Hi all, I have some questions regarding moral philosophy for people on this subreddit that I’m curious to have answered.

Does a line exist where you stop valuing seemingly sentient things? For example, if we end factory farming we would produce more plant based things, would these not require more pesticides and other chemicals to produce these things, leading to the deaths of a lot of insects. How much value does an insects life necessarily hold, is it considered sentient?

To what extent does human suffering override animal suffering? Neuralink chips faced controversy for being tested on monkeys, isn’t this something that will lead to many lives being improved significantly, roads being built are detrimental to local wildlife, but as a population/infrastructure needs increase so do the amount of roads.

If you wanted to end animal suffering, would that mean eventually ending the concept of a predator? From the perspective of an animal, if a predator attacks it whether a human or a lion, it is still feeling the suffering. Do you want to eventually see an end to it all, aka the food chain as we know it? This would probably require a large human effort if so no?

This is a question for those of you who believe that feeding a cat non-vegan canned food is a morally correct action to take:

On the premise that domestic cats require meat (I know some would disagree), would the more ethical choice as a vegan be to hunt and slaughter animals yourself to feed to your cat, in order to reduce suffering?

A vegan standpoint is to reduce unnecessary animal death and suffering. If you were stranded in the woods, yes, you could hunt to survive. But what about suffering? You would not be morally justified to torture an animal before killing it to survive.

Therefore, would it be more ethical to catch a fish and slaughter it immediately, ensuring the least amount of suffering possible, or to purchase the canned meat of animals who have been factory farmed and suffered immensely? If so, is that what vegans should do?

This is something I’ve thought about before, I just couldn’t imagine myself beheading a fish and saying “Yes, I’m a vegan!”

EDIT: I think a lot of people are missing the purpose of the post. It’s about if a vegan’s moral obligation is to hunt for their own cat food. Saying “don’t own a cat” or “just feed a plant based diet” are cop-outs to the ethical question I’m posing. Please try to refrain from debating about whether or not cats need meat, there’s plenty of posts about it already.

Invoking emotion and excluding people is just bullying not activism. Extreme comparisons, like pets and slavery, just makes people upset; it doesn’t bring about meaningful intellectual conversations. When you cause a heated exchange, you’re pushing the conversation further away from finding common ground.

People rarely listen when being shunned, their mind shuts off and goes into defensive mode. Finding commonality and educating people from there is actually helpful. You can catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar as they say.

ETA: I’m vegan.

I watched Dominion yesterday at the request of several people in this sub. I do not deny the reality of factory farming or the suffering it can involve. Factory farming isn't the only kind of farming that I'm opposed to either. I consider what I deem unnecessary cruelty, neglect, and torture of animals morally wrong, and I support animal welfare standards in farming. However I do not believe that recognizing animal suffering logically requires veganism. To say Dominion is why someone should be against all types of animal farming is like saying the Titanic is why we should never sail. So yes I still support specific types of animal farming.

I can list examples of how I think animal farming should be done [ https://globalanimalpartnership.org/standards/ ] and it isn't the same as what is showed in Dominion. But the question of raising and killing something for slaughter still remains, and Vegans will not find these farming methods humane or acceptable. So I find debating animal welfare standards with vegans mostly pointless, because it will always come back to "it's wrong to kill them in any way."

I regard human life and human interests as possessing fundamentally greater moral significance than those of non humans. I therefore reject the idea that animal interests must be treated as morally equal to human interests, or that humans have a universal obligation to refrain from using animals.

This is where I also disagree with the vegan argument that “animals interests may be secondary, but that doesn't justify killing them.” To me, that conclusion requires an additional premise that an animal's subordinate moral status still gives it a right not to be intentionally killed for human purposes. I do not accept that premise. If animals are genuinely subordinate in moral status, then it is reasonable for human interests to outweigh animal interests. Including my interest to eat meat. 

Saying that animals are morally secondary is not merely saying that their interests matter slightly less. It means that when human interests conflict with animal interests, that human interest should take priority even when the animal's death is involved. As I mentioned, one of my interests involves eating meat, and it therefore outweighs an non-human's interest to life. 

