I would like to see this energy directed somewhere more empathetic. Can many humans with a healthy relationship to food and no medical dietary restrictions be physically healthy on a vegan diet (and a B12 supplement)? Probably. Does everyone you’re talking to have all those qualities? Absolutely not. Are their traditions, tastes, and convenience, and every flowthrough effect of their culture, enjoyment, and flexibility, wholly worthless? You aren’t likely to save many animals by telling them so even if you feel that way.
I had an accidentally mostly-vegan lunch today. I’m not a vegan (I’m a pescetarian), but I happened to choose today to make baba ganoush, and of course I wanted bread to put it on and I had some ciabatta, and I also had some Beyond sausages in the fridge that I wanted to try so I fried a couple of those up. By coincidence, my dinner last night was also vegan! I made Singapore noodles, with tofu and cabbage and broccoli and shiitake mushrooms. However, with both meals I drank a glass of milk. Trying to figure out how to completely replace dairy products in my diet would be a tremendous undertaking that would substantially reduce my quality of life, and if you want to make that ask, you should acknowledge its contents.
I know someone on an elimination diet for medical reasons who cannot have any legumes including soy and peanuts. (Nor eggs and dairy, but meat is fine—in fact, as I understand it, meat is one of the things people are least likely to be reactive to in a wide variety of cases.) He can eat gluten, but can’t have it in the house—it’ll make the celiac family members sick. What would you like him to do? Go out to eat a plate of seitan at a restaurant every day during a pandemic? Do you think the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is stating that this person will be fine on quinoa and sunflower seeds and almonds, for months, while their medical team isolates a hopefully narrower set of problem foods, or do you think the AND were making a generalization that doesn’t apply to everyone?
Vat meat is coming. Plant-based meat options are better every year. They haven’t cracked fully general vegan eggs yet but they have approximately-perfect vegan mayonnaise. All we have to do is send market signals and, on the margin, in the meantime, give people recipes.
(Broil 2 large globe eggplants on high for one hour, turning them over after 30 minutes. Let rest until cool enough to handle. Slit open, scoop out, and strain the insides; pat dry with paper towels. Add minced garlic to taste and two tablespoons of lemon juice poured directly over the garlic, and stir vigorously until mostly broken down. Mix in 3 tablespoons tahini, then a steady stream of olive oil while stirring constantly. Salt until it tastes amazing.)
Another commenter has already addressed this somewhat, but to make the point explicit: as you say, we produce enough food already. Hunger in the modern world is caused by logistical difficulties, not under-supply. There does not seem to be any reason to believe that a global transition to veganism would meaningfully affect these difficulties. (This is to say nothing of the highly questionable implied connection between personal decisions, made by individuals in Western countries, to adopt veganism, and any significant shifts in global prevalence of veganism.)
Being vegan contributes to saving wild animals
This point is rather at odds with your argument about animal welfare. The lives of wild animals are full of pain and death—a fact which has long been recognized by effective altruists. (Simply search for “wild animals” on the Effective Altruism Forum to get a flavor of the discussions on this topic.) If you want to reduce unnecessary suffering, are you sure you should be saving wild animals?
Vegans are overall healthier, are less overweight, have less cancer (at least some forms of cancer like breast or prostate cancer), and have fewer cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart attacks.
Citation very much needed. (And see the note in my other comment about health-related claims.) My prior for this sort of claim (taken as a universal or near-universal claim, which is the only way it can have any rhetorical force) is very low.
Invalid arguments against being vegan: …
The “natural“ and “normal” arguments are indeed mostly invalid (though there are serious “Chesterton’s fence” type concerns which ought not be casually dismissed). The “necessary” argument is certainly not invalid (or, rather, requires considerably more support than the almost no support which you have provided, in order to be rejected as invalid).
the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
I looked them up and found this:
A 1995 report, noted the Academy received funding from companies like McDonald’s, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, Sara Lee, Abbott Nutrition, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, McNeil Nutritionals, SOYJOY, Truvia, Unilever, and The Sugar Association as corporate sponsorship.[25][61] The Academy also partners with ConAgra Foods, which produces Orville Redenbacker, Slim Jims, Hunt’s Ketchup, SnackPacks, and Hebrew National hot dogs, to maintain the American Dietetic Association/ConAgra Foods Home Food Safety...It’s in Your Hands program.[62] Additionally, the Academy earns revenue from corporations by selling space at its booth during conventions, doing this for soft drinks and candy makers.[25][63]
(From Wikipedia. Click the link for more in the same vein as the quoted paragraph—there’s a lot there, and all of it bad.)
Under no circumstances would I believe a word these people say about nutrition.
Tradition, taste, convenience: The holy trinity of lazy excuses. Neither the tradition of eating meat nor the taste or convenience of it are able to justify the unnecessary suffering of sentient beings from a moral perspective.
These are, in fact, entirely valid reasons to eat meat—especially if the moral argument fails to persuade. Far from being “lazy excuses”, these three considerations are quite important to the great majority of people! It is empirically true that people value tradition, taste (or, more generally, pleasure and enjoyment), and convenience very highly. (If you doubt this, look at the choices people make!) The task before you is daunting: you must convince people, not only that eating animals (or harming them in the process of food production) is wrong at all, in any way, but also that it’s wrong enough to outweigh things that they actually, in fact, value quite highly.
(And, of course, if the moral argument doesn’t hold water—as I, for one, don’t think it even slightly does—then the point is moot. What reason suffices to justify doing something that’s morally neutral? Why, any reason at all.)
Downvoted for this alone. Using a clickbait title and then apologizing in the text doesn’t somehow absolve you of using the clickbait title in the first place. You knew what you were doing and you still did it. I see this more and more on Less Wrong these days, and I downvote it whenever I see it. When it comes to clickbait, don’t first do it and then apologize for doing it—just don’t do it.
