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On to eggs - here's the deal. Eggs would be fine, because they're actually just a waste product. All they're going to do is rot if we don't eat them.

The issue is not that eating an egg hurts an animal - FARMING eggs hurts a lot of animals. Eggs are actually probably the single worst offender for pain and suffering. In most egg facilities (we're talking "factory farm") the chickens are crammed into tiny cages in which they cannot move, this causes extreme pain for their entire lives. Some of these they cram multiple chickens into one cage together, in many cases cutting off the end of their beaks and claws so that they cannot injur eachother (this is somewhat more rare, but does happen). Free-run facilities are better, and free-range is obviously the best - it also increases the quality of the eggs... eat a free range egg compared to the normal factory farmed variety and the taste improvement is immediately obvious.

The other problem vegans have with eggs is that at the hatcheries where the chicks are being born to become egg layers, workers check each chick to see if it's male or female. The males are either thrown into a wood-chipper type device (alive) to become dog food (not kidding, I've seen it) or are simply tossed (alive) into the garbage to starve to death.

So the issue vegans have with eggs has nothing to do with the eggs, just with how we get the eggs.

(And some vegans don't even have a problem with meat. My girlfriend said many times I should eat all the meat I want, we're at the top of the food chain after all! But I should respect the animal while it's alive and not torture it. I agree.)

EDIT: so yeah - if I have a couple of pet chickens that I treat well and eat their eggs, most vegans would think it's a little gross, but would have no ethical objection. Most of them have actually thought this stuff through believe it or not!
 
And on to dairy. The issue is basically the same. We are capable of harvesting dairy in a humane natural way - when a cow/whatever has a baby, we can hijack some of it's milk production for ourselves. This is great if the animal is living with it's child, out in a feild somewhere being happy.

The problem again is factory farming. The cows are stuck into tiny pens that they cannot move more than a few inches to each side (not as painful as what chickens go through, but you stand still for a few hours and then try to imagine standing still your whole life), they are hooked up to automatic milkers which have all the potential to be humane (indeed, many free range facilities use these as well) but for some reason, I don't know if the factory farmers are leaving them on too long, or what - the cows teats become raw, sore covered infected messes. To combat this the cows are fed a steady stream of antibiotics, and they're also fed hormones to keep up milk production (they're not going through the natural process of having a calf and nursing it after all) and some people are very concerned about all these things ending up in our milk (not to mention blood and puss).

So again, the issue isn't really the milk - it's the process of how we get it. If I have a pet goat (totally want one!) that I get pregnant and then steal some of it's milk for myself to make cheese, most vegans would have little or no issue with this.
 
I don't think that they haven't given it some thought. But it still doesn't make sense, since there are eggs and dairy products, and even honey available that are eco-labeled, where fair (or at least fairer) treatment to the animals involved are assured. Buying those products and consuming those products does more to change the way the animals are treated, than refusing the goods completely in all instances.
 
Smarrikåka said:
I don't think that they haven't given it some thought. But it still doesn't make sense, since there are eggs and dairy products, and even honey available that are eco-labeled, where fair (or at least fairer) treatment to the animals involved are assured. Buying those products and consuming those products does more to change the way the animals are treated, than refusing the goods completely in all instances.
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I agree, but there's one more factor involved - the gross out factor. To a vegan dairy and eggs are just gross. Eggs are essentially the same as eating menstual period matter (pretty big yuk factor there) and milk is just a bodily fluid to them, we might as well be drinking blood or something else gross. I can totally see where they're coming from, personally I can't just drink a glass of milk, it's disgusting. Cheese/yogurt/etc I love though.

Not so bad if they're involved in baking where you can't taste them, but even then they know they're in there and it grosses them out. (plus some actually develop an intolerance to dairy)

Also as you say "fair-er" is an issue, and some vegans would still be uncomfortable with it until it reaches a totally humane level.

