But is the cow you’re drinking milk from living a decent, happy life? What about the male calves that are born as a result of reproducing milk cows? What happens to them?
This thinking could extend to virtually every choice you make and is completely impossible to systematically justify for an ethical system without going completely and utterly insane.
It is the “Butterfly Effect” of ethics. A select path has impacts beyond the initial obvious moral consideration and then more considerations beyond that.
So where is the line? I don’t know that there is one, but I know that its a waste of energy to follow this line of thinking. One initial intuitive layer of moral consideration is more than the average person even remotely considers, and sometimes not even that much. The way elections have gone in the US over the past few years is a good example of this.
I agree that the line can seem or be arbitrary. I’m just pointing out that the specific example that you gave: “happy cow”, is more a figment of your imagination than a reality. It’s not so much “butterfly effect” as simply “effect”. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying you gave a bad example.
Is the immigrant working in the fields with no healthcare and fleeing ICE living a happy, healthy life? Is the slave worker in Myanmar making the trowel you use in your home garden living a happy, healthy life?
It’s impossible to exist without benefiting from suffering somewhere. At a certain point, you just have to try and do what you can to make it better. In my case, that involves supporting legislation to make the world better, because that will have more impact than a fringe group of people deciding not to wear wool socks.
I don’t understand this line of reasoning, especially as applied to the original context of “vegetarians are right, but vegans go too far”. Nobody here is pretending they avoid any part in any suffering. Indeed, we all determine for ourselves how much we can live with. For many of us, that line shifts with our needs, wants, knowledge and understanding. I just pointed out that the example of a happy cow, living life and providing milk is a fiction, masking the same realities that leads many people to vegetarianism.
If you care about those things, and if you consider those necessary to produce crops, then they are also 30-80% necessary to produce a corresponding amount of milk protein.
10-20% of cattle diets are soybeans, corn, or another industrial crop. 25-35% of their protein intake gets converted to milk protein.
Factor in the additional slave labor and worker exploitation involved in all of the other dairy ranching workflows, and it likely makes up the rest of the difference.
But is the cow you’re drinking milk from living a decent, happy life? What about the male calves that are born as a result of reproducing milk cows? What happens to them?
This thinking could extend to virtually every choice you make and is completely impossible to systematically justify for an ethical system without going completely and utterly insane.
It is the “Butterfly Effect” of ethics. A select path has impacts beyond the initial obvious moral consideration and then more considerations beyond that.
So where is the line? I don’t know that there is one, but I know that its a waste of energy to follow this line of thinking. One initial intuitive layer of moral consideration is more than the average person even remotely considers, and sometimes not even that much. The way elections have gone in the US over the past few years is a good example of this.
I agree that the line can seem or be arbitrary. I’m just pointing out that the specific example that you gave: “happy cow”, is more a figment of your imagination than a reality. It’s not so much “butterfly effect” as simply “effect”. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying you gave a bad example.
Is the immigrant working in the fields with no healthcare and fleeing ICE living a happy, healthy life? Is the slave worker in Myanmar making the trowel you use in your home garden living a happy, healthy life?
It’s impossible to exist without benefiting from suffering somewhere. At a certain point, you just have to try and do what you can to make it better. In my case, that involves supporting legislation to make the world better, because that will have more impact than a fringe group of people deciding not to wear wool socks.
I don’t understand this line of reasoning, especially as applied to the original context of “vegetarians are right, but vegans go too far”. Nobody here is pretending they avoid any part in any suffering. Indeed, we all determine for ourselves how much we can live with. For many of us, that line shifts with our needs, wants, knowledge and understanding. I just pointed out that the example of a happy cow, living life and providing milk is a fiction, masking the same realities that leads many people to vegetarianism.
If you care about those things, and if you consider those necessary to produce crops, then they are also 30-80% necessary to produce a corresponding amount of milk protein.
10-20% of cattle diets are soybeans, corn, or another industrial crop. 25-35% of their protein intake gets converted to milk protein.
Factor in the additional slave labor and worker exploitation involved in all of the other dairy ranching workflows, and it likely makes up the rest of the difference.
Again, if you care about those things.