Links - 9th November 2019 (1) (Vegetarians/Vegans)

Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals (Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Undergraduate) | Journal of Practical Ethics - "Ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives that are worse than non-existence. In this paper, I sketch out an argument that wild animals have worse lives than farmed animals, and that consistent vegetarians should therefore reduce the number of wild animals as a top priority. I consider objections to the argument, and discuss which courses of action are open to those who accept the argument...
If vegetarians were to apply this principle consistently, the suffering of wild animals would dominate their concerns, and would plausibly lead them to support reducing the number of wild animals, for instance through habitat destruction or sterilisation. If animals like free-range cows have lives that are not worth living, almost all wild animals could plausibly be thought to also have lives that are worse than non-existence. Nature is often romanticised as a well-balanced idyll, so this may seem counter-intuitive. But extreme forms of suffering like starvation, dehydration, or being eaten alive by a predator are much more common in wild animals than farm animals. Crocodiles and hyenas disembowel their prey before killing them (Tomasik 2009). In birds, diseases like avian salmonellosis produce excruciating symptoms in the final days of life, such as depression, shivering, loss of appetite, and just before death, blindness, incoordination, staggering, tremor and convulsions (Michigan Department of Natural Resources). While a farmed animal like a free-range cow has to endure some confinement and a premature and potentially painful death (stunning sometimes fails), a wild animal may suffer comparable experiences, such as surviving a cold winter or having to fear predators, while additionally undergoing the aforementioned extreme suffering (Tomasik 2013). Wild animals do experience significant pleasure, for instance when they eat, play, have sex, or engage in other normal physical activity. One reason to suspect that on average this pleasure is outweighed by suffering is that most species use the reproductive strategy of r-selection, which means that the overwhelming majority of their offspring starve or are eaten shortly after birth and only very few reach reproductive age (Horta 2010; Ng 1995). For instance, ‘in her lifetime a lioness might have 20 cubs; a pigeon, 150 chicks; a mouse, 1000 kits’ (Hapgood 1979), the vast majority of which will die before they could have had many pleasurable experiences. Overall, it seems plausible that wild animals have worse lives than, say, free-range cows. If vegetarians think it’s better for the latter not to exist, they must believe the same thing about wild animals... even a small reduction in the global number of wild animals would outweigh the impact of ending all livestock production. For example, they could reduce animal populations by sterilising them, or by destroying highly dense animal habitats such as rainforests. It may even be the case that vegetarians should react to this argument by eating more meat, since feeding livestock requires more surface area for agriculture, and fields contain far fewer wild animals per square kilometre than other biomes such as forests...
How much pain or pleasure animals feel in response to certain stimuli is dependent on facts about their neurology which is not well understood. While we may make some reasonable extrapolation from our human experience (being eaten alive is very painful), animal subjective experience may differ significantly. While animals might experience hedonic adaptation (Shane and Loewensein 1999) to their circumstances, encounters with predators produce lasting psychological damage similar to post-traumatic stress disorder in humans (Zoladz 2008). There is some evidence that domesticated animals are less stressed (Wilcox 2016), but measures of stress hormones may not coincide with animals’ revealed preferences (Dawkins 2004)... However, I note that these considerations should also make us uncertain about the subjective well-being of farmed animals...
One could vaccinate animals against diseases: rabies has already been eliminated from foxes for human benefit (Freuling 2013). After elephants’ teeth wear out, they are no longer able to chew food and eventually collapse from hunger, after which they may be eaten alive by scavengers and predators. Fitting elephants with artificial dentures, which has already been done on captive animals, would significantly increase their healthspan (Pearce 2015). Or one could cull predator populations by allowing more of them to be hunted."

