[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I don't disagree, but it is unlikely you could get the entire species to change, unless there is a catastrophic event that leads to it.

Whether it is natural or unnatural was not my point. Only that switching the planet wholesale seems like a pipedream and goes against our natural make-up. I also agree there are cruel practices in the meat industry that need to be improved and no longer hidden away. There are also bad practices in the non-meat food industry as well that need to be improved.

I will say that having grown up in a family that raised most of our own food, including cows, chickens, pigs, I do not see the slaughter of animals for food as "cruel" when done properly. They should be raised responsibly however.

I agree that it is unlikely to happen suddenly. It will probably happen gradually out of necessity, but partially through awareness*, and that is where most vegans are. Some are against all animal deaths, but the vast majority of vegetarians, plant based dieters and vegans understand the reality of the situation. Most want people to just consider eating less meat. My deconversion from religion was gradual. My deconversion from meat was gradual too. My wife has been vegetarian for over 25 years and just now went vegan in the last few years. For me, I eat healthy whole foods, but then I switched to organic and cage-free, free-range, and tried to do the best I could. Then I cut back my meat intake in half or more. Then when my wife went vegan, I dumped dairy, and over time, I went more of a pescatarian (fish, eggs) plant based diet, and now I am animal based. I am not vegan because I haven't eliminated animal products from everything, and I will still have a steak or something for rare occasions. I have a glass of alcohol about once in six months, so I am far from an alcoholic who drinks daily. People are mostly meat-holics, and they could greatly reduce their consumption. If I had a chicken, and it produced eggs, I would eat them. I am not against reasonable farm practices. The problem is that it is very hard to know what is happening behind the scenes from just reading the label. That is one of the points brought up in Netflix's Seaspiracy that the Dolphin Safe Tuna label is a lie, but people use that label to try to make informed decisions about their purchases. I used to eat farmed salmon from Whole Foods where my wife works. While I can say it is probably better than other farmed salmon, I don't know, and often salmon is produced in barely or in small pens in terrible conditions then fed food to help them look pink instead of gray or dyed. Having an animal-based diet is the most moral position I can come up with after seeing all the evidence and considering my options.

*We are destroying the oceans and critically depleting the fish stocks, so there will likely be a tipping point where the cost of fish will get so high because the ships will have to continue to get bigger and work harder for far less yields. This is happening now where prices continue to go up and the size of fish get smaller, but it'll likely be more dramatic in decades to follow. We are suppose to add another 2 billion more people to the world's population by 2050, and there will be even more emerging economies that will be increasing their standard of living and wanting more resources, so there will be strains on the global supply of food without more growth, more rainforest destruction, more land occupied by farms, etc. The effect of methane production, oil production, CO2 production, etc for livestock and farmland for livestock will become more apparent in time. Just like we are seeing action taken against climate change, people will naturally turn their attention to other offenders. We won't be moving to veganism because of a change in our moral conscious; that is far, far, far further into the future. It will be for practical matters like price, resources, water supply, apparent deforestation, rising subsidies on feed and water for livestock, etc.**

**If we just eliminated the subsidies for water and corn and soy and factored in the healthcare and climate disruption costs then the average pound of hamburger meat might cost $35-50/pound. That could cause some changes.

According to recent studies, the U.S. government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, with less than one percent of that sum allocated to aiding the production of fruits and vegetables

In addition to subsidies, Americans pay for meat consumption through healthcare costs and climate disruption. As David Simon illustrates in his book Meatonomics, consumers foot an estimated $2 in external costs for every $1 of product the meat and dairy industry sells.9 In other words, a $4 Big Mac actually costs society $11.

Research from the University of Oxford calculates that eliminating animal-derived protein from the global food system would save $1.6 trillion in environmental costs by 2050

https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removi...al-agriculture