Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Meta_Digital t1_itmtlsx wrote

Reply to comment by After_Kick_4543 in Lab-grown meat could let humanity ignore a serious moral failing by phileconomicus

To be a vegetarian, you have to first be an omnivore and then decide not to eat meat. This doesn't stop you from being an omnivore. Herbivores can't make this decision; they have to eat plants. Same with carnivores. They don't get to decide.

Similarly, you can't decide to stop being an omnivore any more than you can decide to stop being a carbon based lifeform. You can only decide what to do as an omnivore.

7

After_Kick_4543 t1_itmuf2a wrote

Maybe definitionally but if you decide to stop eating meat completely you’ve functionally stopped being an omnivore. Plus the idea that despite having a choice one of those choices is always wrong no matter what just doesn’t sound realistic. Eating meat has advantages either in the fact that certain nutrients are more easily digestibly accessible through meat or the fact that the animals we get meat from also provide fertilizer for our plants and often are fed with waste products from crops that humans cannot eat to begin with.

−3

Meta_Digital t1_itmvw7d wrote

Well, again, an omnivore who decides not to eat meat isn't an herbivore. There's a decision there and that decision is what we call ethics. So it's an important distinction.

The claim that there's advantages to eating meat isn't very well supported. It's certainly easier, but that's largely due to the fact that meat consumption is the norm (more than in any historical period in fact).

We synthesize most of our fertilizers thanks to the Nazi tech we employ. If we wanted to maximize the use of animal produced fertilizers, we'd have them grazing in our fields rather than using fossil fuels to transport it. Also, it wouldn't be necessary to eat those animals.

6

After_Kick_4543 t1_itmx3w0 wrote

I understand but I think that’s more of a technicality.

Ok but your decision is nonsensical it’s like saying that because you’re breathing carbon dioxide and there’s too much carbon dioxide in the air you shouldn’t breath air out in the open but should instead stay inside a bubble that filters out the carbon.

Then tell me what’s not supported.

And finally you can probably make the calculation on the amount of fertilizer a cow will produce over a given period of time and how much that will improve your crop yield versus the nutrition you’d get from simply eating it. And you can further perform the calculation on the carbon cost of transporting the manure versus creating it in a factory

0