"The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it." - Patrick Young

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Besides the privileging of animals over plants (to say nothing of insects [pest control is genocide] and cellular organisms) and how being vegetarian kills more animals than eating meat, another problem with one of the common arguments for vegetarianism is that if one treats animals as moral beings equal to humans, we should apply the same standards to them, which is ridiculous - we don't imprison a bear for life for attacking another bear.

If one says that animals are not morally equivalent to humans, but we nonetheless have moral duties to them, the extent of these have to be problematised (hurr hurr). If killing them for food is wrong, what about culling animals in areas around farms with disease outbreaks? Is killing chickens near where there's been a bird flu outbreak genocide? Is sterilising stray cats as bad as eugenics? The example of pest control also comes up.

Meanwhile, one of the justifications for giving animals (unequal) rights but not plants is that animals feel pain. Putting aside the fact that plants can react to stimuli, what, then, of a human whose nerve centres are damaged and can thus feel no more pain? Is he a morally permissible meal? What about animals genetically engineered to feel no pain?

Also, I'm willing to put my money on essentially all vegetarians who invoke that argument supporting a woman's right to abortion, privileging animals above proto-humans, which is bizarre indeed.

(More on the idiocy of biocentrists and ecocentrists may follow in future weeks)