Anonymous #1 1d

Look in the discussion in the comments of the post i quoted. Acrivelt on my bike so ill reply later im rlly passionate ab this opic

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Anonymous OP 1d

Ah okay I see what you’re getting at in the comments. OOP definitely said some stupid colonialist stuff.

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Anonymous #1 1d

It didnt start out so bad but they kept digging themselves deeper in a hole

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Anonymous #1 1d

Basically ive talked to a lot of vegans that reject cultural epistemologies that consider relationality with animals and eating/using them very differently than us environmentalism does. Us environmentalism is inherently based in colonization and specifically dispossession of land, which animal hunting applies to significantly. Dont get me started ab the whaling thing either its foundation is cia mk ultra stuff like actually for real

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Anonymous OP 1d

Feel free to ask any more questions. I have a pretty place-based knowledge of this but its pretty extensive

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Anonymous #2 1d

And it denies the possibility of relationships with animals being reciprocal and respectful! When i go shellfishing i pick up trash and leave the shells which creates better habitat for more shellfish!

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Anonymous #3 1d

adding to this, i think the most important thing is doing what you can to be YOUR version of a morally good person and do your part to protect our planet. if it is not your culture, why is your opinion being weighed?

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Anonymous #4 1d

this!! as a lifelong vegan, the most important thing is sustainability. real environmentalists support necessary hunting. ESPECIALLY deer, lionfish, etc with how invasive they are. i live in the suburbs, i have no reason to hunt my own food. so i choose not to support factory farming

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Anonymous #4 1d

I have to disagree on “real conservationists understand eating meat isn’t a bad thing.” Not because you’re wrong about the sustainability stuff, but because I think it’s fundamentally unethical to kill something to eat it unless you have no other option. I don’t think that idea is mutually exclusive with values of conservationism, and I think this framing (that “real conservationists” eat meat) is an example of a “no true Scotsman”

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Anonymous OP 1d

Hi, I’m a vegan and would like to know more about all of this. My personal stance is that if you have easy access to plant-based food and other products generally, you should choose the plant-based option. If you don’t have easy access though, I have no right to judge you for eating and using animal products. I also tentatively feel this way in regards to native uses of animal products, but also I’m white and don’t know enough about this so in reality I have no right to argue I’m correct in-

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Anonymous #6 1d

-that regard and would dearly like to learn more. Also, I feel animal products like leather and wool should be used once produced, it would be wasteful otherwise. Again, I would really like to learn more, I hope this doesn’t come across as me trying to argue wholeheartedly against what you’re saying

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Anonymous OP 1d

Wait wait I’m genuinely curious can you dm me about the start of whaling stuff im actually curious 😭

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Anonymous #2 1d

i agree with this to an extent, i think the biggest issue currently is how black and white veganism is being viewed. the actual real definition on veganism is to live a life causing the least amount of harm to others. so this means recycling/reusing clothing made out of animal products, reducing waste, and when possible, choosing to spend money on ethical brands and not factory farms. degrading people for living differently goes against those values and is not good a representation of veganism.

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Anonymous #1 1d

Did I say real conservationists eat meat? Or did I say real conservationists understand eating meat isn’t a bad thing? Those are two whole different sentences.

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Anonymous #3 1d

Im trying to be very deliberate in not doing the indigenous monolith rhetoric. My examples come from Coast Salish practices and histories. Despite it not being my heritage, it is my responsibility as a guest on their land to engage in and advocate for indigenous rights

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Anonymous #1 1d

There is no fundamental in ethics it is subject to each persons/cultures epistemological understandings. Do you hold other animals to the same standard of hunting=bad or just humans?

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Anonymous OP 1d

i understand your point, but i do think there are important distinctions between animals hunting for necessity and humans putting money into farms. as soon as these animals are farmed, it is no longer the “circle of life”. humans hunting sustainably, however, is a different argument. there are many studies showing how indigenous populations help directly in their ecological environment to limit overpopulation of species. non-indigenous hunters help with this as well.

