usenet/Consequences_of_vegetarianism.html
From our archives of Tom's USENET posts. Some of these posts are over a decade old. The author may have mellowed with age since these were written, but the basic views remain. (Please note that web links inside this document may be broken.)
<![CDATA[From tms Thu Jul 1 12:35:58 EDT 1993
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: Consequences of vegetarianism
Summary:
Expires:
References: <mhulsey-300693090450@fatrat.fcs.uga.edu>
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Organization: The Reality Liberation Front (pixels to the people!)
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mhulsey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu (Martin Hulsey) writes:
>
>This is a draft of an article that I am preparing for publication
>elsewhere. I can think of no better group of folks to critique my
>arguments and grammar than those here on RFV.
You asked for it... B->
>Implications of Vegetarianism (1314 words)
>
>Martin G. Hulsey
>Research Associate
>Department of Foods and Nutrition
>University of Georgia
>
>Health Implications
>
> Vegetarians are, on the average, far healthier than those who consume the
>typical Western diet. However, it has not been proven that one must
>eliminate meat from one's diet in order to be healthy. It has been aptly
>demonstrated that the typical Western diet contains too much fat. While
>eliminating meat from the diet is one way to reduce fat and otherwise
>achieve the dietary goals of the NAS/NRC and other government agencies, it
>is not the only way. Claims to that effect are usually made by those with
>an underlying and often hidden ethical agenda.
While I agree that vegetarianism is not the only way to a low fat
diet, it's worth noting that some people have found it easier to throw meat
out altogether than to use it sparingly.
I don't know of any organizations that claim meat must be _entirely_
eliminated for a low-fat diet. All calls for total vegetarianism I know of
are based on ethical, moral, or religious grounds. (I say this as an
ethical vegan.)
> "Ethical" vegetarians usually advocate the most strict vegan regimen,
>which consists exclusively of plant foods. This diet is fundamentally
>deficient in vitamin B-12 because that nutrient is not contained in any
>reliable quantity in plant foods.
A consequence of modern food preparation methods. B-12 is produced by
soil bacteria, which are removed in washing and peeling. It isn't
synthesized by animals, merely collected in their tissues. If I were out
scrounging for my food, I'd get enough dirt in my mouth to get my B-12.
>To overcome that inadequacy, consumption
>of supplements or fortified foods is necessary. A dietary regimen that has
>such fundamental inadequacies should not be regarded as superior from a
>nutritional standpoint when compared to lactovegetarian, lactoovovegetarian
>or low-fat omnivorous regimes.
While supplementation is advisable, the B-12 question is by no means
closed. There is some evidence that B-12 producing bacteria will take up
residence in the guts of vegans, in that region of intestine where B-12 is
absorbed.
>Ethical Implications
>
> First, interspecies exploitation is universal, or nearly so, among
>successful species. In the journal Audubon (92(6):120-133;1990),
>conservationist Richard Conniff noted "The trouble with speciesism as
>cause for indignation was that it seemed to be just about universal in the
>animal kingdom. By definition, a species is a group of physically and
>genetically similar individuals which interbreed and also often cooperate,
>the better to eat other species and forestall the time of being eaten..."
>Conniff also indicated (op. cit.), "In reality, the animal rights movement
>has elevated ignorance about the natural world almost to the level of a
>philosophical principle."
Irrelevent. In the wild, many species practice totalitarian forms of
social rule; does that mean we should organize our governments along the
line of ape tribes? Stronger animals regularly steal from weaker ones, and
fight and kill over issues of territory, mating and social status. This
does not excuse these behaviors in humans. Life in natural world may be
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short;" that's no excuse for man's
inhumanity to man, nor for his treatment of other creatures. If you think
it is, let's forego this discussion and go beat each other's brains out
over our disagreement - the "natural" way to settle disputes.
(That doesn't mean that animals are "evil" for engaging in such
behavior, anymore than a child who takes a toy from another is "evil". Just
immature.)
