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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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 Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| I find vegans to be some of the rudest people I know. |
Care to elaborate? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Ryst Helmut wrote: |
Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."
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The problem with that argument, is that you need far far more land if you're going to eat meat, because the animals must consume so many crops just to produce the meat you are going to eat. For example, (off the top of my head - please correct me if this is wrong) the land needed to grow soya for 60+ people, is the same area of land needed to produce beef for 2 people. So you are still greatly minimising animal death by choosing the vegetarian option.
From wiki, here are rebuttals to your argument.
| Quote: |
Rebuttals
Most meat consumed by humans is not from pasture animals but from animals fed food from crops, the production of which implies the same kind of indirect harm to animals as the production of crops for direct human consumption. However, much larger crop surfaces are needed for a meat-based diet than for a plant-based one, because of the poor energy conversion ratio from plant food to animal flesh. Thus the total amount of harm entailed to field animals is certainly much greater for a standard meat-based diet than for a plant-based one.
The above figure given by Davis of 1.8 billion animals that would be killed annually in the field in the U.S. if everyone went vegetarian is actually much smaller than the number of animals currently slaughtered in the U.S. (approximately 10 billion "poultry" animals),[31] not to mention the animals who are killed in the field if crops are used to feed the animals raised.
It may be true that a few forms of meat consumption -- perhaps, eating the meat from animals raised on pastures -- kills fewer animals than some, or even most, forms of plant production. Such meat production might then be ethically preferable, from an abstract point of view. However, eating meat may also have a symbolic value, as a statement that the life of the animal eaten is of little worth. Only in a society where the interests of other sentient beings are given due consideration can methods be devised to minimize the harm done to animals in the production of crops. To work towards such a society, it is necessary to forgo the consumption of the flesh of animals.[citation needed]
The animal populations and death caused in Davis's studies are artificially high due to the industrialisation of agriculture on one hand and harvesting methods on the other. The issue is one of intent. Vegetarianism does not intend to go out and kill animals and it is entirely within conception to evolve or revert to a more sustainable or cruelty limited system. Davis's critique is actually a critique of the practises of industrial agriculture feeding the meat industry and has little to do with vegetarianism.
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Bramble wrote: |
| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| I find vegans to be some of the rudest people I know. |
Care to elaborate? |
Vegans are not tolerant of other people's choices. I have a few anecdotes I trot out for this. One girl I was friends with became a militant vegan in university. Her mom started cooking her an additional supper so she wouldn't have to eat the non-vegan food they still ate. Every night, the girl screamed at her mom and family and called them murderers.
I know a vegetarian who hosted a dinner party once, and her friend brought over a girl she didn't know. The girl loved the food, and at the end of the dinner she said "This was great. What's in it?" One of the ingredients turned out to be egg-based. So the guest shouted "I'm a vegan!" threw the food on the floor, and stormed out right then and there.
I could go on but these are the two cases that exemplify it the most. Basically, my impression of a vegan is of someone who will stand on a bench and start yelling "What's wrong with you assholes?" |
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Gamecock
Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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A bloodless revolution. REVOLUTION??? hardly. What percentage of the world's population is vegetarian? Anyone know?
I have to say, one of the things I like about Korea is the dumbfounded look on people's faces whenever someone claims to be a vegetarian, like they're an alien or something.
To me, the whole issue is on par with religion. Eat whatever you want. Believe what you want. Just keep your beliefs out of my face. |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:30 pm Post subject: |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| Bramble wrote: |
| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| I find vegans to be some of the rudest people I know. |
Care to elaborate? |
Vegans are not tolerant of other people's choices. I have a few anecdotes I trot out for this. One girl I was friends with became a militant vegan in university. Her mom started cooking her an additional supper so she wouldn't have to eat the non-vegan food they still ate. Every night, the girl screamed at her mom and family and called them murderers.
I know a vegetarian who hosted a dinner party once, and her friend brought over a girl she didn't know. The girl loved the food, and at the end of the dinner she said "This was great. What's in it?" One of the ingredients turned out to be egg-based. So the guest shouted "I'm a vegan!" threw the food on the floor, and stormed out right then and there.
I could go on but these are the two cases that exemplify it the most. Basically, my impression of a vegan is of someone who will stand on a bench and start yelling "What's wrong with you assholes?" |
I wasn't there, so I obviously can't comment. But in the first example, you make it sound as if your friend was always the one who turned the conversation hostile. Were you there every evening, and did you hear every word that was said? Are you so sure she was the sole offender, and that no one was ever rude to her? A "joke" that sounded innocent to you might not have been so funny if you'd just been forced to listen to it for the 999,999th time.
