Posted on 10/23/2011 6:42:18 AM PDT by IbJensen
Veganism dates back to 1944, when British Vegan Society co-founder Donald Watson coined the term to mean “non-dairy vegetarian.” The Society expanded the definition in 1951 to state that “man should live without exploiting animals.” Vegans eschew animal products in food, clothing, household products, or for any other reason.
There are a variety of reasons why people “go vegan.” Some simply don’t like the taste of meat. Some claim veganism is “green,” and that a vegan lifestyle minimizes impact on the environment.
In 1997, a survey revealed three percent of the people in the U.S. claimed that they had not used animals for any purpose in the previous two years. Rutgers School of Law professor Gary Francione argued in 2010 that “all sentient beings should have at least one right — the right not to be treated as property.”
Do ethical vegans live up to this stated standard? Do their actions live up to their own stated ethical principle, that animals have the right not to be treated as property? Do their actions really result in zero animal use? The parallel in human terms would be slavery, which no rational person thinks is ethically acceptable. Slaves are the property of masters; they live and die at their owner’s sufferance.
Unfortunately for the ethical vegan, the production of their food alone reduces their claim to impossibility. Animals are killed in untold millions, in the course of plant agriculture. Some are killed accidentally in the course of mechanized farming; some are killed deliberately in the course of pest control. Animals are killed, every day. Every potato, every stick of celery, every cup of rice, and every carrot has a blood trail leading from field to plate.
In 1999, while researching and writing Misplaced Compassion, I ran into a rice farmer who posted the following first-hand account on a Usenet forum:
[A] conservative annualized estimate of vertebrate deaths in organic rice farming is ~20 pound. … [T]his works out a bit less than two vertebrate deaths per square foot, and, again, is conservative. For conventionally grown rice, the gross body-count is at least several times that figure. … [W]hen cutting the rice, there is a (visual) green waterfall of frogs and anoles moving in front of the combine. Sometimes the “waterfall” is just a gentle trickle (± 10,000 frogs per acre) crossing the header, total for both cuttings, other times it is a deluge (+50,000 acre).
My own family was involved in corn and soybean farming; our numbers were not that high, but they were not inconsiderable. Pheasants and rabbits are routinely killed in planting and harvesting, and rodents are killed by the thousands using traps and pesticides at every step: production, storage, and transportation.
Rational people know this and don’t worry about it. It’s an inevitable consequence of modern, high-production agriculture. The ethical vegan, when confronted with these undeniable facts, collapses. Their reaction, in almost every case, is to do a rhetorical lateral arabesque into a new claim, that their vegan diet somehow causes “less death and suffering” than a non-vegan diet, a ridiculous and unsupportable argument. A pound of wild venison (net cost in animal death: about 1/120th of one animal) almost certainly causes less “death and suffering” than a pound of rice (net cost in animal death: including rodents, insect, reptiles and amphibians, number of deaths may range into the hundreds). Continued on Next Page -> Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single Page Email Print Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
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1. jd
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Bohemean fellow who became Chancelor of Germany in the ’30s adhere to a Vegetarian Diet? October 23, 2011 - 2:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply eon
Yes, and he had a serious problem with the Fat Guy Who Used To Be A Flying Ace who ran his Luftwaffe. (He was very fond of suckling pig.)
Other “ethical vegans” whose behavior toward humanity wasn’t so ethical included Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Himmler, Trotsky, Lavrenti Beria, Feliks Dzerzhinsky (yes, old “Iron Feliks” himself), and the recently-deceased Man Of Many Spellings Of His Name, Moammar al-Qadafi. (This is by no means an exhaustive list, either.)
To return to the main subject, ome of the “ethical vegan” crew hold that only “organic farming” is truly ethical, and demand that not only do we all become vegans, but that we must only eat foods raised organically.
To which I say, fine. Considering the low proportional yield of an acre farmed organically compared to an acre farmed by modern methods (been there, done that), that would mean that you would be expecting humanity to get by on (at best) about one-fourth the yield it does now. Meaning, everybody would be farming, and eating, as they do today in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is, inadequately.
Facts are stubborn things, as somebody-or-other said. And they tend to hit the assumed ethical superiority of “vegans” right in the mush.
cheers
>Why do humans have canine teeth? We were designed to eat meat.
Those canine teeth are vestigial at best. Canine teeth of omnivores and carnivores are sharp and can tear into flesh very easily. Human teeth resemble herbivore teeth more than omnivore teeth.
>Where do vegans get their B vitamins?
