this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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I'm not vegan, I'm just trying to eat less meat, but I see this discourse pop up from time to time in vegan communities.
A similar argument is often made regarding what would happen to vegetarians if they learned that plants can feel pain. This is often posed as a hypothetical, but I've heard that some studies suggests plants and fungi especially may be aware of when they're being eaten. Whether or not that equates to pain, I don't think a consensus has been reached.
But for the sake of argument, let's say that plants do feel pain while you eat them. If your ethos is to reduce overall suffering in the food chain, then it's still logical to abstain from meat. Livestock living a vegetarian life eat a lot of plants.
You might alternatively come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as ethical consumption. An extreme position you might take is that the best way to reduce suffering is to remove yourself from the food chain. If you starve yourself, you'll be consuming less, your greenhouse emissions become zero, and you lessen your impact on social services and infrastructure that is often strained to the breaking point.
Obviously, the solution is not to just kill yourself. But advocating for more ethical consumption seems like a noble cause.
What does ethical consumption look like?
Gosh, that's actually a big question and not one that I'm sure anybody could come to a definitive, absolute answer.
Ultimately, I think it depends on an individual's ethics. Some people believe there's nothing wrong with hunting because it's just predation happening in the ecosystem. Some people avoid certain ingredients or produce like palm oil or avocados because of the ecological harm. For some people, it's eating only locally sourced food to minimize the impact of emissions from the global supply chain.
For many people, it's a murky line between doing what's right and doing what's achievable. And as people get pushed to their limits they might not be able to afford the luxury of choosing what's good.
For my part, I'm trying to do the best I can. Our grocery budget is quite frugal and we're getting squeezed. Eating vegetarian is often a financial necessity. My wife craves meat, and I'm not going to argue with her body's natural impulse. So if there's a bargain or leftovers, we won't pass up an opportunity.
The sad thing is, I live in a first world country and I know people who are way less food secure than I am.
Another one that kills me is eggs. I pay a little more for the free-range eggs from a factory farm, but I'm still buying from a factory farm. I have no illusions that the conditions of a factory chicken are good, but at the least they're not battery-caged, so they must be suffering less. But if we were buying from a local farmer, they'd either be too expensive or not able to keep up with demand. We'd be kind of hard pressed to meet our nutritional needs without eggs, so I have to live with the fact that I'm supporting a factory farm
Fools.
We all know plants are vorarephiles. Those plants are in a state of euphoria.