What are some good books on the ethics of vegetarianism/veganism vs omnivore diet?

God he looks so comfy.

Purchasing animal products gives profit to an industry that produces an incredible amount of pollution in comparison to non animal products. Pollution hurts the health of other human beings, and damages ecosystems that humans rely on for safety and prosperity.

There you go autismo

AFAIK most vegan everything-free products are harder to produce and have a larger environmental footprint than conventional ones, at least on our current tech level.

meat tastes good

[insert immoral act here] feels good.

Source? My vegan cousin is vegan primarily for environmental reasons, so demonstrating the point you posted here would be huge.

>primarily for environmental reasons

>everything-free products
Maybe for this, but in general, nah.

ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.short

>t. norway fag

Surprised nobody has mentioned Peter Singer yet

Really? Reread the OP. The crucial word is here:

>good books

Peter "raping retarded people if they're sufficiently retarded is morally permissible because they're too retarded to give consent and thus do not understand that they are being violated, also I fuck goats" Singer really is a rather terrible thinker.

lmao, garbage

Tolstoy wrote a lot of essays on the subject

I agree with the general idea that living on a vegan diet doesn't solve the issue of food production harming or killing animals. I would also argue that there are ways to kill and eat animals that are less harmfull to animals in general in comparison to the way food for a purely vegan diet is produced.
However there are many problems I have with this article.
First off, many of the sources it quotes are dead links.
I highly question this statement
"In Australia 70% of the beef produced for human consumption comes from animals raised on grazing lands with very little or no grain supplements"
and the souces are all dead.
The main argument here seems to be that "At least 100 mice are killed per hectare per year (500/4 × 0.8) to grow grain."
Which leads him to the conclusion that "Therefore, at least 55 sentient animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more than for the same amount of rangelands beef."
This number is produced by assuming that all cows are solely fed on pasture (which is ridiculous) and by assuming that there are 100 mice killed per hectare per year (no source).

All the examples given are solely talking about Australia, no other country is mentioned.
Alternative ways of farming are completely ignored.
The comparison is protein produced in cattle framing vs growing wheat. This is ofcourse a simplistic aproach and you wouldn't come out with a satisfying answer to the question of omnivores vs vegans if all the numbers and assumptions where correct (which they aren't).
All in all a pretty silly article

If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. (Kant, LE, 212 (27: 459)

>Kant
I Kant seem to find the part where he mentions me eating meat, guy.

The ethics of the production do not involve me as I do not produce the meat. If for example the meat could be produced entirely ethically, it would still not have any consequence for the ethic of the people who only consume the meat.

Holding one group responsible for the actions of another group is not ethically rational.

Purchasing a product is not immoral. The responsibility for those profits lay with the people who make the profits to be more ethical. Again you are holding group x responsible for the actions of group y, and nothing in your statement mentioned anything about "eating" meat. You are making an economic argument about the impact of meat not an ethical one and your argument does not even mention eating of meat.

I asked in what way a person is unethical to a another person by eating meat, and you responded that some other third person did something unethical.

hufe id ture

It also assumes omnivores don't eat grains

You know very well the intentions of those you are giving profit to. It's not immoral to fund terrorists is what you're saying.

>production and consumption are mutually alienated spheres of economic life
>>not pure ideology

I'm sure if you weighed all the grain eaten by any sample of omnivores it would out weigh the grains of any equal sized sample of vegans.vegans tend to eat hardly q, even of the food groups they do think are ethical. Maybe deep down they do know they should feel worse for the little human child working in virtual slavery wishing he was dead harvesting their ethically superior plant foot than the sum non human beast who has no legal, nor, or ethical weight that can compare to a humans suffering by any measure.

You don't see the problem with giving money to a group of people for an action which you think is immoral?
>I don't care about the welfare of the animal because it is not a human (homo sapiens sapien).
Did that change right now, or why are you bringing in this new argument?

>economic life

There you go again not even mentioning the actual act of eating meat. Individual x purchasing animal protein does not equal individual x walking around a barnyard hacking animals to death with a machete. All these economic arguments are economic arguments that have to do with the production of meat. No mention of lifting fork to mouth and the inherent unethical nature of that act. Your argument just doesn't hold to logic. Everyone who uses plastic is responsible for DOW Chemical producing napalm. Everyone who pays taxes in the united states is guilty of killing Iraqi babies. Everyone who spends money on product is responsible for the actions of y producer. But that is just an emotional reasoning. It doesn't make sense any more that saying every Muslim who donates to a mosque may have funded terrorism and is responsible for terrorism. Every Syrian citizen who played taxes unethically supported Assad. Every person in ISIS controlled territory is a defacto supporter and target because they don't leave. Dresden is a valid target because they haven't revolted against the Nazis so they are equally guilty. Spreading guilt for unethical actions by way of consequentialism is a very dangerous and ethically flawed grounds.

