Richard Carrier, historian and all round rationalist atheist good guy wrote a blog post some time back: called "Meat Not Bad." Here: Meat Good
For some reason Carrier chose to speak in a palaeolithic prose style (perhaps he just doesn't like verbs). I like Carrier. But me no like his rationality in blog about meat (like delicious mammoth). In fact, blog make no sense. He blog emotions and pretend be rational.
He argues: "...Being a vegetarian merely out of compassion for animals is nonrational (it’s often just another kind of phobia based on false associations between animals and people)... there are other reasons to be a vegetarian. But the reasons [are] just as nonrational."
Now, I'm not about to argue whether it's rational to be vegetarian. Well, I probably am but I want to look at Carrier's alleged rational response to what he sees as the irrationality of being vegetarian. Let alone Vegan, blimey.
Carrier adds a note at the beginning: "Note: I revised this article by adding some qualifiers and replacing assertions of irrationality with nonrationality, to emphasize the difference between doing something illogical and doing something that is merely not motivated by reason, which could be sensible for yourself but does not automatically follow for anyone else."
Unfortunately, this doesn't make his arguments any less nonsensical.
He starts off by replying to someone who questions the morality of factory farming by telling us:
"“Factory farming” tends to be misreported. When you investigate the actual conditions on most farms, especially those vending major industries like KFC or McDonalds, you find they are not as bad as PETA videos claim. They tend to mix ancient footage with recent (thus representing as current, conditions that have long since been abandoned), overstate the frequency of outlier events (e.g. accidents), and misrepresent farms in violation of existing laws or their own contracts with vendors (farms which then went out of business or underwent severe reforms after being exposed) as being the norm (that’s where a lot of their “horrific” video comes from: gotcha investigations of criminally negligent enterprises, not statistically common farm conditions—and I approve of this gotcha activity)."
Oh god, where to start. Remembering we're talking morality but also, of key importance, rationality.
"When you investigate the actual conditions on most farms..."
Who? Has Carrier? I haven't. And there's good reasons why. If Carrier could unravel the supply chain for KFC or McDonalds then I tip my hat to him. Then manage to get into said farms without being employed by a government food agency I will bow down to him. If magically he had. And he obviously has not. Where's the evidence? Why has he not posted counter videos against the ancient Peta footage? There's a great reason why much footage of intensive animal farming is either poor quality or old, because the animal farming industry is notoriously protective. Understandably, as when undercover filming does take place these are not something most want to view.
"thus representing as current, conditions that have long since been abandoned." He offers no evidence for these changing conditions. Perhaps he (irrationally) just trusts multinational corporations McDonalds and KFC mission statements like:
"We're passionate about animal welfare. Our commitment to only using ingredients and suppliers that meet our high standards has led us to winning a number of RSPCA Good Business Awards. All the chicken that is used across our entire chicken menu is breast meat. Chicken is sourced from several countries including UK, mainland Europe, Thailand and Brazil. All the chicken that is used is sourced from approved suppliers, which must have a fully integrated supply chain to ensure full control over all aspects of our chicken farming standards, including feed and animal welfare."
Can these be taken at face value? Well, one has the evidence of numerous undercover exposes vs faith that said global corporations are scrupulously honest in their dealings (see below).
McDonalds won the RSPCA Good Business Award in 2008. Does that count as ancient?
If one believes a company can control a global supply chain taking in Brazil and Thailand then I think that's naivety.
McDonalds UK site has pictures like this.
Now, I'm not saying McDonalds cows and chickens aren't kept in these idyllic conditions, well, obviously I am...but, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that perhaps, maybe, a major global corporation with a market capital of over $100 billion with numerous expose scandals about how they treat their 100% prime human workers like zero hour contracts in the UK, criticism for paying lower than US minimum wage, spending millions on the McLibel case, numerous exposes of worker conditions, of lobbying, of breaching advertizing standards, avoiding tax, is part of a wave of fast food outlets creating enormous amounts of environmental waste and so on before you even get to animal welfare standards, could be believed about their animal welfare standards it is in the end based on faith. On a belief that this major corporation (who never lie) is telling us the whole truth. That government agencies specifically designed to promote that industry can be trusted. In the UK, for instance, this is called DEFRA (the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). The minister is currently Michael Gove. He's overseeing implementation of new British laws to replace EU standrards once the UK has left the EU. One issue up for debate is animal sentience. It's 2018 and the UK might be ruling that animals don't feel pain.
He is overseeing a comprehensive review of farm inspections to remove bureaucratic burdens placed on farmers. He set this out in a speech to The National Farmers Union.
That we can trust an animal welfare group like the RSPCA (the R is for Royal, patronage by Queenie Elizabeth, who is noted for her love of animals) have their own welfare standards award, called Freedom Food. There have been a number of exposes of Freedom Food farms like these two ancient films from 2008 and 2011.
Welfare group, Compassion in World Farming endorse RSPCA Freedom Food (and indeed McDonalds move to free range eggs) and like the RSPCA stress that they are an animal welfare group, that is, both promote moves to better welfare not assurances on welfare. I point this out as it's worth stressing that groups like this merely look towards better farm animal welfare not an end to animal farming.
So, you either have faith that McDonalds or Kentucky Fried are treating animals with the highest welfare standards, groups with charters to aim to improve the welfare of farm animals or rely on groups with no financial incentive funded by donations to manage to gain access undercover and film at source.
Perhaps it comes down to who you trust. But there's nothing rational about believing a major corporation will be truthful because it's in their interests. HSBC launder criminal proceeds, VW fake emission data (they are keen to offer chimpanzees the chance to smell their pure 100% clean exhause fumes too, of course), pharmaceutical companies cherrypick data to endorse their product etc. Does one trust an organization whose only purpose is profit? Obviously Carrier does: "that’s where a lot of their [Peta] “horrific” video comes from: gotcha investigations of criminally negligent enterprises, not statistically common farm conditions—and I approve of this gotcha activity."
Statistically common farm conditions? Where are these statistics? Who are they from? Come on, Richard, where's the data? How exactly do you assess healthy farm conditions data?
Carrier continues in this vein with "The industry is actually a lot smarter and cleaner than propagandists represent. In fact many of the conditions rights activists complain about are actually so bad for actual production efficiency and profit margin that no rational business would ever engage in them anyway, even if animals were vegetables. Of course stupid criminal mismanagement still occurs from time to time just as happens in any industry (think Enron or the Titanic), but at the very least that means we should support the enforcement of the laws we already have."
Again, he offers absolutely no evidence for this. Odd, for someone who criticizes the blind faith of religion. As to "criminal mismanagement still occurs from time to time just as happens in any industry" where on earth to start? Tax evasion, +worker rights, human rights. You could take one mega company like Amazon and write a book on it.
I popped away for a moment today (21st February 2018) to have a look at The Guardian and lookee here, a major expose of conditions in the biggest US meat processing plants. The details are from US government records that have never been published (raise eyebrow).
Carrier tells us: "I also find that once you delete all the misrepresentations and outliers and then stick with actual, current, normal conditions, animal rights advocates often misconstrue what is “bad” for an animal, thinking animals are just like people and thus whatever we wouldn’t like they wouldn’t like, which is silly."
Which is silly. I think you'll find it's the farming industry and non-vegetarians who anthropomorphise.
My first ever head bobbing scratch around on google just seconds ago pops up the first search entry as farming site: poultry, which suggests:
"Mortality, production and behavioural problems are all worse in large groups of hens, which implies the formation of unstable social groups."
And then goes on to say that:
"In the environmental preference studies (Dawkins, 1980), hens were given a choice of cage or an outside run. Hens used to living outside in the garden all chose the run. Hens previously used to living in cages tended to choose the cage on first trial, although subsequently they came to choose the run. So choice is strongly influenced by previous experience. The fact that the hens prefer an outside run to a cage is not indicative of suffering in a cage. Preference in itself is no indication of suffering."
The chicken fools. Look at that lovely cage. That was pre-shed with 100,000 other hens crammed unto one another. But there I go anthropomorphising again.
Carrier: There is a limit beyond which comfort declines but their “personal boundary” space is a lot closer than it is for people, and often chickens voluntarily mass together for warmth and comfort. Thus seeing a hanger full of clucking chickens brushing against each other should not evoke tears. Animal quality of life has to be measured in terms of what is comfortable for that animal, and must recognize such facts as that animals aren’t aware of most things, and don’t aspire to be or do anything, and have no prospect of becoming anything, and thus should not be hastily anthropomorphized in these ways."
Oddly, animal husbandry: poultry site with 40 references and texts does not mention this but highlights unnatural packing, stress and cannibalism as problems in intensive farming.
"Animals aren’t aware of most things."
Where does Carrier get these pearls of wisdom from?
Isn't that a prerequisite of sentience?
"Sentient animals are aware of their feelings and emotions. These could be negative feelings such as pain, frustration and fear. It is logical to suppose that sentient animals also enjoy feelings of comfort, enjoyment, contentment, and perhaps even great delight and joy.
Science shows us some interesting abilities in farm animals:
Sheep can recognise up to 50 other sheep’s faces and remember them for two years
Cows show excitement when they discover how to open a gate leading to a food reward
Mother hens teach their chicks which foods are good to eat
Lame meat chickens choose to eat food which contains a painkiller
Scientists believe that sentience is necessary because it helps animals to survive by:
learning more effectively from experience in order to cope with the world
distinguishing and choosing between different objects, animals and situations such as working out who is helpful or who might cause them harm
understanding social relationships and the behaviour of other individuals.
The growing scientific interest in animal sentience is showing what many people have long thought to be the case – that a wide range of animals are thinking, feeling beings. What happens to them matters to them."
Compassion in World Farming
"Accordingly I think being a vegetarian out of “compassion” is nonrational," argues Carrier rationally.
"Having compassion for animals is rational. But deducing vegetarianism from that is not. I mean that in the classic sense: it’s a non sequitur, and thus not a logically valid inference. It’s to treat animals like people, which they are not."
How is being vegetarian treating other animals like humans? I'm not dating a pig. I don't go down the pub with a goat. I mean I would. But only if they bought a round.
For some reason Carrier chose to speak in a palaeolithic prose style (perhaps he just doesn't like verbs). I like Carrier. But me no like his rationality in blog about meat (like delicious mammoth). In fact, blog make no sense. He blog emotions and pretend be rational.
He argues: "...Being a vegetarian merely out of compassion for animals is nonrational (it’s often just another kind of phobia based on false associations between animals and people)... there are other reasons to be a vegetarian. But the reasons [are] just as nonrational."
Now, I'm not about to argue whether it's rational to be vegetarian. Well, I probably am but I want to look at Carrier's alleged rational response to what he sees as the irrationality of being vegetarian. Let alone Vegan, blimey.
