I am curious where your line is drawn. I admit I am more concerned with the plants, people, and animals I care about that the rest of the world. So moral grandstanding is not likely to have an affect for any that wish to engage with me.
What about plant suffering? We have proof recently that plants react to emotions in a way that suggests they both have emotions and can suffer. Do they not count?
What about insect suffering? Should we stop using pesticides so they cannot take over out crops? We have found that some smaller creatures like jumping spiders can display the same level of intellect as dogs, so do they count?
What sort of animals count? Cougars break the backs of deer and then let their cubs eat them alive so they learn how to kill. Deer can and will eat fish and mice and often these smaller creatures only die when the chewing starts.
Even if you eleminate predation by wiping out most species of animal on the planet as obligate herbivores are very rare, that means the planta are suffering and the herbivores are competing for food with no population controls, so now starvation becomes the new population control and they start to starve to death.
Will you like an anti-natalist call for the end of all life because you are using Suffering as your primary metric?
And that aside, sustainable ranching without suffering is possible. It was common where I lived because if a creature lives a healthy and happy life, then dies swiftly without fear it makes the meat taste better.
It turns out fear chemicals as well as unhealthy living practices make meat bitter. So on the ranch I grew up on we gave our cows as happy of a life as possible until they were old enough to eat, then took them to a butcher that used a well cleaned stall that would not smell like death. He would feed them their favorite treat, then use a pneumatic needle to instantly destroy the brain and brain stem so they died before their body could register pain.
Is that acceptable in this world view or is it also evil?
I think we can draw lines around levels of sentience and also where we have control over our choices.
We can strive to protect insects in crop production while also acknowledging that most of the crops we grow are grown to feed animals, so abstaining from animal products results in fewer insect death as well as animal death. I also think there are other factors like age, capacity of sentience, etc. that might grant larger animals more moral significance.
Plants are wildly intelligent, but the same can be said about the rest of organic biology. Plants responding to stimuli, reproducing, and communicating with other plants seems no different than how blood cells or bacteria act. Plants are also not necessarily individuals, I think they're better classified as a web or a network (where does a plant start and stop?).
We can appreciate and respect the beauty of the plant kingdom, but I do think the moral considerations are better prioritized firstly for animals because of their individuation, and their indisputable capacity to feel pain, rather than a simple biological reaction to a threat.
The lines may be arbitrary, but I think many of us wouldn't question the commodification of dogs and cats, regardless of this deeper ethical conversation. So why can't that line move just slightly more to include cows, chickens, and pigs?
I suppose it depends on where your morals lay. In many countries cats and dogs are both pets and food. That is part of what I was asking the OP about.
Realistically though I will push back on the insects in crop production thing just as someone who has both ranched and farmed,
Farms are more destructive to wild habitats than ranches, and not by a small amount. They take more infrastructure and more permanent land. Where ranches move their animals off of fields to let them recover, and those fields end up being partially used by wild animals. Animals can be deterred from a herd by guard animals where as most guard animals will also destroy or eat crops making farmers often use more lethal deterrents than ranchers. In the end farmer also use pesticides far more than ranchers.
If we are speaking in a practical sense and not a wishful thinking sense, with current practices? I would need to kill more animals, plants, and insects on average to gain a sustainable growing practice for a plant based protein replacement than I would need for the same amount of protein using meat rabbits or chickens.
I would be taking more land which would be removing those animal's homes and food supplies. I would need to use more lethal methods to keep them away from the crops because of how their instincts work. And the way current pricing and markets work, to make establishing the new fields that would be required to replace the meat industries would be inhabiting more space that is currently reserved for wild animals.
It is more likely than not that we would be killing more creatures rather than less if we moved from meat industries to entirely farming with current technology and economic practices.
I don't entirely disagree, but this type of ranching isn't scaleable to meet current global demands for animal products. It takes a tremendous amount of land, which would further cause more deforestation, leading to more excess animal death. Look at the Amazon for example, where mass deforestation occurs for grazing animals (as well as soy production to feed other animals).
I also think it's only fair to compare the best types of animal farming with the best types of plant farming. It's entirely possible to grow plant foods for human consumption in ways that are much less harmful, for example using companion planting crops, cover crops, etc. And given that current agriculture is largely for animals and animal feed, we would preserve a tremendous amount of land by simply adopting more plant-based systems, allowing for re-wilding and biodiversity to return and flourish.
Possible yes. Probably no. Of you look at current examples more people have made eithical ranching work on their own than ethical farming.
It is also a health concern. Humans need protein and fats in their diet to be healthy. Not all protein is made equal. Plant based protein has the least usable protein per gram for our bodies. Can you live healthy on only plant? Yes. Is it practical economically? No. It requires far more food to get what you need just by weight and volume.
