Let’s not forget bugs. Current farming techniques include the use of pesticides. Unfortunately, and what may just end us, is that those pesticides kill pollinators.
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I wasn’t going to go there, though I did mention Monsanto previously. It’s basically simple. We gotsta eat.
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You said it previously, life eats life. I think that is the basic point here.
Yes I think animal farming should be done differently, yes I think plant farming should be done differently.
But it all comes down to the habits of the masses. What they buy will be produced. I like to think that all of us both vegans, vegetarians and omnivores along with carnivores who care about our diet will eventually swing the scale in a different direction of mass production.
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All of us?
Look… It is my nature to be arrogant and flip. I have this brain that just wants to scream out, 'What about this? What about that?" and I do it in every single situation. Even when people are in complete agreement with me. (I do it to myself… One of my favorite psychotherapists recommended, “Each and every time we thought we knew what was going on with a client, we should lie down until the thought went away.” As pedantic of an ass as I make myself sound, that is the result of convincing courts and insurance companies that I know what I am talking about so that I can get paid. LOL
So, with that said… given your paradigm of altering the eating habits of ‘The Masses.’ I would assert that it is only in first world countries with markets packed full of fresh produce and meats that such things are of concern. Using a poverty line of $20 a day, 78% of the world’s population live in poverty. (That’s $20 for food, shelter, clothing, and all else.) I have to wonder if these people care at all what they eat.
I have eaten racoons. on poor farms in Korea, rats in Thailand. In Compton, California, I have been to homes of lovely retired people, who live by turning their welfare check over to their churches. They live in bed-bug infested hovels, with weekly food dumped on their doorsteps from the local food bank. … Hmm… Now that I think about it… Perhaps these people are not eating too much meat anyway. But what happens when they can afford it? Well, what happened to India when it could suddenly afford meat?
According to the OECD, which said that India’s consumption of meat has steadily shot up with every passing year, the country consumed 6 million tonnes of meat in 2020.Jul 13, 2022.
While I applaud your sentiment, I think the facts are stacked against you. I personally think our hope to a better future lies with science and the production of meat products in a laboratory environment. It would be like getting all the benefits of killing without killing. (Well, we still gotta kill the cells, but who cares about those souless little animals. Can we call them animals?)
I seriously don’t know if the habits of the masses have anything to do with anything. I just wonder. There are a whole lot of variables there.
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Or is he? Hmm 
Hmm 
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If you aren’t going to be intellectually honest and address the multiple fallacies I’ve highlighted, and the counter arguments I have made.
You also continue to strawman my position.
I have lost all respect for you, directly because of your intellectual dishonesty, that you have displayed here.
I have shown you aren’t capable of accepting when you are demonstrated to be wrong.
Instead you just choose to ignore it.
Your credibility in my eyes, has dropped to the standard of Sid.
From here on out @Cognostic you’ll get no response from me, as I don’t see the point in conversing with you further, let’s call this applying the grey rock method.
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I did say I like to think that way, not that it is actually my opinion.
However, I have to apologise for my sloppy English.
I didn’t mean to say masses in general, rather I was talking about masses in consumer market.
Those on or under the edge of poverty are not the ones influencing the behaviour of big farms and food producers.
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I don’t actually think it matters that much. As the means of production improves, more people will eat more meat. I’m 6 ft tall. 27 years ago when I came to Korea, I was a giant. They started a milk program in the schools. They began importing beef from Australia and the USA. Outback, MacDonalds, Burger King, opened chain restaurants. The kids to day are every bit as big as me. This also happened in Japan and is happening in China. (I assume that is what has gone on in India from the article I posted previously.) I don’t think there is a solution. As previously stated… people with full refrigerators have time to think about this stuff.
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Since morality is subjective the words “in my opinion” should be in there. It’s a personal choice whether to eat meat, precisely because it is usually based on personal subjective morals. We may be appalled by some people’s moral choices, but this doesn’t make us right and them wrong, or vice versa.
They’re only “better” choices if one holds the subjective belief that reducing animal suffering is a better way to live of course.
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Makes sense to me. And then there is the issue of thinking you are more moral or ethical? Hmmmm?
