“how does this chicken’s life and death compare to what a wild bird’s life would be?”
I believe this would an example of the “appeal to nature” fallacy. it’s not a strong argument, and it’s also one many people use wildly inconsistency. infanticide, cannibalism, rape, are all “natural” behaviors.
I believe societies worldwide are moving toward veganism. (Googletrend the word “vegan”.) Technology (especially plant proteins - some of which, like Gardein and Beyond Meat, are already incredible) will be a major driver. Every week we hit a new milestone, be it Chipotle sofritas or vegan White Castle Sliders or (just today) John Stewart announcing that one of his retirement projects will be a farmed animal sanctuary. It’s so encouraging to me as a vegan.
One day (and probably within the next few decades) meat-eating is going to be a disreputable habit (kind of like smoking today), and soon after that it will be gross.
When that happens, the situation will simplify for many people. Before every social justice shift (abolition, civil rights) you had people–including many (tho not all!) well-meaning people–parsing the issues, often with incredible subtlety. In the end, the parsings get washed away as society shifts to what is clearly a new, better paradigm.
Based on your spore name, you might be interested to hear that I’m researching fungi as meat alternatives–not simply for diners, but for farmers and others currently invested financially in animal agriculture. Going to the Telluride Mushroom Festival this year; so much action in the fungi world!
Well I for one am not about to take dietary advice from anyone who thinks those pastimes are acceptable. You are not doing the cause of veganism any good with that kind of extremist rhetoric.
Although… once you’ve committed infanticide it’d be a shame to let it go to waste, so cannibalism is pretty much the logical culmination there.
Keep in mind that fungi can be a problem for people with asthma. That’s a real issue. Not that there aren’t many other forms of vegetal protein as options for them, but it’s important to not kill people in the process of saving animals.
Maybe after everyone has become a vegan we can finally deal with trivial problems like child abuse, which will still be with us despite the lofty morality of our diets.
Actually for every pound of wild shrimp eaten, there are about four pounds of other species killed. Apparently shrimp has one of the highest rates of bycatch. And that’s not even counting the human suffering and death in the overseas shrimp farming industry. So yes, shrimp are much worse than eggs, ethically speaking.
The value of eggs is difficult to quantify. They’re practically irreplaceable in baking, mashed bananas work in some respects I guess but I think the current push to develop a synthetic egg, and the quality of the subsequent failures, gives some insight into just how valuable they are.
aside:
I guess it’s comforting to think you can find a metric that will allow you some kind of insight into the morality of animal produce but ultimately all animals in the food system die ‘for’ it.
Or…maybe we can deal with both issues at the same time, with everyone focusing on the social justice issue that they feel speaks to them. Or, maybe an individual can actually work towards justice in more than one realm at a time! (I’ve raised four foster kids, for instance.)
MLK Jr. said injustice anywhere leads to injustice everywhere. So we get to pick. And btw, Coretta King was, and Dexter King is, vegan. So is Angela Davis.
Also, fungi are Opisthokonts, as are animals. Yes, fungi look like plants because they don’t run around, but they are closer relatives to ourselves than to plants. People who eat fungi are just carnivores in denial.