You mean B12. Nutritional yeast
>I do believe cancer is fairly new. But I believe it comes from additives in foods and other chemicals introduced into our lives.
It comes from humans living longer than normal and being at a higher risk for cell mutations as a result.
Do what I do with my step daughtr when she asks if something is made with chicken broth. I just show her a box of vegetable broth powder I bought so she thinks the dish is vegetarian. I refuse to speciality cook for the vegan/vegetarians at my house. They don’t cook meat for me at their house. My gluten-free b-i-l has to bring his own bread or crackers or deset with him,
Heinrich Himmler? The Nazi? Himmler was a chicken farmer.
Ethical vegan is a mythologicical creature.
When the average life span was 45 as it was at the turn of the 20th century...Fewer deaths from cancer.. more from accident, disease and child birth.
It's one to a customer.. you can only shift statistics, you can't change the inevitable.
That makes them...vagitarians.
I think you're confused about what the bible says:
3.Genesis 9:3 (Whole Chapter) Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
5.Genesis 27:4 (Whole Chapter) And make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat, that my soul may bless thee before I die."
Sentience being one of them...The ability to be self aware or just the ability to feel something.
Mother nature is a carnivore...Everything alive eats something else..Even photosynthetic plants do..They just eat it second hand after worms and bacteria have broken it down.
Mother nature doesn't care if the last spotted owl kills and eats the last slinking skink.
The vegans...does something else alive have to go into their mouths before the life matters?
Would they try to avoid bed bugs if their beds were infested, or treat scabies if the parasites were burrowed under their skins.
How about bacteria...Suppose they get salmonella from the organic cow plop that grows their mung beans...are they going to take antibiotics?
And what about bacteria for their std’s or anti-virals for herpes or HIV?
>>>I think you’re confused about what the bible says:
3.Genesis 9:3 (Whole Chapter) Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.>>>
Fair question. Let’s let the Bible interpret itself for clarification and put it in context. Does God now say all meat is clean to eat? Here in Genesis? Remember, he told Noah to put both “clean and unclean” animals into the ark in the previous chapters of Genesis.
Then, still later in Deuteronomy and Isaiah, God clearly again shows that there are clean and unclean meats to eat. And we are not to eat unclean. So God has clean and unclean animals before the flood and after the flood. And this one text is used by some to mean......see, there it is. God doesn’t have clean or unclean meats. But he does, both before Genesis 9 and after Genesis 9.
And of course even in Genesis 9 there’ a “BUT” in the very next verse after 3, verse 4 starts wit BUT. Yes, God does say things and then has a “BUT”....he gave Noah all meat to eat “BUT” those that had blood and based on what he said about clean and unclean meats BEFORE Genesis 9 (see Genesis 7 where he tells Noah what is clean and unclean) and AFTER Genesis 9, see Deuteronomy and Isaiah 66.........and there you have the Bible interpreting itself not based on ONE text....Genesis 9:3. But on several texts.
Bottom line, God told Noah what was clean and unclean BEFORE Genesis 9, and he states what’s clean and unclean well AFTER Genesis 9, and even in Genesis 9 itself, God has a “BUT” after telling Noah what meat he could eat, verse 4.
When we let the Bible interpret itself, we find all the answers.
There was no meat eating in Eden because there was no death, and there will be no meat eating in the new earth because there will be no death.
A if a pig was unclean before the cross, (most Christians say Kosher is Jewish and it’s not)....a pig is unclean after the cross.
I’ts funny, some people say...whoa, in places like Korea or Vietnam, they eat dogs or cats, or even Rats.
I say...big deal. I know people who eat Pigs and shrimp and lobsters, the cockroaches of the ocean. Thank God for the Bible!
And to the person who says Adventists think keeping the Sabbath is required for salvation, the fourth commandment is no more required than the one about adultery, lying, stealing, or worshiping other Gods. But people think they can play picky choosey with the Ten Commandments.
And in any case......keeping any of the Ten commandments will save no one and the Seventh day Adventist Church official position is just that. The official position of the church is grace alone through faith alone because nobody keeps anything perfectly. But just because a person can’t keep anything perfectly, doesn’t mean he tosses the baby out with the bathwater.
And besides, when people say “I heard an Adventist say this or that”.....It goes in one ear and out the other....I heard that a million times. And it’s never true.
Once again folks: Hitler was a vegan!
Thanks for the education. I am referring to gals who call themselves vegans. Gals who eat vegan. Who say they are vegan.
The veg-heads have high regard for all forms of animal life, but when it comes to baby humans you just can’t fill enough dumpsters with baby corpses to please them.
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