Militant Vegans - MEAT IS MURDER, YOU BLOODMOUTHS

[RichardMongler]

"Counter-reasearch" implies that there is quality research to be countered. There isn't. The claims you brought up are either twisted or falsifications. The agri-science is pretty clear on what is and is not best practices.

Let's break down the factory farm water usage claim as an example. The water usage is largely attributed to what was used to grow feed crops. But the crops are nearly all grown with dryland farming practices. Not only that but they are all tertiary crops i.e what is grown on the odd year out in a crop rotation. That is when they aren't just processing waste products (peapods, corncobs, spoilage, etc). That changes the equation a bit, doncha think?

When you start digging and get into what the agri-scientists, farmers, ag service people, and industry organizations say (not the activists and unqualified scientists like ecologists who are almost universally exceptional when it comes to speaking knowledgeably about ag stuff) it becomes readily apparent that very little of any of this has any merit at all.

It also becomes apparent that the activist people think that operating very small oversized-garden "farms" is the most efficient method of food production. This, as best as I can tell, is based on an ambiguous definition of "sustainable" that these hobby farms apparently inherently possess. This calculation apparently does not consider poor land use, low yields, and high losses to be antithecal to "sustainability".

A good way to discretely grow weed and a bad way of growing anything else.

They push it because people like me unhelpfully point out that their crappy hobby farms are inefficient and insufficient to meet demand. In response they came up with a retardedly complicated untried system to champion as a panacea.

They really, really, don't want to accept that modern best practices are actually, gasp, the best practices and that their ideologically-based masturbatory fantasy/theories are impractical.

One last thing I'll bring up is this article by Chris Hedges. Boldest claims in the article:

A person who is vegan will save 1,100 gallons of water, 20 pounds CO2 equivalent, 30 square feet of forested land, 45 pounds of grain and one sentient animal’s life1 every day.
...
Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all worldwide transportation combined — cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes.3 Livestock and their waste and flatulence account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.4 Livestock causes 65 percent of all emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide.5 Crops grown for livestock feed consume 56 percent of the water used in the United States.6 Eighty percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals, and most of this soy is grown on cleared lands that were once rain forests. All this is taking place as an estimated 6 million children across the planet die each year from starvation and as hunger and malnutrition affect an additional 1 billion people.7 In the United States 70 percent of the grain we grow goes to feed livestock raised for consumption.8

The natural resources used to produce even minimal amounts of animal products are staggering — 1,000 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk.9 Add to this the massive clear cutting and other destruction of forests, especially in the Amazon — where forest destruction has risen to 91 percent10 — and we find ourselves lethally despoiling the lungs of the earth largely for the benefit of the animal agriculture industry. Our forests, especially our rain forests, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exchange it for oxygen: Killing the forests is a death sentence for the planet. Land devoted exclusively to raising livestock now represents 45 percent of the earth’s land mass.11
...
Richard A. Oppenlander in his book, “Comfortably Unaware: What We Choose to Eat Is Killing Us and Our Planet,” draws the terrifying scenarios that lie ahead unless we change what we eat. He notes that we can save more water by refusing to eat a pound of beef — which takes more than 5,000 gallons of water to produce12 — than by not showering for a year and that half the water in the United States is used to sustain livestock.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

One last thing I'll bring up is this article by Chris Hedges. Boldest claims in the article:

Eighty percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals, and most of this soy is grown on cleared lands that were once rain forests.

Yeah, all those rainforests in Iowa. Is this person retarded?

All the claims are stupid as fuck propaganda crap but here's one that particularly annoys me.

In the United States 70 percent of the grain we grow goes to feed livestock raised for consumption.

Fucking no. First, that is just flat out wrong. We don't feed wheat to livestock. Livestock get the crap like field corn, soybeans, cottonseed, and barley. They don't eat the primo cash-crop grain and those high-dollar grains make up a helluva lot more than 30% of what is grown.

Second, "factory farms" or whatever where the livestock live in little pens and eat grain until they are slaughtered are largely a fiction. It happens in chicken and pig operations sorta. But the food isn't solely grain. It's a mix of many different things to get a specific nutritional profile.

Cattle is probably the worst example of this "factory farm" fiction. Beef cattle spend years living on rangeland or mixed pasture and only a tiny fraction at the very end on a feedlot. Three months max. The cattle are bought at auction from ranchers and are then fattened to achieve proper marbling on these feed lots before slaughter. Nobody is raising beef cattle in a little pen like a hog. That isn't how it is done.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

https://www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/news/vitro-meat-distraction-veganism

Leaving aside the discussion about whether or not in vitro meat (IVM) is capable of reducing (non-human animal) suffering; reducing environmental impact and positively affecting human health, The Vegan Society considers that at the present time in vitro meat is a distraction from its core work of advocating plant-based (vegan) diets.

In vitro meat is likely to be an expensive item for quite some time. Plant-based diets are readily available and need not be expensive. There is still much public resistance to IVM whereas everyone already eats some plant-based foods in their diets (although many people do not eat enough of these foods for good health). It is possible that in order to overcome the public resistance to IVM, governments and charities will be asked to fund PR campaigns and meet the research and development costs of IVM.