Carrier adds a note at the beginning: "Note: I revised this article by adding some qualifiers and replacing assertions of irrationality with nonrationality, to emphasize the difference between doing something illogical and doing something that is merely not motivated by reason, which could be sensible for yourself but does not automatically follow for anyone else."
Unfortunately, this doesn't make his arguments any less nonsensical.
He starts off by replying to someone who questions the morality of factory farming by telling us:
"“Factory farming” tends to be misreported. When you investigate the actual conditions on most farms, especially those vending major industries like KFC or McDonalds, you find they are not as bad as PETA videos claim. They tend to mix ancient footage with recent (thus representing as current, conditions that have long since been abandoned), overstate the frequency of outlier events (e.g. accidents), and misrepresent farms in violation of existing laws or their own contracts with vendors (farms which then went out of business or underwent severe reforms after being exposed) as being the norm (that’s where a lot of their “horrific” video comes from: gotcha investigations of criminally negligent enterprises, not statistically common farm conditions—and I approve of this gotcha activity)."
Oh god, where to start. Remembering we're talking morality but also, of key importance, rationality.
"When you investigate the actual conditions on most farms..."
Who? Has Carrier? I haven't. And there's good reasons why. If Carrier could unravel the supply chain for KFC or McDonalds then I tip my hat to him. Then manage to get into said farms without being employed by a government food agency I will bow down to him. If magically he had. And he obviously has not. Where's the evidence? Why has he not posted counter videos against the ancient Peta footage? There's a great reason why much footage of intensive animal farming is either poor quality or old, because the animal farming industry is notoriously protective. Understandably, as when undercover filming does take place these are not something most want to view.
"thus representing as current, conditions that have long since been abandoned." He offers no evidence for these changing conditions. Perhaps he (irrationally) just trusts multinational corporations McDonalds and KFC mission statements like:
"We're passionate about animal welfare. Our commitment to only using ingredients and suppliers that meet our high standards has led us to winning a number of RSPCA Good Business Awards. All the chicken that is used across our entire chicken menu is breast meat. Chicken is sourced from several countries including UK, mainland Europe, Thailand and Brazil. All the chicken that is used is sourced from approved suppliers, which must have a fully integrated supply chain to ensure full control over all aspects of our chicken farming standards, including feed and animal welfare."
Can these be taken at face value? Well, one has the evidence of numerous undercover exposes vs faith that said global corporations are scrupulously honest in their dealings (see below).
McDonalds won the RSPCA Good Business Award in 2008. Does that count as ancient?
If one believes a company can control a global supply chain taking in Brazil and Thailand then I think that's naivety.
McDonalds UK site has pictures like this.
Now, I'm not saying McDonalds cows and chickens aren't kept in these idyllic conditions, well, obviously I am...but, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that perhaps, maybe, a major global corporation with a market capital of over $100 billion with numerous expose scandals about how they treat their 100% prime human workers like zero hour contracts in the UK, criticism for paying lower than US minimum wage, spending millions on the McLibel case, numerous exposes of worker conditions, of lobbying, of breaching advertizing standards, avoiding tax, is part of a wave of fast food outlets creating enormous amounts of environmental waste and so on before you even get to animal welfare standards, could be believed about their animal welfare standards it is in the end based on faith. On a belief that this major corporation (who never lie) is telling us the whole truth. That government agencies specifically designed to promote that industry can be trusted. In the UK, for instance, this is called DEFRA (the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). The minister is currently Michael Gove. He's overseeing implementation of new British laws to replace EU standrards once the UK has left the EU. One issue up for debate is animal sentience. It's 2018 and the UK might be ruling that animals don't feel pain.
He is overseeing a comprehensive review of farm inspections to remove bureaucratic burdens placed on farmers. He set this out in a speech to The National Farmers Union.
That we can trust an animal welfare group like the RSPCA (the R is for Royal, patronage by Queenie Elizabeth, who is noted for her love of animals) have their own welfare standards award, called Freedom Food. There have been a number of exposes of Freedom Food farms like these two ancient films from 2008 and 2011.
Welfare group, Compassion in World Farming endorse RSPCA Freedom Food (and indeed McDonalds move to free range eggs) and like the RSPCA stress that they are an animal welfare group, that is, both promote moves to better welfare not assurances on welfare. I point this out as it's worth stressing that groups like this merely look towards better farm animal welfare not an end to animal farming.
So, you either have faith that McDonalds or Kentucky Fried are treating animals with the highest welfare standards, groups with charters to aim to improve the welfare of farm animals or rely on groups with no financial incentive funded by donations to manage to gain access undercover and film at source.
Perhaps it comes down to who you trust. But there's nothing rational about believing a major corporation will be truthful because it's in their interests. HSBC launder criminal proceeds, VW fake emission data (they are keen to offer chimpanzees the chance to smell their pure 100% clean exhause fumes too, of course), pharmaceutical companies cherrypick data to endorse their product etc. Does one trust an organization whose only purpose is profit? Obviously Carrier does: "that’s where a lot of their [Peta] “horrific” video comes from: gotcha investigations of criminally negligent enterprises, not statistically common farm conditions—and I approve of this gotcha activity."
Statistically common farm conditions? Where are these statistics? Who are they from? Come on, Richard, where's the data? How exactly do you assess healthy farm conditions data?
Carrier continues in this vein with "The industry is actually a lot smarter and cleaner than propagandists represent. In fact many of the conditions rights activists complain about are actually so bad for actual production efficiency and profit margin that no rational business would ever engage in them anyway, even if animals were vegetables. Of course stupid criminal mismanagement still occurs from time to time just as happens in any industry (think Enron or the Titanic), but at the very least that means we should support the enforcement of the laws we already have."
Again, he offers absolutely no evidence for this. Odd, for someone who criticizes the blind faith of religion. As to "criminal mismanagement still occurs from time to time just as happens in any industry" where on earth to start? Tax evasion, +worker rights, human rights. You could take one mega company like Amazon and write a book on it.
I popped away for a moment today (21st February 2018) to have a look at The Guardian and lookee here, a major expose of conditions in the biggest US meat processing plants. The details are from US government records that have never been published (raise eyebrow).
Carrier tells us: "I also find that once you delete all the misrepresentations and outliers and then stick with actual, current, normal conditions, animal rights advocates often misconstrue what is “bad” for an animal, thinking animals are just like people and thus whatever we wouldn’t like they wouldn’t like, which is silly."
Which is silly. I think you'll find it's the farming industry and non-vegetarians who anthropomorphise.
That's crossing a line
McDonalds Happy Meals
The RSPCA have "five freedoms" at the heart of its Freedom Food. They are,
Freedom from hunger and thirst; discomfort; pain, injury or disease; fear and distress; and the freedom to express normal behaviour.
But these are only "aspirations" not "ideals." And these are supposedly the good guys and good farms.
Fast Food outlets are also trialing Halal meat. KFC offer 100 outlets in the UK alone where animals are not stunned before slaughter.
Fast Food outlets are also trialing Halal meat. KFC offer 100 outlets in the UK alone where animals are not stunned before slaughter.
Am I just misconstruing what's bad for an animal?
"Animals need a lot less than we do in order to be content and to experience normal stress levels or less (normal being the amount of occasional stress, highs and lows, that they would experience in the wild)."
That's a big charge, Mr Richard Carrier. What be your evidence?
"Chickens, for example, are not miserable when in large crowded communities."
There are, of course, no references to this piece. BECAUSE it's just popped out of Richard Carrier's head.My first ever head bobbing scratch around on google just seconds ago pops up the first search entry as farming site: poultry, which suggests:
"Mortality, production and behavioural problems are all worse in large groups of hens, which implies the formation of unstable social groups."
And then goes on to say that:
"In the environmental preference studies (Dawkins, 1980), hens were given a choice of cage or an outside run. Hens used to living outside in the garden all chose the run. Hens previously used to living in cages tended to choose the cage on first trial, although subsequently they came to choose the run. So choice is strongly influenced by previous experience. The fact that the hens prefer an outside run to a cage is not indicative of suffering in a cage. Preference in itself is no indication of suffering."
The chicken fools. Look at that lovely cage. That was pre-shed with 100,000 other hens crammed unto one another. But there I go anthropomorphising again.
Carrier: There is a limit beyond which comfort declines but their “personal boundary” space is a lot closer than it is for people, and often chickens voluntarily mass together for warmth and comfort. Thus seeing a hanger full of clucking chickens brushing against each other should not evoke tears. Animal quality of life has to be measured in terms of what is comfortable for that animal, and must recognize such facts as that animals aren’t aware of most things, and don’t aspire to be or do anything, and have no prospect of becoming anything, and thus should not be hastily anthropomorphized in these ways."
Oddly, animal husbandry: poultry site with 40 references and texts does not mention this but highlights unnatural packing, stress and cannibalism as problems in intensive farming.
"Animals aren’t aware of most things."
Where does Carrier get these pearls of wisdom from?
Isn't that a prerequisite of sentience?
"Sentient animals are aware of their feelings and emotions. These could be negative feelings such as pain, frustration and fear. It is logical to suppose that sentient animals also enjoy feelings of comfort, enjoyment, contentment, and perhaps even great delight and joy.
Science shows us some interesting abilities in farm animals:
Sheep can recognise up to 50 other sheep’s faces and remember them for two years
Cows show excitement when they discover how to open a gate leading to a food reward
Mother hens teach their chicks which foods are good to eat
Lame meat chickens choose to eat food which contains a painkiller
Scientists believe that sentience is necessary because it helps animals to survive by:
learning more effectively from experience in order to cope with the world
distinguishing and choosing between different objects, animals and situations such as working out who is helpful or who might cause them harm
understanding social relationships and the behaviour of other individuals.
The growing scientific interest in animal sentience is showing what many people have long thought to be the case – that a wide range of animals are thinking, feeling beings. What happens to them matters to them."
Compassion in World Farming
"Accordingly I think being a vegetarian out of “compassion” is nonrational," argues Carrier rationally.
"Having compassion for animals is rational. But deducing vegetarianism from that is not. I mean that in the classic sense: it’s a non sequitur, and thus not a logically valid inference. It’s to treat animals like people, which they are not."
How is being vegetarian treating other animals like humans? I'm not dating a pig. I don't go down the pub with a goat. I mean I would. But only if they bought a round.
By that logic we're treating all non farm animals as humans because we don't eat them. Assuming that he means "treat animals like people" to be not eating them. I mean, no one's arguing that we should dress sheep up and have unnaturally close relationships with them.
"I’ve looked and listened far and wide and there is just no logically valid argument that proceeds from “I ought to be compassionate” to “I ought to be a vegetarian.”"
That's because you're a heartless meat eating cad. No, really, if Carrier believes that the biggest fast food multi-national only has "accidents" on their chain supply farms then I'm not sure how far and wide he's listened or looked. Isn't this just a form of confirmation bias or cognitive dissonance or another of those thinky terms where someone wants to eat meat, perhaps feels guilty about it, or not, but looks for rational reasons why it's ok to eat meat and can't find any evidence for their assertion so simply respond with emotional 'thinkiness' dressed up as facts?
