"Plants have feelings too": Experiments have shown that plants are able to react to stimuli. Plants
are separated into a different 'kingdom' by human beings with good reason.
They don't think or plan,neither are they self aware. It is odd that many
of the arguments employed by meat eaters to try to highlight hypocrisy in
vegetarians are the same ones that vegetarians use to show how meat eaters
are speciesist with respect to animals. It is as though meat eaters are
suggesting 'you are doing the same to a plant as I do to animals,so where
do you get off judging me?"
But a plant is not like an animal,it cannot know of its own existence by
looking in a mirror and realising it exists and is a thing unto itself. Indeed,it
might be problematical for even some animals to do so,but we know that some
can.
This argument fails to understand why plants and animals are even categories.
Sure we are all made of cells,but brains are wholly a thing which belong
to animals,and pain is notion of a brain. Does a plant react when attacked?
Yes it does,but it re-grows cut limbs and can suffer damage without dying,which
makes it very different from an animal. Indeed,vegetarians and vegans often
consume fruiting bodies without killing the plant,so this line of attack
is absurd and faulty.
No plant dies when eating its fruit - it is also part of the lifecycle of
the plant to die once it has fruited ,as long as some of the seeds are planted
to grow a new plant,in this way the plant is farmed for a crop.
Animals are not cropped in this way. The organism itself is killed,and it
knows it is going to be killed,and suffers in the same way a human being
would. A plant does not.
Note that there is no mention of plants in this declaration. This
decalaration was taken from the WIKI article
on DENIALISM which has had the animal pain and suffering
article excised....why?
Dairy products and use of leather: Another line of attack is to ask whether a vegetarian eats eggs or uses
leather.
Unfertlised eggs are protein which was never self aware,and is not alive,and
is quite capable of being consumed without harm to a chicken. Possibly the
chicken might suffer stress at eggs being removed to be eaten,but if chickens
are farmed with consideration of their needs and not in cages and without
light and grass,and some eggs are allowed to become chickens then eggs are
not a problem.
As a by-product of farming,male chicks are destroyed in barbaric ways.This
in itself is not reason not to consume eggs. It might be reason to boycott
farms which do so,and opt for farms which farm eggs ethically and with respect
for the animals,and labelling helps make this happen.
Leather is a problem as it is a by-product of the meat industry and can only
exist because of the death of an animal. However,if one is not buying the
thing at source,then this has not contributed to the death in the first instance.
It is perhaps a lame excuse to use second hand leather,but at least it was
not paid for in exchange for the death of an animal,it only one level removed,and
so if anyone wanted to claim SOME level of hypocrisy over this it might have
some weight. Ideally,animal skins should not exist,unless they died naturally,and
even then it is as disrespectful to wear their skin as it might be another
human beings.
Cheese on the other hand is distinctly a problem as it contains Rennet,but
there are alternate versions of cheese available.
Widening the argument in an attempt to show hypocrisy or
inconsistency:
One of the most absurd arguments I have heard extolled is to extend the ethical
argument outside the plight of animals to other consumables that have ethical
implications. This tactic should be labelled 'avoiding the issue'. The issue
is about animal suffering not whether a coffee table comes from unsustainable
wood that trashed a rain forest.
The point is that under all circumstances human beings should be making the
most ethical choices,since if we have anything that we might indicate we
might have that makes us 'more' it is moral choice,and if we do not use that,we
are no more than animals.
So should we have coffee tables made from wood that came from a trashed rain
forest? No - not if we can help it,but to do so,has no implication for the
argument for not eating animals.
It is as if the meat eater is making a similar argument as the one about
plant's feelings: "Do you use a table made from wood from a trashed rain
forest? Then how have you the gaul to call me for eating meat?"
The individual has little ability,as a consumer,to control where wood comes
from. Animals maybe displaced or killed in this process,but again,as with
eggs, consumer choice can only be enabled if the goods are labelled accordingly
allowing choices to be made. When petitions exist to put pressure on
manufacturers to take care and plant sustainably then these should be
supported.
Owning a coffee table is not a reason not to criticise a meat eater for causing
the actual death of a creature via their personal choice of eating meat -
this DEFINITELY causes death. Consuming wood,MAY cause effects upon animals
but they are avoidable with the right choices.