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Anonymous #6 1d

It doesnt come across adversarial at all, im glad youre curious! So at least aroubd me at industrial meat operations almost every single byproduct is used from hides to bones to blood to waste to organs. They dont do it for sustainability but cuz theres money to make. As far as native uses of animal products it goes a lot deeper than hunting and eating. Food insecurity has been a major tool of genocide and ties food access directly to tribal sovereignty and health

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Anonymous #3 1d

Industrial farming sucks! Responsible farming and sustainable hunting doesn’t 👍🏻

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Anonymous #3 1d

There are ways to raise animals for meat that are sustainable ive done some agroecology work with that but by and large youre right about that. Im by no means arguing in favor of eating farmed meat if we can help it

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Anonymous OP 1d

i think the reason it is so hard to find a middle ground in these arguments ties to sustainability not always equating to ethical standards. when i visited the maasai and chaaga tribes in tanzania, their source of income came from their cows/goats/sheep, which can be viewed as sustainable. however, the animals were kept in abysmal conditions, and many were sick and injured. this is why i try not to involve myself on “side picking” when it comes to this debate.

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Anonymous #3 1d

This is a total nitpick of veganism but i hate when people choose to wear plastic instead of leather. Perhaps there is some sort of nuance nutrient that they are deficient in

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Anonymous OP 1d

i have a lot of thrifted and secondhand leather items like shoes and purses. a few wool sweaters too. it’s better to be used and appreciated than rot in a landfill! bc, say it with me, the biggest issue is overproduction!!

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Anonymous #4 1d

While this statement is a fair enough critique, my point was that reasonable conservationists can disagree on the ethics of eating meat.

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Anonymous OP 1d

Other animals aren’t capable of making ethical decisions, or comprehending ethics as a concept. Nor can predators survive on plant-based diets, at least not all of them. When wolves invent irrigation, or find some other way of gaining sustenance without hunting, we can circle back to this.

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Anonymous #1 1d

This is an aside but animals definitely do farm livestock look at ants. I dont know if i buy into animals not having ethics but even still there is no objective ethical issue with humans eating meat. We are designed to do so and have always been keystone predators. Scaling back meat is necessary but applying your ethics to those who are still sustainable can lead to sketchy territory. Access to meat in many cases is food sovereignty

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Anonymous OP 1d

yes, there are many examples in ants farming aphids and jumping spiders farming ants, but i do think there ARE objective ethical issues to humans eating meat in the context of how the majority of the population gets their meat. there is such a small fraction of the world that can say they ethically harvest animal products, so this argument is typically nullified, especially when making generalized claims. ethically, it is wrong to farm and harvest meat as a human when we don’t need it to survive

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Anonymous #3 1d

Yeah most of meat eating is fucked up but where im from most people get their food and income from wild fish and game harvesting in sustainable ways. These get demonized for imo bs reasons and make it frustrating to have convos with vegans

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Anonymous OP 1d

Look, I do agree with you that access to meat is important for a lot of people, I’m not saying that it isn’t, I’m saying that if you have the option to not eat meat, you should take it, because it’s wrong to deprive a living creature of its life unless it is absolutely necessary for survival.

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Anonymous OP 1d

I do want to examine some other stuff you said, though. Namely, that you “don’t know if I buy into animals not having ethics.” What do you mean you don’t buy into animals not having ethics? When talking about ethics, I’m talking about like, the trolley problem, and questions of rights and such, not empathy, which is something mammals in particular are hard-wired for. And the other thing: just because eating meat comes naturally to humans doesn’t mean anything, that has no bearing on morality

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Anonymous OP 1d

Thank you for touching up on this!

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Anonymous #9 1d

Especially in this economy 😭 not to tmi but I had to quit being pescatarian during my last years of school bc of stress and being paid by my on campus job only once a month and I was 84lbs. In Indian country out here people have to travel literally hours to a nearest grocery store (Hoopa). I also live in a really predominantly white area and racist vegans judge us so harshly for sustainability eating meat 😵‍💫 very frustrating…

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Anonymous #9 1d

Fr! It boggles my mind that so many ostensibly liberal or leftist people don’t understand that people’s food choices are largely dependent on what they have access to. Bannock, for example, became a ubiquitous dish among indigenous Canadians because the ingredients for it were some of the only things they had access to (because of colonialism ofc)

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Anonymous #9 1d

Exactly! I also used to be pescatarian cuz my dad landscapes for a local elders and said elders were always getting gifts of salmon and trout so my dad would get paid with it and access to their inlet for growing native oysters. But lacking access now to those community ties i can really only access shellfish and it takes like an hour to get to clean tidelands on the bus. People dont realize food is so much more than food and ppl can have deeper relationships with it than going to walmart

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Anonymous #1 1d

Well i think we dont give animals sentience enough credit. You say that animals are sentient enough that hunting them is wrong but reject that they have their own cultures with values in which we can form relationships with. Obv no one wants to get eaten but consuming living creatures is how all things live.