Well, as you say, the post is very sloppy, which makes me feel somewhat bad for arguing against it… but if no one speaks up to point out shoddy argument, on a topic of concern to us, then it’s normalized, isn’t it? If you like, consider my commentary to be aimed, not (only) at you per se, but at anyone who makes similar arguments (of whom there are many).
Animal welfare: Humans do not need animal products to be healthy. Therefore, the consumption of animal products is unnecessary. This makes the killing of non-human animals for animal products unnecessary. Not avoiding unnecessary suffering is immoral. Therefore, contributing to unnecessary animal suffering makes you an animal abuser.
This is a series of claims stringed together—almost all of them either unsupported or wrong. Let’s look at them individually. I will number the claims for convenience.
(1) Humans do not need animal products to be healthy.
Citation needed. When providing citations, please note that (a) much of nutrition science is very shoddy (in all the usual ways—methodology, replicability, file-drawer effects, etc.), and (b) there is considerable variation, between people and between groups of people, in optimal diet, physiological responses to dietary changes, etc. Almost any universal statement about human nutrition is likely to be wrong. So a claim like this requires considerable support to be raised even to the “plausible” level, much less to “certain enough to base moral claims on”. (Indeed, it is possible that nutrition science, in its current state, is simply not capable of providing us with the degree of certainty which we would need in order to use a claim like this in a moral argument.)
(2) Therefore, the consumption of animal products is unnecessary.
Granting claim (1), this one does not follow. You seem to imply that something is only “necessary” if, without it, we would die (or suffer serious harms to health). I reject this view.
(3) This makes the killing of non-human animals for animal products unnecessary.
Note that if your argument depends on establishing the immorality of killing animals, that gets you to vegetarianism only, not to veganism. Eggs, dairy, etc. do not require killing animals, so a non-vegan vegetarian might well ask—how does this argument apply to me?
(4) Not avoiding unnecessary suffering is immoral.
The word “unnecessary” seems to be doing most of the work in this claim, but it’s difficult to see how to operationalize it. Interestingly, utilitarianism (which is usually a background assumption in arguments like this, and likely here as well, though you never name it explicitly) doesn’t much help; there isn’t really any way, for a utilitarian, to designate some suffering to be “necessary” or “not necessary”—it simply gets entered as input into the utility calculation, along with all other relevant facts about the world. On the other hand, most non-utilitarian views don’t offer any clear way to make sense of this claim either.
(5) Therefore, contributing to unnecessary animal suffering makes you an animal abuser.
This presupposes several other claims, which are missing from your argument, and must be made explicit. These include “non-human animals are capable of suffering” (and/or “the suffering of non-human animals is morally relevant”).
As a side note, the term “abuser” is tendentious; clearly, you are trying to bring in the connotations of the term we use to describe people who beat their pet dogs, into the argument about whether it’s acceptable to kill cows for their meat. If you have a point, make it without recourse to underhanded emotional tactics.
(The rest of the paragraph is mostly elaboration on claim (5); the factual claims made therein are irrelevant if the argument quoted above does not carry through.)
(Continued in sibling comment, for ease of response.)
Thank you for your extensive reply. I will make sure to address all of your points.
(1) Humans do not need animal products to be healthy.
Citation needed. When providing citations, please note that (a) much of nutrition science is very shoddy (in all the usual ways—methodology, replicability, file-drawer effects, etc.), and (b) there is considerable variation, between people and between groups of people, in optimal diet, physiological responses to dietary changes, etc. Almost any universal statement about human nutrition is likely to be wrong. So a claim like this requires considerable support to be raised even to the “plausible” level, much less to “certain enough to base moral claims on”. (Indeed, it is possible that nutrition science, in its current state, is simply not capable of providing us with the degree of certainty which we would need in order to use a claim like this in a moral argument.)
The source is from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. In regard to the institution you stated the following:
Under no circumstances would I believe a word these people say about nutrition.
You quoted their Wikipedia page and that they profit from funding. However, according to that same Wikipedia article, they are still the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals. Every large institution needs money. They do science. Your own opinion in not trusting their science does not make their science any less credible IMO. However, here is a further source that links to several other organizations that have affirmed that vegan diets are healthy:
Indeed, it is possible that nutrition science, in its current state, is simply not capable of providing us with the degree of certainty which we would need in order to use a claim like this in a moral argument
I think you should not underestimate nutritional science and do your research first if you make such a claim. The scientific findings are sufficient to claim that vegan diets are healthy. Therefore, humans do not need animal products to be healthy.
(2) Therefore, the consumption of animal products is unnecessary.
Granting claim (1), this one does not follow. You seem to imply that something is only “necessary” if, without it, we would die (or suffer serious harms to health). I reject this view.
I would like to modify my original statement: The consumption of animal products is not necessary in order to be healthy. Therefore, they are unnecessary for human health. This makes their consumption optional, a choice. If you can choose non-violence over violence, I think that is a moral imperative (to which I was referring in my title).
(3) This makes the killing of non-human animals for animal products unnecessary.
Note that if your argument depends on establishing the immorality of killing animals, that gets you to vegetarianism only, not to veganism. Eggs, dairy, etc. do not require killing animals, so a non-vegan vegetarian might well ask—how does this argument apply to me?
Again, a slight modification to clarify: The killing of non-human animals for their products is not necessary for human health. Concerning your points about eggs and dairy: Yes, they very much require killing.
(a) The egg industry kills male chicks on the first day of their life, usually by throwing them in a big blender. On another note, chickens that produce eggs suffer from horrible conditions in the majority of cases, which again is suffering not necessary for human health.
(b) The dairy industry does not need the male calves, which are being killed either after a few days or after a few weeks (for veal). Most dairy cows also get slaughtered after 4 to 5 years because their production of milk decreases. Again, there is also a lot of suffering in the industry besides the premature killing of sentient beings, which can be avoided by being vegan.