You're totally right that buying the products which treat animals right does more to improve the state of things than not buying at all - but that doesn't make it any easier psycologically for a vegan to partake!
 
I agree, but the one last key is that even if buying the product does contribute to the solution, it may just be not far along enough for them to feel comfortable with it (ie: still causing suffering, just less than before).

The best example I can think of for us non-vegans is this - let's say shoe factory B342 has added a new policy, now employees are allowed to go to the bathroom without being docked pay. It's still a sweatshop, horrible conditions, dangerous, almost zero pay, employees abused on a regular basis - but now they've added one humane feature in an attempt to draw more customers than their competition, who are still slightly more evil.

Would buying their product contribute in the long run to conditions improving in not just that factory, but others as well? Yes, but man, I would not be comfortable participating at all.
 
And look at me, I totally forgot one more dimension to meat/dairy/eggs: efficiency.

Free range "grass fed" isn't so bad, because the animals eat natural resources that are essentially free for us, but factory farmed (or any case where the animal has a large amount of it's diet supplimented by humans) use up insane quantities of resources to create far smaller amounts of food that just happen to taste nice.

I forget the math, I used to know it, but you have to put MANY pounds of plant into an animal to get 1 lb out of it.


Just because it's inneficient doesn't mean we shouldn't do it - hell, mead is pretty innefficient from a nutrition point of view as well. ;) ;D So meat/eggs/dairy should just be regarded as very expensive high-loss processes that we accept because they make something tasty and fun. Which is fine, humans do all kinds of things that are expensive just because they're fun.


However, these products should be of a reasonably quality in my opinion, otherwise we're really just wasting our time. If we're going to blow all these resources on animal products, let's get rid of garbage like McDonalds, and processed cheese, and all that other tasteless junk!

But if it's going to be high quality cheeses, meats eggs, cooked into something amazing - then by all means, I'm a bit of a hedonist! Let's get cooking!

To spend such vast amounts of resources when we're just going to turn it into garbage that is neither healthy nor tasty... that just makes me sad. :(
 
Yeah, that would be ideal, and I think the world is moving slowly more and more in that direction.
Unfortunately though, there'll always be a market for the cheapest alternatives. But I think the future will see continued improvement of animal conditions and product quality, even on the cheapest levels.
 
It'll get there eventually, the fact that people are starting to even think about things like whether an animal is free range or not is the beginning.

The problem is going to be that eventually everyone is going to have to reduce their meat intake. We simply don't have the land to suppport humane farming of that many animals - and as places that until now have eaten very little meat (India, lots of Asia) are slowly becoming westernized, the demand is only going to keep increasing for the next while.

It'll probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

What we need is cloned muscle tissue - factory farming without the suffering.
 
AToE said:
So again, the issue isn't really the milk - it's the process of how we get it. If I have a pet goat (totally want one!) that I get pregnant and then steal some of it's milk for myself to make cheese, most vegans would have little or no issue with this.
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Me, too!

But why is this conversation on the Southpaw thread when y'all have a vegetarian thread you could be using...
 
AToE said:
I forget the math, I used to know it, but you have to put MANY pounds of plant into an animal to get 1 lb out of it...


I'm a bit of a hedonist! Let's get cooking!

To spend such vast amounts of resources when we're just going to turn it into garbage that is neither healthy nor tasty... that just makes me sad. :(
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Stats, If memory serves are something like this:
9# grain >>1# beef
5# grain>> 1# pork
4# grain >> 1# poultry

In the US it all boils down to The Corn Subsidy
 
TheAlchemist said:
EEEwwwww!

No, Alan, what we need is this:

Know Your Grower!

or...better yet, be the grower...
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Hey, I'm not saying that's what I want to eat! I want free range happy animals. I'm just saying that I don't think the demand for factory farming is going to go away in the next hundred years, so we're better off just cloning the tissue we want, at least nothing suffers that way!

