This study estimates 7.3 billion animals die each year from harvested cropland in the US alone (not including insects).
Can we agree to stop raising animals >specifically< for killing and consumption?
Subsequently, we can tackle the problem of accidental killing of animals through farming practices.
No, because we omnivores enjoy eating animals, and there are not enough which die of natural causes to go around, and many natural causes make the meat unsafe to eat.
This is controversial, but I feel that eating animals is fundamental to being human and that to eat only plants is less than human — perhaps paradoxically, like an animal. I know many, many people disagree, but it’s how I feel, and no amount of rational argument will change that.
No. "Let's all do exactly what I want" isn't an "agreement", or a "compromise" or anything remotely related.
How many sentient lives are you ending each year through your plant diet?
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
If everyone turned vegetarian—or better still, vegan—we could easily return 75% of current cropland to nature[1], and still feed more people than we do today. Meat is just ridiculously water- and resource-intensive; plus, the animals that are reared for said meat are non-trivial contributors to CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
> we can’t create a meal without hurting animals
This is a Western problem. India, for instance, contains more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together, times five.
The reason the DA couldn't go with burglary is because that would require the object taken to have positive value, and those companies don't want to claim they also sell slaughtered animals who were diseased to the verge of death. If they discard their bodies as they corpses they do, they are of no value to the farmers and thus could not have been the subject of a burglary.
Honestly though, more labor and lower yields with the promise that future generations will have healthy soil is a reasonable trade off to me.
Monoculture is what's new and weird.
Philosophical take: Every day animals kill other animals to survive. We can't change that. Why should humans be forbidden to kill & eat animals?
Adopting the moral code of animals, as justification for killing them, while simultaneously leaning on our supremely advanced intelligence to separate us from them so that we don't feel bad about it. Ironic.
We have higher-order thinking as well as choice - can use those to choose not to cause terrible suffering to sentient beings where we don't have to.
As a human, I can live a perfectly happy, healthy life without eating animals. Statistically it’s healthier, cheaper, and has no downside other than taste (meat tastes good, no argument here).
So ethically, how is eating meat any different than torturing and killing animals for pleasure?
Edit: typo
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
> I wouldn’t be surprised if that number is less than the number of animals humans slaughter
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...
Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/
Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption
> Like, I’ve heard that there are more chickens alive right now than all other birds combined
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass#global...
We have twice as much poultry by weight as wild birds.
> We have twice as much poultry by weight as wild birds.
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-cats-and-...
In a paper published today in the journal PLOS One, Okin says he found that cats and dogs are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. If Americans’ 163 million Fidos and Felixes comprised a separate country, their fluffy nation would rank fifth in global meat consumption
There’s 300M people in the US. Think of how many chickens you need to slaughter a day.
https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/
which facilitates bulk data downloads in XML | JSON and additional hosts a BETA data explorer interactive web front end:
I have no opinion on the accuracy of the article linked, had I the time ATM I'd work through this myself (as I often do for all manner of things).
Nevertheless I'd recommend reading "The Extended Circle: An Anthology of Humane Thought" (Jon Wynne Tyson). It's one of only a handful of books I've kept a copy of for a very many years and peruse regularly, taking the form of quotes from famous people, not so famous people, historical personages, and founding texts, all concerning the human relationship to animals. A very moving and wounding book.
That's... just how food works?