This silly argument is an attempt to bat the ethical tennis ball back into
the vegetarian court and turn the spotlight back onto them,completely avoiding
the issue that the meat eater is STILL eating meat,which we KNOW causes a
problem.
Abortion is often used as a ploy to undermine vegetarianism:The argument
being that if you'd protect an animal,you should protect an unborn foetus.
This is a type of category error - you can't compare a foetus which has not
developed to an animal which is alive and fully aware of what is happening
to it. I don't ever recall being in the womb or what happened to me,an
animal knows full well what is happening to it.
"Meat eating is my choice" (Respect it):
Another of the constantly employed ploys, is to say that a meat eater has
as much choice to their food intake as a vegetarian.
Not so. In making that so-called 'choice' the meat eater is failing to account
for the denial of the choice of the organism they are consuming. Live and let live- means leaving something to live -not killing
it.
A vegetarian is making a conscientious choice not to cause harm along the
lines of that indicated by
JS Mill (The harm principle). A meat eater is making
a choice TO cause harm,which is akin to saying 'I can hit my wife if I want
to,that's my choice'.
Sorry,but you are wrong,some choices affect other beings and their right
not to be harmed,so this choice is not a false choice. A meat eater claims
they have that right as the animal is not granted a choice. The same happens
in vivisection,where animals are not granted any choice by denying them
rights. 5 Reasons eating meat is not a personal
choice5 Reasons eating meat is not a personal choice
Man is an omnivore,not a carnivore ("Other animals eat meat,why
can't we?"):
The contradictory nature of meat eaters arguments is highlighted by their
attempts at once to laud themselves as superior to the animal kingdom and
at the same time, to utilise perhaps the one thing which might show that
they are.
If anything as omnivores,we have the capacity to choose our diet. Contrary
to what meat eaters think,we don't NEED meat to have a healthy life. Indeed,in
a lot of instances,one can end up being MORE healthy as a consequence. If
man has been led to such a thing as the 'harm principle' when determining
how to treat one another,then why should this not extend to any other creature
which similarly suffers? Anyone saying 'I don't care' is necessarily lacking
in empathy and should be tagged 'sociopath' as indeed they would be if they
did not care about inflicting harm upon other humans.
Given that today there are replacement products for meat there is no reason
not to use them. They allow human beings to continue consuming meals that
they otherwise may wish to but without the ethical dilemma of the source
being a self aware creature which has died.
The meat industry also does not own a monopoly on sausage shapes or burger
shapes. The circle existed long before burgers came along,and exploiting
the same physical shape of an existing meat product is not an indication
that vegetarians 'really want to eat meat' - it is an indication that a given
product is a 'replacement' for that particular product,and so it is unsurprising
if it is manufactured in the same shape.
Evolution required man to be a meat eater:
Even
if
that were true,why does that get people off the moral hook now? This
is a
form of the tradition fallacy. Something worked in the past,so
it should continue? Why - slavery got overturned. It is highly dubious
meat eating was needed in the past anyhow.
Recent scientific data shows early man had a varied diet and was not
any more a meat eater than we are today.
Tradition fallacy ("People have always hunted and eaten meat"):
Many things that have been overturned used to be the case. Slavery for
example. Recently hunts have been made illegal. Causing pain and misery is
not
something that should continue because it was the case in the past.
Vegetarians are weaklings who eat a poor diet:
This is just ignorant prejudice,and stereotyping. As long as the right vitamins
are
taken,there is no problem.
Vegetarians and vegans mimic the shape of meat products:
So what? The shape of meat foods has been rendered into balls,burgers
and other shapes to save the consumer from being reminded of the
fact that something died to facilitate it.
This is to salve the conscience of the meat eater. They have no monopoly
on shapes. Vegans/Vegetarians may not object to the taste and shape
of the meat product,only to the fact that something died to make
it,so it is perfectly reasonable to reproduce versions of meat products
that are ethical versions of them. Meat eaters don't have a copyright
on shapes.
If cows are not farmed for food,there won't be any cows:
One of the more farcical arguments of meat eaters. Have owls diminished in
population because humans don't eat them? No. Are humans still populous
on the planet even though we are eaten by sharks and lions? Yes.
