Ploughing the field, making it ready for a new crop. The gulls are feasting on worms, snails, slugs and small rodents that have had their homes destroyed as the whole top layer of soil is violently inverted.
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Good morning, Britain.
An absolue gem this morning on ITV, as Piers Morgan takes on Liz Jones on veganism, and uses the wheat-production argument fairly compr...
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The very rock of the Moral High Ground occupied by the vegetarian/vegan movement is the claim that their diet doesn't kill animals. From...
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This little fellow is a bruchid beetle. He and ten billion on his closest chums got into my bean crop and make a right mess of it. They ... -
An absolue gem this morning on ITV, as Piers Morgan takes on Liz Jones on veganism, and uses the wheat-production argument fairly compr...
I suppose fields are never ploughed for animal feed crops?
ReplyDeleteYes they are, indeed. We meat eaters merrily acknowledge all that. But that's not the argument here; the argument here is that the field is being ploughed for growing bread wheat. So animals are dying horrible deaths in the course of bread production.
ReplyDeleteAnd who ever said that fields are never ploughed for animal feed crops? Very odd line of argument.
ReplyDeleteI suppose no meat eaters eat wheat then? The simple fact is that meat eaters eat the exact same things vegans do, plus the animals on top (who eat crops themselves, especially over winter). This website is an embarrassment for farmers.
ReplyDeleteHello, Unknown - nice of you to drop by. Yes, meat eaters eat wheat. Yes, meat eaters eat the same things as vegans do. No-one is saying otherwise, so I'm not sure why you're raising those points, but anyway. But here's the thing: vegans eat wheat claiming that their diet is free from animal death. That claim is a massive lie, and this blog is here to illustrate why it's a massive lie. I would have thought that the embarrassment would be with the vegans, after all that false moral superiority! Cheers, Charlie.
DeleteHi Charlie,
DeleteI like the idea of this blog as it draws people's attention to things they may not have considered!
However, the premise of your attack on vegans is not true. Vegans do not claim their diet or lifestyle is free from animal death (at least when they think about it!). Sadly by simply existing, humans cause harm to animals (crops/vegetables need to be grown somewhere!). The goal of the vegan diet, though, is to simply minimise harm to and the deaths of animals. Veganism is a spectrum, not an absolute status of zero harm.
But, I am sure many people would be distressed at the destruction caused by ploughing wheat and would want to make changes to their diet and the industry as a result!
As such, I think it is important to raise awareness and so please do continue to spread this message!
David
Hi David,
DeleteThanks for dropping by and your comment.
But I'm afraid I stick by my original point: vegans feel they are allowed to scream 'murderer' at meat producers and eaters because they believe that their diet is free from cruelty to animals. Read any write up about why we should go vegan, and 'not killing animals' will be there.
Charlie.
Charlie, David's point remains. There are all sorts of claims made by individuals, but the broader ethical stance of "veganism" is not that no animals are killed. As David says, the aim is to reduce the extent to which we exploit and harm other animals. No serious thinker in this area believes we can do *no* harm. To attack your own strawman is really to miss the point. However, it is not unreasonable to draw attention to the fact that any form of agriculture carries costs. Vegans should be aware that their choices aren't free of those costs.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, it is absolutely the case that a vegan world would result in fewer animal deaths and far less harm and exploitation of other animals. Simply because in a vegan world, a complementary goal to that of securing enough food would be to minimise harm to others whenever possible. That is not the goal of the food industry currently. And bear in mind that the food industry currently is also deeply implicated in causing vast harm to human beings as well, simply because the vegan philosophy does not figure large in its thinking.
Veganism is simply an aspect of a particular view of the world - one in which we seek to do less harm to others, rather than more. Gluttony, greed, and avarice were long ago identified as "sins", behaviours that we should do our best to avoid. That remains the case today. Perhaps more so.
PS I thought you intended to document actual collateral deaths? A photo of some seagulls with no actual empirical statements seems a bit less than useful evidence. To make it easier, I think you'll find no-one is really losing much sleep over the deaths of snails, slugs and worms unless in the course of killing them we run the risk of some more general environmental harm (eg causing extinction or risks to other animals from use of poisons). This is because it is very likely that the kinds of pain suffered by snails, slugs and worms are either non-existent or deeply diminished in a meaningful sense. However we cannot know for sure, so it is reasonable to extend the benefit of the doubt when we can. The case for pain in typically farmed birds and mammals however is far more robust. They almost certainly do experience pain. So your blog is likely to be of more interest if we can observe evidence for deaths and manner of death experienced by creatures such as mice, rabbits and the like.
