet than you?
Go out and continue the circle of life in your local Publix, you ferocious lion you!
Nice to know that you don’t have any arguments. Vegans are the dumb ones for sure! Continue trolling and pretending to be an idiot, that really shows how you have a point and they don’t lol
Saying killing plants is morally equivalent to killing animals is not only dumb, it’s also an argument for veganism. It takes more plants to sustain an omnivore diet than a vegan one. All the animals you eat had to eat as well, and it’s not an efficient transfer of calories. Look up trophic levels if you’re actually arguing in good faith.
So I agree! Killing plants is murder! So you should go vegan and stop killing excessive plants for your selfish taste buds.
I do have some level of sympathy for the fish but also recognize I’m a little more sympathetic to non-human life than most people. I can’t bring myself to kill insects without a good reason (except ticks and mosquito) not even ants. Whenever my parents would cut down a tree on their property I grieve for the life of the trees lost just because my dad fell off one as a kid and has a subconscious hatred for them now (yes he even admitted to me this was the case) I even feel some guilt about cutting grass and mulching the occasional bee.
I’ve worked a seasonal job giving medical care to dairy cows, once you see just how poorly farmers treat them and how horrific their short lives are its hard not to feel bad for them. Farmers make standard animal cruelty cases look like mild neglect by comparison. The only blessing is that modern cows have been selectively bread to become so docile as to be almost braindead.
I’m cool with eating animals, the cycle of life and all that, but in trade we can at least try to give them decent lives that aren’t so fucking awful from birth to death. Like it or not even fish have some level of intelligence and most likely emotional capacity. same with farm animals, trees, mushrooms, insects, and probably even the microorganisms to some degree. To think we are special and the only feeling lifeforms on the planet out o billions just cause the thinky thinky parts of our brain are a little bit bigger than most is just stupid and a very human-centric idea that strokes our own collective ego in a manifest destiny kind of way.
Yes I know I’m wierd but maybe the world needs a few people like me who care a little too much about non-human suffering.
That might just be the weirdest turnaround. You can’t hurt a fly, but you’re okay with a cow being bolted through the brain because they’re a bit tastier than mock meets?
Like, you can’t be “sympathetic to animals” if you’re paying an industry that mass slaughters them. Especially when you’re only paying that out of simple preference. I sure hope you don’t find humans tasty, because it sounds like you’ll set aside all of your morals for a yummy lunch?
You don’t have to feel bad for cutting grass. That’s grass its entire evolutionary skitch, albeit naturally with being grazed instead of mechanically cut.
Grass survives cuts extremely well. Most of its mass is below ground. By thriving in areas that are frequently grazed / cut, it outcompetes other plants. Natural meadows without grazers quickly turn into forests. But tree saplings don’t survive being eaten, so whenever there are grazers (or human cuts), grass outcompetes trees.
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