By his rationale it would be logical for all multi-national companies like McDonalds or KFC or Burgerking to also treat their staff with compassion. A happy workforce is a productive workforce. Yet both have a lengthy history of paying lower than minimum wages, zero hour contracts, refusing to pay workers when they weren't serving customers, etc. In fact, name a global chain that treats its workers well. By a rule of thumb, the bigger the corporation the worse it is for worker rights. All big tech giants are happy to use minerals mined using child and slave labour, Nike and other garment manufacturers have appalling records on human and environmental rights, etc. It makes no rational sense to have blind faith in a corporation's ethical policy.
By his rationale it would be logical for all multi-national companies like McDonalds or KFC or Burgerking to also treat their staff with compassion. A happy workforce is a productive workforce. Yet both have a lengthy history of paying lower than minimum wages, zero hour contracts, refusing to pay workers when they weren't serving customers, etc. In fact, name a global chain that treats its workers well. By a rule of thumb, the bigger the corporation the worse it is for worker rights. All big tech giants are happy to use minerals mined using child and slave labour, Nike and other garment manufacturers have appalling records on human and environmental rights, etc. It makes no rational sense to have blind faith in a corporation's ethical policy.
Now look at Carrier's next completely rational non-emotive argument:
"Farming and eating animals is simply not evil, for the reason I stated: our own overall life satisfaction depends on being compassionate, and compassion compels us not to enjoy or want pointless torment to exist, no matter what or who is experiencing it."
Sigh. Globalized corporations have no transparency. It's next to impossible to trace their supply chain. In fact, when companies are exposed for rights violations they use this very defence. Our supply chain is complex, these evil doers are bad apples and we shall sever ties with them and move to kinder more compassionate suppliers. So, if you have completely irrational faith in corporations whose only motive is profit then, sure. It just goes on and on.
"It would cause you pain, and thus diminish your life satisfaction, to realize you are being a cruel or wholly indifferent person."
Look around you at the products in your home. Or if you're sitting in a cafe, perhaps. The coffee made with slave labour, the growers exploited by trade tariffs that favour the US and western Europe, the retail staff paid wages so low they're topped up with government grants. Chocolate, laptops, jeans, furniture, everything. The point is that our economic system is designed to make us indifferent as we're completely divorced from the production process. This is why, so often, in surveys now, you find fewer than half of young UK adults know butter comes from a dairy cow and a third do not know eggs come from hens.
Come on. At least have the decency to couch your words in euphamisms to distance yourself from the unpleasantness of slaughtering animals:
Come on. At least have the decency to couch your words in euphamisms to distance yourself from the unpleasantness of slaughtering animals:
"But destroying an animal humanely is not cruel."
Ah, destroying. Humanely.
"And it is not destroying a person."
Good point. I'm sold. It is not destroying a person. So I can guiltlessly eat this meat that has been processed in ways that I have no idea about but have faith that I'm sure it was destroyed humanely.
By that is surely a chain of hierarchical reasoning; animal is below human is below close human or kin (you know using the principle theory of altruism or reciprocity). It's what makes us accept that we can allow conditions of labour and wages in far off places with people that are often not of the same ethnicity as us to be far below our own acceptable working conditions. In fact, sportswear manufacturers like Adidas use this very logic for explaining why they don't pay higher wages to factory workers in Bangladesh. It would destabilise the Bangladeshi economy and they, Adidas, bring jobs and thus wealth to the region, which is a good thing. Humane even.
By that is surely a chain of hierarchical reasoning; animal is below human is below close human or kin (you know using the principle theory of altruism or reciprocity). It's what makes us accept that we can allow conditions of labour and wages in far off places with people that are often not of the same ethnicity as us to be far below our own acceptable working conditions. In fact, sportswear manufacturers like Adidas use this very logic for explaining why they don't pay higher wages to factory workers in Bangladesh. It would destabilise the Bangladeshi economy and they, Adidas, bring jobs and thus wealth to the region, which is a good thing. Humane even.
"Again, an animal’s life is indifferent to when it dies, because it does not become anything and has no awareness of being something."
Again, sentience blah blah.
Ok, so I am really sold. I feel completely guilt free about eating this chicken that was reared in a a huge metal shed, pecked at, or worse perhaps debeaked and killed humanely at the ripe old age of 24 days.
Humane huh? This is just factory farming footage not undercover reportage. Can Carrier really believe that it's rational to find this morally acceptable?
Anyway can I, like, torture the animal?
Anyway can I, like, torture the animal?
"Thus eating animals is fine as long as you aren’t torturing them."
Christ. Why not? Surely if animals are indifferent to things, to when it dies and what it will become then a bit of torture won't matter?
Why not?
Because they suffer? Feel pain? So, how exactly do you kill a perfectly healthy animal humanely without it suffering or feeling pain? That's nonsensical.
For Carrier, his post just gets more and more weird. He argues that vegetarians are just bloody hypocrites for hanging out with meat eaters:
"Vegetarians also seem nonrational to me in their acceptance of non-vegetarians. Either eating meat is not all that immoral, or everyone they know is a villain, horrifically consuming the flesh of concentration camp victims. And yet they befriend us. Strange. It’s as if we were all serial child molesters, while they refused to have sex with children because it’s wrong, but then come to laugh at our dinner parties, have sex with us, and help us move."
This is just bizarre. But lets's pretend Carrier's argument isn't completely bonkers and try to unpicking his utterly rational thinking.
So, first, the serial child molesters (as opposed to those one-off paedophiles). Obviously no one has ever suggested this other than Carrier. I didn't dare put a "vegetarian child molester" in a search engine but I've never come across this analogy before. I think that might be because eating meat is a lifestyle choice and socialized as normal behaviour, an ideology that appears completely natural. No one, as far as I'm aware, has ever suggested that being a sexual predator of children is a lifestyle choice. No one has ever suggested we're socialized into molesting children. It's not on school curriculums. It's not considered normal or indeed the preferred way to be. So I can't see the analogy. Certainly factory farming has often been likened to concentration camps and if one takes out the factors that we eat the victims rather than pile them in mass graves and that the victims are animals that are not human the process is startlingly similar. Many find the idea of paralleling the two utterly distasteful. But then, there's never been any data on this one so it's a personal opinion but in my experience people who find the comparison distasteful also find the process of making meat distasteful. While some might not like the analogy of concentration camps on the processing level the analogy does hold up. One does not have to anthropomorphise animals but merely recognize that animals experience similar (if not very much the same) distress and pain as humans.
Apart from that, Carrier's analogy is just bloody irrational gibberish.
And others have pointed out, it would be very very hard for vegetarians to avoid mixing with meat eaters. They're everywhere finger licking and lovin' it.
"Perhaps vegetarians think taking animal lives is no more awful than flouting traffic laws or being mean to street urchins, although that makes less sense of why they are so passionate about it."
Huh? Perhaps? Yeah, I think vegetarians who don't meat for ethical reasons (not health veggies) might well see eating meat as a bit worse than flouting traffic laws. Though both are very naughty.
"That’s not the rhetoric I hear."
From whom? I'd love to meet these people. Methinks Carrier has just made this up.
"The strong drive many of them have to maintain their lifestyle seems attached to a belief that animal lives are “only slightly less valuable” than human lives and that killing them is a revoltingly awful thing to do. And that would make no sense of their tolerating us as if we were nothing more than casual traffic violators."
God knows I'm an idiot but even I can spot a straw men hostage situation. Set up vegetarians as believing meat eaters are about the same as casual (not even hardened serial) traffic violaters. Then show that they make no sense if they believe "animal lives are “only slightly less valuable” than human lives and that killing them is a revoltingly awful thing to do." That shows vegetarians' irrational thinking, magically holding two almost contradictory positions at once that you've just imagined them holding. Where is the logic in this? To complete the straw man rationale:
"If that’s the case, then it would seem vegetarians don’t really believe in their own convictions."
But it isn't the case is it? Because that would mean vegetarians would (all?) have to hold this completely contradictory rationale of both believing meat eating is revoltingly awful and only a minor offence. How Carrier can't see his own non-rational thinking here is beyond me.
But are vegetarians delusional?
"They have a violent emotional reaction to the thought of eating animals that is out of proportion to any factual basis for it, which is what we would ordinarily call a delusion..."
I'm really tempted to pop a video on here of a slaughterhouse scene. You can, if you wish pop in something like "pig slaughter" on youtube and there are a few uncut videos. I can't watch them because they make feel sick and ashamed. I'm delusional and emotional out of proportion to any factual basis though. What the factual basis is, Carrier doesn't allude to. Personally, I think that if you don't have some sort of emotional reaction (and I don't mean turn vegetarian) then there's probably something mentally not right with you.
Ok, so vegetarians are deluded muddle-headed nonrational beings but at least we aren't as nutty as evangelical Christians.
"Although vegetarianism is certainly a milder delusion than conservative Christianity, since its negative social effects are minimal. But I suppose this depends on the actual reasons you choose this, and the intensity of your feelings about it. But often enough the conclusion seems unavoidable to me. Vegetarianism is just another phobia, one that has it’s own restaurants."
However, apart from the first sentence not actually being a sentence (grammar Nazi) because it starts with a conjunction. The analogy is complete nonsense. Christianity is based on the belief in Jesus as your saviour and God and heaven and the whole shebang and Richard Carrier's life work seems to be to question whether even the historical Jesus existed let alone the supernatural Jesus and his mystical magical dad and even if you disagree with the moral arguments around meat eating there is firm scientific (not to say phenomenological in the philosophical sense) evidence to suggest that:
a) farmed animals can suffer
b) farmed animals experience stress and complex emotions and relationships
c) farmed animals feel pain
d) animals definitely exist unless you're into the whole solipsism thing
e) oh what's the point this is so obvious that there is no comparison between believing in this fella as your personal saviour in the afterlife
and believing this
is morally unacceptable in our present age of wealth, abundance and stuff.
It's a completely nonsensical comparison.
But Carrier has only just got going. And after proving that vegetarians are hypocrites because they have carnivorous friends and that not eating meat is like believing in Easter he turns his gaze to the environment. Surely we're on firmer footing here. After all, this isn't a simple moral debate any more but one he can back up with data. Right?
"It’s also not rational to be a vegetarian “to save the planet,” for the same reason it’s not rational to vote for third party candidates in U.S. presidential elections. It’s literally the most useless thing you can do to effect any change or prevent harm."
Literally. You can drive your car into space eating a cow with the heating on full and that would be less useless to the environment than giving up meat and/or dairy. Fact.
There are third party candidates in US elections? There are?
So, how is it literally the most useless environmental action you can undertake. The facts.