It is a nonsense argument to try create an unwanted effect of not eating
cows. All it does is highlight the fact that meat eaters see cows as an object
that is food,and not an animal with a life of its own. There would be need
for fewer cows,but because they were not farmed and husbanded,they'd diminish
naturally in number generation upon generation,and get predated as any other
animal does,by carnivores.
Meat is inefficient and damaging:
At the current moment the Earth has 7 billion human beings and rising. This
is having calamitous effects upon the planet,and other animals. Never before
have animals been facing extinction at such a rate,never before has this
planet faced so many people with so many industrial processes affecting its
ecosystems and meteorological system.
1/3 of this planet is being used to farm creatures for food. Those animals
are producing gases helping to raise the temperature of this planet,which
is not good for us or animals. In order to sustain meat production habitats
are destroyed which is leading to less diversity in the animal kingdom.
Greenhouse gases are starting to affect the weather system as the average
temperature rises,leading to loss of ice at the poles which affects polar
bears,rising sea levels causing coastal erosion and fiercer winds being driven
by the higher energy in the earth's weather system.
Reduction or removal of farmed animals leads to the notion that all the animals
currently farmed would have to be 'killed' to alleviate this situation,which
is as unethical as them being killed for meat. Of course this once again
is their inability to think properly about arguments and try to sustain their
diet. No animal need be destroyed. The number of creatures farmed is entirely
due the demand to supply them into the food chain. If they were not demanded,they
would not be bred,and upon each successive generation fewer would remain.
Add to that the tendency of apex predators to be hunted or deemed 'pests'
or 'vermin' and also eradicated,and there is no self-sustaining environment
to control numbers. If apex predators and their prey were left alone to find
their own levels,the idea that 'farm animals left in the wild would grow
in numbers beyond control' is seen as the ludicrous statement that it is.
Production of meat from animals is also 'trophically inefficient', meaning
that the sun's energy is not efficiently used immediately from its source
as a vegetarian does by eating a plant,but goes through the secondary processes
of feeding a farm animal which becomes meat,and thence is consumed,producing
greenhouse gases on the way t'boot.. Meat eating just doesn't make any sense
in terms of use of efficient use of energy,without even considering ethical
issues.
"Animals are not conscious":
The number one absurd argument from pro-vivisectionists 'animals are not
conscious' - it beggars belief to me that this statement can be made whilst
also maintaining that 'animals are like us and that is why they are needed
in experiments'.
Either they are like us or they are not. You can't cherry pick to suit your
argument. The fact is animals have minds and are like us,they think feel,use
tools,use language (sometimes better than do we eg parrots). They are as
deserving of respect as any possible alien might be who landed here.
If they are unlike us in mind and thinking,then they are not like us and
are thence misleading in experiments.
If they are like us sufficiently to be used in experiments,then they are
also sufficiently like us to be given rights,as
they feel pain and suffer.
So which is it? Either way,they are either bad models for human bodies,or
deserving of the same rights not be to harmed as we have.
In both cases,they should not be in a lab being exploited.
People who murder on the other hand,who are sociopaths and 'do not care'
what happens to animals have shown they are devoid of empathy and if anyone
is a good test bed for human experiments it is human beings who are 'the
same as us' and have forfeited any rights not to be harmed by our justice
system. Animals are latently defenceless and innocent and should be treated
the same way one might treat a human baby. Anyone who would seek to treat
a human baby with cruelty should be in jail,so should anyone doing the same
to an animal.
"People are better than animals":
The tendency to demonise animals or give excessive credence to the human
race is based upon logical mistakes in thinking that I have witnessed time
and time again.
'Animals can't make a computer' or 'Animals don't build cities' or
'Animals can't create a masterpiece'.
Such statements are at once remarkably ignorant of animals abilities,and
are also cognitively biased in human being's favour,make category errors
and cherry pick human abilities,whilst ignoring our frailties and
drawbacks.
You cannot chide a mouse for its incapacity to fly when comparing it with
a bird as a mouse is not SUPPOSED to fly. Comparing apples and oranges and
then declaring that the orange is a very poor apple is no argument at all,it
is a complete failure to understand what the argument is. A human baby can't create a computer or build a city,should it not have
rights as an 'inferior' being?