In the second example, it sounds as if someone had assured the dinner guest all the food would be vegan and she found out otherwise after she'd started eating. Maybe she was upset at having received wrong information? That's happened to me, and I was always upset with myself for being too trusting and not checking the ingredients carefully enough. Maybe that's not what happened at all; I'm just guessing.
I have nothing against Rteacher; he's a nice guy, and I'm glad he brought up this important topic. But he also made statements in this thread with logical and factual errors, and I can't just let them go. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Bramble wrote: |
I wasn't there, so I obviously can't comment. But in the first example, you make it sound as if your friend was always the one who turned the conversation hostile. Were you there every evening, and did you hear every word that was said? Are you so sure she was the sole offender, and that no one was ever rude to her? A "joke" that sounded innocent to you might not have been so funny if you'd just been forced to listen to it for the 999,999th time.
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If you read it closely, I mentioned that the mother went to the trouble of cooking her daughter a vegan meal so she wouldn't have to eat the regular meals the rest of her family ate. And all the thanks she got for it was a vegan temper tantrum. I learned about my friend's behaviour from her concerned older sister. I knew this girl for a few years and saw her go from a regular honours student to an anarchist hippie.
| Bramble wrote: |
In the second example, it sounds as if someone had assured the dinner guest all the food would be vegan and she found out otherwise after she'd started eating. Maybe she was upset at having received wrong information? That's happened to me, and I was always upset with myself for being too trusting and not checking the ingredients carefully enough. Maybe that's not what happened at all; I'm just guessing.
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The host didn't know the girl was vegan. She found out because the vegan threw a temper tantrum and stormed out. I think if you're vegan and have certain dietary restrictions, the burden is on you to be up front about it, and not too in-your-face. Certainly the vegan could've resolved the situation better rather than spoiling the dinner.
These are just two anecdotes that support my assertion that there's a correlation between veganism and aggression. Maybe people who have bad tempers tend to become vegans and then turn into jerks about it, or maybe an unbalanced vegan diet makes you irritable. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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Let it go ... - and I'll put you on my list of "Great Thinkers Who Were Vegetarian" (which I might bump for old time's sake since I didn't make the last post on it ...  ) |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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| maybe an unbalanced vegan diet makes you irritable |
Well, I doubt it. I was irritable long before I ever heard the word "vegan" or knew how to pronounce it. 
As I said, I wasn't at the "anarchist hippie" dinner, but neither were you - and I strongly suspect there's another side to the story that you may not have heard from the girl's sister. Even if their mother felt she was being supportive by cooking "something special," it doesn't mean no one at the table made a nasty comment or said anything to provoke an argument. We just don't know, because we didn't witness the conversation.
I agree that vegans need to be clear about their special requirements if they choose to eat out - and preferably take responsibility for their own food - but sometimes you get into situations where you think you have all the necessary information only to find out you were wrong. New vegans tend to learn this the hard way, and it's upsetting. It just doesn't make sense to me that the girl would have eaten the food in the first place if someone hadn't told her it was vegan - I'm guessing that she relied on the wrong person to do her checking for her and was very upset about it.
It sounds as if the girl at the party didn't handle the situation well, and I apologize on her behalf. Even so I think you should cut her some slack - egg-laying hens are probably the most severely abused of all the victims of modern animal agriculture, and I'm sure that girl felt really bad about having unintentionally hurt an animal. Hopefully she learned to be more careful and won't eat other people's food without checking first. |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Rteacher wrote: |
| Let it go ... - and I'll put you on my list of "Great Thinkers Who Were Vegetarian" (which I might bump for old time's sake since I didn't make the last post on it ... ) |
Thanks, Rteacher, and we'll leave the dairy discussion for now - but if I come across some vegan yogurt and cheese recipes I may not be able to help passing them along.  |
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Ryst Helmut
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
Location: In search of the elusive signature...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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Big_Bird...you smokin' crack? Don't quote me as stating what I cut-and-pasted from another source. Also, I mentioned that I ran across that and it was somewhat pertinent (for the thread). Please, do not assume what I cut-and-pasted is what I believe.
My argument? Pfft, kill 'em all.