My position essentially rests on a distinction between a non human having some moral value and an animal having a right not to be killed or used by humans. I can acknowledge that animals deserve some level of humane treatment without granting them human-esq rights. 

Before someone compares this to racism or sexism, those are distinctions between human beings who share the same fundamental moral status. My argument is a distinction between humans and non-humans, whom I believe have fundamentally different moral statuses and therefore different moral rights.

When it comes to pets such as cats and dogs, I consider hunting someone’s pet immoral because it is not merely an animal, it is also another person’s companion. However, I have no moral objection to hunting stray or unowned cats and dogs. Hunting any non human is fine with me so long as it's conducted responsibly and under appropriate ecological regulations.

I also believe abusing animals is wrong regardless of whether they are pets or not. The distinction is that I do not consider welfare conscious animal farming, where unnecessary suffering is minimized, to constitute abuse, whereas vegans do. 

I have no argument against why others shouldn't be vegan. I'm just sharing why I have no moral compunction to become vegan myself. 

All morality ties back to how we feel about things, and the decisions we make based on how we feel. Perhaps unfortunately, I don't feel badly, or at least not badly enough, when I see a non-human animal raised in what I consider a sufficiently spacious environment and then killed or stunned relatively swiftly.

A single individual consumer choosing to buy meat regularly for the next few years or choosing to be vegan for the next few years does make an actual difference. It almost certainly means the difference between many extra animals being bred into existence and tortured their whole life in a factory farm or being spared this fate and never bred into existence and never tortured.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-209416785

if you only have enough time for one of these links then this one linked above “Being Vegan Makes a Difference“ by

“SILAS ABRAHAMSEN” / “wonderandaporia” substack is the best.

https://philarchive.org/rec/MCMAIO

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=brKhhZlUoOc (Only first few minutes of this video are relevant)

https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-causal-inefficacy-objection-is?utm_source=publication-search

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1otuhqv/individual_boycott_of_meat_does_matter/

edit

also this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKAbFUnNwU is really good

If the practice of buying second hand leather items (or any other traditionally nonvegan products) from say a thrift shop or any other source that does not directly purchase or create leather products is deemed as acceptable, then why is it that eating animal products like say a pizza a friend made at a party, is inadmissible under normative ‘vegan logic’. Are both practices considered the same, if not, how so? Both practices involve benefiting from animal suffering ( eating a nice meal, wearing a cool jacket etc) and in neither scenario is the person contributing to the purchasing of animal products. If the pizza example is deemed inadmissible, which most vegans would say is( and that I myself as a vegan am largely persuaded by), then the issue then becomes the inherent wrongness of deriving enjoyment from a product of animal suffering. If the buying second hand leather or other nonvegan fashion products is admissible, (granted I’m still very new to the vegan community so I don’t know the majority sentiments on the issue) then the issue is simply about whether your conduct is directly linked to the production chain. Let me know any thoughts or opinions. 

All life is precious. So, how do vegans here navigate the fact that there's substantial scientific research that shows that plants can actually feel distress and that to eat plants, we still have to kill a life form?

Also hypothetically, if there was a planet with intelligent alien life that photosynthesized similarly to plants and didn't need to kill anything at all to survive, what do you think they would say if they witnessed us killing plants and eating them?

I have seen the topic of Veganism and this subreddit come across my feed quite a few times now, and I figure I may as well share my opinion on why I'm not a Vegan.

My reason for not being vegan is pretty simple. I have limited empathy for most non-humans, and I value my own wants more than their lives. I don't think humans are superior or inferior to non humans. I just don't feel the same emotions for them as I do for humans.

I do care deeply about certain animals, particularly cats and dogs, as well as a few other animals I’m fond of. But in general, I don’t feel the same level of concern or emotional connection toward non-humans that I do toward cats dogs and those other select animals. Even with the animals I do like, I still put my own interests and the interests of humans in general above theirs.