(Kindly note that the arguments used in (a) and (b) are derived from the book Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows by Dr. Melanie Joy.)
(4) Not avoiding unnecessary suffering is immoral.
The word “unnecessary” seems to be doing most of the work in this claim, but it’s difficult to see how to operationalize it. Interestingly, utilitarianism (which is usually a background assumption in arguments like this, and likely here as well, though you never name it explicitly) doesn’t much help; there isn’t really any way, for a utilitarian, to designate some suffering to be “necessary” or “not necessary”—it simply gets entered as input into the utility calculation, along with all other relevant facts about the world. On the other hand, most non-utilitarian views don’t offer any clear way to make sense of this claim either.
I do not know if this holds up against your argumentation, but I would like to try anyways: I define unnecessary suffering in this case as suffering that is not essential to our lives. If the only reason we consume animal products is pleasure, the question is the following: Can we justify the suffering of others only because it gives us pleasure? As I see it not avoiding the pain and suffering of millions of animals just because we like their taste is immoral.
(5) Therefore, contributing to unnecessary animal suffering makes you an animal abuser.
This presupposes several other claims, which are missing from your argument, and must be made explicit. These include “non-human animals are capable of suffering” (and/or “the suffering of non-human animals is morally relevant”).
As a side note, the term “abuser” is tendentious; clearly, you are trying to bring in the connotations of the term we use to describe people who beat their pet dogs, into the argument about whether it’s acceptable to kill cows for their meat. If you have a point, make it without recourse to underhanded emotional tactics.
Non-human animals are capable of suffering and their suffering is morally relevant. If we cannot agree on this point, I see no point in discussing the other matters further. That they are capable of suffering is not only obvious to anyone who ever witnessed some non-human animal suffer, but also scientifically proven. They have brains, feel physical and emotional pain. Not considering their suffering morally relevant is, analogous to sexism or racism, speciesism. Only because they are not part of our human “in-group” does not make them irrelevant. Please google the term yourself if my explanation was not sufficient.
Concerning the term animal abuser: There are no underhanded emotional tactics. I made the point so people make the uncomfortable connection in their heads for themselves. If you pay for animal products, you pay the industry that causes them suffering and pain. Therefore, you are causing suffering and pain to animals. That is the definition of an animal abuser in my book.
(Please also see my response to your other comment.)
I would like to modify my original statement: The consumption of animal products is not necessary in order to be healthy. Therefore, they are unnecessary for human health. This makes their consumption optional, a choice. If you can choose non-violence over violence, I think that is a moral imperative (to which I was referring in my title).
This depends, of course, on what you define to be “violence”. If “violence” includes the killing of animals (not the usual usage, but also not unheard of)—then I disagree with the claim that choosing “non-violence” is a moral imperative.
I do not know if this holds up against your argumentation, but I would like to try anyways: I define unnecessary suffering in this case as suffering that is not essential to our lives. If the only reason we consume animal products is pleasure, the question is the following: Can we justify the suffering of others only because it gives us pleasure? As I see it not avoiding the pain and suffering of millions of animals just because we like their taste is immoral.
There are several things that might be said in response to this.
First: pleasure is essential to our lives. If you propose that we resign ourselves to living lives devoid of pleasure, then I cannot but condemn that proposal in the strongest terms. Any ideology that deems pleasure and enjoyment to be “inessential” or “unnecessary” is anti-human and, frankly, evil.
Of course, not everything can be justified by the pursuit of pleasure or enjoyment! But the question of what we may rightly sacrifice, in the service of what gains, is not a trivial one. Simply to declare that enjoyment and pleasure are “inessential” is to avoid the question, not to answer it.
Second: the question of animal “suffering”. I address this below.
Third: you say “others” (i.e., “the suffering of others”), as if it were a monolithic set, as if it made sense, morally speaking, to aggregate not only all humans, but all animals as well, or all living things, etc. But it does not—or, at least, it does not obviously make sense. Agent-neutral morality is not universally held, for one thing, and indeed some people do not include animals in their circle of moral concern at all.
Non-human animals are capable of suffering and their suffering is morally relevant. If we cannot agree on this point, I see no point in discussing the other matters further.
Ah, well. Here we come to the crux of the matter, yes? I certainly do not agree on this point!
That they are capable of suffering is not only obvious to anyone who ever witnessed some non-human animal suffer, but also scientifically proven.
Citation needed. (But before you begin collecting references, you may consider reading this recent forum thread on Data Secrets Lox, where just this topic was discussed at length.)
Not considering their suffering morally relevant is, analogous to sexism or racism, speciesism.
Labels are no substitute for arguments.
Please google the term yourself if my explanation was not sufficient.
Surely you’re not suggesting that googling the term ‘speciesism’ is going to convince anyone of anything? Do you assume that anyone who disagrees with you must simply not be aware of the term? With respect, this is not at all a reasonable assumption on Less Wrong, of all places!
But that’s the nature of identity: a claim that’s part of identity won’t suffer insinuations that it needs any arguments behind it, let alone the existence of arguments against. Within one’s identity, labels are absolutely superior to arguments. So the disagreement is more about epistemic role of identity, not about object level claims or arguments.
Non-human animals are capable of suffering and their suffering is morally relevant. If we cannot agree on this point, I see no point in discussing the other matters further.
Ah, well. Here we come to the crux of the matter, yes? I certainly do not agree on this point!
Due to time constraints I only want to briefly respond to this point. Do you not agree that they can suffer or do you not agree that their suffering is morally relevant? Either is quit shocking to me actually. There is nothing morally wrong with someone kicking a dog around for fun? If you have time and are interested maybe you care to watch a few minutes of this documentary, maybe it can awaken your compassion!