> Second, the arguments and actions of "ethical" vegetarians are,
>ironically, also speciesist. They kill non-sentient living beings for
>their own selfish interests, which (to paraphrase Regan) are automatically
>presumed to be greater, when the interests of their victims (living) are
>actually much greater than their own interests (eating vegetables rather
>than fruit). Sentience and sapience are irrelevant when evaluating a
>living being's capacity for death or injury. If a thoughtful organism
>argues that thoughtless organisms don't deserve ethical consideration, it
>is a speciesist argument.
Not a speciesist arguement - as it does not put one species over all
others - but rather a (sentient, sapient, conscious, whatever)ist arguement,
that puts certain classes of beings over others.
> Another difficulty with "ethical" vegetarianism is that sentience is a
>vague criterion for determining what is and what is not ethical to eat.
>Supporters of animal "rights" cannot provide a comprehensive list of those
>organisms that are and are not sentient/sapient. It is therefore an ethic
>based upon ignorance.
Sentience, sapience, the ability to have an experience, whatever you
want to call it, is present at different levels in different beings. In
humans, for example, it ranges from a very low level in newborns up to a
maximum in a full grown human. (It's an interesting question to consider if
some humans have more of it than others. Is the experience-if-life of a
DaVinci, an Einstein, or Buddha fuller and richer than our own?) Since
I can't climb inside the head of another being, we have to make do with
external observations. This of course leads to some guesswork.
To complain about "vaugeness" in ethics is almost laughable. The
entire field is full of ambiguities, conumdrums, and unanswered - perhaps
unanswerable - questions. Sorry if you don't like things being this
complicated, but life is an essay question, not multiple-choice.
> The capacity for sentience or sapience has no implication for a living
>being's capacity to suffer from injury or the loss of its life.
Yes, it does. We've been over this before; your use of the word
"suffer" here confuses its meanings. Let me therefore coin two terms:
suffer[1] and suffer[2]. Suffer[1]ing involves the experience of pain; if
hurt, you or I suffer[1]. Suffer[2] involves undergoing or being the object
of a certain treatment. If I shoot a wall full of holes, we might say that
the wall has suffer[2]ed damage.
Plants do not have the complex neural networks that give rise to minds
and to the ability to have experience and to suffer[1]. They can only
suffer[2]. Their ability to suffer[2] is quite real, but quite
uninteresting in this discussion.
>If we anesthetize a human, it is no more ethical (or legal) to subsequently
>kill him/her.
Anesthetization is a _temporary_ procedure. If this anesthetization
were permanent, and in addition to blocking stimuli this anesthetization
stopped any internal experiece - no thoughts, no dreams; it made our subject
"dark inside" - then, for all intents and purposes, our subject would be
dead. The heart may still beat, the medulla may still tell the diaphragm
to fill and empty the lungs, but this person is gone. They have no more
life-experience than a plant, leading to the appropriate term "vegetative
state" to describe such a condition. "Killing" a person permanently in such
a state would not, in and of itself, be unethical.
> Carnivory, omnivory and vegetarianism all entail the killing of living
>beings. Therefore, they have roughly equal ethical implications.
Why didn't you list cannibalism here? Well, I guess it could be a
subclass of carnivory. It entails the killing of living things; therefore
- by your argument - has equal ethical implications with vegetarianism.
Any argument that leads to such a conclusion is going to be regarded
as flawed by a very, very large percentage of people.
>Ecological Implications
>
> Ecological arguments against omnivory and carnivory are little more than
>an attempt by those from the less popular animal "rights" movement to ride
>the coattails of the more popular environmental movement. Arguments to the
>effect that carnivory is "destroying the planet" overlook that the planet
>has not yet been destroyed despite millions of years of omnivory and
>carnivory by millions of individuals from a multitude of species. Note
>that such claims are not made by bona fide ecologists.
Omnivory itself, no. Modern factory farming methods, needed to support
a meat-centered diet, yes.
===============================================================================
Tom Swiss/tms@cs.umd.edu | "Born to die" | Keep your laws off my brain!
"What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?" - Nick Lowe
This .sig contains no animal products and was not tested on animals.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me...and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country....Corporations have been enthroned
...an era of corruption in high places will follow...and the money power of
the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices
of the people...until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands...and the
republic is destroyed." -- Abe Lincoln
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