>new argument

Simply to define person and human as a distinct species with unique rights and ethical consequence, completely independent and separate from animals for argument sake.

It seems that you are exaggerating the aspect of slavery a little bit. I know quite a few of the people that produce the food I eat and Fair Trade tags are also a thing. So when I know that there are no little human child-
slaves involved in the production, then it makes perfect sense to me to also think about how other sentient beings beside humans are treated in this process.

I agree that they are seperate, but why does that mean that animal welfare is completely irrelevant to you?

Because I am a human and I think trying to spread human rights to animals when we haven't even begun to enforce human rights for all humans is a dangerous game. raising animals to moral level of humans is only going to lower humans to the level animals, devaluing human life and eroding the very notion of human rights to the point of irrelevance.

Most humans on this planet do not view animal life to be equal to human life. Lowering human life to be equal to animals witch most humanity slaughter without any feeling of guilt seems unwise.

I am fine with people eating meat and I am not trying to give animals the same rights that humans have. I do think that needles suffering for animals is something that should be avoided and I don't see how doing so would be detrimental to enforcing human rights, could you elaborate on that?

I think when we live in an age when many governments and criminal and terrorist organizations are actively kidnapping and murdering humans for all manner of immoral reasons, focusing on the lives of chickens and cows is an even more banal and apathetic evil mentality. I will save my moral indignation for the politically disappeared humans in china, the human victims of drug cartels and corrupt police in Latin america, the little human girls that are raped and chopped up by ISIS. And countless other human suffering and deaths.

Most humans are ok with eating meat and do not view the welfare of animals as being anywhere near as important as how humans are treated. Demanding better treatment for animals while we still have wholesale slaughter of human beings on this planet seems sinister and foolish. Most of the people who are subject to the threat of human massacre and slaughter are ok killing and eating thier meat however necessary. Trying trying to tell them that animals shouldn't die or suffer while being completely unwilling to stop thier human suffering and slaughter is an insipid failure of western liberal ethics.

If you are going to make any progress in stopping animal suffering and slaughter, you must first free those people from the threat of suffering and slaughter in the same means and manner. Otherwise you are simply lowering humanity to the level of animals in those places. While humans are being slaughtered, they are not going to be able to be concerned with the goats. Telling them that the goats lives matter is cruelty.

>If you are going to make any progress in stopping animal suffering and slaughter, you must first free those people from the threat of suffering and slaughter in the same means and manner.

If it was my choice, then every person in the world would be free from suffering and able to do whatever it is they wanted as much as possible.
However I have never been in contact with any person being tortured or in danger of being killed.
Imo, the only influence I could possibly have on people in conditions like this is my way of spending money, so that I don't support companies which practice bad labor conditions for their workers.
How would you go about freeing people like that? Because I think that I have very little influence on that.
My other point with your approach to this is that following your logic, you can only ever be concerned about a single topic at a time, as other things might be less important and as a concequence not relevant at all.

>needing a book to reach such obvious conclusion

don't be so fucking gay just jump on board there's 0 reasons not do so. all the books you need: godfist.com/vegansidekick/guide.php

but "eating animals" is alright. basically a guy goes to check out various farms, factory and local ("free range"), and concludes they're all awful and will always be so.

Livestock species exist because of a social contract with humans. We harvest them, but their species is guaranteed to thrive like few others on Earth. We provide food, medical attention, and shelter. They give us a portion of their milk, fiber, and offspring. Without agriculture there is no means to ensure the continued existence of 1 ton field destroyers or flightless birds. Pigs may do alright in *some* situations as wild pigs, but it is still not an easy existence. Industrial farming may not be ideal, but a domestic animal of prey making it in the wild is not a picnic either, or indeed even a measurable upgrade.

This is absolutely wrong, you're autistic

>Implying monoculture of soy and corn is gud.

You're trivializing the way we treat our livestock. We provide food, medical attention, and shelter for the sole purpose of extorting these animals for our indulgence. They don't give us a portion of their milk, fiber, offspring; they give us all that they can physically produce and are then slaughtered when they are no longer of use. If you would classify enslavement, mutilation, and forced reproduction of livestock large populations as thriving, then you should reevaluate your definition of a thriving species.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#Livestock_feed
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Feed_and_fodder_for_livestock
As usual it would be more efficient to just eat the stuff ourselfes and not feed it to the animals and then eat the animals.
Large scale Monoculture isn't good, but inefficient use of it is even worse.