The Vegetarians Who Turned Into Butchers - The New York Times - "She stopped eating meat for more than a decade, she said, out of a deep love for animal life and respect for the environment. She became a butcher for exactly the same reasons... Referring to themselves as ethical butchers, they have opened shops that offer meat from animals bred on grassland and pasture, with animal well-being, environmental conservation and less wasteful whole-animal butchery as their primary goals... she returned to eating meat after learning that the soybean and corn monocultures that accounted for much of her vegan diet were wreaking havoc on the environment... “As soon as I started eating meat, my health improved,” she said. “My mental acuity stepped up, I lost weight, my acne cleared up, my hair got better. I felt like a fog lifted.”... Other former vegetarians reported that they, too, felt better after introducing grass-fed meat into their diets: Ms. Kavanaugh said eating meat again helped with her depression. Mr. Applestone said he felt far more energetic."

I've given up veganism - and have never felt better - "When one of Hollywood’s staunchest vegans, Anne Hathaway, recently admitted she had gone rogue with a piece of Icelandic salmon, I felt a sense of relief. As an ex-vegan myself, still caught up in the apparently all-encompassing plant-positivity movement, it was good to know I was in such smart company. For the past four years, veganism has been a roller‑coaster of a dietary sensation, with the number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupling between 2014 and 2018 to 600,000, according to the Vegan Society.Demand for meat-free food increased by 987 per cent in 2017... the actress admitted that while eating only plant-based foods: “I just didn’t feel good or healthy... not strong” and that munching on that fish in Iceland, made her brain feel “like a computer rebooting”.Fish brought on my Hallelujah moment too, when I gave up veganism last autumn after a year of eschewing all animal products. My first meal was also salmon - in a salad. Almost at once, I felt like the synapses in my brain were having a party. I felt alert and energetic. Quickly, I succumbed to cheese (Cheddar, how I missed you!) and boiled eggs. I’ve not eaten meat for 30 years, so there was no temptation to order a steak. But it wasn’t long before prawns snuck into the fridge and honey into my full fat Greek yoghurt.I did feel a vague – and slightly ludicrous – sense of failure, as though I’d fallen off a holy wagon. But that passed quickly at the sheer joy of flavour surfing during meal times.Perhaps that’s why Hathaway and I are not alone. According to registered dietitian Dr Frankie Phillips, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association (BDA), 75 per cent of vegans give up, lasting an average nine years on a plant pure diet. “They miss certain aspects of foods and by necessity, there is a smaller pool of foods to choose from,” says Phillips, though there can be nutritional reasons too: “It can be hard to get enough omega 3 fats, iodine and iron in a vegan diet.”... my skin was not happy, with regular breakouts, and my nails crumbled away. I added in a Vit B spray and ate vegan calcium tablets and kept going."

Vegan Takes Neighbour To Court Over The Smell Of Barbecue
Why people hate vegans

Thousands to attend mass BBQ outside home of vegan who SUED her neighbours for cooking meat

Vegan activists separate chickens from cockerels 'so the hens are not raped' - "The video was released by the Spanish vegan group Almas Veganas (Vegan Souls), based in Girona in the north-eastern Spanish region of Catalonia... On their Twitter page, the activists describe themselves as 'anti-speciesist' and 'transfeminist.'... the two activists can be seen smashing eggs on the ground because 'they belong to the hens.'... Transfeminism is created by and aimed at transgender women and says that the freedom of trans women is coupled with the liberation of all women."