"As it happens, relying on local produce is worse for the environment. Factory farms are vastly more efficient. And there are, excuse me, but a fucking shitload of people on this planet to feed. We could not feed them without factory and industrial farming. But we’re here to talk about meat specifically…"
Oh dear. Being vegetarian has nothing to do with locally sourced food, that's another matter. So conflation of different arguments. Factory farms are far more efficient than what? Than not cutting down rainforests, growing soya to feed cattle? For a thorough analysis of meat production vs other crops George Monbiot's Eating the Earth is a good starter. Monbiot offers factual snacks like:
"Roughly twice as much of the world’s surface is used for grazing as for growing crops, yet animals fed entirely on pasture produce just 1 gram out of the 81 g of protein consumed per person per day."
"Sheep in this country occupy roughly 4m ha – more or less equivalent to all the arable and horticultural land in the UK. Yet they produce just 1.2% of the calories we consume here."
Full factual dinners like:
"An analysis by the livestock farmer Simon Fairlie suggests that were we to switch to a plant-based diet in Britain, we could feed all the people of this country on just 3m of our 18m hectares of farmland. Alternatively, we could use the land here to feed 200m people."
There's a wiki page on the huge environmental cost of meat production as opposed to other farming. Now I don't want to suggest Carrier is talking complete nonsense but I can't finish this sentence without contradicting myself.
"Apart from its production meat is a highly efficient delivery vehicle for a panacea of nutrients and essential fats and proteins, likewise milk, eggs, yoghurt, lard, and cheese, while meat’s byproducts (the parts people don’t actually eat) are essential across the economy: from pet food for our carnivorous cats and dogs, to leather, wool, gelatine, glue, tallow, fatty acids used in the production of plastic and rubber, natural fertilizers (including urine and bone meal), and the ingredients in hundreds of other everyday products, from household detergents and medicines, to paint, carpet, and processed wood. We get 185 products in all just from your average pig. And the production of all these hundreds of materials is not quite as inefficient as opponents claim."
Oh the old false dichotomy of meat production produces all this so it must be good. Because you can't produce all these things in any other way than from a pig or cow or chicken (well maybe eggs would be tough). And you can't get these nutrients anywhere else. In fact I'm so weakened by my lack of animal products I can't finish this sen
"In fact, since it’s an integral part of our overall recycling industry, abandoning meat production has consequences that negate most of the benefits supposed to be obtained by it (read Simon Fairlie, on whom I rely for much of the following, and Rob Lyons’ review thereof)."
Fairlie, who wrote Meat A Benign Extravagence in 2010, has since shifted his opinion, now arguing that meat consumption is a serious threat to the environment but you don't have to give it up, you just tax it so only rich people can afford it. simon-fairlie-on-meat-and-climate-change
Environmental campaigner, George Monbiot also agreed with Fairlie back in 2011. Mainly because Monbiot was desperate to keep on eating meat it seems. Because two years later he wrote a further piece repudiating everything he's said before in defence of Fairlie's position. wrong-about-being-wrong/
On September 28th of last year The Guardian ran global-carbon-emissions-stood-still-in-2016-offering-climate-hope. We all seem to love a bit of hope. It turned out that the report they had been quoting by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA) didn't factor in animal farming or deforestation in that figure so the Guardian ran with lots of articles afterwards pointing out just how bad the environmental factor was from animal farming and eating yummy burgers: t/2017/sep/29/methane-emissions-cattle-11-percent-higher-than-estimated, 2017/nov/07/big-meat-big-dairy-carbon-emmissions-exxon-mobil etc.
In my last blog I showed how Steven Pinker offered no evidence for a rosy environmental future but instead suggested ways in which things might be better if we took up technologies that don't exist.
Carrier offers the same non-rational response to environmental problems, technology will fix it, carry on:
"Even its negatives can be offset with continually improving technologies if we would just care to apply them. In other words, the solution to such problems is to solve the fucking problem, instead of trying to abandon the industry altogether, which will never happen. To be rational is to be realistic, and work for changes that can actually occur. Like increasing the efficiency of an industry, which benefits everyone, business and environment alike. Game Theory, people. Learn it. Live it."
He's very angry and emotive about this subject. He's always beautifully calm in talks I've seen him on discussing religion and Jesus things. Odd huh? He offers no examples of "continually improving technologies if we would just care to apply them." That always means, in my own humble experience, that they've just made that up. I remember Tony Blair being put on the spot back in the early 2000s about how the New Labour government would offset emissions while continuing to expand airports and air travel. He told us that "new technologies in wing design and fuel efficiency will make it um, you know, far more efficient." Emissions from air travel continues to grow despite these imaginary technologies.
It's certainly not rational to argue that there isn't a (fucking) problem, and uh even if there is it's not rational to argue that you shouldn't stop doing that thing that's causing the problem, you should have faith in non existent technologies that might one day fix them. Carry on eating meat and have faith that technology will solve things. One day. You know...
"Arguments against meat production tend to be based on bad math and bad science, and confuse the wisdom of eating less meat (food supply diversity is essential to an economy and food supply stability as well as personal health), with the dogma of eating none."
This is all wrong. Climate scientists are pretty adamant that animal farming produces 15% of CO2 emissions. That's pretty solid math. I don't know anyone but cranks that disagree with the figure.
Food supply diversity is certainly not essential to any economy. I have no idea where he dreamt this up. Farming is heavily subsidized for a reason. It's not cost effective in its current form. As to health, it's a tired one. You can be healthy with a meat based diet, you can be healthy with a plant based diet. You takes your choice. If you're being rational about things like morality (rationalists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins agree veganism is the morally rational diet, here, here), the environment and health then meat eating doesn't have any rational scientific (let alone mathematical) basis.
"When we look at the actual math and facts everything changes. For what follows I’ll rely on Fairlie’s work as well as the excellent report on animal farming impact by WaterFootprint.org, and they have no pro-meat agenda, yet their data corroborates the world meat industry’s report on the Environmental Impact of Meat Production Systems, which likewise includes industry-independent data."
Weirdly Compassion in World Farming found "One quarter of the global freshwater used worldwide relates to meat and dairy production" and "A reduction in meat consumption and food waste would reduce the water impact of our diet." https://www.ciwf.org.uk/research/environment/wasting-water/
Even weirder the waterFootprint.org piece concludes "Managing the demand for animal products by promoting a dietary shift away from a meat-rich diet will be an inevitable component in the environmental policy of governments. In countries where the consumption of animal products is still quickly rising, one should critically look how this growing demand can be moderated."
So I'm not sure why Carrier is using this piece. Did he think no one would look? Ha.
So what is this math and science he speaketh of?
"As just one example of bad math: much is made of how much water is used to make meat."
Ok. Go ahead.
"Yet almost all of that is actually the water used to grow grain. The grain used to feed cattle, for instance, amounts to 98% of the water consumption involved in beef and dairy production (or more, depending on where we are geographically)."
So...uh...the water is used to grow grain...that is then fed to cattle. You've just defeated your own argument.
"And almost all of that is rain water (over 87%) which falls naturally and would have been wasted anyway were it not put to some use–and likely we’d always be putting it to some use (whether growing grain, generating electricity, manufacturing, drinking, showering) so there would be little net effect on water consumption if we abandoned the meat industry."
I just had to laugh at the logic. Where does Carrier think water comes from normally? I'm just...I can't...this is completely nonsensical. You see, Farmer Brian plants the seeds, the magical rain falls on the seeds, the seeds grow into lovely plants like wheat and then you eat the wheat. With a lot of tweaking (production, fertilisers, pesticides) that's how farming works. But here, Carrier seems to be suggesting that if we didn't eat cattle, we wouldn't grow the crops to feed the cattle and all that rain water would be wasted. Though it wouldn't as he points out, because water is precious and we use it for all those things he suggests. There's a nice table of comparing water use of meat, cereal and vegetable crops at ironically (as Carrier uses their information as his defence): http://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/. It clearly shows that the meat industry is incredibly water intensive compared to other farming.
So, first, the serial child molesters (as opposed to those one-off paedophiles). Obviously no one has ever suggested this other than Carrier. I didn't dare put a "vegetarian child molester" in a search engine but I've never come across this analogy before. I think that might be because eating meat is a lifestyle choice and socialized as normal behaviour, an ideology that appears completely natural. No one, as far as I'm aware, has ever suggested that being a sexual predator of children is a lifestyle choice. No one has ever suggested we're socialized into molesting children. It's not on school curriculums. It's not considered normal or indeed the preferred way to be. So I can't see the analogy. Certainly factory farming has often been likened to concentration camps and if one takes out the factors that we eat the victims rather than pile them in mass graves and that the victims are animals that are not human the process is startlingly similar. Many find the idea of paralleling the two utterly distasteful. But then, there's never been any data on this one so it's a personal opinion but in my experience people who find the comparison distasteful also find the process of making meat distasteful. While some might not like the analogy of concentration camps on the processing level the analogy does hold up. One does not have to anthropomorphise animals but merely recognize that animals experience similar (if not very much the same) distress and pain as humans.
Apart from that, Carrier's analogy is just bloody irrational gibberish.
And others have pointed out, it would be very very hard for vegetarians to avoid mixing with meat eaters. They're everywhere finger licking and lovin' it.
"Perhaps vegetarians think taking animal lives is no more awful than flouting traffic laws or being mean to street urchins, although that makes less sense of why they are so passionate about it."
Huh? Perhaps? Yeah, I think vegetarians who don't meat for ethical reasons (not health veggies) might well see eating meat as a bit worse than flouting traffic laws. Though both are very naughty.
"That’s not the rhetoric I hear."
From whom? I'd love to meet these people. Methinks Carrier has just made this up.
"The strong drive many of them have to maintain their lifestyle seems attached to a belief that animal lives are “only slightly less valuable” than human lives and that killing them is a revoltingly awful thing to do. And that would make no sense of their tolerating us as if we were nothing more than casual traffic violators."
God knows I'm an idiot but even I can spot a straw men hostage situation. Set up vegetarians as believing meat eaters are about the same as casual (not even hardened serial) traffic violaters. Then show that they make no sense if they believe "animal lives are “only slightly less valuable” than human lives and that killing them is a revoltingly awful thing to do." That shows vegetarians' irrational thinking, magically holding two almost contradictory positions at once that you've just imagined them holding. Where is the logic in this? To complete the straw man rationale:
"If that’s the case, then it would seem vegetarians don’t really believe in their own convictions."
But it isn't the case is it? Because that would mean vegetarians would (all?) have to hold this completely contradictory rationale of both believing meat eating is revoltingly awful and only a minor offence. How Carrier can't see his own non-rational thinking here is beyond me.
But are vegetarians delusional?
"They have a violent emotional reaction to the thought of eating animals that is out of proportion to any factual basis for it, which is what we would ordinarily call a delusion..."
