this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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I've had debates with vegans on something similar:
I'm not vegan, I'll never be vegan. That's a complete non-starter for me.
What I have done is reduce my meat intake from 2/sometimes 3 meals a day to 1 meal per day - occasionally (less than once per month) two. Once Lab-grown meat is a viable alternative on cost/taste/texture, I'll be all over that. I still won't be vegan. Even if I reach a point where no animals are harmed from my diet.
I believe it is far easier to convince 1 Million people to do this than it would be to convert 100,000 people to full veganism. A Million people doing this would save Billions more animals per year than 100,000 vegan conversions and maybe even in itself convert a few of those people to full veganism along the way.
They're never interested. It's all or nothing. Black or white. Vegan or Animal killer. They usually have issues with lab grown meat, as well.
It's as though they're a member of an elite club and membership is more important than actually saving animals.
I mean, most vegans would still commend your effort to reduce animal product consumption.
But from a moral standpoint, simply eating less animal products really doesn't have much value. Imagine using your argument for other moral dilemmas.
"Racism is wrong, so I reduced the amount of racial slurs I use to only 1/3"
"Rape is wrong, so I only rape on Mondays now" (in reference to meatless Mondays)
I hate to be so militant about it, but you either think animal abuse is acceptable or you don't.
Now, what I do think could be a moral standpoint, if you really want to still be able to eat meat, is to only eat "humane" meat. I put "humane" in quotes because even farmers with the best intentions are still killing animals young. I don't personally believe any animal product can be humane, but even then I can recognize that any animal that was raised on a pasture and ate real food is more ethical to eat than one in a factory.
So if you genuinely only ate pasture raised beef and chicken (and you were sure about it), then I would say that is quite honorable.
Ahh yeah about that: My reasons are not what you're calling "moral". We are naturally omnivores. We've been omnivorous since before we came down from the trees. Probably since before we left the water. I don't have a problem eating meat. I think a vegan diet is unnatural for us, though I have no issues with anyone who chooses that lifestyle.
My reasons are from a sustainability/environmental position. Our present consumption levels already put a strain on the planet, and we sure couldn’t sustain it if everyone on the planet ate meat three meaty meals a day. This is another reason I’m all about that lab grown meat.
Okay but there's a moral hierarchy when it comes to eating meat. Humans used to hunt, meaning we would kill animals that lived natural lives. Not to mention, we would typically target animals that were older or sickly, because we would have a harder time killing animals that are in their prime.
That's so much different from modern day agriculture practices. We raise animals in fences so tight they can't turn their heads, and feed them nasty stuff. We abuse the shit out of them until they reach the point where we deem them the most profitable then we kill them. There's nothing natural about that.
Also, it's really hard to know for sure, but we have a good amount of evidence that humans didn't eat that much meat. First of all, the animals we hunted wouldn't be nearly as fat as the animals we eat today. Secondly, there's evidence that many humans ate roughly 100g of fiber per day, which is not possible if you had any serious amount of meat. Humans ate a lot of plants. 100g of fiber is an insane amount of plants.