According to the article “
Pro-whaling nations expected the moratorium to be temporary, until consensus could be reached on sustainable catch quotas.”
If this fishing is truly sustainable and doesn’t threaten the whales with extinction there shouldn’t be a problem. Why should whales get protection that pigs, cows, and other animals don’t?
If you are comparing pigs and cows to whaling you are comparing apples and oranges. Pigs and cows and such are farm raised animals for the purpose of slaughter.
If you compared it to hunting deer and moose and elephants and lions and whatnot that would be more of a comparison. Still the difference there is individuals are getting hunting licenses as opposed to an entire country.
You can compare tuna fishing and crabbing and that would probably be the best comparison, and depending on what you read even those have sustainability issues.
I think it is quite silly to hunt some species almost to extinction and ban it for awhile just to repeat the events of the past (lather, rinse, repeat i guess). But i am not Japanese and would not enjoy eating whale meat.
I actually mentioned pigs because they are supposedly quite intelligent and have even been human pets in some civilizations.
You’re right that this is a case of hunting wild animals vs farmed animals for the species I listed, but I don’t see farming animals as inherently more moral. Hunting is definitely problematic if it places a species in danger of extinction, but the article claims the minke whales aren’t anywhere close to endangered and my own internet searches seem to back this up.
>If you are comparing pigs and cows to whaling you are comparing apples and oranges. Pigs and cows and such are farm raised animals for the purpose of slaughter.
That's just an artificial distinction. They didn't began their lives as "farm raised animals for the purpose of slaughter".
>They didn't began their lives as "farm raised animals for the purpose of slaughter".
they did though, cows were domesticated from aurochs and pigs from wild boars for the express purpose of making them easier to slaughter as livestock rather than having to hunt them. Same for chickens. Is it humane? I don't know but they they wouldn't exist in their present form if not for humans domesticating and breeding them for their current characteristics
Just like the modern layer hen, which produces 2 orders of magnitude more eggs than its original wild ancestor (and all the added strain and suffering), or the modern broiler chicken which has been so evolved by humans so that it's feet can't even adequately carry it's grotesquely overweight body. We have evolved those animals for increased profit at the cost of vastly more suffering by sentient beings that experience pain, fear etc
> Whale and dolphin meat is also often loaded with mercury. In 2011, the EIA purchased whale meat in Japan and found that one sample contained 21 parts per million of the toxic metal, 50 times above Japanese safety limits
Cows and pigs are farm-raised, not wild. There are plenty of restrictions around hunting any wild animals in most nations, related to sustainability.
The question is, do we totally ban whaling in light of their endangered status, or do we allow limited whaling as long as it's sustainable?
Another moral question is in play, though. Whales are widely believed to be sentient, as intelligent as human beings. If that is true, is it ethical to hunt them at all?
> Whales are widely believed to be sentient, as intelligent as human beings.
This is not true. They are considered smart animals but not as smart as humans (obviously). I think a pig is supposed to have similar levels of intelligence.
For the record I oppose whaling, but I don't think making hyperbolic statements is going to help anything.
EDIT: If anyone would like to post some information showing that whales are as smart as humans I'd love to see it.
According to one of the first DDG results, “Mountain gorillas are one of the most endangered animals in the world”.
Supposedly this isn’t the case for the species of whale being hunted and the fishing is actually sustainable, according to other information posted here and on Wikipedia stating there’s a population of 500,000 minke whales and they are on a “least concern” list.
I think a better way to state the premise more reasonably is to say that you don't get to engage in hunting/harvesting practices that risk extinction of the species. That is a position that can be logically consistent with both claims "Farming domesticated animals is okay" and "Whaling is a practice that should be heavily regulated with careful quotas"
At least, we should eat much less fish from the sea. With fishing, as with hunting, the limits need to be what the eco system can sustain. The sad part is, due to our overfishing, the sustainable fishing rates are much lower today than they would have been 100 years ago. If we had not overfished, we could fish much more than we should today. Same applies to whaling in much stronger form.