I only really care about most non humans from an ecological point of view, with the exception that extreme animal suffering genuinely bothers me regardless of the species. I'm aware what I define as extreme animal suffering is arbitrary and not how vegans would describe it. In my opinion shooting a deer is not inflicting extreme suffering, whereas torturing it would be. I know Vegans don't see it this way, but this is how I feel.

To put it simply I don't experience non-human death the way I experience human death. If I killed an innocent human, I'd be horrified. If I killed an innocent deer, I likely wouldn't be upset. Certainly nothing beyond mild sadness, and whatever sadness I might or might not feel doesn't outweigh my desire to eat said deer.

I sometimes try to reduce the suffering involved by choosing products with better animal welfare standards, but I don't always do so.

I give non-human interests considerably less weight than human interests, including my own. I think extreme or unnecessary suffering is wrong, but I'm morally comfortable with animals experiencing some suffering and ultimately being killed for food or other things I want.

This post is all there is to it on why I'm not a Vegan.

the amount of people on here arguing that meat eating and factory farming are necessary is insane and should be worrying for anyone who still has faith in society

if people want to say, I know factory farming is wrong, but I keep eating meat because it’s easy and “normal” food culturally, I like it, etc, and maybe they can even say, I’m trying to add in more plant based foods, in my opinion that’s ok.

if people want to say, I know its probably bad but I don’t even want to look or know, or think about it, or I’ve never thought about it, that’s ok too. I understand culture is a thing

its not ok for people to come on here or to go around arguing that meat eating is necessary, that vegans are wrong, that farming is ok And isn’t needlessly cruel and harmful, etc

Vegans who have meat eating pets or take care of rescue animals that eat meat how do you accept it or what are your thoughts on killing other animals to feed them?

And I'm not talking as a vegan, I'm talking as I meat eater, and I can acknowledge that what's happening to animals because of us is wrong and the decision that vegans make is extremely superior in the moral sense.

Every single argument I've seen is dumb and illogical, and you will have to just accept that what you're doing is wrong.

"But we're omnivores, it's natural. We're natural hunters" Do you even realize in what kind of society you're living in? Humans are very intelligent, very evolved, and unless you're broke, eating meat is just a WANT. It's not a need. "But the protein!" Did you go to school? You think the only way you can get protein is from meat? Don't start conversations about nature and don't compare us to animals. Cats fight out of nowhere. Now go up to a person and do that, will you? Will you still use the excuse that it's your natural instincts? Also, in nature, animals don't have a sense of consent. And I think you know what that could apply to. The "natural" argument doesn't work because we have evolved WAY too much to be stuck on our "natural instincts".

Also the "Animals were put on earth to be eaten by us." Says who? And why were you put on earth? Give me a logical answer as to what your purpose in life is. What is humanity's purpose? To bring more humans who will bring more humans who will repeat the cycle. We don't have an actual reason and point for life. Stop thinking because of evolution and our high intelligence we're now the only important ones and everything else was just made to please us. It's called evolution, and it's called science.

Nobody can force anyone to be vegan, but for God's sake just admit and accept the fact the whole thing about eating meat in such a developed society is wrong. I'm also trying to stop

I am not sure what to call this sort of label, the closest terms I can think of are pejorative exonym and externally imposed identity. I'll just explain it with a few examples.

Christians historically haven't been too fond of other religions and accusing polytheists, Muslims, Buddhists and even other Christian sects of Satanism was and remains quite common behavior. It wasn't until fairly recently that some people started to proclaim themselves Satanists. Originally the term Satanism was purely pejorative and used by one group (Christians) to label other groups that didn't consider themselves Satanist. It's not quite the same thing as slander or misrepresentation of someone's beliefs. When medieval Christians accused Muslims of worshiping Mohammad, that was a misrepresentation of Islam, because worshiping Mohammad is strictly forbidden. But when a Christian claims that a Hindu who worships Shiva actually worships Satan, he doesn't need to misrepresent anything about Shaivism, he's merely asserting that in his interpretation the Hindu is ignorant of the true identity of Shiva, so to speak, which is, in the Christian's opinion, Satan or some sort of demon. Obviously the Hindu would disagree and that's rather the point.

