I was thinking yesterday that I’m surprised more EAs don’t hunt or eat lots of mail-ordered hunted meat, like eg this. Regardless of whether you think nature should exist in the long term, as it stands the average deer, for example, has a pretty harsh life and death. Studies like this on American white-tailed deer enumerate the alternative modes of death, which I find universally unappealing. You’ve got predation (which surprisingly to me is the number one cause of death for fawns), car accidents, disease, and starvation. These all seem orders of magnitude worse than being killed by a hunter with a good shot.
I’d assume human hunting basically trades off against predation and starvation, so the overall quantity of deer and deer consciousness isn’t affected much by hunting. The more humans kill, the fewer coyotes kill.
Edit: So it seems to me that buying hunted meat/encouraging hunting might have a better animal welfare profile than veganism, while also satisfying Richard’s concerns about nutrition and satisfying meat cravings. That being said, it is not really scalable in the way veg*ism is.
In my experience, the hardest part about not eating meat is eating outside the house, either at restaurants or at social events. In restaurants it can be hard to find good options that don’t include meat (especially if you’re also avoiding animal products), and at social events the host has to go out of their way to accommodate you unless they are already planning for it. Eating hunted meat doesn’t help the situation with either of those situations. Theoretically there could be a hunted meat restaurant or a social event where the host serves hunted meat, but both of those would be difficult from a verifiability standpoint (“is this really hunted meat, or are they just saying that?”).
I do definitely agree that hunted meat could be a good option for people who still want to have meat but are okay with not having it all of the time and are willing to deal with the hassle. Some people buy meat from farms that raise their animals ethically. That has basically all of the same benefits and drawbacks for animal welfare concerns, but it doesn’t help with climate emissions, which I think hunted meat would help with.
I agree with your description about the hassle of eating veg when away from home. The point I was trying to make is that buying hunted meat seems possibly ethically preferable to veganism on animal welfare grounds, would address Richard’s nutritional concerns, and also satisfies meat cravings.
Of course, this only works if you condition on the brutality of nature as the counterfactual. But for the time being, that won’t change.
I was thinking yesterday that I’m surprised more EAs don’t hunt or eat lots of mail-ordered hunted meat, like eg this. Regardless of whether you think nature should exist in the long term, as it stands the average deer, for example, has a pretty harsh life and death. Studies like this on American white-tailed deer enumerate the alternative modes of death, which I find universally unappealing. You’ve got predation (which surprisingly to me is the number one cause of death for fawns), car accidents, disease, and starvation. These all seem orders of magnitude worse than being killed by a hunter with a good shot.
I’d assume human hunting basically trades off against predation and starvation, so the overall quantity of deer and deer consciousness isn’t affected much by hunting. The more humans kill, the fewer coyotes kill.
Edit: So it seems to me that buying hunted meat/encouraging hunting might have a better animal welfare profile than veganism, while also satisfying Richard’s concerns about nutrition and satisfying meat cravings. That being said, it is not really scalable in the way veg*ism is.
In my experience, the hardest part about not eating meat is eating outside the house, either at restaurants or at social events. In restaurants it can be hard to find good options that don’t include meat (especially if you’re also avoiding animal products), and at social events the host has to go out of their way to accommodate you unless they are already planning for it. Eating hunted meat doesn’t help the situation with either of those situations. Theoretically there could be a hunted meat restaurant or a social event where the host serves hunted meat, but both of those would be difficult from a verifiability standpoint (“is this really hunted meat, or are they just saying that?”).
I do definitely agree that hunted meat could be a good option for people who still want to have meat but are okay with not having it all of the time and are willing to deal with the hassle. Some people buy meat from farms that raise their animals ethically. That has basically all of the same benefits and drawbacks for animal welfare concerns, but it doesn’t help with climate emissions, which I think hunted meat would help with.
I agree with your description about the hassle of eating veg when away from home. The point I was trying to make is that buying hunted meat seems possibly ethically preferable to veganism on animal welfare grounds, would address Richard’s nutritional concerns, and also satisfies meat cravings.
Of course, this only works if you condition on the brutality of nature as the counterfactual. But for the time being, that won’t change.