Otherwise, good chat everyone. I grew tired of this quickly! In all fairness, I am lazy and you are way better at arguing! Anyways, I hope you have a good life and I will make sure to delete this account in some time.
Due to time constraints I only want to briefly respond to this point. Do you not agree that they can suffer or do you not agree that their suffering is morally relevant?
Both. (EDIT: To clarify, I do not think that [most] animals can “suffer”, in the sense in which the word applies to a category of human experience, and also, I do not think that any of the states which are described as “suffering” by those who disagree with my assessment have, when applied to animals, any moral import.)
If you have time and are interested maybe you care to watch a few minutes of this documentary, maybe it can awaken your compassion!
This is a 2-hour-long video; I’m afraid I haven’t the time to devote to something like this (especially since watching it likely to be very low-value). If there’s some particular parts of this which you think are especially relevant, please link to them directly.
You quoted their Wikipedia page and that they profit from funding. However, according to that same Wikipedia article, they are still the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals. Every large institution needs money. They do science. Your own opinion in not trusting their science does not make their science any less credible IMO.
That they are “the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals” is irrelevant. Mere numbers of members aren’t any kind of evidence.
As for “they profit from funding”—perhaps you have missed the point, which is not that they are funded, but by whom they are funded. Do you think this does not matter? The point, to be maximally clear, is that they take money from corporations which have interests that very strongly conflict with the public interest (of getting reliable, unbiased information) and with their own stated purpose! Once again: this so-called “Academy” has severe conflicts of interest, severe enough to fatally compromise them as a source of scientific information on nutrition and diet.
Shall I quote some more from that same Wikipedia page? Let’s see:
Watchdogs note that the Academy rarely criticizes food companies, believing it to be out of fear of “biting the hand that feeds them.”[67][68] Nutrition expert Marion Nestle opined that she believed that as long as the AND partners with the makers of food and beverage products, “its opinions about diet and health will never be believed [to be] independent.”[63] Public health lawyer Michele Simon, who researches and writes about the food industry and food politics, has voiced similar concerns stating, “AND [is] deeply embedded with the food industry, and often communicate[s] messaging that is industry friendly.”[69]
You would trust this organization, when these experts do not? What do you know that they don’t?
A 2011 survey, found that 80% of Academy members are critical of the Academy’s position. They believe that the Academy is endorsing corporate sponsors and their products when it allows their sponsorship.[70]
You would trust this organization, when four out of five of their own members do not?
The organization also publishes nutrition facts sheets for the general public, which food companies pay $20,000 to take part in writing the documents.[73] A list of these publications for the general public include: […] This industry funding also gives food companies the ability to offer official educational seminars to teach dietitians how to advise their clients in a way that advances the interests of the food company. For instance, in a Coca-Cola sponsored seminar for dietitians, the speaker promoted free sugars consumption for children as a healthy choice.[79]
To be frank, the idea that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is a reliable and unbiased source of nutrition-related information is ludicrous. To claim otherwise undermines the credibility of every other claim you make.
However, here is a further source that links to several other organizations that have affirmed that vegan diets are healthy:
By no means does this address the argument at all.
You have linked to an advocacy website. Not to a meta-analysis or review, not to a paper published in a respected journal, not even to a popular science article in a reputable publication, or a blog post by a scientist working in the field—but to an advocacy website. I’m sorry to be blunt about this, but—do you not see how worthless this is, as evidence? (And lest you consider replying that they link to other, more reputable sources, recall that a biased advocate for a position can cherry-pick sources to support almost any possible point—see “What Evidence Filtered Evidence?” and “The Bottom Line” for further commentary.) Linking to a page on a vegan advocacy site and declaring the matter settled is simply not anything even resembling a serious approach to this topic.
Suppose I were interested in investigating this topic for myself. Setting aside the deep skepticism which it is only rational to cultivate about any nutrition-related topic, and the awareness that advocacy of all sorts, and profound systemic and instutional flaws, compromise the reliability of even credentialed sources, I might do the maximally naive thing and simply do a web search for “vegan diet health”. On the very first page of search results, I would see sites and documents which say things like:
One common concern is whether a vegan diet provides enough vitamin B12. B12 helps prevent nerve damage, and is found in meat, fish, eggs and dairy, but not in fruit or vegetables. It’s recommended that adults consume 1.5 micrograms of the vitamin per day.
“A B12 deficiency can lead to neurological symptoms such as numbness, and it’s irreversible if the deficiency is present for too long,” says Janet Cade, of the Nutritional Epidemiology Group, School of Food Science and Nutrition.
A recent study involving 48,000 people over 18 years compared the health of meat-eaters, pescatarians – who eat fish and dairy but not meat – and vegetarians, including some vegans. They found that people who eat vegan and vegetarian diets have a lower risk of heart disease, but a higher risk of stroke, possibly partly due to a lack of B12.
Researchers are concerned that a lot of research comparing the vegan diet and health outcomes (also known as observational research) is unreliable, since vegans tend to be healthier.
“Typically, vegans smoke less, drink less alcohol and exercise more,” says Faidon Magkos, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s department of nutrition, exercise and sports, who last year published a review into research examining the health effects of the vegan diet.
These lifestyle factors, which can also contribute to a lower risk of heart disease and mortality, can suggest that the vegan diet alone is healthier than it may actually be.
While the evidence isn’t very strong for the vegan diet specifically, Cade says, the vegan diet seems to be linked to better general health, apart from bone density and fractures, which may be more common due to possible lower calcium intake, and the likelihood of B12 deficiency.
“If you compare a plant-based diet with an unhealthy diet that includes meat, the plant-based diet is certainly better,” Faidon says.
“But if you follow a relatively prudent omnivorous diet, such as the Mediterranean diet, which is high in fruit, vegetables, legumes and low in meat, there’s evidence to suggest this type of omnivorous diet is at least as healthy as a vegan diet,” he says.