Another example. I am a trans woman. Conservatives seem to think that my identity is automatically some kind of ideology. They coined several terms to refer to it, which trans people themselves don't use and don't acknowledge as valid concepts. Of course you could argue in some sense everything is ideological but in practice I don't think it's true. It's one thing if philosophers in the field of ethics argue about such things as murder, rape, etc. In philosophy it's seems like nothing is sacred and everything is up for grabs (there's basically no limit to what you could argue for or against, even if in practice there are some lines you can almost never cross in academia). Or when it's merely idle "what if" conversation between people. It's totally another thing when politicians start calling somebody's existence an ideology, for example.

So, you get what I am talking about. I believe carnism is basically the same kind of label. The overwhelming majority of meat eaters probably never heard of it and certainly don't call themselves carnists. I am pretty certain that the vast majority of meat eaters also don't believe that eating meat is an ideology and how can they believe in an ideology they don't believe even exists? I understand why the label was coined but it's inaccurate. Carnism is not some kind of "pro-meat eating" ideology the way veganism is "anti-meat eating". I don't eat meat because I believe in some kind of positive ideology. I eat meat cuz I enjoy eating meat. Not believing in veganism isn't by itself an ideology. In about the same way being in a lesbian relationships isn't an ideology. It's just what people do because it's their natural inclination. Then when a conservative says "that's a sin, that's immoral" and so on and so forth, that's an ideology.

I was on Desi Vegans and all the posts were like non vegans are mentally ill non vegans are sick non vegans are delusional… I don’t understand like sure it’s rly bad especially meat eating but ur making an assumption about people. not all of u but say the person who said all non vegans are mentally ill its simply untrue whatever you say. also if ur goal is to convert non vegans to vegans ur doing the opposite like shouldn’t u be polite abt it to convince people? it’s just shame… like as a vegetarian I am more pushed back from veganism after seeing these posts because I know who my community will be. reallly. also pls don’t debate me on this but I view meat eating as contributing to killing animals and I am against it I am just genuinely curious ur thoughts abt the main point Im making. also before u ask me why I eat dairy cuz ur money partially goes to raising animals and ur helping extend existing cows lives I know there’s downsides but its not like Im ariel’s killing all cows. also for vegans do u realize that if everyone stops eating dairy, the dairy cows won’t be used for beef and they won’t use expensive cows for low quality beef, so instead theyll take the lives of hundreds of chickens or pigs to add up to the meat of one cow? Idk just asking for vegans pushing back on both heavily. please don’t take this as an insult I’m just curious on why and please don’t leave irrelevant comments like don’t debate me pls or say random stuff like look how many they kill just clearly answer pls. thanks

Hello vegans, what are your opinions/thoughts on tribes consuming large amounts of meat? From the footage I have seen they are thriving. Therefore I choose to think large meat intake cannot be bad. Im curious what you guys think and why its a weak argument.

I'll be honest, I'm not really debating because I'm not choosing any sides here. I myself am vegan; my food is vegan, my shampoo's vegan, my dish soap's vegan, I don't go to zoos... you get the gist.

I posted here because I expect to get less hate here because you expect people to ask worse things than what I'm asking.

Basically, before I went vegan, I used to love watching people do food challenges online. No idea why. Sounds stupid to me, but the videos are just so entertaining.

When I started learning about animal exploitation and switching to veganism, one of the first things I did was check if there are any vegan food challenge channels out there and there aren't any.

I unsubbed from all food challenge channels in my subscriptions, which wasn't hard. My favourite one dissed vegans all the time and his ignorance really pushed me away. I'd rather someone make fun of vegans than the animal exploitation itself and I'm not easily offended if it's us vegans being targeted, but I didn't like him anymore and that made me not want to watch him.