Yeah I get it, ethics can’t be measured or quantified in that way, only comparatively, and even then a broad consensus is still just the subjective opinion of most people. In Nazi Germany for example this seems a problematic way to assess the worth of moral claims. How about the fact that most people in the world believe in deities and the supernatural, and this informs their morality, now I’m in a minority.
This I can’t agree with.
I also don’t agree that all morality is subjective, there are times when it is objective that actions cause harm to others.
In this instance, it is objectively demonstrable that suffering of animals is caused to a higher degree by choosing to eat meat, than simply sticking to plant based products.
Not a better way to live, that isn’t my position.
Instead, that it is to a higher ethical standard, or ‘more moral.’
This is objectively true, because less animals are suffering.
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I think you made that up. As has been pointed out, farming causes loss of animal life as well. Is there data that indicates whether a diet made of all plants reduces or increases animal death?
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It is such a difficult thing to quantify, yet I made an attempt previously.
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What is and isn’t harm is also subjective…
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Putting an end to the life of a species, that can perceive living, is objectively harmful.
This isn’t subjective.
I don’t care if some people claim that it isn’t harm, they are objectively wrong.
What will you say to the next theist who posts that morality is objective?
What do you say to someone who insists farming is objectively immoral because it kills bees?
What would you say to a person who is convinced that being atheist causes harm so it is immoral?
Are you claiming to be the arbiter of what is objective? What is harmful? What is wrong?
This isn’t my position.
I don’t claim all morality is objective.
I claim that morality can be objective.
No, the arbiter of what is objectively moral, what is objectively verified as causing harm to others, in this instance, the death of animal that understands death and doesn’t want it.
the life of insects, doesn’t fall under the umbrella of perceiving life, Bumble bees as far as I am aware, don’t perceive the concept of dying. Sure, they can choose to not sting, even halfway through the process, but this can be attributed to reflexive action caused by natural selection, not an actual cognitive thought of ‘I don’t want to die.’
I'll Bee There for You: Do Insects Feel Emotions? | Scientific American.
The studies are inconclusive, but I hold the position to withhold belief that bees have emotions, until further evidence is presented.
I also want to reinforce what I previously mentioned about practicality, even if insects are categorically demonstrated to have emotions and suffer on the cognitive levels that it could be deemed immoral to kill them, the avoidance of killing them isn’t always practical for an individual.
Indeed actions can cause harm, but whether we think causing harm is immoral or not is entirely subjective, you seem to have focused on a straw man there.
Again this is not the point, the point is that the idea that causing suffering is less moral than avoiding it, is a subjective opinion.
And again this would only be true if one held that position to be moral, and holding that position would be subjective.
Well lets leave aside quantifying animal suffering objectively for a moment, as it misses the point here I feel. Since the opinion that causing or not preventing suffering is more moral than causing or not preventing suffering (even if we can objectively quantify suffering) is itself a subjective opinion,
All morality is subjective, it cannot be otherwise. One may prefer a world with less suffering, but that preference is not objectively more moral just because we wish it to be so.
Yet the idea it is wrong or bad to do so is subjective.
The basis of morality is subjective, the ways in which we might best achieve that morality can be objectively measured, but morality is subjective.
Just give one example of something that you think is objectively moral.
Can you say why you think this is immoral without resorting to subjective opinion? I seriously doubt that you can, but am intrigued to hear what you have to say.
Lets say (for the sake of argument) that it is objectively true that not eating meat will likely reduce animal suffering,. Now, this doesn’t mean that it is objectively moral not to eat meat, only that not eating meat would objectively be more likely to satisfy your subjective morality.
I don’t see how you can demonstrate this to be the case, if you are to make this assertion, could I not just assert the opposite or closely to?
I disagree, if harm is being caused then it is objectively being caused, regardless as to whether or not the person causing it perceives it so.
So you assert, but I don’t see how you can back this assertion up.
No, harm is because caused, this is fact, objective.
For the life of an animal to have been put an end to, it is being destroyed, harmed.
Putting the end to a life that would have carried on living if it wasn’t for the action in question.
Yes, life ending is objectively harmful for that life.