Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello, i'm Mateo3112 and i'm an alchoholic... Haha, jk i'm so funny .............. No? Anyone? Ok...
Anyway, i'm an atheist and a vegeterian, i started my vegeterian diet some days ago and up to this date i've been doing fine.
I hope to find interesting topics to debate on and learn more about how to carry on with my vegeterian diet.

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome Mateo, I hope we can help you with any questions you have. Please don't hesitate to ask.

Welcome Mateo! What do you think of veganism? Why did you choose to be vegetarian?

Welcome! I too would like to know your stance on veganism. Thanks! Glad you are here!

Hey! Welcome to the forum. Hope you enjoy it here.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Welcome Mateo! What do you think of veganism? Why did you choose to be vegetarian?

Veganism is fine, i can understand why you wouldn't want to eat meat nor products derived from animals, such as milk, eggs, and honey. But i do think it's going to the extreme. I'm rather confused on whether we humans should stop using animals completely. Today the amount of animals slaughtered is enormous and unnecesary. But what if we stoped ussing them completely? wouldn't that affect the ecosystem? The main reason as to why cows and pigs are so succesful (Not from the quality of life point of view but from an evolutionary one) is that we use them. Maybe if we started going vegan slowly, the ecosystem wouldn't be affected. But i personally would require evidence other than speculation to go full vegan myself.
As to why i chose vegeterianism i have 2 main reasons: 1: Because eating vegetables is healthier and 2: They taste very good, so i wouldn't really miss eating meat.
Also, i'd like to add that as for animal derived products i only consume honey (When i'm sick) and eggs. So who knows, in some years i might even go vegan.

"Tell people that there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure" -George Carlin.

Mateo3112 wrote:I'm rather confused on whether we humans should stop using animals completely. Today the amount of animals slaughtered is enormous and unnecesary. But what if we stoped ussing them completely? wouldn't that affect the ecosystem?

Yes, it would benefit the ecosystem. Animal agriculature is harmful to the environment.

Think about this: You eat animals (or animal products), those animals have to eat more plants which had to be farmed, and that causes the clearing of more forests.

It's all basic thermodynamics.
When a chicken (for example) eats corn, most of the energy and protein is lost from the corn (and turns into CO2 and chicken poop), then if you eat the chicken, you get less energy and protein compared to eating the corn.

In another thread I recently calculated:

Feed conversion ratios for Chicken are around 2:1. A chicken is around 10% composed of "usable" protein.
That's 20kg of feed to 1 kg of protein.
Feed contains about 20% protein.
4 kg feed protein makes 1 kg chicken protein.

4 kg of plant protein, fed to chickens, only creates 1 kg of chicken protein. 3 kg are wasted. That's 75% waste.

If you eat chicken compared to a grain like corn (which the chickens are fed), you need four times more farmland.
Eating chicken, you have to clear four plots of forest, and turn into farm land. You destroy the environment.

If you eat vegan, you only need to clear one plot of forest to turn into farm, and you have three plots of natural environment left.

Mateo3112 wrote:Maybe if we started going vegan slowly, the ecosystem wouldn't be affected. But i personally would require evidence other than speculation to go full vegan myself.

Well, see above.

We breed these animals. They do not exist "naturally". They come from factories where eggs are hatched. The cows are artificially inseminated.

If people stopped eating meat, we would stop breeding them. And then we could either allow many of those farms to return to natural environments like forests, OR we could use that extra corn to feed starving people, as the world's population keeps growing, OR we could even use the extra corn to make fuel, to replace oil -- this would help stop global warming.

We have lots of choices of what to do with all of the extra corn. But it certainly won't damage the environment to stop eating meat.

brimstoneSalad wrote:

Mateo3112 wrote:I'm rather confused on whether we humans should stop using animals completely. Today the amount of animals slaughtered is enormous and unnecesary. But what if we stoped ussing them completely? wouldn't that affect the ecosystem?

Yes, it would benefit the ecosystem. Animal agriculature is harmful to the environment.

Think about this: You eat animals (or animal products), those animals have to eat more plants which had to be farmed, and that causes the clearing of more forests.