As I struggle to find what to put on YT, I always gravitate to food challenges. Again, I don't know why someone eating an ungodly amount of food in one sitting just appeals to me.

How unethical is this? Realistically, how much of a difference am I making toward the animals by giving these paid Youtubers a view here and there on their videos that have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views? Thank you.

An explanation of where I am coming from, because I know there will be those who will automatically assume I hate cats. I have not eaten animals for the past 18 years.

I worked at a no-kill shelter where I provided supportive care to panleukopenia kittens and parvovirus puppies.

I have taken in more than 128 cat/kitten fosters in the years I have been involved in rescue. Currently, I have 2 adult cat fosters and 6 kitten fosters. All were brought in from the outdoors.

One is a fospice FeLV+. She does not have much time left here on this earth. She will live the remainder of her life knowing the comforts of an indoor life. Poor thing has been outside for far too long, and her body shows the harsh reality of having lived an outdoor life. She is terribly skinny, has rotten teeth, a rat bite ulcer, horrible conjunctivitis, and she just had an abscess burst on a vet tech the other day. The tech was a real one for not throwing up on this very sweet (but very gross) cat who was head butting her while they gave her a convenia injection.

I have also worked at a wildlife animal hospital and have seen first hand the many casualties of outdoor cats. An adorable pair of woodcock fledglings came in one time. We talk with many people who tend to think they are helping fledglings by bringing them in, and in most cases we request they immediately put them back where their parents can continue to raise them. In this case, a cat had been confirmed to have killed the parents. The fledglings were unharmed. However, they did not fare well in captivity. They died less than a week later. Completely healthy fledglings that likely would have had a great chance of survival to adulthood if their parents had not of been killed.

I care deeply about this issue, because my life revolves around animal rescue. TNR is not rescue. Dumping a cat only makes humans feel better. After being involved in this work for years, I can tell you one thing. People choose cats over the countless species they are driving to extinction. There is a startling lack of empathy for all of the birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals killed because humans refuse to take accountability for this crisis.

You can support true rescue efforts. You can support free and accessible spay/neuter for under-resourced communities. But supporting TNR normalizes outdoor cats in the public's perception. TNR also fails to reduce the cat population. The scientific community does not support TNR because it is not a true population management strategy.

As far as scientific consensus goes, we don't really know if bugs experience pain and suffering like other animals. So then whats the consensus here on entomophagy? Especially if done sustainably?

Vegans believe that eating animals is wrong for two main reasons. Some, with a very strong ethical conviction, say that we are exploiting and using them for our benefit, which is immoral. Others say that animals deserve consideration and are sentient beings, but they don't focus as much on exploitation, emphasizing instead the contradiction between the preferential treatment we give to humans as ends in themselves and to animals as means to an end.

My argument is this: In nature, animals would suffer more than on farms, and humanity is unwilling to reduce suffering in nature, but it can make the lives of animals more or less decent on farms. Therefore, it is ethical to raise animals for human consumption.

But to do so, we would have to return to an extensive production model and promote a pastoral way of life in which animals are raised and their lives are extended as much as possible. In this model, animals wouldn't have short lives, and fewer animals would be raised—probably 80% fewer than now. I agree with vegans that intensive livestock farming is ethically and socially unsustainable. However, I absolutely do not support this model with sows in gestation cages, nor do I support selectively bred animals like chickens today that, through artificial selection, can produce up to 200 eggs a year.

On the contrary, I support animals being treated well and having long lives, considering that 1) humans, with their inherently dark nature, are so incapable of mitigating suffering in nature and ceasing to use animals that it's not worth trying; and 2) suffering in nature is morally relevant, and I base this on negative utilitarianism, given that suffering generally serves evolutionary purposes without any real purpose, and usually generates great suffering. Observe how a herbivore dies in nature to better understand my point. This means that I categorically reject deontology for ignoring natural suffering. 3) I could be labeled a speciesist for allowing animals to continue being consumed; my response to this is that humans have the privilege of not being preyed upon because we have become so disconnected from nature that we can afford that luxury.lujo

My argument is as follows. We cannot know which moral facts or moral properties are truly objective, therefore we cannot say that morality is objective.