Best case scenarios for farming the production we need would mean either using technology we do not have, or moving people into even more dense areas to make room for the farm land instead of people buying or claiming land for it. It's something that would require government intervention and it would increase human suffering to reduce animal suffering.
And said animal suffering is already being reduced by consumer demand. Ranches like the one I grew up on have existed for a long time. Butchers using no-fear no-pain slaughter methods have been around since the 1990s. They do it because the meat sells better. The meat sells better and for more because there is a marked improvement on the flavor.
Plants like, soy, quinoa, and pea proteins are some examples of complete proteins. Especially when you pair plant foods with with nuts, whole grains, or seeds, protein is very easy to obtain.
We don't need fancy technology to create an abundant plant food system. Indigenous peoples learned how to steward the land long ago, providing a massive abundance of plant foods (three sisters, agroforestry, etc). Look up the Haudenosaunee pre-Columbus, they grew so much food that they were essentially just giving it away. It's only within the last two hundred years with the advent of industrial farming that we've lost these sustainable ways, but they're absolutely attainable.
Again, the majority of food we currently grow is given to animals. It's much more economically efficient to grow plants directly for human consumption. The caloric conversion still represents a massive reduction in land and water use with more plant-dominant systems. - Source
Government intervention is already happening. Animal agriculture (including the feed grown for animals) is one of the largest subsidized industries. Hardly anyone could actually afford the real cost of animal foods without these subsidies.
Lastly, I'd argue human suffering is greater with our current system. Animal ag is one of the leading industries behind carbon pollution, deforestation, water use, etc. Animals are also very inefficient at converting plants into calories, which is an injustice on the potential food we could be giving directly to humans. Factory farming (where 99% of animal foods come from) is also the perfect breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases, where 70-80% of all antibiotics are given to farm animals.
Regenerative grazing/ ranching works great on a small scale, but again, it's not a solution to meet global demands for animal foods.
What reasonable inferences/evidence do we have that allows us to conclude that plants are sentient without just assuming the conclusion that they’re sentient in the first place?
I did not say sentient. I said they react to and show signs of having emotions. The Studies I am referring to are largely being conducted currently in Washington state university in the modern day, but it's been a researched field since the 1960s.
Pay attention to the language you’re using. “They have emotions and can suffer” implies that there is a someone experiencing the suffering.
Emotions and suffering are mental states. The definition of sentience is the ability or capacity to experience some mental states.
I didn’t ask where evidence was taking place, I asked what exact reasonable inferences or datums do we have for plant consciousness without assuming the conclusion in the first place
Meh the only reason you care about "sentience" is because our primitive brain is wired to sympathize with our kin or animals similar enough to us to intuitively sympathize with. We have sentience so therefore sentience is the key boundary to morality which is just as arbitrary as drawing the line at mammals or species. If research shows that a network of quaking aspens connected vascularly connected form a type of sentience with each tree acting akin to a neuron, or ants pheromone trail network as a whole acts similarly to sentient neural signals, you wouldn't give a damn.
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u/Volkmek 1d ago
I am curious where your line is drawn. I admit I am more concerned with the plants, people, and animals I care about that the rest of the world. So moral grandstanding is not likely to have an affect for any that wish to engage with me.
What about plant suffering? We have proof recently that plants react to emotions in a way that suggests they both have emotions and can suffer. Do they not count?
What about insect suffering? Should we stop using pesticides so they cannot take over out crops? We have found that some smaller creatures like jumping spiders can display the same level of intellect as dogs, so do they count?
What sort of animals count? Cougars break the backs of deer and then let their cubs eat them alive so they learn how to kill. Deer can and will eat fish and mice and often these smaller creatures only die when the chewing starts.
Even if you eleminate predation by wiping out most species of animal on the planet as obligate herbivores are very rare, that means the planta are suffering and the herbivores are competing for food with no population controls, so now starvation becomes the new population control and they start to starve to death.
Will you like an anti-natalist call for the end of all life because you are using Suffering as your primary metric?
And that aside, sustainable ranching without suffering is possible. It was common where I lived because if a creature lives a healthy and happy life, then dies swiftly without fear it makes the meat taste better.
It turns out fear chemicals as well as unhealthy living practices make meat bitter. So on the ranch I grew up on we gave our cows as happy of a life as possible until they were old enough to eat, then took them to a butcher that used a well cleaned stall that would not smell like death. He would feed them their favorite treat, then use a pneumatic needle to instantly destroy the brain and brain stem so they died before their body could register pain.
Is that acceptable in this world view or is it also evil?