Ask Lemmy

No.

Sincerely, A lifelong vegetarian.

Yes

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.

Is it morally wrong to ask a bait question on a public forum?

Vegetarianism is a dietary preference. Veganism is a moral philosophy. They don't have anything to do with each other.

Depends on who you ask and the background of your question.

Yes

It is undeniable in current day the horrors industrial farming creates and inflicts on millions of sentient beings to sustain a business that was originally fomented in order to supply food for a post-war world where several countries were rendered with little or no usable land for farming.

The traditional model of farming, where animals were an integral part of a production chain that kept the land itself alive and reduced waste to a minimum was destroyed to give place to a highly destructive model where lowest cost, hight profit margins and speed of production is absolute.

In this process, thousands, if not millions, of landrace animals, along with heirloom seed varieties, went extinct and were lost. Petroleum products and by-products entered the daily life, from food, to clothing, to essentially anything imaginable. Not because those were better but because it was cheaper and protected interests.

Knowing this and still leaning heavily on an animal protein based diet with no concern for its toll on our collective ecosystem and the suffering it creates is nothing short of regrettable.

No

Meat is cheap. Artificially cheap but still. Processed foods cheaper; with meat in it, even more.

Many people throughout the world do not have access to the means to have a fully exclusive or at least heavily based vegetable diet, either because of the environment they live in or simply because they lack the means to afford it. Many people in developing countries still depend on cattle to provide food and raw materials, if not on hunting, trapping and fishing. Even more people, in rich, developed countries, don't have the money to afford a proper diet, even less a vegetable based one.

These people are as worthy of living as any other. It can not be taken against them wanting to survive.

Maybe

Some people aren't aware how much their personal decision can have a meaningful impact.

Others don't have the time or hability to extract from vegetables meals that can truly satisfy them and don't want to resort to ultraprocessed foods. Others are simply too deep into a cultural mindset that blocks them from experimenting.

It is just another type of barrier. There is a degree of lack of interest and effort in this stage but we can't (shouldn't) hold against people their personal circumstances, which adds poorly when it comes to changing minds, habits and cultures.

Take your pick.

Yeah, the most ethical diet is plant based.

Why do you ask it?

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.

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