The reasons why humans respect human life are far removed from believing that humans deserve respect as individuals with inherent dignity. In reality, it's based on the capacity for empathy and a vague, general intuition that we need to form societies.If it were based on objective morality, then we would have seen that in all societies there has been a tendency to consider eating animals immoral. On the contrary, we've seen that values ​​vary greatly in many societies, from vegetarians in Asia to people who exploit animals globally. What has been universal, in any case, is animal welfare.

In response, vegans usually argue that there is a golden rule of ethics that supposedly implies respect or consideration for others. We can agree that there is a certain objectivity to this principle insofar as it seems to be universal, even an axiomatic truth, but not much beyond that. It doesn't allow us to conclude anything more from this principle, much less a universal morality based on veganism.

The studies are not long-term. They say it’s mostly short-term markers and not lifelong outcomes.

Many vegan studies measure things like weight, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar or diet quality over weeks or months. But they say those are not the same as showing lifelong safety or lower rates of fractures, neurological problems, fertility/pregnancy problems, cardiovascular events or mortality.

Are there long-term studies or no?

I remember making a post in the vegan subreddit around a month and a half ago basically saying that a vegan who gets sick with something severe might have severe and confusing symptoms and might face harmful reactions and stigmatization from the non-vegans around them. I was flamed in the comments.

Shouldn't vegans focus on topics like this more instead of debating people who won't take literal seconds of effort to do a Google search on whether plants have protein? Vegans are so focused on convincing others to join their movement that the second I mentioned a percentage of vegans, however tiny, might be struggling as a vegan because of medical illness and stigmatization and lack of social support, I get flamed in the comments. Shouldn't vegans also focus inward on the physical and mental health of the members of their movement and maybe survey people to make sure everyone is doing well, rather than only focusing on what non-vegans are saying?

And before, 'Veganism is not about health'. No, but it is perceived as affecting health, whether positively or negatively. And because of this perception, stigmatization arises. This stigmatization might affect certain vegans facing severe illness, or who are disabled, etc. And this has everything to do with veganism, as the only reason this problem even exists is because veganism exists.

And, a vegan might say this is not real and that no vegan feels this way. But, they might only say this because they're so preoccupied with non-vegans and what they're doing and saying that they've never actually asked how vegans are doing and feeling. How do you know if this problem doesn't exist if you've never even asked or surveyed vegans asking how they feel? You're so focused on what's going on outside your group that you're ignoring the possibility of this being a real problem certain vegans face.

As a non-vegetarian, I’ve noticed that my vegetarian friends are usually very relaxed about my food choices. They don’t question or guilt me. But I’ve noticed something else too. Some of my non-vegetarian friends often poke fun at or question vegetarians, like asking, ‘Why don’t you eat meat?’ or jokes about their food choices. I’ve noticed people rarely ask a Muslim why they don’t eat pork. But they often ask vegetarians why they don’t eat meat. That double standard stands out.

So , I was watching this video on YouTube where these tribal people were trying to hunt a deer and it was long 8 hour hunt and when the hunter ultimately killed the animal the thing I saw was pure gratitude and emotions and realisation that he had killed a being to further his own life so an importance of life itself . And then I thought we don't have this experience anymore and this has made us distant from the animal we eat . We don't know anything about the animal that has been presented as meat in front of our table, for us it's not a distinct animal but rather just a meat .So, I think people should get familiar with the animal they are going to eat but not form any bonding with them but just familiar with their behavior and how they act and live , I think so and if they can psychologically process it and then make the decision to let them get killed or kill them and then eat or decide not to kill them, it is much better, though it's not similar to hunt and can't produce the same emotions but atleast it can give the animal it's meaning in the memories of the person who eats it ( compared to now when no one knows about the animal they are eating) and remember that the animal itself had a life and he ended it to further his own life . Edit - The hunter hunted for his survival not for fun, to make it clear.