It's all basic thermodynamics.
When a chicken (for example) eats corn, most of the energy and protein is lost from the corn (and turns into CO2 and chicken poop), then if you eat the chicken, you get less energy and protein compared to eating the corn.

In another thread I recently calculated:

Feed conversion ratios for Chicken are around 2:1. A chicken is around 10% composed of "usable" protein.
That's 20kg of feed to 1 kg of protein.
Feed contains about 20% protein.
4 kg feed protein makes 1 kg chicken protein.

4 kg of plant protein, fed to chickens, only creates 1 kg of chicken protein. 3 kg are wasted. That's 75% waste.

If you eat chicken compared to a grain like corn (which the chickens are fed), you need four times more farmland.
Eating chicken, you have to clear four plots of forest, and turn into farm land. You destroy the environment.

If you eat vegan, you only need to clear one plot of forest to turn into farm, and you have three plots of natural environment left.

Mateo3112 wrote:Maybe if we started going vegan slowly, the ecosystem wouldn't be affected. But i personally would require evidence other than speculation to go full vegan myself.

Well, see above.

We breed these animals. They do not exist "naturally". They come from factories where eggs are hatched. The cows are artificially inseminated.

If people stopped eating meat, we would stop breeding them. And then we could either allow many of those farms to return to natural environments like forests, OR we could use that extra corn to feed starving people, as the world's population keeps growing, OR we could even use the extra corn to make fuel, to replace oil -- this would help stop global warming.

We have lots of choices of what to do with all of the extra corn. But it certainly won't damage the environment to stop eating meat.

Yes but imagine this: Humanity currently has over 5 billion cows to its disposal. Cows are prone to getting illnesess. What would happen if we freed them all? They've survived this far because humanity uses them and breeds them so that only the good ones survive. All it takes is 3 infected cows to infect the vast majority of the population of cows, and because they are so many, it wouldn't stop just at cows, other species of animals would probably get infected too. The number of cows would decrease rapidly. And if they do infect other animals, who knows what will happen?. Who knows how much time will it take for the ecosystem to recover balance?. I hope that i'm wrong. I hope that i'm wrong and that we can actually all go vegan someday, but to me it sounds like an utopia that will never happen. I think it would be impossible for the majority of the human population to go vegan without any repercussion, because that's how it has ever been.
But i do agree that if we stoped breeding animals, it would benefit us in the longrun.

Mateo3112 wrote: Yes but imagine this: Humanity currently has over 5 billion cows to its disposal.

If they were no longer bred, there would not be 5 billion cows. There would be none, or a small few in sanctuaries and some zoos to educate the public about how we used to treat other animals, like a holocaust memorial.

The only laws we have to pass to achieve that end are to forbid breeding.

Mateo3112 wrote:Cows are prone to getting illnesess. What would happen if we freed them all?

The current population of cows would last about a year or two, at the current rate of meat consumption. If we banned breeding, that would be the end of things.

Freeing cows is more legally and practically problematic. Because they are viewed as "property", it's hard to take that away from companies.

Mateo3112 wrote: All it takes is 3 infected cows to infect the vast majority of the population of cows, and because they are so many, it wouldn't stop just at cows, other species of animals would probably get infected too.

That's not true, even if they were freed. Infection spread depends on proximity/population density. If cows were freed to grasslands, infection would not spread so easily.
There's also no reason to believe any kind of infection would spread to other species. Some viruses can, but the weakness cows have is LACK of genetic diversity. Other species don't suffer this problem, and it's relatively difficult for disease to jump from one species to another without massive amounts of close contact; something that just doesn't occur much in a wild context due to lower population density.

Mateo3112 wrote:I think it would be impossible for the majority of the human population to go vegan without any repercussion, because that's how it has ever been.
But i do agree that if we stoped breeding animals, it would benefit us in the longrun.

That doesn't make any sense; there is no reason why it would be harmful to stop animal agriculture in the first world. The only effect animal agriculture practices have on the environment is a negative one. Stopping it could only be helpful to the environment and us, in the long run and in the short run.