Posted on 10/23/2011 6:42:18 AM PDT by IbJensen
Veganism dates back to 1944, when British Vegan Society co-founder Donald Watson coined the term to mean “non-dairy vegetarian.” The Society expanded the definition in 1951 to state that “man should live without exploiting animals.” Vegans eschew animal products in food, clothing, household products, or for any other reason.
There are a variety of reasons why people “go vegan.” Some simply don’t like the taste of meat. Some claim veganism is “green,” and that a vegan lifestyle minimizes impact on the environment.
In 1997, a survey revealed three percent of the people in the U.S. claimed that they had not used animals for any purpose in the previous two years. Rutgers School of Law professor Gary Francione argued in 2010 that “all sentient beings should have at least one right — the right not to be treated as property.”
Do ethical vegans live up to this stated standard? Do their actions live up to their own stated ethical principle, that animals have the right not to be treated as property? Do their actions really result in zero animal use? The parallel in human terms would be slavery, which no rational person thinks is ethically acceptable. Slaves are the property of masters; they live and die at their owner’s sufferance.
Unfortunately for the ethical vegan, the production of their food alone reduces their claim to impossibility. Animals are killed in untold millions, in the course of plant agriculture. Some are killed accidentally in the course of mechanized farming; some are killed deliberately in the course of pest control. Animals are killed, every day. Every potato, every stick of celery, every cup of rice, and every carrot has a blood trail leading from field to plate.
In 1999, while researching and writing Misplaced Compassion, I ran into a rice farmer who posted the following first-hand account on a Usenet forum:
[A] conservative annualized estimate of vertebrate deaths in organic rice farming is ~20 pound. … [T]his works out a bit less than two vertebrate deaths per square foot, and, again, is conservative. For conventionally grown rice, the gross body-count is at least several times that figure. … [W]hen cutting the rice, there is a (visual) green waterfall of frogs and anoles moving in front of the combine. Sometimes the “waterfall” is just a gentle trickle (± 10,000 frogs per acre) crossing the header, total for both cuttings, other times it is a deluge (+50,000 acre).
My own family was involved in corn and soybean farming; our numbers were not that high, but they were not inconsiderable. Pheasants and rabbits are routinely killed in planting and harvesting, and rodents are killed by the thousands using traps and pesticides at every step: production, storage, and transportation.
Rational people know this and don’t worry about it. It’s an inevitable consequence of modern, high-production agriculture. The ethical vegan, when confronted with these undeniable facts, collapses. Their reaction, in almost every case, is to do a rhetorical lateral arabesque into a new claim, that their vegan diet somehow causes “less death and suffering” than a non-vegan diet, a ridiculous and unsupportable argument. A pound of wild venison (net cost in animal death: about 1/120th of one animal) almost certainly causes less “death and suffering” than a pound of rice (net cost in animal death: including rodents, insect, reptiles and amphibians, number of deaths may range into the hundreds). Continued on Next Page -> Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single Page Email Print Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
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1. jd
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Bohemean fellow who became Chancelor of Germany in the ’30s adhere to a Vegetarian Diet? October 23, 2011 - 2:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply eon
Yes, and he had a serious problem with the Fat Guy Who Used To Be A Flying Ace who ran his Luftwaffe. (He was very fond of suckling pig.)
Other “ethical vegans” whose behavior toward humanity wasn’t so ethical included Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Himmler, Trotsky, Lavrenti Beria, Feliks Dzerzhinsky (yes, old “Iron Feliks” himself), and the recently-deceased Man Of Many Spellings Of His Name, Moammar al-Qadafi. (This is by no means an exhaustive list, either.)
To return to the main subject, ome of the “ethical vegan” crew hold that only “organic farming” is truly ethical, and demand that not only do we all become vegans, but that we must only eat foods raised organically.
To which I say, fine. Considering the low proportional yield of an acre farmed organically compared to an acre farmed by modern methods (been there, done that), that would mean that you would be expecting humanity to get by on (at best) about one-fourth the yield it does now. Meaning, everybody would be farming, and eating, as they do today in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is, inadequately.