>Taking the myth of harmonious nature as a reality.
Nature is a real bitch, and animals not well suited to fight for survival die, often horribly.

Their alternative is extinction. We obviously create more life than we take anyways, otherwise they would be extinct already. If your beef (punny) is factory farming then support small farming operations who treat their animals kinder before their inevitable death. That we choose the time of death is not an ethical conundrum either as animals lack self determination and will die regardless of human intervention, that we make them useful in their death is a thing of beauty not ugliness.

>billions of humans living in disease, starvation, and constant danger of death by crime or government corruption
>I have very little influence on that.

Like I said about the failure of western liberal ethics, comfortable westerners would rather be more concerned about the livestock than thier fellow human beings. But because they feel guilty for doing nothing to help thier fellow man they tell themselves that nothing can be done and then start worrying about chickens instead.

The unwillingness to help fellow humans to freedom and prosperity is the banality of evil today. Non interventionism is a moral failure of the decadent bloated well fed and secure western liberal. You do not want to liberate the suffering and slaughtered human beings of this world but rather the cows and the pigs.It's not my job to help my fellow man. I cant do anything." I wonder what those humans in those suffering slaughtering places feel when the food runs out and the babies die of disease and the government or warlords troops come to slaughter the rest of the village whatever left. I wonder if they say "Oh good, I'm glad those well fed, medicated and free westerners stayed at home today and tried to influence companies with how they spend thier dollars. I hope thier live stock is happy and free."

>Implying that the environmental impact of monocultured soy and corn consumed by humans is even comparable to the environmental impact of raising livestock

Wrong. Humans are much more inefficient converters of plant matter than herbivores, or even pigs who are omnivores. If I buy a piglet and feed it two coffee cans of corn meal feed a day for 5 months it will be big enough that when butchered it can sustain a family of 4 for at least 6 months if not longer.

It isn't now, but you aren't looking to how the model shifts without animals. For example, loss of pasture rangelands heavily utilized in the beef industry would be a catastrophic loss of carbon sequestration.

You can't make the assumption that extinction is the only alternative. What do you think these species did before humanity? Also, how does creating more life than we take away play into the ethics of meat eating? Animals do have self determination, and ending their pitiful lives after only 1/6th to 1/10th of their average life span is absolutely an ethical conundrum.

You have yet to disprove my point. How do you think one should help these people? You keep repeating how horrible their living conditions are and how important it is to help them, yet you are unwilling to tell me how this should be done. Doesn't this mean that you are cheating these people from possible support?
I explicitly said that I have an interest in helping these people, but you just keep rambling about how selfish everybody is.
I ask again, how would you help them?

Or we could plant forests in place of pastures. Trees are much better at sequestering carbon than grasses.

nono, we need phytoplankton farms.

Animals are not moral actors. Ethics do not extend to animals, just like it doesn't extend trees.

That doesn't mean you can treat animals like shit, though.

These "species" resemble nothing of their wild ancestors. 10,000 years of genetic manipulation has ensured that. A modern dairy cow for instance produces 5 gallons of milk per day even in suboptimal conditions. This is enough to both make her calf sick and still have enough milk in her mammory glands to destroy her udder, cause mastitis infection, which would go unchecked which would then lead to her death after one reproductive cycle. All this granting that she makes it through a birth that is almost always facilitated by humans because modern calf sizes make unassisted birth for a first calf heifer a 50/50 proposition at best.

You gonna eat wood senpai?

We already produce more than enough food to sustain the planet's populations on beans, grains, and soy, senpai

I am currently raising 3 pigs. I have been feeding them a minumum of 50kg of Potatoes + various other vegetables everyday for the last 3 months, a little less before that. I got them at about 1 month age, so they are about 7 months old and have only reached abou 75kgs. These species usually grow to 100kg before they get slaughtered. Your statement is completely wrong, the pig is going to starve to death, if the only thing it gets fed is >two coffe cans of corn meal a day
The question also wasn't who's the more efficient converter of plant matter, but if it's more efficient to eat the soy and corn ourselfes than to feed it to the animals, which we then eat ourselfes, which are two completely different questions

>1/6th or 1/10th
How long do you think these animals survive in the wild? Do you believe that a 4 year old dairy cow makes it to 40 or that the average boar would ever make it to 10 yrs old? Lmao I love when out of their element suburbanites think they know agriculture.

