this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Vegan Circlejerk

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[–] joostjakob 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In case anyone takes that seriously: farmed animals mostly eat industrial agricultural food. And they need 10 kilo of food for every kilo of meat. So you're basically killing ten times as many farmland animals when eating meat compared to earing plants directly.

[–] BugleFingers 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I thought they were making a joke that insects are part of the family and animalia and therefore you'd have to kill way more insects than you would traditional farm animals.

[–] joostjakob 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh I know. My point is that traditional farm animals basically don't exist, in the same way that manually harvested grain doesn't really exist anymore

[–] BugleFingers 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Traditional animal farms, or tradional farm animals?

The former is how we used to farm animals with lower density and free range, the latter is animals that have historically been bred and raised for meat; pigs, cows, etc.

[–] joostjakob 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean traditional-farm animals, so animals at a traditional farm. Sorry, not a native speaker.

[–] BugleFingers 1 points 1 month ago

Not a problem! That's why I clarified

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Lower intensity agriculture is possible, but just not as consistent or price effective. You could, for example, raise pigs or chickens mostly on food scraps and have meat that requires little extra inputs, but maybe not if you need to raise thousands of them.

[–] joostjakob 2 points 1 month ago

Yes, possible in theory. Quite hard to find in practice

[–] Crack0n7uesday 1 points 1 month ago

Wait until you hear about how much compost contributed to global warming...

[–] TragicNotCute -2 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I know that the food I eat feels pain. I don’t feel good about it, but that’s definitely the reality.

Don’t plants feel pain too though? I really believe that all consumption creates pain. Perhaps animal suffering is more real or important than plant suffering, but I don’t love that I can’t eat without killing something else.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[–] The2b 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, plants do not feel pain. They do not have a nervous system, they do not have consciousness, etc.

Even if they did, that's still an argument for veganism. Where do you think animals get the energy they store in their bodies? They don't absorb it from the sun. They eat plants, use some of that energy sustaining their life, then you eat them and absorb some of what's left. Anywhere from 1/4 to 1/10th of the energy they originally consumed. Meaning if you are looking to minimize suffering, regardless of whether or not plants feel pain (which they don't), eating plants directly is how you do that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

But have you considered this? "bacon"... vegoon owned... my genius shocks me sometimes

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I wish I had enough b12 to be this smart 😔

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Did you know that b12 feels pain too?

[–] TragicNotCute 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe not, but we don’t know for sure

We do not know if plants are capable of subjective sensation. There is no scientific proof that plants feel pain. But it is also quite clear that we cannot simply rule this out. There is circumstantial evidence for this, although not a complete chain of evidence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634081/

And to be clear, I’m a shitty human because I eat meat. I’m not arguing for my lifestyle. Just having a related conversation.

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

We are as sure of plants not feeling pain as we are of rocks not feeling pain.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The real question is does water feel pain? Do minerals feel pain? Maybe even pain itself feels pain. I wish science could possibly answer these troubling questions, but alas, I'm not willing to look it up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Water feels pain and this is easily verifiable by hitting it... you'll see that it actually reacts to your hit and MOVES, proving that it feels pain

[–] KISSmyOSFeddit 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The animals you eat eat way more plants than you'd eat directly.

[–] SpaceNoodle 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's why I only eat carnivores

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I- but... Err, alright 😂

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

The animals* not the food

Also no plants don't feel pain

[–] TragicNotCute -1 points 1 month ago

I eat the animals, therefore, they are food to me.

[–] toasteecup -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Actually yes, plants do feel pain. Likely not to the same level as us, but they do react to things that cause pain.

[–] The2b 10 points 1 month ago

Reacting to stimuli ≠ feeling pain. Plants do not have a nervous system, nor a brain, nor any way of consciously feeling that pain.

If you want to understand what feeling pain is, feel free to watch farmers smash piglets heads into concrete (thumping, an industry standard) until they're no longer breathing or pigs being dropped into CO_2 chambers and having every mucas lining in their sinuses, eyes, throats, etc acidified as they suffocate to death.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

My smartphone sputters and dies if I put a knife in it. Is that a pain reaction?