i think this topic has about run its course in terms of productiveness, and has mostly devolved into people complaining about being held to (objectively correct) vegan ethics. locking
TL;DR, the physiology is pretty similar to someone filling your lungs with a saline solution, but slower because they’re cold blooded.
When you consider this, that most ocean plastic comes from fishing, and that modern day slavery is heavily present in it (no police on a boat, and hard to escape) I actually have more respect for meat eaters than pescitarians. Don’t eat seafood, folks.
Edit: Oh, bycatch too, and habitat destruction from bottom trawling. I might be missing more; it’s kind of impressive how fucked that industry is.
The 2 trillion figure is the minimum: it could be more than 6 trillion every year, and the elephant in the room is that more than half of those are factory farmed - which means humans are responsible for torturing them their entire lives.
“for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka” - Isaac Bashevis Singer
being farmed isn’t torture.
Depends massively on the farm and the practices.
Being a cow on a pasture looks okay most of the time. Factory farms should not exist.
I beg to differ.
https://awionline.org/content/inhumane-practices-factory-farms
Maypull is not worth talking to. They’re defending the cruel multi-billion dollar animal agriculture system no matter the cost to the animals, the environment and the workers.
torture means that pain/distressed are caused intentionally. like beating someone so they give up information. that’s not the case in farming. sometimes, animals are caused pain or distress, but the point of the activity is not to cause it. if a farmer could raise their livestock and never cause them any pain or distress for the same cost, i’m sure they would. the pain is incidental, not intentional. it’s not torture. qed.
yeah, killing the animals so you can consume their flesh, after all their lives being in a enclosed space designed to maximise the profits, isn’t bad or torture for the animals. the bad things happening to them from that life is just a byproduct of wanting to use their corpses for other things, so it can be considered torture, right?
it doesn’t matter what is the explicit or direct intent, they are being abused, mistreated and tortured, just for personal and human gain.
you can torture other people physically, emotionally or psychologicaly without it being the direct intent for your actions, but the torture will still be there.
torture is intentional. the pain and distress caused by farming is only incidental.
trolling or just willfully ignorant?
why not both?
Ah, technically correct, the best kind.
Okay, equivalent in unpleasantness to prolonged torture.
Broccoli screams, you just can’t hear it.
Prove it. They do not have any sound-producing organs, nor any structured nervous system to coordinate a non-hormonal response to anything.
I don’t love the disregard for plant life just because they lack the central nervous system of animals, but this isn’t an argument in favor of eating animals. If you want to argue it’s better for us to die than to live via harm, that’s one thing, but if you accept we have the right to live at the expense of other life forms then the goal of many becomes to minimize suffering.
While plants do have sensory experiences which elicit behaviors, they don’t experience the world in a personal way; they’re like a robot or generative AI. When a dog suffers, it has a concept of self and an understanding of what is happening to it, and it will carry memories of the experience which negatively influence its quality of life.
Plants have feelings too
No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…OP has provided scientific evidence, feel free to do the same to support your claim - I’d wager this is gonna be hard.
And apologies if there was a /s I missed somewhere, I’m quite sensitive about this topic.
It’s pretty well known that plants don’t just passively endure damage—they communicate chemically with each other through the air or root systems.
Here are two examples:
Acacia Trees
When attacked, the tree releases ethylene gas into the air. Nearby acacia trees detect this gas and respond by increasing tannin production in their leaves, making them bitter and potentially toxic to herbivores. This chemical warning system helps protect not just one tree, but others nearby as well.
Tomato Plants
When attacked by pests like caterpillars, tomato plants release VOCs (such as methyl jasmonate). Nearby tomato plants “smell” this and preemptively activate their own defenses, such as producing chemicals that deter insects or attract predatory wasps.
Almost all people would agree that’s not the same thing as the subjective experience of pain, though. By that measure, a smoke detector is actually screaming when it’s power is interrupted.
Plants don’t have organs for movement or information processing, because those are too energy intensive and wouldn’t help much. Their other tissues respond to stimuli, but the data rate is orders of magnitude slower than an animal in the same environment.
I’m not sure why these signals would need to reach any significant complexity, but if they did amount to thought it would have the weird property that the plant’s mind grows (with it’s “body”) about as fast as it can think. And it’s kind of beside the point. Stealing from !Teppichbrand@feddit.org:
Plants have feelings too
No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…
Fuck it. I’m becoming an autotroph.
Or you can just eat a plant-based diet that’s actually viable.
Was that ever up for debate? I mean, what do people believe happens when one takes a creature adapted to breathing through water out of said water?
My dad is adamant that fish don’t feel pain. He just heard it from someone when he was young, and accepted it as fact because it made him feel better as a fishing enthusiast.
they don’t want to think about it, or they directly think that all animals doesn’t feel pain (or that the pain they suffer it’s not important because they are just animals and “we as humans, are above them”.
As a kid I liked to go fishing with my step father, and we (or at least I) never thought about what the fish felt, as they were so different to us, and they taught us that this was normal and fun.
It was years later that I really thought about it.
How would you ethically kill fish? For animals you could raise them to be old and live decent lives in a free range area and kill them with a stunner, but what about fishes?
Also, what are some good alternatives to fishes for your diet?
Edit: CW Don’t read if you don’t want descriptions of death of fish
Different ethical systems presume different things. That aside, I think the most universal thing is to minimise suffering. So it you’re going to fish, there are ways to minimise suffering of catch. It really depends your setup. But obviously the number one thing is do everything in your power to only catch things you will eat. Secondly, when you do catch something, don’t let it asyphixiate slowly to death. You can do a clean cut around the gill arches or the caudal artery. Which will hit the main veines and drop blood pressure to the brain really quick (very very quick death), this is also useful because then the fish bleeds out which prevents blood pooling in the meat from turning it rotten. Some people prefer to stun the fish before any cutting at all, so the first thing they will do, is hit something hard on the fish’s head which will immediately render it unconscious, then cut the arteries.
The whole asphyxiation to death is really the worst because it takes many many minutes and fish go through things like lungs collapsing and blood clotting which bring immense pain before being unconscious.
I think the most universal thing is to minimise suffering.
that’s just not true. the only ethical system i know of that holds this axiom is utilitarianism, and that is fraught with issues from epistemics to the fact it can be summarized “the ends justify the means”
Stop abusing animals and do better. Eating animals is wrong, unhealthy and horrible for the environment. Stop making excuses for your nonsense.
Can you ethically kill your dog when they want to live?
You can make fish alternatives with carrots, tofu, jackfruit, seitan, oyster king mushrooms, chickpeas, tempeh, anti choke.
https://proveg.com/uk/fish-alternatives-10-vegan-substitutes-to-fish-caviar-and-other-seafood/
there is no evidence non-human animals understand personal mortality. we can’t say they want to live, since there’s no evidence they understand that they themselves are living or could die.
Oh yes let’s ignore the fact that fish intentionally avoid being eaten in the ocean. I smell concern trolling, intentionally making false claims as if they were “the absolute truth.”
if you can point me to an animal behavioral-cognition study that shows any non-human animal understands personal mortality, i’d love to read it. all the studies i have found that get close to talking about it go out of their way to point out they don’t have evidence of it.
Can we solve human suffering first? Not saying this isn’t important… just that it’s kind of hypocritical to shift the focus away from the “hard” stuff, to something “easier”.
This is a false dichotomy. There is absolutely no reason to do both. And honestly, people who advocate for animal welfare tend to also be more outspoken against human suffering.