At the very least, this would convince me that the case is far from closed, and that much more investigation is needed.
EDIT:
I think you should not underestimate nutritional science and do your research first if you make such a claim. The scientific findings are sufficient to claim that vegan diets are healthy. Therefore, humans do not need animal products to be healthy.
Citation needed. Since you suggest that I do my research, no doubt you’ve done yours—yes? The “scientific findings” you refer to ought to be cited explicitly.
This proves too much. Most of these arguments would profess to hold veganism as the superior policy for sapient wolves (who are sufficiently advanced to have developed cheap dietary supplementation), degrading the moral imperative of tearing living flesh from the bones.
See proving too much. In the thought experiment where you consider sapient wolves who hold violent consumption of sentient creatures as an important value, the policy of veganism is at least highly questionable. An argument for such a policy needs to distinguish humans from sapient wolves, so as to avoid arguing for veganism for sapient wolves with the same conviction as it does for humans.
Your argument mentions relevant features (taste, tradition) at the end and dismisses them as “lazy excuses”. Yet their weakness in the case of humans is necessary for the argument’s validity. Taste and tradition point to an ethical argument against veganism, that doesn’t not exist as you claim at the start of the article. Instead the argument exists and might be weak.
There is evidence that pescetarians have betterhealth outcomes than vegans. These studies aren’t definitive, but it’s also worth noting, that Asian diets are often high in fish, and there are some populations with very good health outcomes there, such as the blue-zone population in Okinawa, Japan. Dietary science is very much a mess, but I strongly believe that if vegans advocates aren’t clear about the dietary science, this issue could cause a LOT of blowback. If, eg, in 10 years, it’s definitively show that consumption of fish adds, say 3 years to health-span and vegans have been misleading the public about this, I predict that it will be very bad for the social acceptance of veganism.
Beyond the considerations of being misleading about the dietary science, IF some amount of fish consumption is indeed healthy, then the moral case is far from clear. Humans are animals too. Many of us find staying healthy an intrinsic good, and having our loved ones be healthy is also an intrinsic good. This would trade off against the welfare of fish.
Personally, I would be very very happy if fish consumption was show to be neutral or negative for health outcomes, both for the animal welfare considerations, as well because of the state of the oceans, and also for aesthetic reasons: fish are incredibly beautiful and majestic animals and I find it unsettling to consume them. Currently, I eat sardines from the seafoodwatch.org’s recommended list a couple of times a week—this is my main deviation from veganism. I’d be happy to return to full veganism if the evidence supported it.
Thank you for this, an important point. According to my own research, the main benefits of fish consumption to human health are omega-3-fatty-acids. These inherently stem from various algae which ultimately end up in the fish bodies through the food chain. I personally consume algae oil as an supplement for DHA and EPA and make sure to get a lot of omega 3 from flax, hemp and chia seeds.
Of course you have to do your own research on this, but please also keep in mind the potential amount of antibiotics, microplastic and heavy metals that might be found in various fish.
Hi Ruben, it’s true that omega-3s seem to be important, but the research on omega-3 supplementation consistently seems to find almost no effect or tiny effects, or sometimes even small harmful effects (examine.com’s pages are a good starting off point for this).
Again, while it’s true that seafood may have yucky contaminants in it, eating small fish close to the bottom of the food chain here seems like a situation where moral and nutrition concerns align—briesling sprats and pilchard sardines have very very tiny wee little brains, and it seem less likely to me that they suffer much. They’re also wild caught, so have at least had free lives.
The supplement industry, OTOH, also has documented problems with contamination, and many supplements are poorly absorbed—consuming an isolated compound generally doesn’t seem to be fungible with eating a whole food.
World Hunger: Approximately 9 million humans die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year. We already produce enough food on earth to feed around 10 billion people, but the majority of grain crops is fed to livestock. Being vegan can effectively contribute to ending world hunger.
I don’t think a population level shift to veganism would have the effect on world hunger that you are presenting here. The problem is availability. If the grain being fed to livestock is suddenly freed up, I don’t know that it is just diverted to people experiencing hunger.
I would like to see this energy directed somewhere more empathetic. Can many humans with a healthy relationship to food and no medical dietary restrictions be physically healthy on a vegan diet (and a B12 supplement)? Probably. Does everyone you’re talking to have all those qualities? Absolutely not. Are their traditions, tastes, and convenience, and every flowthrough effect of their culture, enjoyment, and flexibility, wholly worthless? You aren’t likely to save many animals by telling them so even if you feel that way.
I had an accidentally mostly-vegan lunch today. I’m not a vegan (I’m a pescetarian), but I happened to choose today to make baba ganoush, and of course I wanted bread to put it on and I had some ciabatta, and I also had some Beyond sausages in the fridge that I wanted to try so I fried a couple of those up. By coincidence, my dinner last night was also vegan! I made Singapore noodles, with tofu and cabbage and broccoli and shiitake mushrooms. However, with both meals I drank a glass of milk. Trying to figure out how to completely replace dairy products in my diet would be a tremendous undertaking that would substantially reduce my quality of life, and if you want to make that ask, you should acknowledge its contents.
I know someone on an elimination diet for medical reasons who cannot have any legumes including soy and peanuts. (Nor eggs and dairy, but meat is fine—in fact, as I understand it, meat is one of the things people are least likely to be reactive to in a wide variety of cases.) He can eat gluten, but can’t have it in the house—it’ll make the celiac family members sick. What would you like him to do? Go out to eat a plate of seitan at a restaurant every day during a pandemic? Do you think the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is stating that this person will be fine on quinoa and sunflower seeds and almonds, for months, while their medical team isolates a hopefully narrower set of problem foods, or do you think the AND were making a generalization that doesn’t apply to everyone?