While I agree with the first part of your point, I've come to the opposite conclusion: slaughtering cows and pigs is morally indefensible.
One aspect of this particular cognitive dissonance has always baffled me: you can, for example, see lots of pictures in reddit's "r/aww" subreddit of adorable pigs and cows, and in many cases the draw is the way these animals show behaviors analagous to humans, e.g. cuddling, or playing a game, or enjoying a pet by a human. And folks could coo over these adorable pictures while eating bacon or a burger.
And similarly people have no problem eating pork or beef, but express sheer disgust at the thought of eating horse or dog meat. At some point you realize that these distinctions are arbitrary.
This is certainly a very unpopular opinion in the population at large, but I've always been interested in how cultures can look back at earlier versions of themselves and be amazed at how wrong humans previously were, e.g. with slavery, treatment of women, colonialism, attitudes toward homosexuality, etc. I think that in the future societies will look back at our consumption of meat, especially factory farming methods, and wonder why it took us so long to change our attitudes on this issue.
I have been thinking about the issue of "saving the planet", which is similar to "saving the endangered spices from extinctions".
Ultimately I think humans are just selfish by nature and they only do things to ensure the continuation of humans as a spices. Everything else is sugar-coating it. So really, there is no morality to be discussed, it is just natural instinct.
Humans are much more selfish than that. Almost nobody cares about the species. They care about themselves, their family, maybe their neighborhood, and if you’re really lucky they might care about their country.
> They care about themselves, their family, maybe their neighborhood, and if you’re really lucky they might care about their country.
Most of that is social construct.
Our biological imperative is too simple for most people to fathom-- if you concern yourself only with the welfare of yourself and your family, you're doing your part for the species by expanding it with viable offspring.
If ensuring the survival of you and yours means paying tribute to the local warlord or toeing a party line, then concern for the neighborhood or country will follow.
But make no mistake, it's not in your interests for the species to thrive. It's in your interests for your own offspring to thrive. Nature can't maintain its balance if the sick and infertile reproduce and the boundless demand for limited resources result in us driving everything else to extinction until we all run around sticking punji knives in each others' guts for lack of food anyway.
Does any other animal species care about things other than themselves? Natural selection would weed out individuals who were too altruistic, if you're looking for something to blame you're going to have to blame thousands of years of evolution selecting for the cruelest and greediest organisms
I read your link, and my biggest disagreement with it is that it (a) basically uses a very flimsy strawman argument that mischaracterizes the other side and (b) its conclusion is baffling and illogical.
Of course the reason we should fight global warming is that it will have huge deleterious effects on humans that are avoidable. Yes, I agree, "the planet" will continue with or without us, but most people would prefer the "with us" option.
Finally, you end with "All we are doing is making the earth more suitable for humans to live, that’s it." What?? Tell that to the billions of people that live along the coast, or say anyone that lives in Bangladesh.
> Finally, you end with "All we are doing is making the earth more suitable for humans to live, that’s it." What?? Tell that to the billions of people that live along the coast, or say anyone that lives in Bangladesh.
I think you misunderstood the meaning of that sentence. I mean "the effort to counter global warming" is to make the earth more suitable for humans to live, not the lack of effort.
I think there's a pretty reasonable argument that 1) conditions for livestock are actually much better than those endured by animals in nature, and 2) living to eventually be slaughtered is better than never having lived at all.
While I think both of those points are very debatable (just search YouTube for factory farming videos if you really think livestock conditions are better), they still miss the point. After all, both of your points could just as easily apply to dogs, cats, horses, whales, chimpanzees and heck, even humans. My main argument is that there is really no morally consistent way to think that eating dogs, cats, horses or whales is abhorrent but eating pigs or cows is OK.
I think you are correct, but agreeing with you on the lack of moral consistency does not drive me to cut meat out of my diet. I've never tried dog, but I certainly would. I keep dogs as pets and I would never eat my own dogs. They have emotional value to me, by my own design, as that's the purpose I've given them in my life.