Hi Graeme, good of you to drop in, and thanks for your comment.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm afraid I must disagree with you on your fundamental point - that vegans acknowledge that their diet includes animal death, and that they strive to minimise it. Every single T-shirt proclaiming 'meat is murder', every single bit of daubed graffiti on vandalised buildings saying 'killer' is proclaiming that veganism isn't murder, i.e., that vegans don't kill animals.
Over the decades I've been making this argument with vegetarians/vegans - well, the ones who will engage in debate - not a single one has argued as you have; maybe we have a less philosophical class of v/v over here! They are absolutely clear: their diet is free from cruelty.
So I don't consider it to be a strawman argument at all; the 'we don't harm animals' line is still the number one reason that v/vs (particularly youngsters) choose their diet.
I also disagree with your claim that the vegan diet will result in fewer animal deaths and less harm. It is, of course, almost impossible to quantify, but having been involved intimately with wheat (i.e.bread) production for 33 years, I could tell you tales of mass in-field death: the poor old slugs, of course, the morning after application of pellets. The aphids after Aphox, the orange blossom midges after Dursban, the bin-loads of beetles and bugs that fall out of the bottom of the grain cleaner, the infinite numbers of mites and beetles that have to be fumigated in the grain store. That's an awful lot of animals deaths. That's an awful lot of death per acre, per loaf, per sandwich.
But you raise a crucial point when you say 'no-one is losing much sleep over the deaths over the deaths of slugs, snails and worms'. Whyever not? Is that really the view among vegans/vegetarians? An animal death is an animal death, surely. No animal death is 'worth' more or less than another if your whole philosophy of life is to avoid animals death. (And can I use your quote in Farmers Weekly?)
You're right - I have produced very little evidence of my argument on my blog - but moi tractorrrr has been stuck in the barn for five months waiting for the rain to stop. Grrrrr!
Best wishes,
Charlie.
Hi Charlie, sorry to hear it's been so wet. Is that a really bad thing where you are? Here it's the opposite, been very dry for a while now.
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting that you have found vegans to honestly believe that their choice of diet is free from harm. I have of course seen many young people whose idealism trumps their willingness to research the facts, but as I said I am pretty sure the real thinkers in the field do not believe that. I suppose it makes sense to educate the less well-informed vegans out there, I am just saying that you shouldn't confuse some degree of public ignorance for a more general ignorance within the animal advocacy movement (for want of a better term).
Just quickly about the question of snails and slugs and so on. Yes, lots of vegans just say we should never harm or kill another animal and I think as a general guide to life that's fair enough as far as it goes. I do my best not to hurt anything if I can avoid it, yet I kill probably hundreds of insects every day.
But serious thinking about animal ethics has to have a better basis than that. The commonly accepted view is that some other animals are sentient. This means that they can experience the world in ways like we do and as such have some interest in being free from harm and free to stay alive. Of course in nature that is difficult, but it is still why evolution has caused sentience to exist. It gives animals more functional capacity to survive and prosper and thus animals with that capacity to "feel" the world have an interest in feeling good or living on (as we do).
It follows then that animals with the ability to experience the world should be accorded a far deeper respect by human beings (who are, let's face it, the only moral agents in nature). We term this idea "animal rights". I suppose it's just saying that sentient animals represent a kind of "person" who deserves our respect because we can actually choose to give it. We express this idea as being about rights, such rights simply being a means to describe and enact relationships between us and other animals. The important bit though is that these rights actually require a moral duty on our part in how we treat them.
Now, on that line of thinking, it is necessary for an animal to actually have the kind of sentience that counts. Very limited or non-existent experience of the world (ie a more reflexive kind of nervous system) can likely not experience the world, or suffering, and hence is unlikely to have an interest in living on. Insects spring to mind - science is reasonably confident that they do not experience pain and do not have the kind of awareness that higher animals have. Similarly for such animals as oysters, and probably snails and slugs.
So while many vegans might not agree, a science based approach means that when we are reasonably confident that an animal has a subjective awareness of the world, then he or she therefore has interests and we should accord that animal certain rights. Cows probably are sentient enough for that, snails probably not. That doesn't mean that we should feel free to go out there and hurt snails for fun, but it does mean that we may not owe snails the same rights as cows.
Dunno if that makes it any clearer! And of course there are a whole pile of other versions of this, and various ideas about just how far the idea of rights should actually extend. My point is just to explain that animal rights theory isn't purely bound up in keeping all animals alive always come what may. You'll see that "veganism" and "animal rights" in this context is in fact the same kind of outlook as expressed in most of the ethical attitudes about how people relate to each other, which also have changed over time.