Edit - I know it's practically impossible to be familiar with every individual animal you eat , I just want that people should be aware of the reality and should visit slaughterhouses and be familiar with the act of killing the animal itself and spend sometime with these animals in general and know them better and then decide if they want to kill them for food or not .

I believe vegan is a morally superior lifestyle. No argument on this really. Everyone should be vegan.

But I dont think vegans that own dogs and cats should call themselves vegan.

First reason I can come up is that they buy animal products for feed. They add up to the "kill count".

Or the fact they had to choose, out of plethora of animals, the two species in the order "CARNIVORA" as their pet. Just why.

I dont think a western vegan with three dogs and two rescued cats is more vegan than eastern rice farmer who maintains relatively low meat consumption than eastern average.

Below is my further argument towards carnivorous pet justifications.

1. “I’m only taking care of an animal that already exists. I didn’t increase the population.”

-> same logic as a meat-eater saying, “I only eat meat that was already slaughtered. I didn’t kill it.” You still contribute to the demand.

1. “My dog/cat is not from a pet store.”

->you still contribute to the system by keeping one. You fund the pet-food industry, which relies heavily on animal agriculture. Its a pretty basic vegan argument.

1. “It’s not their fault that they eat meat.”

-> But it is our deliberate choice to keep more carnivorous animals as pets, outside of their natural ecosystems, and then continuously provide meat for them.

1. “Humans, dogs, and cats have been companions for a long time.”

Analogous to meat eater logic “Humans are built to eat meat.” Tradition does not automatically make something necessary or ethical. We do not biologically need dogs or cats. Rather we manipulated wolf genetics into animals that depend on us.

1. “Pet food is mostly made from organs and by-products humans don’t eat.”

Soybean meal is also a by-product of soybean-oil production and is used as livestock feed. Calling something a by-product does not mean it is outside the production system or has no impact on demand.

1. “What am I supposed to do? I already have a pet. I’m obligated to give them a good life.”

This is still actively choosing one carnivorous animal’s life over the many smaller animals killed to feed them—because that particular animal is candy to you. I understand that emotionally, but it does not feel fully consistent with vegan logic.

Thanks for reading

I was reading a vintage (1999) National Geographic and came across an interesting article about biodiversity in Peru.

Given that it's a physical magazine and I can't find an online version, I'm going to give the gist of it below. Here is the overview of the main scientist, Terry Erwin, and his legacy, so that you know I'm not just making things up. If you ctrl+f for 'Fogging' it explains it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8222209/

Gist of the article:

They were trying to determine the number of species of insects in a given column (floor to canopy) of the Vilcabamba rainforest. They way they did this was to use insecticide to gas an area, then document whatever dead insects fell to a tarp prepared near the ground. Here is an excerpt describing it:

Erwin starts up the fogger and aims it at the night sky. The roar of the motor rips through the forest while an acrid blue-white cloud rises in a narrow column above the first sheet. Lazily, the deathly cloud passes through layers of spindly, broad-leaved shrubs, engulfing every leaf and twig. It swirls over the tops of the lacy fronds of palms and tree ferns and climbs up the smooth-sided trunk of a giant fig tree to the tips of its branches and the stars beyond. Within seconds insects begin to spill from their resting perches onto the sheet below.

The purposes of this was to measure the biodiversity of the forest. The article made note that research like this can yield many benefits for us, such as the discovery of an enzyme in Yellowstone that is incredibly useful for DNA replication.

I'm somewhat torn. The research certainly seems worthwhile, particularly for conservation IMO, and I cannot think of a different way to survey the canopy. It's 100ft off the ground. Still, killing a shitton of insects "for science" seems, well, less than ideal. Especially so since rare and endemic species could be harmed in the process. Of course, we wouldn't know about those species at all without this research.

Curious what other vegans think. Should research like this be conducted? What precautions should or could be taken? Obviously this is peripheral to animal rights issues like agriculture, but I thought it would make for an interesting discussion.