There are many reasons to why we wouldn't eat certain animals. Cats hunt rodents, dogs are protective, horses provide transportation. Cows don't do any of those things well, and they also taste wonderful.
See my response here[0] on whether living in nature or on a factory farm is more more horrific. The gist is: each breeding pair of animals produces, on average, just two offspring who themselves live to reproduce. The implication is that the vast majority of animals ever born die of predation, starvation, or via exposure to the elements. Nature is a bloodbath.
There are a lot of documentaries (Earthlings, Dominion) or books (Eating Animals, Fast Food Nation) on animal agriculture that would give you a better counterpoint to #1 than I will in this comment. Or just Google image search "factory farm", "battery cage", "gestation crate".
If #2 justified animal agriculture it could also be used to justify human slavery, provided you intentionally bred humans for that purpose.
Regarding factory farming vs. life in a state of nature: on average, each breeding pair of animals will produce just two offspring that live to maturity and reproduce. Which means that the vast majority of animals ever born will die of something other than old age. And mostly those deaths will come via predation, starvation, or by freezing to death (in northern climates). In other words, the scale of death and misery in nature is massive.
And regarding my second point somehow justifying human slavery: that's only true if your moral system somehow makes humans and animals out to be equivalent. But we don't even make different classes of humans morally equivalent to each other, so why would we make animals morally equivalent to humans?
A life of pain and suffering on a factory farm is worse than a natural life, where there is at least the possibility of joy and natural behavior. The only thing many factory-farmed animals ever touch is steel, concrete, and their own waste; they never see the sun nor feel the wind. Many are artificially inseminated, so they don't reproduce naturally. Many never see live plants, let alone eat them, so they don't feed naturally. Many live in cages so small they can't turn around or stand up, others so packed together that they go crazy and resort to cannibalism. To mitigate or prevent cannibalism, pigs and chickens are mutilated in various ways. From lack of exercise and intense weight gain many can't stand on their own for the later portions of their short lives. The scale and degree of cruelty that factory farming inflicts on animals is really incredible, and I think it says something horrible about humanity.
> I think that in the future societies will look back at our consumption of meat, especially factory farming methods, and wonder why it took us so long to change our attitudes on this issue.
How would future societies propose we feed ourselves if we don't eat meat?
Yes it's a serious question. Many people love meat and it's a staple part of their diet (as has been the case with humans for all of humanity). As for India, you may want to update your numbers:
None of your statements strengthen your argument. Many people also love it when other people are forced to work for them for free and it was the basis of the economic systems of many societies for centuries. Yet somehow we've managed to survive and thrive without large scale slavery.
As to your comment on India, no one is arguing that meat doesn't taste good or that most people don't like to eat it. But whether the number is 300 million or 500 million, clearly meat isn't necessary for a balanced diet, and no one seriously disputes this.
Comparing eating meat with slavery is exactly why people won't stop eating meat. It's impossible to take such an argument seriously.
> no one is arguing that meat doesn't taste good or that most people don't like to eat it.
That's pretty much the final word on the subject. People will never stop eating meat. It's part of being human (yes some humans don't do it, but we are omnivores).
> It's impossible to take such an argument seriously.
Why? It seems you are exactly proving my point: you've compartmentalized one as "ok cause we like it and do it now" and the other as "evil because it's bad and we don't do it anymore", but provide no argument as to why they are logically so incomparable. And your "final word on the subject" is apparently "meat tastes good and people like it." Forgive me if I'm not pursuaded by your "logic".
Because it's a non-sequitur. Slavery and diet have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You could pick any good or bad example of something and strap it to your argument, but it doesn't make it convincing.
> And your "final word on the subject" is apparently "meat tastes good and people like it." Forgive me if I'm not pursuaded by your "logic".
