[sweetheart]

> Sometimes good food involves suffering

It never needs to. You're performing mental gymnastics, I'm sorry. It's never true that this sort of immense suffering just needs to magical occur for the world to operate normally. There are limitless delicious recipes that require 0 suffering, 0 pain, 0 murder.

> I don't think we should go out of our way to hurt animals

That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.

[realisticeater]

Who's talking about murder? I'm not for eating humans lol. This sort of phrasing is intellectually dishonest.

> That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.

So are you against eating all meat or in favor of reforming industrial meat farming? These are two very different positions.

> It never needs to.

Yes I didn't say it needs to. I said sometimes it does. Foie gras involves sticking a pipe down a duck's throat and force feeding it until it has liver desease which makes its liver extra large and tasty. It is what it is. I support it because it's delicious. My taste buds are more important than a given animal's suffering, plain and simple.

I know I'm being blunt but I feel this holier-than-thou attitude on the vegan's side needs to be confronted with a little bit of "silent majority"-type viewpoints.

I'm not making controversial points, I'm spelling out widespread ideas to you.

[sweetheart]

> My taste buds are more important than a given animal's suffering, plain and simple.

lol holy shit. When your reasoning gets to this point, I think we need to back up and appreciate the insanity of what you're saying. Would you be fine with some alien species arriving to Earth and doing all this to you? Would you accept it and think "Ah yes well it is what it is!"

[cercatrova]

Like it or not, that's what the argument is of most people who eat meat. I also think my tastebuds are more important than an animal. This is why things like impossible foods sidestep this issue, because they know people don't switch en masse on ethical grounds, but they do it you make a better product, in terms of price and more importantly, taste.

If an alien comes to us to eat us, I mean yes, that's just how it is. We can try fighting back of course (which species wants to be killed?) but if they win then, what can you do? Appeal emotionally with them? They could say the same thing, that it's just how it is. Might really does make right. If they have superiority in fighting power, I mean, there's nothing we can do other than accept it. And that's the same thing that's happening with us and the animals we eat.

[sweetheart]

So if I can physically overpower someone is it okay for me to keep them as a slave? Is it moral to kill someone if I gain pleasure from the act, as long as I’m physically capable of it?

The alien hypothetical isn’t about what is possible, it’s about what is right. Would you feel that the aliens should be allowed to enslave and eat you? Or would you feel like you’re being wronged, and that you don’t deserve it?

[cercatrova]

Might makes right, so sure, if you were able to enslave someone, why wouldn't you be able to keep them? You just have to fend off from people who'd want to take them away from you, right? After all, we do that with pets, they're our slaves basically.

It's clear that you're trying to say that animals and people are equivalent, that animals are slaves. If I don't believe in that world view, you can't make me care. You could show rational reasons like, eating a vegetarian diet is better to combat climate change, which I accept, but having a moral appeal doesn't move me to change my meat-eating ways.

If an alien can overpower us, sure I'd try to escape because I obviously want to live, but I'd be under no delusion that I deserve to not die. The alien captured and wants to eat me, so that's going to be what will happen. There is a difference between how I feel, what would happen, and what is morally right. I posit that morals don't matter in this case, only power over other beings, which the aliens have over us in this scenario.

Said another way, why should morals matter in this case? I'm genuinely asking, because whenever I ask this, people don't give an actual answer and instead say something like, it's the right thing to do or it reduces suffering, but this uses morality to explain why morality matters, sort of like using the Bible to ask why things that are said in the Bible are true.

[sc4les]

"I don't care but looking at pictures it doesn't feel right" yeah the classical it's-ok-as-long-as-I-don't-think-about-it attitude

[realisticeater]

Oh I've seen plenty of pictures and videos and whatnot. I've slaughtered plenty of animals myself (though never a cow, to be honest).

I'm not looking away and pretending it doesn't exist. I'm staring at it and saying "yes I approve of that because I like to eat animals".

If your argument is that intensive farming is less than ideal, sure, I agree. If your argument is that the solution to that is to stop eating meat, that's where you lose me.

[sc4les]

That’s saying “I want change but I don’t want to change”

[thefounder]

Not really. Just because you enjoy a good steak doesn't mean you agree to torture the animal. Also "happy" animals seem to have better taste so it's a win win.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q8984/why-animals-that-died...

[sweetheart]

How on Earth is it a win for the animal you are raising to then kill? If the cow could talk, do you think it'd describe the situation as a win win? If I keep a slave, and raise them to harvest their organs, and keep them content until their teenage years only to kill them, is that a win win?

[cercatrova]

What kind of slave? A human slave? They're more valuable in other forms of labor than harvesting their organs (usually; sometimes organ prices can exceed labor value). That's why slavery and organ harvesting still exist after all, if no one thought it was valuable, then it wouldn't exist. We don't have slaves in developed countries because we figured out that former slaves being able to use their brains for labor rather than their physical prowess was more valuable for society as a whole.

[cercatrova]

Why would it never need to? I can say that a steak is a good food, and by vegans' definition it involves the suffering of a cow, and therefore, sometimes good food involves suffering.

[sweetheart]

I'm not saying all good food is cruelty free. I'm saying one can eat exclusively delicious food without involving cruelty.

[cercatrova]

Yes, but that's not the argument that the poster above was making. Good food can be cruelty free, but not all good food can be. Therefore, if you want a specific food that requires cruelty, you're just gonna have to accept that fact. Somewhat related, but why would I restrict my choice of food if I want to eat what I want to eat?

[sweetheart]

Because it involves horrific agony to be experienced by a living thing.

[cercatrova]

So what? Again, moral appeals don't move people who do not subscribe to the same world view as you do. If I'm pro choice, I could yell all day that a woman's right to life matters more than a fetus', and if I'm pro life, I could say the opposite. It won't change the minds of people who don't hold those same moral positions.