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Ryst Helmut wrote: |
Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."
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The problem with that argument, is that you need far far more land if you're going to eat meat, because the animals must consume so many crops just to produce the meat you are going to eat. For example, (off the top of my head - please correct me if this is wrong) the land needed to grow soya for 60+ people, is the same area of land needed to produce beef for 2 people. So you are still greatly minimising animal death by choosing the vegetarian option.
From wiki, here are rebuttals to your argument.
| Quote: |
Rebuttals
Most meat consumed by humans is not from pasture animals but from animals fed food from crops, the production of which implies the same kind of indirect harm to animals as the production of crops for direct human consumption. However, much larger crop surfaces are needed for a meat-based diet than for a plant-based one, because of the poor energy conversion ratio from plant food to animal flesh. Thus the total amount of harm entailed to field animals is certainly much greater for a standard meat-based diet than for a plant-based one.
The above figure given by Davis of 1.8 billion animals that would be killed annually in the field in the U.S. if everyone went vegetarian is actually much smaller than the number of animals currently slaughtered in the U.S. (approximately 10 billion "poultry" animals),[31] not to mention the animals who are killed in the field if crops are used to feed the animals raised.
It may be true that a few forms of meat consumption -- perhaps, eating the meat from animals raised on pastures -- kills fewer animals than some, or even most, forms of plant production. Such meat production might then be ethically preferable, from an abstract point of view. However, eating meat may also have a symbolic value, as a statement that the life of the animal eaten is of little worth. Only in a society where the interests of other sentient beings are given due consideration can methods be devised to minimize the harm done to animals in the production of crops. To work towards such a society, it is necessary to forgo the consumption of the flesh of animals.[citation needed]
The animal populations and death caused in Davis's studies are artificially high due to the industrialisation of agriculture on one hand and harvesting methods on the other. The issue is one of intent. Vegetarianism does not intend to go out and kill animals and it is entirely within conception to evolve or revert to a more sustainable or cruelty limited system. Davis's critique is actually a critique of the practises of industrial agriculture feeding the meat industry and has little to do with vegetarianism.
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:11 am Post subject: |
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Now I'm the one who won't let it go... One problem that I have is that vegans tend to rely very heavily on soybean products. In Indian culture, soybeans are considered rather low-class, and sometimes they're even described as "pig food"...
I don't really put much stock in nutritional analyses, because various animal stools may somehow manage to put up good numbers...
And it's also somewhat troubling that many soy products have been found to have "estrogen-like qualities"... |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| I don't think it's a good thing to "rely" on soy foods - not because I believe sensationalist claims about them, but because they're processed. Fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc., provide everything we need - but if you like the taste of cheese, yogurt, ice-cream, etc., soy-based alternatives are a much better choice, IMO. Dr. Colin Campbell in The China Study makes a convincing case against dairy from a health point of view, and I think he's worth listening to. Of course I don't want to force soy on people who find it unacceptable for cultural reasons, and vegans don't need to eat it if they don't want to. But I like soy ice cream and soy yogurt and will eat them when they're around. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, I stumbed upon a "Soy Delicious" shop near the Yanjiae station (on my way back from the vegan buffet at SM Ching hai...) and their "ice cream" was excellent ... |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| Bramble wrote: |
It sounds as if the girl at the party didn't handle the situation well, and I apologize on her behalf. Even so I think you should cut her some slack - egg-laying hens are probably the most severely abused of all the victims of modern animal agriculture, and I'm sure that girl felt really bad about having unintentionally hurt an animal. Hopefully she learned to be more careful and won't eat other people's food without checking first. |
She did intentionally hurt another animal--a human. I have trouble believing a person so hostile to other humans is capable of compassion. I really think they do it for ulterior motives, because it makes them feel superior or something. |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| Bramble wrote: |
It sounds as if the girl at the party didn't handle the situation well, and I apologize on her behalf. Even so I think you should cut her some slack - egg-laying hens are probably the most severely abused of all the victims of modern animal agriculture, and I'm sure that girl felt really bad about having unintentionally hurt an animal. Hopefully she learned to be more careful and won't eat other people's food without checking first. |
She did intentionally hurt another animal--a human. I have trouble believing a person so hostile to other humans is capable of compassion. I really think they do it for ulterior motives, because it makes them feel superior or something. |
You're entitled to believe whatever you want. I think someone must have told her the food was vegan, and she was probably really upset about having been deceived. |
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