Depends on your morals.
A vegetarian diet isn’t much more ethical than an omnivore diet, anyway. Veganism has a much better argument.
If ethical = animal welfare, perhaps.
But when factoring in e.g. water consumption and CO2e per unit of food consumed, I would argue the average vegetarian diet to be significantly more ethical compared with the average omnivorous diet.
Obviously the type of animals involved, the way they are treated and killed, and religious views add more complexity to this case.
edit: the essence of my point is that this isn’t a black and white matter.
I think that’s a flawed argument. Cow milk production requires that cows get pregnant once a year, and the calves can’t all become milk cows, too - thus, cow milk production cannot exist without cow meat production. And IIRC milk products still have a worse environmental impact than chicken meat.
TBH I’m not sure about the environmental impact of eggs vs meat. But animal welfare is generally the main reason why people keep to vegetarian or vegan diets, and chicken farming is not great in terms of animal welfare.
The bottom line is: 1 cow birth per year (or let’s call it cow deaths, because that’s what is most relevant here) yields around 10.000L of milk. Out of which around 1000kg of cheese can be produced, plus of course the meat of that calf.
Does that make it ethical? I don’t think so. But I would say around 1.5-2x less unethical compared to eating meat, which is significant.
I read a book called “change of heart” by a vegan animal activist, which was all about research into what actually worked in terms of convincing people to reduce animal suffering. For him, it would be ideal if we reduced animal suffering to zero. But even encouraging someone to eat less meat (e.g. Meatless Mondays) reduced animal suffering, and was a win in his book. I kind of agree with that.
The way I see it is similar. If everyone stopped eating animal products today like turning off a faucet, literal millennia of selective breeding guarantees there will be animal suffering. A better option is to reduce overall consumption while also working towards reversing the changes we’ve made to the animals to turn them into products. At this time, dairy cows overproduce milk making milking a requirement for the animals health and safety. Poultry is a whole other discussion that isn’t quite as environmentally problematic but way more ethically problematic that requires a whole extra level of discussion towards improvement
I thought you were talking about environmental impact? Both cow milk and cow meat have a worse environmental footprint than chicken meat.
My point is: ethics should not be confused with a single dimension of ethics. Whether something I’d ethical, depends on your beliefs.
Simultaneously, if animal welfare is all we optimize for, vegetarianism is a step forward. And indeed, so is pollotarianism when optimizing for just environmental impact. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Whether something is moral or ethical doesn’t depend on the commercial benefit you can derive from it! What the actual fuck!!
Not OP, but I think the argument is more about nutritional benefit than commercial benefit.
Yes, thank you for clarifying this.
Not sure why anyone would assume monetary/commercial benefit here.
Do you think dairy farmers eat their 100lbs wheels of cheese? It’s the same thing.
In either case, you’re talking about harm reduction when it is so trivial to eliminate harm. It is in fact EASIER. But your attachment to the fruits of abuse won’t let you see it that way, and you’re looking for ways to make your abuse more emotionally palatable.
Treating a vulnerable individual as a means instead of as an end is fundamentally wrong. No amount of benefit to you short of saving your life can make it morally acceptable. In a famine we have to make hard choices and sometimes we have to sacrifice others. That’s not the situation right now. We grow more food each year than humanity could eat in two years without harvesting any vulnerable individuals.
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For water consumption and CO2, avoid beef, milk and cheese. Chicken and eggs are no issue, they cause less harm in that regard than many plant products (like almonds).
People seem to focus on the ills of the dairy industry when talking about vegetarians, but the egg industry is particularly egregious.
Eggregious*
Not sure I’m getting your point, but meat tastes better than lettuce.
Overall, most humans agree that it is morally wrong to make other creatures suffer. Eating meat, or dairy, definitely leads to animal suffering (it actual leads to human suffering too).
So you believe plants or fungi don’t suffer when you eat them?