Facts are stubborn things, as somebody-or-other said. And they tend to hit the assumed ethical superiority of “vegans” right in the mush.
cheers
Pescatarian is the word you're looking for. She's a pescatarian, not a vegetarian.
Add in Jello too. This one catches a lot of them by surprise too.
Why would you believe that? We've found melanoma in mummified remains dating back 4,000 years, and tell tale signs in bone in very early fossils of a variety of animals.
LOL! Booo!!! Bad joke!!! Booo!!! LOL! Booo!!! LOL!
How can celebrating the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week (aka Saturday) be false? Might check back in with the Ten Commandments.
I believe the science is not conclusive.
"A study of ancient bodies has determined that cancer is a man-made disease, one fueled by the excesses. Tumors turn out to be extremely rare until very recent times, when pollution and poor diet became issues.
Researchers analyzed potential references to the disease in classical literature, and also searched for signs in the fossil record and in mummified bodies. But despite examining tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies, they confirmed only one case of cancer
According to the Daily Mail:
"Dismissing the argument that the ancient Egyptians didn't live long enough to develop cancer, the researchers pointed out that other age-related disease such as hardening of the arteries and brittle bones did occur ...
Fossil evidence of cancer is also sparse, with scientific literature providing a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossil".
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/03/cancer-not-found-in-ancient-mummies-appears-to-be-recent-disease.aspx
Right, she told me that the other day but I couldn’t remember it. I must write it down. thanks.
Gee. I thought only Andrew Zimmern ate bugs.
Oh I can buy more common, absolutely. However, anyone with a basic knowledge of biology should rightly scoff at the idea that cancer did not exist in antiquity. All mammals, reptiles, avian etc will eventually develop cancer if they live long enough. All it takes is one aged gene to fail in but one of the bodies cells, and voila neoplastic growth, aka cancer.
In order for cancer to not exist. The gene that regulates cell growth would have to be perfect in every cell in every body of every creature on the planet at every point in time. In other words, impossible.
Most vegan women are lesbians.
Pescatarian is the word you're looking for. She's a pescatarian, not a vegetarian. “
Is that sort of like an Episcopalian?
bump
Hey Vegans, starve yourselves to death. It’s painless and the right thing to do!
My younger son is as well, but eats eggs, cheese, fish and drinks milk. He seem to be doing just fine, but it's a PITA feeding him when he brings his veggies & dairy only girlfriend along.
You wrote:
“How can celebrating the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week (aka Saturday) be false? Might check back in with the Ten Commandments.”
You might want to check in with Hooked on Phonics and learn to read. I never mentioned the Sabbath.
Bill Clinton, hasn’t he become a vegan? My money says he eats meat when no one is around.
Your definition fits him to a tee.
>>>Why do humans have canine teeth? We were designed to eat meat.>>>
Humans don’t have canine teeth. Our teeth are flat. I tend to believe in the Bible and the God’s original diet. I think he knows best. There was no death, no death means no meat. Pretty simple.
I won’t respond to the rest of the superficial and shallow posts. Clearly, not to many Bible scholars here on FB. And even fewer who have any knowledge of Seventh day Adventists. As I said, they don’t need to shout their faith.......they just live longer and healthier and happy than anyone.......and turn out doctors and surgeons like Dr. Ben Carson, arguably the world’s greatest brain surgeon.
But the geniuses here on FB know better. Especially the one who claimed because a bird broad back a leaf, hell, there must been lettuce out there. LOL! He’s a real Bible scholar I see. God tells Noah what clean meats he can eat.....clearly, Noah must have been a big meater before the flood then right?....Genius. Lots of geniuses here who read and study the Bible. It shows......
What specific parts of Adventism are false and not based on the Bible?
“Every potato...has a blood trail leading from field to plate.”
OMG! All this time I thought that was ketchup on my fries!
I already gave three: It dates back only to the 19th century, puts the ridiculous ramblings of Ellen G. White on a par with scripture and practice deceptive tactics.
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