It's all the same stuff, just whether or not it was ever hooked up to a brain/mind. ;)
 
OK, but the industrial production of grains (and vegetables) isn't exactly ethical when it comes to animals either. You rip up a bunch of forest to have big flat fields to run you tractors and combines through, destroying countless square miles of natural habitat. You spray the plants/grains with all sorts of unholy chemicals to kill insects/fungi/other pests possibly (and I mean only possibly) contributing to CCD, and certainly killing billions of insects, and potentially causing toxic ingestion in higher animals. You dump tons of fertilizer that runs of into streams causing algae blooms and choking off estuaries, and to run it all you've got to have petrol leading to massive spills in the Gulf. I don't think Vegans should get a pass on ethics unless everything they're eating is organic/hydroponic.

Frankly, I don't see the industrial production of meat or vegetables going away as long as the number of people continues to increase. We are going to feed ourselves as long as there is something to eat.

I personally would love to try a cloned-muscle, Kobe-beef steak!
 
That's something vegans are well aware of, and it bugs them a lot.

Industrial farming is definitely bad for animals/the environment/humans too - but at least when you eat that stuff it only needs to be produced once (organic farming would be an improvement of course, but I certainly don't like paying that much for all my produce, just as much as I can afford is all I get).

Why do I say only once? - When you eat meat that's been factory farmed (or even free range, but with feed on top of grass) their feed comes from those same industrial farming sources.

So a vegan may eat a pound of unethically produced plant matter - but when a meateater eats a pound of meat they are in fact consuming many pounds of that exact same unethical plant matter - so even if the animal was happy, the multiplication of damage done is still there (there's no way around it with eating meat, it's just ineffecient. We have to accept that when we eat it). And, since the vast majority of meat consumed in North America is not exactly humanely produced (or good for the environment at all), there's that damage on top of the multiplied damage done by the plant matter that animal consumed.

So vegans don't get a pass on ethics for being perfect (who is?) they get a pat on the back for being better, that is all. It's not about being perfect, just doing as little damage as a person can, staying within being realistic.

Anything helps - making the decision to eat 1 less serving of factory farmed meat a week helps. It's a sacrifice in some cases, and not everyone can afford it, but all that needs to be done is have a nice vegitarian (may I suggest Indian) meal one night instead of a cheap-meat meal, then the next day eat some free range animal. If done right, the costs will balance out (eating meat isn't exactly cheap regardless of it's source).

Unfortunately the ethics are relative, we're all doing unethical things, it's just facing that, looking it in the eye and thinking to yourself "what small thing can I do right now, today, to make the world better?" One baby step at a time!

EDIT: As you may guess, this isn't my first rodeo when it comes to this topic!
 
I wanted to add too that I give the opposite of a pat on the back to vegans who talk about honey being unethical. As we've all discussed, the good that honey production acheives is far greater than any damage done, therefore the total "ethic" is a positive.

I don't have an issue with them not wanting to eat honey - if the minor damage to a few bugs bothers them and they can't bring themselves to eat it, I totally respect that. What I take issue with is when they try to spread the idea that it is unethical, because they are just plain technically incorrect about that, and by attempting to spread that idea they are in fact doing potential damage (assuming they get anyone else off honey).

This is a big part of why I had nothing but respect for my "vegan" girlfriend. She wasn't a vegan for the sake of calling herself that, or for the sake of trying to be high and mighty. She honestly weighed (and researched, which is more than most people of any diet can claim) every single aspect of veganism and how diet/overall consumtion effects the world, and made her decisions. She looked at honey, decided it was in fact ethical, so went back to eating it.
 
;D I like that one.

When I get back to Vancouver I hope to rent/own a house, and I plan to rip out the whole yard and replace it with a food garden. I'll also get a couple chickens, which will be great because I'll have awesome free (and totally ethical) eggs, plus they'll eat most of the bugs that will be trying to eat my plants!

I'm still trying to figure out how I can keep a goat though... I want it's milk for cheese making. ;D
 
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