I'm really tempted to pop a video on here of a slaughterhouse scene. You can, if you wish pop in something like "pig slaughter" on youtube and there are a few uncut videos. I can't watch them because they make feel sick and ashamed. I'm delusional and emotional out of proportion to any factual basis though. What the factual basis is, Carrier doesn't allude to. Personally, I think that if you don't have some sort of emotional reaction (and I don't mean turn vegetarian) then there's probably something mentally not right with you.
Ok, so vegetarians are deluded muddle-headed nonrational beings but at least we aren't as nutty as evangelical Christians.
"Although vegetarianism is certainly a milder delusion than conservative Christianity, since its negative social effects are minimal. But I suppose this depends on the actual reasons you choose this, and the intensity of your feelings about it. But often enough the conclusion seems unavoidable to me. Vegetarianism is just another phobia, one that has it’s own restaurants."
However, apart from the first sentence not actually being a sentence (grammar Nazi) because it starts with a conjunction. The analogy is complete nonsense. Christianity is based on the belief in Jesus as your saviour and God and heaven and the whole shebang and Richard Carrier's life work seems to be to question whether even the historical Jesus existed let alone the supernatural Jesus and his mystical magical dad and even if you disagree with the moral arguments around meat eating there is firm scientific (not to say phenomenological in the philosophical sense) evidence to suggest that:
a) farmed animals can suffer
b) farmed animals experience stress and complex emotions and relationships
c) farmed animals feel pain
d) animals definitely exist unless you're into the whole solipsism thing
e) oh what's the point this is so obvious that there is no comparison between believing in this fella as your personal saviour in the afterlife
It's a completely nonsensical comparison.
But Carrier has only just got going. And after proving that vegetarians are hypocrites because they have carnivorous friends and that not eating meat is like believing in Easter he turns his gaze to the environment. Surely we're on firmer footing here. After all, this isn't a simple moral debate any more but one he can back up with data. Right?
"It’s also not rational to be a vegetarian “to save the planet,” for the same reason it’s not rational to vote for third party candidates in U.S. presidential elections. It’s literally the most useless thing you can do to effect any change or prevent harm."
Literally. You can drive your car into space eating a cow with the heating on full and that would be less useless to the environment than giving up meat and/or dairy. Fact.
There are third party candidates in US elections? There are?
So, how is it literally the most useless environmental action you can undertake. The facts.
"As it happens, relying on local produce is worse for the environment. Factory farms are vastly more efficient. And there are, excuse me, but a fucking shitload of people on this planet to feed. We could not feed them without factory and industrial farming. But we’re here to talk about meat specifically…"
Oh dear. Being vegetarian has nothing to do with locally sourced food, that's another matter. So conflation of different arguments. Factory farms are far more efficient than what? Than not cutting down rainforests, growing soya to feed cattle? For a thorough analysis of meat production vs other crops George Monbiot's Eating the Earth is a good starter. Monbiot offers factual snacks like:
"Roughly twice as much of the world’s surface is used for grazing as for growing crops, yet animals fed entirely on pasture produce just 1 gram out of the 81 g of protein consumed per person per day."
"Sheep in this country occupy roughly 4m ha – more or less equivalent to all the arable and horticultural land in the UK. Yet they produce just 1.2% of the calories we consume here."
Full factual dinners like:
"An analysis by the livestock farmer Simon Fairlie suggests that were we to switch to a plant-based diet in Britain, we could feed all the people of this country on just 3m of our 18m hectares of farmland. Alternatively, we could use the land here to feed 200m people."
There's a wiki page on the huge environmental cost of meat production as opposed to other farming. Now I don't want to suggest Carrier is talking complete nonsense but I can't finish this sentence without contradicting myself.
"Apart from its production meat is a highly efficient delivery vehicle for a panacea of nutrients and essential fats and proteins, likewise milk, eggs, yoghurt, lard, and cheese, while meat’s byproducts (the parts people don’t actually eat) are essential across the economy: from pet food for our carnivorous cats and dogs, to leather, wool, gelatine, glue, tallow, fatty acids used in the production of plastic and rubber, natural fertilizers (including urine and bone meal), and the ingredients in hundreds of other everyday products, from household detergents and medicines, to paint, carpet, and processed wood. We get 185 products in all just from your average pig. And the production of all these hundreds of materials is not quite as inefficient as opponents claim."
Oh the old false dichotomy of meat production produces all this so it must be good. Because you can't produce all these things in any other way than from a pig or cow or chicken (well maybe eggs would be tough). And you can't get these nutrients anywhere else. In fact I'm so weakened by my lack of animal products I can't finish this sen
"In fact, since it’s an integral part of our overall recycling industry, abandoning meat production has consequences that negate most of the benefits supposed to be obtained by it (read Simon Fairlie, on whom I rely for much of the following, and Rob Lyons’ review thereof)."
Fairlie, who wrote Meat A Benign Extravagence in 2010, has since shifted his opinion, now arguing that meat consumption is a serious threat to the environment but you don't have to give it up, you just tax it so only rich people can afford it. simon-fairlie-on-meat-and-climate-change
Environmental campaigner, George Monbiot also agreed with Fairlie back in 2011. Mainly because Monbiot was desperate to keep on eating meat it seems. Because two years later he wrote a further piece repudiating everything he's said before in defence of Fairlie's position. wrong-about-being-wrong/
On September 28th of last year The Guardian ran global-carbon-emissions-stood-still-in-2016-offering-climate-hope. We all seem to love a bit of hope. It turned out that the report they had been quoting by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA) didn't factor in animal farming or deforestation in that figure so the Guardian ran with lots of articles afterwards pointing out just how bad the environmental factor was from animal farming and eating yummy burgers: t/2017/sep/29/methane-emissions-cattle-11-percent-higher-than-estimated, 2017/nov/07/big-meat-big-dairy-carbon-emmissions-exxon-mobil etc.
In my last blog I showed how Steven Pinker offered no evidence for a rosy environmental future but instead suggested ways in which things might be better if we took up technologies that don't exist.
Carrier offers the same non-rational response to environmental problems, technology will fix it, carry on:
"Even its negatives can be offset with continually improving technologies if we would just care to apply them. In other words, the solution to such problems is to solve the fucking problem, instead of trying to abandon the industry altogether, which will never happen. To be rational is to be realistic, and work for changes that can actually occur. Like increasing the efficiency of an industry, which benefits everyone, business and environment alike. Game Theory, people. Learn it. Live it."
He's very angry and emotive about this subject. He's always beautifully calm in talks I've seen him on discussing religion and Jesus things. Odd huh? He offers no examples of "continually improving technologies if we would just care to apply them." That always means, in my own humble experience, that they've just made that up. I remember Tony Blair being put on the spot back in the early 2000s about how the New Labour government would offset emissions while continuing to expand airports and air travel. He told us that "new technologies in wing design and fuel efficiency will make it um, you know, far more efficient." Emissions from air travel continues to grow despite these imaginary technologies.
It's certainly not rational to argue that there isn't a (fucking) problem, and uh even if there is it's not rational to argue that you shouldn't stop doing that thing that's causing the problem, you should have faith in non existent technologies that might one day fix them. Carry on eating meat and have faith that technology will solve things. One day. You know...
"Arguments against meat production tend to be based on bad math and bad science, and confuse the wisdom of eating less meat (food supply diversity is essential to an economy and food supply stability as well as personal health), with the dogma of eating none."
This is all wrong. Climate scientists are pretty adamant that animal farming produces 15% of CO2 emissions. That's pretty solid math. I don't know anyone but cranks that disagree with the figure.
Food supply diversity is certainly not essential to any economy. I have no idea where he dreamt this up. Farming is heavily subsidized for a reason. It's not cost effective in its current form. As to health, it's a tired one. You can be healthy with a meat based diet, you can be healthy with a plant based diet. You takes your choice. If you're being rational about things like morality (rationalists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins agree veganism is the morally rational diet, here, here), the environment and health then meat eating doesn't have any rational scientific (let alone mathematical) basis.
"When we look at the actual math and facts everything changes. For what follows I’ll rely on Fairlie’s work as well as the excellent report on animal farming impact by WaterFootprint.org, and they have no pro-meat agenda, yet their data corroborates the world meat industry’s report on the Environmental Impact of Meat Production Systems, which likewise includes industry-independent data."
Weirdly Compassion in World Farming found "One quarter of the global freshwater used worldwide relates to meat and dairy production" and "A reduction in meat consumption and food waste would reduce the water impact of our diet." https://www.ciwf.org.uk/research/environment/wasting-water/
Even weirder the waterFootprint.org piece concludes "Managing the demand for animal products by promoting a dietary shift away from a meat-rich diet will be an inevitable component in the environmental policy of governments. In countries where the consumption of animal products is still quickly rising, one should critically look how this growing demand can be moderated."
So I'm not sure why Carrier is using this piece. Did he think no one would look? Ha.
So what is this math and science he speaketh of?
"As just one example of bad math: much is made of how much water is used to make meat."
Ok. Go ahead.
"Yet almost all of that is actually the water used to grow grain. The grain used to feed cattle, for instance, amounts to 98% of the water consumption involved in beef and dairy production (or more, depending on where we are geographically)."
So...uh...the water is used to grow grain...that is then fed to cattle. You've just defeated your own argument.
"And almost all of that is rain water (over 87%) which falls naturally and would have been wasted anyway were it not put to some use–and likely we’d always be putting it to some use (whether growing grain, generating electricity, manufacturing, drinking, showering) so there would be little net effect on water consumption if we abandoned the meat industry."
I just had to laugh at the logic. Where does Carrier think water comes from normally? I'm just...I can't...this is completely nonsensical. You see, Farmer Brian plants the seeds, the magical rain falls on the seeds, the seeds grow into lovely plants like wheat and then you eat the wheat. With a lot of tweaking (production, fertilisers, pesticides) that's how farming works. But here, Carrier seems to be suggesting that if we didn't eat cattle, we wouldn't grow the crops to feed the cattle and all that rain water would be wasted. Though it wouldn't as he points out, because water is precious and we use it for all those things he suggests. There's a nice table of comparing water use of meat, cereal and vegetable crops at ironically (as Carrier uses their information as his defence): http://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/. It clearly shows that the meat industry is incredibly water intensive compared to other farming.
"There would be little net effect on water consumption if we abandoned the meat industry."
This is just completely and utterly wrong.
"We’d just use that water for something else."
I uh...I'm just...this is like explaining economics to a small child. Yes, we would use the water for something else. Precious precious water. And because freshwater is precious meat costs more to produce environmentally as well as economically. Does this not slap one in the face?
"Or not use it at all. So even at its worst (and beef production is the worst) meat production is really only negligibly more water intensive than agriculture."
Again, completely untrue, see graph at waterfootprint.org. Spookily enough his reference pages are all dead. I mean, they've been humanely destroyed.