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Anonymous #11 1d

i disagree, as almost 70% of crop farming goes directly to feeding livestock. not to mention, the carbon footprint from factory farming is significantly higher than crop farms. not to mention the amount of land it is destroying… deforestation, pollution, and that’s not even tapping into the environmental affects of commercial fishing.

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Anonymous #2 1d

Not to mention how they’re complaining about people killing animals for food but ignoring the fact that the farms that make their soy and other vegan food products use heavy pesticides that also kill sentient animals and insects. Goes to show they really only care about the cute animals, not all animals.

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

vegan entomologist here !! that’s completely not true at all.

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Anonymous #3 1d

Strange because resources say that there is killing of billions of insects in agriculture which includes vegan food

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Anonymous #3 1d

A good portion of the produce you consume was picked by people being paid a slave labor, if they were paid at all. Deforestation and pollution are also major environmental issues caused by crop farming, too! Not to mention pesticide usage, which has detrimental effects on the whole ecosystem due to the grasshopper effect, biomagnifcation, and the fact that many pesticides affect all insects and not just the targeted ones.

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

when you can pull up one peer reviewed source backing up your claim, i will take you seriously. for now, from firsthand experience, i can tell you that over 1/3 of crops grown globally are directly for livestock. globally, only 64% of ALL crops are sprayed with any sort of pesticide. also, most pesticides are used to control invasive and harmful species, which benefits all food you eat. this is a pointless argument when 200 MILLION land animals are killed daily for human consumption.

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Anonymous #11 1d

Then there’s the fact that a good portion of produce goes through a factory, to be canned, boxed, etc. These factories obviously produce a ton of pollutants. Farms also contribute to pesticide and nitrogen runoff, which can create dead zones and even end up in our own water. I fully support veganism but to pretend like it’s all sunshine in rainbows is being purposely ignorant.

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Anonymous OP 1d

I want to be clear here, I think that (at least) animals with a central nervous system are sentient, or at minimum are self-aware. I think killing them is wrong, because of that, and I don’t think that their own cultures (which do exist, that has been proven) really factor into the problem here. I think it’s weird to think that they do, honestly.

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Anonymous #3 1d

I’m not disregarding that land animals are killed in a way that supports overconsumption which is a major problem itself, I’m saying it’s ridiculous to take a moral high ground on someone else’s food practices when your own food practice does serious damage too. Because it’s not just the insects that that hurts, it also is a pollutant which I know from experience can be very detrimental to aquatic ecosystems.

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

And as for your peer reviewed paper I think “Indirect Effect of Pesticides on Insects and Other Arthropods” by Francisco Sánchez-Bayo is a good start

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

If you want one specifically on agriculture you can look at “Use of pesticides in agriculture and livestock animals and its impact on environment of India” by Sachin Kumar, et al.

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

And if you don’t believe me about the effects of the pollutant on aquatic life and environments you can read “Human induced fish declines in North America, how do agricultural pesticides compare to other drivers?” By Richard Aaron Brain and Ryan Scott Prosser

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Anonymous thunbriaralebeard 1d

And did I possibly over exaggerate the number, maybe, but my point still stands that it happens and to say it’s completely untrue like that one person did is ridiculous

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Anonymous #1 1d

Why is it weird? With hunting and fishing you need to understand the cultures of the creatures and build relationships with them in order to hunt them. You continue to practice that once the animal is dead by the ritual of processing and consuming it. Its a deeply intimate connection

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Anonymous #11 20h

i agree that it is certainly not all sunshine and rainbows, but it is certainly more ethical and sustainable compared to eating commercial animal products. many vegans are also vegan for the environment, and many like myself do not buy from brands that harvest their products unethically, such as dole, driscoll, etc. due to their environmental impact and controversial ethical practices. many also avoid brands that use pesticides.

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Anonymous #11 20h

well, you’d be wrong. animal agriculture uses far more land, and it’s not really comparable. over 80% of all agricultural lands are used for animal agriculture, which provides just over a third of the calories in our diets. the issue with veganism isn’t that it’s ‘less sustainable’, it’s that individual choices do not amount to collective or systemic change. this is why any reduction has to happen at the point of production, not consumption. all people, especially those with no material relation

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Anonymous _orangutan 20h

with the food they eat, should be amenable to plant-based diets

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