Eating vegan: the bigger picture - "Let’s start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season. And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most animals killed for crop protection are.) So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That’s not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That’s mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in. Collydean’s owners assure me it wouldn’t befinancially viable for them to grow peas without killing animals. Which means that every time we eat peas, farmers have controlled the “pest” species on our behalf, and animals have died in our name. The number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing... Let’s look at birds. Over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers in NSW killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their fields. That’s right, to grow rice. That’s in addition to the animals indirectly affected, such as those that once thrived in the waterways drained by such a heavily irrigated crop on a dry continent. That’s how farming works. To grow something, other things are affected. Sometimes it’s an animal, sometimes it’s a helluva lot of animals. The most animals that die on Fat Pig Farm, our property in the Huon Valley south of Hobart, are the snails and slugs that would destroy our garden if left unchecked. We kill close to 5000 moths, slugs and snails each year to grow vegetables, and thousands and thousands of aphids. Insects bear the brunt of all annual vegetable production. And the most exploited insect of all is the European honeybee. True vegans don’t eat honey because it’s the result of the domestication, and utilisation, of the European honeybee. They don’t eat it because eating honey is “stealing” honey from the hive, and because bees die in the process of beekeepers managing the hives and extracting the honey. And they’re right, bees do die in that process. Problem is, honeybees are very, very good pollinators, and a whole heap of crops are pretty much reliant on these bees to produce fruit — and even more crops would suffer from far lower production due to poor fertility if we didn’t have bees. About one-third of all crops globally benefit from direct interaction with pollinators, of which European honeybees are by far the most efficient. Whether we eat honey or not, we are the beneficiaries of the work of the domesticated European honeybee. In their absence, some crops would come close to failure, and others increase substantially in cost. Gobs of bees die every year doing the work of pollination for us. According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards. And that’s the carnage from just one crop. What about vegan wine, you say? It doesn’t use fish bladders, or milk extracts, or egg as a fining agent (ingredients used to clarify many wines, beers and ciders). But don’t forget the harvest. Come with me to watch grapes being picked, watch as huge tubs of plump grapes are tipped into the crusher along with mice, spiders, lizards, snakes and frogs. Sadly, vegan wine is a furphy. Let’s move on to peanut butter, that wonderful practical protein staple. Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast... It does seem that food production gets unfairly singled out for killing animals, when every human activity has an effect on other living things. We kill animals when we drive. We kill animals when we fly, or transport goods by plane. We kill when we build railway tracks, when we farm grain, grow apples and mine sand. We alter ecosystems when we put up new housing developments, build bicycle factories and ship lentils. We push native animals out of their environments all the time, with the resultant pain and suffering you’d expect... Most estimates put it that the amount of fossil fuel needed to grow a calorie of food and get it to the table is 10 times more than the food calorie itself. It’s a negative-sum game. Grains and monoculture crops are worst among them — whereas grass-reared animals, killed and sold locally, are among the more efficient producers of food energy for fossil fuel use. Take away the use of animal waste in the farming system and things will swing further to one side. If you want truly vegan agriculture, you’re going to have more fossil fuel emissions and in the process end up with more expensive food, poorer pollination and reduced variety thanks to the removal of domesticated bees."

Bank of England to keep animal fat in banknotes despite complaints - "The Bank of England has decided to stick to plastic banknotes despite complaints from vegans and religious groups that they contain tallow, an animal byproduct.The central bank concluded after “careful and serious consideration and extensive public consultation” that switching to palm oil alternatives would be costly and raise questions about environmental sustainability... The petition said the use of animal fat was “unacceptable to millions of vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and others in the UK”. Some Hindu temples in the UK banned the £5 note... The decision means the new plastic £20 note and future print runs of £5 and £10 notes will be made from polymer, which typically contains less than 0.05% of animal fat.The only viable alternative would be to use chemicals derived from palm oil, the central bank said, but its suppliers were “unable to commit to sourcing the highest level of sustainable palm oil at this time”. Coconut oil did not work, tests by the suppliers Innovia and De La Rue showed. Another consideration was value for money. The Bank estimates the cost of switching would be about £16.5m over the next 10 years, on top of the £70m cost of reprinting the £5 and £10 notes. The Treasury advised that a switch to palm oil would not represent value for money for taxpayers.Polymer banknotes are used in more than 30 countries. It emerged during the Bank’s research that plastic containing animal fat is also used in debit and credit cards, mobile phones, carrier bags, cosmetics, soaps, household detergent bottles and car parts... The Bank argues that polymer banknotes are much harder to counterfeit and last longer than paper notes. Mark Carney dipped one of the new plastic fivers in chicken curry at Borough Market in London last year to prove their durability."
Apparently the environmental lobby is more powerful than the vegan/vegetarian, Hindu, Sikh and Jain lobbies combined
Presumably vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains don't use mobile phones to tweet their outrage