Yep, that's why people will continue to eat meat; it tastes great. Do you honestly think people will ever stop? I know I never would and I'm sure I'm not alone.
It's seems obvious that if you are raised to not eat meat then you will be very unlikely to introduce it into your diet later on, especially if it is socially frowned upon. People who have been vegetarians for a long time often are unable to stomach meat. Also, it's clear that some kinds of meat are already not eaten: do you think the reason people don't eat dog in the US is because it doesn't taste good?
So, while it's certainly likely that people alive today will always eat meat, generational turn-over could result in a world without meat eaters.
> slavery and diet have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
No one is talking about diet. The part where you eat the animal isn't relevant morally. The part where the animal's freedom is restricted and is treated as an object purely for the pleasure of humans is.
What you're experiencing is cognitive dissonance. You're not a bad person for being raised in a culture that encourages you to not think about these things. You should try to look into where your food comes from even though our cultural biases that will make us try to avoid doing so or justify the atrocities when we do see them.
No, that myth was debunked decades ago. You can get all essential amino acids from a normal variety of plant foods, and the body combines them naturally. Or in case of some all essential amino acids are in the same plant.
All amino acids originate from non-animals (plants, microbes). Where do you think other animals get their essential amino acids? They eat plants or eat an animal that ate plants. All plant proteins have all of the essential amino acids. The only truly “incomplete” protein is gelatin, which is missing the amino acid tryptophan, so the only protein source you couldn’t live on is Jello.
Basically all of your comment is false. Humans can synthesize many amino acids. That is the defining difference between non-essential vs. essential amino acids.
And there are lots of plant sources that are missing or insufficient in essential amino acids. Beans, for example, are lacking in methionine, which is why corn and beans are eaten together in some traditional diets.
Sorry, all essential* amino acids come from plants or microbes. Beans, e.g. pinto, do have methionine, but corn has even less, so I don't see your point.
Besides, you probably don't want a lot of methionine in your diet (it's linked to feeding cancer) [1..7].
Further, you're recycling the tired myth that "protein comibing" is necessary. Our body maintains pools of free amino acids by dumping protein into the digestive tract, which are broken down and reassembled, i.e. it does the protein combining for us, it's not necessary to explicitly do it through meals if you're otherwise eating a varied diet that sufficient in calories.
Surely if killing animals is wrong, so is exploiting them for eggs and milk? So the only moral option (currently available, in the absence of lab-grown meat) is veganism, which is deadly (it's missing some B vitamin I think).
You aren't even sure which vitamin it is, but you're sure that veganism is deadly? It's B12, which is from bacteria in the soil and water, but because of water purification and washing vegetables, we don't get it so much naturally. So vegans take a B12 supplement. But even animals raised as food are also given B12 supplements, and it's often recommended for non-vegans to take a B12 supplement as well. You know what else is deadly? Atherosclerosis from eating animals.
Yes exploiting animals for eggs and milk (and all the death that accompanies it) isn't moral when it's for pleasure and not for staying alive. No a plant based diet is not deadly, in fact vegans tend to live longer healthier lives. The longest lived population studied was essentially (over 95%) vegan.
> Surely if killing animals is wrong, so is exploiting them for eggs and milk?
Prefacing an argument with "surely" doesn't make it a stronger argument. I don't see why it follows at all that raising animals for eggs or milk could not be done humanely.
Well, the argument agains killing animals seems to be "you wouldn't kill humans" (I don't consider "animals suffer" a valid argument, because there are viable killing methods that don't cause suffering), so then you can use the same argument "you wouldn't enslave humans" with any kind of farm-raising. Like, the only possibly moral alternative would be foraging - picking unfertilized eggs of wild birds - but I don't think that would scale...
> Well, the argument agains killing animals seems to be "you wouldn't kill humans"
That's not my argument, so I'll try to explain my personal reasoning. To me, the main real reason we have for not killing or hurting other creatures is that we believe they have some level of emotional life, and are capable of things like happiness, love (at least in some form), sadness, fear, and suffering beyond just physical pain. We love our dogs, cats, etc. because we believe at some level they are capable of loving us back (perhaps a stretch for cats I know).
