I'll never understand moral vegan absolutists. There are so many non-dietary ways we cause direct or indirect harm to animals. I understand those who are vegan for dietary or environmental reasons, but moral veganism? I don't get it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think it goes something like: humans used to need to eat meat and animal products to survive, but now we don't. If humans are really better than animals, then we don't need to kill or enslave them since we can get everything we need from the food we grow (and in some cases, the lab produced supplements previously only available from animal products, notably B12).

I get that, and it makes sense on the surface. The next part is the bit that muddies the water. Grass grows, nature happens, and generally when you grow one beefie one animal dies to get 200kg of food.

How many animals die to make 200kg of carrots? A best case scenario is 100m^2^ to grow those 200KG of carrots (based on a quick search showing 20 tonne per hectare, or 2kg per m^2^). How many insects are killed every time you apply pesticides? More than one I bet. I'd expect on 100m^2^ of garden it is probably tens of thousands. Sure you can say "organic", but that just means pesticide that isn't made from oil. You could say "spray free", but when you drive the harvester through the field to harvest the carrots you're still going to kill thousands of insects and small rodents.

Is the life of the cattle worth more than the life of the insect? Because it seems the whole concept of veganism is based around the idea that the life of one animal (e.g. human) is not worth more than the life of another (e.g. pig).

If it's not, then is it not more moral to eat the cattle?

We can't ignore that most US vegans are comparing growing an acre of crop to eat vs growing an acre of crop to then feed to cattle and kill that as well, so I can get that their argument might stack up. But here in NZ, most of the beef raising is done from grassy fields that get fertiliser and some roundup on the gorse or ragwort and not much else.

So yeah, my conclusion is much like yours but with a lot more rambling. Dietary vegans are much healthier than you or I, considering the good foods like red meat and bacon are on the "definitely causes cancer" list. Environmental vegans for sure have much lower carbon footprints, most likely even when the food is shipped from the other side of the world. But I've never worked out the conundrum of how the life equation works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The study I think you’re referring to about red meat causes cancer was done using processed meat I think. Fresh meat prepared correctly is good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I wasn't referring to that, I was referring to WHO's List of agents Carcinogenic to humans, However, I had misremembered. Processed meat is on the "Carcinogenic to humans" list, red meat is on the "Probably carcinogenic to humans" list.

Other notable things on the carcinogenic list are alcohol, lots of different infections (such as HPV or HIV), air polution, solar radiation (e.g. UV light), tobacco smoke (second hand smoke is also separately listed), and asbestos and other various workplace exposure items like deisel fumes or coal dust.

Some notable things on the "Probably" list are household wood burning, high-temperature fried food, night shift work, red meat consumption, and drinking beverages above 65°C.

As an example of evidence about red meat, this study found:

Red meat consumption was significantly associated with greater risk of breast cancer (RR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.03–1.15), endometrial cancer (RR = 1.25; 95% CI = 1.01-1.56), colorectal cancer (RR = 1.10; 95% CI = 1.03–1.17), colon cancer (RR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.09-1.25), rectal cancer (RR = 1.22; 95% CI = 1.01-1.46), lung cancer (RR = 1.26; 95% CI = 1.09–1.44), and hepatocellular carcinoma (RR = 1.22; 95% CI = 1.01-1.46).

The study looked at both processed and unprecessed red meat, and the risk was higher with processed meat, but there was still an increased cancer risk for unprocessed red meat.

There are other studies that find weak or no risk when looking at some specific cancer types, and with different focus areas, so it seems the specifics are not well understood.