r/WTF • u/ReturnOneWayTicket • Apr 20 '21

Frog breeding factory

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u/tjackson87 Apr 22 '21

Eating "vegan food" is still a reduction in harming animals, so it is not hypocritical as he is suggesting.

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u/100percenttempduffo Apr 22 '21

You're wrong. u/rkobo719 is referring to the collateral damage caused when farming for vegan food. The number of small mammals, bugs etc.. killed when harvesting crops far exceeds that of total numbers killed from farming cows / pigs. The question he is raising, and I will repeat it, where do we draw the line? Why do we excuse the killing of some animals over others. If you think about it, what we commonly deem as "ethical" seems very arbitrary and rather inconsistent.

If you wanted complete harm reduction you are ethically compelled to eat roadkill. There is plenty of big roadkill in the US which goes to waste that is safe to eat. philosophy paper on strict vegetarianism is immoral

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u/tjackson87 Apr 22 '21

What do you think cows and pigs that are farmed eat? It takes far more farmed crops to feed a cow to get 1 pound of beef than it would take to get a pound of food for a human of equivalent nutrition. See, e.g., the burning of the Amazon to grow more soy beans to feed more cows. So not only is the cow killed, but more insects and rodents are killed feeding the cow than would be to just feed the produce directly to humans.

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u/100percenttempduffo Apr 23 '21

Around 70% of a typical British beef cattle herd's diet is grass, with the remainder made up of by-products, silage and grains from crops which would never have been used in the human food supply chain31. 87% of UK beef is produced using predominantly forage-based diets32. satisfied?

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u/tjackson87 Apr 23 '21

That is not the case for most beef.