"So the argument then shifts to why we waste all that grain, when we could just eat it. Well, first of all, we are converting that grain into more than just meat."
We are?
"When we compare “per ton of product” between cattle and grain, for instance, we’re not talking about just food; and not every item that comes off a cow has the same value or importance. Per ton of fertilizer cows produce? Per ton of bone meal cows produce? Per ton of tallow cows produce? Per ton of leather cows produce? Are these things the same value or even equatable to the food that cows produce, including meat, fat, milk, cheese, whey, and yoghurt?"
Evidence?
"Secondly, most of the grain we feed cows (and other farmed animals), people couldn’t eat."
That's simply not true. Cattle are mostly fed on "a typical cereal diet [which] might include wheat, barley, oilseed rape and minerals" for your McDonalds burger (from their website).
"It’s called roughage, a waste product. Over 80% of what even factory farmed animals eat is actually recycled waste product from the production of grain humans are already eating. Whenever you see stats like “22% of [U.S. grown wheat] is used for animal feed and residuals,” that word residuals means agrowaste fed to livestock–so this is not “22% of human edible wheat product” that’s going to animals, but 22% of the wheat product sold, whether humans could eat it or not."
The logic being that you feed something to a cow so that it is no longer food that I could have eaten. The soy that cattle eat wasn't going to be eaten by humans ergo it would have been wasted. Brilliant logic. As a vegan I've experienced many times the "you can eat this chicken, it's dead and I've bought it so it doesn't matter" logic with no understanding of how economics works. You see, the argument actually is not whether the feed you feed cattle would be wasted if the cattle weren't there but that feeding the cattle the feed that I could eat is a huge waste of resources. Astonishingly, this really is simple maths.
"In fact most stats you’ll see for tonnage of crops parceled by use don’t distinguish residuals from edible quantity, thus badly skewing what a naive reader might think such numbers mean. Animal farming is not taking grain away from people, but making the grain people eat more efficient, by converting its waste product into more food. And hundreds of other products besides food."
This is not just stupidity but disingenuousness. No one suggests feeding cattle is taking away grain from anyone. The argument is (apart from the morality of eating meat) that it's not cost effective in land use, to the environment, in use of water, in calorific value, protein, and so on. Humans eating grain is far more cost effective in every sense than pushing it through the middleman of a farm animal.
"Now, in order to recycle that waste, we do have to supplement it with some quality product as well. In effect some human edible grain must be “burned” to convert grain production waste into food (and corn is worldwide the most popular supplement used), so animal farming does “consume” grains that humans could have eaten instead, but by doing so it creates more food, and many other products. In other words, we are burning a little bit of grain to run these waste recycling-plants we call animals–just as we have to burn resources to recycle plastic, metal, or paper. "
Blink. By feeding cattle grain it produces more food? Oh dear. Again just pop in a search for say, energy intensity meat vs grain and you'll see that meat is far more intensive and wasteful.
Come on, bamboozle me with some maths.
"When you do all the math for industrial cattle farming, for example, feed conversion efficiency for non-roughage grain input is better than 4:1 (4 kg non-waste input for every 1 kg usable output), which is not bad considering what you get for it (which is again, a lot more than just food–it’s also all those other animal products that grease our economy, literally and figuratively). For industrial dairy farming this efficiency is actually 1:4, i.e. we get 4 kgs of usable product for every 1 kg of usable product we put in. Which makes industrial dairy farming one of the smartest things we ever thought of (so it’s too bad I can’t digest dairy, but even I benefit from this industry, as dairy products are in things even I and many vegetarians eat, like bread). The numbers come out a little different if you compare food energy input and output (for dairy it’s close to 1:1; yet for beef it’s 1:0.65, which is better than 2:1, either way at near parity), but that’s not a wholly apt comparison because energy is not all you get out of food (you also get a whole array of nutrients) and food isn’t all you get out of animals. On balance, we do not appear to be wasting very much food on livestock. It looks like any other efficient system of manufacturing, into which we pour a selection of resources and out of which we get hundreds of usable products of comparable value."
What absolute nonsense.
"Any other argument you hear ends up like that: start pulling at the threads of its specious math and facts, and it unravels."
Oh my.
Ok. Richard, why not fly in the face of all evidence.
"For example, take the claim that “factory farming (specifically for meat) is one of the greatest contributors to global warming.” That’s simply not true."
That is simply not true.
"It’s based on an FAO report that has led websites and wonks to say things like that the “animal agriculture sector is responsible for 18%, or nearly one-fifth, of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, greater than the share contributed by the transportation sector,” but that’s hopelessly misleading. A third of that figure is based not on the farming, but on the clearing of forests to expand ranches in developing countries."
Actually deforestation for cattle feed is usually counted separately in the data. But even if it were counted in the data it's still bloody data!
"...which is a one-time cost and not an actual ongoing effect of the ranch, and is not terminal (forest clearing goes on a decline as countries doing it improve economically and begin to balance their resources–they are just going through the phase we went through a hundred years ago, claiming for industry land that was effectively fallow, and gradually learning to balance that process with national preserves and biodiversity). Nor is this a significant factor in first world animal farming (no one burned down a forest to feed you Iowa beef)."
Again this is completely wrong, untrue. We've lost 50% of the rainforests in 50 years and that is for wood and clearing for growing animal feed. It's completely unsustainable. This is complete nonsense.
"Another one third of that figure consists of fertilizer production and use, most of which actually gets used in the agriculture industry (and would thus simply be replaced with some other emissions-producing fertilizer), and what gets used for animal husbandry (e.g. fertilizing pastures) would still be used if the same land were used for crops (in fact crops are more fertilizer intensive), so this is not in fact anything we’d get back if we stopped animal farming. And when you subtract that element, too, now you end up with just 6% of manmade emissions coming from actual animal farming that would go away if we stopped. But that’s including inefficient animal husbandry in third world countries. How much of total manmade emissions comes from actual modernized industrial animal farming? Less than 2%. And this is all based on that same FAO data. And BTW these numbers reflect impact, not quantity, e.g. that “less than 2%” figure is taking into account that methane is a hundred times worse than carbon dioxide. Hmm. Funny how “less than 2%” becomes “18%” with just a little accounting chicanery. So if you are worried about cow farts boiling the earth away, worry not. You are ruining the environment just as much when you shower as when you eat a hamburger. In fact, if we set an average shower’s greenhouse impact at about 2 units, a hamburger rates about 3…while the impact for a serving of winter tomatoes is 50. That’s right, vegetarians. Perspective is a bitch."
This is all complete nonsense. If you check the FAO data. If one wants to go down the disingenuous route of saying, yeah, well, if you take out the growing of feed, the fertiliser, the land use, the manure, the processing, hey, animal farming hardly hurts the environment at all. You're still bloody wrong:
"In terms of activities, feed production and processing (this includes land use change) and enteric fermentation from ruminants are the two main sources of emissions, representing 45 and 39 percent of total emissions, respectively. Manure storage and processing represent 10 percent. The remainder is attributable to the processing and transportation of animal products." FAO data
Cow farts make up as much as feed production and processing.
The FAO report clearly shows the extent of damage that animal farming causes. An odd one to use in any defence of eating meat.
I think it's about time that we admitted that animal farming is bad in every way but in the future it could be better and I'm going to defend my continuing way of life by extolling future technological development that doesn't exist and hey, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater argument.
"Our factory farming system can be improved greatly, like any industry can (e.g. the amount of water consumed by electricity generation and manufacturing is far more alarming than what we use to produce animal products). Thus like any industry we ought to aim at improving it."
Yes, let's aim to endeavour to dream and aspire.
"But it’s nonrational to say “we should just get rid of it,”"
Why? Why is it nonrational? It's completely rational. It would do away with the unnecessary death of between 50 and 60 billion land animals (that doesn't include fish) per year. It would make a huge dent in the amount of anthropomorphic CO2 expelled into the atmosphere. It would be better for our health.
"and doubly nonrational to think you’re ever going to get rid of it."
That would indeed be nonrational to believe you could ever use rationality to talk around irrational people into not eating meat. I'm pretty sure nobody believes that would happen.
"and triply nonrational to think that a meaningless protest behavior (not eating meat) is ever going to make one whit of difference to anything."
Yeah, why vote, why do anything? None of it makes a whit of difference.
What a bizarre nihilistic argument.
But hey, at least I'm healthy being vegan right? Uh oh.
"And Vegetarianism Is Not “Healthier”."
I'm not sure why "healthier" is in speech marks.
"I’ve just gone over a few examples. But I have yet to see any rational reason to be a vegetarian, other than pure aesthetics (“I just like it” or “it makes me feel good”)..."
Woah. Is that a rational position? I just like it? I just like being Christian? I just like believing in Angel fairy crystal healing?
"...or medical necessity (“I have heart disease”)," Uh so how come it's not healthier if it's good if you have heart disease? That doesn't make sense.
"...which are idiosyncratic (i.e. not true for most people)."
Huh? Vegetarian diets are only good for some people with heart disease? That's bonkers talk.
"Even basing it on anecdotes and testimonials (“I felt so much better after I went vegan!”) is nonrational, because that’s just another alternative medicine mumbo placebo."
Wow, yes, I agree. Because that would not be rational. I feel so much better after I drink my own piss for breakfast is one I've heard. Well, you go ahead there. Is that a cocktail umbrella in it?
But woah, I feel a strawy straw man argument coming on....
"Just sincerely convince yourself that eating meat will have the same effect, and you’ll be saying “I feel so much better now that I went back to eating meat!” It’s no different from “I felt so much better after I started wearing magnets on my feet!” Sure. But that’s all in your head. Get control of your perception of reality and you can turn any lifestyle change into a source of improved mood. Until you regress back to your baseline. This is not a sound basis for recommending other people placebo themselves into vegetarianism."
Agreed. But who says this other than foot magnet wearing men of straw in Richard Carrier's imaginings?
"“But it’s healthier!” is also false. Because the data do not consistently establish this."
Oh Richard you are on the wrong bus to Wrongville, Ohio.
So come on, where's this data backing your argument up?
"Every diet has pros and cons, the net effect of which is zero, when any healthy diet is compared. Thus the same mathematical and factual unraveling occurs for any claimed benefit you pull at the threads of. Eating less meat is good for your heart, for example, but not as much as is claimed, and even what is claimed is not very impressive. One study is often cited as establishing 24% fewer deaths from ischemic heart disease (but, notably, no differences whatever for any other cause of death). In fact that study only established a 95% chance that the differential was somewhere between 6% and 38%…pay close attention: that means the data do not confirm a benefit any greater than only 6% fewer deaths (it could be greater, but we don’t know). A 6% edge is effectively irrelevant. Even a 24% edge is not that significant. It means for every 10 meat eaters who die of ischemic heart disease, about 8 vegetarians will likewise. Not a huge improvement."