There is indeed a very small scientific community that has some (very preliminary) research done on a “nervous system” in plants. The wood-wide-web is part of those hypothesis. It is very intriguing, but reading the interviews with these scientists and their publications didn’t leave me with the impression that plants feel emotions, or that they think, are cognitive or learn from pain. Do you have scientific data to proof otherwise?
Of course not. But nobody has evidence that cows think or have emotions beyond physical sensations either.
How can anyone be so data blind? These things are studied by actual biologists.
Don’t engage with them. It’s a troll account.
Hush, so am I.
Have you ever actually seen a cow in person townie?
This is an argument in favor of plant-based diets, since it results in fewer plants being eaten
Eating meat, or diary
I hate it when people eat my diary. That is morally wrong.
If it’s possible and you’re capable to do it, then I think it’s a moral choice.
If it’s a matter of survival, health or inaccess to a variety of food, I don’t think it really is a choice one should have to make on grounds of morality.
Is it morally wrong to ask a bait question on a public forum?
It’s bait if it makes me angry
I guess you’re not going to bait stickly into examining the consequences their choices have on others who are powerless to protect themselves from those consequences. He’s too clever for that kind of bait.
I don’t understand wht you mean.
But I’m not baiting anyone. I wanted to see people’s personal opinions and get some insight from their arguments.
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I generally agree with you, however your argument does add some subjectivity to the maybe and no sections. I’d add that while not every situation can accommodate a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, in 2026 the vast majority of people have the capability to change to a non-meat diet without any detriment to their health or lifestyle besides social ostracism of unaccepting peers depending on where they live.
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Yeah I think so probably. The animal product industry seems pretty messed up. Very un-cool what we do to them. Inefficient too but that’s another argument.
I would argue that no, it is not morally wrong per se to be non-vegetarian. Meat consumption is not morally wrong in general, it is just morally wrong in our society. We kill way too many animals to be sustainable and every animal you eat contributes to that. We harm climate and ecosystems to sustain our meat consumption. We hold animals captive and make them hurt and suffer. In this society you can not eat meat in a morally okay way.
Is it not morally wrong to drink the milk of an animal that was forcibly impregnated and whose child was murdered for said milk? Why stop at vegetarianism?
artifical insemination doesnt need to happen for milk production
It’s not clear here if you think that is the only problem with rape, child theft, torture, and murder. It’s not even clear whether you understand that a child has to be created, neglected, and abused for a mother’s milk to be sold.
- how is it rape
- how is it torture
- child theft?
- murder?
He thinks cows are people.
I think cattle are moral individuals that have the capacity to be wronged. That is all. That doesn’t require that they are human-like people with full human-like capacities and rights. Just because a human is worth more than a cow doesn’t mean a cow is worthless and you can do whatever you want to her, doesn’t mean that a cow cannot suffer every bit as harshly as you can.
Giving different words to the crimes we commit against animals is a way of insulating yourself from the crimes you commit, like how calling cow flesh “beef” insulates you from the horror and cruelty you commit.
Coming in quite hot and using a lot of assumptions, my friend
Is there a serious problem with the standard agricultural practices of large dairy farms of systematic forced pregnancy, either destruction of the calf or adding to the birth cycle once old enough, and other layers of mistreatment that should neither be condoned or continued? Absolutely and we should all strive to get the whole process abolished.
That said, most cow breeds overproduce milk for their calfs needs and it is unhealthy for them to stay full at all times. Milking them is a kindness and until we can undo eons of selective breeding, needs must.
I have an endless list of problems with the agricultural world and its practices but the reality is if we all went pure vegan right now, more animals would suffer in preventable ways. Tapering off the demands for the products of big agriculture, especially by forcing the market towards small farms treating the animals with kindness, and working towards reversing the changes we’ve caused in the breeds that make them more product than animal is the best route to end exploitation of animals.
If you care about animals, shaming people does fuck all. Educating them without assuming malice goes a whole lot farther towards your point of view. Also recognizing that literal millennia of selective breeding will not be undone in a single generation and the process of reversing is slow and fraught with its own challenges that need to be addressed.