Vat meat is coming. Plant-based meat options are better every year. They haven’t cracked fully general vegan eggs yet but they have approximately-perfect vegan mayonnaise. All we have to do is send market signals and, on the margin, in the meantime, give people recipes.
(Broil 2 large globe eggplants on high for one hour, turning them over after 30 minutes. Let rest until cool enough to handle. Slit open, scoop out, and strain the insides; pat dry with paper towels. Add minced garlic to taste and two tablespoons of lemon juice poured directly over the garlic, and stir vigorously until mostly broken down. Mix in 3 tablespoons tahini, then a steady stream of olive oil while stirring constantly. Salt until it tastes amazing.)
(Continuing from my other comment.)
Another commenter has already addressed this somewhat, but to make the point explicit: as you say, we produce enough food already. Hunger in the modern world is caused by logistical difficulties, not under-supply. There does not seem to be any reason to believe that a global transition to veganism would meaningfully affect these difficulties. (This is to say nothing of the highly questionable implied connection between personal decisions, made by individuals in Western countries, to adopt veganism, and any significant shifts in global prevalence of veganism.)
This point is rather at odds with your argument about animal welfare. The lives of wild animals are full of pain and death—a fact which has long been recognized by effective altruists. (Simply search for “wild animals” on the Effective Altruism Forum to get a flavor of the discussions on this topic.) If you want to reduce unnecessary suffering, are you sure you should be saving wild animals?
Citation very much needed. (And see the note in my other comment about health-related claims.) My prior for this sort of claim (taken as a universal or near-universal claim, which is the only way it can have any rhetorical force) is very low.
The “natural“ and “normal” arguments are indeed mostly invalid (though there are serious “Chesterton’s fence” type concerns which ought not be casually dismissed). The “necessary” argument is certainly not invalid (or, rather, requires considerably more support than the almost no support which you have provided, in order to be rejected as invalid).
I looked them up and found this:
(From Wikipedia. Click the link for more in the same vein as the quoted paragraph—there’s a lot there, and all of it bad.)
Under no circumstances would I believe a word these people say about nutrition.
These are, in fact, entirely valid reasons to eat meat—especially if the moral argument fails to persuade. Far from being “lazy excuses”, these three considerations are quite important to the great majority of people! It is empirically true that people value tradition, taste (or, more generally, pleasure and enjoyment), and convenience very highly. (If you doubt this, look at the choices people make!) The task before you is daunting: you must convince people, not only that eating animals (or harming them in the process of food production) is wrong at all, in any way, but also that it’s wrong enough to outweigh things that they actually, in fact, value quite highly.
(And, of course, if the moral argument doesn’t hold water—as I, for one, don’t think it even slightly does—then the point is moot. What reason suffices to justify doing something that’s morally neutral? Why, any reason at all.)
Downvoted for this alone. Using a clickbait title and then apologizing in the text doesn’t somehow absolve you of using the clickbait title in the first place. You knew what you were doing and you still did it. I see this more and more on Less Wrong these days, and I downvote it whenever I see it. When it comes to clickbait, don’t first do it and then apologize for doing it—just don’t do it.
And now, a substantive reply.
Well, as you say, the post is very sloppy, which makes me feel somewhat bad for arguing against it… but if no one speaks up to point out shoddy argument, on a topic of concern to us, then it’s normalized, isn’t it? If you like, consider my commentary to be aimed, not (only) at you per se, but at anyone who makes similar arguments (of whom there are many).
This is a series of claims stringed together—almost all of them either unsupported or wrong. Let’s look at them individually. I will number the claims for convenience.
Citation needed. When providing citations, please note that (a) much of nutrition science is very shoddy (in all the usual ways—methodology, replicability, file-drawer effects, etc.), and (b) there is considerable variation, between people and between groups of people, in optimal diet, physiological responses to dietary changes, etc. Almost any universal statement about human nutrition is likely to be wrong. So a claim like this requires considerable support to be raised even to the “plausible” level, much less to “certain enough to base moral claims on”. (Indeed, it is possible that nutrition science, in its current state, is simply not capable of providing us with the degree of certainty which we would need in order to use a claim like this in a moral argument.)
Granting claim (1), this one does not follow. You seem to imply that something is only “necessary” if, without it, we would die (or suffer serious harms to health). I reject this view.
Note that if your argument depends on establishing the immorality of killing animals, that gets you to vegetarianism only, not to veganism. Eggs, dairy, etc. do not require killing animals, so a non-vegan vegetarian might well ask—how does this argument apply to me?
The word “unnecessary” seems to be doing most of the work in this claim, but it’s difficult to see how to operationalize it. Interestingly, utilitarianism (which is usually a background assumption in arguments like this, and likely here as well, though you never name it explicitly) doesn’t much help; there isn’t really any way, for a utilitarian, to designate some suffering to be “necessary” or “not necessary”—it simply gets entered as input into the utility calculation, along with all other relevant facts about the world. On the other hand, most non-utilitarian views don’t offer any clear way to make sense of this claim either.
This presupposes several other claims, which are missing from your argument, and must be made explicit. These include “non-human animals are capable of suffering” (and/or “the suffering of non-human animals is morally relevant”).
As a side note, the term “abuser” is tendentious; clearly, you are trying to bring in the connotations of the term we use to describe people who beat their pet dogs, into the argument about whether it’s acceptable to kill cows for their meat. If you have a point, make it without recourse to underhanded emotional tactics.
(The rest of the paragraph is mostly elaboration on claim (5); the factual claims made therein are irrelevant if the argument quoted above does not carry through.)
(Continued in sibling comment, for ease of response.)
Thank you for your extensive reply. I will make sure to address all of your points.