Those are fair points, but it doesn't justify their continued exploitation. I agree that we can't just release them because they would go extinct, but we could grant them ethical consideration while still utilizing their products as ultra-premium goods instead of staples to modern society.

Yeah you're feeding it potatoes you dumb slav. Feed it good feed then get back to me.

I'm talking average biological lifespan. You're right, a vast majority would die before reaching this average life span, but at least they wouldn't be enslaved.

Well I cited this earlier here
Veganism is a macroeconomic dead end.

>Get's called out on his bullshit and goes ad hominem
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Pigs

>Enslaved
Yeah it's so much fun looking over your shoulder everyday hoping a coyote or wolf doesn't eviserate you or your offspring everyday. This glorification of the wild for species of prey needs to end. Go watch a Nat Geo video, Christ Almighty.

By whatever means necessary. Sharing social media articles and posting on twitter dont seem to be having much positive effect on stopping the bad actors of the world from committing acts of heinous suffering and death to humanity.

I'm sorry I didn't know you wanted me to spell out for you the basic framework of international conflict and human rights protection and why our failure to uphold it and engage with it is bad.

So first you have economic sanctions that are monetarily enforced. When that proves to be not enough you move to sanctions that are enforced by military blockade or threat of. If that fails and a crisis of human suffering continues then international resolution for intervention. Early stages of no fly zone, then airstrike against forces violating the resolution. Then of necessary intervention by ground support and then liberation, occupation and reconstruction support as necessary and determined by international law and norm. Long term support for the rule of law and self determination with a strong focus on personal liberties, human rights, and international peace using soft power.

What are you supposed to do personally? Support these projects of international cooperation and conflict resolution. Support politicians who don't want to use your nations soft and hard power to sit on its hands while humans are being slaughtered. And I do mean use all of its power to the maximum effectiveness.

Or you can just buy something with a sticker on it that says "Fair Trade" and hope that ends the slaughter while your powerful nation sits on its hands and makes speeches about how bad things are.

Still better than being dominated and enslaved

there's no real answer outside of joining the FBI, CIA or other alphabet agency

A cow making it to 24 isn't that unrealistic, plus every animal that's raised for meat is definetely not going to make it ot four years.
>or that the average boar would ever make it to 10 yrs old?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar#Social_behaviour_and_life_cycle
"The maximum lifespan in the wild is 10–14 years"
Dude, just do some research before you make up things like this.

>We provide food, medical attention, and shelter for the sole purpose of extorting these animals for our indulgence.
Farmers, doctors and realtors provide you with those things for the same reason.

>Cites Wikipedia
Again dude get some quality food like Purina.

>Maximum lifespan is expected lifespan in the wild
Boy you can get a job harvesting cherries with how you look at data.

>for the same reason
For our indulgence? I wouldn't say human need for food, health, and shelter is for the purpose of indulgence over necessity. That analogy doesn't work

Animals are dominated and enslaved by their senses. It's what made domestication possible in the first place. All humans had to do was provide the best food and guaranteed procreation. The animals are more comfortable with this arrangement than most urbanites can understand because they imprint their values of comfort on beasts who have very different thresholds for all types of conditions.

With the average lifespan of a pig grown for meat production ranging from 6 weeks to a year, and the average lifespan of a wild boar being around 4 years, anons earlier guess of 6 to 10 times the lifespan seems pretty good, don't you think?
Do you also want to talk about chicken life span in captivity and in the wild?

Kek you think that modern conveniences is the same as necessity and not just making you a debt slave in a gilded cage. Maybe this is why urban dwellers empathize so much with animals they've never encountered. They deep down know that they too are chattle to our modern economy.

>Multiples of 2 or 4 off
Christ I know this is lit but get your math right. Also you are further distorting your comparison by not including the lifespans of sows or stud board. The average of all pigs in agriculture will be raised significantly with these inclusions.

>Chickens in the wild
Is this a joke? Lol all those feral chickens huh?

Kek let's hear your arguments for food, health, and shelter not being necessities to human life instead of making baseless accusations

>Animals are dominated and enslaved by their senses
Evidently this could be applied to any sentient life

>beasts who have very different thresholds for all types of conditions
Care to expand on this?

Your suggestions so far are to support politians and other projects that act in favor of peace.
I have looke into this and I could not find a single politician that does this while not also having some other bullshit agenda, like banning hate speech and so on. There is always going to be sufferung and murder, ofcourse it should be our goal to reduce this as much as possible, but ignoring every other problem ever while there are people suffering will just lead to these problems being ignored forever.
Also I still don't see your point as to why we have to treat animals like shit if we want other people to have a decent life.
Weren't you the user who said that you shouldn't make one group of people responsible for another groups action? How am I hurting these people living in war zones?

