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You know that wonderful smell of freshly mowed grass? It’s a chemical distress signal, informing the surrounding vegetation that herbivores/lawnmowers are around and that it would be a good idea to draw your nutrients from the leafy parts to the roots.
Practically all plants do this but the human nose reacts only to grass chemicals, possibly because they indicate a potential steak nearby.
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Yep. Mind you - bread is basically thousands of pulverized wheat babies.
I have this idea for a sci-fi story where an intelligent space-wheat civilization discovers Earth and finds out what we’ve been systematically doing to their brethren for millennia…
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Sorry, but that’s because you lack knowledge on the subject. People can be vegan for life. As a vegan for more than 5 years, I can tell you that I enjoy eating as much or more now than I did before I became a vegan, so the food can be very satisfying. What isn’t sustainable is for the planet at least is animal consumption.
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Please tell me that the title is going to be “Gluten Intolerance” or something along those lines.
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That’s brilliant.
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There is another “one question that stumps all vegans” I like better.
Let me start of by saying I totally agree eating less meat is, ethically and from a environmental standpoint, unquestionably the right thing to do. I try to eat less meat myself but like @anon62577920 I find this hard to do while keeping myself healthy. (Currently I’m trying to mix protein powder into my breakfast every day to offset those days I skip meat, maybe a tip for you too?)
The question:
When everyone would stop eating meat, all those farm animals will just not be bred. Do you really want to deny them their existence? Or phrased in a different way, do you think it would be better for those animals to not exist then to live the (short) life they live as farm animals? At what point, when you increase the animal welfare, is their quality of life high enough that existence is preferable to them not existing?
Vegan for 23 years (so far).
I find the “everything is alive, death is a part of life, therefore veganism is stupid” arguments uncompelling.
And the “gotcha!” argument that vegans (or anyone) should prefer that more animals be bred to be slaughtered because to do otherwise would be denying them their right to exist is incoherent to me. Should we breed more and more and more cows and pigs and chickens and people because all the not-yet-conceived-beings have a right to exist?
How many babies’ right to be conceived have you denied today?
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How is this in any way relevant? All sorts of entities transmit information all the time. That doesn’t mean they have anything resembling consciousness, or that they are capable of anything resembling suffering that would obligate us ethically.
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They certainly seem to care whether they are being eaten or not.
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You’ve conveniently omitted any citation to this “substantial evidence” that plants have complex nervous-system-like mechanisms that produce intelligence, qualia experience, and consciousness that obligate us ethically in our behavior toward them.
Is this because this “evidence” is exclusively the provenance of new-age quacks, because it doesn’t exist, or because it’s about as rigorous as the posters in these comments saying things like “Sunflowers turn toward the sun! Petrichor is a chemical signaling response to physical damage! Therefore plants are sensate and conscious! So everything’s on the (literal dinner) table! Checkmate vegans!”?
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If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey
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There is no “right” to be conceived.
I don’t believe there is any predetermined goal to our life, the best thing I can come up with is something like, the biggest amount of happiness for the largest amount of beings possible. Given that basis I don’t think this excludes all forms of meat consumption. It surely excludes the large majority of our current meat consumption, but I can imagine a more scaled down model with a lot more animal welfare fitting with that goal.
So I’m not arguing about a right to exist but more about what would bring about more pleasure/wellbeing/happiness to our world
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The argument that breeding animals is or could be for the animals’ benefit makes my brain hurt.
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'Not a thing wrong with granting your food person-hood. In much the same way as referring to “Mother Earth” allows you to regard the planet as something to be nurtured and cared for, and not just a resource to be managed. Granting the possibility that your food may indeed be conscious, does not make you unethical for eating it, but it does acknowledge that these things you shove in your pie-hole give rise to and nurture you. When I look at my own health, it improved markedly when I saw that I needed nurturing in addition to fuel. (BTW my only nod to vegan diets is that I acknowledge I eat things that eat vegan)
[quote=“Footface, post:28, topic:115179”]How many babies’ right to be conceived have you denied today?
[/quote]
Makes me think of the Monty Python song “Every Sperm Is Sacred”. We’re veering into Catholic thinking. 
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In the U.S., more CO2 is emitted in the production of vegetables than for the production of animals and their products. Please stop eating vegetables. ;>D
And the total agricultural sector is only 9% of emissions. It’s the burning of fossil fuels which we must maintain our focus on. Not cow burps:
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Perhaps your arguments would carry more weight without the snark and derisive labeling?
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Horses used to be a big thing and everywhere, now not so much so I think looking at them as an example would be the answer to that question. Do horses feel denied their right to be as populous as they were? I can’t say I believe it even occurs to them really.
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