Citation for the claim:
https://www.eatrightpro.org/~/media/eatrightpro%20files/practice/position%20and%20practice%20papers/position%20papers/vegetarian-diet.ashx
The source is from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. In regard to the institution you stated the following:
You quoted their Wikipedia page and that they profit from funding. However, according to that same Wikipedia article, they are still the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals. Every large institution needs money. They do science. Your own opinion in not trusting their science does not make their science any less credible IMO. However, here is a further source that links to several other organizations that have affirmed that vegan diets are healthy:
https://www.veganism.com/is-vegan-diet-healthy/
I hope that addresses argument (1) sufficiently.
I think you should not underestimate nutritional science and do your research first if you make such a claim. The scientific findings are sufficient to claim that vegan diets are healthy. Therefore, humans do not need animal products to be healthy.
I would like to modify my original statement: The consumption of animal products is not necessary in order to be healthy. Therefore, they are unnecessary for human health. This makes their consumption optional, a choice. If you can choose non-violence over violence, I think that is a moral imperative (to which I was referring in my title).
Again, a slight modification to clarify: The killing of non-human animals for their products is not necessary for human health. Concerning your points about eggs and dairy: Yes, they very much require killing.
(a) The egg industry kills male chicks on the first day of their life, usually by throwing them in a big blender. On another note, chickens that produce eggs suffer from horrible conditions in the majority of cases, which again is suffering not necessary for human health.
(b) The dairy industry does not need the male calves, which are being killed either after a few days or after a few weeks (for veal). Most dairy cows also get slaughtered after 4 to 5 years because their production of milk decreases. Again, there is also a lot of suffering in the industry besides the premature killing of sentient beings, which can be avoided by being vegan.
(Kindly note that the arguments used in (a) and (b) are derived from the book Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows by Dr. Melanie Joy.)
I do not know if this holds up against your argumentation, but I would like to try anyways: I define unnecessary suffering in this case as suffering that is not essential to our lives. If the only reason we consume animal products is pleasure, the question is the following: Can we justify the suffering of others only because it gives us pleasure? As I see it not avoiding the pain and suffering of millions of animals just because we like their taste is immoral.
Non-human animals are capable of suffering and their suffering is morally relevant. If we cannot agree on this point, I see no point in discussing the other matters further. That they are capable of suffering is not only obvious to anyone who ever witnessed some non-human animal suffer, but also scientifically proven. They have brains, feel physical and emotional pain. Not considering their suffering morally relevant is, analogous to sexism or racism, speciesism. Only because they are not part of our human “in-group” does not make them irrelevant. Please google the term yourself if my explanation was not sufficient.
Concerning the term animal abuser: There are no underhanded emotional tactics. I made the point so people make the uncomfortable connection in their heads for themselves. If you pay for animal products, you pay the industry that causes them suffering and pain. Therefore, you are causing suffering and pain to animals. That is the definition of an animal abuser in my book.
(Please also see my response to your other comment.)
This depends, of course, on what you define to be “violence”. If “violence” includes the killing of animals (not the usual usage, but also not unheard of)—then I disagree with the claim that choosing “non-violence” is a moral imperative.
There are several things that might be said in response to this.
First: pleasure is essential to our lives. If you propose that we resign ourselves to living lives devoid of pleasure, then I cannot but condemn that proposal in the strongest terms. Any ideology that deems pleasure and enjoyment to be “inessential” or “unnecessary” is anti-human and, frankly, evil.
Of course, not everything can be justified by the pursuit of pleasure or enjoyment! But the question of what we may rightly sacrifice, in the service of what gains, is not a trivial one. Simply to declare that enjoyment and pleasure are “inessential” is to avoid the question, not to answer it.
Second: the question of animal “suffering”. I address this below.
Third: you say “others” (i.e., “the suffering of others”), as if it were a monolithic set, as if it made sense, morally speaking, to aggregate not only all humans, but all animals as well, or all living things, etc. But it does not—or, at least, it does not obviously make sense. Agent-neutral morality is not universally held, for one thing, and indeed some people do not include animals in their circle of moral concern at all.
Ah, well. Here we come to the crux of the matter, yes? I certainly do not agree on this point!
Citation needed. (But before you begin collecting references, you may consider reading this recent forum thread on Data Secrets Lox, where just this topic was discussed at length.)
Labels are no substitute for arguments.
Surely you’re not suggesting that googling the term ‘speciesism’ is going to convince anyone of anything? Do you assume that anyone who disagrees with you must simply not be aware of the term? With respect, this is not at all a reasonable assumption on Less Wrong, of all places!
But that’s the nature of identity: a claim that’s part of identity won’t suffer insinuations that it needs any arguments behind it, let alone the existence of arguments against. Within one’s identity, labels are absolutely superior to arguments. So the disagreement is more about epistemic role of identity, not about object level claims or arguments.
Due to time constraints I only want to briefly respond to this point. Do you not agree that they can suffer or do you not agree that their suffering is morally relevant? Either is quit shocking to me actually. There is nothing morally wrong with someone kicking a dog around for fun? If you have time and are interested maybe you care to watch a few minutes of this documentary, maybe it can awaken your compassion!
Otherwise, good chat everyone. I grew tired of this quickly! In all fairness, I am lazy and you are way better at arguing! Anyways, I hope you have a good life and I will make sure to delete this account in some time.
Both. (EDIT: To clarify, I do not think that [most] animals can “suffer”, in the sense in which the word applies to a category of human experience, and also, I do not think that any of the states which are described as “suffering” by those who disagree with my assessment have, when applied to animals, any moral import.)
This is a 2-hour-long video; I’m afraid I haven’t the time to devote to something like this (especially since watching it likely to be very low-value). If there’s some particular parts of this which you think are especially relevant, please link to them directly.
Re: the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics:
That they are “the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals” is irrelevant. Mere numbers of members aren’t any kind of evidence.