Thus, for me personally I draw the line at mammals because I believe they possess all of these qualities. I will eat poultry, fish and shellfish because I don't believe they have the same capacity of "emotional sentience" as humans, though I'm fully open to the idea that my ideas about poultry are wrong.
Thus, while I "wouldn't enslave humans" I also believe it's possible to keep hens and cows for eggs and dairy in a manner where the animal does not suffer, and I don't see this as any kind of "enslavement".
some plants would kill the planet as well.
let's take almonds for example, they need a huge amount of water. and still more and more products will include them.
if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody. guess the best thing is a healthy mix of everything.
> if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody.
Keeping non-human animals for the purpose of eating their flesh requires even huger amounts of water/field sizes; so much in fact that half of the world's crops are fed to non-human animals[0].
Here's some numbers from a peer-reviewed analysis from 2018[0]:
> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
I know I was responding to a specific comment about land usage, but I probably wouldn't read that book as I also believe that we should prevent unnecessary pain and suffering, e.g. even if we hypothetically found out that the smoke from the ovens in concentration camps didn't contribute significantly to air pollution, they still wouldn't be a good idea, so of course I object to a book that describes ongoing mass killings as "benign".
But if you have the specific numbers from the book handy, I'd still like to give them a look.
Animals need even more water and space, both for themselves and for the huge amount of plant crops we grow to feed them. Which one do you think is more effecient to eat?
This argument that certain areas _only_ support grass / ruminants gets brought up a lot but isn't accurate. Grasslands are some of the richest areas for growing plant-based crops in the USA.
Ignoring the whataboutism going on here, there are a lot of other glaring issues with this comparison. Whales are not farmed. Their populations have been in decline since the dawn of sailing. Some organizations consider the targeted whale species (Minke?) to be endangered.
The most intelligent Cetaceans are Orcas and Bottle-nosed Dolphins. Both pass the mirror test* while other whales have failed. The same applies for pigs and most other mammals.
Awareness of oneself is a completely different matter. The Mirror Test is far from perfect, but it does demonstrate that some individuals of some species are indeed capable identifying themselves as individuals in a group, indicating at least rudimentary sentience. There are also other tests for animal sentience, though I suspect it's hard to test many animals due to logistical reasons.
Most multi-cellular life is able to feel pain, and probably pleasure too. That includes both pigs and cows (and whales for that matter). Heck -- even plants have chemical responses to damage, even though they don't have nervous systems. Individual plants can even communicate with each other and let others know of the pain it experiences. In other words: if pain to the living being that you are consuming for food is a concern, then you should stick to eating fruit and things that are already dead.
> Individual plants can even communicate with each other and let others know of the pain it experiences.
The way cows, dogs, pigs, cats, sheep and horses express pain is very similar to humans: screaming and squirming or trembling, trying to escape, sweating, increased pulse and blood pressure, etc.
Responding to damaging stimuli is not necessarily the same, and I'm therefore not convinced that plants can "feel pain"; but perhaps neither are you? Surely you'd have a harder time grabbing a red hot iron bar and poking a puppy than poking a turnip with it? (There's a reason the killing is done behind closed doors[1].)
> The Mirror Test is far from perfect, but it does demonstrate that some individuals of some species are indeed capable identifying themselves as individuals in a group, indicating at least rudimentary sentience.
What about the individuals that fail it? I expect tiny infants to be able to fail the mirror test. That wouldn't make it ok to eat them, of course? Same argument for blind people; and of course the kind of people who, when they wake up after they've been drugged and strapped firmly to a chair in front a mirror, don't consider investigating a sticker on their shoulder as a first priority (because that's how that test works, right?).
