Vegan diet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175567#Comment_118175567

Even without humans though is that not the life arc facing many if not most of all animals on the planet?

Though in fairness the animals in question do not "look forward" to it at all do they? Do any of the sheep on a farmers land have any idea what the farmers ultimate agenda and plan is for their flesh? I doubt it myself. Animals seem quite good at living in the moment and are not seemingly all that preoccupied with death and the like as a concept :)

Contrast that to animals in the wild around predators - who live in a constant state of being alert in the hopes of avoiding that predator just awhile longer. If anything it is the wild meat we do not eat who have things that are hardly worth looking forward to.

To steal a joke from Daniel Dennett - what a wonderfully intelligent evolutionary move it was for sheep to acquire shepherds. For a small price in freedom and individual autonomy over husbandry they acquired constant food - protection - medical care - shelter - and more. :)

So I have always found the not getting to live argument (from the meat eaters) and the life arc argument (from the vegs) similarly unmoving and unconvincing. For me when I am sourcing meat it is the quality of life that meat had that is the motivator for me. Which is the primary motivation when I say I try to source my meat as ethically as possible. My Christmas goose each year lives with us for months getting treated like royalty before it gets offed for example :) But I have relationships with a butcher and some farmers who source or slaughter some pretty happy meat relative to some of the more mass produced options.

Thelonious Monk

Why would any type of being want to be born into a chicken or pig farm in Ireland, given the way they are treated? Would you want to be born into some kind of overcrowded inhumane extermination camp if that was the only taste of life you ever got?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175642#Comment_118175642

the fact you have to justify this is incredible to me. you're trying to justify that it's okay cos they don't know, but the fact is it's not okay.

whether they know about it or not is neither here nor there. what is the benefits to being born if you're pre marked with a kill date?

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175497#Comment_118175497

not sure if serious.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175863#Comment_118175863

he is, they always come out with this stuff, like if we all went vegan we'd have to kill loads of animals etc. this is what you're up against.

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175642#Comment_118175642

Someone once said about sheep, "If they could die twice,they would".

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118176648#Comment_118176648

they bastards did it! all them! so what they did was went around the country (didn't take long as we all know 99% of Junkies are in Dublin anyway)

so what they did, the bastards, was went and gathered up all the Junkies and dropped them off in the city centre.

then something.. something.. something.. they own the place now?

I've been up and down to Dublin 100's of times and I lived there for half a year and can say confidently that poster has taken the stereotype about Dublin City and applied it as though it were fact.

I'm from a rural area where I grew up, live in a town now, but I'll never forget telling my folks I was going to Dublin to see the Mrs and having the mother reply: well, jesus make sure you don't get stabbed or something up there!

but tell me more about how vastly more educated and travelled rural folks are, please...

When somebody says "i am vegan", they really mean,"i am a boring self righteous twat"

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175735#Comment_118175735

Pigs are born as pigs and chicken as chicken. Humans don't be born as anything other than humans.

They don't go wondering what's going to happen me tomorrow.

Ten of Swords

@RandomViewer do not post in this thread again

A number of off topic trolling posts about Dublin vs Rural have been deleted, let's not go there again in this thread

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118176139#Comment_118176139

They are just trolling.

twinytwo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118173057#Comment_118173057

Have to call this out - you do know why China essentially hoovered up the powdered milk market?

Farmers get paid depending on protein content in the milk. The more protein the better price - with protein % depending in breed of the cow, feed quality etc. In China farmers were adding a chemical to the milk to trick the tests into showing the milk had higher protein ( by extension being better quality) than it actually was.

This milk was then taken and used to make baby formula etc - however the chemical added turned out to wreck the kidneys of the babies.

This was so bad in China they didn't just buy powdered milk from Ireland they literally took most of the market.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118175769#Comment_118175769

Huh? I think you are replying to the wrong post. Nothing in my post was an attempt - on any level - to "justify" anything at all. What I was doing was questioning two seemingly opposing narratives coming from two totally different camps/directions and explaining why neither of those narratives holds any water for me. It is comical that you see "justification" in my post when A) No one has asked or demanded that I justify anything and B) No one has shown me anything I am doing that requires justification in the first place.

I suggest going back and reading the post again with that in mind as you will likely parse it more correctly on the second pass - and also bring to the reading the notion that projecting human values on concepts like "benefits" to being born onto animals might also not be a wise move to make. You are using human values for life to evaluate animal incentives and wellbeing it would seem. I see no reason at this time to think such animals evaluate life in those kind of terms - or with those kind of measures.

Certainly in the human world there is a human philosophical notion that knowing the exact time/date of your own death would modify the value you place on your own life. However there is no fixed notion on what exactly that modification would be. Some people think it would drain their life of all value and meaning. Others however think the opposite - and we certainly see cases where people who have been diagnosed with having "X months to live" start to engage with live in new and more vigorous ways and much more start to value the time they have left. While others just give up entirely and succumb to depression. There is no fixed result there.

The notion however appears useless when discussing animals bred for food. They have no such concepts on any level. They have no concept they have a "kill date". So the narrative does not seem to transfer in any useful way to this discussion. I simply find it an irrelevant discussion point on discussing the morality of meat eating - if the move is to be vicarious in value judgements on their behalf. What motivates me more when selecting the sources of my meat is the quality of life - regardless of length - that animal was given while it was alive. And given the choice between cheap mass produced meat on a shelf in the supermarket - and the more expensive equivalent from a farmer I know who had an animal happily frolicking around the fields who offered it to me post-slaughter - I go with option 2 every time.