Oh dear. Vegetarian diet is not healthier and here's the evidence that proves it's a bit healthier. Well, that certainly worked out for that argument.
"Worse, heart disease is a default: because we have cured or can prevent or treat all other diseases so well, yet people must necessarily eventually die of something, and that something is commonly heart disease (and cancer next after that). Thus heart disease remains a top killer not because anything is causing more of it, but because we are living longer and dodging every other bullet. In that light, vegetarianism isn’t giving us any real advantage. We’re just going to die anyway, it will simply be of something else. Like non-ischemic heart disease, which is more common. And vegetarianism confers no benefit against that. Lo and behold, that’s what the study found: when all causes are considered, vegetarians die exactly as often as nonvegetarians do. No net benefit."
Dear god. This is the logic: We're all going to die, probably of heart disease or cancer, a vegetarian diet might makes us a bit healthier but hey, we're going to die, we just live longer. Vegetarianism confers no benefits on certain illnesses so ergo the net benefit is zero because we're all going to die sometime.
Logic seems to go out of the window in any critique of vegetarianism/veganism. If you care about health (and I couldn't give a damn about diet health factors) then recently (2016) A new study from Italy’s University of Florence linked vegetarian and vegan diets to significantly lower rates of ischemic heart disease and cancer. More research has tied vegan diets to healthier guts, gentler menopause symptoms and even lower levels of stress. As reported in Time magazine. This uses exactly the same logic as Carrier.
The vegan diet beat other diets including: "when pitted against other popular diets—classic omnivorism, as well as vegetarianism and a form of it that allows for fish—the vegan plan also came out on top in terms of weight loss."
Slim, devastatingly handsome (it says that somewhere), healthy. Well, this study proves that though it's not exceptional benefits, vegan diets outperform vegetarian diets which outperform meat based diets. Ergo, a vegan diet is healthier. But...
"Combine all of those benefits with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Beyoncé and Ellen Degeneres, and “going vegan” seems like a no-brainer if you have the gustatory fortitude to stick with it.
But dig into the research, and some holes appear."
Uh oh. How can Beyonce be wrong? I have no idea who these people are.
"Regarding the study tying veganism to lower rates of total cancer and ischemic heart disease, the Italian team also found vegans do not enjoy benefits when it comes to total cardiovascular disease, death from cancer or death from any cause."
You see the sleight of hand? No one is suggesting veganism does worse than other diets on "total cardiovascular disease, death from cancer or death from any cause" but these are considered "holes." To put it clearly, vegan and vegetarian diets outperform meat diets on certain illnesses, on others they show no difference. Nothing here suggests vegan or vegetarian diets are unhealthier in any way but the slant is to suggest just that as "holes" in the data. And then Time offers another view, you know, for balance.
"“Compared to the average American diet, a vegan diet looks very healthy, especially in the short term,” says Loren Cordain, professor emeritus of health and human sciences at Colorado State University. “But in the long-term, there aren’t any clear mortality benefits, and in fact [vegan diets] may be less healthy than diets than [sic] include meat.” [my italics]"
Loren Cordain makes a living from selling books on "the paleo-diet." The Paleo diet being red red meat. Yum. It rates bottom in nutritional ratings tables health.usnews.
I love Cordain's assertion that vegan diets may be less healthy than the diet he endorses in a number of best selling books. I may be King of Albania one day. His argument is complete gibberish.
Anyway, Carrier's still irrationally barking on.
"To give you a point of comparison, while vegetarianism might give you a benefit of about 1.2 times lower mortality on one single illness, and yet still makes no difference to when you die beyond at most one or two years, not smoking definitely does give you a benefit of 10 times lower mortality rate on numerous diseases, and for some diseases it’s 20 times or more."
Has Carrier not heard of straw men? A vegetarian diet might give health benefits over a meat diet but smoking is much worse. Huh?
There's then a huge paragraph on smoking that has nothing to do with the argument but having set up this straw man he's going to run with it.
"Thus smoking is vastly more irrational than vegetarianism (so vegetarians who smoke: you’re the biggest fools on the planet)."
Is this just a big prank?
"Vegetarianism is at least merely an inconvenience, provided you maintain a healthy diet (merely eating vegetarian does not constitute a healthy diet; in fact vegetarians have to be even more informed and careful about managing their diet precisely because they are avoiding a primary delivery vehicle for many of the vitamins and nutrients humans normally need)."
By this point I'm just chuckling at the logic.
"Notably, early studies showing improved health and lifespan for vegetarians, when controlled for smoking (because vegetarians tend not to be smokers), showed no remaining advantage to being a vegetarian. In other words, eat a reasonable diet of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, nuts, and fruit. And don’t fucking smoke."
Fucking A.
Conclusive proof if ever one needed it that MEAT NOT BAD. Case closed.
Meat eating is just as healthy as not eating meat and dairy, it's not bad for the environment, in fact it's probably good for it because we get byproducts like leather couches that could never be replaced by something like a couch made of some other non-meat byproduct based material, if we didn't eat meat we'd waste loads of rain water, vegetarian smokers are unhealthy, factory farms are clean and functional but may occasionally have accidents and eating meat is morally rational because of all these things. And more. The court rules in favour of Carrier vs nonrational vegetarians.
This is just completely and utterly wrong.
"We’d just use that water for something else."
I uh...I'm just...this is like explaining economics to a small child. Yes, we would use the water for something else. Precious precious water. And because freshwater is precious meat costs more to produce environmentally as well as economically. Does this not slap one in the face?
"Or not use it at all. So even at its worst (and beef production is the worst) meat production is really only negligibly more water intensive than agriculture."
Again, completely untrue, see graph at waterfootprint.org. Spookily enough his reference pages are all dead. I mean, they've been humanely destroyed.
"So the argument then shifts to why we waste all that grain, when we could just eat it. Well, first of all, we are converting that grain into more than just meat."
We are?
"When we compare “per ton of product” between cattle and grain, for instance, we’re not talking about just food; and not every item that comes off a cow has the same value or importance. Per ton of fertilizer cows produce? Per ton of bone meal cows produce? Per ton of tallow cows produce? Per ton of leather cows produce? Are these things the same value or even equatable to the food that cows produce, including meat, fat, milk, cheese, whey, and yoghurt?"
Evidence?
"Secondly, most of the grain we feed cows (and other farmed animals), people couldn’t eat."
That's simply not true. Cattle are mostly fed on "a typical cereal diet [which] might include wheat, barley, oilseed rape and minerals" for your McDonalds burger (from their website).
"It’s called roughage, a waste product. Over 80% of what even factory farmed animals eat is actually recycled waste product from the production of grain humans are already eating. Whenever you see stats like “22% of [U.S. grown wheat] is used for animal feed and residuals,” that word residuals means agrowaste fed to livestock–so this is not “22% of human edible wheat product” that’s going to animals, but 22% of the wheat product sold, whether humans could eat it or not."
The logic being that you feed something to a cow so that it is no longer food that I could have eaten. The soy that cattle eat wasn't going to be eaten by humans ergo it would have been wasted. Brilliant logic. As a vegan I've experienced many times the "you can eat this chicken, it's dead and I've bought it so it doesn't matter" logic with no understanding of how economics works. You see, the argument actually is not whether the feed you feed cattle would be wasted if the cattle weren't there but that feeding the cattle the feed that I could eat is a huge waste of resources. Astonishingly, this really is simple maths.
"In fact most stats you’ll see for tonnage of crops parceled by use don’t distinguish residuals from edible quantity, thus badly skewing what a naive reader might think such numbers mean. Animal farming is not taking grain away from people, but making the grain people eat more efficient, by converting its waste product into more food. And hundreds of other products besides food."
This is not just stupidity but disingenuousness. No one suggests feeding cattle is taking away grain from anyone. The argument is (apart from the morality of eating meat) that it's not cost effective in land use, to the environment, in use of water, in calorific value, protein, and so on. Humans eating grain is far more cost effective in every sense than pushing it through the middleman of a farm animal.
"Now, in order to recycle that waste, we do have to supplement it with some quality product as well. In effect some human edible grain must be “burned” to convert grain production waste into food (and corn is worldwide the most popular supplement used), so animal farming does “consume” grains that humans could have eaten instead, but by doing so it creates more food, and many other products. In other words, we are burning a little bit of grain to run these waste recycling-plants we call animals–just as we have to burn resources to recycle plastic, metal, or paper. "
Blink. By feeding cattle grain it produces more food? Oh dear. Again just pop in a search for say, energy intensity meat vs grain and you'll see that meat is far more intensive and wasteful.
Come on, bamboozle me with some maths.
"When you do all the math for industrial cattle farming, for example, feed conversion efficiency for non-roughage grain input is better than 4:1 (4 kg non-waste input for every 1 kg usable output), which is not bad considering what you get for it (which is again, a lot more than just food–it’s also all those other animal products that grease our economy, literally and figuratively). For industrial dairy farming this efficiency is actually 1:4, i.e. we get 4 kgs of usable product for every 1 kg of usable product we put in. Which makes industrial dairy farming one of the smartest things we ever thought of (so it’s too bad I can’t digest dairy, but even I benefit from this industry, as dairy products are in things even I and many vegetarians eat, like bread). The numbers come out a little different if you compare food energy input and output (for dairy it’s close to 1:1; yet for beef it’s 1:0.65, which is better than 2:1, either way at near parity), but that’s not a wholly apt comparison because energy is not all you get out of food (you also get a whole array of nutrients) and food isn’t all you get out of animals. On balance, we do not appear to be wasting very much food on livestock. It looks like any other efficient system of manufacturing, into which we pour a selection of resources and out of which we get hundreds of usable products of comparable value."
What absolute nonsense.
"Any other argument you hear ends up like that: start pulling at the threads of its specious math and facts, and it unravels."
Oh my.
Ok. Richard, why not fly in the face of all evidence.
"For example, take the claim that “factory farming (specifically for meat) is one of the greatest contributors to global warming.” That’s simply not true."
That is simply not true.
"It’s based on an FAO report that has led websites and wonks to say things like that the “animal agriculture sector is responsible for 18%, or nearly one-fifth, of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, greater than the share contributed by the transportation sector,” but that’s hopelessly misleading. A third of that figure is based not on the farming, but on the clearing of forests to expand ranches in developing countries."
Actually deforestation for cattle feed is usually counted separately in the data. But even if it were counted in the data it's still bloody data!
"...which is a one-time cost and not an actual ongoing effect of the ranch, and is not terminal (forest clearing goes on a decline as countries doing it improve economically and begin to balance their resources–they are just going through the phase we went through a hundred years ago, claiming for industry land that was effectively fallow, and gradually learning to balance that process with national preserves and biodiversity). Nor is this a significant factor in first world animal farming (no one burned down a forest to feed you Iowa beef)."