As for “they profit from funding”—perhaps you have missed the point, which is not that they are funded, but by whom they are funded. Do you think this does not matter? The point, to be maximally clear, is that they take money from corporations which have interests that very strongly conflict with the public interest (of getting reliable, unbiased information) and with their own stated purpose! Once again: this so-called “Academy” has severe conflicts of interest, severe enough to fatally compromise them as a source of scientific information on nutrition and diet.
Shall I quote some more from that same Wikipedia page? Let’s see:
You would trust this organization, when these experts do not? What do you know that they don’t?
You would trust this organization, when four out of five of their own members do not?
To be frank, the idea that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is a reliable and unbiased source of nutrition-related information is ludicrous. To claim otherwise undermines the credibility of every other claim you make.
By no means does this address the argument at all.
You have linked to an advocacy website. Not to a meta-analysis or review, not to a paper published in a respected journal, not even to a popular science article in a reputable publication, or a blog post by a scientist working in the field—but to an advocacy website. I’m sorry to be blunt about this, but—do you not see how worthless this is, as evidence? (And lest you consider replying that they link to other, more reputable sources, recall that a biased advocate for a position can cherry-pick sources to support almost any possible point—see “What Evidence Filtered Evidence?” and “The Bottom Line” for further commentary.) Linking to a page on a vegan advocacy site and declaring the matter settled is simply not anything even resembling a serious approach to this topic.
Suppose I were interested in investigating this topic for myself. Setting aside the deep skepticism which it is only rational to cultivate about any nutrition-related topic, and the awareness that advocacy of all sorts, and profound systemic and instutional flaws, compromise the reliability of even credentialed sources, I might do the maximally naive thing and simply do a web search for “vegan diet health”. On the very first page of search results, I would see sites and documents which say things like:
(From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health-benefits-to-going-vegan)
(See also https://empoweredsustenance.com/is-vegan-healthy/ for a laundry list of other concerns.)
At the very least, this would convince me that the case is far from closed, and that much more investigation is needed.
EDIT:
Citation needed. Since you suggest that I do my research, no doubt you’ve done yours—yes? The “scientific findings” you refer to ought to be cited explicitly.
This proves too much. Most of these arguments would profess to hold veganism as the superior policy for sapient wolves (who are sufficiently advanced to have developed cheap dietary supplementation), degrading the moral imperative of tearing living flesh from the bones.
I am sorry, I do not get your point here. Could you elaborate what you mean?
See proving too much. In the thought experiment where you consider sapient wolves who hold violent consumption of sentient creatures as an important value, the policy of veganism is at least highly questionable. An argument for such a policy needs to distinguish humans from sapient wolves, so as to avoid arguing for veganism for sapient wolves with the same conviction as it does for humans.
Your argument mentions relevant features (taste, tradition) at the end and dismisses them as “lazy excuses”. Yet their weakness in the case of humans is necessary for the argument’s validity. Taste and tradition point to an ethical argument against veganism, that doesn’t not exist as you claim at the start of the article. Instead the argument exists and might be weak.
There is evidence that pescetarians have better health outcomes than vegans. These studies aren’t definitive, but it’s also worth noting, that Asian diets are often high in fish, and there are some populations with very good health outcomes there, such as the blue-zone population in Okinawa, Japan. Dietary science is very much a mess, but I strongly believe that if vegans advocates aren’t clear about the dietary science, this issue could cause a LOT of blowback. If, eg, in 10 years, it’s definitively show that consumption of fish adds, say 3 years to health-span and vegans have been misleading the public about this, I predict that it will be very bad for the social acceptance of veganism.
Beyond the considerations of being misleading about the dietary science, IF some amount of fish consumption is indeed healthy, then the moral case is far from clear. Humans are animals too. Many of us find staying healthy an intrinsic good, and having our loved ones be healthy is also an intrinsic good. This would trade off against the welfare of fish.
Personally, I would be very very happy if fish consumption was show to be neutral or negative for health outcomes, both for the animal welfare considerations, as well because of the state of the oceans, and also for aesthetic reasons: fish are incredibly beautiful and majestic animals and I find it unsettling to consume them. Currently, I eat sardines from the seafoodwatch.org’s recommended list a couple of times a week—this is my main deviation from veganism. I’d be happy to return to full veganism if the evidence supported it.
Thank you for this, an important point. According to my own research, the main benefits of fish consumption to human health are omega-3-fatty-acids. These inherently stem from various algae which ultimately end up in the fish bodies through the food chain. I personally consume algae oil as an supplement for DHA and EPA and make sure to get a lot of omega 3 from flax, hemp and chia seeds.
Of course you have to do your own research on this, but please also keep in mind the potential amount of antibiotics, microplastic and heavy metals that might be found in various fish.
Hi Ruben, it’s true that omega-3s seem to be important, but the research on omega-3 supplementation consistently seems to find almost no effect or tiny effects, or sometimes even small harmful effects (examine.com’s pages are a good starting off point for this).
Again, while it’s true that seafood may have yucky contaminants in it, eating small fish close to the bottom of the food chain here seems like a situation where moral and nutrition concerns align—briesling sprats and pilchard sardines have very very tiny wee little brains, and it seem less likely to me that they suffer much. They’re also wild caught, so have at least had free lives.
The supplement industry, OTOH, also has documented problems with contamination, and many supplements are poorly absorbed—consuming an isolated compound generally doesn’t seem to be fungible with eating a whole food.
World Hunger: Approximately 9 million humans die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year. We already produce enough food on earth to feed around 10 billion people, but the majority of grain crops is fed to livestock. Being vegan can effectively contribute to ending world hunger.
I don’t think a population level shift to veganism would have the effect on world hunger that you are presenting here. The problem is availability. If the grain being fed to livestock is suddenly freed up, I don’t know that it is just diverted to people experiencing hunger.