Also pigs seem to be able to understand mirrors anyway:
> They found that pigs:
> • have excellent long-term memories
> • are whizzes with mazes and other tests requiring location of objects
> • can comprehend a simple symbolic language and can learn complex combinations of symbols for actions and objects
> • love to play and engage in mock fighting with each other, similar to play in dogs and other mammals
> • live in complex social communities where they keep track of individuals and learn from one another
> • cooperate with one another
> • can manipulate a joystick to move an on-screen cursor, a capacity they share with chimpanzees
> • can use a mirror to find hidden food
> • exhibit a form of empathy when witnessing the same emotion in another individual
> In other words: if pain to the living being that you are consuming for food is a concern, then you should stick to eating fruit and things that are already dead.
I think it should even extend beyond personal diet to preventing others from inflicting pain on the living, just like slavery was not considered a personal choice by abolitionists.
I was going to write a long rant as a reply, but it all really comes down to this:
> I think it should even extend beyond personal diet to preventing others from inflicting pain on the living
If we assume a lion (or another predatorial animal) has at least a rudimentary form of counciousness, would that mean that a lion that ate a human would feel bad about it's actions?
Lion's are not on a mental level where we can demand that of them.
Similarly vegans are generally also not arguing for dogs to have drivers license, or to give cows the right to vote, because they don't have the mental abilities to do so.
But really, the behavior of lions doesn't have anything to do with the question of whether we should keep pigs in factory farms, and whether it's ok for us to murder.
Sentience is a complex question, but it mostly revolves around language and symbol-making/recognition. There's substantial evidence that whales actually have language. Pigs and cattle do not.
(edit: I'm misusing the word "sentience" here. The problem is that it's not the right distinction. Cows/pigs are sentient, in that they can feel emotions. But they cannot reason. So it's not just that whales are sentient, but also that whales can reason. At any rate, whales are considered by most experts to be able to think similarly to the way humans think - language, symbolism.)
I believe the important distinction is not whether or not pigs and cows are sentient/language capable. Instead the real question is can they suffer. And if they can is it acceptable to cause that suffering simply for entertainment value?
Ask yourself if dog fighting is acceptable. That is clearly animal suffering for purely entertainment purposes. If you live in a situation where you can survive and thrive without eating meat, how is eating meat any different than watching dog fighting? It’s animal suffering for enjoyment purposes.
I've never understood this part of the vegetarian argument. Cows and pigs wouldn't exist if we didn't eat them. Is it better that they not exist at all, than that they should suffer briefly?
I say yes. Can we breed humans as slaves and say “would it be better that they didn’t exist than live a horrible existence?” to justify breeding them? Because that is the exact logic slaveowners used.
Same with dogfighting. If we breed dogs for dogfighting that wouldn’t otherwise exist, does that make dogfighting acceptable?
Pigs are incredible intelligent. Yet even for sentient beings that aren't at the same level, that doesn't mean they should be exploited (think through the ethical consequences of that world view)
Are you serious? Because a pig or calf can be bought for a few hundred bucks, few thousand tops, and raised in a suburban back yard. Because there is zero chance they are keystone species.
An adult sperm whale weighs over 100 tons and eats about a ton a day. Do you not see the practical implications of that with regards to irreversible damage?
Edit: missed the sustainable part of your post. Whaling afaik can't be sustainable because the demand in Japan is high enough that whale populations simply can't replenish fast enough. They have a very slow reproductive and nurturing cycle.
I thought the demand in Japan was so low they had trouble selling the whale meat they hunted in the past couple of years. But I haven't been able to find a reliable source for that.
I always figured the Japanese stance was borne of out of politics and nationalism -- and possibly cronyism, I'm sure somebody is getting rich -- rather than driven by consumer demand.
"Today, whale stocks are carefully monitored, and while many species are still endangered, others - like the minke whale that Japan primarily hunts - are not."
If this fishing is truly sustainable and doesn’t threaten the whales with extinction there shouldn’t be a problem. Why should whales get protection that pigs, cows, and other animals don’t?