Again this is completely wrong, untrue. We've lost 50% of the rainforests in 50 years and that is for wood and clearing for growing animal feed. It's completely unsustainable. This is complete nonsense.
"Another one third of that figure consists of fertilizer production and use, most of which actually gets used in the agriculture industry (and would thus simply be replaced with some other emissions-producing fertilizer), and what gets used for animal husbandry (e.g. fertilizing pastures) would still be used if the same land were used for crops (in fact crops are more fertilizer intensive), so this is not in fact anything we’d get back if we stopped animal farming. And when you subtract that element, too, now you end up with just 6% of manmade emissions coming from actual animal farming that would go away if we stopped. But that’s including inefficient animal husbandry in third world countries. How much of total manmade emissions comes from actual modernized industrial animal farming? Less than 2%. And this is all based on that same FAO data. And BTW these numbers reflect impact, not quantity, e.g. that “less than 2%” figure is taking into account that methane is a hundred times worse than carbon dioxide. Hmm. Funny how “less than 2%” becomes “18%” with just a little accounting chicanery. So if you are worried about cow farts boiling the earth away, worry not. You are ruining the environment just as much when you shower as when you eat a hamburger. In fact, if we set an average shower’s greenhouse impact at about 2 units, a hamburger rates about 3…while the impact for a serving of winter tomatoes is 50. That’s right, vegetarians. Perspective is a bitch."
This is all complete nonsense. If you check the FAO data. If one wants to go down the disingenuous route of saying, yeah, well, if you take out the growing of feed, the fertiliser, the land use, the manure, the processing, hey, animal farming hardly hurts the environment at all. You're still bloody wrong:
"In terms of activities, feed production and processing (this includes land use change) and enteric fermentation from ruminants are the two main sources of emissions, representing 45 and 39 percent of total emissions, respectively. Manure storage and processing represent 10 percent. The remainder is attributable to the processing and transportation of animal products." FAO data
Cow farts make up as much as feed production and processing.
The FAO report clearly shows the extent of damage that animal farming causes. An odd one to use in any defence of eating meat.
I think it's about time that we admitted that animal farming is bad in every way but in the future it could be better and I'm going to defend my continuing way of life by extolling future technological development that doesn't exist and hey, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater argument.
"Our factory farming system can be improved greatly, like any industry can (e.g. the amount of water consumed by electricity generation and manufacturing is far more alarming than what we use to produce animal products). Thus like any industry we ought to aim at improving it."
Yes, let's aim to endeavour to dream and aspire.
"But it’s nonrational to say “we should just get rid of it,”"
Why? Why is it nonrational? It's completely rational. It would do away with the unnecessary death of between 50 and 60 billion land animals (that doesn't include fish) per year. It would make a huge dent in the amount of anthropomorphic CO2 expelled into the atmosphere. It would be better for our health.
"and doubly nonrational to think you’re ever going to get rid of it."
That would indeed be nonrational to believe you could ever use rationality to talk around irrational people into not eating meat. I'm pretty sure nobody believes that would happen.
"and triply nonrational to think that a meaningless protest behavior (not eating meat) is ever going to make one whit of difference to anything."
Yeah, why vote, why do anything? None of it makes a whit of difference.
What a bizarre nihilistic argument.
But hey, at least I'm healthy being vegan right? Uh oh.
"And Vegetarianism Is Not “Healthier”."
I'm not sure why "healthier" is in speech marks.
"I’ve just gone over a few examples. But I have yet to see any rational reason to be a vegetarian, other than pure aesthetics (“I just like it” or “it makes me feel good”)..."
Woah. Is that a rational position? I just like it? I just like being Christian? I just like believing in Angel fairy crystal healing?
"...or medical necessity (“I have heart disease”)," Uh so how come it's not healthier if it's good if you have heart disease? That doesn't make sense.
"...which are idiosyncratic (i.e. not true for most people)."
Huh? Vegetarian diets are only good for some people with heart disease? That's bonkers talk.
"Even basing it on anecdotes and testimonials (“I felt so much better after I went vegan!”) is nonrational, because that’s just another alternative medicine mumbo placebo."
Wow, yes, I agree. Because that would not be rational. I feel so much better after I drink my own piss for breakfast is one I've heard. Well, you go ahead there. Is that a cocktail umbrella in it?
But woah, I feel a strawy straw man argument coming on....
"Just sincerely convince yourself that eating meat will have the same effect, and you’ll be saying “I feel so much better now that I went back to eating meat!” It’s no different from “I felt so much better after I started wearing magnets on my feet!” Sure. But that’s all in your head. Get control of your perception of reality and you can turn any lifestyle change into a source of improved mood. Until you regress back to your baseline. This is not a sound basis for recommending other people placebo themselves into vegetarianism."
Agreed. But who says this other than foot magnet wearing men of straw in Richard Carrier's imaginings?
"“But it’s healthier!” is also false. Because the data do not consistently establish this."
Oh Richard you are on the wrong bus to Wrongville, Ohio.
So come on, where's this data backing your argument up?
"Every diet has pros and cons, the net effect of which is zero, when any healthy diet is compared. Thus the same mathematical and factual unraveling occurs for any claimed benefit you pull at the threads of. Eating less meat is good for your heart, for example, but not as much as is claimed, and even what is claimed is not very impressive. One study is often cited as establishing 24% fewer deaths from ischemic heart disease (but, notably, no differences whatever for any other cause of death). In fact that study only established a 95% chance that the differential was somewhere between 6% and 38%…pay close attention: that means the data do not confirm a benefit any greater than only 6% fewer deaths (it could be greater, but we don’t know). A 6% edge is effectively irrelevant. Even a 24% edge is not that significant. It means for every 10 meat eaters who die of ischemic heart disease, about 8 vegetarians will likewise. Not a huge improvement."
Oh dear. Vegetarian diet is not healthier and here's the evidence that proves it's a bit healthier. Well, that certainly worked out for that argument.
"Worse, heart disease is a default: because we have cured or can prevent or treat all other diseases so well, yet people must necessarily eventually die of something, and that something is commonly heart disease (and cancer next after that). Thus heart disease remains a top killer not because anything is causing more of it, but because we are living longer and dodging every other bullet. In that light, vegetarianism isn’t giving us any real advantage. We’re just going to die anyway, it will simply be of something else. Like non-ischemic heart disease, which is more common. And vegetarianism confers no benefit against that. Lo and behold, that’s what the study found: when all causes are considered, vegetarians die exactly as often as nonvegetarians do. No net benefit."
Dear god. This is the logic: We're all going to die, probably of heart disease or cancer, a vegetarian diet might makes us a bit healthier but hey, we're going to die, we just live longer. Vegetarianism confers no benefits on certain illnesses so ergo the net benefit is zero because we're all going to die sometime.
Logic seems to go out of the window in any critique of vegetarianism/veganism. If you care about health (and I couldn't give a damn about diet health factors) then recently (2016) A new study from Italy’s University of Florence linked vegetarian and vegan diets to significantly lower rates of ischemic heart disease and cancer. More research has tied vegan diets to healthier guts, gentler menopause symptoms and even lower levels of stress. As reported in Time magazine. This uses exactly the same logic as Carrier.
The vegan diet beat other diets including: "when pitted against other popular diets—classic omnivorism, as well as vegetarianism and a form of it that allows for fish—the vegan plan also came out on top in terms of weight loss."
Slim, devastatingly handsome (it says that somewhere), healthy. Well, this study proves that though it's not exceptional benefits, vegan diets outperform vegetarian diets which outperform meat based diets. Ergo, a vegan diet is healthier. But...
"Combine all of those benefits with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Beyoncé and Ellen Degeneres, and “going vegan” seems like a no-brainer if you have the gustatory fortitude to stick with it.
But dig into the research, and some holes appear."
Uh oh. How can Beyonce be wrong? I have no idea who these people are.
"Regarding the study tying veganism to lower rates of total cancer and ischemic heart disease, the Italian team also found vegans do not enjoy benefits when it comes to total cardiovascular disease, death from cancer or death from any cause."
You see the sleight of hand? No one is suggesting veganism does worse than other diets on "total cardiovascular disease, death from cancer or death from any cause" but these are considered "holes." To put it clearly, vegan and vegetarian diets outperform meat diets on certain illnesses, on others they show no difference. Nothing here suggests vegan or vegetarian diets are unhealthier in any way but the slant is to suggest just that as "holes" in the data. And then Time offers another view, you know, for balance.
"“Compared to the average American diet, a vegan diet looks very healthy, especially in the short term,” says Loren Cordain, professor emeritus of health and human sciences at Colorado State University. “But in the long-term, there aren’t any clear mortality benefits, and in fact [vegan diets] may be less healthy than diets than [sic] include meat.” [my italics]"
Loren Cordain makes a living from selling books on "the paleo-diet." The Paleo diet being red red meat. Yum. It rates bottom in nutritional ratings tables health.usnews.
I love Cordain's assertion that vegan diets may be less healthy than the diet he endorses in a number of best selling books. I may be King of Albania one day. His argument is complete gibberish.
Anyway, Carrier's still irrationally barking on.
"To give you a point of comparison, while vegetarianism might give you a benefit of about 1.2 times lower mortality on one single illness, and yet still makes no difference to when you die beyond at most one or two years, not smoking definitely does give you a benefit of 10 times lower mortality rate on numerous diseases, and for some diseases it’s 20 times or more."
Has Carrier not heard of straw men? A vegetarian diet might give health benefits over a meat diet but smoking is much worse. Huh?
There's then a huge paragraph on smoking that has nothing to do with the argument but having set up this straw man he's going to run with it.
"Thus smoking is vastly more irrational than vegetarianism (so vegetarians who smoke: you’re the biggest fools on the planet)."
Is this just a big prank?
"Vegetarianism is at least merely an inconvenience, provided you maintain a healthy diet (merely eating vegetarian does not constitute a healthy diet; in fact vegetarians have to be even more informed and careful about managing their diet precisely because they are avoiding a primary delivery vehicle for many of the vitamins and nutrients humans normally need)."
By this point I'm just chuckling at the logic.
"Notably, early studies showing improved health and lifespan for vegetarians, when controlled for smoking (because vegetarians tend not to be smokers), showed no remaining advantage to being a vegetarian. In other words, eat a reasonable diet of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, nuts, and fruit. And don’t fucking smoke."
Fucking A.
Conclusive proof if ever one needed it that MEAT NOT BAD. Case closed.
Meat eating is just as healthy as not eating meat and dairy, it's not bad for the environment, in fact it's probably good for it because we get byproducts like leather couches that could never be replaced by something like a couch made of some other non-meat byproduct based material, if we didn't eat meat we'd waste loads of rain water, vegetarian smokers are unhealthy, factory farms are clean and functional but may occasionally have accidents and eating meat is morally rational because of all these things. And more. The court rules in favour of Carrier vs nonrational vegetarians.
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