Public revenue may be spent on developing and promoting a technology and product that the majority of the public does not want and that will be of benefit to only those who can afford it. IVM will produce inequalities of wealthy meat eaters who will be able to pay for the benefits claimed for IVM - a situation analogous to the current claims made for 'free range organic meat'. Furthermore, IVM ignores the powerful vested interests and social forces that create ‘demand’ for meat and that routinely stigmatise veganism. In fact IVM further stimulates ‘demand’ for meat by perpetuating a myth that meat is and will always be intrinsically desirable.

Promoting veganism has immediate potential. Plant-based diets are available here and now and are democratic rather than discriminatory. The massive scale of exploitation of other animals and environmental damage consequent to meat eating must not wait for the speculative promises of IVM advocates for a solution. Idiosyncratic tastes aside, the public do not currently object to eating plants. There is no ‘yuck factor’ to be overcome. Better policy alternatives to promoting IVM might therefore include: subsidising the substitution of horticulture, forestry and so on for the exploitation of farmed animals; educating the public on the preparation, benefits and pleasures of plant-based diets; changing public food procurement policies to make plant-based meals ubiquitous in public services such as schools and hospitals and eliminating the advertising of foods that depend on the exploitation of farmed animals.

Written by Dr Matthew Cole, chair of The Vegan Society Research Advisory Committee References: Cole, M. (2010) Is in vitro meat the future of food? The case against, paper presented at Vegetarian Society AGM, 11 Sept, Dragon House, London.

So, yes, basically, synthmeat is bad because it normalises carnism. Even though it can be developed to the point at which it can be produced en masse without any requirement for land use or similar in industrial and chemical processes.

 

[Adamska]

They're literally just mad that they'll need to find a new way to be special whenever Synthmeat becomes readily available on market.

 

[tumblrkek]

It's funny to see 57 pages of retards sperging on animal rights on social medias while achieving absolutely nothing.

I'm pretty sure that if you adopt a good attitude as a meat consumer (for example buying meat coming from local farms treating their animals responsibly and pass on white-label product), you will do ten times more for the animals than all of these attention seeking morons combined will ever hope to achieve.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

They're literally just mad that they'll need to find a new way to be special whenever Synthmeat becomes readily available on market.

They're already doing that. Because synthmeat was developed from stem cells taken from (living) animals, it's exploiting those animals even though the same cells have been cloned many times since then and never came into contact with an animal in the form at which they are purveyed to the end user.

you will do ten times more for the animals than all of these attention seeking morons combined will ever hope to achieve.

But how will your hipster mates know how ethical you are?

 

[pozilei]

They're literally just mad that they'll need to find a new way to be special whenever Synthmeat becomes readily available on market.

Yeah, this basically. For most vegans their "good person" identity is so deeply tied into the meat=murder shit that they just don't want to imagine this going away.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

One last thing I'll bring up is this article by Chris Hedges. Boldest claims in the article:

Goddamn, I can't leave this thing alone.

Livestock and their waste and flatulence account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

These fuckfaces don't even know how their own doomsday eco-disaster works. Carbon emissions happen all the time, it's the carbon cycle. If the livestock didn't eat the feed and emit CO2, the carbon would stay in the feed. If the feed wasn't grown, the plants it is made from wouldn't absorb the carbon from the atmosphere. It's zero-sum. It is just shuffling around carbon that is already active in the environment.

However, if you are emitting CO2 from a coalfield or oil well or whatever that has had the carbon locked up since the late cretaceous period that unbalances the equation. That isn't zero-sum. That is the issue.

 

[Koby_Fish]

Goddamn, I can't leave this thing alone.

These fuckfaces don't even know how their own doomsday eco-disaster works. Carbon emissions happen all the time, it's the carbon cycle. If the livestock didn't eat the feed and emit CO2, the carbon would stay in the feed. If the feed wasn't grown, the plants it is made from wouldn't absorb the carbon from the atmosphere. It's zero-sum. It is just shuffling around carbon that is already active in the environment.

However, if you are emitting CO2 from a coalfield or oil well or whatever that has had the carbon locked up since the late cretaceous period that unbalances the equation. That isn't zero-sum. That is the issue.

I once had a math teacher in high school who was a vegetarian. He was amusing rather than full-on exceptional, but he had a cute pro-vegetarian poster with a cartoonish Tyrannosaurus Rex with a bib, knife, and fork and crosseyed expression, and I think it was 100 reasons to go vegetarian (the word "vegan" had not yet graced our lexicon with its exceptionality) pinned to the wall of his classroom. One of the claims that all the grain that goes to feed cattle could feed the starving people of the world because it takes something like 4 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef or something. It didn't mention CO2 emmissions, since "Climate Change/Global Warming" was not yet on the radar, but it mentioned how much more water it takes to "produce a pound of beef" vs an equivalent amount of grain (protip: that's not how water works).