The sheer fact is animals DO make cities,they DO compute,they DO make
masterpieces, but only a speciesist full of their own ego is blind to animal's
abilities and takes to comparing like with unlike to try and make man the
'superior being'.
Termites make air cooled cities - they are smaller scale,but grand in design
compared their size and capability. An ant weight for weight can lift a grand
piano in its mouth, and computes the size of any possible nest to determine
if the number of ants that are to be there can fit.
Bees have been shown to have various
calculating abilities including solving
'the travelling salesman problem' that
the average human being would need a computer for,and even then would have
to know how to program it.
In making such statements vivisectionist or meat eaters alike tend to borrow
from the greatest among us,as if all human beings are Einsteins or Mozarts.
"Can an animal make a great symphony? " they ask. "Can you?" I reply.
Odds are they can't. So just like Will Smith in 'I Robot' they are forced
to re-assess the position they have taken as a representative of the high
and mighty 'human race' . The same human race,currently trashing the
planet,arrogantly and pompously claiming its 'superiority' whilst spiders
build webs stronger than our buildings over night and then repair or destroy
them and build the over just as quickly. Whilst whales communicate across
the oceans using the sound of their own voices exploiting the capacity of
water to carry their 'communication',man pats himself on the back for just
recently creating a world communication system which can reach anyone at
any time.
WOW!- whales have been doing that for AGES,with no electronics.
Get down off your high-horse and stop stroking your own ego,you are a jumped
up primate who recently came to the table,and already you are pushing all
animals to their deaths,exploiting them as you did slaves and women and jews
before that,when they had to fight for their rights. Now animals look to
have theirs and the vivisectionists deny them, thinking they are in the moral
right ,because the ends justified the means.
No amount of suffering and pain warrants any ends when it is inflicted upon
the defenceless and innocent.
No choice given to an exploited animal:
The major mistake of vivisectionists (and meat eaters) is the denial of choice
to a creature. The only reason this happens is because animals are in the
food chain. The litany of reasons that meat eaters and vivisectionists come
up with to try and justify causing harm to another creature is testimony
to their incapability of admitting that they are denying rights to something
because they just WANT things to continue that way. They try and try to come
up with reasons as to why meat NEEDS to be eaten or that experiments HAVE
to be done.
Anyone TRYING to cause harm to another aware being is breaching the harm
principle and must be assumed to have psychopathic tendencies.
Necessary Evil:
This absurd 'justification' is based on the idea that in lieu of finding
alternatives to animal testing,vivisection should continue as it is the only
viable method,noxious though it is.
This is something of an admission by vivisectionists that animals
suffer.They recognise that animals may do so - they just think we HAVE to
do it,in order for the 'superior' humans to benefit. This total disregard
for another being is tantamount to psychopathy in lacking all feeling for
another beings capacity to feel fear. It is not that there are no
alternatives it is just that animal's lives and cheap and the means to an
end expedient. As long as animals are in the food chain,this poor and laxy
excuse will result. You don't exploit something in lieu of doing something
properly. If you see that science is doing something wrong by causing
suffering,the onus is upon you to find the alterntive and not willfully cause
suffering until you find it. Animals are not 'stop gaps' to fill in for lack
of willpower or concern of human beings.If you can't find an ethical process
that does not cause misery,then you will have to leave the research until
you can.
There are alternatives to animal testing. Use of murderers who have forfeit
their rights. Computer models have become sophisticated
enough that they are better representations of actual human parts,than
any animal organ.
When chimps,our nearest DNA neighbours were used for AIDS research,only after
a decade did it become evident that chimps did not suffer from our form of
the dysfunction and were void as a model. Failures such as
Thalidomide,which was tested
on animals and STILL caused problems prove that animal testing
is not valid,safe or scientifically sound,even if
ethics is not considered.
Ends justifying means arguments are often
emotionally
biased as it is possible someone has emotional investiture in the
outcome eg "It's okay for this mouse to suffer,because my mum needs the
medicine." - Taking issue with this is likely to be met with "my mum
is worth more than a mouse" which is a specious value judgement based on
injerent speciesism.