Tldr: educate yourself beyond the rhetoric and hanlons razor. Idealism is great for concept but will fail on the reality when put into practice
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You cannot even accept “torture”? Really. Well then that clarifies your original comment.
they should be killed swiftly and painlessly
non sequitur
you’re clearly speaking from a place of ignorance, about what you want to be true. you should learn more about where your food actually comes from and what externalities are being paid by others because of your choices. right now you’re just brainwashing yourself so that you don’t have to emotionally cope with your cruelty and violence.
Being vegetarian or omnivorous isn’t very different, morally, as producing milk still requires killing calves. I think the better comparison would be with veganism
producing milk still requires killing calves
It certainly is not a requirement. They don’t have to use the males born to make veal.
Yes, it is an economic requirement. They can’t compete with beef cattle for meat production, keeping them alive just makes the milk more expensive than the farmer down the road who murders his calves can sell it for.
the vast majority of dairy calves are brought to full weight before slaughter, but slaughter still isn’t necessary.
How do you recoup the costs of raising a bull to full weight (which happens at a fraction of its natural lifespan) without slaughtering him? It’s like saying breathing isn’t necessary because you can just hold your breath.
you can just choose not to do that
As in, choose not to be a dairy farmer or consume dairy products?
even a dairy farmer can just choose not to kill.
Sell them to beef ranchers. Make even more money and meat. 🤦♂️
No.
Where did this question originate? Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
Give us you opinion and I might be more inclined to share my opinion.
Where did this question originate
Why
Why has it come up in your day to day conversation?.
It hasn’t
Give us you opinion
Don’t have one yet
Or you could simply off your opinion based on the information as presented.
This seems like an attempt at trying to sidetrack the topic rather than providing an answer. Which is odd given that commenting here is opt in. It’s not like someone directly approached you and asked the question.
Morals are subjective, I don’t consider myself the arbiter of truth and I also reject theistic positive claims stating otherwise such as objective morals or free will. Personally I know I can survive without eating animals, so I’d rather not be indirectly involved in the killing of other animals where it is reasonably possible and I don’t consider humans more important/superior to any other animals, generally.
I think you could get a lot of people to even admit to valuing very old trees over a lot of people too so even some plants are worth leaving alone, according to some of us. Like Red Wood giants in Cali, for example. All the land cleared of wildlife to grow food for billions of humans is disturbing stuff at least to me as well. The planet is actually kinda… small. I’ve come to realise. I fully reject humanity’s unearned superiority complex.
I acknowledge it’s hard/impossible to be absolute in the vegetarian ideal given all the ramifications of industrial overpopulation and just casually participating in the society I was born into. Best I can do on this suffering planet, that I never consented to being born to live temporarily upon pointlessly, is to minimize (elimination is unrealistic) the suffering my life inflicts on others.
In other words, I don’t owe anyone jack shit, not even Mommy Dearest. Yet I still stand by this moral position. Although I’d argue this is just who I am and always was. The justications put into words and labels applied came later. You’ll notice I didn’t condemn meat eating in this comment and that’s quite deliberate. You are not me. I just explain my position when asked and it’s up to others to adopt it or not.
We are social animals. We all owe each other our entire survival.
Anything that offends you gets the thought terminating edgy label applied, I see you bud. Username checks out.
“I don’t owe anyone jack shit, not even Mommy Dearest,” is a decidedly edgelord thing to say. Other parts of what you were saying are not trying to be edgy, and I think I get that you were trying to create some kind of rhetorical contrast, but that’s just objectively an edgelord comment. I edited my comment to tone it down, but not before you saw it, so I guess I have to stand by that.
It’s a difficult question, so I hope some people who have interesting things to say about it will turn up here. All I can contribute is this link: Ancient Arguments For Vegetarianism
“eels that come when called”?
What’s the value of life? Is the life of an animal worth less than that of a human and a plant or mushroom worth less than an animal? IMO, they are all worth the same, human or haybale, cow or soybean.
When driving a car, would you swerve into a haybale to avoid hitting a human? Would you swerve into a human to avoid running over a pile of soybeans?
