Originally published at: Thousands of monkeys still in forced labor farms | Boing Boing
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I think we should treat animals well. But where do we draw the line? Is packing coffee beans on a burro also forced labor? Is impregnating cattle and milking them after they’ve had their calves a type of forced labor?
I mean I already know what PETA’s answer to these questions are. But I reject their world view. So setting that aside, would forced monkey labor be acceptable if the monkeys were treated better?
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I always wonder this about strict vegans who also drink alcohol. Billions of creatures were made to die, literally sifting through the bodies of their siblings searching for nutrients until their environment is so toxified with their own waste that they essentially suffocate en mass. Where do you draw the line!?!
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Nothing exits that the human beings will not enslave, I mean nothing.
@cannibalpeas
Where do you draw the line!?!
Quick, check outside your window, I think the Vegan Police are onto you.
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Human flesh? Oh, wait…
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Is the problem that monkey’s are doing labor? or that they’re being treated poorly? Or both? I mean given the option between some sort of fossil fuel burning harvesting device and monkeys, I kind of like the idea of monkeys picking coconuts. However I would prefer they be treated as some sort of beloved helper/part of the farm (think sheep dog) than locked in a cage and forgotten about between shifts.
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Your definition of “creature” is a bit looser than most. Yeast is not an animal though I guess it’s not a plant either but most vegans will eat mushrooms so I suspect they don’t think much about it.
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Thousands of humans convinced they must have got in the wrong revolving door for themselves. Good Onion headlines, these. Just looking for the Thai monkey thought leaders…oh, and they missed CPAC, such a tragedy.
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It sounds like these cousins of ours are being badly mistreated, and that has to stop. But, like others in this thread I think the problem is in the treatment, not in the basic principal of using animals to help us with our work.
Emotional support animals for assholes.
I’m not a vegan, but they do have a fairly principled argument overall. But it depends on drawing that line somewhere, and the grey areas are places like pollination–I don’t think it generally goes down to yeasts. Almond growth requires the cultivation, enslavement, and mass transport of honey bees. I personally don’t think there is a principled distinction between eating honey and eating almonds. There are some who draw the line between the two, arguing honey is not vegan but almonds are. Others will eat either, but I don’t think that is orthodox veganism. Some people say ‘I don’t think it is wrong to eat honey or almonds but I just don’t like/eat honey’, which seems to me like having your cake and eating it too.
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I think the argument is usually ability to consent, so I think as you said, both almonds and honey are out, since bees are not giving us either of their own volition.
I think veganism is honestly that step too far, as in the fact that you often can’t get all the nutrients you need for survival without modern society and food being shipped worldwide (those like Jain’s living in the tropics can afaict)… just how much climate change is justified so you can avoid exploiting animals? Vegetarians seem to be able to balance that better, with the addition of things like dairy, and can often get the full spectrum of nutrition from fairly locally produced food.
I suppose they could be given a comfortable life and basic liberties in exchange for their labor, but I also suppose that given basic liberties they would say “fuck this” and not work on Maggie’s farm no more. I would.
And this is why I have no problem boiling lobster or eating fish.
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Isn’t this the same part of the world that has issues with using human slave labor to harvest shrimp?
Maybe the issue isn’t which species is being enslaved, but a wider acceptance that some degree of slavery is ok.
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Will someone please just tell me whether I can still buy Aroy-D in good conscience?
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I suspect you are right. Still I watch those nature?/anthropology? shows about “exotic folks in far away country” using farming practices that are novel to western audiences (or me at least), like fishermen using cormorants or otters with a certain amount of awe and no one in the documentary seems to be lamenting the animals treatment. It’s all painted rather rosy.
Then there’s the monkeys in the temples who have essentially be trained to steal items and hold them hostage for food. I suspect it wouldn’t be impossible to enter into something more akin to a partnership with the monkeys than your typical “domestication” although there could be all sorts of unintended consequences. Like wild monkeys attacking humans for not keeping up their end of the bargain when those humans aren’t even aware of the bargain?
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