None of this took into account that cows eat grass and hay, which humans cannot utilize properly for nutrition, and grain is usually mostly used in "finishing lots" (or to feed lactating cows who crave grain--I've seen lactating does stand on hind legs to get at the grain in a bird feeder). In fact the demand for grass-fed beef has increased over the years.

There were some other goofy arguments, such as the job with the highest turnover rate (rate of people either being fired or outright quitting) was US slaughterhouse worker (CITATION NEEDED but not given, but even then, SO WHAT?), claiming that the humane "captive bolt pistol" is often not used in a slaughterhouse because at 1c per shot it's "too expensive" (CITATION NEEDED), and last but not least, the last reason was that the greatest carnivore ever, the T-rex, was last seen 65 million years ago. (Insinuating that it went extinct because it was a carnivore and completely ignoring the great predators of today like the lion, the wolf, the eagle, etc, are all still around).

He wasn't overly preachy but every now and then he'd say, "By the way, meat is bad for you. That's just by the way," but he said it in such a way a student couldn't help but chuckle.

 

[Mrs Paul]

This kind of crap just makes me want to eat meat even more, purely out of spite. (Mind you, I understand the objections to factory farming. But I don't think going vegan is the answer. And a LOT of the so-called "real footage!" videos are heavily edited)

 

[Phil Ken Sebben]

It's funny to see 57 pages of exceptional individuals sperging on animal rights on social medias while achieving absolutely nothing.

I'm pretty sure that if you adopt a good attitude as a meat consumer (for example buying meat coming from local farms treating their animals responsibly and pass on white-label product), you will do ten times more for the animals than all of these attention seeking morons combined will ever hope to achieve.

To a militant vegan, you're still complicit in murder and all that bit.

They won't be happy until everybody joins them in becoming vegan. Some of these people are even upset with the so called "Impossible Burger" that is 100% vegan because it supposedly looks and tastes like ground beef. It even bleeds. Their reasoning is that it still sends the wrong signal and we shouldn't be trying to replicate vegan products to look like meat we should be accepting of vegan products as they are.

Long story short, these people are crazy.

 

[My Sad Makes Me Special]

the last reason was that the greatest carnivore ever, the T-rex, was last seen 65 million years ago. (Insinuating that it went extinct because it was a carnivore and completely ignoring the great predators of today like the lion, the wolf, the eagle, etc, are all still around).

Ironically, the large carnivores likely survived longer than the herbivores before going extinct. During the K T mass extinction, the sky was blocked out by large amounts of dust, causing many plant species to die out. The herbivores would have died off first, since they lost their food source first. Carnivores and omnivores would have lasted longer, because they could eat each other. (While the predators you mentioned weren't around before that extinction event, I'd like to note that crocodilians and sharks are both carnivores that survived to the present day.)

But since when have militant vegans let facts get in the way of their arguments?

 

[ColtWalker1847]

To a militant vegan, you're still complicit in murder and all that bit.

They won't be happy until everybody joins them in becoming vegan.

Not even then. These folks are obsessed with animal rights. Once the vegan thing is solved, it moves to all domesticated animals. Then food production. Then environment. It never ends, ever.

There is no alteration in behavior that can absolve humans from meat-sin. Aside from neo-primitive gathering mud-hut societies... and even then it would be better if we all just died.

 

[A Welsh Cake]

I remember being told by a vegan that jelly babies are evil because of the animal bone marrow used in gelatin. I just thought that humans are smart to waste as little of the animal as possible.

 

[fishercat]

There's this vegan on a Discord server I know who believes that humans aren't biologically omnivores.

 

[Mrs Paul]

Once I heard that beer isn't vegetarian, that's when I was like, fuck if I'll ever go veg.

 

[RichardMongler]

Once I heard that beer isn't vegetarian, that's when I was like, fuck if I'll ever go veg.

Funny, I've heard opposite, hence PeTA's anti-milk campaign:

Okay, there are some obvious exceptions (milk stouts, of course), but some beers are entirely veg-friendly. Of course, some of those are awful. Fucking IPA shits.

 

[MysticMisty]

Once I heard that beer isn't vegetarian, that's when I was like, fuck if I'll ever go veg.

...How is beer not vegetarian? I assume the yeast would make it qualify as non-vegan, but vegetarian?

 

[Koby_Fish]

...How is beer not vegetarian? I assume the yeast would make it qualify as non-vegan, but vegetarian?

Some breweries use gelatin or casein (milk protein)-based clarifiers in their brewing process.

 

[Miss Hortensia]

...How is beer not vegetarian? I assume the yeast would make it qualify as non-vegan, but vegetarian?

Some sorts of beer (usually those with a high percentage of hops) get filtrated to prevent the formation of sediments. In the EU filter agents are often made out of animal charcoal and/or gelatine. Only naturally cloudy beers are "vegan" and "vegetarian".

Ninja'd by @Koby_Fish. You got it, bro. But hey, I'm a German. Beer is our religion.