Cattle ranchers are making less money in the US despite beef prices at an all-time high. In the meantime, Trump started importing beef from Argentina to lower beef prices, but only achieved to lower cattle prices.
Cattle ranchers are making less money in the US despite beef prices at an all-time high. In the meantime, Trump started importing beef from Argentina to lower beef prices, but only achieved to lower cattle prices.
When a cheetah hunts a gazelle, the gazelle doesn’t consent to death. When parasites infest you, you don’t consent. When cows eat grass, the grass doesn’t consent.
There is nearly no form of food consumption that doesn’t extinguish a life or subjugate another lifeform. Until we can grow food in tubes to feed the human race, that will stay a fact of life for humans. Wild animals will continue though and that isn’t something we can nor should intervene in.
Sure.
My main reason for doing the vegan thing for so long wasn’t animal ethics…it was environmentalism and efficiency. Animal ethics came secondary, but I did come to understand the perspective.
Humanity is now able to make fully sustainable diets from non-animal sources. Some micronutrients (namely B12, D, Iron, Zinc, and Omega-3s) are difficult but not impossible to vegan-source.
I do not see a sustainable way to feed humanity going forward on an omnivorous diet. Especially not one that involves the volume of red meat that is found in a typical American diet.
However…your appeal to nature fallacy is flawed when you realize that there is nothing natural about modern agricultural livestock. You could say that an (American) slave had a better life than a person in the wilds of Africa. That obviously wouldn’t be accurate…but you could say it.
It’s not so much a matter of eat-or-be-eaten but one of freedom. And bovines especially…highly social creatures and incredible emotional intelligence. More than we give them credit for.
But even my hens exhibit unique “personalities” (chickenalities?), social hierarchy, even daily routines. I got one girl who, every day, I let them out, she follows me to the nesting box, checks out the situation, pecks my leg twice, then goes to her favorite dust-bath spot so the others don’t get there first.