"I don't think they should use animals in cosmetic tests":
Come on now,if you accept that animals are hurt during the rather superficial
and vain testing of cosmetics,then they are just as hurt when doing medical
tests. You can't cherry pick when animals are tested on and when not.
This presumes that a vivisectionist is doing some bizarre cost/benefit analysis
and determining that animals should not be hurt for lipstick but it's okay
to cause suffering for medical procedures. Animals are hurt and injured in
both cases,just because you think cancer research is more worthy than an
anti-aging agent or shampoo doesn't mean you get to make a different discernment.
If you can see animals should not be injured for cosmetics,the same
argument applies for medicines.
No vision or foresight of future moral problems:
In fact meat does not need to be eaten and experiments don't need to be done.
We have sufficient modeling power these days that nigh on every experiment
doesn't need an animal. Quite apart from it being wrong to inflict such pain
and misery,it bodes ill for the future.
Should the human race ever build an AI machine which passes a Turing test
or an alien intelligence lands here,what then?
Should we be granting rights to Millienial Man or Sonny or Johnny5 when an
animal has none? It is animals that show they are far more than any of our
machines are. If a machine deserves rights,then how much moreso an animal?
If 'Predator' landed here or the Martians from 'Mars Attacks' and started
treating us as 'lesser' or as foodstuff,would not the human race scream about
the 'injustice' of it?
If Starman or Klaatu landed here and we strapped them to an examination table
and tried to justify it,would they not take exception to that and expect
more from us?
The cephalopod species that contains
squid,octopus and cuttlefish are not even
like us -they have different brains and different blood. Yet 'calamari' is
still on the menu.
Already we have aliens along us - they are the other creatures with which
we share this planet,and it behoves the human race to stop treating them
with disrespect and show some compassion,use the one thing we have going
for us ' a moral compass' - and see that animals, as
jews,slaves
and women before them require consideration from the law to be granted immunity
from being killed,exploited,abused and being treated as 'less'.
Hunting has always happened: The most common fallacious argument used by hunters is 'we have always
done this' - this is the
tradition fallacy. Just because something was the
case in the past,doesn't mean it should continue. Once
upon a time human slaves were kept,this immoral denial of rights
was overturned and slaves were granted freedom. Today animals are
still treated
like slaves and
denied
rights.Mankind is an omnivore, not a carnivore,so we
can make ethical choices.
Hunting aids conservation:
No it doesn't.
Culls
are highly ignorant of food webs and
the
Hydra Effect. Trophy hunts are exactly that; to obtain trophies.
This is something a psychopathic murderer does. That they pay to do it
only makes it more perverted and sick. Paying to kill doesn't male
it morally right.
If the victim was not an animal would it make sense? - No
it wouldn't.
Ends do not justify means - because it seems there is a net
good,like money for conservation - this is blood money when it comes
from trophy hunting and does NOT justify hunting.
Bran the raven solves complex problems to get food in the
RI lecture 2017
Despite wide scientific consensus that some animals can experience pain and
suffering,[64] this is often denied when it is convenient for people to do
so. Such denial occurs for animals on farms, in laboratories, and those used
for entertainment,[65][66][67] where animals may come to be viewed as
commodities. A study in 2013 reported that male undergraduates in the US
denied animal suffering to justify eating meat.[68]
The denial of animal pain and suffering is often inconsistent between related
species. Such beliefs have led to the publication of books such as Why We
Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows written by social psychologist Melanie
Joy in which she popularised the term carnism.[69]
Denial of animal pain and suffering can also lead to denial of broader concepts,
such as denial of moral status[70] or the existence of "mind"[71][72] in
non-human animals. Among those who eat meat, it can lead to their experiencing
the meat paradox.[72] Philosopher Marc Bekoff wrote that denialism is a feature
of moral thinking about animals, and that there is a "self-serving disconnect"
between scientific facts and the way some people think about animals.[73]
The idea that animals might not feel pain goes back to the 17th-century French
philosopher, René Descartes, who argued that animals do not experience
pain and suffering because they lack consciousness.[74][75][76][77]
NOTE THAT THIS PASSAGE WAS REMOVED FROM THE WIKI ARTICLE
- WHY?