I can't tell if you're serious, I would argue that these are exactly the kinds of forces that contribute to war and international conflict

It's impossible to get accurate numbers on this, but with pigs regularly being slaughtered at 6 weeks, 6 to 10 times is pretty good
What, do you think people just invented chicken out of nowhere?

Are you implying I should be feeding them cat food?

believe it or not those agencies fight human trafficking every day. Google also has an organization that works directly with the government to help the fight.

>He doesn't know about Purina best in show pig feed
Yes. Modern chickens are a human invention based on thousands of years of genetic manipulation. There is no such thing as a feral chicken. They cannot survive on their own.
A modern house, diet, etc. In America goes so far above what is necessary for sustainance that you cannot say that the pursuit of modern man's comfort at the expense of his freedoms due to debt owed tying him to a job and place amounts to the chattelization of the consumer. Also, pigs, chickens, and cows do not perceive pain or discomfort at anywhere near the feeble levels humans do. Spend some time with them and you'll see what I mean. It is virtually impossible to seriously hurt a cow without a pretty good weapon, ever wonder why their skin makes such durable clothing? They also weigh a literal ton and can break tree limbs the size of a man's arm by scratching their itchy scalps. They are several orders of magnitude stronger and tougher than us.

The argument started when user said that you need to feed a pig only 2 cups of corn meal every day, I don't know what this show feed meme has to do with it.

Same goes for most animals that have been bred for such a long time for such a specific purpose. That doesn't mean that there are no wild varieties.

Ok I admit my thinking here isn't fully flushed out. I guess i was mainly arguing for using our existing structures to end conflict to a maximum possible extent. I would say we are doing about 10-15% of what we could. That's just a rough guess. I'm talking about a full on global level of engagement with full mobilization of social, industrial, and political forces as in WWII. Total realignment of the international political order then as now with an establishment of a higher and more equitable level of prosperity and safety and freedom for every human being regardless of race, religion, sex, gender, or any other bullshit category of human person. We can do this in our lifetime and it may not fix every problem but we can demand a baseline of human existence and fight for it. Lay out every resource and take every risk possible to achieve it. We need to put our treasure, and our lives and the honor of our civilizations deepest beliefs of human dignity and worth on the line and back up what we claim to believe. And when that is done, we start again to raise the baseline until we stand in the way of every bad actor who seeks to maim and kill and oppress, untill we find a way to make more and share more and feed every mouth, untill we find a way to relieve every natural disaster, and rebuild every village and make clean water flow and wash clean every person, until every vote counts and every government is accountable, until every voice that cries out to the gods and to the fates for relief is heard and liberation from oppression is heard, until all the people of the world are free to speak, and worship and live in peace with all others, until the slaughter of the innocent humans stop and we make a better world for all then we speak for the unheard, and we write for the feeble, and we stand up for the week, and we carry the burden for the weary, and we stand in front of the bullets and bombs that fall onto thier homes and into the rooms of their children and we answer back those bullets and bombs with a fury of justice so swift and so determined that the world will not doubt that a new era of liberty for all humans dignity for all mankind and all time has begun.

Failing that, failing all our systems doing anything meaningful to achieve a better world and humanity then stand by me user and we will walk into the darkness and despair and pick up the hand of the dying and break the shackles of slavery and oppression person after person, one at a time until they are all free or we have died trying. Will you come with me? Will you leave today and free the world? Will you take up the ancient cause of your ancestors who fought so hard to bring you the liberty and prosperity you enjoy now, will you take up the cause of future generations freedom as they died and suffered unimaginable horrors to bring you your freedom? Will you join me?

>press yes to donate one dollar to some bullshit that will be a drop in the bucket that has a rusted out bottom.

>Cups
Lmao so you have no idea how big a coffee can is.

How about you actually pick some kind of unit to measure your corn in, doing it in "coffee cans" doesn't make this whole argument any less silly.

The premise that humans are as efficient as literal herbivores at converting plant matter to energy is what makes this discussion silly.

No body ever stated that. What's silly is to think that it's more efficient to feed a pig corn and then eat the pig than it is to just eat the corn.

Also Pigs aren't solely herbivores what the fuck

>Corn has usable protein for humans
>Pigs aren't extremely efficient converters of corn.

Female Mirounga angustirostris? Did you take that picture in CA?

Nope, I just grabbed it from /p/