Ethical food consumption

daneejela wrote: »

Don't take this as an ego issue, but I am really puzzled with all the "Disagree's" in my entry point. I've tried to open an ethical debate about food consumption in the most open way I possibly could, trying to avoid separation on nutritional clans and just encourage thinking about what we can do within our diets (whether we are vegans, carnivores, paleo, vegetarians...) to make more sustainable and more human choices.

One of the things I found pretty basic was to give those animals at least a most natural environment for the length of their short or long, lives. Like, don't put them in small cages if you have acres of empty land.
If you can support smaller, multi-variety growth instead of large monoculture fields that require a lot of chemicals and seriously disrupt all life in the area, including humans (check for soya fields documentary in Paraguay). Another, also, pretty basic thing is to be mindful about food consumption and eating much more than we need.

I am really puzzled - what is there to disagree with?
Are we that much insensitive that we dislike even an idea of discussion about how can we survive and thrive and do so in the most ethical way possible?

Weird thing is that all those ethical things are actually in our favor. It's beneficial for us to eat free-range, grass-fed meat, veggies with fewer pesticides, and not to overeat.

To not end in the ranting tone, I really appreciate all tips shared!

I'm puzzled that you're puzzled.

It's been over a year since your OP. As I type this, you have 11 disagrees, an average of less than one a month. You also have 5 pages of replies, 89 total posts, some of them quite nuanced. I suspect at least some of the 11 disagrees were from people who never posted, aren't going to read your question from today. You posted about a controversial topic, and did so in an international online community, so there are going to be a huge range of experiences and opinions. It would be surprising to me if you post got very few disagrees, on a controversial topic, no matter what you said about the topic.

I've been here for a while, post/reply a lot. I have 786 total disagrees. (I have no idea whether I have any post with 11 disagrees, and don't much care.) I don't think you should worry about it, or care, anyway, especially in that you got some comments that disagree in some way with the OP, and there's no point in folks repeating what's already been said, so they may just click disagree.

I can speculate about reasons why people may've clicked "disagree", even though I personally didn't (and don't see why I would, though I did reply with what I think is a little skepticism about the concept in practice). I'm not saying I think any of the following are things you did wrong, or about which you're wrong, but some possibilities:

* Some people are going to expect a post/thread about eating and ethics to be a hotbed of virtue-signaling, and object to that whole idea being brought up.

* Some people think it's show-off-y to talk about one's own virtuous behavior.

* Thinking about ethics and eating in this way can be thought of as a luxury for developed world, relatively well off people. Even in the developed world, numerous people can't "eat free-range, grass-fed meat, veggies with fewer pesticides": Industrial production makes it possible for some to feed their families enough, if they're lucky.

* In connection with that last point, you mentioned zero in the OP that I saw about human famine, human undernutrition, food insufficiency or other inequities even in the first world, exploitation or abuse of human workers in the food production and delivery chain, or really anything that suggested that our lives vis a vis other people's lives may have any eating-related ethical considerations involved. (That one does seem odd to me, personally - though again, I didn't click "disagree". For example, I'm old enough to know that the "green revolution" (the old one, in food production!) which was very much about exploiting technology and industrialization, did, in certain places and times, play a significant role in reducing human starvation and undernutrition globally.)

* You're talking about ethics and animals, but you're not vegan or vegetarian, which will strike some people as disagreeable reasoning.

* Some of your choices of phrase seem quite un-nuanced ("veggies that are not grown in a very artificial way with lots of chemistry that kills everything around" seems to ignore valid debate about impacts of certain organic farming methods (Bt comes to mind, for example)); others seem naive (much of the food waste is in the supply chain vs. in people's homes; those sheep that need to be shaved every summer to stay cool wouldn't need to be shaved in such numbers if people didn't breed and manage them industrially in order to shave them every summer to sell that wool, and then maybe eat them once they're too old - though IMU younger animals are preferable for meat consumption - but I'm not very familiar with that because little mutton is eaten in the US.).

* Why just eating-related ethics?

And so forth. (But still, who cares?)

Again, it's not that I think those things (except where I've commented in this post that I do). I replied with my thoughts on the core subject, earlier in the thread. I thought it was a reasonable thing to post about, though controversial, and though I'm personally uncomfortable with it (reasons stated in my initial reply on the thread) and even though I found some the replies a little bit far out there in any/all directions.

Really, don't worry about the disagrees. You got more "inspirings" and "likes" than "disagrees" (though narrowly), and you got a high level of engagement in debate. The people who disagreed, and didn't say why, and didn't click just because someone else had stated a similar position, aren't worth worrying about. In that narrow set of cases, it's an emotional reaction from someone who doesn't know how to use their words productively. Ignore 'em.

Keep thinking, keep learning, keep posting. 🙂

SunnyBunBun79 wrote: »

If the animal is well taken care of and is slaughtered swiftly to not increase its pain then that would, in my opinion, be the best way to consume meat. Unfortunately, with greed and cruelty, animals are the ones who suffer til the end. I don't know why its more expensive in the US to buy grass fed beef or free range animal meat/eggs.. there is SO MUCH more land here to spread out and raise cattle and other animals for meat.

Some of it is just wages for workers, too.

I'm a "locavore," I guess under current terminology. To the extent that I determine reasonable and affordable, we buy locally raised meat, milk, eggs, grains, and produce. I personally know the farmers we get our food from and support their practices. It is a bit more expensive than a regular grocery store, and a lot more expensive than a discount store, but for a family of our size (7) the amount I spend on food and other consumables monthly actually falls into what the USDA considers "frugal." A larger family, though, means being able to buy in bulk which is not practical for many smaller households to do. In some cases, though, we actually combine with some other neighborhood families and use our buying power that way to get lower prices on bulk goods that we then divvy up amongst ourselves. We acquired a chest freezer and buy large portions of an entire animal, and eat all the "weird" parts and organ meats, use the bones to make stock, and I actually use the bones afterwards again to make fertilizer for our herb and vegetable gardens. I also compost our kitchen scraps. I'd like to raise chickens in the future too, for both eggs and meat. I don't find the use of animals inherently unethical, but do strongly feel they should be treated well and in most mass-commercial agricultural operations, they probably are not, or it's impossible to find out (which also means they're probably not.)

I don't judge other people's shopping or consumption habits because it's really not my place. I do tend to think that most of the problems are systemic and that it's unrealistic to think that my individual household will make much of an impact by itself. But that doesn't make it not worth doing, to the extent that I can, or if I possibly encourage someone else to try those things if they're interested. It's a learning curve and a process, and we didn't start doing all these things at once. My first step was signing up for a CSA that was pretty close in price to what we spent on fruits and vegetables already, and learning how to cook the stuff we got. That was ten years ago. Now we do these other things, and I have more things I want to try in the future. Just like weight loss, it's building a series of habits over time that work for our family, and then when my children are out and living on their own, those habits are just as normal for them if and when they start their own families.